Speaker 1: Episode five refuse Dystopia. In the end, the state failed
Speaker 1: in more places than it succeeded. It was a matter
Speaker 1: of sheer logistics. After more than a century of taking
Speaker 1: the United States for granted as a concept, the men
Speaker 1: women in jack booted thugs at the top were reminded
Speaker 1: of just how big this country is. In response to
Speaker 1: a government crackdown, wildcats strikes sparked up all across the
Speaker 1: big cities. Many were crushed by police and arrested. Activists
Speaker 1: were often forced back into their old service industry jobs
Speaker 1: as prison labor. But some of the strikes succeeded. With
Speaker 1: interstate commerce breaking down, police in many urban areas weren't
Speaker 1: able to maintain their supplies of riot munitions and ammunition
Speaker 1: in your own area, a spirited alliance with some of
Speaker 1: the rural communities near by allowed you to move like
Speaker 1: water when the cops came in force while choking their
Speaker 1: access to supplies from the central government. Eventually they broke
Speaker 1: and left. That story more or less was repeated in
Speaker 1: hundreds of com unities across the country. Eventually the Feds
Speaker 1: gave up. There were attempts to impose demands on the government,
Speaker 1: and some of those demands even went through, but most
Speaker 1: of the old States power devolved into a loose association
Speaker 1: of local communities. What's going on in some of those
Speaker 1: communities sounds pretty scary. You've heard awful stories from other states,
Speaker 1: but where you live things are looking up. No one
Speaker 1: pays rent now in your neighborhood. People own the property
Speaker 1: they're willing to maintain. There are more houses than people still,
Speaker 1: as there have always been, so the biggest logistical hurdle
Speaker 1: has been organizing training and skill sharing across the city
Speaker 1: and nearby towns to ensure everything stays maintained. For the
Speaker 1: most part, it does. Power is almost as reliable as
Speaker 1: it used to be before things fell apart, and the
Speaker 1: hybrid solar wind set up you and your community put
Speaker 1: together works better than the old system did. By the end.
Speaker 1: You all have to be more careful about your power use.
Speaker 1: No leaving things plugged in, fewer personal appliances, and more
Speaker 1: shared ones. During the summer, you run your ace at
Speaker 1: the heat of the day and keep your homes properly
Speaker 1: sealed so it stays cool at night. The food situation
Speaker 1: got bad at a couple of points. During the worst days,
Speaker 1: you learned what it feels like to be truly hungry.
Speaker 1: But between the people who died and the people who fled,
Speaker 1: including most of the old money types, the overall caloric
Speaker 1: need in your area dropped substantially. You all got better
Speaker 1: at aquaponics, building greenhouses, learning how to cultivate and survive
Speaker 1: off plants native to your area. Now chickens and even
Speaker 1: a few cows graze free in every neighborhood. You and
Speaker 1: your next door neighbor keep goats and make cheese. You
Speaker 1: trade for eggs every couple of weeks. You no longer
Speaker 1: own a car, or rather, your car is no longer
Speaker 1: just your car. It was new enough that one of
Speaker 1: the mechanic collectives was able to modify it into a
Speaker 1: purely electric vehicle, and now it runs off the same
Speaker 1: solar grid as everything else. Every block has a couple
Speaker 1: of vehicles just like this in common. They're used for
Speaker 1: hauling produce, transporting small groups on occasional johnts across town,
Speaker 1: and even the odd joy ride. There's a sign up
Speaker 1: sheet for that. There are times when you miss the
Speaker 1: old days, but then you think about the people who died,
Speaker 1: and those last terrible convulsions of a broken system. You
Speaker 1: think about the friends you had who didn't make it
Speaker 1: through the months of hunger, or who died to gunfire
Speaker 1: by the police or from vigilantes. The new world you've
Speaker 1: helped to build isn't perfect, but you know it will
Speaker 1: never turn into the kind of monster that brought you here.
Speaker 1: You owe it to the dead to make sure of that.
Speaker 1: On Thursday June at approximately one am, the twelve story
Speaker 1: Champlain Tower South Complex in Miami, Florida collapsed. Dozens of
Speaker 1: people were buried in the rubble would ultimately die crushed
Speaker 1: to death by their own homes. It took weeks for
Speaker 1: rescuers to search through more than fourteen thousand pounds of rubble,
Speaker 1: and was just over a month before the final victim
Speaker 1: was definitively identified. The story of how and why the
Speaker 1: Champlain Tower collapsed and killed so many of its residents
Speaker 1: is a perfect example of how social democracy can fail
Speaker 1: when confronted with an existential threat. See In a condo
Speaker 1: complex like the Champlain Towers, all the residents own part
Speaker 1: of the building. They elect representatives a condo board to
Speaker 1: make decisions about things like when to make repairs and
Speaker 1: how much to spend on those repairs. In many ways,
Speaker 1: this is a better situation for the residents than say,
Speaker 1: living in an apartment complex. Your home is your own property.
Speaker 1: You don't live at the dictates of a landlord. But
Speaker 1: if one or a few of you recognize a major
Speaker 1: problem with the larger building, you have to get everyone
Speaker 1: else on board in order to fund repairs. The Champlain
Speaker 1: Towers Condo Board met repeatedly in the years that led
Speaker 1: up to the collapse. Many on the board pushed their
Speaker 1: fellow residents to pony up the cash hints of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars apiece to fix the very obvious damage and
Speaker 1: structural failures of their building. People don't like to spend
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money to fix problems they're pretty sure
Speaker 1: they can ignore, so the repair is kept getting put off.
Speaker 1: People would demand more inspections, which took more time and
Speaker 1: put off further votes on the millions and desperately needed repairs.
Speaker 1: With every year that went by, the damage deepened and
Speaker 1: the price of repair increased from nine million dollars to
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollars. For the people who accepted the severity
Speaker 1: of the problem, this delay was intolerable. In two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: the President of the condo board, and at Goldstein resigned
Speaker 1: in protest. In a letter to the condo Association, she wrote,
Speaker 1: we work for months to go in one direction, and
Speaker 1: at the very last minute objections are raised that should
Speaker 1: have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning. This
Speaker 1: pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining
Speaker 1: the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths.
Speaker 1: I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the
Speaker 1: functioning of our board and many before us, but describes
Speaker 1: a board that works very hard but cannot, for the
Speaker 1: reasons above, accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.
Speaker 1: Residents signed a petition against an assessment that pegged the
Speaker 1: price of repair between eighty thousand and two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per condo. People balked that the cost was akin
Speaker 1: to taking out a second mortgage. Dozens of them then
Speaker 1: died in their homes, lives over but bank accounts fuller.
Speaker 1: They died alongside residents who saw the problem and supported
Speaker 1: taking action, but failed to force the issue. Like the
Speaker 1: residents of the Champlain Towers, we are stuck in a
Speaker 1: problem of collective action. We cannot fix anything without getting
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of our fellow humans on
Speaker 1: board a solution. And if we fail, opting out of
Speaker 1: the system, moving to the woods or whatever won't stop
Speaker 1: us from burning from the same wildfires that scorched the
Speaker 1: homes of climate deniers. I tend to think that among
Speaker 1: the people who see the true scope of the problems
Speaker 1: facing us, you have two broad categories of response. They
Speaker 1: are the optimists, always at work trying to mitigate harm
Speaker 1: and wake people up, and there are the nihilists. The
Speaker 1: nihilists also break into two broad chunks. One chunk of
Speaker 1: us want to go hide in the woods or drop
Speaker 1: out in other ways. These are the dark mountain types.
Speaker 1: They accept the situation as fucked beyond unfucking and try
Speaker 1: to enjoy what time they have left. On the other
Speaker 1: side are people who decide the best thing they can
Speaker 1: do is light fires and break things. Over a billion
Speaker 1: sea creatures died on the Northwest coast when the Pacific
Speaker 1: heat dome hit in early summer one. New research indicates
Speaker 1: that in recent years, global insect populations have declined by
Speaker 1: as much as seventy five one point five degrees celsius
Speaker 1: of warming, which we absolutely will hit in the very
Speaker 1: near future, will kill an additional hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: people per year from air pollution alone. When you put
Speaker 1: the facts together and really force yourself to look at them,
Speaker 1: it is hard not to at least consider terrorism as
Speaker 1: a legitimate response to climate change. I would go so
Speaker 1: far as to say that on a moral level, violence
Speaker 1: against the individuals, institutions, and governments most responsible for our
Speaker 1: shared catastrophe is very much justified. Again, we're looking at
Speaker 1: roughly fourteen holocausts per year of additional dead people, and
Speaker 1: just from the air pollution caused by one and a
Speaker 1: half degree celsius of warming. There are people, individual human beings,
Speaker 1: who were warned about this decades ago and made the
Speaker 1: decision to devote great wealth and power towards ensuring nothing
Speaker 1: was done. There are people who recognize the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation and chose to deny it for the sake
Speaker 1: of their own political and media careers. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the Second World War, with tens of millions dead,
Speaker 1: the victorious Allies held a great trial at Nuremberg to
Speaker 1: punish those most responsible. You could probably get quite a
Speaker 1: few people on board the idea of holding a climate Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: and if that's justified, why isn't some sort of insurgency.
Speaker 1: Today we celebrate the French Resistance, the brave partisans from Czechoslovakia,
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia who struck hopeless blows against the Nazis
Speaker 1: despite the certainty of their own doom. It is probable
Speaker 1: that the people of the future will feel similarly about
Speaker 1: our modern day eco terrorists, many of whom are currently
Speaker 1: rotting away in federal penitentiaries. Most people outside of activist
Speaker 1: circles have not heard of the Green scare. It's a
Speaker 1: term that refers to a concerted campaign by federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the federal government, both Republicans and Democrats, to
Speaker 1: crack down severely on the activist wing of the environmental movement.
Speaker 1: The culprits were people who had burnt down construction sites
Speaker 1: for housing developments, destroyed SUVs and car dealership lots, spiked
Speaker 1: logging or mining equipment, and in one case, set fire
Speaker 1: to a McDonald's. Despite the fact that these activists did
Speaker 1: not kill human beings, they were treated by law enforcement
Speaker 1: as terrorists, a tactic that has become increasingly common in
Speaker 1: the years since. Earlier this year, Jessica Resinesek, a Catholic
Speaker 1: environmentalist activist, was sentenced to eight years in prison for
Speaker 1: damaging heavy construction equipment meant for use on the Dakota
Speaker 1: Access pipeline. Resinesek was prosecuted as a terrorist. The judge
Speaker 1: who sentenced her said that domestic terrorism charges were warranted
Speaker 1: because Jessica sought not only to stop the flow of
Speaker 1: oil through a pipeline, but to prevent government approval of
Speaker 1: pipelines like Dapple in the future. Now, it is possible
Speaker 1: that the damage Jessica helped do to that construction equipment
Speaker 1: de layed the construction of the pipeline that has certainly
Speaker 1: acclaimed the government made. The Dakota Access pipeline was completed, though,
Speaker 1: and has gone on to leak several times. In July
Speaker 1: of this year, a Department of Transportation regulator issued a
Speaker 1: notice against the company that runs the pipeline, alleging multiple
Speaker 1: serious safety violations. If Jessica really did delay construction, it's
Speaker 1: possible she reduced the harm caused by the pipeline, but
Speaker 1: if so, the overall impact was sadly minimal. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of gallons of oil still flow through the Dakota
Speaker 1: Access pipeline every day. The company behind it suffered a
Speaker 1: few million in damages, but Jessica rezinesex suffered much more.
Speaker 1: She will spend almost a decade behind bars, an other
Speaker 1: three years under probation, and she owes more than three
Speaker 1: million dollars in restitution, ensuring she will never be able
Speaker 1: to lead more than an economically marginal life in the future.
Speaker 1: That is, of course, the government's strategy here. When you
Speaker 1: come at people like the hammer of God, whenever they
Speaker 1: consider environmental direct action, you reduce the chances of something
Speaker 1: like that going viral. Think of the way direct action
Speaker 1: got briefly picked up by liberals nationwide during the George
Speaker 1: Floyd protests. For the first time, maybe ever, you had
Speaker 1: large numbers of normal people, the kind of folks the
Speaker 1: cops can't brutalize without creating an outcry either doing or
Speaker 1: physically supporting people doing damage to police infrastructure. This terrified
Speaker 1: the people in power, both liberal and conservative, and as
Speaker 1: a result, they've spent the last half year or so
Speaker 1: pushing a raft of new laws to criminalize protest. More
Speaker 1: than that, we've seen cities like New York, Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and Minneapolis deploy a wildly excessive police and sometimes military
Speaker 1: forces at the start of new protest movements. The goal
Speaker 1: is to scare away all but the most committed activists,
Speaker 1: to avoid letting any protest reach the critical mass of
Speaker 1: numbers that makes crackdowns dangerous. When considering this topic, I
Speaker 1: found a lot of wisdom in something J. R. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in the dark day
Speaker 1: days of nineteen forty three concerning the global plague of industrialization.
Speaker 1: There is only one bright spot, and that is the
Speaker 1: growing habit of disgruntled men dynamiting factories and power stations.
Speaker 1: I hope that encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit,
Speaker 1: but it won't do any good if it is not universal.
Speaker 1: And that is more or less the truth. Ecological direct
Speaker 1: action as an occasional fringe burst of fury does little
Speaker 1: besides make a statement. It may be many things, but
Speaker 1: it is not a path forward for us if we
Speaker 1: care about more than just fenting our rage against industrial society.
Speaker 1: I know that it can be extremely tempting to take
Speaker 1: the attitude that the situation is already fucked, we might
Speaker 1: as well just burn it all down, But that attitude
Speaker 1: isolates you, and while you are offering people nothing but
Speaker 1: a sense of doom, the fascist is promising them that
Speaker 1: with enough state violence, they and their families can at
Speaker 1: least be protected. Leviathan is coming to them and saying,
Speaker 1: hand over power to the state, and we can bring
Speaker 1: back some version of the good times. Every bad actor
Speaker 1: route there is coming with promises that they can improve
Speaker 1: people's material conditions. If you want a better future and
Speaker 1: not just revenge, we're going to have to be able
Speaker 1: to offer that too. There is a line from the
Speaker 1: book Climate Leviathan. I find it quite stirring. It's written
Speaker 1: in response to Roy Scranton, a climate change philosopher and
Speaker 1: author of the book We're Doomed Now What, commenting on
Speaker 1: his claim that nobody has real answers and the problem
Speaker 1: is us. Wainwright and Man say, quote, at a time
Speaker 1: when the left everywhere must reinvent means to live together,
Speaker 1: we cannot make acceptance of death our aspiration. They go
Speaker 1: on to note that the coming crisis is not unmanageable.
Speaker 1: It is already here, already being managed by liberal capitalism,
Speaker 1: if rather badly. Indeed, the very manageability of the crisis
Speaker 1: is part of the problem we face. To address it,
Speaker 1: we do not need to learn to die, but to live,
Speaker 1: think and rebel. I tend to agree with this assessment,
Speaker 1: and I think that face with the ultimate failure of
Speaker 1: older attempts at rebellion, we need to be open minded
Speaker 1: in our search for a new rebellion. We may find
Speaker 1: that in a society built to facilitate mass death, learning
Speaker 1: how to survive and keep others alive is the most
Speaker 1: effective method of revolt. Do I have suggestions for that
Speaker 1: beyond start cooperative kitchens with your neighbors and hand out
Speaker 1: supplies after disasters. Yes, But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: I want to make the case for why I think
Speaker 1: mutual aid is a viable path towards revolt. Earlier in
Speaker 1: the series, I laid out what I see is the
Speaker 1: most likely route towards radical change, a general strike with
Speaker 1: a list of demands supported by a massive national and
Speaker 1: ideally international mutual aid campaign. There is a tendency among
Speaker 1: some radicals on the left to right mutual aid off
Speaker 1: as charity dressed up to look like revolution, but the
Speaker 1: evidence suggests that the state and the far right consistently
Speaker 1: see effective mutual aid programs as what they are a
Speaker 1: serious threat. In January of nineteen sixty nine, the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party held their first free for children breakfast program
Speaker 1: at Saint Augustine Episcopal Church. They fed eleven children. They
Speaker 1: kept going though every day, and by the end of
Speaker 1: the week they had fed a hundred and thirty five kids.
Speaker 1: Billy X. Jennings was one of the Panthers there. At
Speaker 1: the very beginning, he recalled to the Guardian every office
Speaker 1: was required to send two people to learn how it ran,
Speaker 1: so you can open one in your area. In a
Speaker 1: matter of weeks, the breakfast program had expanded to twenty
Speaker 1: three locations around Oakland. By the end of nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the program had been incorporated into one of the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party's survival programs and regularly fed twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: in nineteen cities. On the surface, this was just cooking
Speaker 1: breakfast for poor kids. It certainly looked less radical than, say,
Speaker 1: the armed patrols the Black Panthers carried out to monitor
Speaker 1: police officers in black neighborhoods. But j Edgar Hoover, director
Speaker 1: of the FBI, considered the breakfast program an existential threat.
Speaker 1: The program represents the best and most influential activity going
Speaker 1: for the BBP, and as such is potentially the greatest
Speaker 1: threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the b PP
Speaker 1: and destroy what it stands for. Hoover recognized that the
Speaker 1: Panthers were engaged in the most crucial task for any
Speaker 1: insurgent movement, winning hearts and minds. The Maoist Marxist beliefs
Speaker 1: of many Panthers were a lot easier to spread to
Speaker 1: folks who saw them as the people feeding their damned children,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, for almost everyone,
Speaker 1: the basic needs of your loved ones trump specific ideology
Speaker 1: every day of the week. That's why the FBI targeted
Speaker 1: the free breakfast program specifically. At one rate in Chicago,
Speaker 1: agents smashed and urinated on all the food that had
Speaker 1: been collected for the next day's meal. In some cities,
Speaker 1: agents were sent door to door, visiting parents in their
Speaker 1: homes and claiming the Panthers were using breakfast clubs to
Speaker 1: teach children to be racist against white people and to
Speaker 1: urge them to riot in school. Historian Franzisca Meister says
Speaker 1: that in San Francisco, quote FBI agents actually brought one
Speaker 1: of the breakfast programs to a halt by talking the
Speaker 1: parents of the participating children into believing that the food
Speaker 1: the panthers were serving had been infected with funereal disease.
Speaker 1: Mutual aid is just as frightening to our enemies to
Speaker 1: day as it was to j Edgar Hoover. The Center
Speaker 1: for Security Policy is a far right, anti Muslim, anti
Speaker 1: communist think tank founded by former Reagan administration official Frank
Speaker 1: Gaffney JUNR. Earlier this year, they were leased a report
Speaker 1: analyzing the mutual aid efforts of a number of Texas
Speaker 1: based leftist organizations, including the Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club,
Speaker 1: and the d f W chapter of the Socialist Rifle
Speaker 1: Association from the Center for Security Policy. But mutual aid
Speaker 1: must not be understood as simply volunteerism, as its proponents
Speaker 1: explicitly note, its true purpose is to build up capability
Speaker 1: for dual power, a kind of shadow governance. As much
Speaker 1: as avowed anarchists might hate the term to be exercised
Speaker 1: by a network of a narco communist and autonomous groups.
Speaker 1: As a result, the likelihood that mutual aid will also
Speaker 1: involve the presence of community armed self defense groups like
Speaker 1: the John Brown gun Club and other ANTIFA groups is high.
Speaker 1: Such groups do not make a distinction between providing basic
Speaker 1: aids such as providing water, emergency meal and motel rentals,
Speaker 1: and direct clashes with law enforcement and others who they
Speaker 1: perceive is threatening their agenda. Local and state officials dealing
Speaker 1: with natural disasters should urge citizens to avoid contributing to
Speaker 1: unknown or suspect mutual aid organizations and encourage support instead
Speaker 1: to traditional, registered charities. They should likewise respond to an
Speaker 1: increase in protest and activism activity generated by autonomous groups
Speaker 1: seeking to use the disaster for propaganda purposes. Finally, they
Speaker 1: should develop a comprehensive understanding of the extremist groups reading
Speaker 1: in their areas of responsibility. The think tank is of
Speaker 1: course wrong with they attempt to cast the DFW, s
Speaker 1: r A, and John Brown Gun Club, neither of which
Speaker 1: have been tied to terrorism, as violent extremists, but they
Speaker 1: are broadly right about the purpose of mutual aid. One
Speaker 1: thing that sets it apart from simple charity is that
Speaker 1: the goal of mutual aid is to build power. Not
Speaker 1: hierarchical power, not a shadow governance put in the hands
Speaker 1: of a leader or a pollit bureau, but the power
Speaker 1: of a community to meet its own needs and thus
Speaker 1: resist domination. This is why mutual aid frightens those in power.
Speaker 1: It's why in a two thousand and six lecture at
Speaker 1: the Universities of Texas School of Law, the FBI Supervisory
Speaker 1: Senior Resident listed Food Not Bombs as an organization on
Speaker 1: the local terrorist watch list in Austin. In writing for
Speaker 1: Belling Cat, I analyzed the chat logs of Patriot Coalition,
Speaker 1: a group of several hundred armed far right extremists in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. They looked forward to the potential of
Speaker 1: fights with Antifa, but they were terrorified when during the wildfires,
Speaker 1: Portland's anti fascists put together and distributed thousands of pounds
Speaker 1: of aid supplies to people who'd been displaced. If we
Speaker 1: judge the efficacy of resistance tactics by who they scare,
Speaker 1: mutual aid ranks highly. Indeed, this is, of course not
Speaker 1: the whole answer to the question, how do we pull
Speaker 1: ourselves up out of the tail spin? I would be
Speaker 1: an arrogant man. Indeed, if I pretended to know that,
Speaker 1: or try to put myself forward as someone with the
Speaker 1: ultimate solution to our problems. How would a national network
Speaker 1: of mutual aid collectives organized to handle the manufacture and
Speaker 1: distribution of more complex necessities like insulin. How would a
Speaker 1: general strike movement reach some kind of agreement on an
Speaker 1: actual list of demands without becoming bogged down in debate
Speaker 1: and negotiations like a doomed condo board. How would we
Speaker 1: protect such a movement from the kind of threats that food, medicine,
Speaker 1: and good intentions can't defeat. Over the coming days and months,
Speaker 1: we're going to try and find the answers to all
Speaker 1: of those questions. Together. I'm going to bring on people
Speaker 1: much smarter than me, and we're going to hear their answers.
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring on activists and organizers from around
Speaker 1: the world who have answered versions of those questions themselves,
Speaker 1: and we'll see what we can learn from their struggles.
Speaker 1: Together with a lot of help from our friends, I'm
Speaker 1: hoping we can come to some conclusions. But before we
Speaker 1: conclude this first week of episodes, I want to take
Speaker 1: a look at the future we could have, or at
Speaker 1: least new elements of it. Because when you tell people
Speaker 1: the world needs to change very quickly or where fucked
Speaker 1: it kind of behooves you to provide them with a
Speaker 1: vision of the future you'd like to make instead. The
Speaker 1: people of the Navajo Nation have been enduring the consequences
Speaker 1: of capitalism for a very long time. Decades of US
Speaker 1: government neglect has led to a situation in which thirty
Speaker 1: to forty percent of their people lack access to clean water.
Speaker 1: Climate change, drought, and reduced rainfall have further strained their
Speaker 1: access to water, making farming and simple survival much more difficult.
Speaker 1: Cameron sou who lives in the Navajo Nation, told an
Speaker 1: interviewer some of them have to drive an hour and
Speaker 1: a half one way to town to get drink water.
Speaker 1: People say, well, water is not expensive. Sure, if you
Speaker 1: have access to the store it's around the corner. Yes,
Speaker 1: But for us, the reality is that just going to
Speaker 1: the town of Flagstaff, you're spending maybe fifty dollars on
Speaker 1: gas and other things. When you go by water in town,
Speaker 1: a case of bottled water is actually costing you around
Speaker 1: sixty eighty dollars. But while climate change has strained the
Speaker 1: Navajos access to water, it has provided them with additional
Speaker 1: reserves of another resource, sunlight. This has led many in
Speaker 1: the nation to embrace solar businesses. Especially after in two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen they voted against continuing to operate a coal
Speaker 1: power plant that employed some eight hundred people. At this moment,
Speaker 1: some Navajo entrepreneurs are working with a company called Source
Speaker 1: Water to install hundreds of hydro panels on isolated homes.
Speaker 1: The hydro panel is a solar powered water generator. It
Speaker 1: condenses clean water out of the atmosphere. A standard tupanel
Speaker 1: array can make four to ten liters of water per day,
Speaker 1: even in fairly dry conditions. This is a small solution
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, but it is a solution.
Speaker 1: At the moment. Fifteen Navajo families have access to regular,
Speaker 1: clean water because of these panels. Five hundred more homes
Speaker 1: should receive panels in the near future. The technology is
Speaker 1: still very new and as a result, not particularly cheap.
Speaker 1: This is not a Norman boer Log style mass solution
Speaker 1: to our problems, but it is a good development, and
Speaker 1: it provides us with some texture to how our futures
Speaker 1: might look once we've adapted to the inevitable new normal.
Speaker 1: Solar stills and atmospheric condensers glittering atop roofs and alongside
Speaker 1: gardens in all the places where useless lawns once sucked
Speaker 1: up water, and speaking of the Navajo, our hopeful future
Speaker 1: will have to involve a hell of a lot more
Speaker 1: input from indigenous peoples. This isn't woke politics. It's our
Speaker 1: best hope for reversing some of the damage already done
Speaker 1: to our ecosystems. In two thousand seven, the swin Amish tribe,
Speaker 1: located in Washington's northwest coast, published a climate proclamation that
Speaker 1: declared climate adaptation a top priority in securing their long
Speaker 1: term future. In two thousand ten, while every government on
Speaker 1: Earth dithered, they published an action plan that ensured their
Speaker 1: people's food security under climate change. They began to build
Speaker 1: rock walls to expand the intertitle zone that clams call
Speaker 1: home and boost shellfish numbers to compensate for die offs
Speaker 1: and over fishing. I want to quote from a rite
Speaker 1: up by Yale School of the Environment, quote to protect
Speaker 1: salmon runs. The tribe is working on the Skagit River
Speaker 1: to create better spawning beds and as planting trees to
Speaker 1: provide shade and reduced river temperatures. In addition, the tribe
Speaker 1: is fighting to block mining operations and the headwaters of
Speaker 1: the Skagit in British Columbia, which could impact waters downstream
Speaker 1: Across North America, other indigenous communities are stepping up to
Speaker 1: formulate and enact climate action plans to protect their way
Speaker 1: of life. In twenty nineteen, the Carrick Tribe of Northern
Speaker 1: California released its climate adaptation plan with a recommendation to
Speaker 1: return to prescribed burning, an old idea that might help
Speaker 1: to ease California's wildfire problems. The Tulalip Tribes Washington State
Speaker 1: are relocating nuisance beavers from urban areas back to traditional
Speaker 1: watersheds to help lower river temperatures and aid salmon populations.
Speaker 1: They are also redirecting agricultural runoff for electricity generation. The
Speaker 1: Jamestown Squalum Tribe and Washington is removing invasive butterfly bushes
Speaker 1: from the banks of the Dungeness River to help protect
Speaker 1: its salmon. The Confederated Salish and Kutanaie tribes of Montana
Speaker 1: are gathering and planting seedlings of the white bark pine
Speaker 1: that are more resistant to warming related diseases such as
Speaker 1: blister rust. Alaskan tribes are using microscopy to identify harmful
Speaker 1: algae blooms spurred by warming waters. The list goes on. Now,
Speaker 1: these are all examples of direct action, most of which
Speaker 1: not all of which won't land anyone in prison, and
Speaker 1: all of which will help mitigate the on Rushian catastrophe
Speaker 1: in real ways. Alone, indigenous peoples cannot pull us out
Speaker 1: of the mess we've gotten ourselves into. But if we
Speaker 1: can develop a political situation which gives them back control
Speaker 1: of their land, we can institute measures like this on
Speaker 1: a much wider scale, and it will benefit every single
Speaker 1: person on the planet. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Speaker 1: Changes recent reports have noted that they have high confidence
Speaker 1: that global adaptation efforts will benefit from including indigenous knowledge.
Speaker 1: Mead Crosby, a conservation biologist with a University of Washington, notes,
Speaker 1: one of the things that comes across really clearly is
Speaker 1: that indigenous people are by far the most effective stewards
Speaker 1: of biodiversity. They do the best job. One recent study
Speaker 1: showed that deforestation rates in the Amazon, the world's largest
Speaker 1: carbon sinc were two to three times lower in indigenous
Speaker 1: held lands. At present, indigenous people's hold or manage about
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent of the planet's land, but more than
Speaker 1: forty percent of its protected wildlife areas. Some eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the world's biodiversity exists under their stewardship. It is
Speaker 1: so very easy to lose hope when all you consume
Speaker 1: is a day the drumbeat of bad news, ocean die
Speaker 1: offs and wildfires, and crooked corporate deals to piss more
Speaker 1: poison into the atmosphere. Those stories are important, and you
Speaker 1: should be angry. But bad news is not the only news.
Speaker 1: Indigenous peoples have been fighting for generations in the face
Speaker 1: of genocide and relentless oppression to reverse the damage unchecked
Speaker 1: greed has done to our climate. What excuse do the
Speaker 1: rest of us have to give into doom when they
Speaker 1: could really fucking use our help. This may sound silly
Speaker 1: to you, there is a good chance you just had
Speaker 1: a visceral gut reaction to the idea of a hopeful,
Speaker 1: solar powered future driven by hard earned knowledge of indigenous custodians.
Speaker 1: This is because all of us, left and right, have
Speaker 1: spent most of the last twenty years ingesting a steady
Speaker 1: diet of apocalyptic fantasies. Even Star Trek, meant to be
Speaker 1: a utopian vision of possibility, tends to focus more on
Speaker 1: war and violence these days we're one to compare the
Speaker 1: science fiction of fifty years ago with today, they might
Speaker 1: think we'd lost our ability to hope. And so at
Speaker 1: the end of all this, I'd like to provide you,
Speaker 1: the ongoing listeners of it could happen here with a
Speaker 1: promise this is a show about hope as much as
Speaker 1: it is a show about collapse. I believe firmly that
Speaker 1: the ability to build a better world starts with being
Speaker 1: able to imagine one. So as we dive into the
Speaker 1: muck and grime of a system on the brink, let's
Speaker 1: accept that with hard work and above all else, love,
Speaker 1: it's still possible to turn this ship around.