WEBVTT - Thumbs in the Dike 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:05.120 Episode four Thumbs and the Dike. We have had too 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:08.280 much anarchy in our city, the mayor says, and with 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:11.159 the county sheriff and city police chief behind him, he 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.600 lays out the city's aggressive plan to sweep the encampments 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.799 and strike back at criminals hiding in the guise of 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:22.000 a social justice movement. He's talking about you, Tom, Aaron, 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.239 and a growing group of friends and allies who spent 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.080 most of October and November doing eviction resistance. It all 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.680 started with the right wing vigilantes who carried out a 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.920 series of drive by attacks on the camps. At first, 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.559 they just lobbed firecrackers, but that soon evolved into emptying 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:42.920 handguns into tents. In response, the camps organized roving defensive teams. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.120 There were a couple of gunfights and one death, although 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.960 you weren't around for any of those. By the time 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.800 the attack stopped, you had a large, organized group of 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:55.680 people used to taking direct action. From that point, making 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.560 the jump to proactively stopping evictions wasn't such a big deal. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:02.760 Half the landlords in your part of town had jumped 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.120 ship for other cities with less intense climates. Many of 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.319 their properties were sold to banks, or large rental companies. 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:12.559 Unemployment in your city hit as high as thirty percent 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.560 by some counts, and more people nationwide are out on 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:17.480 the street than there have ever been at any point 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.319 in your life, at least where you live, though people 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.800 have options. There are now five camps hosting more than 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.560 five thousand people. Two of them are based out of 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.039 large apartment complexes, two were in city parks, and the 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:32.639 fifth is made from several square blocks of the city 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.039 that had an eviction rate topping eighty percent. Some of 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:38.760 the people joining collectives are asking for help are folks 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.960 who months ago surely supported the cops cracking down on encampments. 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.920 Now they're on your side, driven by desperation. You try 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.240 not to let that piss you off. What matters is 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.760 that you're in this together now, and aggressive eviction offense 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.000 has kept hundreds of your neighbors in their homes and 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.720 helped the population in the camps stay manageable. But of 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.720 course the landlords aren't happy with that, and local business 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:06.000 owners keep blaming the camps for graffiti and hampering the recovery. 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:08.400 You spend enough time online to know this ship is 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.840 happening all around the country and eviction defense action in 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.920 Portland turned into a gun battle. Activists in l A 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.720 responded to the tear gassing of an encampment by bombing 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.320 an l A p D van, and worst of all, 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.960 the NYPD killed three activists while clearing out a squat 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.200 in Brooklyn. Every day, two different digital collectives allied with 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.240 the encampments gather not just news of different protests around 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.960 the country, but tactical information and after action reports. You, Tom, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:37.680 and all of the other hundreds of people in the 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.160 Defensive Committee have been taking notes. You've welded together cal 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.360 trips and dote vehicle barricades, rigged up paint cannons to 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.399 coat police car windshields, and experimented with a dozen other 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.440 tactics to protect the main camps. This is bigger than 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.079 your hometown and your little movement. The federal government has 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.080 responded to the absolute societal free fall of the last 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.239 year by blaming anarchists in government, extremists, and an addiction 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.239 to government entitlements. Disaster funding keeps being slashed, which is 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.040 where a lot of this started anyway, But the President 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.440 just announced a raft of emergency police funding using money 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:17.280 the last administration had remarked for climate resiliency projects. You've 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:19.640 spent the last few days going about your duties with 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.400 a sense of doom hanging over your head. It's not 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.880 just the imminent government crackdown. The food situation has gotten 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.919 increasingly tenuous. Wheat crops saw less than half their normal harvest. 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.000 Even potatoes dropped significantly. Several of the camps have started 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.640 permaculture projects in greenhouses, but no one is growing anything 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:40.480 like what you need to feed all these people. Donations 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.720 helped for a while, but everyone's tapped. For the last 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.720 few weeks. You've been able to close the gap by 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.760 sending out dumpster diving teams into the neighborhoods with stocked 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.520 grocery stores and functioning restaurants. One of your neighbors works 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.520 in an Amazon warehouse, and he provided Tom with information 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:57.400 on how to break in and where to find the 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.480 dried goods. All this has helped, but the police have 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.520 grown increasingly aware of your efforts. People in the rich 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.400 neighborhoods have been using a community defense app to warn 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.200 the police about criminals stealing food. Mark, a guy you 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.800 sort of knew from a few past eviction defenses, was 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.240 shot dead outside of a safeway two nights back. We 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.000 can't keep going on like this, Tom says, And he 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.120 tells you he's been reaching out to an old marine 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.000 buddy of his who lives on a farm a couple 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.960 hours out of town. They've got food, but their grid 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.040 is still fucked from the summer, and half the small 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.360 farms out there have lost so much production that they're 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:33.320 on the edge of eviction themselves. We have electricians, we 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.800 can get equipment, and we've got manpower people who will 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.360 help harvest and stand up against the sheriff's department if 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.719 there's an eviction. You'd be lying if you said Tom's 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.640 suggestion didn't scare you a little bit. By bit, the 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.360 daily grind of survival, building resiliency and protecting your community 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.520 has grown to feel more seditious. That seems a bit strong. 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.280 But now you're talking about treating fighters for food to 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.680 defend a farming town against the police. That's nuts. Fuck it. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.400 You tell Tom, let's get the others together and talk 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:11.880 about it. Seems like a good idea to me. In night, 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:16.000 climate scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate and claimed 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.800 for the first time that human influence on warning was 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:23.320 discernible and separate from natural variability. James was not the 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.600 first expert to warn about what we now call climate change, 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:28.640 but he was the first one to get up in 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:30.760 front of the country and give a warning in such 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.479 a clear and unequivocal way at a time when many 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.800 of his fellows would him and haw about natural variability. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.560 At the time, there was tremendous debate, fueled by donations 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.440 from the fossil fuel industry and politicians eager for a 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.560 culture war, about whether or not Hansen was a doomsayer 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.279 or a prophet. We now know that he was, if anything, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.760 too optimistic. The warming trends we have seen put us 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:57.960 roughly thirty years ahead of his most dire predictions. It's 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.479 worth digging into exactly how has happened part of the 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.960 story you already know. Companies like Exxon spent hundreds of 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.800 millions of dollars over the last forty years funding think 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.159 tanks and propaganda campaigns designed to so doubt over the 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.880 reality of climate change or global warming. As a child 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.320 growing up in the Bible Belt, nearly everything I learned 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.000 about climate change was filtered through this lens. The picture 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.040 painted by media pundits and best selling authors like Michael 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.800 Crichton was that scientists were at worst corrupt shills pushing 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:33.240 an environmentalist agenda, and at best alarmist's ginning up panic 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.800 over minor fluctuations in climate. Paul Erlick came up quite 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.880 often in this context. In the late nineteen sixties, he 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.000 was an entomologist at Stanford University who released a book 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:48.680 called The Population Bomb. Its first sentence was, the battle 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.360 to feed all of humanity is over. Paul predicted that 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.040 in the nineteen seventies, hundreds of millions of people were 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.800 going to starve to death due to overpopulation, and there 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.120 was nothing anyone could do to prevent it. The Population 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.320 Bomb sparked a global panic and an anti population growth 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.800 movement that led to repressive laws around the world. It 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.920 also didn't come true, thanks in large part to the 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.720 green Revolution sparked by Agronomius. To Norman Borlog's work, there 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.720 was no mass starvation. Borlog has been rightfully lauded for 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:22.360 creating new hybrid seeds that vastly increased the amount of 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.440 calories farmers in places like India were able to produce. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.280 His work is credited with saving as many as a 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.480 billion lives. I first learned about him on Penn and 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.240 Teller's Bullshit, a libertarian themed science he show that was 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:37.840 popular in the early aughts for the same reason as 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:41.760 South Park. Both shows managed to be anti liberal without 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.120 being right wing in the traditional sense. For kids raised 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.120 conservative but disillusioned with the Republican Party due to the 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.120 Iraq War, these shows provided seemingly clever arguments for why 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.680 both sides were dumb and the smartest thing to do 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.200 was make fun of them. This is not a bad 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.600 thing under all circumstances. If you reflexively to like both 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.360 the Republican and Democratic parties, you will be right more 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:05.800 often than you were wrong. But in the early at 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:10.240 some prominent Democrats, most significantly al Gore, did try to 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:15.000 warn people about climate change. These folks were framed as alarmists, 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:17.560 like Paul Erlick. Penn and Teller were one of a 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.600 number of popular voices that specifically used Borlog's example to 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:26.320 attack environmentalists worried about global warming. We'd better develop and 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:32.800 ever improved science and technology, including the new by technology 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:38.599 to produce the foodia needed for the world to day. Unfortunately, 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.280 the humanitarian efforts of people like Dr Borlog are undermined 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:46.559 by Greenpeace and other assholes. Now, Pinjillette has somewhat come 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.200 around on climate change in recent days, but even in 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.679 twenty nineteen, in this interview for the Origins podcast, he's 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.679 stuck to the same line about al Gore being an alarmist. 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.800 I think that there's no way you can deny that 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:06.160 is climate change. I've completely changed on that, although completely 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.920 changed is a little bit confusing because I never went 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:15.079 beyond I don't know what bothers me about. The climate 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:21.320 change thing was a great disservice done by al Gore 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:26.360 of exaggerating. We now know that not only did Algor 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.120 not exaggerate, but it would actually be fair to attack 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:31.560 him for painting far too rosie a picture of what 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.960 climate change would cause and the adaptations are society would 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.920 need to adopt in order to mitigate it. I'm harping 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.680 on Penn and Teller in particular because this exact line 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.880 of thinking has led to the most durable sort of 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.280 climate denial I've seen in my own life. Earlier this year, 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.080 my father and I endured the most severe snowstorm in 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.760 Texas history together. When I tried to talk about climate change. 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.400 He brought up Paul Erlick and the fact that even 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.720 if climate change is as bad as they say, some 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.120 Norman Borlog will along with a scientific solution that will 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.520 save us. There is no sign of this so far. 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.680 Carbon capture technology, which works by capturing carbon before it 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.199 can reach the atmosphere, has proved to be extremely disappointing. 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.839 Only about point one percent of annual global emissions from 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.400 fossil fuels are captured at present, and of the carbon 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.080 captured to date has been used to extract more oil 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.040 from wells by pumping that carbon into the ground to 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.240 force oil out. But still Boorlog shadow looms large over 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:44.720 the climate question. Today's episode is about the different paths 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.320 to mitigation and adaptation that we might see in the 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.319 future as the damage caused by climate change becomes too 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.800 great to ignore. Weight and hope for a super genius 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:57.520 is certainly the path some individuals and probably some politicians 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.880 will continue to take. The myth of the Leonaire inventor 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.839 and the personality colts around men like Elon Musk and 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.840 their own little green projects has made this a popular 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.880 school of thought over the last decade. The good news 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:12.480 is that we've already reached a point of calamity great 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.520 enough that support for this sort of solution is probably 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.160 past its peak. On the day I write this chapter, July, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.719 the Guardian has just published an article warning that yet 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.320 another heat dome is set to settle over the entire 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.920 continental United States. The article quoted Michael Verner, a senior 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:34.959 scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, quote, you expect 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.559 hotter heat waves with climate change, but the estimates may 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.960 have been overly conservative. With the Pacific Northwest heat wave, 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.760 you conclude the event would almost be impossible without climate change, 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.160 But in a straightforward statistical analysis from before this summer, 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.280 you'd also include it would be impossible with climate change too. 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:56.760 That is problematic because the event happened. For years, climate 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.839 scientists have been attacked as alarmist, Yet the growing can 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.360 census is that they were actually too conservative with their warnings. 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.400 The situation was more severe than most reports portrayed. Before 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.040 we go further, it's worth looking at why this was. 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.280 I found a good scientific American article from two thousand 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.880 nineteen by the authors of a book called Discerning Experts, 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.559 which analyze the methods by which experts had assessed environmental 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:24.360 damage in order to provide policy recommendations. They found a 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:29.120 consistent tendency by scientists to underestimate the severity of threats 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.920 and the rapidity with which they might unfold quote. Among 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.680 the factors that appear to contribute to underestimation is the 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.880 perceived need for consensus, or what we might label univocality, 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.080 the felt need to speak in a single voice. Many 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.880 scientists worry that if disagreement has publicly aired, government officials 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.800 will conflate differences of opinion with ignorance and use this 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.320 as justification for an action. Others worry that even if 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.040 policymakers want to act, they will find it difficult to 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.280 do so if scientists fail to send an unambiguous message 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.120 there or they will actively seek to find their common 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.280 ground and focus on areas of agreement. In some cases, 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:07.679 there will only put forward conclusions on which they can 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.440 all agree. How does this lead to underestimation? Consider a 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.120 case in which most scientists think that the correct answer 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.200 to a question is in the range of one to ten, 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:18.400 but some belief that it could be as high as 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.280 one hundred. In such a case, everyone will agree that 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:23.480 it is at least one to ten, but not everyone 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.240 will agree that it could be as high as one hundred. Therefore, 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.080 the area of agreement is one to ten, and this 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.040 is reported as the consensus view. Wherever there is a 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.080 range of possible outcomes that includes along a high end 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.840 tail of probability, the area of overlap will necessarily lie 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.040 at or near the low end. The other cause of problems, 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.120 they conclude was a common mental model practiced by the 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.239 media as well as by scientists, which tends to unconsciously 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.720 consider facts to be something which all reasonable people should 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.520 be able to agree upon. If there is a mass 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.600 disagreement over the conclusions of a report, then it must 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:02.280 be because those conclusions are based on opinion rather than facts. 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.520 And the third reason for underestimation involves a very simple 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.760 worry of a reputation. In good science, being wrong shouldn't 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:12.840 be bad for your career, as a large part of 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:16.000 the discipline is making hypotheses which are either proven or 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.760 disproven by testing. But when we're talking about a field 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.720 as politicized as climate science, going too far in a 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:26.120 prediction gets you labeled an alarmist by media talking heads. 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:31.720 This leads to an understandable trend to conservatism and climate predictions. 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.640 All these factors have already caused huge problems for our society, 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.520 and as we move forward towards trying to adapt, these 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:43.080 trends will, if not disrupted, caused further calamity. In the 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.920 nineteen fifties, fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd coined the term 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.440 ODA loop to describe the cycle by which human beings 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.280 and organizations make decisions at the operational level during military 0:14:54.360 --> 0:15:00.520 campaigns ODA stands for observe, orient, decide, act, and Colonel 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.720 Boyd's terminology has been applied in a dizzying variety of 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.920 situations since, from training troops for combat to training corporations 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.560 for cyber security. The ODA loop helps explain how an 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.800 agile and creative opponent can disrupt and defeat a seemingly 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.480 much more powerful enemy. The basic idea is that if 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:20.960 you can break any part of your enemy's ODE loop, 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.680 you can stop them from properly reacting in a given 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:28.320 situation and eventually defeat them. Stop the enemy from observing 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.920 you and they can't orient themselves to your attack, decide 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.960 how to respond to you or take action, disrupt the 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:37.640 enemy's ability to make decisions, and even if they see 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.440 the problem, they won't be able to act on it 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.840 for years. Our ability to properly observe and orient ourselves 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.280 to the problem of climate change has been hampered by 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.080 all the things we just discussed. As I type this, 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.400 wildfires are burning across the width of Canada. Subways in 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.000 multiple major world cities have become watery tombs. The scope 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:58.680 of the issue is finally beyond a reasonable doubt in 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.360 almost everyone's mind, yet we still find ourselves disrupted when 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.520 we reach d There will come a time when the 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.440 governments of the world will decide and then act with 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.120 much more of a concerted plan than we've seen before. 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.880 When it comes to predicting what that decision, or more realistically, 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.040 those decisions might be, the best book I found is 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:22.600 Climate Leviathan by Joel Wainwright and joff Man. The term 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.320 Leviathan comes from a book by Hobbes, The Philosopher not 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.120 the Tiger, which argues that peace and unity can only 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.440 be achieved by the creation of a sovereign power responsible 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.800 for protecting the commonwealth and given absolute authority to do so. 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.400 It's essentially an argument for a big, all powerful state 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:43.160 or sovereign to keep everything nice. Wainwright and Man's book 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.680 stems from the premise that most people, out of fear 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.120 or desperation, will probably back some sort of leviathan as 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.800 an answer to climate change. Quote. We contend that the 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:56.000 drive to defend capitalist social relations will putch the world 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:00.920 towards climate leviathan, namely adaptation projects to allow capitalist eletes 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:05.200 to stabilize their position amidst planetary crises. This scenario, we 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:07.720 pose it implies a shift in the character and form 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:11.720 of sovereignty, the likely emergence of planetary sovereignty defined by 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.520 an exception proclaimed in the name of preserving life on Earth. 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.560 We are not suggesting that sovereignty will be characterized by 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.240 the quasi monarchical rule of a single person, but we recognize, 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:24.080 as some suggest, Hobbs himself and even Carl Schmidt at 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.760 least after ninety two, also recognized that it is almost 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.960 certainly to be exercised by a collection of powers coordinated 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.720 to save the planet and to determine what measures are 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.600 necessary and what and who must be sacrificed in the 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:41.240 interests of life on Earth. Wainwright and Man envision a 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:45.440 few different types of possible leviathan one elucidated above is 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:48.919 a neoliberal, capitalist leviathan. Think of it as an extension 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.760 of the Western States and the attitudes we've seen so far, 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.120 the smiling face of someone like Joe Biden talking about 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.080 the importance of using paper bags while giving Exxon tax 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:01.479 breaks so they can invest in cloud seating technology. One 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.919 of the most frightening things about this possibility is that 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.280 the very same corporate actors responsible for fighting any action 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.320 on climate change up until now will surely find a 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:14.320 key space for themselves partaking in state funded mitigation efforts. 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.280 Think of Jeff Bezos suggesting that polluting industrial buildings be 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.600 moved into space, or imagine Chevron using some of their 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:25.000 vast fortune to invent snow piercer style technology to blanket 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:29.159 the atmosphere and reduce warming. These possibilities are frightening because 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:32.520 any solutions dreamed up under this regime are likely to 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.440 be as selfish and ill considered as the long campaign 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.560 to deny the reality of climate change. In this future, 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.000 the architects of our present misery and shrine themselves forever 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.760 as our protectors. Wainwright and Man also envision what they 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:50.879 somewhat cheekily call climate Mao an anti capitalist state centered Leviathan, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.880 possibly based around China or a block of Southeast Asian nations. 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:57.800 While Climate Leviathan would be an attempt to maintain the 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:01.720 present capitalist world order while stabilising the environment, Climate Mao 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.480 was a quasi revolutionary attempt to replace it with a 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.959 system just as centralized, but not based around the moneyed 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.400 interests that got us here from the book Climate Leviathan. 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.880 Even today, when an increasingly non Maoist Chinese state invokes 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.879 its full regulatory authority, it can achieve political feats unimaginable 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.280 in liberal democracy. Perhaps the most notable instance of state 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:26.280 coordinated climate authority is the matter in which Beijing's air 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.080 quality was re engineered during the two thousand eight Olympics. 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.520 Flowers potted all over the city, traffic barred, trees planted 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.640 in the desert, and factories and power plants closed, all 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.200 to successfully blew the skies for the games. Another effect 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.400 of this power is the way in which the Chinese 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.880 state effectively killed General Motors gas guzzling Hummer in early 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:47.639 two thousand ten, when it blocked the division's sale to 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.040 Sichuan Tenjong Heavy Industrial Machinery due to the vehicles of 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.120 missions levels. One might also point to the Great Green 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.840 Wall against Desertification, which if successfully completed, will cross four thousand, 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.639 four eighty meters of northern China, and various tree planting 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:07.600 programs that will purportedly give the country forest cover. By 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.080 and since vowing in the summer of two thousand ten 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.040 to apply an iron hand to the task of reducing emissions, 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:16.320 the Communist Party closed more than two thousand steel mills 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.400 and other carbon emitting factories by March two thousand eleven. 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.280 In mid two thousand sixteen, the government announced new dietary 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:26.800 guidelines encouraging people to consume no more than seventy five 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.560 grams of meat per day. Reducing meat consumption was justified 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.160 on health and environmental grounds and hailed as by climate activists. 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.120 Such policies foretell the possibility of a climate MAO were 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.040 China to become a global hedgemon and also change under 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:44.680 revolutionary pressures. To be clear, that is a very big if. 0:20:57.119 --> 0:21:00.480 If Leviathan is an attempt to maintain the capitalest world 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.600 ordered in an ego friendly manner, behemoth by far the 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.439 darkest potential future is an acknowledgment that the situation is 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.560 well and truly fucked. The damage is done, and all 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.879 that can be done is grab as much power and 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.919 as many resources as possible and concentrate them in the 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.080 hands of a chosen few, be it a specific nation 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:23.040 or perhaps an ethno state. Behemoth is the fascist state 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.520 solution to climate change. It's only children will be endless 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:30.600 resource wars. Now, these are fairly broad categories, and we 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:33.800 are likely to see variations of each of these archetypes attempted. 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:36.639 You may note my lack of enthusiasm for any of 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.680 the possibilities. This is a result of my own bias. 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.600 I am not a statist, and while Behemoth is obviously 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.479 the nightmare solution, I am not excited by either the 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.800 neoliberal climate Leviathan or climate MAO. Top down solutions to 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:52.719 big problems can work, clearly, but they have a nasty 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.240 tendency to crush people in order to fit them into 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.840 a system. An example of why I fear climate Leviathan 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:03.200 in particular came on June one, when the Los Angeles 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:05.480 Police Department rated the home of a man with a 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.760 significant quantity of illegal fireworks in the midst of the 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.480 deadliest fire season in living memory. The Boys at the 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:13.960 top decided that cops would need to crack down on 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:18.440 fireworks fenders. It seems logical enough from a high vantage point, 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.840 and elected leaders always like to send police in to 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.480 see ship because then they can say X pounds of 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.680 substance y was confiscated, and that makes for an easy 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.760 sound bite. But on this occasion, the l ap D 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:33.359 fucked up. Their technicians loaded what they thought were sixteen 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.320 point five pounds of explosives into an armored truck in 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:39.600 order to safely detonate it. Instead, they set off forty 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:42.399 two pounds, which started a chain reaction that turned the 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:45.919 entire armored truck into a massive I e. D. The 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.240 resulting explosion destroyed multiple homes and led to the deaths 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:53.000 of two people plus numerous injuries. These are the sort 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.000 of decisions we can expect from climate Leviathan, and the 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.800 sort of consequences too. In their book, Wainwright and Man 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:03.040