Speaker 1: Episode one. Welcome to the Crumbles. The screaming starts while
Speaker 1: you're rolling a shopping cart down the aisle of your
Speaker 1: local supermarket. You're trying to determine which canned meat looks
Speaker 1: most appetizing. The price of fresh meat has been rising
Speaker 1: steadily for the last few years, but two months ago
Speaker 1: a ransomware attack shut down several massive meat processing plants
Speaker 1: in Brazil. In Texas, the last four months of wildfires
Speaker 1: also took their toll, burning thousands of acres of pasture
Speaker 1: land and hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle. So
Speaker 1: you were trying to decide between the spam and the
Speaker 1: canned chicken. When you heard the commotion start a few
Speaker 1: wiles down from your position, you knew immediately that it
Speaker 1: had to be about coffee. In the last month, you've
Speaker 1: seen two fist fights and a dozen screaming matches start
Speaker 1: by the corner of the store that had once held
Speaker 1: dozens of friendly, colorful bags of different coffee brands. The
Speaker 1: last time it had looked that way was a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Before the great plantations of Central America had
Speaker 1: succumbed to blight, fire and drought, there was still coffee
Speaker 1: capitalism always found a way, but it was harsher and
Speaker 1: more bitter than it had been before, and it was
Speaker 1: also much more expensive. Each customer was limited to one
Speaker 1: half pound per week when it was in stock. You've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky today and bought a bag, But evidently another
Speaker 1: customer had been less fortunate. He seemed to be screaming
Speaker 1: at a staff member, berating her for the problems caused
Speaker 1: by a supply chain that had been breaking for the
Speaker 1: last decade. You couldn't back it up with data, but
Speaker 1: you feel like this sort of thing happens more and
Speaker 1: more often every year, not just the supply chain disruptions,
Speaker 1: but the outbursts of violence and rage. You don't even
Speaker 1: stop to watch the videos on social media anymore. If
Speaker 1: customers screaming and starting fights over the ground, beef that
Speaker 1: wasn't there for their Fourth of July barbecue or whatever.
Speaker 1: You can't tell me there's no coffee. I've seen a
Speaker 1: dozen assholes with coffee in their carts. If they have
Speaker 1: a right to it, I have a right do it.
Speaker 1: You turn away from your cart and sneak a glance
Speaker 1: down the other aisle in spite of yourself. The angry
Speaker 1: man is heavy set around six feet tall and wearing
Speaker 1: a T shirt with a faded, thin blue line flag
Speaker 1: on its back. He's yelling at a reedy young man
Speaker 1: wearing the uniform of a grocery store clerk. This poor
Speaker 1: kid had probably been stalking apple sauce a few minutes earlier.
Speaker 1: Now he was the target of this man's entitled rage.
Speaker 1: I know you keep more in the back. I don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about your excuses. Get it. As the
Speaker 1: young clerk tries to explain again that there's no coffee
Speaker 1: left in the store, a security guard rounds the corner
Speaker 1: at the other end of the aisle. He yells hey
Speaker 1: and puts a hand on the taser at his belt. Sir,
Speaker 1: you need to leave. I'm not leaving without my coffee.
Speaker 1: You realize with a start that a small crowd has
Speaker 1: started to form behind you. You feel sudden anxiety at
Speaker 1: the fact that you've left your cart undefended, and pull
Speaker 1: away from the scene to put your hands on it.
Speaker 1: You were lucky enough to get coffee and the last
Speaker 1: carton of eggs, and a lot of customers in the
Speaker 1: store would happily steal either. Mercifully, your card has survived
Speaker 1: the altercation unmolested, You wheel it away from the ongoing
Speaker 1: confrontation towards the self checkout. Maybe you can avoid the
Speaker 1: worst of the line that way. The yelling stops, and
Speaker 1: as you wheel your cart up to the checkout counter,
Speaker 1: you see the angry man's storm out of the grocery store,
Speaker 1: cursing under his breath. The security guard and the clerk
Speaker 1: follow a few feet back and stop when he exits
Speaker 1: the building. They both sigh with relief, and for a
Speaker 1: few minutes, you lose yourself in the task of running
Speaker 1: your products through the self checkout. As you prepare to pay,
Speaker 1: you happen to look up just in time to see
Speaker 1: the angry man re enter the store through the front door.
Speaker 1: You see the gun in his hand an instant before
Speaker 1: he raises it up just a few feet from the
Speaker 1: clerk's face and fires. On June, Victor Lee Tucker Jr.
Speaker 1: Thirty walked into the Big Bear Supermarket into Kalb County, Georgia.
Speaker 1: A story employee, forty one year old Lakita Willis, noticed
Speaker 1: he was not wearing a face mask and violation of
Speaker 1: the store's policies. Lookita informed Victor that he would have
Speaker 1: to wear a mask to continue shopping. Victor Tucker left
Speaker 1: the store in a huff and returned with a gun,
Speaker 1: which he used to murder Lakita Willis and wound the
Speaker 1: store security guard, an off duty sheriff's deputy. Lakida and
Speaker 1: that security guard are not the only victims of this
Speaker 1: sort of violence. At a Flint, Michigan, dollar store, a
Speaker 1: forty three year old father of eight and employee was
Speaker 1: shot dead over a mask. The city of Stillwater, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: was forced to reverse a mask ordinance when it led
Speaker 1: to a surge of violence against service industry employees. We
Speaker 1: could go on, but we won't. This is it could
Speaker 1: happen here a podcast about collapse dedicated to chronicling where
Speaker 1: we all of us are headed in the very near
Speaker 1: future if things continue on their present course. The first
Speaker 1: season of this show focused on the possibility of a
Speaker 1: second to American Civil War, and compared to that, perhaps
Speaker 1: a shooting in a grocery store over coffee seems low stakes.
Speaker 1: When Hollywood turns its eyes towards the subject of collapse,
Speaker 1: they nearly always focus on the exciting parts. Buildings tumbling down,
Speaker 1: mass violence in the streets, bandits and gunfights, and explosions,
Speaker 1: and all the stuff that looks rad on a silver screen.
Speaker 1: But that's not how collapse looks to most of the
Speaker 1: people who are forced to endure it. Civilizations die by
Speaker 1: paper cuts more often than by bullets. Everyone listening has
Speaker 1: and the last year in Change watched the global society
Speaker 1: we live in take a solid body blow in the
Speaker 1: form of COVID nineteen. Many of the terrible things we
Speaker 1: experienced that year. The supply line crunches, the culture war
Speaker 1: over masks, the anti lockdown protests, the explosion of conspiracism
Speaker 1: among millions of people stuck at home online. These things
Speaker 1: are easy to attribute to the freak coming of a plague.
Speaker 1: But COVID was not a speed bump. It was the
Speaker 1: harbinger of a new era. It revealed how fra duel
Speaker 1: much of the infrastructure of modern life truly was. I
Speaker 1: wrote this episode while the city of Portland, Oregon, braced
Speaker 1: itself for an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures nearing a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees. Last year's fire season saw Portland
Speaker 1: blanketed and a cloud of rancid yellow smog. More than
Speaker 1: half a million people living in Oregon had to flee
Speaker 1: their homes over ten percent of the state's population. Stores
Speaker 1: ran out of respirators, fire axes, and emergency supplies. The
Speaker 1: American West's heat wave is a product of the same
Speaker 1: thing that may soon strip the coffee from your store shelves,
Speaker 1: climate change. In April of one, US coffee stockpiles hit
Speaker 1: a six year low, even with Brazil's record twenty twenty crop.
Speaker 1: That country is now experiencing its most severe drought in decades,
Speaker 1: which will sink production further. The global coffee deficit, the
Speaker 1: amount of the Earth's coffee production falls below demand, is
Speaker 1: expected to hit ten point seven million bags this year.
Speaker 1: The previous project was a short fall of eight million.
Speaker 1: In the vignette that opened this episode, I mentioned a
Speaker 1: meat shortage caused in part by cyber attacks on meat
Speaker 1: processing plants that actually happened. On May thirty first one, JBS,
Speaker 1: the world's largest meat supplier, was hacked, shutting down much
Speaker 1: of their operations on Australia, Canada, and the United States
Speaker 1: from a rite up. In the Wall Street Journal quote
Speaker 1: the culprit a ransomware attack didn't just hit its target,
Speaker 1: it royaled the U s food industry from hog farms
Speaker 1: in Iowa to small town processing plants in New York restaurants.
Speaker 1: The hacks set off a domino effect that drove up
Speaker 1: wholesale meat prizes, backed up animals in barns, and forced
Speaker 1: food distributors to hurriedly search for new supplies. The attack
Speaker 1: was the latest clash between cyber criminals and companies integral
Speaker 1: to the functioning of the U. S economy. It was
Speaker 1: another disruption to the U. S food industry after the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic last year forced weeks of plants shutdowns,
Speaker 1: and this year an economic rebound has stretched suppliers ability
Speaker 1: to meet demand. Now I read that whole quote because
Speaker 1: it illustrates the way all these problems build upon themselves.
Speaker 1: Our supply chains are what mathematicians call a chaotic system.
Speaker 1: If your knowledge of chaos theory comes primarily from Dr
Speaker 1: E and Malcolm, the gist of it is this certain
Speaker 1: complex systems can be impacted in huge, unexpected ways by
Speaker 1: seemingly minor changes because so many things are interacting at
Speaker 1: once that a change in one can set off a
Speaker 1: chain of other changes. The most common framing of this
Speaker 1: observation is the phrase a butterfly flapping its wings in China,
Speaker 1: can cause a hurricane in New York, and variations of
Speaker 1: the same. The world we live in and the infrastructure
Speaker 1: that makes our daily lives possible, is such a system.
Speaker 1: We've all seen ample evidence of that over the last year.
Speaker 1: It really hit home from me earlier in twenty one
Speaker 1: when a friend of mine who works as an ear
Speaker 1: nurse at a local hospital sent a message to a
Speaker 1: signal chat for my local friend group and warned, the
Speaker 1: hospital is full. Don't get hurt. Initially, we all assumed
Speaker 1: coronavirus was the cause, but no, he explained very few
Speaker 1: of the cases that had filled his r and multiple
Speaker 1: overflow rooms had anything to do with a viral infection. Instead,
Speaker 1: the cause was a mix of things, people celebrating in
Speaker 1: dumb ways as the state reopened, overdoses and car accidents,
Speaker 1: et cetera. In normal times, these might not have drained
Speaker 1: the system, but a huge number of doctors and nurses
Speaker 1: quit during the worst of the plague. My friend calls
Speaker 1: the period wherein now where aspects of modern society that
Speaker 1: once seemed immutably solid start to fall apart all at
Speaker 1: once as the crumbles. I find this a much more
Speaker 1: useful framework for discussing the future than the dreams of
Speaker 1: collapse shared by apocalypse obsessives. One April second study showed
Speaker 1: that at least one in five healthcare workers have considered
Speaker 1: quitting as result of the virus. More than thirty six
Speaker 1: hundred u S healthcare workers died in COVID's first year.
Speaker 1: These strains hit the medical system in the midst of
Speaker 1: an ongoing drought and healthcare workers. By five the u
Speaker 1: S is likely to face a shortage of more than
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand home health aids, twenty nine thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred nurse practitioners, and between fifty four thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: and one hundred and thirty nine thousand physicians. We went
Speaker 1: into the pandemic with a shortage of doctors and nurses.
Speaker 1: At least some of the six hundred thousand American deaths
Speaker 1: from the virus were certainly due to a lack of
Speaker 1: qualified medical professionals, and now COVID has further exacerbated that shortage,
Speaker 1: ensuring that the next great strain on our health care
Speaker 1: system it's even harder, which will drain away more professionals,
Speaker 1: which will make the next pandemic or natural disaster even
Speaker 1: more devastating. This is the way the crumbles work. Problems
Speaker 1: feed into calamities and turn into catastrophes. A healthy society
Speaker 1: has the wherewithal to diagnose its problems and patch the
Speaker 1: holes in its systems when they appear. We do not
Speaker 1: live in a healthy society. The problems that will confront
Speaker 1: us over the next fifty years rising sea levels, out
Speaker 1: of control wildfires, crop failures, greater waves of ref you
Speaker 1: geez are no less imposing than the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: The virus could have been halted by something as simple
Speaker 1: as getting everyone to wear masks and avoid crowded indoor
Speaker 1: spaces for a few weeks. The United States could not
Speaker 1: handle that. In April, I watched a crowd of anti
Speaker 1: lockdown protesters surround a group of doctors and nurses in
Speaker 1: the Oregon state capital Salem. The healthcare professionals carried signs
Speaker 1: that said please, we just don't want you to get sick.
Speaker 1: Protesters spat at them and screamed diaper mouth, mocking the
Speaker 1: face masks they wore. Several of these protesters carried rifles.
Speaker 1: As you probably guessed by now, this is not a
Speaker 1: particularly optimistic podcast, but It's also not my intention to
Speaker 1: infect you with a sense of doom. The worst problems
Speaker 1: we face all have solutions, or at least strategies for
Speaker 1: adaptation and harm reduction. To my mind, our most pressing
Speaker 1: problems fall into three broad categories. One the environmental consequences
Speaker 1: of modern civilization. This is going to be by far
Speaker 1: the most unibomery point I make to day, but it
Speaker 1: cannot be avoided. As I type this, fires are burning
Speaker 1: throughout Oregon, even in the famously wet northern reaches of
Speaker 1: the state. Towns in northern California with huge amounts of
Speaker 1: rainfall thirty eight inches in some cases are so low
Speaker 1: on water that citizens have been restricted to fifty five
Speaker 1: gallons per day. Prior to twenty twenty one, Portland's record
Speaker 1: high temperature was a hundred and seven degrees this June,
Speaker 1: before the hottest part of the year. It beat that
Speaker 1: record for three days straight. The year before twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Australia suffered a mega fire, the largest in its history,
Speaker 1: which burnt more than twenty three hundred square miles. All
Speaker 1: these fires are just preludes. The world is only getting
Speaker 1: hotter from here on out. As I write this, the
Speaker 1: United Nations Climate Science Advisers issued a draft report warning
Speaker 1: that the worst projected impacts of climate change are hitting
Speaker 1: much faster than previously expe did. We will probably reach
Speaker 1: one point five degrees celsius of warming by twenty twenty six. Now,
Speaker 1: for years, staying under one and a half degrees celsius
Speaker 1: has been the goal. The target amount of warming. Mainstream
Speaker 1: climate scientists and climate conscious politicians wanted to limit us too.
Speaker 1: If we were to stop all other forms of emissions
Speaker 1: right now, agriculture alone would carry us over the one
Speaker 1: point five degree celsius line in just a handful of years.
Speaker 1: Most institutional messaging posits one point five degrees of warming
Speaker 1: as the acceptable, even relatively pleasant option. A UN Climate
Speaker 1: Change tweet from earlier this year made that point in
Speaker 1: image form, showing depictions of the Earth's atmosphere in green, yellow,
Speaker 1: and red one point five degrees celsius, two degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: and three degrees celsius plus with the text. The difference
Speaker 1: between one point five two degrees and three to four
Speaker 1: degrees average global warming can sound marginal. In fact, they
Speaker 1: represent vastly different scenarios for the future of humanity. It
Speaker 1: is true that two or three degrees of warming would
Speaker 1: create a radically different world than less than one and
Speaker 1: a half. But the data and our lived experience has
Speaker 1: made it increasingly clear that one point five degrees, which
Speaker 1: we will hit period in the near future, is a
Speaker 1: calamity of almost incomprehensible dimensions. The phenomenon we're all staring
Speaker 1: down the barrel is called climate tipping. One example of
Speaker 1: this would be unprecedented heat waves causing mass wildfires, which
Speaker 1: release more carbon into the atmosphere, which speeds up warming,
Speaker 1: which accelerates the whole cycle onward and upward. Scientists in
Speaker 1: Europe recently found that climate tipping is likely to cause
Speaker 1: sudden shifts in the Gulf Stream, which will cause sudden
Speaker 1: and massive temperature changes in normally tempered zones like western Europe.
Speaker 1: The last devastating heat wave to hit France and twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen killed at least fifteen dred people. This particular study
Speaker 1: was the result of scientists from eighteen universities working in tandem.
Speaker 1: Their spokesman, doctor Michael Gill, told fizz dot org quote
Speaker 1: these results indicate that climate tipping is an imminent risk
Speaker 1: in the Earth system. Even the safe operating space of
Speaker 1: one point five or two degrees above present generally assumed
Speaker 1: by the I p c C might not be all
Speaker 1: that's safe. According to the precautionary principle, we must consider
Speaker 1: abrupt and irreversible changes to the climate system as a
Speaker 1: real risk, at least until we understand these phenomena better.
Speaker 1: The central problem is that our previous models were far
Speaker 1: too optimistic, largely in their assumptions about how gradual the
Speaker 1: warming caused by carbon release would be. Another recent study,
Speaker 1: published in Science Advances, analyzed twenty years of data to
Speaker 1: study the transfer of carbon dioxide between land plants in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Its findings suggest that if present trends continue,
Speaker 1: forests in twenty forty will absorb only half as much
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide as they do now. So when we hit
Speaker 1: one and a half degrees celsius, which we will permafrost
Speaker 1: will start to thaw, releasing methane, which will warm the planet.
Speaker 1: Forests will hold less carbon, more fires will burn, an
Speaker 1: estimated hundred and fifty million people will die due to pollution.
Speaker 1: These factors all make it likelier that we will hit
Speaker 1: two degrees celsius of warming or even higher, at which
Speaker 1: point we will experience catastrophic permafrost thawing alongside another two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty billion tons of carbon burping out of
Speaker 1: the soil. The effects of this will be catastrophic for
Speaker 1: all of us, but they will be particularly disastrous for
Speaker 1: the traditional victims of capitalism Africans. I want to quote
Speaker 1: from an article in The Independent by Ugandan writer Vanessa
Speaker 1: Naicaate quote. This year, abnormally warm temperatures and heavy rains
Speaker 1: have led to swarms of locusts destroying hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of hectares of crops in East Africa. Twelve million people
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are in dire need of food.
Speaker 1: Lake Chad has runk to a tenth of its original
Speaker 1: size over the last fifty years. Half of Nigeria has
Speaker 1: no access to water. It is hard to be encouraged
Speaker 1: by stories of meatless burgers or moonshot technologies when communities
Speaker 1: around you are battling an endless and worsening cycle of drought, famine, cyclones,
Speaker 1: floods and destruction. This is my world at one point
Speaker 1: to degrees celsius of warming. This is not progress. Vague
Speaker 1: distant targets for twenty thirty or twenty fifty will not
Speaker 1: keep the world well below two degrees celsius of warming,
Speaker 1: as the Paris Agreement promised. I can tell you a
Speaker 1: two degrees celsius hotter world is a death sentence for
Speaker 1: countries like mine. Now, when you lay it all out
Speaker 1: like that, it can be pretty overwhelming. For perspective's sake,
Speaker 1: it is important to note that nearly all of the
Speaker 1: carbon that's causing these problems was released into the atmosphere
Speaker 1: within the span of a human lifetime. It is, in short,
Speaker 1: the result of industrial society and its consequences. Right now,
Speaker 1: there is more carbon in the atmosphere than at any
Speaker 1: point in the last eight hundred thousand years, and perhaps
Speaker 1: as far back as fifteen million years. But all this
Speaker 1: carbon started flowing into the atmosphere just three hundred years
Speaker 1: ago in the seventeen hundreds, when England started burning coal
Speaker 1: and kicked off a global drive to industrialization. The vast
Speaker 1: majority of the carbon in our atmosphere was pumped out
Speaker 1: even more recently than that, as David Wallace Wells writes
Speaker 1: in his book The Uninhabitable Earth quote, the majority of
Speaker 1: the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. Since
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, the figure is above
Speaker 1: eighty five percent. The story of the industrial world's Kama
Speaker 1: Kaze mission is the story of a single lifetime the
Speaker 1: planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe
Speaker 1: in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and
Speaker 1: a funeral. That fact has a tendency to inspire false
Speaker 1: hope and some if the real problem only started a
Speaker 1: lifetime ago, perhaps we can solve it in the space
Speaker 1: of a lifetime. But reality does not work that way,
Speaker 1: my friends. Once the carbon is out there, released from
Speaker 1: trees burning in millions of acres of wildfires, from the
Speaker 1: exhaust pipes of hundreds of millions of cars, or from
Speaker 1: the smoke stacks of factories, it is there to stay.
Speaker 1: If we transitioned entirely to nuclear power tomorrow, that carbon
Speaker 1: would still be warming us for decades. And as the
Speaker 1: globe warms up, it dries out the soil, which in
Speaker 1: turn heats the world further, which pushes more people to
Speaker 1: install a c which increases emissions, which dries out the soil,
Speaker 1: which leads to wildfires, which releases more carbon, and on
Speaker 1: and on and on and on it goes. And this
Speaker 1: brings me to pressing problem number two, the authoritarian renaissance.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, the Syrian Civil War started, sending
Speaker 1: millions of Syrian refugees fleeing into Europe. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen and fifteen, nearly two million people filed for
Speaker 1: asylum in the EU. Contrary to popular opinion, experts are
Speaker 1: heavily divided on whether or not climate change played a
Speaker 1: major role in sparking the conflict, but the refugee crisis
Speaker 1: did play a major role in sparking something else, the
Speaker 1: rise of Europe's authoritarian right wing. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: now from a Leibnitz Institute for Economic Research report by
Speaker 1: Andreas Steinmeyer. Quote. In the Upper Austrian state elections in
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, the far right Freedom Party of Austria
Speaker 1: doubled its vote share from two thousand nine and obtained
Speaker 1: over thirty percent of the vote with a fierce anti
Speaker 1: asylum campaign. Polls indicate that support for the Freedom Party
Speaker 1: remained roughly at the level of two thousand nine state
Speaker 1: elections until late two thousand fourteen, but subsequently increased drastically.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fifteen, When refugee numbers started to grow,
Speaker 1: the salience of the issue in the media, measured as
Speaker 1: the number of newspaper articles covering the refugee situation, increased
Speaker 1: almost in proportion to the number of asylum applications. Upper
Speaker 1: Austria was no exception in Europe. The Sweden Democrats, for instance,
Speaker 1: obtained five point seven percent of votes in the two
Speaker 1: thousand ten parliamentary elections in Sweden. After that, support increased
Speaker 1: parallel to the rising number of refugees, which increased earlier
Speaker 1: in Sweden than in other European countries. In parliamentary elections
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, the Sweden Democrats obtained twelve point
Speaker 1: nine percent of the vault and pulled around twenty percent
Speaker 1: in late two thousand fifteen at the peak of the
Speaker 1: refugee inflow into Sweden. The alternative for Germany a f D,
Speaker 1: was not founded until two thousand thirteen. Poles show was
Speaker 1: sharp increase in support of up to fifteen percent along
Speaker 1: with growing refugee numbers. Now During the two thousand and
Speaker 1: sixteen election Canada, Donald Trump in the United States constantly
Speaker 1: harped on the danger of refugees from Syria, but also
Speaker 1: from places in Latin America like Guatemala, whose economies had
Speaker 1: been devastated by climate change. These climate refugees and the
Speaker 1: false perception that they were causing crime and of violence,
Speaker 1: fed into a rising American fascist movement that is still
Speaker 1: with us today. Authoritarians have always used fear of the other,
Speaker 1: and specifically fear of foreign asylum seekers, to stoke division.
Speaker 1: That part of their job is only going to get easier.
Speaker 1: The UN projects that by twenty fifty an additional two
Speaker 1: hundred million people will be climate refugees. This was the
Speaker 1: entire population of planet Earth during the high of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, clawing desperately at the iron gates of any
Speaker 1: country better off than where they've left. Climate change doesn't
Speaker 1: just provide opportunities for authoritarian politicians. It tends to make
Speaker 1: society itself more authoritarian by increasing military conflicts and domestic crime.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and fourteen, the U. S Department of
Speaker 1: Defense authored an annual Defense Review that noted, quote the
Speaker 1: nature in pace have observed climate changes and an emerging
Speaker 1: scientific consensus on their projected consequences pose severe risks for
Speaker 1: our national security. The report goes on to warn about
Speaker 1: conflicts over resources, particularly water in places like Lake Mead,
Speaker 1: Nevada and the Colorado River system, where conflicts over scarce
Speaker 1: water could spiral into violence. As I write this, a
Speaker 1: group of militiamen under the banner of Aim and Bundy
Speaker 1: have set up shop by the Klamath River in central Oregon,
Speaker 1: claiming to represent the interests of farmers being denied their
Speaker 1: normal allotment of water due to severe drought conditions. Bundy
Speaker 1: at All have threatened to break onto federal land are
Speaker 1: armed and released the water. As that Department of Defense
Speaker 1: reports so aptly noted, these effects are threat multipliers that
Speaker 1: will aggravate stressors abroad, such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability,
Speaker 1: and social tensions, conditions that can enable terrorist activity and
Speaker 1: other forms of violence. We've already seen how both main
Speaker 1: parties in the United States react to violence and the
Speaker 1: perception of violence. President Trump responded to a popular uprising
Speaker 1: against police brutality with a wave of police brutality. He
Speaker 1: was almost universally supported in his re election bid by
Speaker 1: police unions. On January six, at least thirty one police
Speaker 1: officers took part in the Capital insurrection aimed at keeping
Speaker 1: Trump and power Despite this fact, President Biden suggested in
Speaker 1: June that communities should spend much of the three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars in COVID nineteen aid dispensed in
Speaker 1: May to hire more police officers. A few days earlier,
Speaker 1: his administration released its plan for dealing with domestic terrorism,
Speaker 1: inspired by the violence of the Capital Riot. This included
Speaker 1: an additional hundred million in funding for local law enforcement.
Speaker 1: All this is to say that the state only has
Speaker 1: one solution to deal with the problems we will increasingly face,
Speaker 1: and that solution is to put more men with guns
Speaker 1: in our communities. Platoons of goons armed with grenade launchers
Speaker 1: and armored vehicles may in fact provide some protection to
Speaker 1: the people at the very top of our society, but
Speaker 1: they will not protect you. That's not just my own
Speaker 1: personal bias speaking. And there were more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand sworn law enforcement officers serving nationwide, the highest number ever.
Speaker 1: That same year, homicides raised nearly among the nation's ten
Speaker 1: largest police departments. The average clearance rate in those departments, however,
Speaker 1: dropped by seven percent to about This means a few things.
Speaker 1: Murders rose in the United States, with more cops than
Speaker 1: ever before. Those cops solved fewer of the murders committed
Speaker 1: than they had in prior years. President Biden's one budget
Speaker 1: included twenty two billion dollars to fight global climate change.
Speaker 1: His two budget calls for thirty six billion dollars in funding.
Speaker 1: That is a substantial rate of increase, but even thirty
Speaker 1: six billion dollars is only about one sixth of what
Speaker 1: the United States spends on policing and incarcerating its citizens
Speaker 1: each year. The cost to stop global warming at less
Speaker 1: than two degrees celsius is a contentious issue, but one
Speaker 1: estimate places it at as much as fifty trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Whether you buy that estimate or not, by any sober analysis,
Speaker 1: thirty six billion is a drop in the bucket compared
Speaker 1: to what will be necessary to avoid the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: And the worst case scenario is coming. If we want
Speaker 1: to have any chance at avoiding it, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to organize. And that brings me to pressing problem
Speaker 1: number three, weaponized unreality. Starting in two thousand sixteen, Russian
Speaker 1: disinformation became a major media buzzword. There were stories about
Speaker 1: that nation's Internet Research Agency, its armies of botanuts and
Speaker 1: trolls aimed as stoking division and pushing certain narratives into
Speaker 1: the American consciousness. Russia absolutely has an advanced disinformation operation,
Speaker 1: but the media made a mistake focusing on them alone.
Speaker 1: The reality of the situation is that nations, corporations, political parties,
Speaker 1: extremist movements, and every other organization with its shipped together
Speaker 1: does the same thing the Russians do. The name of
Speaker 1: the game is to take lies, propaganda, incendiary claims in
Speaker 1: rage bait and use them to stoke the ire of
Speaker 1: millions of people. I can't claim credit for creating the
Speaker 1: term weaponized unreality. That one goes to my friend Carl,
Speaker 1: but the term does a brilliant job of describing the problem.
Speaker 1: If the coronavirus has taught us one thing, it's that
Speaker 1: the right lies can be deadlier than a thousand or
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand guns when properly deployed. Weaponized on reality
Speaker 1: is part of why our present problems with climate change
Speaker 1: have gotten so very dire. Starting in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Exxonmobile and later a host of other oil and gas companies,
Speaker 1: borrowed a public relations strategy initially invented to serve the
Speaker 1: needs of big tobacco. The Union of Concerned Scientists describes
Speaker 1: the strategy as manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even
Speaker 1: the most indisputable scientific evidence. Adopted a strategy of information
Speaker 1: laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further
Speaker 1: its desired message and therefore confuse the public. Promoted scientific
Speaker 1: spokespeople who misrepresent peer reviewed scientific findings or cherry pick facts,
Speaker 1: attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on
Speaker 1: global warming with misleading charges about the need for sound science.
Speaker 1: That all sounds pretty bleakly familiar to us now after
Speaker 1: a year of dueling coronavirus conspiracy theories matas de sized
Speaker 1: que and on bullshit and stop the steel style election disinfo.
Speaker 1: Weaponized un reality is often used by politicians and grifters
Speaker 1: people like Alex Jones or Andy No, to make quick
Speaker 1: profits or energize their base during an election. Such individuals
Speaker 1: seldom consider or fully anticipate the long term impact of
Speaker 1: building out an alternate counter factual reality. Think of former
Speaker 1: President Trump begging his supporters to get vaccinated and trying
Speaker 1: to take credit for the creation of a vaccine that
Speaker 1: forty one percent of his followers think is some sort
Speaker 1: of Chinese Bill gatesy and genocide conspiracy. Or think of
Speaker 1: Mike Pence, whose career is built on decades of right
Speaker 1: wing lies about abortion, climate change, terrorism in the economy.
Speaker 1: Now think of Mike huddled in fear behind his bodyguards
Speaker 1: as a mob of fanatics burst through the halls of
Speaker 1: power with murder on their minds. The problem with weaponized
Speaker 1: unreality is that to really make it work, you have
Speaker 1: to craft an entire alternate reality for the true believers,
Speaker 1: one with its own meat ea in its own self
Speaker 1: reinforcing cycle of disinformation. This is extremely profitable and creates
Speaker 1: a durable base of support for the precise reason it
Speaker 1: is tremendously dangerous. Two entirely separate realities cannot coexist in
Speaker 1: the same political system. The unreality that the right wing
Speaker 1: has spent decades building is centered around the contention that
Speaker 1: its enemies, Democrats and the left, are literal servants of Satan,
Speaker 1: hell bent on building a system that will exterminate real
Speaker 1: Americans and moss. At present, twenty three percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: believe Satanic pedophiles control the US government, the media, and
Speaker 1: the financial sector. Roughly fifteen to twenty percent of Americans
Speaker 1: nationwide share the same belief. Nearly thirty percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: believe that patriots, which their unreality has defined as white conservatives,
Speaker 1: may need to resort to violence in order to restore
Speaker 1: their version of American values. The good news is that
Speaker 1: a clear majority of Americans do not abide by those views,
Speaker 1: but they don't need two. In nineteen thirty two, the
Speaker 1: National Socialist German Workers Party had their best performance in
Speaker 1: a legitimate election and got just thirty seven point three
Speaker 1: percent of the vote. A minority party can manage tremendous
Speaker 1: bloodshed if they are sufficiently unified, their opponents are sufficiently disorganized,
Speaker 1: and the political system is biased in their favor. All
Speaker 1: of those things were true of the Nazis in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, and all of those things are more or
Speaker 1: less true of our situation now. The next three years
Speaker 1: in change will bring continued climate related collapse. This added
Speaker 1: strain will reveal more and more of the holes in
Speaker 1: our infrastructure. As I type this, a massive condo complex
Speaker 1: in Florida has just collapsed into a sinkhole, killing dozens,
Speaker 1: and the state of Oregon has issued a warning that
Speaker 1: a chlorine shortage threatens the state's ability to properly sanitize
Speaker 1: drinking water. A new study has revealed that despite six
Speaker 1: months of counter disinformation efforts, one third of Americans still
Speaker 1: believe the election was stolen by the Democrats, the same
Speaker 1: percentage you believed that in No Wimber. On June one,
Speaker 1: American news network host Pearson Sharp got in front of
Speaker 1: his viewers and said this about the election he believed
Speaker 1: had been stolen. How many people were involved in these
Speaker 1: efforts to undermine the election? Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: How many people does it take to carry out a
Speaker 1: coup against the presidency? And when all the dust settles
Speaker 1: from the audit Arizona and the potential audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin, what happens to all these people who were
Speaker 1: responsible for overthrowing the election? What are the consequences for
Speaker 1: traitors who meddled with our sacred democratic process and tried
Speaker 1: to steal power by taking away the voices of the
Speaker 1: American people? What happens to them in their sundry internet?
Speaker 1: Heidi holes Q and UN believes took this broadcast as
Speaker 1: hard evidence that their long awaited storm was coming and
Speaker 1: the mass execution of democratic officials and journalists was about
Speaker 1: to begin. I don't think I have to spend much
Speaker 1: time here saying how dangerous this is. What I do
Speaker 1: want to do is point out that Pearson Sharp was
Speaker 1: also a major personality on Sputnik, a Russian propaganda news outlet.
Speaker 1: I don't bring this up to further any sort of
Speaker 1: Russia Gate fervor, because I don't think that's one of
Speaker 1: our main problems. But the kind of content Pierson made
Speaker 1: for Sputnik is important. His job was to repeatedly slander
Speaker 1: the White Helmets, an organization of Syrian volunteers who helped
Speaker 1: provide medical aid and the immediate aftermath of Syrian regime bombings.
Speaker 1: A complex and sophisticated propaganda campaign has turned them into
Speaker 1: boogieman for a sizeable chunk of the international left. There
Speaker 1: are conspiracy theories that the White Helmets actually staged and
Speaker 1: faked all of the chemical weapons attacks and bombings, but
Speaker 1: shar Al Assad's air force did against civilian targets. On
Speaker 1: June eleventh, two thousand eighteen, Pearson took a state sponsor
Speaker 1: trip into Syria, escorted by the soldiers of a dictator
Speaker 1: who has killed half a million of his citizens. He
Speaker 1: posted this, everyone, literally everyone you made in Syria will
Speaker 1: tell you how grateful they are to be living under
Speaker 1: government held areas and that the Syrian army freed them
Speaker 1: from torture under Western backed rebels. Only the terrorists complain
Speaker 1: about being liberated. That last line, only the terrorists complain
Speaker 1: about being liberated strikes hard within my soul. The point
Speaker 1: of this digression is again not about Russian propaganda, but
Speaker 1: about the kind of man Pearson sharp is. He has
Speaker 1: made for years a career out of denying the violence
Speaker 1: of brutal dictators and justifying massacres with propaganda, and in
Speaker 1: one he's decided that the trumpe Ist wing of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party is the place to be. He is not alone.
Speaker 1: The same night that one American news broadcast dropped, Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson got on his show and in front of a
Speaker 1: graphic of a Democratic Party donkey with the words anti
Speaker 1: white Mania written in front of it, he said this,
Speaker 1: The question that we should be meditating on day in
Speaker 1: and day out is how do we get out of
Speaker 1: this vortex, this cycle Before it's too late. How do
Speaker 1: we save this country before we become Rwanda. It's interesting
Speaker 1: that Tucker brings up Rwanda here, Interesting and telling because
Speaker 1: the genocide that cost a million people their lives in
Speaker 1: that country was driven in part by a talk radio
Speaker 1: station called r t l M. Scholars describe r t
Speaker 1: l M as a de facto wing of the extremest
Speaker 1: Hutu government that started the massacre. Roughly ten percent of
Speaker 1: the violence that occurred has been tied directly to specific
Speaker 1: r t l M broadcasts. Now, look, I promised this
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a Dumer podcast, and I mean
Speaker 1: to keep to that. While the three factors I mentioned
Speaker 1: are churning us all in the direction of hell, they're
Speaker 1: not the only factors to consider. We, the people who
Speaker 1: do not want to live in a dictatorship or see
Speaker 1: the mass murder of our fellow citizens, are in the majority,
Speaker 1: and we have tools with which to fight against our enemies.
Speaker 1: The last year and struggles of the pandemic have brought
Speaker 1: with them a tremendous rise in the number of organizations
Speaker 1: practicing mutual aid. This term has its origins and anarchist
Speaker 1: political theory, and is very different from charity. In charity
Speaker 1: and individual or organization with plenty gives aid to people
Speaker 1: who cannot help themselves. Mutual aid is when communities rise
Speaker 1: up to serve their own needs without waiting for their
Speaker 1: government or some in GEO to do it for them.
Speaker 1: The goal of mutual aid is not just to handle
Speaker 1: immediate needs, but to build dual power. When you build
Speaker 1: dual power, you are essentially creating organizations that fulfill the
Speaker 1: useful roles formerly filled or poorly filled by the state.
Speaker 1: Doing this reduces or eliminates people's reliance on the state,
Speaker 1: and as a result, vastly increases the public's bargaining position.
Speaker 1: If you want to force massive sweeping changes on the
Speaker 1: system will replace it entirely, you're going to need to
Speaker 1: build dual power first. Mutual aid is also just fucking inspiring,
Speaker 1: And when you spend as much time staring into the
Speaker 1: this as we all do these days, you need inspiration.
Speaker 1: While researching this article, I came across a wonderful piece
Speaker 1: and The Guardian about the rise of mutual aid, and
Speaker 1: I want a quote from it here. During the final
Speaker 1: thousand days of the Second World War, shipyard workers in
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay area produced one thousand warships a
Speaker 1: warship a day. Something like that epic urgent industry seems
Speaker 1: to be at work now, but outside the federal government
Speaker 1: or any government. In early April, the Bay Area branch
Speaker 1: of the news site Hoodline reported on Thursday morning, two
Speaker 1: tons of rolled sheet plastic arrived at a warehouse in Alameda.
Speaker 1: By the end of the weekend, it had become sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand plastic face shields. That remarkable turnaround is entirely owed
Speaker 1: to self organization by Bay Area makers who have transformed
Speaker 1: maker spaces, universities, fabrication shops, and almost anyone with their
Speaker 1: own sewing machines, C and C machine, or three D
Speaker 1: printer into an ad hoc core of medical supply manufacturers.
Speaker 1: The report called the self organized effort involving industrial design
Speaker 1: students and teachers a distributed factory. Let's do send. Realized
Speaker 1: efforts organized without top down authority are exemplary mutual aid.
Speaker 1: In April fourteenth, nurses and seven doctors from the same
Speaker 1: institutions set off for a one month assignment on the
Speaker 1: Navajo Reservation, whose residents are facing high levels of infection.
Speaker 1: They were coordinated by the existing ucsf Heal Initiative, which
Speaker 1: works with impoverished and vulnerable communities from Haiti to Nepal.
Speaker 1: Its mission statement is we seek to embody solidarity and
Speaker 1: contribute to the movement for global health equity led by
Speaker 1: communities themselves. This initiative, based on the principle of solidarity
Speaker 1: not charity, has been working with communities under stress for
Speaker 1: six years and will still be there when the immediate
Speaker 1: crisis is over. When faced with the looming specter of
Speaker 1: fascism and gangs of heavily armed racists spent on massacrring
Speaker 1: the other, mutual aid may seem like a poor defense
Speaker 1: at best. This is not the case. It is, in fact,
Speaker 1: the only thing that can pull us back from the brink.
Speaker 1: Weaponized on reality works because people are angry, confused, and frightened.
Speaker 1: Now of the thirty of Republicans willing to kill to
Speaker 1: save their concept of America are bigots, and the things
Speaker 1: that confuse and anger them are equality in progress. But
Speaker 1: those people are only dangerous at scale when there is
Speaker 1: a much larger number of less radical people scared and
Speaker 1: confused enough to buy into their lies. The one thing
Speaker 1: that can cut through lies, that can build the empathy
Speaker 1: necessary to forestall terror is community. When you help people
Speaker 1: with their material needs and provide them with a community
Speaker 1: that makes them feel valued and cared for, they are
Speaker 1: unlikely to support your murder. Effective mutual aid also undercuts
Speaker 1: the ability of authoritarians to profit as much from climate change.
Speaker 1: When the system falls apart, authoritarians always promised to fix it.
Speaker 1: The best way to put lie to that promise is
Speaker 1: to build a better solution to the problems, one that
Speaker 1: works in real time periods of collapse, and we are
Speaker 1: right now all living through collapse, our times in which
Speaker 1: people are more open to new modes of living, new
Speaker 1: visions of how the world could exist. That's why these
Speaker 1: times are so dangerous, but it's also why they hold
Speaker 1: so much promise. Right now, we face the risk of
Speaker 1: falling together into the darkness, but we also have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to build a new world from the ashes of
Speaker 1: the old. Either way, we'll be doing it together. For
Speaker 1: my part, I know which option I prefer. What about you,