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Speaker 1: Episode one. Welcome to the Crumbles. The screaming starts while

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Speaker 1: you're rolling a shopping cart down the aisle of your

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Speaker 1: local supermarket. You're trying to determine which canned meat looks

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Speaker 1: most appetizing. The price of fresh meat has been rising

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Speaker 1: steadily for the last few years, but two months ago

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Speaker 1: a ransomware attack shut down several massive meat processing plants

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Speaker 1: in Brazil. In Texas, the last four months of wildfires

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Speaker 1: also took their toll, burning thousands of acres of pasture

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Speaker 1: land and hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle. So

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Speaker 1: you were trying to decide between the spam and the

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Speaker 1: canned chicken. When you heard the commotion start a few

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Speaker 1: wiles down from your position, you knew immediately that it

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Speaker 1: had to be about coffee. In the last month, you've

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Speaker 1: seen two fist fights and a dozen screaming matches start

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Speaker 1: by the corner of the store that had once held

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Speaker 1: dozens of friendly, colorful bags of different coffee brands. The

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Speaker 1: last time it had looked that way was a long

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Speaker 1: time ago. Before the great plantations of Central America had

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Speaker 1: succumbed to blight, fire and drought, there was still coffee

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Speaker 1: capitalism always found a way, but it was harsher and

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Speaker 1: more bitter than it had been before, and it was

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Speaker 1: also much more expensive. Each customer was limited to one

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Speaker 1: half pound per week when it was in stock. You've

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Speaker 1: gotten lucky today and bought a bag, But evidently another

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Speaker 1: customer had been less fortunate. He seemed to be screaming

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Speaker 1: at a staff member, berating her for the problems caused

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Speaker 1: by a supply chain that had been breaking for the

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Speaker 1: last decade. You couldn't back it up with data, but

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Speaker 1: you feel like this sort of thing happens more and

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Speaker 1: more often every year, not just the supply chain disruptions,

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Speaker 1: but the outbursts of violence and rage. You don't even

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Speaker 1: stop to watch the videos on social media anymore. If

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Speaker 1: customers screaming and starting fights over the ground, beef that

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Speaker 1: wasn't there for their Fourth of July barbecue or whatever.

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Speaker 1: You can't tell me there's no coffee. I've seen a

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Speaker 1: dozen assholes with coffee in their carts. If they have

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Speaker 1: a right to it, I have a right do it.

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Speaker 1: You turn away from your cart and sneak a glance

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Speaker 1: down the other aisle in spite of yourself. The angry

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Speaker 1: man is heavy set around six feet tall and wearing

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Speaker 1: a T shirt with a faded, thin blue line flag

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Speaker 1: on its back. He's yelling at a reedy young man

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Speaker 1: wearing the uniform of a grocery store clerk. This poor

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Speaker 1: kid had probably been stalking apple sauce a few minutes earlier.

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Speaker 1: Now he was the target of this man's entitled rage.

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Speaker 1: I know you keep more in the back. I don't

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Speaker 1: give a shit about your excuses. Get it. As the

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Speaker 1: young clerk tries to explain again that there's no coffee

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Speaker 1: left in the store, a security guard rounds the corner

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Speaker 1: at the other end of the aisle. He yells hey

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Speaker 1: and puts a hand on the taser at his belt. Sir,

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Speaker 1: you need to leave. I'm not leaving without my coffee.

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Speaker 1: You realize with a start that a small crowd has

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Speaker 1: started to form behind you. You feel sudden anxiety at

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Speaker 1: the fact that you've left your cart undefended, and pull

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Speaker 1: away from the scene to put your hands on it.

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Speaker 1: You were lucky enough to get coffee and the last

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Speaker 1: carton of eggs, and a lot of customers in the

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Speaker 1: store would happily steal either. Mercifully, your card has survived

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Speaker 1: the altercation unmolested, You wheel it away from the ongoing

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Speaker 1: confrontation towards the self checkout. Maybe you can avoid the

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Speaker 1: worst of the line that way. The yelling stops, and

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Speaker 1: as you wheel your cart up to the checkout counter,

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Speaker 1: you see the angry man's storm out of the grocery store,

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Speaker 1: cursing under his breath. The security guard and the clerk

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Speaker 1: follow a few feet back and stop when he exits

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Speaker 1: the building. They both sigh with relief, and for a

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Speaker 1: few minutes, you lose yourself in the task of running

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Speaker 1: your products through the self checkout. As you prepare to pay,

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Speaker 1: you happen to look up just in time to see

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Speaker 1: the angry man re enter the store through the front door.

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Speaker 1: You see the gun in his hand an instant before

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Speaker 1: he raises it up just a few feet from the

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Speaker 1: clerk's face and fires. On June, Victor Lee Tucker Jr.

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Speaker 1: Thirty walked into the Big Bear Supermarket into Kalb County, Georgia.

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Speaker 1: A story employee, forty one year old Lakita Willis, noticed

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Speaker 1: he was not wearing a face mask and violation of

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Speaker 1: the store's policies. Lookita informed Victor that he would have

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Speaker 1: to wear a mask to continue shopping. Victor Tucker left

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Speaker 1: the store in a huff and returned with a gun,

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Speaker 1: which he used to murder Lakita Willis and wound the

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Speaker 1: store security guard, an off duty sheriff's deputy. Lakida and

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Speaker 1: that security guard are not the only victims of this

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Speaker 1: sort of violence. At a Flint, Michigan, dollar store, a

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Speaker 1: forty three year old father of eight and employee was

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Speaker 1: shot dead over a mask. The city of Stillwater, Oklahoma,

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Speaker 1: was forced to reverse a mask ordinance when it led

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Speaker 1: to a surge of violence against service industry employees. We

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Speaker 1: could go on, but we won't. This is it could

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Speaker 1: happen here a podcast about collapse dedicated to chronicling where

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Speaker 1: we all of us are headed in the very near

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Speaker 1: future if things continue on their present course. The first

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Speaker 1: season of this show focused on the possibility of a

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Speaker 1: second to American Civil War, and compared to that, perhaps

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Speaker 1: a shooting in a grocery store over coffee seems low stakes.

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Speaker 1: When Hollywood turns its eyes towards the subject of collapse,

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Speaker 1: they nearly always focus on the exciting parts. Buildings tumbling down,

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Speaker 1: mass violence in the streets, bandits and gunfights, and explosions,

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Speaker 1: and all the stuff that looks rad on a silver screen.

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Speaker 1: But that's not how collapse looks to most of the

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Speaker 1: people who are forced to endure it. Civilizations die by

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Speaker 1: paper cuts more often than by bullets. Everyone listening has

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Speaker 1: and the last year in Change watched the global society

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Speaker 1: we live in take a solid body blow in the

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Speaker 1: form of COVID nineteen. Many of the terrible things we

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Speaker 1: experienced that year. The supply line crunches, the culture war

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Speaker 1: over masks, the anti lockdown protests, the explosion of conspiracism

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Speaker 1: among millions of people stuck at home online. These things

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Speaker 1: are easy to attribute to the freak coming of a plague.

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Speaker 1: But COVID was not a speed bump. It was the

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Speaker 1: harbinger of a new era. It revealed how fra duel

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Speaker 1: much of the infrastructure of modern life truly was. I

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Speaker 1: wrote this episode while the city of Portland, Oregon, braced

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Speaker 1: itself for an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures nearing a

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees. Last year's fire season saw Portland

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Speaker 1: blanketed and a cloud of rancid yellow smog. More than

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Speaker 1: half a million people living in Oregon had to flee

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Speaker 1: their homes over ten percent of the state's population. Stores

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Speaker 1: ran out of respirators, fire axes, and emergency supplies. The

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Speaker 1: American West's heat wave is a product of the same

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Speaker 1: thing that may soon strip the coffee from your store shelves,

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Speaker 1: climate change. In April of one, US coffee stockpiles hit

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Speaker 1: a six year low, even with Brazil's record twenty twenty crop.

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Speaker 1: That country is now experiencing its most severe drought in decades,

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Speaker 1: which will sink production further. The global coffee deficit, the

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Speaker 1: amount of the Earth's coffee production falls below demand, is

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Speaker 1: expected to hit ten point seven million bags this year.

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Speaker 1: The previous project was a short fall of eight million.

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Speaker 1: In the vignette that opened this episode, I mentioned a

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Speaker 1: meat shortage caused in part by cyber attacks on meat

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Speaker 1: processing plants that actually happened. On May thirty first one, JBS,

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Speaker 1: the world's largest meat supplier, was hacked, shutting down much

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Speaker 1: of their operations on Australia, Canada, and the United States

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Speaker 1: from a rite up. In the Wall Street Journal quote

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Speaker 1: the culprit a ransomware attack didn't just hit its target,

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Speaker 1: it royaled the U s food industry from hog farms

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Speaker 1: in Iowa to small town processing plants in New York restaurants.

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Speaker 1: The hacks set off a domino effect that drove up

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Speaker 1: wholesale meat prizes, backed up animals in barns, and forced

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Speaker 1: food distributors to hurriedly search for new supplies. The attack

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Speaker 1: was the latest clash between cyber criminals and companies integral

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Speaker 1: to the functioning of the U. S economy. It was

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Speaker 1: another disruption to the U. S food industry after the

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic last year forced weeks of plants shutdowns,

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Speaker 1: and this year an economic rebound has stretched suppliers ability

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Speaker 1: to meet demand. Now I read that whole quote because

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Speaker 1: it illustrates the way all these problems build upon themselves.

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Speaker 1: Our supply chains are what mathematicians call a chaotic system.

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Speaker 1: If your knowledge of chaos theory comes primarily from Dr

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Speaker 1: E and Malcolm, the gist of it is this certain

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Speaker 1: complex systems can be impacted in huge, unexpected ways by

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Speaker 1: seemingly minor changes because so many things are interacting at

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Speaker 1: once that a change in one can set off a

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Speaker 1: chain of other changes. The most common framing of this

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Speaker 1: observation is the phrase a butterfly flapping its wings in China,

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Speaker 1: can cause a hurricane in New York, and variations of

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Speaker 1: the same. The world we live in and the infrastructure

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Speaker 1: that makes our daily lives possible, is such a system.

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Speaker 1: We've all seen ample evidence of that over the last year.

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Speaker 1: It really hit home from me earlier in twenty one

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Speaker 1: when a friend of mine who works as an ear

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Speaker 1: nurse at a local hospital sent a message to a

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Speaker 1: signal chat for my local friend group and warned, the

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Speaker 1: hospital is full. Don't get hurt. Initially, we all assumed

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Speaker 1: coronavirus was the cause, but no, he explained very few

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Speaker 1: of the cases that had filled his r and multiple

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Speaker 1: overflow rooms had anything to do with a viral infection. Instead,

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Speaker 1: the cause was a mix of things, people celebrating in

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Speaker 1: dumb ways as the state reopened, overdoses and car accidents,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. In normal times, these might not have drained

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Speaker 1: the system, but a huge number of doctors and nurses

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Speaker 1: quit during the worst of the plague. My friend calls

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Speaker 1: the period wherein now where aspects of modern society that

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Speaker 1: once seemed immutably solid start to fall apart all at

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Speaker 1: once as the crumbles. I find this a much more

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Speaker 1: useful framework for discussing the future than the dreams of

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Speaker 1: collapse shared by apocalypse obsessives. One April second study showed

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Speaker 1: that at least one in five healthcare workers have considered

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Speaker 1: quitting as result of the virus. More than thirty six

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Speaker 1: hundred u S healthcare workers died in COVID's first year.

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Speaker 1: These strains hit the medical system in the midst of

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Speaker 1: an ongoing drought and healthcare workers. By five the u

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Speaker 1: S is likely to face a shortage of more than

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Speaker 1: four hundred thousand home health aids, twenty nine thousand, four

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Speaker 1: hundred nurse practitioners, and between fifty four thousand, one hundred

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Speaker 1: and one hundred and thirty nine thousand physicians. We went

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Speaker 1: into the pandemic with a shortage of doctors and nurses.

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Speaker 1: At least some of the six hundred thousand American deaths

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Speaker 1: from the virus were certainly due to a lack of

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Speaker 1: qualified medical professionals, and now COVID has further exacerbated that shortage,

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Speaker 1: ensuring that the next great strain on our health care

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Speaker 1: system it's even harder, which will drain away more professionals,

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Speaker 1: which will make the next pandemic or natural disaster even

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Speaker 1: more devastating. This is the way the crumbles work. Problems

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Speaker 1: feed into calamities and turn into catastrophes. A healthy society

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Speaker 1: has the wherewithal to diagnose its problems and patch the

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Speaker 1: holes in its systems when they appear. We do not

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Speaker 1: live in a healthy society. The problems that will confront

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Speaker 1: us over the next fifty years rising sea levels, out

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Speaker 1: of control wildfires, crop failures, greater waves of ref you

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Speaker 1: geez are no less imposing than the COVID nineteen pandemic.

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Speaker 1: The virus could have been halted by something as simple

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Speaker 1: as getting everyone to wear masks and avoid crowded indoor

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Speaker 1: spaces for a few weeks. The United States could not

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Speaker 1: handle that. In April, I watched a crowd of anti

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Speaker 1: lockdown protesters surround a group of doctors and nurses in

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Speaker 1: the Oregon state capital Salem. The healthcare professionals carried signs

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Speaker 1: that said please, we just don't want you to get sick.

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Speaker 1: Protesters spat at them and screamed diaper mouth, mocking the

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Speaker 1: face masks they wore. Several of these protesters carried rifles.

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Speaker 1: As you probably guessed by now, this is not a

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Speaker 1: particularly optimistic podcast, but It's also not my intention to

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Speaker 1: infect you with a sense of doom. The worst problems

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Speaker 1: we face all have solutions, or at least strategies for

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Speaker 1: adaptation and harm reduction. To my mind, our most pressing

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Speaker 1: problems fall into three broad categories. One the environmental consequences

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Speaker 1: of modern civilization. This is going to be by far

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Speaker 1: the most unibomery point I make to day, but it

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Speaker 1: cannot be avoided. As I type this, fires are burning

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Speaker 1: throughout Oregon, even in the famously wet northern reaches of

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Speaker 1: the state. Towns in northern California with huge amounts of

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Speaker 1: rainfall thirty eight inches in some cases are so low

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Speaker 1: on water that citizens have been restricted to fifty five

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Speaker 1: gallons per day. Prior to twenty twenty one, Portland's record

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Speaker 1: high temperature was a hundred and seven degrees this June,

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Speaker 1: before the hottest part of the year. It beat that

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Speaker 1: record for three days straight. The year before twenty twenty,

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Speaker 1: Australia suffered a mega fire, the largest in its history,

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Speaker 1: which burnt more than twenty three hundred square miles. All

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Speaker 1: these fires are just preludes. The world is only getting

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Speaker 1: hotter from here on out. As I write this, the

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Speaker 1: United Nations Climate Science Advisers issued a draft report warning

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Speaker 1: that the worst projected impacts of climate change are hitting

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Speaker 1: much faster than previously expe did. We will probably reach

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Speaker 1: one point five degrees celsius of warming by twenty twenty six. Now,

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Speaker 1: for years, staying under one and a half degrees celsius

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Speaker 1: has been the goal. The target amount of warming. Mainstream

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Speaker 1: climate scientists and climate conscious politicians wanted to limit us too.

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Speaker 1: If we were to stop all other forms of emissions

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Speaker 1: right now, agriculture alone would carry us over the one

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Speaker 1: point five degree celsius line in just a handful of years.

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Speaker 1: Most institutional messaging posits one point five degrees of warming

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Speaker 1: as the acceptable, even relatively pleasant option. A UN Climate

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Speaker 1: Change tweet from earlier this year made that point in

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Speaker 1: image form, showing depictions of the Earth's atmosphere in green, yellow,

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Speaker 1: and red one point five degrees celsius, two degrees celsius,

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Speaker 1: and three degrees celsius plus with the text. The difference

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Speaker 1: between one point five two degrees and three to four

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Speaker 1: degrees average global warming can sound marginal. In fact, they

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Speaker 1: represent vastly different scenarios for the future of humanity. It

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Speaker 1: is true that two or three degrees of warming would

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Speaker 1: create a radically different world than less than one and

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Speaker 1: a half. But the data and our lived experience has

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Speaker 1: made it increasingly clear that one point five degrees, which

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Speaker 1: we will hit period in the near future, is a

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Speaker 1: calamity of almost incomprehensible dimensions. The phenomenon we're all staring

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Speaker 1: down the barrel is called climate tipping. One example of

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Speaker 1: this would be unprecedented heat waves causing mass wildfires, which

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Speaker 1: release more carbon into the atmosphere, which speeds up warming,

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Speaker 1: which accelerates the whole cycle onward and upward. Scientists in

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Speaker 1: Europe recently found that climate tipping is likely to cause

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Speaker 1: sudden shifts in the Gulf Stream, which will cause sudden

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Speaker 1: and massive temperature changes in normally tempered zones like western Europe.

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Speaker 1: The last devastating heat wave to hit France and twenty

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Speaker 1: nineteen killed at least fifteen dred people. This particular study

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Speaker 1: was the result of scientists from eighteen universities working in tandem.

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Speaker 1: Their spokesman, doctor Michael Gill, told fizz dot org quote

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Speaker 1: these results indicate that climate tipping is an imminent risk

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Speaker 1: in the Earth system. Even the safe operating space of

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Speaker 1: one point five or two degrees above present generally assumed

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Speaker 1: by the I p c C might not be all

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Speaker 1: that's safe. According to the precautionary principle, we must consider

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Speaker 1: abrupt and irreversible changes to the climate system as a

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Speaker 1: real risk, at least until we understand these phenomena better.

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Speaker 1: The central problem is that our previous models were far

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Speaker 1: too optimistic, largely in their assumptions about how gradual the

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Speaker 1: warming caused by carbon release would be. Another recent study,

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Speaker 1: published in Science Advances, analyzed twenty years of data to

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Speaker 1: study the transfer of carbon dioxide between land plants in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Its findings suggest that if present trends continue,

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Speaker 1: forests in twenty forty will absorb only half as much

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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide as they do now. So when we hit

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Speaker 1: one and a half degrees celsius, which we will permafrost

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Speaker 1: will start to thaw, releasing methane, which will warm the planet.

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Speaker 1: Forests will hold less carbon, more fires will burn, an

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Speaker 1: estimated hundred and fifty million people will die due to pollution.

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Speaker 1: These factors all make it likelier that we will hit

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Speaker 1: two degrees celsius of warming or even higher, at which

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Speaker 1: point we will experience catastrophic permafrost thawing alongside another two

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Speaker 1: hundred and thirty billion tons of carbon burping out of

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Speaker 1: the soil. The effects of this will be catastrophic for

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Speaker 1: all of us, but they will be particularly disastrous for

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Speaker 1: the traditional victims of capitalism Africans. I want to quote

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Speaker 1: from an article in The Independent by Ugandan writer Vanessa

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Speaker 1: Naicaate quote. This year, abnormally warm temperatures and heavy rains

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Speaker 1: have led to swarms of locusts destroying hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of hectares of crops in East Africa. Twelve million people

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Speaker 1: in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are in dire need of food.

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Speaker 1: Lake Chad has runk to a tenth of its original

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Speaker 1: size over the last fifty years. Half of Nigeria has

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Speaker 1: no access to water. It is hard to be encouraged

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Speaker 1: by stories of meatless burgers or moonshot technologies when communities

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Speaker 1: around you are battling an endless and worsening cycle of drought, famine, cyclones,

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Speaker 1: floods and destruction. This is my world at one point

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Speaker 1: to degrees celsius of warming. This is not progress. Vague

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Speaker 1: distant targets for twenty thirty or twenty fifty will not

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Speaker 1: keep the world well below two degrees celsius of warming,

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Speaker 1: as the Paris Agreement promised. I can tell you a

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Speaker 1: two degrees celsius hotter world is a death sentence for

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Speaker 1: countries like mine. Now, when you lay it all out

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Speaker 1: like that, it can be pretty overwhelming. For perspective's sake,

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Speaker 1: it is important to note that nearly all of the

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Speaker 1: carbon that's causing these problems was released into the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: within the span of a human lifetime. It is, in short,

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Speaker 1: the result of industrial society and its consequences. Right now,

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Speaker 1: there is more carbon in the atmosphere than at any

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Speaker 1: point in the last eight hundred thousand years, and perhaps

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Speaker 1: as far back as fifteen million years. But all this

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Speaker 1: carbon started flowing into the atmosphere just three hundred years

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Speaker 1: ago in the seventeen hundreds, when England started burning coal

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Speaker 1: and kicked off a global drive to industrialization. The vast

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Speaker 1: majority of the carbon in our atmosphere was pumped out

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Speaker 1: even more recently than that, as David Wallace Wells writes

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Speaker 1: in his book The Uninhabitable Earth quote, the majority of

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Speaker 1: the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. Since

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Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, the figure is above

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Speaker 1: eighty five percent. The story of the industrial world's Kama

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Speaker 1: Kaze mission is the story of a single lifetime the

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Speaker 1: planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe

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Speaker 1: in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and

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Speaker 1: a funeral. That fact has a tendency to inspire false

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Speaker 1: hope and some if the real problem only started a

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Speaker 1: lifetime ago, perhaps we can solve it in the space

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Speaker 1: of a lifetime. But reality does not work that way,

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Speaker 1: my friends. Once the carbon is out there, released from

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Speaker 1: trees burning in millions of acres of wildfires, from the

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Speaker 1: exhaust pipes of hundreds of millions of cars, or from

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Speaker 1: the smoke stacks of factories, it is there to stay.

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Speaker 1: If we transitioned entirely to nuclear power tomorrow, that carbon

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Speaker 1: would still be warming us for decades. And as the

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Speaker 1: globe warms up, it dries out the soil, which in

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Speaker 1: turn heats the world further, which pushes more people to

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Speaker 1: install a c which increases emissions, which dries out the soil,

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Speaker 1: which leads to wildfires, which releases more carbon, and on

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Speaker 1: and on and on and on it goes. And this

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Speaker 1: brings me to pressing problem number two, the authoritarian renaissance.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, the Syrian Civil War started, sending

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Speaker 1: millions of Syrian refugees fleeing into Europe. In two thousand

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Speaker 1: and fourteen and fifteen, nearly two million people filed for

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Speaker 1: asylum in the EU. Contrary to popular opinion, experts are

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Speaker 1: heavily divided on whether or not climate change played a

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Speaker 1: major role in sparking the conflict, but the refugee crisis

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Speaker 1: did play a major role in sparking something else, the

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Speaker 1: rise of Europe's authoritarian right wing. I'm going to quote

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Speaker 1: now from a Leibnitz Institute for Economic Research report by

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Speaker 1: Andreas Steinmeyer. Quote. In the Upper Austrian state elections in

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Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, the far right Freedom Party of Austria

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Speaker 1: doubled its vote share from two thousand nine and obtained

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Speaker 1: over thirty percent of the vote with a fierce anti

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Speaker 1: asylum campaign. Polls indicate that support for the Freedom Party

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Speaker 1: remained roughly at the level of two thousand nine state

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Speaker 1: elections until late two thousand fourteen, but subsequently increased drastically.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, When refugee numbers started to grow,

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Speaker 1: the salience of the issue in the media, measured as

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Speaker 1: the number of newspaper articles covering the refugee situation, increased

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Speaker 1: almost in proportion to the number of asylum applications. Upper

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Speaker 1: Austria was no exception in Europe. The Sweden Democrats, for instance,

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Speaker 1: obtained five point seven percent of votes in the two

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Speaker 1: thousand ten parliamentary elections in Sweden. After that, support increased

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Speaker 1: parallel to the rising number of refugees, which increased earlier

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Speaker 1: in Sweden than in other European countries. In parliamentary elections

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Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, the Sweden Democrats obtained twelve point

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Speaker 1: nine percent of the vault and pulled around twenty percent

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Speaker 1: in late two thousand fifteen at the peak of the

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Speaker 1: refugee inflow into Sweden. The alternative for Germany a f D,

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Speaker 1: was not founded until two thousand thirteen. Poles show was

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Speaker 1: sharp increase in support of up to fifteen percent along

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Speaker 1: with growing refugee numbers. Now During the two thousand and

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Speaker 1: sixteen election Canada, Donald Trump in the United States constantly

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Speaker 1: harped on the danger of refugees from Syria, but also

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Speaker 1: from places in Latin America like Guatemala, whose economies had

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Speaker 1: been devastated by climate change. These climate refugees and the

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Speaker 1: false perception that they were causing crime and of violence,

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Speaker 1: fed into a rising American fascist movement that is still

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Speaker 1: with us today. Authoritarians have always used fear of the other,

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Speaker 1: and specifically fear of foreign asylum seekers, to stoke division.

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Speaker 1: That part of their job is only going to get easier.

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Speaker 1: The UN projects that by twenty fifty an additional two

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Speaker 1: hundred million people will be climate refugees. This was the

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Speaker 1: entire population of planet Earth during the high of the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire, clawing desperately at the iron gates of any

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Speaker 1: country better off than where they've left. Climate change doesn't

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Speaker 1: just provide opportunities for authoritarian politicians. It tends to make

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Speaker 1: society itself more authoritarian by increasing military conflicts and domestic crime.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and fourteen, the U. S Department of

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Speaker 1: Defense authored an annual Defense Review that noted, quote the

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Speaker 1: nature in pace have observed climate changes and an emerging

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Speaker 1: scientific consensus on their projected consequences pose severe risks for

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Speaker 1: our national security. The report goes on to warn about

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Speaker 1: conflicts over resources, particularly water in places like Lake Mead,

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00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:41,760
Speaker 1: Nevada and the Colorado River system, where conflicts over scarce

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Speaker 1: water could spiral into violence. As I write this, a

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Speaker 1: group of militiamen under the banner of Aim and Bundy

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Speaker 1: have set up shop by the Klamath River in central Oregon,

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Speaker 1: claiming to represent the interests of farmers being denied their

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Speaker 1: normal allotment of water due to severe drought conditions. Bundy

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Speaker 1: at All have threatened to break onto federal land are

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Speaker 1: armed and released the water. As that Department of Defense

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Speaker 1: reports so aptly noted, these effects are threat multipliers that

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Speaker 1: will aggravate stressors abroad, such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability,

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Speaker 1: and social tensions, conditions that can enable terrorist activity and

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Speaker 1: other forms of violence. We've already seen how both main

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Speaker 1: parties in the United States react to violence and the

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Speaker 1: perception of violence. President Trump responded to a popular uprising

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Speaker 1: against police brutality with a wave of police brutality. He

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Speaker 1: was almost universally supported in his re election bid by

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Speaker 1: police unions. On January six, at least thirty one police

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Speaker 1: officers took part in the Capital insurrection aimed at keeping

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Speaker 1: Trump and power Despite this fact, President Biden suggested in

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Speaker 1: June that communities should spend much of the three hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars in COVID nineteen aid dispensed in

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Speaker 1: May to hire more police officers. A few days earlier,

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Speaker 1: his administration released its plan for dealing with domestic terrorism,

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Speaker 1: inspired by the violence of the Capital Riot. This included

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Speaker 1: an additional hundred million in funding for local law enforcement.

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Speaker 1: All this is to say that the state only has

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Speaker 1: one solution to deal with the problems we will increasingly face,

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Speaker 1: and that solution is to put more men with guns

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Speaker 1: in our communities. Platoons of goons armed with grenade launchers

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Speaker 1: and armored vehicles may in fact provide some protection to

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Speaker 1: the people at the very top of our society, but

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Speaker 1: they will not protect you. That's not just my own

433
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: personal bias speaking. And there were more than eight hundred

434
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: thousand sworn law enforcement officers serving nationwide, the highest number ever.

435
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: That same year, homicides raised nearly among the nation's ten

436
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 1: largest police departments. The average clearance rate in those departments, however,

437
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: dropped by seven percent to about This means a few things.

438
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: Murders rose in the United States, with more cops than

439
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: ever before. Those cops solved fewer of the murders committed

440
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: than they had in prior years. President Biden's one budget

441
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:17,439
Speaker 1: included twenty two billion dollars to fight global climate change.

442
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: His two budget calls for thirty six billion dollars in funding.

443
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: That is a substantial rate of increase, but even thirty

444
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 1: six billion dollars is only about one sixth of what

445
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:31,640
Speaker 1: the United States spends on policing and incarcerating its citizens

446
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 1: each year. The cost to stop global warming at less

447
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: than two degrees celsius is a contentious issue, but one

448
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: estimate places it at as much as fifty trillion dollars.

449
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: Whether you buy that estimate or not, by any sober analysis,

450
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,199
Speaker 1: thirty six billion is a drop in the bucket compared

451
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 1: to what will be necessary to avoid the worst case scenario.

452
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: And the worst case scenario is coming. If we want

453
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: to have any chance at avoiding it, we're going to

454
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:01,680
Speaker 1: have to organize. And that brings me to pressing problem

455
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:08,200
Speaker 1: number three, weaponized unreality. Starting in two thousand sixteen, Russian

456
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: disinformation became a major media buzzword. There were stories about

457
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: that nation's Internet Research Agency, its armies of botanuts and

458
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: trolls aimed as stoking division and pushing certain narratives into

459
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: the American consciousness. Russia absolutely has an advanced disinformation operation,

460
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 1: but the media made a mistake focusing on them alone.

461
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:32,639
Speaker 1: The reality of the situation is that nations, corporations, political parties,

462
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: extremist movements, and every other organization with its shipped together

463
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 1: does the same thing the Russians do. The name of

464
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: the game is to take lies, propaganda, incendiary claims in

465
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 1: rage bait and use them to stoke the ire of

466
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: millions of people. I can't claim credit for creating the

467
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 1: term weaponized unreality. That one goes to my friend Carl,

468
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: but the term does a brilliant job of describing the problem.

469
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 1: If the coronavirus has taught us one thing, it's that

470
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: the right lies can be deadlier than a thousand or

471
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand guns when properly deployed. Weaponized on reality

472
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: is part of why our present problems with climate change

473
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: have gotten so very dire. Starting in the nineteen seventies,

474
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: Exxonmobile and later a host of other oil and gas companies,

475
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: borrowed a public relations strategy initially invented to serve the

476
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:25,360
Speaker 1: needs of big tobacco. The Union of Concerned Scientists describes

477
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: the strategy as manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even

478
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: the most indisputable scientific evidence. Adopted a strategy of information

479
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further

480
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: its desired message and therefore confuse the public. Promoted scientific

481
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 1: spokespeople who misrepresent peer reviewed scientific findings or cherry pick facts,

482
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on

483
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: global warming with misleading charges about the need for sound science.

484
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: That all sounds pretty bleakly familiar to us now after

485
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: a year of dueling coronavirus conspiracy theories matas de sized

486
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: que and on bullshit and stop the steel style election disinfo.

487
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: Weaponized un reality is often used by politicians and grifters

488
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: people like Alex Jones or Andy No, to make quick

489
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: profits or energize their base during an election. Such individuals

490
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 1: seldom consider or fully anticipate the long term impact of

491
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: building out an alternate counter factual reality. Think of former

492
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 1: President Trump begging his supporters to get vaccinated and trying

493
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: to take credit for the creation of a vaccine that

494
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,400
Speaker 1: forty one percent of his followers think is some sort

495
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: of Chinese Bill gatesy and genocide conspiracy. Or think of

496
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: Mike Pence, whose career is built on decades of right

497
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: wing lies about abortion, climate change, terrorism in the economy.

498
00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 1: Now think of Mike huddled in fear behind his bodyguards

499
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: as a mob of fanatics burst through the halls of

500
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: power with murder on their minds. The problem with weaponized

501
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: unreality is that to really make it work, you have

502
00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: to craft an entire alternate reality for the true believers,

503
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: one with its own meat ea in its own self

504
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: reinforcing cycle of disinformation. This is extremely profitable and creates

505
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: a durable base of support for the precise reason it

506
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: is tremendously dangerous. Two entirely separate realities cannot coexist in

507
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: the same political system. The unreality that the right wing

508
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: has spent decades building is centered around the contention that

509
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: its enemies, Democrats and the left, are literal servants of Satan,

510
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 1: hell bent on building a system that will exterminate real

511
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: Americans and moss. At present, twenty three percent of Republicans

512
00:29:32,600 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: believe Satanic pedophiles control the US government, the media, and

513
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: the financial sector. Roughly fifteen to twenty percent of Americans

514
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: nationwide share the same belief. Nearly thirty percent of Republicans

515
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: believe that patriots, which their unreality has defined as white conservatives,

516
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 1: may need to resort to violence in order to restore

517
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: their version of American values. The good news is that

518
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: a clear majority of Americans do not abide by those views,

519
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: but they don't need two. In nineteen thirty two, the

520
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: National Socialist German Workers Party had their best performance in

521
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: a legitimate election and got just thirty seven point three

522
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: percent of the vote. A minority party can manage tremendous

523
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: bloodshed if they are sufficiently unified, their opponents are sufficiently disorganized,

524
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: and the political system is biased in their favor. All

525
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: of those things were true of the Nazis in the

526
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, and all of those things are more or

527
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: less true of our situation now. The next three years

528
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: in change will bring continued climate related collapse. This added

529
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: strain will reveal more and more of the holes in

530
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: our infrastructure. As I type this, a massive condo complex

531
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: in Florida has just collapsed into a sinkhole, killing dozens,

532
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:43,960
Speaker 1: and the state of Oregon has issued a warning that

533
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: a chlorine shortage threatens the state's ability to properly sanitize

534
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: drinking water. A new study has revealed that despite six

535
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: months of counter disinformation efforts, one third of Americans still

536
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: believe the election was stolen by the Democrats, the same

537
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: percentage you believed that in No Wimber. On June one,

538
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: American news network host Pearson Sharp got in front of

539
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: his viewers and said this about the election he believed

540
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 1: had been stolen. How many people were involved in these

541
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 1: efforts to undermine the election? Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.

542
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: How many people does it take to carry out a

543
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: coup against the presidency? And when all the dust settles

544
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: from the audit Arizona and the potential audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada,

545
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin, what happens to all these people who were

546
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: responsible for overthrowing the election? What are the consequences for

547
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 1: traitors who meddled with our sacred democratic process and tried

548
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 1: to steal power by taking away the voices of the

549
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: American people? What happens to them in their sundry internet?

550
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: Heidi holes Q and UN believes took this broadcast as

551
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: hard evidence that their long awaited storm was coming and

552
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: the mass execution of democratic officials and journalists was about

553
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: to begin. I don't think I have to spend much

554
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: time here saying how dangerous this is. What I do

555
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: want to do is point out that Pearson Sharp was

556
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: also a major personality on Sputnik, a Russian propaganda news outlet.

557
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: I don't bring this up to further any sort of

558
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: Russia Gate fervor, because I don't think that's one of

559
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 1: our main problems. But the kind of content Pierson made

560
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: for Sputnik is important. His job was to repeatedly slander

561
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: the White Helmets, an organization of Syrian volunteers who helped

562
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: provide medical aid and the immediate aftermath of Syrian regime bombings.

563
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: A complex and sophisticated propaganda campaign has turned them into

564
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: boogieman for a sizeable chunk of the international left. There

565
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: are conspiracy theories that the White Helmets actually staged and

566
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 1: faked all of the chemical weapons attacks and bombings, but

567
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: shar Al Assad's air force did against civilian targets. On

568
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,959
Speaker 1: June eleventh, two thousand eighteen, Pearson took a state sponsor

569
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: trip into Syria, escorted by the soldiers of a dictator

570
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: who has killed half a million of his citizens. He

571
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: posted this, everyone, literally everyone you made in Syria will

572
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: tell you how grateful they are to be living under

573
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 1: government held areas and that the Syrian army freed them

574
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: from torture under Western backed rebels. Only the terrorists complain

575
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: about being liberated. That last line, only the terrorists complain

576
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:28,320
Speaker 1: about being liberated strikes hard within my soul. The point

577
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: of this digression is again not about Russian propaganda, but

578
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: about the kind of man Pearson sharp is. He has

579
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: made for years a career out of denying the violence

580
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: of brutal dictators and justifying massacres with propaganda, and in

581
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: one he's decided that the trumpe Ist wing of the

582
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: Republican Party is the place to be. He is not alone.

583
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: The same night that one American news broadcast dropped, Tucker

584
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: Carlson got on his show and in front of a

585
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: graphic of a Democratic Party donkey with the words anti

586
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: white Mania written in front of it, he said this,

587
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: The question that we should be meditating on day in

588
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: and day out is how do we get out of

589
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,279
Speaker 1: this vortex, this cycle Before it's too late. How do

590
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 1: we save this country before we become Rwanda. It's interesting

591
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 1: that Tucker brings up Rwanda here, Interesting and telling because

592
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: the genocide that cost a million people their lives in

593
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: that country was driven in part by a talk radio

594
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 1: station called r t l M. Scholars describe r t

595
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: l M as a de facto wing of the extremest

596
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: Hutu government that started the massacre. Roughly ten percent of

597
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 1: the violence that occurred has been tied directly to specific

598
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 1: r t l M broadcasts. Now, look, I promised this

599
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a Dumer podcast, and I mean

600
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: to keep to that. While the three factors I mentioned

601
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: are churning us all in the direction of hell, they're

602
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 1: not the only factors to consider. We, the people who

603
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 1: do not want to live in a dictatorship or see

604
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: the mass murder of our fellow citizens, are in the majority,

605
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: and we have tools with which to fight against our enemies.

606
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 1: The last year and struggles of the pandemic have brought

607
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: with them a tremendous rise in the number of organizations

608
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: practicing mutual aid. This term has its origins and anarchist

609
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: political theory, and is very different from charity. In charity

610
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: and individual or organization with plenty gives aid to people

611
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: who cannot help themselves. Mutual aid is when communities rise

612
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: up to serve their own needs without waiting for their

613
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: government or some in GEO to do it for them.

614
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: The goal of mutual aid is not just to handle

615
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: immediate needs, but to build dual power. When you build

616
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: dual power, you are essentially creating organizations that fulfill the

617
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: useful roles formerly filled or poorly filled by the state.

618
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: Doing this reduces or eliminates people's reliance on the state,

619
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: and as a result, vastly increases the public's bargaining position.

620
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: If you want to force massive sweeping changes on the

621
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 1: system will replace it entirely, you're going to need to

622
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 1: build dual power first. Mutual aid is also just fucking inspiring,

623
00:35:58,120 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: And when you spend as much time staring into the

624
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 1: this as we all do these days, you need inspiration.

625
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: While researching this article, I came across a wonderful piece

626
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: and The Guardian about the rise of mutual aid, and

627
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:11,840
Speaker 1: I want a quote from it here. During the final

628
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: thousand days of the Second World War, shipyard workers in

629
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:17,840
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay area produced one thousand warships a

630
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: warship a day. Something like that epic urgent industry seems

631
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 1: to be at work now, but outside the federal government

632
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: or any government. In early April, the Bay Area branch

633
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,919
Speaker 1: of the news site Hoodline reported on Thursday morning, two

634
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,880
Speaker 1: tons of rolled sheet plastic arrived at a warehouse in Alameda.

635
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: By the end of the weekend, it had become sixteen

636
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:39,080
Speaker 1: thousand plastic face shields. That remarkable turnaround is entirely owed

637
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: to self organization by Bay Area makers who have transformed

638
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: maker spaces, universities, fabrication shops, and almost anyone with their

639
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: own sewing machines, C and C machine, or three D

640
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,240
Speaker 1: printer into an ad hoc core of medical supply manufacturers.

641
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: The report called the self organized effort involving industrial design

642
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: students and teachers a distributed factory. Let's do send. Realized

643
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: efforts organized without top down authority are exemplary mutual aid.

644
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 1: In April fourteenth, nurses and seven doctors from the same

645
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 1: institutions set off for a one month assignment on the

646
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: Navajo Reservation, whose residents are facing high levels of infection.

647
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: They were coordinated by the existing ucsf Heal Initiative, which

648
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: works with impoverished and vulnerable communities from Haiti to Nepal.

649
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,319
Speaker 1: Its mission statement is we seek to embody solidarity and

650
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: contribute to the movement for global health equity led by

651
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 1: communities themselves. This initiative, based on the principle of solidarity

652
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 1: not charity, has been working with communities under stress for

653
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: six years and will still be there when the immediate

654
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: crisis is over. When faced with the looming specter of

655
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:45,279
Speaker 1: fascism and gangs of heavily armed racists spent on massacrring

656
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 1: the other, mutual aid may seem like a poor defense

657
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,240
Speaker 1: at best. This is not the case. It is, in fact,

658
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,600
Speaker 1: the only thing that can pull us back from the brink.

659
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: Weaponized on reality works because people are angry, confused, and frightened.

660
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: Now of the thirty of Republicans willing to kill to

661
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:05,560
Speaker 1: save their concept of America are bigots, and the things

662
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 1: that confuse and anger them are equality in progress. But

663
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 1: those people are only dangerous at scale when there is

664
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 1: a much larger number of less radical people scared and

665
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: confused enough to buy into their lies. The one thing

666
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: that can cut through lies, that can build the empathy

667
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: necessary to forestall terror is community. When you help people

668
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: with their material needs and provide them with a community

669
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: that makes them feel valued and cared for, they are

670
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 1: unlikely to support your murder. Effective mutual aid also undercuts

671
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,720
Speaker 1: the ability of authoritarians to profit as much from climate change.

672
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: When the system falls apart, authoritarians always promised to fix it.

673
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: The best way to put lie to that promise is

674
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: to build a better solution to the problems, one that

675
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 1: works in real time periods of collapse, and we are

676
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: right now all living through collapse, our times in which

677
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:58,080
Speaker 1: people are more open to new modes of living, new

678
00:38:58,160 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 1: visions of how the world could exist. That's why these

679
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 1: times are so dangerous, but it's also why they hold

680
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:06,840
Speaker 1: so much promise. Right now, we face the risk of

681
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: falling together into the darkness, but we also have the

682
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 1: opportunity to build a new world from the ashes of

683
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 1: the old. Either way, we'll be doing it together. For

684
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: my part, I know which option I prefer. What about you,