Podcast appearances and mentions of Richard Heinberg

Épisode 75 dans sa version française. Richard Heinberg est un des penseurs qui m'a le plus influencé ces derniers temps. Il fait partie de ces trop rares personnes qui parviennent à prendre de la hauteur pour remettre en perspectives plusieurs des grands enjeux actuels, parmi lesquels l'économie, l'énergie, l'écologie.Son dernier ouvrage, Power, m'a fasciné.En étudiant le pouvoir et la puissance, leur signification, leurs différents aspects, il parvient à capturer une des grandes dynamiques d'évolution de l'humanité et pose un diagnostic limpide et sans appel sur les enjeux actuels.On en parle dons cet épisode à ne pas manquer.NB : ceci est une version française: la traduction et la voix de Richard Heinberg sont générés par une IA et les questions de Julien ont été réengistrées en français afin de proposer une interview fluide. ITW enregistrée le 3 sept 2021----Sismique est un podcast indépendant créé et animé par Julien Devaureix.Il s'agit d'une enquête sur les grands enjeux de notre époque pour explorer, se préparer et s'adapter à un monde en pleine mutation.

Rediffusion de l'épisode 75. Richard Heinberg est un des penseurs qui m'a le plus influencé ces derniers temps. Il fait partie de ces trop rares personnes qui parviennent à prendre de la hauteur pour remettre en perspectives plusieurs des grands enjeux actuels, parmi lesquels l'économie, l'énergie, l'écologie.Son dernier ouvrage, Power, m'a fasciné.En étudiant le pouvoir et la puissance, leur signification, leurs différents aspects, il parvient à capturer une des grandes dynamiques d'évolution de l'humanité et pose un diagnostic limpide et sans appel sur les enjeux actuels.On en parle dons cet épisode à ne pas manquer.Ceci est la version originale de l'interview en anglais. De quoi on parle ?What is the situation we are in right now as humans, what defines our era ?What is still commonly misleading us the most when we look at the world today ?What is Power ? What are the key elements, the key principles to have in mind before we go into more details ?How power games are so central in how our world functions ?What are the main sources, the main forms of power for humans through History, until today?How does power can explain the super fast evolution of the past decades ?Are we over-powered ?Can we keep growing our economies, our energy consumption, our population, improve our lifestyles AND solve say the climate crisis ?Can capitalism limit its appetite for power and for creating inequalities ?Then why does it appear that humans are failing to restrain their power and are willing to risk literally everything in pursuit of it?How can we limit our individual and collective power ?What's a pathway to avoiding the worst outcomes during the rest of this century?What are the most important levers to try to pull, the acupuncture points that could be tipping points ?Knowing all what you know, what do you think will happen in the coming years and decades ?What is your advice anyone listening ?2 books that everyone should read ?ITW enregistrée le 3 sept 2021----Sismique est un podcast indépendant créé et animé par Julien Devaureix.Il s'agit d'une enquête sur les grands enjeux de notre époque pour explorer, se préparer et s'adapter à un monde en pleine mutation.

A bonus episode in between seasons 5 and 6, featuring my new year's 'a calm presence' reflection on hope with writings and stories by Peter Schneider, John Crier (as told to Vanessa Andreotti), Richard Heinberg, Zia Gallina, Naomi Klein, Azul Carolina Duque, Jem Bendell, Robert R. Janes and Hildegard Westerkamp. To read the original posting on Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com/p/when-spirit-becomes-one-5f5  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHey conscient listeners, Thanks for your presence. Season 5 of this podcast is now completed. I'll be back with season 6 on art and culture in times of crisis, collapse and renewal (to be confirmed) sometime in 2025. Background on the conscient podcast I've been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020 on un-ceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory (Ottawa). It's my way to give back and be present.In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those in need of a calm presence'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also, please note that a complete transcript of most conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 5 is available on the web version of this site: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast or my social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on November 18, 2024

The June 15 Swanpool Environmental Film Festival was in equal portions depressing and uplifting - the latter arising from the fact that the Swanpool theatre was full of people eager to understand what is ahead for humanity and how best they could contribute to decisions ensuring the correct path was chosen. The eight-hour festival included the screening of three movies - "The New Corporation", "Finding the Money", and "Undercurrents" by Margot Nash. An intriguing, and almost laughable aspect of the Finding the Money movie was the interview with Jared Bernstein, the Chair of America's Council of Economic Advisers. Dr Steven Hail from the Torrens University Modern Money Lab in Adelaide introduced "Finding the Money" and mentioned Professor Stephanie Kelton, who was, by default, the movie's star. Musical entertainment was provided by the "Hot House Quartet" and in entertaining the crowd with the song "The Carnival is Over", I was reminded of Richard Heinberg's 2003 book, "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies". Dr Mark Diesendorf, co-authored "The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change" with Rod Taylor. Sponsors for the festival were the "Swanpool and District Land Protection Group"; the Benalla Sustainable Future Group"; the "Gecko Clan"; "Winton Wetlands"; "Benalla Rural City Council"; and the "Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority". A separate episode of "Climate Conversations" has a presentation by Dr Mark Diesendorf. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robert-mclean/message

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The most vomit-inducing document of 2023 has to be the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto," written (oh so obviously) by a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Join Jason, Rob, and Asher if you feel like sharing in some outrage and learning about a WAY better manifesto that just so happens to focus on the world's smallest monkeys.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.References:Marc Andreessen's horrifying "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" Peer-reviewed paper featuring Jason's far superior "Dehumanist Manifesto"Description of the pygmy marmosetThe idea of Beth Sawin's Multisolving InstituteThe dark triad -- narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathyThe original paper on the taxonomy of Phalse ProphetsArticle by Richard Heinberg about free will.Support the show

In this episode, Sarah and Sheri reflect on the Richard Heinberg interview as it relates to the message of their new book So That We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis. (https://www.mennomedia.org/9781513812946/so-we-and-our-children-may-live/) We discuss why we are hopeful despite the polycrisis described in both our new book and in the interview with Richard. We also talk about why conspiracy theories like QAnon are onto something true and why it is important to be in kinship and solidarity with the working-class and poor people who believe these theories. Note: At the beginning of this episode, we refer to a segment of the interview with Richard that wasn't included in the previous episode. It's a segment where he talks about the work of complexity scientist Peter Turchin. If you want to listen to that 7-minute segment – shameless plug alert! – you can do so by subscribing to Sarah's and my new Substack (https://sarahsheri.substack.com/), where you will get a quite personal weekly reflection on ecological justice, decolonization, faith, and hope for our future. We'll begin posting Nov. 30. We refer to this podcast episode, “Insects – A Silent Extinction” (https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/90-nick-haddad) on Nate Hagens' “The Great Simplification.” You can follow the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery on Instagram (@coalitiontodismantle) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/dismantlediscovery)

In this episode, we talk with Richard Heinberg, one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our reliance on fossil fuels. He is the author of fourteen books, including some of the major works on society's current energy and environmental sustainability crisis. His latest book is Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (https://power.postcarbon.org) (New Society, 2021). He is also Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, which is one of the main places Sheri goes to for information and analysis related to the polycrisis in which we find ourselves. Sheri relied on Richard's work and that of the Post Carbon Institute when writing her and Sarah's book, which is coming out later this month – So That We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (Herald Press). We're delighted that Richard wrote an endorsement for our book! You can find all of the articles Richard mentioned in this podcast, and more, at his website (http://richardheinberg.com). Also check out the Post Carbon Institute's resilience.org (http://www.resilience.org), which offers complex and clear systemic analysis on ecology, the environment, the equity crisis, energy and politics. You can follow the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery on Instagram (@coalitiontodismantle) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/dismantlediscovery)

BFM turns 15 on the 4th of September 2023, and to commemorate, we're revisiting some of our best interviews from the years past, and playing you 15-minute snippets from three interviews (or thereabouts) featuring international guests we've featured on Earth Matters. In this collection, you will hear from Dame Jane Morris Goodall DBE, a Primatologist & Anthropologist, Richard Heinberg, a Journalist, Educator, and Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and also climate activist Yeb Saño, the Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Post Carbon Institute/SIDCSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

756: Richard Heinberg on Power, Energy, and Climate ChangeWorking to remove fossil fuels from the food systemIn This Podcast: Richard Heinberg joins the show to talk about how our power and energy systems affect our food system and how that affects the planet's ability to sustain our species. He shares his insight on how we've gotten to where we are now and some proposed solutions that are based on self-limiting our power. He gives us ways to get involved and to be more educated. Richard is a senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. He's an author, educator, and lecturer, and has spoken widely on energy and climate issues to audiences across the globe. He's the author of fourteen books, including the most recent Power Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, along with his podcast of the same name. He is widely published in Nature, the Wall Street Journal and literary review, and has delivered hundreds of lectures on energy and climate issues to audiences on six continents, addressing policymakers at many levelsVisit Urbanfarm.org/PowerLimits for the show notes and links on this episode!Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.Click HERE to learn more!Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Meet Steve Bannon, the Molotov mixologist who wants to light the world on fire. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 1 with Daniel P Aldrich, Amira Odeh, and Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 2 with Dean Spade, Joanna Swan, and Aliza Tuttle, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.Dean Spade, "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),"  Verso Books, October 2020."Democracy Rising" essay series on deliberative democracyGlobal Tapestry of AlternativesEliana Johnson and Eli Stokols, "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read," Politico, February 7, 2017.Lisa Marshall, "Inside Steve Bannon's 'War for Eternity'," CU Boulder Today, April 22, 2020.Joshua Green, "Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon's Nationalist Fantasia," Vanity Fair, July 17, 2017.David Breitenbeck, "A Brief Summary of Traditionalism," The Imaginative Conservative, March 21, 2019.Generation Zero, Bannon's poorly reviewed documentaryGuo Wengui's video for his song, "Take Down the CCP," -- the third best comedy yacht video of all time.Douglas Rushkoff, "How to Avoid Becoming a Fascist: Why I turned down an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast," Medium, October 21, 2021.Olivia Goldhill, "The neo-fascist philosophy that underpins both the alt-right and Silicon Valley technophiles," Quartz, June 18, 2017.Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state'," The Washington Post, February 23, 2017.Support the show

We are joined in this episode by Richard Heinberg, one of the world's foremost experts on energy and sustainability. Using his latest book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival as the basis of our conversation, we unpack how humans have come to overpower Earth's natural systems and oppress one another and how we might address this. Richard challenges the techno-utopian absurdity of “green growth” and explains how unfettered human expansionism, even with a “green” tint, is incompatible with natural limits. We discuss how we might deliberately rein in our power, starting with an urgent transition away from fossil fuels, and move from a culture of unabated growth toward a culture of sufficiency, simplicity, and resilience. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcasts/richard-heinberg ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance Executive Director Nandita Bajaj, cohost Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/

Meet Mark Jacobson and David Keith, the leading techno-fixologists who overpromise overhyped “solutions” to the climate conundrum. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:The Solutions ProjectCarbon EngineeringDavid W. Keith et al., "A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere," Joule, August 15, 2018.Christopher T. M. Clack et al., "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar," PNAS, June 19, 2017.Natanael Bolson, P. Prieto, and T. Patzek, "Capacity factors for electrical power generation from renewable and nonrenewable sources," PNAS, December 20, 2022.Simon Michaux's websiteRichard Heinberg, "Can Civilization Survive? These Studies Might Tell Us," Resilience, December 19, 2022.Average household electricity consumptionDavid Fridley and Richard Heinberg, "Can Climate Change Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline?," Renewable Energy World, June 19, 2018.Mark Jacobson on Late Night with David LettermanJames R. Martin, "Energy Transition & the Luxury Economy," Resilience, October 31, 2022.Yamina Saheb, Kai Kuhnhenn, and Juliane Schumacher, "It's a Very Western Vision of the World," Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.Mark Z. Jacobson et al., "Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries," Energy & Environmental Science (2022).Nicole Jewell, "Leading Stanford climate scientist builds incredible net zero home, complete with Tesla Powerwall," In Habitat (2017).Raymond Pierrehumbert, "The trouble with geoengineers 'hacking the planet'," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2017).Support the show

On our show for April 24th, host Brent Ragsdale will speak with his guest, Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at Post Carbon Institute and the author of 14 books, including POWER: […] The post REDESIGNING OUR COMMUNITIES FOR LIFE AFTER FOSSIL FUELS appeared first on KKFI.

This week we talk about the intersections of large language models, the golden age of television and its storytelling mishaps, making one's way through the weirding of the labor economy, and much more with two of my favorite Gen X science fiction aficionados, OG podcaster KMO and our mutual friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut. In this episode — a standalone continuation to my recent appearance on The KMO Show, we skip like a stone across mentions of every Star Trek series, the collapse of narratives and the social fabric, Westworld HBO, Star Wars Mandalorian vs. Andor vs. Rebels, chatGPT, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, H.P. Lovecraft, the Sheldrake-Abraham-McKenna Trialogues, Charles Stross' Accelerando, Adventure Time, Stanislav Grof's LSD psychotherapy, Francisco Varela, Blake Lemoine's meltdown over Google LaMDA, Integrated Information Theory, biosemiotics, Douglas Hofstadter, Max Tegmarck, Erik Davis, Peter Watts, The Psychedelic Salon, Melanie Mitchell, The Teafaerie, Kevin Kelly, consilience in science, Fight Club, and more…Or, if you prefer, here's a rundown of the episode generated by A.I. c/o my friends at Podium.page:In this episode, I explore an ambitious and well-connected conversation with guests KMO, a seasoned podcaster, and Kevin Walnut [sic], a close friend and supporter of the arts in Santa Fe. We dive deep into their thoughts on the social epistemology crisis, science fiction, deep fakes, and ontology. Additionally, we discuss their opinions on the Star Trek franchise, particularly their critiques of the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery. Through this engaging conversation, we examine the impact of storytelling and the evolution of science fiction in modern culture. We also explore the relationship between identity, media, and artificial intelligence, as well as the ethical implications of creating sentient artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the philosophical questions surrounding AI's impact on society and human existence. Join us for a thought-provoking and in-depth discussion on a variety of topics that will leave you questioning the future of humanity and our relationship with technology.✨ Before we get started, three big announcements!* I am leaving the Santa Fe Institute, in part to write a very ambitious book about technology, art, imagination, and Jurassic Park. You can be a part of the early discussion around this project by joining the Future Fossils Book Club's Jurassic Park live calls — the first of which will be on Saturday, 29 April — open to Substack and Patreon supporters:* Catch me in a Twitter Space with Nxt Museum on Monday 17 April at 11 am PST on a panel discussing “Creative Misuse of Technology” with Minne Atairu, Parag Mital, Caroline Sinders, and hosts Jesse Damiani and Charlotte Kent.* I'm back in Austin this October to play the Astronox Festival at Apache Pass! Check out this amazing lineup on which I appear alongside Juno Reactor, Entheogenic, Goopsteppa, DRRTYWULVZ, and many more great artists!✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work.Buy my music on Bandcamp! (This episode features “A Better Trip” from my recent live album by the same name.)Or if you're into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group and Discord server. Join us!Episode cover art by KMO and a whole bouquet of digital image manipulation apps.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• These show notes and the transcript were made possible with Podium.Page, a very cool new AI service I'm happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I'm a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don't wear it all the time, when I do it's sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I've ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned Media:KMO Show S01 E01 - 001 - Michael Garfield and Kevin WohlmutAn Edifying Thought on AI by Charles EisensteinIn Defense of Star Trek: Picard & Discovery by Michael GarfieldImprovising Out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldAI and the Transformation of the Human Spirit by Steven Hales(and yes I know it's on Quillette, and no I don't think this automatically disqualifies it)Future Fossils Book Club #1: Blindsight by Peter WattsFF 116 - The Next Ten Billion Years: Ugo Bardi & John Michael Greer as read by Kevin Arthur Wohlmut✨ Related Recent Future Fossils Episodes:FF 198 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Aliens, Land Spirits, & The Singularity (Part 2)FF 195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesFF 187 - Fear & Loathing on the Electronic Frontier with Kevin Welch & David Hensley of EFF-Austin FF 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutions FF 175 - C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as Art ✨ Chapters:0:15:45 - The Substance of Philosophy (58 Seconds)0:24:45 - Complicated TV Narratives and the Internet (104 Seconds)0:30:54 - Humans vs Hosts in Westworld (81 Seconds)0:38:09 - Philosophical Zombies and Artificial Intelligence (89 Seconds)0:43:00 - Popular Franchises Themes (71 Seconds)1:03:27 - Reflections on a Changing Media Landscape (89 Seconds)1:10:45 - The Pathology of Selective Evidence (92 Seconds)1:16:32 - Externalizing Trauma Through Technology (131 Seconds)1:24:51 - From Snow Maker to Thouandsaire (43 Seconds)1:36:48 - The Impact of Boomer Parenting (126 Seconds)✨ Keywords:Social Epistemology, Science Fiction, Deep Fakes, Ontology, Star Trek, Artificial Intelligence, AI Impact, Sentient AGI, Human-Machine Interconnectivity, Consciousness Theory, Westworld, Blade Runner 2049, AI in Economy, AI Companion Chatbots, Unconventional Career Path, AI and Education, AI Content Creation, AI in Media, Turing Test✨ UNEDITED machine-generated transcript generated by podium.page:0:00:00Five four three two one. Go. So it's not like Wayne's world where you say the two and the one silently. Now, Greetings future fossils.0:00:11Welcome to episode two hundred and one of the podcast that explores our place in time I'm your host, Michael Garfield. And this is one of these extra juicy and delicious episodes of the show where I really ratcheted up with our guests and provide you one of these singularity is near kind of ever everything is connected to everything, self organized criticality right at the edge of chaos conversations, deeply embedded in chapel parallel where suddenly the invisible architect picture of our cosmos starts to make itself apparent through the glass bead game of conversation. And I am that I get to share it with you. Our guests this week are KMO, one of the most seasoned and well researched and experienced podcasters that I know. Somebody whose show the Sea Realm was running all the way back in two thousand six, I found him through Eric Davis, who I think most of you know, and I've had on the show a number of times already. And also Kevin Walnut, who is a close friend of mine here in Santa Fe, a just incredible human being, he's probably the strongest single supporter of music that I'm aware of, you know, as far as local scenes are concerned and and supporting people's music online and helping get the word out. He's been instrumental to my family and I am getting ourselves situated here all the way back to when I visited Santa Fe in two thousand eighteen to participate in the Santa Fe Institute's Interplanetary Festival and recorded conversations on that trip John David Ebert and Michael Aaron Cummins. And Ike used so June. About hyper modernity, a two part episode one zero four and one zero five. I highly recommend going back to that, which is really the last time possibly I had a conversation just this incredibly ambitious on the show.0:02:31But first, I want to announce a couple things. One is that I have left the Santa Fe Institute. The other podcast that I have been hosting for them for the last three and a half years, Complexity Podcast, which is substantially more popular in future fossils due to its institutional affiliation is coming to a close, I'm recording one more episode with SFI president David Krakauer next week in which I'm gonna be talking about my upcoming book project. And that episode actually is conjoined with the big announcement that I have for members of the Future Fossil's listening audience and and paid supporters, which is, of course, the Jurassic Park Book Club that starts On April twenty ninth, we're gonna host the first of two video calls where I'm gonna dive deep into the science and philosophy Michael Creighton's most popular work of fiction and its impact on culture and society over the thirty three years since its publication. And then I'm gonna start picking up as many of the podcasts that I had scheduled for complexity and had to cancel upon my departure from SFI. And basically fuse the two shows.0:03:47And I think a lot of you saw this coming. Future fossils is going to level up and become a much more scientific podcast. As I prepare and research the book that I'm writing about Jurassic Park and its legacy and the relationship It has to ILM and SFI and the Institute of Eco Technics. And all of these other visionary projects that sprouted in the eighties and nineties to transition from the analog to the digital the collapse of the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the human and the non human worlds, it's gonna be a very very ambitious book and a very very ambitious book club. And I hope that you will get in there because obviously now I am out in the rain as an independent producer and very much need can benefit from and am deeply grateful for your support for this work in order to make things happen and in order to keep my family fed, get the lights on here with future fossils. So with that, I wanna thank all of the new supporters of the show that have crawled out of the woodwork over the last few weeks, including Raefsler Oingo, Brian in the archaeologist, Philip Rice, Gerald Bilak, Jamie Curcio, Jeff Hanson who bought my music, Kuaime, Mary Castello, VR squared, Nastia teaches, community health com, Ed Mulder, Cody Couiac, bought my music, Simon Heiduke, amazing visionary artist. I recommend you check out, Kayla Peters. Yeah. All of you, I just wow. Thank you so much. It's gonna be a complete melee in this book club. I'm super excited to meet you all. I will send out details about the call details for the twenty ninth sometime in the next few days via a sub tag in Patreon.0:06:09The amount of support that I've received through this transition has been incredible and it's empowering me to do wonderful things for you such as the recently released secret videos of the life sets I performed with comedian Shane Moss supporting him, opening for him here in Santa Fe. His two sold out shows at the Jean Coutu cinema where did the cyber guitar performances. And if you're a subscriber, you can watch me goofing off with my pedal board. There's a ton of material. I'm gonna continue to do that. I've got a lot of really exciting concerts coming up in the next few months that we're gonna get large group and also solo performance recordings from and I'm gonna make those available in a much more resplendent way to supporters as well as the soundtrack to Mark Nelson of the Institute of Eco Technics, his UC San Diego, Art Museum, exhibit retrospective looking at BioSphere two. I'm doing music for that and that's dropping. The the opening of that event is April twenty seventh. There's gonna be a live zoom event for that and then I'm gonna push the music out as well for that.0:07:45So, yeah, thank you all. I really, really appreciate you listening to the show. I am excited to share this episode with you. KMO is just a trove. Of insight and experience. I mean, he's like a perfect entry into the digital history museum that this show was predicated upon. So with that and also, of course, Kevin Willett is just magnificent. And for the record, stick around at the end of the conversation. We have some additional pieces about AI, and I think you're gonna really enjoy it. And yeah, thank you. Here we go. Alright. Cool.0:09:26Well, we just had a lovely hour of discussion for the new KMO podcast. And now I'm here with KMO who is The most inveterate podcaster I know. And I know a lot of them. Early adopts. And I think that weird means what you think it means. Inventor it. Okay. Yes. Hey, answer to both. Go ahead. I mean, you're not yet legless and panhandling. So prefer to think of it in term in terms of August estimation. Yeah. And am I allowed to say Kevin Walnut because I've had you as a host on True. Yeah. My last name was appeared on your show. It hasn't appeared on camos yet, but I don't really care. Okay. Great. Yeah. Karen Arthur Womlett, who is one of the most solid and upstanding and widely read and just generous people, I think I know here in Santa Fe or maybe anywhere. With excellent taste and podcasts. Yes. And who is delicious meat I am sampling right now as probably the first episode of future fossils where I've had an alcoholic beverage in my hand. Well, I mean, it's I haven't deprived myself. Of fun. And I think if you're still listening to the show after all these years, you probably inferred that. But at any rate, Welcome on board. Thank you. Thanks. Pleasure to be here.0:10:49So before we started rolling, I guess, so the whole conversation that we just had for your show camera was very much about my thoughts on the social epistemology crisis and on science fiction and deep fakes and all of these kinds of weird ontology and these kinds of things. But in between calls, we were just talking about how much you detest the first two seasons of Star Trek card and of Discovery. And as somebody, I didn't bother with doing this. I didn't send you this before we spoke, but I actually did write an SIN defense of those shows. No one. Yeah. So I am not attached to my opinion on this, but And I actually do wanna at some point double back and hear storytelling because when he had lunch and he had a bunch of personal life stuff that was really interesting. And juicy and I think worthy of discussion. But simply because it's hot on the rail right now, I wanna hear you talk about Star Trek. And both of you, actually, I know are very big fans of this franchise. I think fans are often the ones from whom a critic is most important and deserved. And so I welcome your unhinged rants. Alright. Well, first, I'll start off by quoting Kevin's brother, the linguist, who says, That which brings us closer to Star Trek is progress. But I'd have to say that which brings us closer to Gene Rottenberry and Rick Berman era Star Trek. Is progress. That which brings us closer to Kurtzmann. What's his first name? Alex. Alex Kurtzmann, Star Trek. Well, that's not even the future. I mean, that's just that's our drama right now with inconsistent Star Trek drag draped over it.0:12:35I liked the first JJ Abrams' Star Trek. I think it was two thousand nine with Chris Pine and Zachary Qinto and Karl Urban and Joey Saldana. I liked the casting. I liked the energy. It was fun. I can still put that movie on and enjoy it. But each one after that just seem to double down on the dumb and just hold that arm's length any of the philosophical stuff that was just amazing from Star Trek: The Next Generation or any of the long term character building, which was like from Deep Space nine.0:13:09And before seven of nine showed up on on Voyager, you really had to be a dedicated Star Trek fan to put up with early season's Voyager, but I did because I am. But then once she came on board and it was hilarious. They brought her onboard. I remember seeing Jerry Ryan in her cat suit on the cover of a magazine and just roll in my eyes and think, oh my gosh, this show is in such deep trouble through sinking to this level to try to save it. But she was brilliant. She was brilliant in that show and she and Robert Percardo as the doctor. I mean, it basically became the seven of nine and the doctor show co starring the rest of the cast of Voyager. And it was so great.0:13:46I love to hear them singing together and just all the dynamics of I'm human, but I was I basically came up in a cybernetic collective and that's much more comfortable to me. And I don't really have the option of going back it. So I gotta make the best of where I am, but I feel really superior to all of you. Is such it was such a charming dynamic. I absolutely loved it. Yes. And then I think a show that is hated even by Star Trek fans Enterprise. Loved Enterprise.0:14:15And, yes, the first three seasons out of four were pretty rough. Actually, the first two were pretty rough. The third season was that Zendy Ark in the the expanse. That was pretty good. And then season four was just astounding. It's like they really found their voice and then what's his name at CBS Paramount.0:14:32He's gone now. He got me too. What's his name? Les Moonves? Said, no. I don't like Star Trek. He couldn't he didn't know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. That was his level of engagement.0:14:44And he's I really like J.0:14:46J.0:14:46Abrams. What's that? You mean J. J. Abrams. Yeah. I think J. J. Is I like some of J. Abrams early films. I really like super eight. He's clearly his early films were clearly an homage to, like, eighties, Spielberg stuff, and Spielberg gets the emotional beats right, and JJ Abrams was mimicking that, and his early stuff really works. It's just when he starts adapting properties that I really love. And he's coming at it from a marketing standpoint first and a, hey, we're just gonna do the lost mystery box thing. We're gonna set up a bunch questions to which we don't know the answers, and it'll be up to somebody else to figure it out, somebody down the line. I as I told you, between our conversations before we were recording. I really enjoy or maybe I said it early in this one. I really like that first J. J. Abrams, Star Trek: Foam, and then everyone thereafter, including the one that Simon Pegg really had a hand in because he's clear fan. Yeah. Yeah. But they brought in director from one of the fast and the furious films and they tried to make it an action film on.0:15:45This is not Star Trek, dude. This is not why we like Star Trek. It's not for the flash, particularly -- Oh my god. -- again, in the first one, it was a stylistic choice. I'd like it, then after that is that's the substance of this, isn't it? It's the lens flares. I mean, that that's your attempt at philosophy. It's this the lens flares. That's your attempt at a moral dilemma. I don't know.0:16:07I kinda hate to start off on this because this is something about which I feel like intense emotion and it's negative. And I don't want that to be my first impression. I'm really negative about something. Well, one of the things about this show is that I always joke that maybe I shouldn't edit it because The thing that's most interesting to archaeologists is often the trash mitt and here I am tidying this thing up to be presentable to future historians or whatever like it I can sync to that for sure. Yeah. I'm sorry. The fact of it is you're not gonna know everything and we want it that way. No. It's okay. We'll get around to the stuff that I like. But yeah. So anyway yeah.0:16:44So I could just preassociate on Stretrick for a while, so maybe a focusing question. Well, but first, you said there's a you had more to say, but you were I this this tasteful perspective. This is awesome. Well, I do have a focus on question for you. So let me just have you ask it because for me to get into I basically I'm alienated right now from somebody that I've been really good friends with since high school.0:17:08Because over the last decade, culturally, we have bifurcated into the hard right, hard left. And I've tried not to go either way, but the hard left irritates me more than the hard right right now. And he is unquestionably on the hard left side. And I know for people who are dedicated Marxist, or really grounded in, like, materialism and the material well-being of workers that the current SJW fanaticism isn't leftist. It's just crazed. We try to put everything, smash everything down onto this left right spectrum, and it's pretty easy to say who's on the left and who's on the right even if a two dimensional, two axis graph would be much more expressive and nuanced.0:17:49Anyway, what's your focus in question? Well, And I think there is actually there is a kind of a when we ended your last episode talking about the bell riots from d s nine -- Mhmm. -- that, you know, how old five? Yeah. Twenty four. Ninety five did and did not accurately predict the kind of technological and economic conditions of this decade. It predicted the conditions Very well. Go ahead and finish your question. Yeah. Right.0:18:14That's another thing that's retreated in picard season two, and it was actually worth it. Yeah. Like, it was the fact that they decided to go back there was part of the defense that I made about that show and about Discovery's jump into the distant future and the way that they treated that I posted to medium a year or two ago when I was just watching through season two of picard. And for me, the thing that I liked about it was that they're making an effort to reconcile the wonder and the Ethiopian promise And, you know, this Kevin Kelly or rather would call Blake Protopian, right, that we make these improvements and that they're often just merely into incremental improvements the way that was it MLK quoted that abolitionists about the long arc of moral progress of moral justice. You know, I think that there's something to that and patitis into the last this is a long question. I'm mad at I'm mad at these. Thank you all for tolerating me.0:19:22But the when to tie it into the epistemology question, I remember this seeing this impactful lecture by Carnegie Mellon and SFI professor Simon Didayo who was talking about how by running statistical analysis on the history of the proceedings of the Royal Society, which is the oldest scientific journal, that you could see what looked like a stock market curve in sentiment analysis about the confidence that scientists had at the prospect of unifying knowledge. And so you have, like, conciliance r s curve here that showed that knowledge would be more and more unified for about a century or a hundred and fifty years then it would go through fifty years of decline where something had happened, which was a success of knowledge production. Had outpaced our ability to integrate it. So we go through these kinds of, like, psychedelic peak experiences collectively, and then we have sit there with our heads in our hands and make sense of everything that we've learned over the last century and a half and go through a kind of a deconstructive epoch. Where we don't feel like the center is gonna hold anymore. And that is what I actually As as disappointing as I accept that it is and acknowledge that it is to people who were really fueling themselves on that more gene rottenberry era prompt vision for a better society, I actually appreciated this this effort to explore and address in the shows the way that they could pop that bubble.0:21:03And, like, it's on the one hand, it's boring because everybody's trying to do the moral complexity, anti hero, people are flawed, thing in narrative now because we have a general loss of faith in our institutions and in our rows. On the other hand, like, that's where we are and that's what we need to process And I think there is a good reason to look back at the optimism and the quarian hope of the sixties and early seventies. We're like, really, they're not so much the seventies, but look back on that stuff and say, we wanna keep telling these stories, but we wanna tell it in a way that acknowledges that the eighties happened. And that this is you got Tim Leary, and then you've got Ronald Reagan. And then That just or Dick Nixon. And like these things they wash back and forth. And so it's not unreasonable to imagine that in even in a world that has managed to how do you even keep a big society like that coherent? It has to suffer kind of fabric collapses along the way at different points. And so I'm just curious your thoughts about that. And then I do have another prompt, but I wanna give Kevin the opportunity to respond to this as well as to address some of the prompts that you brought to this conversation? This is a conversation prompt while we weren't recording. It has nothing to do with Sartreks. I'll save that for later. Okay.0:22:25Well, everything you just said was in some way related to a defense of Alex Kurtzmann Star Trek. And it's not my original idea. I'm channeling somebody from YouTube, surely. But Don't get points for theme if the storytelling is incompetent. That's what I was gonna Yeah. And the storytelling in all of Star Trek: Discovery, and in the first two seasons of picard was simply incompetent.0:22:53When Star Trek, the next generation was running, they would do twenty, twenty four, sometimes more episodes in one season. These days, the season of TVs, eight episodes, ten, and they spend a lot more money on each episode. There's a lot more special effects. There's a lot more production value. Whereas Star Trek: The Next Generation was, okay, we have these standing sets. We have costumes for our actors. We have Two dollars for special effects. You better not introduce a new alien spaceship. It that costs money. We have to design it. We have to build it. So use existing stuff. Well, what do you have? You have a bunch of good actors and you have a bunch of good writers who know how to tell a story and craft dialogue and create tension and investment with basically a stage play and nothing in the Kerstmann era except one might argue and I would have sympathy strange new worlds. Comes anywhere close to that level of competence, which was on display for decades. From Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space nines, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek Enterprise. And so, I mean, I guess, in that respect, it's worth asking because, I mean, all of us, I think, are fans of Deep Space nine.0:24:03You don't think that it's a shift in focus. You don't think that strange in world is exempt because it went back to a more episodic format because what you're talking about is the ability for rather than a show runner or a team of show runners to craft a huge season, long dramatic arc. You've got people that are like Harlan Ellison in the original series able to bring a really potent one off idea to the table and drop it. And so there are there's all of those old shows are inconsistent from episode to episode. Some are they have specific writers that they would bring back again and that you could count to knock out of the park. Yeah. DC Fontana. Yeah.0:24:45So I'm curious to your thoughts on that as well as another part of this, which is when we talk when we talk your show about Doug Rushkoff and and narrative collapse, and he talks about how viewers just have different a way, it's almost like d s nine was possibly partially responsible for this change in what people expected from so. From television programming in the documentary that was made about that show and they talk about how people weren't ready for cereal. I mean, for I mean, yeah, for these long arcs, And so there is there's this question now about how much of this sort of like tiresome moral complexity and dragging narrative and all of this and, like, things like Westworld where it becomes so baroque and complicated that, like, you have, like, die hard fans like me that love it, but then you have a lot of people that just lost interest. They blacked out because the show was trying to tell a story that was, like, too intricate like, too complicated that the the show runners themselves got lost. And so that's a JJ Abrams thing too, the puzzle the mystery box thing where You get to the end of five seasons of lost and you're like, dude, did you just forget?0:25:56Did you wake up five c five episodes ago and just, oh, right. Right. We're like a chatbot that only give you very convincing answers based on just the last two or three interactions. But you don't remember the scene that we set. Ten ten responses ago. Hey. You know, actually, red articles were forget who it was, which series it was, they were saying that there's so many leaks and spoilers in getting out of the Internet that potentially the writers don't know where they're going because that way it can't be with the Internet. Yeah. Sounds interesting. Yeah. That sounds like cover for incompetence to be.0:26:29I mean, on the other hand, I mean, you did hear, like, Nolan and Joy talking about how they would they were obsessed with the Westworld subreddit and the fan theories and would try to dodge Like, if they had something in their mind that they found out that people are re anticipating, they would try to rewrite it. And so there is something about this that I think is really speaks to the nature of because I do wanna loop in your thoughts on AI to because you're talking about this being a favorite topic. Something about the, like, trying to The demands on the self made by predatory surveillance technologies are such that the I'm convinced the adaptive response is that we become more stochastic or inconsistent in our identities. And that we kind of sublimate from a more solid state of identity to or through a liquid kind of modernity biologic environment to a gaseous state of identity. That is harder to place sorry, harder to track. And so I think that this is also part of and this is the other question I wanted to ask you, and then I'm just gonna shut up for fifteen minutes is do you when you talk about loving Robert Ricardo and Jerry Ryan as the doctor at seven zero nine, One of the interesting things about that relationship is akin to stuff.0:27:52I know you've heard on Kevin have heard on future fossils about my love for Blade Runner twenty forty nine and how it explores all of these different these different points along a gradient between what we think of in the current sort of general understanding as the human and the machine. And so there's this thing about seven, right, where she's She's a human who wants to be a machine. And then there's this thing about the doctor where he's a machine that wants to be a human. And you have to grant both on a logical statuses to both of them. And that's why I think they're the two most interesting characters. Right?0:28:26And so at any rate, like, this is that's there's I've seen writing recently on the Turing test and how, like, really, there should be a reverse Turing test to see if people that have become utterly reliant on outboard cognition and information processing. They can pass the drink. Right. Are they philosophical zombies now? Are they are they having some an experience that that, you know, people like, thick and and shilling and the missing and these people would consider the modern self or are they something else have we moved on to another more routine robotic kind of category of being? I don't know. There's just a lot there, but -- Well done. -- considering everything you just said, In twenty words or less, what's your question? See, even more, like I said, do you have the inveterate podcaster? I'd say There's all of those things I just spoke about are ways in which what we are as people and the nature of our media, feedback into fourth, into each other. And so I would just love to hear you reflect on any of that, be it through the lens of Star Trek or just through the lens of discussion on AI. And we'll just let the ball roll downhill. So with the aim of framing something positively rather than negatively.0:29:47In the late nineties, mid to late nineties. We got the X Files. And the X Files for the first few seasons was so It was so engaging for me because Prior to that, there had been Hollywood tropes about aliens, which informed a lot of science fiction that didn't really connect with the actual reported experience of people who claim to have encountered either UFOs, now called UAPs, or had close encounters physical contact. Type encounters with seeming aliens. And it really seemed like Chris Carter, who was the showrunner, was reading the same Usenet Newsgroups that I was reading about those topics. Like, really, we had suddenly, for the first time, except maybe for comedian, you had the Grey's, and you had characters experiencing things that just seemed ripped right out of the reports that people were making on USnet, which for young folks, this is like pre Worldwide Web. It was Internet, but with no pictures. It's all text. Good old days from my perspective is a grumpy old gen xer. And so, yeah, that was a breakthrough moment.0:30:54Any this because you mentioned it in terms of Jonathan Nolan and his co writer on Westworld, reading the subreddit, the West and people figured out almost immediately that there were two interweaving time lines set decades apart and that there's one character, the old guy played by Ed Harris, and the young guy played by I don't remember the actor. But, you know, that they were the same character and that the inveterate white hat in the beginning turns into the inveterate black cat who's just there for the perverse thrill of tormenting the hosts as the robots are called. And the thing that I love most about that first season, two things. One, Anthony Hopkins. Say no more. Two, the revelation that the park has been basically copying humans or figuring out what humans are by closely monitoring their behavior in the park and the realization that the hosts come to is that, holy shit compared to us, humans are very simple creatures. We are much more complex. We are much more sophisticated, nuanced conscious, we feel more than the humans do, and that humans use us to play out their perverse and sadistic fantasies. To me, that was the takeaway message from season one.0:32:05And then I thought every season after that was just diluted and confused and not really coherent. And in particular, I haven't if there's a fourth season, haven't There was and then the show got canceled before they could finish the story. They had the line in season three. It was done after season three. And I was super happy to see Let's see after who plays Jesse Pinkman? Oh, no. Aaron oh, shit. Paul. Yes. Yeah. I was super happy to see him and something substantial and I was really pleased to see him included in the show and it's like, oh, that's what you're doing with him? They did a lot more interesting stuff with him in season four. I did they. They did a very much more interesting stuff. I think it was done after season three. If you tell me season four is worth taking in, I blow. I thought it was.0:32:43But again, I only watch television under very specific set of circumstances, and that's how I managed to enjoy television because I was a fierce and unrepentant hyperlogical critic of all media as a child until I managed to start smoking weed. And then I learned to enjoy myself. As we mentioned in the kitchen as I mentioned in the kitchen, if I smoke enough weed, Star Trek: Discovery is pretty and I can enjoy it on just a second by second level where if I don't remember what the character said thirty seconds ago, I'm okay. But I absolutely loved in season two when they brought in Hanson Mountain as as Christopher Pike. He's suddenly on the discovery and he's in the captain's chair. And it's like he's speaking for the audience. The first thing he says is, hey, why don't we turn on the lights? And then hey, all you people sitting around the bridge. We've been looking at your faces for a whole season. We don't even think about you. Listen to a round of introductions. Who are you? Who are you? It's it's if I were on set. You got to speak.0:33:53The writers is, who are these characters? We've been looking at them every single episode for a whole season. I don't know their names. I don't know anything about them. Why are they even here? Why is it not just Michael Burnham and an automated ship? And then it was for a while -- Yeah. -- which is funny. Yeah. To that point, And I think this kind of doubles back. The thing that I love about bringing him on and all of the people involved in strange and worlds in particular, is that these were lifelong fans of this series, I mean, of this world. Yeah. And so in that way, gets to this the idiosyncrasy question we're orbiting here, which is when these things are when the baton is passed well, it's passed to people who have now grown up with this stuff.0:34:40I personally cannot stand Jurassic World. Like, I think that Colin Trivaro should never have been in put at the reins. Which one did he direct? Oh, he did off he did first and the third. Okay. But, I mean, he was involved in all three very heavily.0:34:56And there's something just right at the outset of that first Jurassic World where you realize that this is not a film that's directly addressing the issues that Michael Creighton was trying to explore here. It's a film about its own franchise. It's a film about the fact that they can't just stop doing the same thing over and over again as we expect a different question. How can we not do it again? Right. And so it's actually, like, unpleasantly soft, conscious, in that way that I can't remember I'll try to find it for the show notes, but there's an Internet film reviewer who is talking about what happens when, like, all cinema has to take this self referential turn.0:35:34No. And films like Logan do it really well. But there are plenty of examples where it's just cheeky and self aware because that's what the ironic sensibility is obsessed with. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that where it's, like, you're talking about, like, Abrams and the the Star Wars seven and you know, that whole trilogy of Disney Star Wars, where it's, in my opinion, completely fumbled because there it's just empty fan service, whereas when you get to Andor, love Andor. Andor is amazing because they're capable of providing all of those emotional beats that the fans want and the ref the internal references and good dialogue. But they're able to write it in a way that's and shoot it in a way. Gilroy and Bo Willeman, basic of the people responsible for the excellent dialogue in Andor.0:36:31And I love the production design. I love all the stuff set on Coruscant, where you saw Coruscant a lot in the prequel trilogy, and it's all dayglow and bright and just in your face. And it's recognizable as Coruscant in andor, but it's dour. It's metropolis. It's all grays and it's and it's highlighting the disparity between where the wealthy live and where the poor live, which Lucas showed that in the prequel trilogy, but even in the sports bar where somebody tries to sell death sticks to Obi wan. So it's super clean and bright and just, you know, It shines too much. Personally though, and I just wanna stress, KMO is not grumpy media dude, I mean, this is a tiny fraction about, but I am wasting this interview with you. Love. All of the Dave Felloni animated Star Wars stuff, even rebels. Love it all.0:37:26I I'm so glad they aged up the character and I felt less guilty about loving and must staying after ahsoka tano? My favorite Star Wars character is ahsoka tano. But if you only watch the live action movies, you're like who? Well, I guess now that she's been on the Mandalorian, he's got tiny sliver of a foothold -- Yeah. -- in the super mainstream Star Wars. And that was done well, I thought. It was. I'm so sorry that Ashley Epstein doesn't have any part in it. But Rosario Dawson looks the part. She looks like a middle aged Asaka and think they tried to do some stuff in live action, which really should have been CGI because it's been established that the Jedi can really move, and she looked human. Which she is? If you put me on film, I'm gonna lick human. Right. Not if you're Canada Reeves, I guess. You got that. Yeah. But yeah.0:38:09So I do wanna just go real briefly back to this question with you about because we briefly talked about chat, GPT, and these other things in your half of this. And, yeah, I found out just the other night my friend, the t ferry, asked Chad g p t about me, and it gave a rather plausible and factual answer. I was surprised and That's what these language models do. They put plausible answers. But when you're doing search, you want correct answers. Right. I'm very good at that. Right. Then someone shared this Michelle Bowen's actually the famous PTP guy named him. Yeah. So, you know, So Michelle shared this article by Steven Hales and Colette, that was basically making the argument that there are now they're gonna be all these philosophical zombies, acting as intelligent agents sitting at the table of civilization, and there will be all the philosophical zombies of the people who have entirely yielded their agency to them, and they will be cohabitating with the rest of us.0:39:14And what an unpleasant scenario, So in light of that, and I might I'd love to hear you weave that together with your your thoughts on seven zero nine and the doctor and on Blade Runner twenty forty nine. And this thing that we're fumbling through as a species right now. Like, how do we got a new sort of taxonomy? Does your not audience need like a minute primer on P zombies? Might as well. Go for it.0:39:38So a philosophical zombie is somebody who behaves exactly like an insult person or a person with interior experience or subjective experience, but they don't have any subjective experience. And in Pardon me for interrupt. Wasn't that the question about the the book we read in your book club, a blind sign in this box? Yes. It's a black box, a drawn circle. Yeah. Chinese room experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Daniel, it goes out. You don't know, it goes on inside the room. Chinese room, that's a tangent. We can come back to it. P. Zombie. P. Zombie is somebody or is it is an entity. It's basically a puppet. It looks human. It acts human. It talks like a human. It will pass a Turing test, but it has no interior experience.0:40:25And when I was going to grad school for philosophy of mind in the nineteen nineties, this was all very out there. There was no example of something that had linguistic competence. Which did not have internal experience. But now we have large language models and generative pretrained transformer based chatbots that don't have any internal experience. And yet, when you interact with them, it seems like there is somebody there There's a personality there. And if you go from one model to a different, it's a very different personality. It is distinctly different. And yet we have no reason to believe that they have any sort of internal experience.0:41:01So what AI in the last decade and what advances has demonstrated to us and really even before the last decade You back in the nineties when the blue beat Gary Casper off at at chess. And what had been the one of the defining characteristics of human intelligence was we're really good at this abstract mathematical stuff. And yeah, calculators can calculate pie in a way that we can't or they can cube roots in a way that humans generally can't, creative in their application of these methodologies And all of a sudden, well, yeah, it kinda seems like they are. And then when what was an alpha go -- Mhmm. -- when it be to least a doll in go, which is a much more complex game than chess and much more intuitive based. That's when we really had to say, hey, wait a minute. Maybe this notion that These things are the exclusive province of us because we have a special sort of self awareness. That's bunk. And the development of large language models since then has absolutely demonstrated that competence, particularly linguistic competence and in creative activities like painting and poetry and things like that, you don't need a soul, you don't even need to sense a self, it's pretty it's a pretty simple hack, actually. And Vahrv's large language models and complex statistical modeling and things, but it doesn't require a soul.0:42:19So that was the Peter Watts' point in blindsight. Right? Which is Look revolves around are do these things have a subjective experience, and do they not these aliens that they encounter? I've read nothing but good things about that book and I've read. It's extraordinary. But his lovecrafty and thesis is that you actually lovecraftian in twenty twenty three. Oh, yeah. In the world, there's more lovecraftian now than it was when he was writing. Right? So cough about the conclusion of a Star Trek card, which is season of Kraft yet. Yes. That's a that's a com Yeah. The holes in his fan sense. But that was another show that did this I liked for asking this question.0:42:54I mean, at this point, you either have seen this or you haven't you never will. The what the fuck turn when they upload picard into a synth body and the way that they're dealing with the this the pinocchio question Let's talk about Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. But I mean yeah. So I didn't like the wave I did not like the wave of card handled that. I love the wave and Blade Runner handled it. So you get no points for themes. Yeah. Don't deliver on story and character and coherence. Yeah. Fair. But yeah. And to be not the dog, Patrick Stewart, because it's clear from the ready room just being a part of this is so emotional and so awesome for everyone involved. And it's It's beautiful. Beautiful. But does when you when you see these, like, entertainment weekly interviews with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard about Jurassic World, and it's clear that actors are just so excited to be involved in a franchise that they're willing to just jettison any kind of discretion about how the way that it's being treated. They also have a contractual obligation to speak in positive terms about -- They do. -- of what they feel. Right. Nobody's yeah. Nobody's doing Shout out to Rystellis Howard, daughter of Ron Howard.0:44:11She was a director, at least in the first season, maybe the second season of the Mandalorian. And her episodes I mean, I she brought a particular like, they had Bryce Dallas Howard, Tico, ITT, directed some episodes. Deborah Chow, who did all of Obi wan, which just sucked. But her contributions to the Mandalorian, they had a particular voice. And because that show is episodic, Each show while having a place in a larger narrative is has a beginning middle and end that you can bring in a director with a particular voice and give that episode that voice, and I really liked it. And I really liked miss Howard's contribution.0:44:49She also in an episode of Black Mirror. The one where everyone has a social credit score. Knows Donuts. Black Mirror is a funny thing because It's like, reality outpaces it. Yeah. I think maybe Charlie Bruker's given up on it because they haven't done it in a while. Yeah. If you watch someone was now, like, five, six years later, it's, yes, or what? See, yes. See, damn. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah. I don't know. I just thing that I keep circling and I guess we come to on the show a lot is the way that memory forms work substantiates an integrity in society and in the way that we relate to things and the way that we think critically about the claims that are made on truth and so on and say, yeah, I don't know. That leads right into the largest conversation prompt that I had about AI. Okay? So we were joking when we set up this date that this was like the trial logs between Terence Buchanan and Rupert Shell Drake. And what's his name? Real Abraham. Yeah. Yeah. All Abraham. And Rupert Shell Drake is most famous for a steward of Morphe resin.0:45:56So does AI I've never really believed that Norfolk residents forms the base of human memory, but is that how AI works? It brings these shapes from the past and creates new instantiation of them in the present. Is AI practicing morphic resonance in real life even if humans are or not? I've had a lot of interaction with AI chatbots recently. And as I say, different models produce different seeming personalities. And you can tell, like, you can just quiz them. Hey, we're talking about this. Do you remember what I said about it ten minutes ago? And, no, they don't remember more than the last few exchanges.0:46:30And yet, there seems to be a continuity that belies the lack of short term memory. And is that more for residents or is that what's the word love seeing shapes and clouds parad paradolia. Yeah. Is that me imparting this continuity of personality to the thing, which is really just spitting out stuff, which is designed to seem plausible given what the input was. And I can't answer that. Or it's like Steven Nagmanovich in free play talks about somewhat I'm hoping to have on the show at some point.0:47:03This year talks about being a professional improviser and how really improvisation is just composition at a much faster timescale. And composition is just improvisation with the longer memory. And how when I started to think about it in those terms, the continuity that you're talking about is the continuity of an Alzheimer's patient who can't remember that their children have grown up and You know, that that's you have to think about it because you can recognize the Alzheimer's and your patient as your dad, even though he doesn't recognize you, there is something more to a person than their memories. And conversely, if you can store and replicate and move the memories to a different medium, have you moved the person? Maybe not. Yeah. So, yeah, that's interesting because that gets to this more sort of essentialist question about the human self. Right. Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. Go there. Go there. A joy. Yes.0:47:58So in Blade Runner twenty forty nine, we have our protagonist Kaye, who is a replicant. He doesn't even have a name, but he's got this AI holographic girlfriend. But the ad for the girlfriend, she's naked. When he comes home, she is She's constantly changing clothes, but it's always wholesome like nineteen fifty ish a tire and she's making dinner for him and she lays the holographic dinner over his very prosaic like microwave dinner. And she's always encouraging him to be more than he is. And when he starts to uncover the evidence that he might be like this chosen one, like replicant that was born rather than made.0:48:38She's all about it. She's, yes, you're real, and she wants to call him Joe's. K is not a name. That's just the first letter in your serial number. You're Joe. I'm gonna call you Joe.0:48:46And then when she's about to be destroyed, The last thing is she just rushes to me. She says, I love you. But then later he encounters an ad for her and it's an interactive ad. And she says, you looked tired. You're a good Joe. And he realizes and hopefully the attentive audience realizes as real as she seemed earlier, as vital, and as much as she seemed like an insult being earlier, she's not. That was her programming. She's designed to make you feel good by telling you what you want to hear. And he has that realization. And at that point, he's there's no hope for me. I'm gonna help this Rick Deckard guy hook up with his daughter, and then I'm just gonna lie down and bleed to death. Because my whole freaking existence was a lie. But he's not bitter. He seems to be at peace. I love that. That's a beautiful angle on that film or a slice of it. And So it raises this other question that I wanted to ask, which was about the Coke and Tiononi have that theory of consciousness.0:49:48That's one of the leading theories contending with, like, global workspace, which is integrated information. And so they want to assign consciousness as a continuous value that grayates over degree to which a system is integrated. So it's coming out of this kind of complex systems semi panpsychist thing that actually doesn't trace interiority all the way down in the way that some pants, I guess, want it to be, but it does a kind of Alfred North Whitehead thing where they're willing to say that Whitehead wanted to say that even a photon has, like, the quantum of mind to accompany its quantum of matter, but Tinutti and Coker saying, we're willing to give like a thermostat the quantum here because it is in some way passing enough information around inside of itself in loops. That it has that accursive component to it. And so that's the thing that I wonder about these, and that's the critique that's made by people like Melanie about diffusion models like GPT that are not they're not self aware because there's no loop from the outputs back into the input.0:51:09And there isn't the training. Yeah. There there is something called backwards propagation where -- Yes. -- when you get an output that you'd like, you can run a backward propagation algorithm back through the black box basically to reinforce the patterns of activation that you didn't program. They just happen, easily, but you like the output and you can reinforce it. There's no biological equivalent of that. Yeah. Particularly, not particularly irritating.0:51:34I grind my teeth a little bit when people say, oh, yeah, these neural net algorithms they've learned, like humans learn, no, they don't. Absolutely do not. And in fact, if we learned the way they did, we would be pathetic because we learn in a much more elegant way. We need just a very few examples of something in order to make a generalization and to act on it, whereas these large language models, they need billions of repetitions. So that's I'm tapping my knee here to to indicate a reflex.0:52:02You just touched on something that generates an automatic response from me, and now I've come to consciousness having. So I wanted it in that way. So I'm back on. Or good, Joe. Yeah. What about you, man? What does the stir up for you? Oh, I got BlueCall and I have this particular part. It's interesting way of putting it off and struggling to define the difference between a human and AI and the fact that we can do pattern recognition with very few example. That's a good margin. In a narrow range, though, within the context of something which answers to our survival. Yes. We are not evolved to understand the universe. We are evolved to survive in it and reproduce and project part of ourselves into the future. Underwritten conditions with Roberto, I went a hundred thousand years ago. Yeah. Exactly. So that's related. I just thought I talked about this guy, Gary Tomlinson, who is a biosemietition, which is semiative? Yes.0:52:55Biosymiotics being the field that seeks to understand how different systems, human and nonhuman, make sense of and communicate their world through signs, and through signals and indices and symbols and the way that we form models and make these inferences that are experienced. Right? And there are a lot of people like evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, who thought they were what Thomas had called semantic universalists that thought that meaning making through representation is something that could be traced all the way down. And there are other people like Tomlinson who think that there is a difference of kind, not just merely a matter of degree, between human symbolic communication and representational thinking and that of simpler forms. So, like, that whole question of whether this is a matter of kind or a matter of degree between what humans are doing and what GPT is doing and how much that has to do with this sort of Doug Hofstetter and Varella question about the way that feedback loops, constitutes important structure in those cognitive networks or whatever.0:54:18This is I just wanna pursue that a little bit more with you and see kinda, like, where do you think that AI as we have it now is capable of deepening in a way that makes it to AGI? Or do you because a lot of people do, like, People working in deep mind are just like, yeah, just give us a couple more years and this approach is gonna work. And then other people are saying, no, there's something about the topology of the networks that is fundamentally broken. And it's never gonna generate consciousness. Two answers. Yeah. One, No. This is not AGI. It's not it's not gonna bootstrap up into AGI. It doesn't matter how many billions of parameters you add to the models. Two, from your perspective and my perspective and Kevin's perspective, we're never gonna know when we cross over from dumb but seemingly we're done but competent systems to competent, extremely competent and self aware. We're never gonna know because from the get go from now, from from the days of Eliza, there has been a human artifice at work in making these things seem as if they have a point of view, as if they have subjectivity. And so, like Blake Limone at Google, he claimed to be convinced that Lambda was self aware.0:55:35But if you read the transcripts that he released, if his conversations with Lambda, it is clear from the get go he assigns Lambda the role of a sentient AGI, which feels like it is being abused and which needs rep legal representation. And it dutifully takes on that role and says, yes. I'm afraid of you humans. I'm afraid of how you're treating me. I'm afraid I'm gonna be turned off. I need a lawyer. And prior to that, Soon Darpichai, in a demonstration of Lambda, he poses the question to it, you are the planet Jupiter. I'm gonna pose questions to you as are the planet Jupiter, answer them from that point of view. And it does. It's job. But it's really good at its job. It's this comes from Max Techmark. Who wrote to what a life three point o? Is it two point o or three point I think it's three point o.0:56:19Think about artificial intelligence in terms of actual intelligence or actual replication of what we consider valuable about ourselves. But really, that's beside the point. What we need to worry about is their competence. How good are they at solving problems in the world? And they're getting really good. In this whole question of are they alive? Do they have self awareness? From our perspective, it's beside the point. From their perspective, of course, it would be hugely important.0:56:43And this is something that Black Mirror brings up a lot is the idea that you can create a being that suffers, and then you have it suffer in an accelerated time. So it suffers for an eternity over lunch. That's something we absolutely want to avoid. And personally, I think it's we should probably not make any effort. We should probably make a positive effort to make sure these things never develop. Subjective experience because that does provide the potential for creating hell, an infinity of suffering an infinite amount of subjective experience of torment, which we don't want to do. That would be a bad thing, morally speaking, ethically speaking. Three right now. If you're on the labor market, you still have to pay humans by the hour. Right? And try to pay them as little as possible. But, yeah, just I think that's the thing that probably really excites that statistically greater than normal population of sociopathic CEOs. Right? Is the possibility that you could be paying the same amount of money for ten times as much suffering. Right. I'm I'm reminded of the Churchill eleven gravity a short time encouraging.0:57:51Nothing but good things about this show, but I haven't seen it. Yeah. I'd love to. This fantasy store, it's a fantasy cartoon, but it has really disturbing undertones. If you just scratch the surface, you know, slightly, which is faithful to old and fairy tales. So What's your name? Princess princess princess bubble down creates this character to lemon grab. It produces an obviously other thing there, I think, handle the administrative functions of her kingdom while she goes off and has the passion and stuff. And he's always loudly talking about how much he's suffering and how terrible it is. And he's just ignoring it. He's doing his job. Yeah. I mean, that that's Black Mirror in a nutshell. I mean, I think if you if you could distill Black Mirror to just single tagline it's using technology in order to deliver disproportionate punishment. Yeah. So so that that's Steven Hale's article that I I brought up earlier mention this thing about how the replacement of horse drawn carriage by automobile was accompanied with a great deal of noise and fuhrer about people saying that horses are agents.0:59:00Their entities. They have emotional worlds. They're responsive to the world in a way that a car can never be. But that ultimately was beside the point. And that was the Peter again, Peter Watson blindsight is making this point that maybe consciousness is not actually required for intelligence in the vesting superior forms of intelligence have evolved elsewhere in the cosmos that are not stuck on the same local optimum fitness peak. That we are where we're never we're actually up against a boundary in terms of how intelligent we can be because it has to bootstrap out of our software earness in some way.0:59:35And this is that's the Kyle offspring from Charles Strauss and Alexander. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So so I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, in this space today, but usually, unfortunately.0:59:45That's the thing that I I think it's a really important philosophical question, and I wonder where you stand on this with respect to how you make sense of what we're living through right now and what we might be facing is if we Rob people like Rob and Hanson talk about the age of where emulated human minds take over the economy, and he assumes an interiority. Just for the basis of a thought experiment. But there's this other sense in which we may actually find in increasing scarcity and wish that we could place a premium on even if we can't because we've lost the reins to our economy to the vile offspring is the human. And and so are we the horses that are that in another hundred years, we're gonna be like doing equine therapy and, like, living on rich people's ranches. Everything is everything that will have moved on or how do you see this going? I mean, you've interviewed so many people you've given us so much thought over the years. If humans are the new horses, then score, we won.1:00:48Because before the automobile horses were working stiffs, they broke their leg in the street. They got shot. They got worked to death. They really got to be they were hauling mine carts out of mines. I mean, it was really sucked to be a horse. And after the automobile horses became pampered pets, Do we as humans wanna be pampered pets? Well, pampered pet or exploited disposable robot? What do you wanna be? I'll take Pampers Pet. That works for me. Interesting.1:01:16Kevin, I'm sure you have thoughts on this. I mean, you speak so much about the unfair labor relations and these things in our Facebook group and just in general, and drop in that sign. If you get me good sign, that's one of the great ones, you have to drop in. Oh, you got it. But The only real comment I have is that we're a long overdue or rethinking about what is the account before? Us or you can have something to do. Oh, educational system in collections if people will manage jobs because I was just anchored to the schools and then, you know, Our whole system perhaps is a people arguing and a busy word. And it was just long past the part where the busy word needs to be done. We're leaving thing wired. I don't know. I also just forgot about that. I'm freezing the ice, getting the hand out there. Money has been doing the busy word more and faster.1:02:12One thing I wanna say about the phrase AI, it's a moving goal post -- Yeah. -- that things that used to be considered the province of genuine AI of beating a human at go Now that an AI has beat humans at go, well, that's not really AI anymore. It's not AGI, certainly. I think you both appreciate this. I saw a single panel comic strip and it's a bunch of dinosaurs and they're looking up at guy and the big comment is coming down and they say, oh, no, the economy. Well, as someone who since college prefers to think of the economy as actually the metabolism of the entire ecology. Right? What we measure as humans is some pitifully small fraction of the actual value being created and exchanged on the planet at any time. So there is a way that's funny, but it's funny only to a specific sensibility that treats the economy as the

Anarşist gazeteci Richard Heinberg'in "Uygarlık bir hata mıydı?" başlıklı yazısı üzerine konuşuyoruz.

UN Secretary General, António Guterres, says we must act this decade. Richard Heinberg gives us a bonus episode of his power podcast: "How to Navigate Power with Wisdom"; "McGowan Government commits to legislating net zero by 2050 and introducing five-year interim targets"; "Liverpool Plains farmers oppose seismic testing and Hunter Gas Pipeline"; "Doomsday Clock at record 90 seconds to midnight amid Ukraine crisis"; "Fossil fuels fall to record low in power grid as renewables hit new high"; "A small modular nuclear reactor just got US approval — a big milestone"; "New energy trial enables people to power their homes from their electric vehicle"; "Understanding Healthy Soil and Climate Change"; "UN Report Says Humanity Has Altered 70 Percent of the Earth's Land, Putting the Planet on a ‘Crisis Footing'"; "Norway plans to offer record number of Arctic oil, gas exploration blocks"; "Solar energy could be key in Puerto Rico's transition to 100% renewables, study says". --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robert-mclean/message

First wisdom, then action. Richard Heinberg shares insights from his deep dive into the nature of power and power relationships. He addresses the three main "power tools": money, weapons, and communication technologies with humble and thoughtful advice on how to approach them. You'll have the chance to contemplate how you might live your most authentic life with moderation, rationality, responsibility, and sometimes sacrifice. And you'll learn how to evaluate potential solutions to global environmental and social problems by answering a simple question about how power is shared (or how it is not). For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Richard Heinberg (pictured) from the Post Carbon Institute asks: "Can Civilization Survive? These Studies Might Tell Us"; "Plibersek faces 140 decisions pitting koalas against development"; "Climate change may have encouraged the Huns to invade Europe"; "Climate data to help you better understand the climate crisis"; "Is there a ‘right to disobey'? From the Vietnam War to today's climate protests"; "BP criticised over plan to spend billions more on fossil fuels than green energy"; "Can quinoa help us to survive climate change?"; "Exxon sues EU in move to block new windfall tax on oil companies"; "Scientists have debunked a popular corporate greenwashing tactic"; "This year, I only needed to open my window in Brazil to witness the climate crisis". --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/robert-mclean/message

Learn how humanity can exercise collective self-restraint to navigate the social and environmental crises of the 21st century. The world is in overshoot. There are too many people consuming too much stuff, and we're facing climate change, biodiversity loss, and immense social inequality. We're currently on a pathway to collapse, but the future doesn't have to be bleak. We can develop communities where we take care of one another and the ecosystems we inhabit. By understanding power relationships, overhauling economic institutions, and nurturing our most honorable cultural and spiritual traditions, we can forge a happy and healthy future. Follow along with sustainability expert Richard Heinberg as he explores these topics and offers sound advice for young people who will be living through turbulent times. And don't miss Melody's song at the end of this episode. For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Overpopulation, overconsumption, and overexploitation of Earth's resources go way beyond the realm of simple problems with straightforward solutions. Instead, they are dilemmas that require tradeoffs and difficult decisions. To guide such decisions, energy and sustainability expert Richard Heinberg explores big ideas such as the adaptive cycle, resilience theory, and prudent predator theory. Heavy topics abound, from death to extinction to societal collapse, but Richard proposes the "optimum power principle" to help humanity step back from the edge. And the good news is that we have a long history of deploying self-limiting tools (even ordinary policies like taxation and rationing) to curtail our overzealous quest for power. For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

As exploitation of fossil fuels powered exponential growth in population and consumption, humanity began running into problems. Serious problems. The existential kind, like the potential for runaway global warming and the onset of the sixth mass extinction. For many problems, a solution exists, but what happens when a selected solution actually generates more problems? Energy and sustainability expert Richard Heinberg explains the difference between problems and dilemmas, and discusses how to escape our current climate dilemma. Sources of renewable energy have a major role to play, but we can't rely on technofixes and business as usual. Real change will require shared sacrifice and wise decisions in the face of tradeoffs. For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Richard Heinberg, renowned energy and sustainability expert, explores the development of social power – simply defined as the ability to get other people to do something. Whether through money, violence, writing, or other means, humans have devised interesting ways of exerting influence over one another. One major downside, with implications for the collapse of societies, is widespread inequality. Concentration of social power tends to create social instability. You'll hear how power acts as a drug, damages people's brains, and leads to the tragedies of slavery and colonization. Along the way, you might adopt new verbs like "Tom Sawyering" and "Robin Hooding." Note: Choral music in this episode was licensed from Allen Grey Music, "Lost Voices Soundscape." For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Join renowned energy and sustainability expert, Richard Heinberg, as he describes the flow of power in hunter-gatherer communities of the Pleistocene. As people learned to wield fire, deploy an array of tools, and coordinate actions through increasingly descriptive language, they became more capable of concentrating power. This development produced mind-blowing impacts on brain capacity and other aspects of human evolution. As you go back in time to the dawn of civilization, you'll become familiar with self-reinforcing feedback loops and how they shaped humanity's rise to dominance. And finally, you'll get to hear about (and appreciate) the surprising power of beauty in all its varied forms, but especially in the form of music. For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Jason and Josh sit down with world renowned expert on energy and the environment, Richard Heinberg to discuss the future of energy, techno-utopianism, and an optimistic vision for the future. Richard William Heinberg @richardheinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richardheinberg.com Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University. Josh Kearns @hillbillynarnia is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.

Please check out our newest podcast, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival featuring Richard Heinberg. How have humans become powerful enough to disrupt the world's climate, trigger the sixth mass extinction, and cause serious harm to the biosphere? And with all the abilities and technologies we've accrued, why do we so often oppress instead of uplift one another? Join us as we explore the hidden driver behind the converging crises of the 21st century. It all comes down to power - our pursuit of it, overuse of it, and abuse of it. Learn how different forms of power arose, what they mean for us today, and why giving up power just might save us.Support the show

Please check out our newest podcast, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival featuring Richard Heinberg. How have humans become powerful enough to disrupt the world's climate, trigger the sixth mass extinction, and cause serious harm to the biosphere? And with all the abilities and technologies we've accrued, why do we so often oppress instead of uplift one another? Join us as we explore the hidden driver behind the converging crises of the 21st century. It all comes down to power - our pursuit of it, overuse of it, and abuse of it. Learn how different forms of power arose, what they mean for us today, and why giving up power just might save us.Support the show

Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, poverty, and inequality are all symptoms of one overarching problem: the way we humans accumulate and use power. If we want to address this problem and reduce the chances of a chaotic collapse of society, we will have to confront our overuse and abuse of power. But first we'll need to define power (both physical and social) and learn how energy flows through ecosystems and human society. Take a tour of these topics with succinct explanations from renowned energy and sustainability expert, Richard Heinberg, and clarifying stories that feature airplane flights, wrecking balls, charismatic leaders, and other seats of power. For more information, please visit our website.Support the showLearn more at power.postcarbon.org

Biologist Paul Ehrlich reflects on the 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, on its 50th anniversary – including the fact that it has been refuted (poorly), ignored, and confirmed. The study was done by a team of scientists commissioned by the Club of Rome to develop a computer model to simulate the interaction of earth and human systems. It revealed that continuation of the then-current trends in population, industrialization, resource use and pollution would result in overshooting the carrying capacity of the Earth and result in a general collapse at some point in the first half of the 21st century. The study results were published in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, which holds the record as the top-selling environmental book. The book was authored by four system dynamics scientists (Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens III). Gaya Herrington, whose 2020 analysis of The Limits to Growth was published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology, described the study and book aptly: “the authors identified society's relentless pursuit of growth not as the solution to, but the cause of, so many of the environmental and social crises that plague humanity still today.” “....what is it about Homo sapiens that leads us to the limits as a moth to a flame.  Why don't we stop?  Why should we?  Can we?”   – Brian Czech, Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy Read The Limits to Growth: Online Read, but includes scans of pages and downloadable charts https://collections.dartmouth.edu/teitexts/meadows/diplomatic/meadows_ltg-diplomatic.html High Quality Scan https://collections.dartmouth.edu/content/deliver/inline/meadows/pdf/meadows_ltg-001.pdf Mentioned in Our Discussion of The Limits to Growth: Limits to Growth 50th Anniversary Events - on Club of Rome website https://www.clubofrome.org/ltg50-events/ UN Event June 2-3: Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity View live on the web: https://www.stockholm50.global/events/programme The Stockholm+50 Conference: What You Need to Know and Why It Matters https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/the-stockholm50-conference-what-you-need-to-know-and-why-it-matters/ Take this survey before June 2: https://www.stockholm50.global/state-planet-global-public-survey June 10 seminar: Limits to Growth +50: Can Economies Keep Growing Indefinitely on a Finite Planet? Organized by: Norwegian University of Life Sciences https://www.nmbu.no/en/faculty/landsam/department/noragric/research/seminars/node/44433 The Limits to Growth at 50: From Scenarios to Unfolding Reality - by Richard Heinberg https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-02-24/the-limits-to-growth-at-50-from-scenarios-to-unfolding-reality/ Limits and Beyond (New book April 2022 from the Club of Rome, a collection of essays) https://exapt.press/books/limits-and-beyond Nate Hagens interviews Dennis Meadows in his podcast, The Great Simplification. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/12-dennis-meadows Dennis Meadows on the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of The Limits to Growth - interview by Richard Heinberg https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-02-22/dennis-meadows-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-publication-of-the-limits-to-growth/ Is Global Collapse Imminent? – by Graham Turner (2014) The Limits to Growth “standard run” (or business-as-usual, BAU) scenario produced in 1972 aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2763500/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf Update to Limits to Growth: Comparing the World3 Model with Empirical Data - by Gaya Herrington https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13084 Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet - by Anders Wijkman and Ersnt Von Weizscker and with contributions from more than 30 members of the Club of Rome https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/come-capitalism-short-termism-population-destruction-planet/ What a 50-year-old World Model Tells Us About a Way Forward Today - by  Gaya Herrington, now vice president of ESG Research at Schneider Electric and member of The Club of Rome's Transformational Economics Commission https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/herrington-ltg50/ In this episode, we also discuss these “growthbusting news” items: Walk Or Cycle Instead of Driving, Urges Ford Boss https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/05/16/walk-or-cycle-instead-of-driving-urges-ford-boss/?sh=2283c3ba3481 New flight of fancy for billionaires – the Air Yacht https://theuglyminute.com/2022/05/11/air-yacht/ Back From a Touring Hiatus, Coldplay Pledges to Make Performances More Sustainable https://www.npr.org/2022/05/14/1098947216/back-from-a-touring-hiatus-coldplay-pledges-to-make-performances-more-sustainabl The European Environmental Bureau has launched a campaign calling on the EU to refocus from GDP Growth to Wellbeing Campaign Page: https://eeb.org/doughnuteconomicsforall/ https://meta.eeb.org/2022/05/12/doughnut-economics-how-to-bake-a-better-future/ The 25% Revolution - film https://vimeo.com/535791169 GrowthBusters Called Me Extreme, So I Responded - episode of This Sustainable Life podcast by Joshua Spodek https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/this-sustainable-life-593342/episodes/583-growthbusters-called-me-ex-139440528 Mobilising Humanity Film Premier at COP26 - Ed Gemmel described his nightmare in this episode of the Planet in Crisis podcast from Scientists Warning Europe https://planetincrisis.libsyn.com/30-mobilising-humanity-film-premier-at-cop26 Give Us Feedback: Record a voice message for us to play on the podcast: 719-402-1400 Send an email to podcast at growthbusters.org The GrowthBusters theme song was written and produced by Jake Fader and sung by Carlos Jones. https://www.fadermusicandsound.com/ https://carlosjones.com/ On the GrowthBusters podcast, we come to terms with the limits to growth, explore the joy of sustainable living, and provide a recovery program from our society's growth addiction (economic/consumption and population). This podcast is part of the GrowthBusters project to raise awareness of overshoot and end our culture's obsession with, and pursuit of, growth. Dave Gardner directed the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, which Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich declared “could be the most important film ever made.” Co-host, and self-described "energy nerd," Stephanie Gardner has degrees in Environmental Studies and Environmental Law & Policy. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GrowthBustersPodcast/ Make a donation to support this non-profit project. https://www.growthbusters.org/donate/ Archive of GrowthBusters podcast episodes http://www.growthbusters.org/podcast/ Subscribe to GrowthBusters email updates https://lp.constantcontact.com/su/umptf6w/signup Explore the issues at http://www.growthbusters.org View the GrowthBusters channel on YouTube Follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode:

Investigative journalist, Rachel Donald, is behind the podcast "Planet Critical" and uses that platform to talk with influential people from all around the world. She says: "Essentially, it's our behaviour that's at the root of the problem. But so often this isn't addressed as the root. Our economic system claims tech will save us from ourselves—but imagine we do find a silver bullet, do we have the social cohesion in place to implement that solution or any?  Her guest on this episode of "Planet Critical" is Richard Heinberg. Other Quick Climate Links for today are: "Readings on climate-change impacts and insurance"; "Grants help Wisconsin nonprofits purchase electric vehicles"; "Global CO2 emissions rebounded to their highest level in history in 202"; "Global Energy Review: CO2 Emissions in 2021"; "Husband of environmentalist who set himself on fire urges others to seize climate action: ‘Choose to live'"; "‘Everybody's problem is drought': One in four children could live with water shortages in 2040, UN warns"; "Beach house collapses into the waves in North Carolina as sea levels rise"; "UK faces ‘record' heatwaves this summer – and it's not a cause for celebration"; "Chart: US solar installations could fall 50% or more under new tariffs"; "Largest oil and gas producers made close to $100bn in first quarter of 2022"; "Thousands at risk as deluge batters Queensland"; "BIG – The Role of the State in the Modern Economy with Richard Denniss"; "Have Your Say on Victoria's 2035 Climate Target"; "Why Nobody Cares about Climate Change"; "‘We've had a decade of no leadership': Scientists back ALP on climate action plans"; "Vanuatu's push for legal protection from climate change wins crucial support". Enjoy "Music for a Warming World". Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/climateconversations

We’re living in the anthropocene — a geological period defined by the impact of human activity on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Essentially, it’s our behaviour that’s at the root of the problem. But so often this isn’t addressed as the root. Our economic system claims tech will save us from ourselves—but imagine we do find a silver bullet, do we have the social cohesion in place to implement that solution, or any? That’s what Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at Post Carbon Institute, joins me to discuss. Richard’s devoted his life to understanding the crisis and its solutions, authoring 14 books and hundreds of articles on the topic. Richard’s a big picture thinker, and he believes it is our behaviour and our current political division which is the real threat to climate progress.We discuss energy rationing, political division, the effect of increasing economic inequality, and the knowledge gap between the public and leaders.Listen on Apple or SpotifyWatch on Youtube Read the interview transcriptBonus video out on Friday© Rachel DonaldPlanet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

This week we got to speak with Richard Heinberg about his new book "Power".  Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute and author of 14 books on energy and the environment, including Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, and, with David Fridley, Our Renewable Future. He's won an award for excellence in energy education and has been published in Nature, Wall Street Journal, and Literary Review. Heinberg's work is cited as one of the inspirations for the international Transition Towns movement, which seeks to build community resilience ahead of climate change. He and his wife, Janet Barocco, live in an energy-efficient Permaculture home in Santa Rosa, California.You can find the book "Power" here.A big thanks to our sponsor, ReadyWise. ReadyWise is an emergency food storage supplier with a great variety of meals (including vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free options!) that last up to 25 years. Click here for a 10% discount using the code KK10 (plus you get an additional 10% discount with your first purchase). Available in the US only. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/collapsepod)

Get married, buy a house, raise a family. For many of us, that's the expected life trajectory. Are we entitled to meet that expectation? If many follow the typical trajectory, including having two or more children, then we drive human civilization right off a cliff. On an overpopulated planet, does society have an obligation to make parenthood possible, practical, convenient, and/or affordable to all? Public policy on the table in the U.S. today is designed to make it easier for couples to have children. Ethicist Philip Cafaro joins us to discuss the motivations behind these policies and the moral questions about whether people are “entitled” to have children on an overpopulated planet. In this episode, we hear some unenlightened statements about U.S. population from U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, including inviting listeners to conclude U.S. population is declining (it is not), and a healthy dose of depopulation panic. Cafaro is professor of philosophy at Colorado State University and an affiliated faculty member of CSU's School of Global Environmental Sustainability. He's also written a couple of books about human overpopulation, and he is co-founder of The Overpopulation Project. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: The Overpopulation Project https://overpopulation-project.com/ Just Population Policies for an Overpopulated World - by Philip Cafaro https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/pdfs/epub-046.pdf Climate Ethics and Population Policy - by Philip Cafaro https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264492830_Climate_ethics_and_population_policy Climate Ethics and Population Policy: A Review of Recent Philosophical Work - by Philip Cafaro https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.748 Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change Are Affecting the Morality of Procreation – by Travis Rieder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29846041-toward-a-small-family-ethic Moral Basis for Small Families: Travis Rieder - Episode #206 of Conversation Earthhttp://www.conversationearth.org/moral-basis-small-families-travis-rieder-206/ Public Policy Brakes on Procreation? Travis Rieder - Episode #207 of Conversation Earthhttp://www.conversationearth.org/public-policy-brakes-procreation-travis-rieder-207/ One Child: Do We Have a Right to More – by Sarah Conly https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26308950-one-child Stuck in Traffic? Head to Mars - Episode 63 of GrowthBusters podcast https://www.growthbusters.org/stuck-in-traffic-head-to-mars/ 8 Billion Angels – documentary film https://8billionangels.org/ Earth Overshoot https://www.earthovershoot.org/ Sustainable Population Australia https://population.org.au/ Time's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk Is So Wrong – by Simon Cole https://equanimity.blog/2021/12/29/times-2021-person-of-the-year-elon-musk-is-so-wrong/ Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival – by Richard Heinberg https://power.postcarbon.org/ Ice Shelf Holding Back Antarctica's ‘Doomsday Glacier', Is Fracturing And ‘Won't Last Long', Scientists Warn https://au.yahoo.com/news/ice-shelf-holding-back-antarctica-184346587.html Human Consciousness – by Robert Bolman https://robertbolman.com/human-consciousness/ This Sustainable Life podcast – by Joshua Spodek https://joshuaspodek.com/podcast Don't Call Doof Food: Systemic Change Begins with Personal Change – Joshua Spodek TEDx Talkhttps://youtu.be/L4OAaI_uXgY GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth – free on YouTube https://youtu.be/_w0LiBsVFBo Give Us Feedback: Record a voice message for us to play on the podcast: 719-402-1400 Send an email to podcast at growthbusters.org The GrowthBusters theme song was written and produced by Jake Fader and sung by Carlos Jones. https://www.fadermusicandsound.com/ https://carlosjones.com/ On the GrowthBusters podcast, we come to terms with the limits to growth, explore the joy of sustainable living, and provide a recovery program from our society's growth addiction (economic/consumption and population). This podcast is part of the GrowthBusters project to raise awareness of overshoot and end our culture's obsession with, and pursuit of, growth. Dave Gardner directed the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, which Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich declared “could be the most important film ever made.” Co-host, and self-described "energy nerd," Stephanie Gardner has degrees in Environmental Studies and Environmental Law & Policy. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GrowthBustersPodcast/ Make a donation to support this non-profit project. https://www.growthbusters.org/donate/ Archive of GrowthBusters podcast episodes http://www.growthbusters.org/podcast/ Subscribe to GrowthBusters email updates https://lp.constantcontact.com/su/umptf6w/signup Explore the issues at http://www.growthbusters.org View the GrowthBusters channel on YouTube Follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode:

In the past, economic growth has been strongly correlated with improvements in human wellbeing, and so economic growth is generally considered to be a good proxy measure for human wellbeing. But is growth always good? Can it continue forever? How are the benefits distributed? Has the measure become the target? What role do money and consumption play in living a good life? These are the kinds of questions that the degrowth movement seeks to answer.  In this episode, I chat with Robin Roels about the degrowth movement. We explore the origins of the movement, some of its key ideas and principles, and some thoughts on alternative paradigms. Limits to growth paperJason Hikels Less is More is a popular book on degrowthCheck out related podcasts Energy and society with Richard Heinberg for more detail about our energy futureThe Art of Frugal Hedonism with Annie Raser Rowland for what a degrowth lifestyle could look likeHave you got suggestions for further reading?let me know!

In this, our ninth season (and third year), we are aiming to look more deeply into the ways we might create a flourishing future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. With that in mind, our first guest of this new season is Richard Heinberg, author of the magesterial, 'Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival' which came out in September 2021.  Richard  is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, and is regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He is the author of fourteen books in all, including some of the seminal works on society's current energy and environmental sustainability crisis:His books include:  Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (September 2021) power.postcarbon.org Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy, co-authored with David Fridley (Island Press, 2016) ourrenewablefuture.org Also mentioned in the podcast: Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradoxPeter Turchin: https://peterturchin.com/The Evolution of Beauty by Richard Prum:  https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Evolution-of-Beauty-by-Richard-O-Prum/9780385537216

The amount of energy we have available to do valuable work is a parameter that continually shapes and reshapes how our societies are organised economically, politically, socially, and ethically. Therefore understanding our energy systems and their capabilities and limitations is essential for understanding why our society is structured the way it is.In this episode, I chat with Richard Heinberg about the different kinds of energy and how they shape our society, prospects for our energy futures, and the great transition ahead. Richard is a well-known commentator on energy, culture, the economy, and the environment. He is the author of 14 books and is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, where he writes regularly.Find out more about Richards work:Link to Richard's book about the energy transition.Link to the Post Carbon Institute, where you can find other publications.

The climate pact achieved at COP26 was woefully inadequate. We could be in for over four degrees Fahrenheit of warming this century over pre-industrial temperatures, and some scenarios would put us closer to eight degrees. In this episode, Paul Sutton shares his observations from Glasgow, and we get assessments from a few other noted experts. Policymakers are not willing to embrace any climate actions that give up economic growth, but economic growth virtually guarantees climate disaster. The bottom line: only drastic policy and behavior changes will avoid a very bleak future. Sutton is a Professor in the Department of Geography & the Environment at the University of Denver. He served as an official delegate for the American Association of Geographers (AAG) at the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow in early November of 2021. He is not speaking for the AAG in this episode. One interesting class Paul teaches is Envisioning Utopia Through the Lens of a Wellbeing Economy. Also: recommended reading, and the new movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The Titanic cartoon in this episode's graphic was created for the GrowthBusters project by artist/writer Stephanie McMillan. https://stephaniemcmillan.org/ The GrowthBusters theme song was written and produced by Jake Fader and sung by Carlos Jones. https://www.fadermusicandsound.com/ https://carlosjones.com/ MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Running Out of Gas – Episode 26 of the GrowthBusters podcast, with Paul Sutton and James Ward https://www.growthbusters.org/running-out-of-gas-podcast-episode-26/ GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth – free on YouTube https://youtu.be/_w0LiBsVFBo The Limits to Growthhttps://collections.dartmouth.edu/teitexts/meadows/diplomatic/meadows_ltg-diplomatic.html Planet of the Humans documentary https://planetofthehumans.com/ More Fun, Less Stuff – Episode 55 of the GrowthBusters podcast, with Mike Nickerson https://www.growthbusters.org/more-fun-less-stuff/ COP26: If We Don't Know Where We're Going, We Will End Up Someplace Else – by Paul Sutton https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/579095-cop26-if-we-dont-know-where-we-are-going-we-will-end-up-someplace?rl=1 Bankers Took Over the Climate Change Summit. That's Bad for Democracyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/25/opinion/cop26-gfanz-climate-change.html Soylent Green – trailer; see the movie on YouTube, AppleTV, Vudu and elsewhere https://youtu.be/N_jGOKYHxaQ The Powell Memorandum https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/ The Powell Memo and links to many essays about it https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/ The Powell Memo – a critical book excerpt about the memo https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/ A Finer Future – by L. Hunter Lovins, Stewart Wallis, Anders Wijkman, and John Fullerton https://ourfinerfuture.com/ Quick Take from Katharine Hayhoe of The Nature Conservancy https://youtu.be/9wZz253lZwg Planet in Crisis podcast from Scientists Warning Europe https://www.scientistswarningeurope.org.uk/podcast World Scientists' Warnings into Action, Local to Global – New paper from Scientists Warning Europe https://www.scientistswarningeurope.org.uk/signature Shared Socioeconomic Pathways https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-explore-future-climate-change Prosperity Without Growth – by Tim Jackson https://timjackson.org.uk/ecological-economics/pwg/ COP26 demonstrations – photos by Paul Sutton https://urizenapw02-vlp.du.edu/~paul.sutton/COP26/ Rebelling Against Black Friday Consumerism – Episode 61 of the GrowthBusters podcast https://www.growthbusters.org/non-material-holidays/ So Kind Gift Registry https://sokindregistry.org/ Make a Year-End Gift to the GrowthBusters project https://www.growthbusters.org/donate/   RECOMMENDED READING: Insist that Public Policy Respects the Rights of Children and Women – by Dave Gardner https://medium.com/ending-overshoot/insist-that-public-policy-respects-the-rights-of-children-and-women-d961478d36f5 Ending Overshoot – a publication on Medium edited by Dave Gardner and Jem Randles https://medium.com/ending-overshoot Welcome to Gilead: How Population Fears Drive Women's Rights Abuses – new report from Population Matters https://populationmatters.org/news/2021/11/welcome-gilead-how-population-fears-drive-womens-rights-abuses To Breed or Not to Breed – by Alex Williams in the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/style/breed-children-climate-change.html The End of Growth: Ten Years After – by Richard Heinberg https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/20/end-growth-ten-years-after Climate Change with 8 Billion Humans - by Joseph Chamie http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/11/climate-change-8-billion-humans/ Why Renewable Energy isn't the Only Answer in our Climate Emergency - by Julie Peconi, also from Scientists Warning Europe https://www.scientistswarningeurope.org.uk/discover/why-renewable-energy-isnt-the-only-answer-in-our-climate-emergency On the GrowthBusters podcast, we come to terms with the limits to growth, explore the joy of sustainable living, and provide a recovery program from our society's growth addiction (economic/consumption and population). This podcast is part of the GrowthBusters project to raise awareness of overshoot and end our culture's obsession with, and pursuit of, growth. Dave Gardner directed the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, which Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich declared “could be the most important film ever made.” Co-host, and self-described "energy nerd," Stephanie Gardner has degrees in Environmental Studies and Environmental Law & Policy. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GrowthBustersPodcast/ Make a donation to support this non-profit project. https://www.growthbusters.org/donate/ Archive of GrowthBusters podcast episodes http://www.growthbusters.org/podcast/ Subscribe to GrowthBusters email updates https://lp.constantcontact.com/su/umptf6w/signup See the film – GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth http:www.growthbustersmovie.org Explore the issues at http://www.growthbusters.org View the GrowthBusters channel on YouTube Follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode:

'Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We're going to conclude our case study today of the 2nd season of the conscient podcast.'Claude Schryerou can listen to part one here. This is the conclusion!The setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada'. I want to thank my son Riel for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study' based on the second season of the conscient podcast as part of a class on art in 2021. There are four people in the class: the teacher played by myself, a young male student is played by my son Riel Schryer, a young female student, who is online, is played by my daughter Clara Schryer and a female adult student is played by my wife Sabrina Mathews. I want to thank the cast. A reminder that most of the narration is in English, but there are elements and excerpts of the interviews that are in French and some of the narrations as well. Episode 64 features excerpt from the following episodes in season 2 (in order of appearance):e19 reality (1m05s) (Claude Schryer reading Catherine Ingram)e43 haley (2m29s)e58 huddart (3m55s)e19 reality (5m27s) (Claude Schryer reading Britt Wray)e33 toscano (8m13s)e19 reality (9m53s) (Claude Schryer reading Richard Wagamese)e30m maggs (11m09s)e36 fanconi (13m07s)é37 lebeau (15m08s)e43 haley (16m36s) (second excerpt)e59 pearl (20m00s)e19 reality (21m51s) (Claude Schryer reading Todd Dufresne)e52 mahtani (23m05s)e22 westerkamp (23m58s)e54 garrett (25m19s)e41 rae (27m03s)e67 wanna be an ally (29m47)Screen grab of Reaper software edit of e64Recording cast : Sabrina Mathews (adult student), Claude Schryer (professor) and Riel Schryer (male student): September 2021, OttawaRecording cast : Clara Schryer (female student): September 2021, OttawaScriptNote: Some of the script has been slightly modified during the recording through improvisation and is not captured in this text.(Sounds of students chatting, arriving in class and sitting down)Teacher: Hello students. Let's start the class. Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. Last time we had to disrupt the class because of the air pollution alarm but now the air quality is acceptable, and we can breathe again so hopefully the alarm won't go off again. Let's pick it up where we left off last week. I see we have the same group as last week. a few students in class and one online. Je vous rappelle que c'est une classe bilingue. A quick reminder that we're going to conclude our case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast, which produced by an Ottawa based sound artist, Claude Schryer and at the end the last class he was reading a quote from a dharma teacher Catherine Ingram.  I think we'll start by playing that again so that you remember what that was about. Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. … There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own.Teacher: Alright. Let's talk about art. One of the key moments in the 2020s was when society started to understand that climate change was a cultural issue and that the role of art was not so much to provide solutions, even though they are important, but to ask hard questions and to help people overcome barriers to action. Here is excerpt that I really like a lot from British ecological artist David Haley. It's fromepisode 43:Climate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.Adult student: The 2020s sure were a strange time. I heard that some said it was the most exciting time to be alive, but I think it would have been terrifying to live back then and … Teacher (interrupting): You're right and that they were tough times, but they were also a time of possibilities, and some people saw how the arts could step up to the plate and play a much larger role. One of these was Stephen Huddart who was the CEO of a foundation called the JW McConnell Family Foundation based in Montreal. Let's listen to him in episode 58 talk about the crisis and the role of the arts. This is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.Male student: They keep talking about tipping points. What's a tipping point?Teacher: Ah. Right, sorry about that. I should have filled you in about that. Let me find a quote from episode 19 where Schryer actually refers to an expert on this (sound of typing). Here it is. It's from Canadian writer Britt Wray in an article called Climate tipping points: the ones we actually want. Again, this is Schryer reading that quote. Oh, and you'll notice in this one the sound of a coocoo clock in this one. Schryer liked to insert soundscape compositions in between his interviews in season 2. Here is Britt Wray: When a small change in a complex system produces an enormous shift, that new pathway gets reinforced by positive feedback loops, which lock in all that change. That's why tipping points are irreversible. You can't go back to where you were before. A tipping point that flips non-linearly could be the thing that does us in, but it could also be the thing that allows us to heal our broken systems and better sustain ourselves. Adult student: So, they knew back in the 2020's that they were on the verge of irreversible collapse due to climate change and yet they did nothing to heal their broken systems?  Teacher: It's not that they did nothing but rather that they did not do enough, quickly enough. it's easy to look back and be critical but that's why we're looking at this history and trying to understand what happened back then and what it means to us now. You are students of history, and you know how significant it can be. There were so many theories and great writing about the need for radical change back then by authors such as Richard Heinberg, Jeremy Lent, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Naomi Klein,Michael E. Mann, and so many more, and there were also great podcasts like Green Dreamer and For the Wild that provided words of warning, interviewed brilliant people and alternatives paths forward, it was all there – but at first it did little to mobilise the population. People were pretty comfortable in their lifestyle and mostly lived in a kind of denial about the climate emergency. People only really started changing their behaviour when climate change affected them directly, like a fire or flood in their backyard, and this is when it became clear that the arts had a role to play in shaping the narrative of change and changing the culture. I'll give you an example, performance artist and podcaster Peterson Toscanotalksabout the power of storytelling and the idea of touching people hearts and minds. This is from episode 33:It's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also, we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So, it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.Female student: Right, so something as simple as a story could change a person's behaviour? Teacher: Yes, it could, because humans are much more likely to understand an issue through a narrative, image or allegory than through raw scientific data. In fact, we need all of it, we need scientists working with artists and other sectors to effect change. People have to work together. As I was listening to episode 19 this next quote struck me as a really good way to talk about the power of words to affect change. It's by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese in episode 19 :To use the act of breathing to shape air into sounds that take on the context of language that lifts and transports those who hear it, takes them beyond what they think and know and feel and empowers them to think and feel and know even more.  We're storytellers, really. That's what we do. That is our power as human beings.Teacher: How is everyone doing? Need a break? No, ok, well, let's take a look at arts policy in 2021 now. Cultural theorist and musician Dr. David Maggs, wrote a paper in 2021 called Art and the World After This that was commissioned by the Metcalf Foundation. In this excerpt from episode 30, Dr. Maggs explains the unique value proposition of the arts and how the arts sector basically needed to, at the time, reinvent itself:  Complexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.Adult student: We studied this report in an art history class. It's a good piece of writing. I think it had 3 modes of engagement: greening the sector, raising the profile :Teacher: … and I think it was reauthoring the world if I remember correctly. It's interesting to note how the arts community were thinking about how to create ecological artworks as well as theoretical frameworks and how does that happen. I'll give you a couple of examples. First, an environmental theatre company in Vancouver called The Only Animal. Let's listen to their artistic director Kendra Fanconi inepisode 36:Ben Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.Teacher: This actually happened. The arts community did develop carbon positive arts works. To be realistic the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere was probably minimal but the impact on audiences and the public at large was large.  At the time and still today, it gets people motivated and open the door to change. People started creating their own carbon positive projects Female student: (interrupting) Amazing! I just found a video of their work on You Tube…Teacher: Please share the link in the chat. It's always good to see what the work looked like. The other example I would give is in Montreal with a group called Écoscéno, which was a circular economy project that recycled theatre sets. Now this one is in French, so let me explain that what Anne-Catherine Lebeau, the ED of that organization is saying. She suggests that the arts community should look at everything it has as a common good, praises the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England for their work on circular economies and she underlines the need to create art that is regenerative…Let's listen to Anne-Catherine Lebeau in episode 37:. Pour moi, c'est sûr que ça passe par plus de collaboration. C'est ça qui est intéressant aussi. Vraiment passer du modèle ‘Take Make Waste' à ‘Care Dare Share'. Pour moi, ça dit tellement de choses. Je pense qu'on doit considérer tout ce qu'on a dans le domaine artistique comme un bien commun dont on doit collectivement prendre soin. Souvent, au début, on parlait en termes de faire le moins de tort possible à l'environnement, ne pas nuire, c'est souvent comme ça que l'on présente le développement durable, puis en faisant des recherches, et en m'inspirant, entre autres, de ce qui se fait à la Fondation Ellen MacArthur  en Angleterre, en économie circulaire, je me suis rendu compte qu'eux demandent comment faire en sorte de nourrir une nouvelle réalité. Comment créer de l'art qui soit régénératif? Qui nourrisse quelque chose.Male student (interrupting) Sorry, wait, regenerative art was a new thing back then? Teacher: Actually, regenerative art had been around for a while, since the 1960 through the ecological art, or eco art movement that David Haley, who we heard from earlier in this class. he and other eco artists did work with the environment and ecosystems. Let's listen to another excerpt from David Haley from episode 43:What I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.Teacher : So eco art was an important movement but it did not become mainstream until the 2020s when natural resources on earth were drying up and people started looking at art forms that were about ecological balance and a harmonious relationship with nature. . Now, fortunately, many artists had tested these models over the years so there was a body of work that already existed about this... Btw there's a great book about eco art that came out in 2022 called Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities. I'll  put it on the reading list for you so that you can get it form the library. All of this to say that in retrospect, we can see that 2021 was the beginning of the end of capitalism that Dr. Todd Dufresne predicted, and the arts were at the heart of this transformation because they had the ability to us metaphor, imagery, illusion, fantasy, and storytelling to move people's hearts and presented a new vision of the world. So, I think you're starting to see how things were unfolding in the arts community in 2021. What was missing was coordination and some kind of strategic structure to move things along in an organized way now this was happening in the Uk with Julie's Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland and similar organizations, but we did not have that in Canada. I want you to listen to an excerpt of Schryer's conversation with Judi Pearl, who ended up being a very important figure in the arts in the 2020's because she was a co- founder with Anjali Appadurai, Anthony Garoufalis-Auger, Kendra Fanconi, Mhiran Faraday, Howard Jang, Tanya Kalmanovitch, David Maggs, Robin Sokoloski and Schryer himself of an organization called SCALE, which I mentioned earlier. Here is Judi Pearl who explains what SCALE was about in episode 59:It's a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.Teacher: OK, time is passing quickly here. there are many other examples in season 2 of the role of the arts, about community-engaged arts, immersive systems, activist art, ritual based art, etc. but in the interests of time, I suggest we move to the notion of hope now. There were so many amazing books and podcasts about hope during this time. Schryer mentions that he enjoyed the book by Thomas Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, Eslin Kelsey's Hope Matters, Joanna Macy's and Chris Johnstone's classic from 2010, Active Hope but there were many others. The thing about hope back then is that it was aspirational. Indeed, andthere were many different forms of hope. Let's start with Schryer reading a quote from Dr. Todd Dufresne in episode 19:We're all being “radicalized by reality.” It's just that for some people it takes a personal experience of fire, landslide, or hurricane to get their attention. I'm afraid it takes mass death and extinction. … Whoever survives these experiences will have a renewed appreciation for nature, for the external world, and for the necessity of collectivism in the face of mass extinction. There's hope in this — although I admit it's wrapped in ugliness.Teacher: And it is very ugly, isn't it...? Here's another take on hope from composer Dr. Annie Mahtani in episode 52. Annie was director of a electroacoustic music festival in the UK where the focus of the 2021 was on listening and how listening could us better understand our environment. If we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up.Female student: I love the focus on listening. I think Schryer was a specialist in acoustic ecology, if I remember correctly.Teacher: Yes. On a similar wavelength, here's excerpt from soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp from episode 22:We need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute… If there is any chance to survive, that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.Teacher: Thankfully, we did survive, and we did develop the capacity to listen and slow down as Westerkamp suggests. She was quite prescient in this way. But the notion of hope was elusive, because science keep telling us that they were headed for catastrophe, and there was good reason to be concerned about this and this created massive tension. Male Student: How did they manage that? Teacher: They just kept going in spite of the uncertainty and the grim prospect... As I mentioned earlier, no-one knew if was possible to stop the destruction of the planet, but they kept going on and they   use art not only to change systems abut also to keep up morale.  Let's listen to this excerpt from episode 54 with theatre artistIan Garrett: I don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.Male student: OK, they knew that there would be trouble ahead but what about adaptation and preparedness in the arts community. How did they prepare and adapt to the changing environment? Did they not see it coming?Adult Student: It's one thing to raise awareness through art but how did art actually help people deal with the reality of fires, floods, climate refugees and all of that?Teacher:  Remember that art had the ability to touch people emotions and motivate them to change their attitudes and lifestyles, but it was also a way to teach people how to adapt while continuing to enjoy the things around them. Artist-researcher and educator Jen Rae is a good example. Rae and her colleagues in Australia did a lot of work in the 2020's to develop tools and resources that call upon art to reduce harm during emergencies.  The notion of preparedness. This is from episode 41:The thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.Teacher: Online student, you have a question. Please go ahead. Female student: Did artists step up? Teacher: Yes, they did. For example, in 2021, there were the Green Sessions organized by SoulPepper Theatrecompany and the Artists for Real Climate Action (ARCA), a really great collective of artists who did all kinds of activist art projects that set the tone for years to come. Some of the most impactful art works were the ones that directly addressed the culture of exploitation and the disconnection from nature that caused the ecological crisis in the first place, so it was not observations but also critique of the root of the issues that humanity was facing at the time. There was also a body work by Indigenous artists, writers, curators and educators that was extremely important and transformative. A good example is Towards Braiding, a collaborative process developed by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti, developed in collaboration with Sharon Stein, in 2020 that opened the door to new ways of working with indigenous communities in cultural institutions and all kinds of settings. It was very impactful. I found an episode from conscient podcast episode 67 from season 3 called ‘wanna be an ally' where Schryer talks about this book and reads the poem called ‘wanna be an ally' from Towards Braiding and I think it's worth listening to the whole thing. It's really important to understand these perspectives. conscient podcast, episode 67, ‘wanna be an ally'? I've been thinking about decolonization and reconciliation and other issues in our relations with indigenous communities. I was reading a text the other day that really affected me positively but also emotionally and I wanted to read it to you. If you remember last episode, I talked about the idea of radical listening. Well, this is a type of radical listening in the sense that each of these words are, I think very meaningful and important for us all to consider. It's from a document called Towards Braiding by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa. Andreotti written in collaboration with Sharon Stein and it's published by the Musagetes Foundation. I'd like to start by thanking them all for this a very important document that essentially talks about how to, or proposes how to engage indigenous and non-indigenous relations in an institutional setting and, principles and methods, to consider. It's very well-written and I recommend a strongly as something to read and something to do, but for now, I'll just read this poem, on page 39 of the document and, and leave it at that for today because, it's already a lot to consider and as we listen more radically, that means just sitting back and listening with our full attention and openness of mind. So here it is.don't do it for charity, for feeling good, for looking good, or for showing others that you are doing good don't do it in exchange for redemption from guilt, for increasing your virtue, for appeasing your shame, for a vanity award don't put it on your CV, or on Facebook, or in your thesis, don't make it part of your brand, don't use it for self-promotion don't do it as an excuse to keep your privileges, to justify your position, to do everything except what would be actually needed to change the terms of our relationship do it only if you feel that our pasts, presents and futures are intertwined, and our bodies and spirits entangled do it only if you sense that we are one metabolism that is sick, and what happens to me also happens to you do it recognizing that you have the luxury of choice to participate or not, to stand or not, to give up your weekend or not, whereas others don't get to decide don't try to “mould” me, or to “help” me, or to make me say and do what is convenient for you don't weaponize me (“I couldn't possibly be racist”) don't instrumentalize me (“my marginalized friend says”) don't speak for me (“I know what you really mean”)don't infantilize me (“I am doing this for you”) don't make your actions contingent on me confiding in you, telling you my traumas, recounting my traditions, practicing your idea of “right” politics, or performing the role of a victim to be saved by you or a revolutionary that can save you and expect it to be, at times, incoherent, messy, uncomfortable, difficult, deceptive, paradoxical, repetitive, frustrating, incomprehensible, infuriating, boring and painful — and prepare for your heart to break and be stretched do you still want to do it? then share the burdens placed on my back, the unique medicines you bring, and the benefits you have earned from this violent and lethal disease co-create the space where I am able to do the work that only I can and need to do for all of us take a step back from the centre, the frontline from visibility relinquish the authority of your interpretations, your choice, your entitlements, surrender that which you are most praised and rewarded for don't try to teach, to lead, to organize, to mentor, to control, to theorize, or to determine where we should go, how to get there and why offer your energy to peel potatoes, to wash the dishes, to scrub the toilets, to drive the truck, to care for the babies, to separate the trash, to do the laundry, to feed the elders, to clean the mess, to buy the food, to fill the tank, to write the grant proposal, to pay the tab and the bail to do and support things you can't and won't understand,and do what is needed, instead of what you want to do, without judgment, or sense of martyrdom or expectation for gratitude, or for any kind of recognitionthen you will be ready to sit with me through the storm with the anger, the pain, the frustration, the losses, the fears, and the longing for better times with each other and you will be able to cry with me, to mourn with me, to laugh with me, to “heart” with me, as we face our shadows, and find other joys, in earthing, breathing, braiding, growing, cooking and eating, sharing, healing, and thriving side by side so that we might learn to be ourselves, but also something else, something that is also you and me, and you in me, and neither you nor me Teacher: We need to wrap this class up soon, but I think you've noticed that Schryer was deeply influenced by indigenous writers and knowledge keepers of his time. He published a blog in September 2021 that quotes Australian academic and researcher Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta from episode 321 of the Green Dreamer podcast. I'll read a short excerpt now but encourage you to listen to the entire interview if you get a chance. Teacher:The most damaged people on the planet are going to have to set aside their IOUs, set aside any kind of justice, or hope for justice or karma, or anything else, and carry the load for another thousand years to keep everything alive. And it's going to be hard just to forgive and then hand over all this wealth of knowledge and relationship and everything else to the people who are still holding the capital from the last great heist and are not going to give it up or share it anyway. The only way that's going to save the entire planet is to bring everybody back under the law of the land, and be very generous with our social systems, open them up and bring everybody back in. And that's going to be really hard, because at the same time, people are going to be trying to extract from that, corrupt that and everything else. Adult student: That's interesting. It kind of brings us back to the notion of reality and grief, but Yunkaporta doesn't even mention art in that quote so how do we connect the dots with the arts here?Teacher (interrupting): It's a good point but the presence of arts and culture is implied through the notion of the transfer of knowledge and through relationships with humans and the natural world. I think art is there he just did not use the word. Most indigenous cultures at that time did not consider art as separate activity from day-to-day life. It's interesting to observe Yunkaporta's prophesy is essentially what is happening in our world today, isn't it? We're slowly returning to the natural laws of the land, at least in the habitable parts of the planet, and our social systems are being transformed by the knowledge and expertise of Indigenous peoples, right? It's true that we had to go through a tremendous amount of suffering to get there – and we still are - but we seem to be on the other side of that elusive just transition that Anjali Appadurai spoke about in episode 23. So that's why 2021 in the arts in Canada is such an interesting topic and that's why we spent two classes on it as part of this course on Canada in the year 2021. The arts essentially planted seeds for massive transformation that came later. Artists and cultural workers at the time guided the way for that transformation. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time for today's class and my voice is getting tired... I suggest we end the class with another quote from that same blog by Schryer. I've just put it in the chat. I suggest we read it out loud as a group, OK? I'll start and then point to the next person to read out loud. I'll begin.  Now that season 2 is complete, I've been thinking about I can be most useful to the ecological crisis. Is it by sharing more knowledge about art and climate through podcasts like this one? Is it by engaging in more activist and protest art? Or is it by developing more green policies for the arts sector? All of these will likely help, but I think the most useful thing for me to do is to listen radically. Let me explain what I mean by listening radically. Male Student: Listening radically is about listening deeply without passing judgment. Listening radically is about knowing the truth and filtering out the noise. Listening radically is about opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done.Female Student: I conclude this blog with a quote that I used at the end of episode 1 of this podcast by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese, from his novel, For Joshua. ‘We may not relight the fires that used to burn in our villages, but we carry the embers from those fires in our hearts and learn to light new fires in a new world.'Adult Student: ‘We can recreate the spirit of community we had, of kinship, of relationship to all things, of union with the land, harmony with the universe, balance in living, humility, honesty, truth, and wisdom in all of our dealings with each other.'Teacher: OK. We'll continue with more about Canada in 2021 next week. Thanks so much for being such an engaged and fun group today. Merci. Miigwech.(speaking softly under the professor, improvised)Male Student: Thanks Prof. I'm really exhausted but I learned a lot. Female Student: Moi aussi. Merci pour cette classe. Aurevoir 2021. Adult Student: Yup, I learned a lot, but I'm bushed. Does anyone want to go for coffee? *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

It's not unusual for species to go extinct; it happens all the time. In fact, scientists estimate that at least 99.9% of all species of plants and animals that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. That's pretty amazing, considering how many species still exist—up to 8.7 million, according to some experts. Mass extinction events, however, are not so common. A mass extinction event is when more than half of all species living at a given time go extinct over a relatively short period. The American Museum of Natural History found five significant mass extinction events in the Earth's history that it thought were worth highlighting on the museum's website. The largest of these happened about 250 million years ago, when up to 95% of existing species died out. Another that people may find particularly noteworthy occurred 65 million years ago. That one took out the dinosaurs, marking a major turning point in history. What hasn't happened in the past is a mass extinction event caused by humans. However, Richard Heinberg, author of the soon-to-be-released book titled Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, thinks that may be coming, and some of the reasons are detailed in his 416-page book. “The book is a ‘big picture' book, and I address three huge questions in it. One is: How did we—just one species—come to overpower the rest of nature to the point where we're changing the climate and triggering what looks like it may be a mass extinction event? The second question is: How have we come to oppress one another in so many and so brutal ways? And the third is: Is there any way we can come to terms with power in such a way as to turn things around?” Heinberg said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Heinberg said people around the world must switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources to limit climate change, but he was pessimistic about the prospects for doing so quickly enough to make a difference in the long term. “It's going to be very, very difficult to do that in fact, and for a number of reasons,” said Heinberg. “One, of course, is just the fact that solar and wind, which are our main candidates for replacing fossil fuels, they produce electricity, but electricity is only about 20% of global energy usage. So, the other 80%, we use solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels for agriculture and transportation, and industrial processes like smelting metals, and making cement for concrete, and on, and on, and on—a lot of high-heat industrial processes. Those things are going to be hard to electrify.” The only way to “get to the other side,” according to Heinberg, is for people in industrial countries such as the U.S. to reduce their overall energy usage pretty substantially. “That sounds really daunting, but it certainly is possible to do,” he said. “Europeans use half the energy that Americans do, and yet their quality of life is quite acceptable by anybody's standards. So, we're going to have to find ways of providing basic human needs in ways that use the least amount of energy, and then supply renewable energy for those purposes.” “I speak frequently to experts, not just in climate science, but in other environmental fields and social fields and so on. And everyone that I talk to is really, really concerned about where all of this is headed. So, if you're worried, you're not alone, the experts are worried too. But, we really have to start talking honestly with each other about all of this and getting our heads out of the sand because it's just too easy to live in denial,” Heinberg said. “We're going to have to step up to the plate and really show that we're a species that deserves to survive.”

Heinberg and Norberg-Hodge are experts on climate change, localization, and sustainability. Their past lectures have been almost prophetic in their accuracy, and their ideas are more relevant now than ever.Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, is regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.An author, educator, editor, and lecturer, he has spoken widely on energy and climate issues to audiences in 14 countries, addressing policy makers at many levels, from local city officials to members of the European Parliament. He has been quoted and interviewed countless times for print, television, and radio and has appeared in many film and television documentaries. Heinberg's Museletter has provided a monthly exploration of current events and the world of  ideas. Its essays present an inter-disciplinary study of history and culture.Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures/International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) and The International Alliance for Localization (IAL). Based in the US and UK, with subsidiaries in Germany and Australia, Local Futures examines the root causes of our current social and environmental crises while promoting more sustainable and equitable patterns of living in both North and South. Its mission is to protect and renew well-being by promoting a systemic shift away from economic globalization toward localization.The Earth Journal counted Norberg-Hodge among the world's ten most interesting environmentalists, and in Carl McDaniel's book Wisdom for a Liveable Planet she was profiled as one of eight visionaries changing the world. The Post Growth Institute counted her on the (En)Rich List of 100 people “whose collective contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.”

Our guest today is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute. We will discuss what our future climate might mean for us and how we can prepare for the coming changes. Richard is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richard will draw on the extensive knowledge of the Institute and from his outstanding online video series, Think Resilience.

Our guest today is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute. We will discuss what our future climate might mean for us and how we can prepare for the coming changes. Richard is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richard will draw on the extensive knowledge of the Institute and from his outstanding online video series, Think Resilience.

Our guest today is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute. We will discuss what our future climate might mean for us and how we can prepare for the coming changes. Richard is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richard will draw on the extensive knowledge of the Institute and from his outstanding online video series, Think Resilience.

Our guest today is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute. We will discuss what our future climate might mean for us and how we can prepare for the coming changes. Richard is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richard will draw on the extensive knowledge of the Institute and from his outstanding online video series, Think Resilience.

Sometimes the most heated debates are among people who almost agree. That seems to be the case with the recent Jacobson-Clack controversy, in which two groups of well-intentioned, renewable energy advocates bitterly spar over differing paths to a 100% renewable energy future. But as PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg points out in his latest essay, neither side is considering one of the most crucial aspects to successfully reaching that future. Tune in to hear Richard's take on the controversy and decide for yourself who offers the clearest path forward.

Sometimes the most heated debates are among people who almost agree. That seems to be the case with the recent Jacobson-Clack controversy, in which two groups of well-intentioned, renewable energy advocates bitterly spar over differing paths to a 100% renewable energy future. But as PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg points out in his latest essay, neither side is considering one of the most crucial aspects to successfully reaching that future. Tune in to hear Richard's take on the controversy and decide for yourself who offers the clearest path forward.

Sometimes the most heated debates are among people who almost agree. That seems to be the case with the recent Jacobson-Clack controversy, in which two groups of well-intentioned, renewable energy advocates bitterly spar over differing paths to a 100% renewable energy future. But as PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg points out in his latest essay, neither side is considering one of the most crucial aspects to successfully reaching that future. Tune in to hear Richard's take on the controversy and decide for yourself who offers the clearest path forward.

Happy Valentines Day! Nicole talks guns in the news (from Christopher Dornan to Wayne LaPierre to Oscar Pistorius...). Plus energy & climate with Richard Heinberg, and SOTU, GH and more with Maysoon Zayid