Speaker 1: Hmm. Greetings and salutations. This is it could happen here.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davis. I'm part of the research and writing team,
Speaker 1: and today we have a special treat for everybody. Here.
Speaker 1: We are going to be running an interview with Jeff Man.
Speaker 1: Jeff Man is a co author of the fantastic book
Speaker 1: Climate Leviathan, A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. UM.
Speaker 1: Jeff Man is a as a as a professor, he
Speaker 1: teaches political economy and economic geography. UM. He's done lots
Speaker 1: of writing on capitalism and climate change. He is a
Speaker 1: He's a fantastic resource and I highly recommend his book.
Speaker 1: Um it can get a little academic, um making has
Speaker 1: a lot of has a lot of big fancy words
Speaker 1: that I probably I would have a hard time saying
Speaker 1: out loud, but um, it's a very it's a very
Speaker 1: good read. So I would would recommend picking up the
Speaker 1: book if you want to read about economics and climate
Speaker 1: change and all that kind of stuff. But thankfully we
Speaker 1: interviewed him here in the pod, so if you're more
Speaker 1: so inclined, you can listen to this interview that's going
Speaker 1: to play right after I'm done talking. So without further
Speaker 1: ado Here is our interview with Jeff Man talking about
Speaker 1: politics and climate change. Let's let's go. So we're the
Speaker 1: show we're looking to do. The first season of this,
Speaker 1: which we dropped like years ago twenty nineteen, was like
Speaker 1: kind of uh my, my, My basic experiences journalists isn't
Speaker 1: conflict reporting, so like Rack Siria Ukraine, And it was like,
Speaker 1: what would happen if there were to be a civil
Speaker 1: conflict in the United States? How would that actually look?
Speaker 1: How do these things look in the modern world? And
Speaker 1: all that jazz. This season we're doing what is the
Speaker 1: world going to be? Just based on what we know
Speaker 1: of of how climate change is going to affect things,
Speaker 1: and um, that's all too bleak to get into without
Speaker 1: trying to provide some positive possibilities for how things could be,
Speaker 1: how adaptations that could be made and whatnot. And I
Speaker 1: think what's so interesting about your book is it provides
Speaker 1: all of the difference. With the exception of the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, all the scenarios you present seem very plausible
Speaker 1: to me. And I guess I'm wondering, of of the
Speaker 1: ones that you've put forward in your book, is there
Speaker 1: one that seems more plausible to you right now, are
Speaker 1: you kind of at at a point where you're expecting
Speaker 1: there to be kind of a regional breakdown as to like,
Speaker 1: you know, this chunk of the world goes to this
Speaker 1: kind of climate mouthing climate Leviathan, is this sort of
Speaker 1: chunk of the world, Like, I'm wondering what you're seeing
Speaker 1: right now, just as we're watching ships start to really
Speaker 1: hit home for people. Yeah, yeah, I I'm always reluctant
Speaker 1: in these instances to say that I know more than
Speaker 1: anyone else you know about what's going to happen, So
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't come across as in any way
Speaker 1: like me agnosticating um, which actually, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: Jewel is much more comfortable doing the guy I wrote
Speaker 1: the book with, who you should also chat with if
Speaker 1: you ever get the chance, brilliant guy. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I do think there's a sort of
Speaker 1: fragmentation right now, Um, whether or not like geo politically
Speaker 1: in the sense like you said, regional you know, breakdowns,
Speaker 1: or the way that like kind of different trajectories could
Speaker 1: be happening simultaneously in different parts of the planet. How
Speaker 1: long that can last, or whether or not it just
Speaker 1: stays that way. I think it's a super interesting question,
Speaker 1: Like it does seem to me that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Chinese state for a variety of reasons, some of which
Speaker 1: I probably can have a handle on, and others I
Speaker 1: just don't know enough to know. The Chinese state, you know,
Speaker 1: approaches these problems in a really different way than we
Speaker 1: do in North America or Western Europe for example. UM
Speaker 1: and and how they handle like what is clearly fucking
Speaker 1: coming down their pipe, you know, not just with these floods,
Speaker 1: but you know, the overall like the soil loss um,
Speaker 1: sort of massive ternment in the West um an urbanization
Speaker 1: at a scale that you know is like completely unsustainable
Speaker 1: because the countryside is you know, can't support its people anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, they have these permit systems and everything. How
Speaker 1: they approach that whole problem from like ecological breakdown perspective
Speaker 1: could very much, I think, take a kind of Leviathan
Speaker 1: like form, but a much more authoritarian version. It will not,
Speaker 1: I don't think in the short term, look like now
Speaker 1: in terms of a sort of revolutionary uh process UM.
Speaker 1: But here in North America, I think that this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, Joe and I tried to float about
Speaker 1: capital taking over and trying to basically maintain itself at
Speaker 1: the top of the hierarchy. UM. And you know, basically
Speaker 1: allow the planet to break down, but to have the
Speaker 1: social uh, to maintain the social order in its own interests.
Speaker 1: I actually still think that's unfolding right front of us, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think Western Europe is the same that just
Speaker 1: managing it in that, you know, in a very different
Speaker 1: kind of technocratic way. UM. But I think you're right
Speaker 1: to identify not a global kind of coalescence, but rather
Speaker 1: a whole variety of conflicting trajectories. That would be my
Speaker 1: take on it right now. How do you when you're
Speaker 1: trying to have these conversations about like what's what's coming
Speaker 1: down the pipe with people who are less buried in
Speaker 1: this than you are, how do you introduce the concept
Speaker 1: of climate Leviathan to them? Well, so, I mean I
Speaker 1: run into this. I mean this might be a terrible
Speaker 1: uh what's the right word of comparison, um to make?
Speaker 1: But I run into this a lot, like you know,
Speaker 1: just in the like classroom, like with students and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And basically the way I usually begin it
Speaker 1: is I asked the question you know because people often
Speaker 1: I think quite rightly make certain kinds of uh agnostications
Speaker 1: about uh, you know, climate change kind of running out
Speaker 1: of control and destroying life as we know it in
Speaker 1: a rather immediate way. And and I usually just say, like,
Speaker 1: like that that runs so counter to the interests of
Speaker 1: global capital that it's impossible to imagine I'm not responding
Speaker 1: and and and in and in anywhere from a kind
Speaker 1: of minor tweakye to men like full on emergency panic
Speaker 1: mode response, depending upon the situation and conditions. And so
Speaker 1: I basically say the idea of climate Leviathan is precisely
Speaker 1: that it's capital responding. Now, of course, we all, I
Speaker 1: think rightly know that that response will never be adequate
Speaker 1: to the problem, not even at a purely sort of
Speaker 1: survivalist level. But I still think that in the medium term,
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to see. And that's how I
Speaker 1: usually introduced it. It's like, imagine capital response wanting to
Speaker 1: climate change because they'll have to. It'll look like Levia Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the yeah no, that that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And one of the reasons I like that,
Speaker 1: and I like the way you Enjoel frame things is
Speaker 1: that I'm I've grown very tired of especially in the
Speaker 1: you know, I have some prepping kind of interests and
Speaker 1: stuff like I I think that stuff is neat. But
Speaker 1: I've always felt like the the obsession with collapse is
Speaker 1: not just silly, it's um counter factual um because barring
Speaker 1: some sort of like the the ever present possibility of
Speaker 1: a nuclear conflict or something, I don't I don't see
Speaker 1: collapse as a as a realistic consequence of climate change.
Speaker 1: Actually collapses. I see places collapsing, I see survivability and
Speaker 1: chunks of the world collapse. And but I think you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. There's no way capital is going to allow
Speaker 1: everything to fall apart, because then they can't go them all,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, and we can't either, and that's
Speaker 1: they're desperate for us to keep doing that, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, total. Yeah, I'm wondering this climate Leviathan, Like,
Speaker 1: when you describe it, it doesn't sound great. It also
Speaker 1: sounds at least familiar. It sounds like the same way
Speaker 1: I've see. It's like, that's part of why it's very believable,
Speaker 1: is it sounds like the way the system currently deals
Speaker 1: with every problem. Right, these these technocratic half competent UH
Speaker 1: focus group solutions that are generally too late and you know,
Speaker 1: only occasionally effective. Um. What scares me is UM and
Speaker 1: I forget the exaction, but like essentially the authoritary, the
Speaker 1: more authoritarian version of this, you know, like and and
Speaker 1: the more authoritarian kind of coming from a We're not
Speaker 1: going to fix the problem. We're just going to protect
Speaker 1: whatever kind of identitarian chunk we we we we consider
Speaker 1: our base from it. Um, do you see that gaining
Speaker 1: strength right now? Like where do you where do you
Speaker 1: looking at kind of the the lay of the land
Speaker 1: at the moment? Where are you seeing that? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good, you know comment from my perspective. I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I think that stuff is serious, and
Speaker 1: I think, if I'm honest with you, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a missing bit in the book's argument in
Speaker 1: the sense that I don't think we took seriously enough
Speaker 1: a version of behemoth that doesn't deny climate change but
Speaker 1: only gives a shit about its own internal territories or
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, its own interests, so that
Speaker 1: it becomes a behemoth like fuck you to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, but but at the same time takes
Speaker 1: climate very seriously. Uh. You know, I think some people
Speaker 1: call it like eco fascism. I'm not so sure. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't I that term. I don't think that covers
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm trying to say. But maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: don't understand it well enough. But I do think that
Speaker 1: that the book Joel and I don't take that prospect
Speaker 1: seriously enough. And I think that is actually like that
Speaker 1: kind of Mike Davis sort of like you know, if
Speaker 1: you guys read that piece who Will Build the Arc?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, it's it's fucking awesome. It's an amazing
Speaker 1: piece of work. Um. It's from about two and ten,
Speaker 1: I think, in the New Left Review, and he writes
Speaker 1: basically about, you know, an elite kind of attempt to
Speaker 1: just sort of create islands of survivability or not more
Speaker 1: than survivability, islands of elite leisure in sense um, in
Speaker 1: a world that's falling apart around it. And I actually
Speaker 1: think that that's totally believable. Like I think that's more
Speaker 1: believable than we thought it was when we wrote the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess you know, the question of whether or
Speaker 1: not to call it climate fascism, I think that climate
Speaker 1: fascism is a separate thing from the possibility of climate authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: because I think you have this possibility of like, all right,
Speaker 1: we have a state or a group of states that
Speaker 1: are going to produce very authoritarian measures in order to
Speaker 1: protect their people, and they're so called way of life
Speaker 1: as and I think you also have a chance of
Speaker 1: this possibility of kind of a more identarian sort of thing,
Speaker 1: like whether it's white nationalist or whatever. Um uh, I
Speaker 1: kind of see and I see maybe them feeding into
Speaker 1: each other. I don't know, like it's it all gets
Speaker 1: very muddled, and I think like one of the problems
Speaker 1: you have trying to prognosticate about the future is that
Speaker 1: there's always so many variables and you can anything, you
Speaker 1: any kind of permutation of any of these things that
Speaker 1: you can dream up. You can see the seeds of
Speaker 1: them if you go out and find them. You can
Speaker 1: find the Christian dominionist chunk of this, like the eco
Speaker 1: fascist thing, and you can find a more socialist version,
Speaker 1: and you can find a more white nationalist version. And
Speaker 1: it's just kind of anyone's guess as to what's going
Speaker 1: to pick up steam. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's something those I think important about the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that Joel and I are trying to
Speaker 1: do in the book. And there's also something that is uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps inevitably arrogant about that effort, and that that arrogance
Speaker 1: like well, I think both Joe and I would always
Speaker 1: say that the book what for us at least was
Speaker 1: worth writing no matter what, It would be wrong too
Speaker 1: to not to not acknowledge the arrogance of that analysis.
Speaker 1: That then allows you as as soon as you acknowledge arrogance,
Speaker 1: then you acknowledge a lot of the stuff you're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: like the the fact that, yeah, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: million things that ways that this could go, and some
Speaker 1: of them won't look like what we said they look
Speaker 1: and we can't you know, we have to think hard. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I find really intelligent about the way you
Speaker 1: set it up, because you're not saying, Okay, this political
Speaker 1: party is going to evolve in these ways. You're trying
Speaker 1: to say that these are kind of the we can
Speaker 1: see from responses to other problems and from responses even
Speaker 1: to climate change. These are kind of the patterns things
Speaker 1: are going to break down in um And I guess
Speaker 1: before I I'll hand it over to Garrison in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But um, kind of the last thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to really get into was the climate X, the
Speaker 1: term you all use for kind of the the most
Speaker 1: optimistic scenario that I don't think any of us believes
Speaker 1: in as much as we'd like to at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly it. Yeah, Um, I'm one of the things
Speaker 1: that we're trying to do here is envision how that
Speaker 1: might look. And the best thing that I can come
Speaker 1: up with is a mix of um, really durable, widespread
Speaker 1: mutual aid networks to support some sort of mass general
Speaker 1: strike in order to institute sweeping changes both to the
Speaker 1: nature of capitalism and to like the social system we
Speaker 1: have in order to reduce environmental harm and anyway that
Speaker 1: sort of thing like that's that's the only thing I
Speaker 1: can imagine that I don't think you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about an effort more ambitious than landing a man on
Speaker 1: the moon. Um, but at least it's a set of
Speaker 1: things that could achieve a goal as opposed to like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's totally pious, guy, it's a possibility.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what when you think about best case scenario,
Speaker 1: how if like everything breaks right, things could be resolved positively,
Speaker 1: Like what are you envisioning? I'm wondering kind of like
Speaker 1: what's your optimistic side say when you let it peek through? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I think it looks a lot
Speaker 1: like what you're describing. I think that you know that
Speaker 1: they'll have to be and I do think there will be.
Speaker 1: The question is, of course whether it's too late, and
Speaker 1: whether it's effective and all other stuff. But there will
Speaker 1: have to be a kind of mass based to it,
Speaker 1: for sure. But what I don't believe, and I think
Speaker 1: you're hinting at this too, telp me if I'm misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: What I don't believe is that it will be a
Speaker 1: mass based thing from what we might think of as
Speaker 1: a single or monolithic movement. It's gonna it's because the
Speaker 1: ways that people manage what's coming our way are going
Speaker 1: to have to be, for one thing, very locally specific.
Speaker 1: As we know, like like you said, like there's collapses,
Speaker 1: there's you know, people are dealing with different challenges in
Speaker 1: their own places, um, and not just environmentally, but of
Speaker 1: course their own political histories and all our stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it has to be like an articulation in
Speaker 1: these mass moments like you're describing, like a general strike
Speaker 1: or whatever, of a whole variety of movements that are
Speaker 1: actually organized primarily around meeting the needs of the people
Speaker 1: where they live, mutual aid societies, other kinds of distributional
Speaker 1: you know, fixes, and this kind of chaotic breakdown like
Speaker 1: you describe when things can much more important than coffee
Speaker 1: are unavailable widely, those kinds of things. Um, let's not,
Speaker 1: let's not. Let's not downplay at the importance of coffee. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I would never down for coffee, but for the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it, you know, like water, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, or something. Um uh, Then I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be. It has to be climate
Speaker 1: X has to be multiple in the sense that it
Speaker 1: has to take many, many forms specific to the needs
Speaker 1: of the folks that are there. But what I am
Speaker 1: convinced of which I wasn't always actually, is that the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of movements like that will have that they will
Speaker 1: depend upon the extent to which they're democratic, not in
Speaker 1: terms of actual long term effectiveness. Cannot be like local authoritarianisms.
Speaker 1: We can't imagine. This is sort of like a series
Speaker 1: of climate change warlords. I don't think that is a
Speaker 1: a realistic solution, even from a purely like kind of
Speaker 1: managing the climate change perspective. Yeah. No, I've known a
Speaker 1: couple of warlords, and none of them are good at
Speaker 1: long term planning. Yes, I've never known a warlord, but
Speaker 1: I can imagine you are, right, Garrison, you want to
Speaker 1: take it over for a bit. Yeah. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I started doing just in general kind of climate
Speaker 1: research like about half a year ago, like getting like
Speaker 1: relatively deep into it, and one of your books was
Speaker 1: one of the things that kept coming up as recommended
Speaker 1: reading on the topic. UM, and yeah, I found it
Speaker 1: super super interesting. There's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff focuses on, like a lot of stuff on the
Speaker 1: topic focuses on like potential physical effects happening to like, um,
Speaker 1: geography and to like environments, but not there's not as
Speaker 1: much on like the political side of things and how
Speaker 1: that's going to break down like societally in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, freedom and liberty and sovereignty over specific you
Speaker 1: know states or you know free states. Um. So that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what really drew me into your book specifically was
Speaker 1: the kind of special focus on that side of things, UM,
Speaker 1: and the the other the other part that got me
Speaker 1: pretty early on is the mitigation versus adaption side of things,
Speaker 1: and how to my understanding, we're kind of like crossing
Speaker 1: into the place where mitigation is becoming more and more
Speaker 1: difficult and adaptation is both necessary but also unlike unfortunately necessary,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of ways that that can be
Speaker 1: used by authoritarian states to make things harder to have
Speaker 1: change happened in the future. UM, would you like speak
Speaker 1: on what types of mitigation, what type of some mitigation
Speaker 1: efforts might we still have, and how and how adaption
Speaker 1: is both going to be necessary and how there's going
Speaker 1: to be like a dark side to some of those adaptions.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I would agree with your read there, Like
Speaker 1: I think we're at the point now where it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that if you ask the climate scientist, I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but I know a few climate scientists
Speaker 1: and I do quiz them on stuff like this sometimes, UM,
Speaker 1: that we're at the point where mitigation efforts right now
Speaker 1: are actually purely adaptive. Like we we are past many
Speaker 1: thresholds where somehow we could imagine it's like escaping this problem,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like evading it, getting out
Speaker 1: the side door or something like that. So even our
Speaker 1: mitigation efforts right now are actually adaptive in that sense,
Speaker 1: an adaptation and I think has become in many ways,
Speaker 1: the the holy grail of modern political economy. Like, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, how do we have our luxurious
Speaker 1: Western lifestyles and consumption patterns and all this in the
Speaker 1: middle of out collapsing ecosystems? Like how do we how
Speaker 1: do we manage that? You know what I mean? It's
Speaker 1: almost like I think at some point in the book
Speaker 1: we say, and Joel and I have certainly said it
Speaker 1: a lot since you know, adaptation has become the progress
Speaker 1: of our time. Like if in the twentieth century we
Speaker 1: talked about all progress progress, that's where capitalism and liberalism deliver.
Speaker 1: Now we're like, all the best they can deliver is
Speaker 1: adaptation to a fucking crazy set of you know, conditions. Um,
Speaker 1: And so I guess I would say that from a
Speaker 1: mitigation perspective, for sure, we still have the capacity to
Speaker 1: to you know, considerably cut emissions if we you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have the sort of pie in the sky,
Speaker 1: but but hopeful things like you know that the elimination
Speaker 1: of the fossil fuel industry, that would do a lot,
Speaker 1: but we would still be in kind of short term,
Speaker 1: I mean, in medium terms sort of fucked like um,
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal. Um So I do think
Speaker 1: that the mitigation efforts. I would never want to say, oh,
Speaker 1: it don't bother like some sort of accelerationist horseshit, because
Speaker 1: of course that will matter. But I do think that, um,
Speaker 1: that adaptation has become in some sense like the mode
Speaker 1: through which we evaluate anything from like political proposals to
Speaker 1: two you know, technical fixes, Like it's at least amongst
Speaker 1: people who are willing to admit there's a problem. I
Speaker 1: guess there's a you know, a whole world of people
Speaker 1: who somehow still don't. Yeah that that that people is
Speaker 1: always larger than what I you know, after like spending
Speaker 1: like months reading you know, so many climate books, I'm
Speaker 1: like still struck at like how basically the majority of
Speaker 1: people in America don't think it's a big problem. And
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, that's ire we're real script that from yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not. I mean, you know, uh, I
Speaker 1: think about like fascism the last time it came around
Speaker 1: and how what a common attitude that was towards fascism
Speaker 1: sweeping Europe And we eventually got on the same page
Speaker 1: about that, and only like a hundred million people died.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I know, but I guess I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: there there is like there. I think they're really strong.
Speaker 1: I magical, if that's the right word. Reasons for the
Speaker 1: persistence not of like not of denial is m you know,
Speaker 1: in this kind of like stupid stereotypical way, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's a Chinese hoax and all that stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: mean that. I mean more like this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people call it the new denialism, where you acknowledge
Speaker 1: it as a problem, but then you don't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. Like this is what we have in Canada.
Speaker 1: We have a national government that that talks all the
Speaker 1: time and then subsidizes every oil industry that you can
Speaker 1: get its hands on, you know, a sort of like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a problem, and we're doing everything we can. Here's
Speaker 1: our new l en Gen pipeline or whatever, um that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I think that the dominant way of
Speaker 1: talking about the problem still contains a lot of like
Speaker 1: weird uncertainty. You know that people say things like, um,
Speaker 1: you know there's a chance that we're heading towards water scarcity.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no scientist thinks there's a chance.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows it's the case, but we frame it as
Speaker 1: if it's still this big tig uncertainty in the future.
Speaker 1: And I think that allows people to feel, like what
Speaker 1: Garrison saying, a kind of like it gives a room
Speaker 1: for not doubt, but like distance or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to describe it as. Um, yeah, I think distance,
Speaker 1: because that's all that's that's that's so deep, particularly in
Speaker 1: the American and I guess the Canadian psyche, right, like
Speaker 1: even just going back to like the wars of the
Speaker 1: last century, this idea that like, well, we're we're separated
Speaker 1: from it, We're far enough away from it. And I
Speaker 1: think there was even an idea among people who accepted
Speaker 1: the reality of climate change in Canada specifically that like, well,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna make this place a better growing climate
Speaker 1: or whatever, Like it's not gonna it's not going to
Speaker 1: lead to tornado, Like it's not going to lead to
Speaker 1: like massive storm fronts of lightning built by giant fire
Speaker 1: waves destroying entire cities, Like that's not gonna happen, and
Speaker 1: I yeah, yeah, the other Yeah. One interesting thing, This
Speaker 1: is just something I've been writing about lately, like not
Speaker 1: just for myself. I haven't published it or anything, but
Speaker 1: but one of the one of the things I've been
Speaker 1: trying to study a lot is the climate economic modeling,
Speaker 1: you know, like the stuff that the governments supposedly leans
Speaker 1: on to like make its plans or determine its tax
Speaker 1: rates for carbon and this kind of stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: And one of the crazy things about those models, as
Speaker 1: I've dug into them, both at the technical level, like
Speaker 1: right down to the mathematical you know, choice is made,
Speaker 1: but also how they conceive of them is that all
Speaker 1: those models are built h and therefore, you know, most
Speaker 1: of the policy expertise that's based on them is also
Speaker 1: built on this idea that everything political will stay the same,
Speaker 1: everything political economic will stay the same, things will just
Speaker 1: get hotter. So like they are a model of stable
Speaker 1: capitalism in a warmer world. Do you know, does that
Speaker 1: make any sense? No, Yeah, it's this idea that well,
Speaker 1: it's it's this acceptance that like it's going to get hotter. Um,
Speaker 1: But this ignorant, ignorant the fact that like, and that's
Speaker 1: going to increase the number of refugees, and that's going
Speaker 1: to provide fuel for the radical right, and that's going
Speaker 1: to lead to more exterminationists to talk in like mainstream
Speaker 1: politics and like, yeah, it's yes, I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1: And what worries me is that that is absolutely like
Speaker 1: you can walk really far out on that limb and
Speaker 1: then it just cracks and and then you know, the
Speaker 1: whole fun and show is no longer temple. And that's
Speaker 1: I think, you know, those moments like you're describing, there'll
Speaker 1: be placed specific I suppose, yes, but it's that's the
Speaker 1: ship that scares me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to the normal person in the street a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. It starts to make sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. Yeah, I think, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of people there is definitely like the
Speaker 1: everything will stay mostly the same syndrome along among a
Speaker 1: lot of the population, whether you know they fall the
Speaker 1: conservative or liberal side. I think there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: there's a lot of acts that that's a whole lot
Speaker 1: easier and in terms of like even for like you know,
Speaker 1: people who are more radical, um even you know who
Speaker 1: are like on like more on like the left. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there is like this you know perception that
Speaker 1: capital is just going is it's gonna stay very similar
Speaker 1: to how we see it now. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people underestimate the adaptive capabilities. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the useful things about the plagues last year
Speaker 1: is that we've seen capital like transform it like transform
Speaker 1: itself in very large ways in terms of like retail
Speaker 1: industry supply lines very quickly. Um. So we've both seen
Speaker 1: that kind of you know, you know, large scale transformation
Speaker 1: on on like on a global scale. And we've also
Speaker 1: seen the other thing you talked about creating like islands
Speaker 1: of luxury right of like people who are um, you know,
Speaker 1: higher class, but also some people who are like middle
Speaker 1: class being able to basically create isolated pockets where they
Speaker 1: can live in a life that's pretty similar to what
Speaker 1: they already had. Where everyone else has to live and
Speaker 1: ship like they get they they get everyone else has
Speaker 1: so much worse, whereas a middle class class get to
Speaker 1: stay kind of like in this in this small bubble um.
Speaker 1: And I think that is definitely I think it's really
Speaker 1: useful to look at how that happened in the play,
Speaker 1: you know, early on with people like you know, where
Speaker 1: people like flying to New Zealand to live in there
Speaker 1: like cabins um and being like yeah, that's gonna happen. Um.
Speaker 1: And now with you know, Amazon Man going to space,
Speaker 1: it's like the same thing, right, there's gonna be there's
Speaker 1: gonna see more and more extreme versions of this. Um hm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know any thoughts on that that type of
Speaker 1: thing in terms of you know, how we can look
Speaker 1: at like past past, smaller you know, collapses or crumblings
Speaker 1: of you know, of societal norms get really showing how
Speaker 1: capital is going to adapt and how quickly it can
Speaker 1: adapt in some cases. M I don't know if I
Speaker 1: have any specific thoughts, but I you know, I am
Speaker 1: with you on all of that analysis. I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, I think you're very very right to
Speaker 1: emphasize the kind of robustness the capital keeps demonstrating, like
Speaker 1: like we can knock it all at once. It's a yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's exactly I'm just about to say exactly, And it's
Speaker 1: tougher than virtually every other political economic arrangement you know
Speaker 1: that came before it, at least in the recent centuries,
Speaker 1: like it, it does adapt in this remarkable way or
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, shapeshift. Um. But I also think,
Speaker 1: like you know, just in terms of the kinds of
Speaker 1: dynamics you're describing. Yeah, the the inequality that persists today,
Speaker 1: not only like in its purely economic form, in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, there's a few very rich, very
Speaker 1: powerful people, um, and then the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: planet you know, um, isn't quite far behind, to put
Speaker 1: it lightly, um, But that but that we're also like
Speaker 1: it's almost like a total disaster that ideologically this problem
Speaker 1: emerges precisely at the moment, it seems to me when
Speaker 1: inequality is is so widely understood to be just normal
Speaker 1: or natural, so that the reaction to almost any crisis
Speaker 1: is that, you know, the rich will be fine and
Speaker 1: and whether like people like me might say that sucks
Speaker 1: and that's shitty, but for the most part, it's wide
Speaker 1: they accepted as just the way the world works, right now,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, like, there's never been
Speaker 1: a better argument for a wealth tax than there is
Speaker 1: right now. I can't think of one maybe the robber
Speaker 1: barons in the States or whatever, you know, in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth early twentieth century. But it's it's like, at
Speaker 1: least to me, it seems to be just here in
Speaker 1: Canada at least it's a total joke, Like we talked
Speaker 1: about it, but it's nowhere near happening. There's a sort
Speaker 1: of strange like you know, I think Naomi Client has
Speaker 1: written about this, like the kind of like poor timing
Speaker 1: of the fact that the climate crisis happened precisely when
Speaker 1: you know that democracy and social democratic forces are at
Speaker 1: their weakest, or at least not weakest, but you know,
Speaker 1: not in a good spot. Yeah, I mean, and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was always tempting earlier to talk
Speaker 1: about Syria and kind of have climate change contributed to
Speaker 1: that and how that contributed to rising authoritarians And there's
Speaker 1: actually been some new analysis on that that kind of
Speaker 1: has made me less confident in climate change as a
Speaker 1: driver of that conflict. Um I am, I guess, But
Speaker 1: but what what what I do and why I do
Speaker 1: still talk about that when I talk about like how
Speaker 1: all this is going to work? Is kind of one
Speaker 1: of the things that's most important to understand is that,
Speaker 1: like the problem is not just climate change, right, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's not just that it's getting warmer, and
Speaker 1: it's not even just that climate change is causing these problems.
Speaker 1: Is that we have these pre existing problems. We have
Speaker 1: all these these issues we didn't deal with for years
Speaker 1: and years. Um. It's like an old house and you
Speaker 1: didn't do the repair work necessary, and then you know
Speaker 1: there's there's extreme weather and the weather does It's not
Speaker 1: just the weather that causes the problems, it's you've got
Speaker 1: all these all these issues that cascade. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the terms I think we're using a lot because we're
Speaker 1: trying to get people away from the from the discussion
Speaker 1: of collapse, which I don't think is productive. UM. A
Speaker 1: friend of both Garrisonizes, is an e R nurse who
Speaker 1: has been kind of working through COVID and was talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that like, um, you know, prior to COVID,
Speaker 1: we had a shortage of healthcare workers. It was exacerbated
Speaker 1: by COVID, more people quit, it was exacerbated by all
Speaker 1: of these different sort of like issues structurally within Portland itself,
Speaker 1: in the way the city is set up, and now
Speaker 1: you've got um, all these different medical systems kind of
Speaker 1: like falling apart at the point when they're most necessary.
Speaker 1: And the term that he uses is the crumbles um,
Speaker 1: which I like a lot. Just this this thing, it's
Speaker 1: not ever going to just fall apart, but pieces of
Speaker 1: it are breaking off at all times, and it's it's
Speaker 1: this um. I think that I I think it's an
Speaker 1: easier way to get people because like there's you know,
Speaker 1: we're having an in Portland right now. We had this
Speaker 1: fucking heatwave hit. At the same time, we got a
Speaker 1: notice that because of supply line issues, um Oregon was
Speaker 1: out of chlor I think it was chlorine in order
Speaker 1: to like uh pure for the for the water filtration systems.
Speaker 1: And they were like, it'll be fine this time, We're
Speaker 1: gonna we have like enough stored up to to deal
Speaker 1: with like the shortage of equipment. But it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: but what about next time? And the same thing. Because
Speaker 1: of COVID jet fuel, like to save money, companies fired
Speaker 1: all of their drivers, so there's not enough jet fuel
Speaker 1: or was not enough jet fuel, which was fine during COVID,
Speaker 1: but then these fires hit and they're having to ground
Speaker 1: firefighting planes because there's just no jet fuel, and what
Speaker 1: there is is being requisitioned to keep flames planes going
Speaker 1: to and fro, and so you can't adequately fight the fire.
Speaker 1: It's these wow, yeah, all these these seemingly little things
Speaker 1: that become big things when you this. Uh it's like
Speaker 1: climate changes like steroids to all these little problems too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Then and they
Speaker 1: sort of tend a cascade way that we didn't we
Speaker 1: didn't predict. Yeah. Yeah, it's chaos theory stuff, right, It's
Speaker 1: like we're we're all we're we're tipping over the edge
Speaker 1: of chaos right now, past the point where it makes
Speaker 1: things more adaptable, and towards the point where it all
Speaker 1: just kind of spirals out of control. Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine talking about something like equilibrium right now. It's
Speaker 1: just Yeah, but since virtually all of our science is
Speaker 1: built on the model of equilibrium that causes trouble, should
Speaker 1: you speak to that a little bit more? Because I'm
Speaker 1: I am not a scientist, and I'm fairly certain Garrison
Speaker 1: doesn't either, so that I hadn't really thought of things
Speaker 1: in those terms. Yeah, I mean, I only think of
Speaker 1: it in those terms because you know, I'm training in economics,
Speaker 1: and that's the framing. But in general, like most of
Speaker 1: the complex models not so that's not so true of
Speaker 1: the climate science models necessarily behind any means, but most
Speaker 1: of the ways that we model, like the behavior of
Speaker 1: an ecosystem or the behavior of an economy, assumes that
Speaker 1: there's a sort of tendency toward normally normalizing, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like that over time, a series of
Speaker 1: processes kind of build up a tendency toward a particular direction.
Speaker 1: So like that, you know, in in economics that the
Speaker 1: economy is understood to be kind of self correcting, not
Speaker 1: even kind of self correcting. So like if something they
Speaker 1: call it a shock, If something happens in the in
Speaker 1: the in the in the economic system that's unexpected, then
Speaker 1: of course the whole system kind of shakes a bit.
Speaker 1: But then the assumption is that the overall momentum and
Speaker 1: dynamics of the system will bring things back to normal.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense, Yeah, And that's exactly how we
Speaker 1: model ecosystem behavior. Like cut a hole in the middle
Speaker 1: of a forest, the assumption is that for a second,
Speaker 1: for a second on forest time, this force is like,
Speaker 1: holy fun, there's all this sunlight and there's weird animals
Speaker 1: in a here that weren't here before, but over time,
Speaker 1: the forests sort of pattern of operation will bring it
Speaker 1: back to normal. This is why like clear cutting is
Speaker 1: supposed to be okay, because eventually the ecosystem will recover um.
Speaker 1: And most of our sciences are built on this kind
Speaker 1: of equilibrium oriented model, kind of normalizing of the larger
Speaker 1: processes of the system that just had their own momentum.
Speaker 1: And there's only a few, like ecological sciences that break
Speaker 1: that pattern. And there are things like people who study
Speaker 1: deserts which are like, oh, they don't really have a middle,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't It doesn't help to talk about a
Speaker 1: desert's average temperature because the desert never is that temperature,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's just in the middle
Speaker 1: of extremes um and uh. And I think that at
Speaker 1: least from a sort of like scientific tech perspective, technological
Speaker 1: fixed perspective for climate change, one of the biggest problems
Speaker 1: is the fact that most of our kind of science
Speaker 1: and knowledge can't deal with dissequilibrium systems, like ones that
Speaker 1: actually we don't know where they're going and we don't
Speaker 1: know where they'll end and we don't have the tools,
Speaker 1: like literally the mathematical tools to manage them, so we
Speaker 1: can't model them, and then we don't know what then
Speaker 1: to do. One of the things I've been reading in
Speaker 1: preparation with this that's been useful from a uh an
Speaker 1: intellectual framework is this. It was written in two thou
Speaker 1: and twelve. It's called the Gonzo Futurist Manifesto, and it's
Speaker 1: a guy kind of laying out as someone looking into
Speaker 1: this and told them be like, well, it looks like
Speaker 1: everything's in this process of like either free fall or
Speaker 1: massive change, and we're like, I don't think a lot
Speaker 1: of people caught up to. And the frame that the
Speaker 1: framework day uses post normal um is like the acceptance
Speaker 1: that you're in a post normal era, which I think
Speaker 1: is what you're getting at. There's the equilibrium isn't going
Speaker 1: to come back right, like we're we and we're you're
Speaker 1: you're starting from a flawed position when you're even thinking
Speaker 1: of considering that as a possibility, um, the shift has
Speaker 1: been too fundamental. It's the same thing politically with assuming
Speaker 1: like anything could work the same way after Trump, Like no,
Speaker 1: we're in post normal times where it's never going back. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think sometimes it's you know, it
Speaker 1: can be quite problematic to talk to progressives of a
Speaker 1: different generation, like say my parents, who weren't by any
Speaker 1: means lefties, but they were like old school Canadian social democrats,
Speaker 1: you know, big welfares ate that kind of stuff. Is
Speaker 1: that the assumption is that that's what we need right now,
Speaker 1: Like that's we just need to get that back and
Speaker 1: everything will be cool. Like that's that's my dad's analysis
Speaker 1: of the problem. Yeah, and I can see the temptation, sure,
Speaker 1: but it's totally not true. Yeah, I mean, the temptation
Speaker 1: is profound because like, yeah, I mean it if things
Speaker 1: were if you have this feeling that things were good,
Speaker 1: whether or not it's right or wrong, you're naturally gonna
Speaker 1: want to return to that, which, you know, is what
Speaker 1: what's going to be the fuel for the authoritarian version
Speaker 1: of this, but it's also going to be the fuel
Speaker 1: for climate Leviathan, you know, like in any case, like
Speaker 1: it's easier. The scary thing about trying to bring climate
Speaker 1: X into being right is that it's by far the
Speaker 1: best possible kind of solution you have, but it requires
Speaker 1: saying fundamentally we're the way we all live is going
Speaker 1: to have to change our attitudes towards democracy, are going
Speaker 1: to have to change our attitudes towards what a society is.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to shift in the fundamental level. Well,
Speaker 1: everyone else is saying, here's how we bring back what
Speaker 1: you used to have here, so we get the coffee
Speaker 1: back in the stores, you know, Like, yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of been the problem with a lot of left
Speaker 1: leaning projects is that it is a newer thing, and
Speaker 1: that's why none of them have really lasted very long
Speaker 1: or they've you know, gone horribly wrong very quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if we're gonna try to do any Climate X
Speaker 1: is more like a stateless world, or at least a
Speaker 1: stateless area. That introduces a whole, a whole new problem
Speaker 1: that we haven't really seen on a mass scale, you know,
Speaker 1: outside of like Rojava or something. Um, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a whole new, a whole new problem to deal with,
Speaker 1: and a whole lot of people are going to be
Speaker 1: scared of that. Agreed, And I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, like, no, I'm stating you obvious, So I
Speaker 1: apologize for this, But part of me thinks, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of need to say it to remind myself.
Speaker 1: But you know, for for good or ill. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's for ill. A lot of people, like
Speaker 1: even though they know that how they live now is untenable,
Speaker 1: you know, in the larger frame, it's also how they
Speaker 1: live now. Like like like a lot of us, myself included,
Speaker 1: are invested in the way things work now, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like like the prospect of that
Speaker 1: radical change that that is a hard sell when you know,
Speaker 1: like this is what put food on the table, this
Speaker 1: is how my kids go to school, Like these are
Speaker 1: you know, this is like that big leap that we
Speaker 1: will have to demand of ourselves and others at some
Speaker 1: point in the near future. Probably is also like justifiably
Speaker 1: terrifying to lots of people. Yeah, and it's I mean
Speaker 1: the big yeah. And it's always easier, it's always it's
Speaker 1: a lot less frightening to tell people. I can make
Speaker 1: it like it was yeah, which but it was you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe it was awesome for some of them, you know, um,
Speaker 1: for my dada, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find it interesting
Speaker 1: that you bring up deserts in that framework of like
Speaker 1: of like equilibrium in terms of like, you know, they're
Speaker 1: being a normal and desert is not as one of
Speaker 1: the things that isn't it's always fluctuating between different temperates
Speaker 1: um and you know, and and I think there was
Speaker 1: there was a popular anarchists book I think also written
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve, um just called Desert about
Speaker 1: climate change and how basically it's it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not about like how the whole world
Speaker 1: we're literally turned into a desert. It's about like how
Speaker 1: the desert model in terms of like they're never being
Speaker 1: a normal again. It's gonna fluctuating between extremes. It's going
Speaker 1: to happen in a lot of places, like like everything
Speaker 1: is gonna get turned into their own version of deserts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The title is based off the idea of that old
Speaker 1: quote that like empires make a desert and call it
Speaker 1: peace right, and it's kind of seeing global capital as
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it's called desert. Yeah. Online, it's like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a manifesto. But yeah, but yeah, like
Speaker 1: in terms of like we're never gonna even even as
Speaker 1: the crumbles start happening, we're not We're never gonna rereach
Speaker 1: a place of stability. It's always going to be in flux.
Speaker 1: We're never going to get to that normal again. We
Speaker 1: may have coffee for a year, we may have insulin
Speaker 1: you know, being produced locally, but it's going to be
Speaker 1: it's not that we're not going to have the same
Speaker 1: false stability that we have now, right, Like we have
Speaker 1: an idea of stability now now it's not true, you know,
Speaker 1: because Taco Bell doesn't have ground beef anymore. Um right,
Speaker 1: but like, actually real, are you guys saying yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I mean there's shortages Taco Bells, like not able
Speaker 1: to serve a lot of stuff. They're having shortages of things.
Speaker 1: You don't really have Taco Bell here in can You're
Speaker 1: not missing. I was, Oh, but you guys have tim
Speaker 1: Horton's so no one's hands are clean. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's true. Yeah. I didn't didn't mean. I didn't need
Speaker 1: to absolve my strow responsibility. I just ate some Tim
Speaker 1: Horton's cereal this morning. My my mother, who lives in
Speaker 1: Canada sent me some. Um so that's what I ate
Speaker 1: for breakfast. So yeah, did you used to live in Canada?
Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, I'm Canadian Oh yeah, he's Canadian as hell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I moved to Portland with my family. Then most most
Speaker 1: of my families moved back to Canada, which is probably
Speaker 1: the smart move. Um. But I mean, as we see,
Speaker 1: you know, both both these countries right now have like
Speaker 1: liberals in charge quote quote right now, and it's not no.
Speaker 1: You know, both Trudeau and Biden have a lot of
Speaker 1: the same problems despite their generational gap, and they have
Speaker 1: kind of the same effect in terms of what they
Speaker 1: say versus what they do. You know, both of them.
Speaker 1: You know, Biden talked about banning fracking in his campaign,
Speaker 1: and everyone who is further to the left of Biden
Speaker 1: new like, no, you're just lying. I like this, come on,
Speaker 1: like come on. And you know Trudeau made a lot
Speaker 1: of promises about pipelines and how that's not that's not
Speaker 1: working out, um. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that we haven't talked about yet is the symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: between the state and like tech companies and oil companies, um,
Speaker 1: and how that will be alert how that I see
Speaker 1: that being a large part of Levivan is basically the
Speaker 1: government subsidizing or the government letting tech companies try to
Speaker 1: fix the problem therefore increasing our reliance on capital and
Speaker 1: those companies to maintain kind of you know, you know
Speaker 1: in terms of like gew in terms of like gew
Speaker 1: and engineering or carbon capture. Right if if the government
Speaker 1: is gonna is gonna help help those companies do those things,
Speaker 1: as soon as those companies go away, we get so
Speaker 1: much more carbon released immediately. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this like self preservation that I think capital is going
Speaker 1: to try to do. Um. I know you you you
Speaker 1: brought up stuff similar to this in terms of like
Speaker 1: climate levies. That's like, yeah, do you do you have
Speaker 1: like what what? What do you see? Now? That's kind
Speaker 1: of frightening in terms of you know, tech getting its
Speaker 1: hands on not just like government influence, but like you know,
Speaker 1: trying to make itself a necessary part of our world
Speaker 1: in terms of in term terms of climates. I mean,
Speaker 1: the text is necessary for a lot of ways right now,
Speaker 1: but specifically in terms of climate. How do you kind
Speaker 1: of see that happening? Yeah? Now, I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. And I'm not sure I put enough
Speaker 1: thought into it to be honest with you, but I
Speaker 1: do think you're right there. It's it's it's obvious, it
Speaker 1: seems to me right now that that tech or you know,
Speaker 1: green whatever they're calling themselves this kind of stuff. The goal,
Speaker 1: and I think it's actually like quite explicit, is to
Speaker 1: make itself essential to how we deal with the problem,
Speaker 1: which which means that of course, like I think you
Speaker 1: just said, the first thing that that requires is that
Speaker 1: we write off a whole bunch of ways of dealing
Speaker 1: with the problem so that we can prioritize this way
Speaker 1: of doing things. And then and then once that, once
Speaker 1: that becomes the way of managing things like carbon capture
Speaker 1: or you know, something like that, that requires, as you say,
Speaker 1: you know, once you once you start, it's like an addiction,
Speaker 1: like you can't you can't stop it, or you're fucked. Um.
Speaker 1: If we've written the other options off the table or
Speaker 1: they just become untenable at some point, then then yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the way that that tech will be crucial
Speaker 1: to this um is absolutely their plan. I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, like and I would say probably it's it's
Speaker 1: already under discussion in big you know, serious ways that
Speaker 1: big companies like Google and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I would say, on this same front,
Speaker 1: and I think you just mentioned it too, is this
Speaker 1: idea of you know, what will happen with geo engineering,
Speaker 1: which I think it in terms of what I find
Speaker 1: scary that I find a bit scary, and not just
Speaker 1: of course, you know, the sort of experimenting with the
Speaker 1: planetary system, which you know is pretty terrifying, but but
Speaker 1: the political implications of of the power associated with being
Speaker 1: able to manipulate the planet purely in the interests of
Speaker 1: maintaining capital's power, you know, like we're really like, we're
Speaker 1: really talking about we are willing to dicker with the
Speaker 1: entire planet rather than change the way that we live.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's that astounding. The scariest part of your
Speaker 1: book for me was when you started talking about that
Speaker 1: and space weaponry um, and that I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this a lot yesterday with Bess going up in his
Speaker 1: penis rocket um. And I think I even talked about
Speaker 1: it on on another show. Is yeah, is the intersection
Speaker 1: between the militarization of the atmosphere with the UH then
Speaker 1: with like the control of the atmosphere right like basically
Speaker 1: like making the atmosphere a thing that we're like, I
Speaker 1: think colonizes the wrong word. I think that that's kind
Speaker 1: of inappropriate for actual clon colonization. But it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of similar, Like it's like it's the it's another frontier
Speaker 1: that we wanted to conquer. It's the next one is
Speaker 1: gonna be the atmosphere itself in terms of like weapons
Speaker 1: as you talked about in the book, and then geo engineering,
Speaker 1: and then with you know Bezos talking about moving all
Speaker 1: of the polluting stuff into space, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing. Um yeah, I'd like so, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: watching that happened yesterday, and you know, your your book
Speaker 1: was written a few years ago, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. You're like, that's and before I read
Speaker 1: your book, that's not that's not. I never thought about
Speaker 1: the space thing specifically, And now with Basis talking about that,
Speaker 1: that's like wow, they're just going all for it, Like
Speaker 1: they're just yeah, they're just like it's like what what what?
Speaker 1: What what made you guys think of that possibility? Like
Speaker 1: what was the thing you saw there? Was like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is how we kind of see this trend going
Speaker 1: that will result in this kind of colonization of the
Speaker 1: atmosphere in space, And well, well what did you see
Speaker 1: that kind of got you there? Well, like, if I'm
Speaker 1: honest with you, ah, that was really Joel's brainchild, like
Speaker 1: that that part of the book about SRM solar Radiation
Speaker 1: management and the space weaponry and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That was something that was a connection that he made
Speaker 1: and he pursued, uh, most rigorously, and he actually wrote
Speaker 1: that part of the book because as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: to split it up, you know what I mean. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I wouldn't want I mean, for me what
Speaker 1: who made that connection was Joel, So I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to I wouldn't want to speak for him. I think
Speaker 1: he he's he's in conversation both professionally and also just
Speaker 1: like interest wise with a whole range of of international
Speaker 1: relations scholars who inside the university are considered kind of wacky,
Speaker 1: like people who take like space weapons seriously, like they're
Speaker 1: sort of like peripheral, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: Joel has been in conversation with him for a very
Speaker 1: long time, so that he knew all that literature like
Speaker 1: already before we even started. And I've never even heard
Speaker 1: of it, um. But I do think the connection is
Speaker 1: really compelling, and I know he's pursued it since I
Speaker 1: hope you guys get a chance to chat with him.
Speaker 1: He's a fucking brilliant I love to you're you're just
Speaker 1: the easier person to contact. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's
Speaker 1: and he loves to chat chat and he's infinitely more
Speaker 1: articulate than me. Like you'll you'll you'll get way more
Speaker 1: out of him than you ever have from me. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a brilliant guy. Uh, but he's he's a that's
Speaker 1: a connection that he made and I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: speak for how he got there. Sure, like you're more interested,
Speaker 1: Like correct me if I'm wrong, But it's more you
Speaker 1: you have like a lot of more studying in like
Speaker 1: the economics side of things. Um, do do you see
Speaker 1: because like the other the other kind of out of
Speaker 1: this you know, ties in the space separy is just
Speaker 1: the U. S Military itself. Um do you see them
Speaker 1: interacting with the economy and in collapse like in like
Speaker 1: crumble scenarios. How how do you see the military being
Speaker 1: used by the state to kind of not solve issues
Speaker 1: but like you know, mitigate some of them or adapt
Speaker 1: to some of those. Yeah. I mean again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say I know any better than anyone else,
Speaker 1: but I do think, I mean, the U. S Military
Speaker 1: in particular has a couple of advantages you want to
Speaker 1: call it that in terms of the role that they
Speaker 1: might play as you know, certain kinds of crumbling become
Speaker 1: essential for the state to deal with them. The first
Speaker 1: is that it's been taking climate change seriously for decades
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, no mencing words in any of those reports, exactly,
Speaker 1: very blunt and very accurate. Yeah. And they even they
Speaker 1: know for a long time, they know the international security risks.
Speaker 1: They you know, they have they have plans, they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to design weapons that don't require fossil fuels
Speaker 1: like they are. They take the problem seriously, so they're
Speaker 1: ahead in that sense. And also, I do think that
Speaker 1: the kind of sort of localized for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, of regionalized crumbling that you guys are just
Speaker 1: discussing will make the militarization of certain parts of the economy,
Speaker 1: probably especially supply lines um and certain production processes, maybe
Speaker 1: even if something as central as agriculture um, well, the
Speaker 1: militarization and the securitization of those aspects of the modern
Speaker 1: economy are going to become more and more essential, and
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, at least in North America,
Speaker 1: the principle instrument of that securitization will be the military.
Speaker 1: And I think the other interesting things in terms of
Speaker 1: like the plague is like that's the one thing we
Speaker 1: all saw the military do is be crucial in the
Speaker 1: vaccine distribution effort. Um. So I think, you know, really
Speaker 1: the past year has been for interesting glimpse into how
Speaker 1: we're gonna use our capital and military power when stuff
Speaker 1: gets more and more unstable. Um. It seems like in
Speaker 1: the States that's how the state, the state knows how
Speaker 1: to step in is via the military or via the police.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? Because there isn't like
Speaker 1: as you know here in Canada. I mean, we've got
Speaker 1: lots of things that are problematic, but one of the
Speaker 1: things we didn't need for the distribution of the vaccine
Speaker 1: was anything more than our public health care system, which
Speaker 1: was extant and worked perfectly fine, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like we didn't have to build up any new infrastructure,
Speaker 1: and like that, we just had to say, oh, you
Speaker 1: people who are already doing this do this too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the lack of the lack of civil infrastructure in
Speaker 1: the States makes US more both need to rely on
Speaker 1: the military, and it makes Americans imaginations so small that
Speaker 1: the only way they can envision that is your military
Speaker 1: force or is through policing because the only civil infrastructure
Speaker 1: we fund is policing in the military. Well in the
Speaker 1: military is also the only thing Americans overwhelmingly trust, Like
Speaker 1: there's no other like you look at polling, like there's
Speaker 1: no other branch of the government that is widely trusted
Speaker 1: by US citizens other than the military. And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's because of the most successful propaganda campaign of all time, um,
Speaker 1: their partnership with Hollywood, but it is it is a reality,
Speaker 1: Like huh, yeah, that's a really interesting point. We'll probably
Speaker 1: want to rap up with. The one other thing I
Speaker 1: want to mention is like the hardest part of looking
Speaker 1: at Levithan for me is the is how incapable the
Speaker 1: UN is um in terms of like like how bad
Speaker 1: they are at doing their job. So what do you
Speaker 1: think would need to change um for something like the
Speaker 1: UN And maybe maybe not then specifically, but like you know,
Speaker 1: if we're going to have like a transnational cooperation of
Speaker 1: the state and capital to try to to try to
Speaker 1: to try to you know, alleviate some of the worst
Speaker 1: spect of climate change. What would need to happen for
Speaker 1: to make that more realistic because the u N is
Speaker 1: not it, at least not right now. Um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have a good answer to
Speaker 1: that question, to be honest with you, you know, partly
Speaker 1: because it's such a good question. Um. I think the
Speaker 1: U N and the u n F Triple C you know,
Speaker 1: have have proven like like I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's too much to say that, you know that the
Speaker 1: international negotiations that have gone on around this, you know, Copenhagen, Paris,
Speaker 1: can COOUM whatever, Dada da da have literally got us nowhere,
Speaker 1: like seriously nowhere. Um. It's been more of, you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of long term dithering. H And it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine to me at least that that framework an
Speaker 1: approach to global problem solving is gonna you know, somehow
Speaker 1: be redeemed the next meeting a Glasgow and everything will
Speaker 1: be fine again. Um. I think that from a purely
Speaker 1: like real politic perspective, it's gonna take like the US
Speaker 1: and China creating a G two and just making rules
Speaker 1: for the world. Those rules will be terrible um and
Speaker 1: and it it will be a kind of levi authoritarian
Speaker 1: Leviathan form if that happens. I think, but I think
Speaker 1: in terms of what we might actually anticipate happening in
Speaker 1: the medium term, that's much closer than any sort of
Speaker 1: like global hug that's gonna get us through this. I'm
Speaker 1: so like, I'm I'm pretty young, I'm eighteen. I'm part
Speaker 1: of the zoomers, um my generation. You know. The friends
Speaker 1: that I've had that are my age don't have much
Speaker 1: hope for the future. Kind of like the term we
Speaker 1: use is like a dum er. That's like kind of
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing we use is like we
Speaker 1: can't see anything besides doom and despair. And for some
Speaker 1: people that drives them to nihilism. For some people, it
Speaker 1: just drives them to apathy. Uh, sometimes it drives them
Speaker 1: to like anger and resentment and attack. Um do do
Speaker 1: you have any hope for what's going to happen in
Speaker 1: the next few years? Do you? You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you have kids, but like how what what
Speaker 1: do you think? You know, like you're you're at least
Speaker 1: your teachers, Like what what do you say to like
Speaker 1: younger generations? In terms of like, how can we look
Speaker 1: at these very depressing problems and how can we get
Speaker 1: a more useful outlook than just being doomers, because like,
Speaker 1: the doomer action is natural, it's easy, you know. I
Speaker 1: I default to that every day. You know, it takes
Speaker 1: it takes takes active fighting to not just want to
Speaker 1: lay in my bed and cry. Um, So like what what? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like do you have hope? Where does it? If so,
Speaker 1: where does it come from? Where can you see you know,
Speaker 1: not non dumor outlooks being useful? Yeah, I think about
Speaker 1: this all the time too. Um. I do have kids there,
Speaker 1: you're exactly your age, you're seventeen and twenty. Um. So
Speaker 1: one just graduated high school. There's part way through university. Um,
Speaker 1: that's what he went to do. Um And I don't
Speaker 1: think interestingly enough. And I don't mean this in any
Speaker 1: kind of like value of way. Neither of them are dumers.
Speaker 1: Both of them are. I wouldn't call them hopeful, but
Speaker 1: they are. They are not h which and it would
Speaker 1: be totally reasonable to be. They are not obsessed with
Speaker 1: what the future seems not to hold. Um. And I
Speaker 1: say that only because um, I do think that well,
Speaker 1: I guess one of the have to sort of responses,
Speaker 1: and the first of which is is, I apologize quite cliche,
Speaker 1: but I actually think it still matters, and that is
Speaker 1: that your generation will soon be in charge and that's
Speaker 1: a very good, good thing. Um. But but that's the cliche.
Speaker 1: But the second part is that I I because I because,
Speaker 1: like Robert was saying earlier, I think I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: sort of have a little bit of a similar take
Speaker 1: cares because I don't see this as kind of like
Speaker 1: a collapse process, but rather us managing a series of
Speaker 1: radical changes in the way that systems work, crumblings, you know,
Speaker 1: and breakdowns, that kind of thing, but also changes that
Speaker 1: that we that my hope lies in our capacity to
Speaker 1: use those moments as ways to not fix things or
Speaker 1: make things all better, but to like work together generously
Speaker 1: with the folks with whom we're alive they'll be dickheads
Speaker 1: for sure, um, to to make the most of what
Speaker 1: we have at that moment and to work to the future.
Speaker 1: And I don't see those moments running out. Those will
Speaker 1: be there, and insofar as we leap into them generously,
Speaker 1: because we don't know any better than anyone else, necessarily
Speaker 1: we will always have the capacity for hopeful and actually
Speaker 1: joyous solidarity in confronting those problems, and it won't always
Speaker 1: be fun around on the tournament romanticize it. But all
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that I actually think that
Speaker 1: they're the world will not be without joy unless we
Speaker 1: choose to let it go there. And I guess like,
Speaker 1: at least for now, I still feel like we can.
Speaker 1: We can tell ourselves, we can, we can confront what's
Speaker 1: coming our way. I don't know if it's going to
Speaker 1: be bad or good, but we will do so. Um.
Speaker 1: And there will be a group of us who does
Speaker 1: it with good in our hearts, and I would just
Speaker 1: take that for what it's worth, you know. Yeah, It's like,
Speaker 1: in like a weird way, a lot of these crumbles
Speaker 1: will almost give an opportunity for radical freedom because like,
Speaker 1: you know, we we think of ourselves and looking like
Speaker 1: a free society, but you know, we rely on so
Speaker 1: many things that are out of our control and that
Speaker 1: you know makes us unhappy subconsciously and subconsciously um. And
Speaker 1: when we're forced to live such be so active in
Speaker 1: our life and in our communities and with you know,
Speaker 1: people we love and care about. You know, it does
Speaker 1: it the one thing that I hope that I do
Speaker 1: hope for that it will give us more opportunities to
Speaker 1: have like some like radical freedom, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: be able to live and to be able to have
Speaker 1: small communities that can live, you know, much much more
Speaker 1: free than what we do now. Um in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, authoritarianism from the state and through you know,
Speaker 1: companies in capital um. Yeah, as as long as as
Speaker 1: long as we don't fall into a full military dictatorship
Speaker 1: of capital tech. UM, that's kind of that's kind of
Speaker 1: the thing that I would like. Um. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to talk about this stuff without sounding cheesy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you talk about when you try to sell
Speaker 1: people on the only possible optimistic outcomes for this, because
Speaker 1: there's you you have to I guess I think we
Speaker 1: were also trying. This is another thing capitalism does well,
Speaker 1: talking about it as a resilient system. Um. When you
Speaker 1: talk about alternatives to capitalism, it's hard not to sound like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard not to sound silly to people
Speaker 1: because anything that isn't this specific system either sounds you're
Speaker 1: either going back and saying I want to do a
Speaker 1: community Soviet Union again, but we'll get it right this time,
Speaker 1: or you're I don't know, it's it's tough because people
Speaker 1: are are very bought have very much bought into the
Speaker 1: idea that like anything that isn't a slight modification of
Speaker 1: what we're doing right now is um is silly, uh
Speaker 1: star trek bullshit. You know, I agree you guys, you
Speaker 1: guys have probably both heard that. I always come back
Speaker 1: to it all the time. I think it's great that
Speaker 1: famous quote from Frederick Jamison where he says it's easier
Speaker 1: to imagine the end of the world than it is
Speaker 1: the end of capitalism and u and it gets attributed
Speaker 1: to tons of different people, but it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was coined by that guy Jamison. He's a English
Speaker 1: professor actually weirdly enough at Duke. But there's a good
Speaker 1: ursula kay La gwinn uh comment on kind of the same.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm sure, but I think you're right, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a quip and it's sort of
Speaker 1: you know, superficial, but it's actually also true. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of the times today, it does feel like that
Speaker 1: it's easy, it's literally easier to imagine us driving the
Speaker 1: planet into the end of its functioning, and it is
Speaker 1: for many people to imagine otherwise. I think I think
Speaker 1: you're right, Robert, like when you tell people, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of things could be otherwise, and
Speaker 1: we could have it quite quickly if we chose. People
Speaker 1: look at you like you have two heads. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that was one of the most optimistic thing I've experienced
Speaker 1: in the last several years was going to northeast Syria,
Speaker 1: which is a mess in a very complicated situation, but
Speaker 1: like sitting down with like militia in the desert and
Speaker 1: having these conversations about like the future that they were
Speaker 1: trying to build, and like here's the like here's our
Speaker 1: soil reclamation project, and like here's the way we're trying
Speaker 1: to like alter and it like, well, if they're able
Speaker 1: to like try, that's remarkable and they've got some ship
Speaker 1: to deal with, you know. Um amazing, Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, super nice to meet you both. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate. And that is our interview with Jeff Mann,
Speaker 1: co author of Climate Leviathan. You can find him on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Jeff p. Man Um Jeff spelt with a
Speaker 1: with a with a G. Not with a not with
Speaker 1: a J, and follow us on Twitter, at cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media and happen Here pod. You can find me at
Speaker 1: Hungry bow Tie. Thank you for listening, and see you tomorrow.