WEBVTT - Carbon Bros, Ep 2: Energy Dominance 0:00:01.880 --> 0:00:04.960 Thank you very much for being here. We have largely 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:09.639 an energy group today. We're looking to be very energy dominant. 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:11.480 Unleash energy dominance. 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.880 This is unleashed the National Energy Dominance Council. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.600 We are unleashing energy dominance, and. 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.360 You're going to see this is basically energy dominance, and 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.000 it's going to be environmentally clean, environmentally wonderful, and we're 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.000 going to make more money than anybody's ever made with energy. 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:30.479 We have more energy than anybody else. I call it 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:32.159 liquid gold under our feet. 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:37.320 Energy dominance. That is the Trump Administration's catchphrase when it 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.280 comes to America's new energy policy, or should we see 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:47.160 old energy policy? Always energy policy. In February of twenty 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:51.560 twenty five, Trump established the National Council on Energy Dominance, 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.880 whose aim is basically more oil, natural gas, and coal, 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.920 with a smattering of geothermal and nuclear thrown into me 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:03.920 AI demand. He's promising cheaper prices at the pump for 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.440 consumers and no more of that pesky wind and solar. 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:10.759 You just heard the voices of President Trump, his Press 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:14.840 Secretary Carolyn Levitt, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgham, and 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:20.680 EPA administrator Leez Eldon All repeating that same line energy, energy, 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.520 energy dominance, like it's a magic spell. But what does 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:28.759 energy dominance actually mean? Who or what is the Trump 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:33.399 administration trying to dominate with it? Is it the energy itself? 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.360 Those molecules of freedom as the Trump administration was calling 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.640 it back in twenty nineteen, But they're trying to dominate. 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:46.600 American presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have always said America 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:50.200 needs more energy. Also, why are they always. 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:51.400 Unleashing it. 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:59.560 Totally? In his first term, you may remember Barry President 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:05.200 Braco was pitching the idea of energy independence, which was 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.840 basically covered to justify lifting the export ban for the 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:09.639 fracking guys. 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:14.000 Hello, everybody, I'm speaking to you today from a UPS 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.160 customer center in Landover, Maryland, where I came to talk 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.600 about an issue that's affecting families and businesses just like 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.760 this one, the rising price of gas and what we 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.400 can do as a country to reduce our dependence on 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:30.320 foreign ore. This week, I released a blueprint for a 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:34.280 secure energy future. Part of the strategy involves increasing our 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.760 oil exploration right here in America. 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.000 And of course becoming a net exporter. Did the opposite 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.000 of making the US energy independent, Instead it hogtied US 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.600 to an energy commodity market that's been jerking prices around 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.320 ever since. And despite all the industry's talk of Biden's 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.960 environmental policy getting in the way of its growth, the 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.960 US actually became the world's top oil and gas producer 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.040 and exporter under Biden. 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:08.800 Let's debunk some miss here. My administration has not stopped 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:13.160 or slowed US oil production. Quite the opposite. We're producing 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:17.120 twelve million barrels of oil per day, and by the 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.520 end of this year, we will be producing one million 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.360 barrels a day, more than the day in which I 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:26.200 took office. In fact, we're on track for record oil 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.080 production in twenty twenty three, and today the United States 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.200 is the largest producer of oil and petroleum products in 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:34.200 the world. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.960 So Obama and Biden basically had an all of the 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:42.720 above energy strategy, boosting fossil fuel production along with solar, 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.720 wind and other renewables, while Trump is really only interested 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:47.880 in liquid gold. 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.440 Yeah, Trump loves gold so much and he hates building renewables, 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.480 even in places like Texas where they secretly make a 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:00.240 bunch of Republicans a lot of money. He is, as 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.720 we tape, actively trying to kill the clean energy industry 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:05.600 a free markets. 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:10.080 But I do think the crucial difference beyond just the 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.800 policy is also the way Trump and his cronies think 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.680 about energy and the way they talk about it. They 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.880 keep hitting on that word dominance, and that's the keyword here. 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.360 The Dems wanted market dominance for American energy, and they 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.560 were fine getting there with wind or solar, but with 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:33.279 Trump and MAGA, it's more than that. Whether or not 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.400 they believe in climate change is almost beside the point. 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.159 It's the idea that fossil fuels are at the center 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.640 of the global economy and that power comes from controlling them. 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.440 It's not about independence or security. It's about power, and 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.039 not just on a geopolitical level of being able to 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:54.040 bully other countries, but almost like on an individual one. 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:55.960 It reminds me of that line from Doom. 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:02.279 Yes, he who controls the spice, it drove the universe spice. 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:09.560 And it's that word dominance, not spice, that we want 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.640 to talk about in this episode of Carbon Brows, because 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.760 the idea of trying to dominate through taking possession of 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.760 natural resources goes back a lot further than Trump or 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:21.560 even the fight over climate change. 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.520 It's the story of how masculinity and extraction got linked 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:29.120 in our collective imaginations, how we went from thinking of 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.120 the earth of a living organism or mother even to 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:37.279 something we can plunder and destroy and profit from as 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.440 we as men see fit, And how the fight over 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.120 climate change became bound up with the backlash against feminism, 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:49.480 transgender rights, and the rights of anyone or anything that 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:51.800 challenges the supremacy of men. 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:55.000 Welcome back to Carbon Bros. 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.480 I'm Daniel Penny and I'm Amy Westervelt. 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.960 On today's episode, Good Energy Dominance. 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:08.839 There are a lot of ways we could start this 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.280 episode about the masculine urge to dominate nature. 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.280 And it should be said right from the top that 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:20.080 dominance and aggression are not innately masculine traits, nor do 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.920 all men exhibit them hashtag not all men. But for 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.800 the purposes of this combo, we're talking about hegemonic masculinity 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:32.480 or toxic masculinity, the type that Trump, MAGA and the 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.240 global far right view as the only proper way to 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.359 be a man. Last year, I spoke with doctor Terry 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.960 Cooper's who's one of the leading academic researchers that helped 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.839 popularize the term toxic masculinity. 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:50.680 Toxic masculinity is not synonymous with masculinity. We have to 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:55.000 be clear about what we're talking about. There are multiple masculinities. 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.760 There's a hegemonic masculinity which is being contested right now. 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:05.159 What is hegemonic masculinity and what distinguishes that from toxic masculinity. 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:10.120 There's a dominance hierarchy, and within that framework we can 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.920 look at characteristics what we call in psychology traits like 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:22.560 hyper competitiveness, like brutality towards those lower on the dominance hierarchy. 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:29.160 Those things I believe are socially evil, They're not appropriate 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.520 aims to strive for, and a group of those things 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:37.800 I lump under toxic masculinity. At different points of time, 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:44.400 different forms of masculinity emerge and become more or less powerful, 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:50.680 dominant hedgebonic masculinity looks at that historical development with the 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:57.160 question what kind of masculinity is dominant now or hegemonic? 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.640 For instance, I believe in the United States we're having 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.000 a cultural war about that. We have a president who 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:13.400 explicitly advocates sexism, misogyny, homophobia, islamophobia, etc. All of which 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.400 you're part of toxic masculinity. 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.880 So to recap, just like there are many ways to 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:23.480 be a woman based on cultural and historical context, masculinity 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.200 is not all one thing, and it does not have 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.800 to be agro, but hegemonic masculinity that's the kind of 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.000 images and behaviors and social scripts we encounter every day 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.319 does equate manliness with dominance. 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.040 And this is important when we think about how these 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:41.960 macho men treat the natural world. 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.120 To understand how dominating nature got all tied up with masculinity, 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.200 we have to talk about how ideas about nature became 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.360 gendered in the first place. And for about as long 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.920 as we have documentation of humans, there is this idea 0:08:56.040 --> 0:09:00.680 of Earth as a womb, as a maternal figure nurturing humans. 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:05.400 It spans back for centuries across cultures and religions from 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.680 Pacha Mama amongst the indigenous peoples of Peru. 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.520 And of course the Greeks had Gaya and the Romans 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:16.480 had Tera mater mother Earth. This familiar relationship between humans 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.240 and the rest of the national world goes back to 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.280 way before hippies were making bumper stickers about it, and 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.400 it's remained a recurring theme in pop culture. I was 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:29.960 actually just watching this clip that I found from a 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.520 nineteen ninety Earth Day TV special with a lot of 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:38.040 celebrities in it, including Robin Williams and Bette Midler playing 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.480 Mother Earth. What are you worried about? 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.000 Everyone's saying Mother Nature? 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:43.839 Mother Earth? 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:45.920 People said, we gotta respect Mother. 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.439 Earth what we do. But she loves us. 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.760 She's always there for us, isn't she. She's always got. 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:53.480 One more tree upper sleeve, doesn't she. 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.440 And she's the type of mom who could never say no. 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.480 Stop praise He's I can't marry her another word. 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:07.480 It's second. 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:09.320 Enough of this drivel. 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:10.600 What is this? 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.040 Marny grown may see Thanksgiving day break? 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.000 Come on, are you arigant? 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:16.199 Little Homo sapiens? 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:18.120 You don't know me? 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:21.120 I'm not surprised. 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:23.800 It's hard to recognize me anymore. 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:24.360 Oh. 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.439 Once I was so fresh, so green, my skies were 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:28.120 so bloom. 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:32.680 I was pristine, my Mother Earth. 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.080 And I'm sick and it's all. 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.040 Your fault to me? 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:41.920 Why is it all it's mart fault? 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:42.680 Yeah? 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.719 The Mother Earth thing really cuts both waysy. On the 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.880 one hand, it's presented as a reason to respect the planet, 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:53.079 on the other as a reason to endlessly extract with impunity. 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.120 It makes me wonder how nature even got coated as 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:57.640 feminine in the first place. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:07.239 A certain kind of European Christianity has been very influential 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.360 in the United States in terms of kind of framing 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:15.200 that men should have dominion over women and children, but 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.680 also over the environment. That has been really foundational to 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:22.200 the story of the United States. 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.640 That's Sophie Burke James. She's a researcher at Vanderbilt focused 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.520 on the intersection of gender, environment, and religion. Her work 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.240 often looks at the connections between the anti abortion movement 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.559 and other far right projects, including climate change. 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.880 We can see a very clear through line across anti 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:46.400 environmental movements that they generally are also anti feminist and 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:54.040 opposing gender equality and supporting various kinds of male supremacy. 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.280 That those are often very much linked, particularly in the 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:02.000 United States, but elsewhere as well. It's a power relation, 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:05.160 and I think that's what's really important in trying to 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:11.600 understand why the anti feminist far right movements of today 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:18.680 are also generally opposed to acknowledging there our current environmental reality, 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.520 which is we need a different relationship to the natural. 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:25.000 World, like this idea of dominion. It's not coming from nowhere. 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.760 It's a specific interpretation of the Bible. This is Genesis, right. 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:36.679 Let us make men in our after our likeness, and let. 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:38.959 Them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and. 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.240 Over the power of the air, and over the cattle, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.880 and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:48.480 that creepeth upon the earth. Yeah, a specific interpretation of 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:55.000 the Bible that really prioritizes this notion of power over others. 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.679 There's many biblical scholars that say that the Bible is 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.400 actually could be read as an environmental text, that there's 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.960 many themes in the Bible that talk about not just 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:12.000 dominion over and control over in nature, but can be 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:15.560 actually read as a text about how to celebrate nature 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:22.720 and live in harmony with nature. Protestantism is often very 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:27.880 much in line with capitalist values around property and around 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.559 viewing the natural world not as something that we rely 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.320 on and that requires respect and care, but as something 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:41.040 that can be parceled out into private property. And that's 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.760 a very different kind of relationship. 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:44.079 Right. 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.520 If it's your property, you can kind of do whatever 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.040 you want with it. It's again about power and control 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:54.360 and not about a kind of symbiotic relationship. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:59.319 What's the connection then, to the plight of women, because 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:03.760 obviously today women aren't property, but they once were. 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.360 There are some parts of the current Christian right that 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.360 want not to turn women into property, but they are 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:13.640 opposed to the Nineteenth Amendment, which allows women the vote. 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.960 When I first started studying the Christian right in the 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.320 United States over fifteen years ago, that was a really 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:25.480 radical position that's becoming much more, not mainstream, but talked 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:29.040 about more broadly, like that women should be should no 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.080 longer have the right to vote. If we kind of 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:33.160 step back and look at what these movements are about, 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:39.120 they're about asserting relationships of power and control in the world, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:43.240 and that means men should have power and control over women. 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.360 That feminism is a direct assault to this worldview, but 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.680 also recognizing the reality of climate change is also a 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:55.040 direct assault to that worldview, and that if you have 0:14:55.080 --> 0:15:00.160 to recognize that you, as a human being are ten 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:05.960 on a much broader ecological system that you know is 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:12.320 vulnerable to human impacts, then it's a very different relationship 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:14.440 than one of power and control. And so I think 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.880 that the power and control is the kind of foundation 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:20.840 to both of those issues. 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:30.440 But a certain version of Christianity that says man has 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:34.160 dominion isn't the only thing driving a wedge between humans 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.320 in the natural world. During this time, this Protestant theology 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.040 was brought to the US by settlers. Where I live 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.520 on the outer tip of Cape Cod is actually the 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.040 first place the Pilgrims landed on their way to Plymouth. 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:49.280 But I think they couldn't get much food here, and 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.000 a lot of them starved to death. Anyway. The Pilgrims, 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.880 like most Europeans during the so called Age of Discovery, 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:00.920 believed this new world was promised to them by and 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.360 whoever was first to lay claim to it was the 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:10.120 rightful owner. This is known as the doctrine of Discovery. 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.080 Exactly, and a really cool loophole to this approach was 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:14.680 that if someone did make it there first, but they 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.240 weren't a Christian, that didn't count. 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.320 I hear I claimed this land and all literally tests 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:24.520 in the name of His majestin kaing James the past, 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:28.600 and to so name the settlement James Town. 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.280 The Doctrine of Discovery is one of the original international 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.800 law doctrines that was developed in the fourteen hundreds to 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.120 control the actions of European Christian nations. 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.240 This is Robert Miller. He's an expert in federal Indian 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:48.000 law and an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:52.040 As Europeans began to sail outside the site of land, 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:56.160 they began to be interested in acquiring empires in Africa 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.560 and then into the Americas and into Asia. And this 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.760 idea that the Church and the kings and queens of 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:09.600 Europe could develop international law to control how they acquired empires. 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:13.560 We call this the doctrine of discovery. Because Europeans were 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:18.200 discovering other cultures, other people's, other lands, and then wanted 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.120 to be able to claim them and have those claims 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.919 recognized under international law. It's finders keepers to the extent 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.160 that they were finding lands that were truly vacant. They 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:33.400 very rarely found lands that were truly vacant. They were 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.720 claiming the lands of indigenous peoples in Africa, in the Americas, 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:38.520 and in Asia. 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:41.919 Robert really blew my mind when he pointed out that 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.359 the doctrine of discovery is still alive and well today, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:49.280 though it doesn't just apply two Christian nations colonizing other 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.720 parts of the world anymore, but it's still justifying what 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.120 it did back then resource extraction. 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.320 It is still the law today. Russia and China have 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.639 planted their national flags on the bottom of the ocean 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:05.439 bed under the North Pole in two thousand and seven, 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.639 and in twenty ten China puty its flag on the 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.879 bottom of the South China Sea. So nations are still 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:16.560 using this idea that where they arrived first, they can 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:31.280 acquire by claiming this area. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:34.560 So while the Virginia and East India companies were sailing 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.760 around the world laying claim to new lands, the British 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.720 upper classes were also busy at home kicking peasants off 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:45.480 their land. This was a process called enclosure, which Karl 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.560 Marx writes a lot about it. And this was this 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.880 idea that in the feudal era you had lords who 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.919 were given land by the king, but then there was 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.600 also something called the commons, which was land that everyone 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:00.520 got to make use of, and they could graze their 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:04.960 animals there, and they could take firewood, etc. And at 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.879 some point in the sixteen hundreds, Parliament got together and 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.840 they started passing laws that allowed the wealthy to take 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:17.040 that land entirely for themselves and kick the peasants off 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.080 of it in the name of agricultural improvement. 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:25.840 Who raised a hand against the king's men will be arrested. 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:26.880 You'll have no right. 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:28.600 They've signed it out. 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.080 Well, now it belongs to the Earl of Manchester, by 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:33.640 whose authority, by the authority of the king. 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:34.920 Then I say that. 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:35.719 King is a thing. 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.280 You're under arrest. Take them away. 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.359 And this is what, according to Marx, created the working 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.639 class people without land, who had to sell their labor 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:47.760 in order to survive. 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:53.480 Living in twenty twenty five, when absolutely everything has been commodified, 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.080 it's hard to remember that there was a before to 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:59.359 the way we live now. But it was during this 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.680 transition hundreds of years ago, when capitalism was just getting started, 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.080 that a lot of our collective ideas about nature were 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.879 starting to crystallize. One of the more important ones was 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.000 that if you can't price something like the value of 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:19.080 an impact ecosystem, for example, or clean drinking water, then 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:24.920 it's worth nothing. We got to read a new book 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:28.159 about all this, recently called Free Gifts, Capitalism and the 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.280 Politics of Nature by Elisa Battistoni. Here she is explaining 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:33.560 it in more detail. 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:37.920 Western culture and Enlightenment, and there's this moment that comes 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:40.919 about with Dick part and then other Enlightenment thinkers, that 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:46.000 really institutes the separation between like the thinking, rational human 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:49.240 being and the dumb matter of the world, Like that 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.359 animals or machines and everything else in. 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.320 The world is just kind of a solis nothing. 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:56.520 To be used as we will and sort of put 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:57.600 to human use. 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.840 Major division between human beings and the rest of the world. 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.800 Then the basic idea has really structured fundamentally a lot 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:09.679 of Western development. 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:12.560 The expropriation account. 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:16.879 Looks at this violent process of expropriation of taking. You know, 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.840 even John Locke would say God gave this orth command 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.199 in common, and then what happens is like some people 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.040 appropriate there's. 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.760 And the privatization of that by this very violent process. 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:32.720 I think that's the other sort of major story we. 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.600 Have about what happens with capital. 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:36.879 So the free gift is really built into sort of 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:39.600 like the daily processes of capitalism in a way that's 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.439 not necessarily about what we think or what we believe, 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:46.160 because there's this sort of foundational reality. 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:49.600 Apologies because I know you wrote able book about it, 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:50.159 but if. 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:54.920 You can define what you mean by a free gift, So. 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:56.760 This term the free gift of nature. 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.800 There's a term that I really get out of looking 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:01.879 at a lot of classical political economy. 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:05.080 So people like Adam Smith and David Ricardo and Jambetts, 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:07.240 and a lot of the people writing and like the 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.520 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who are writing the early 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:14.639 days of capitalism and the development of industrial capitalism, and 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.840 they are describing the contributions that non human nature make 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:23.439 to production. They talk about the organs of sheep that 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.520 help produce full they talk about soil fertility that helps 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.760 crops grow. There's a lot of different gifts of nature 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.160 that give gratuitously to production. They're observing all of these 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.639 wonderful gifts, but they're giving only to capital in the 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:39.240 system where they're the. 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:41.280 Ones who are benefiting from the free gifts of nature. 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:53.000 I'm curious what you think about the sort of way 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:58.080 that nature has been gendered throughout most of history in general, 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:02.199 and like weather call it Mother Earth or referring to 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.080 the planet, and all of these sort of like feminine terms, 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:09.680 has contributed to the idea that it should be free. 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.840 Yeah, I think we should be a more circumspect about 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:16.440 embracing the Mother Earth's language, because I think it can't 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.280 suggest this rationalization in a way of on the one hand, 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.600 that mothers are also supposed to give freely and generously 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:24.800 and selflessly and so on, and so we should treat 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:26.840 that labors if it's just kind of like available for 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:29.240 the taking, you know, it seems like the earth. 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:31.800 Is just giving them to us of its own free religion. 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:32.920 I think is rarely the case. 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:34.920 I think it's maybe more of like a thing where 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:37.560 it kind of ends up justifying that rather than causing it. 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:43.520 Okay, we've got man's dominion over nature and women, the 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:48.000 doctrine of discovery to justify grabbing foreign land, rich landlords 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:51.120 using violence to get rid of the commoners and take 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:54.080 it for themselves, and to keep all of this humming. 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:57.920 You've got the free gifts from mother nature. This stuff 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.840 may sound abstract, but it's still shaping so much conservative 0:24:01.840 --> 0:24:05.880 opposition to environmental rules and the fight to stop climate change. 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:08.679 Yes, this is a super important point. The importance of 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:12.400 private property is at the core of American conservatism today. 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:16.000 The rights of property owners get invoked every time environmental 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.680 regulations threaten to limit how people use their land by 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:23.320 not allowing them to dump chemicals into rivers, for example, 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:25.720 or pollute the air with plumes of CO two. 0:24:26.160 --> 0:24:29.520 And while there are many people who helped promote this concept, 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:33.679 there's one guy who did more than most, John Locke. 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:38.479 Maybe father liberalism or a father anyway. Right wing groups 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:42.240