New Future

Phosphorus is a critical resource underlying global agricultural production. This nutrient, a common component of commercial fertilizers, is essential for photosynthesis and the storage and transportation of energy in crops. This element is a critical component of global food security.

So Saito’s fundamental argument, that we must slow down the economy and reduce material consumption to turn around the climate crisis, remains potent. If anything, the breaching of multiple ecological limits beyond climate makes it stronger.

Aging, crumbling transportation and electrical infrastructure in America is exposing us to possible catastrophic, cascading failures.

In today’s episode, Nate is joined by Pedro Prieto to discuss the recent blackout in the Iberian Peninsula, exploring its causes, impacts, and the role of renewable energy in the stability of the electric grid.

For anybody taking a closer look, it’s quickly obvious that our current money system isn’t working for most people, nor is it compatible with a sustainable future. This book does a very good job of explaining why that is so.

After centuries of rule by kings, emperors, tyrants, mad men, fascists, communists, military dictatorships and mega-corporations, We the People of the world are now ready to take charge of our own destiny and start calling the shots from below.

In this episode, Nate is joined by energy expert and educator Jean-Marc Jancovici, who shares insights from his ongoing work advising governments and the public on the limits of our economic systems amid growing energy and ecological constraints.

Growth is often a pale substitute for value, which often takes a back seat to flackery, smoke, and mirrors. The brightest business minds of tomorrow will shrug off the constraints of the shareholder-primacy model and embrace new modes of finance and governance.

Stronger democratic institutions go hand in hand with stronger environmental policy. Understood in this way, democracy is both a tool and solution to the climate crisis.

We need to find ways to inhabit place and meta-place differently to the present, ways that are equal to the challenges of our times and what they’re revealing to us.

So, whether we’re talking about Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Noam Chomsky, or Milton Friedman, they all look strikingly similar from my vantage in the hinterlands. All champion anthropocentric systems doomed to fail by ecological standards on biophysical grounds on the timescales that really count.

Being alive to the real world around us, seeing the love and the connection and the magic, is all we need in life, it is all we want. It is the meaning of life.

At the heart of everything this is what a strong social movement needs: people coming together to form meaningful and lasting friendships with a shared passion for system change and a willingness to push for that change.

Heroism and hope in these times are only possible against a backdrop of total relinquishment to the possibility that we won’t be able to control our own fate. But on a deeper level, this will be the way for us to reconnect with our origins, to become one again with the natural world.