Conversation Earth

Do we behave rationally? You might be surprised how often our decision-making deviates from what is in our best interest. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies human behavior and decision-making. His experiments have led him to startling conclusions. 

 

“We repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives.”

 

We may be rats in a maze for scientific study, but Dan Ariely puts a refreshingly human face on the scientific study of why we do the things we do. He offers an insightful explanation of why Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. can't agree on facts:

 

“When we have an initial belief, reality doesn’t matter as much as we think.  We have an illusion that we’re actually observing reality, but it’s filtered dramatically by what we’re experiencing in our brains, and our expectations.”

 

Ariely offered this about climate change:

“If you were starting from scratch, and you said, ‘Let me create a problem that people would not care about,’ it would look very much like global warming.”

Listen to this conversation to find out why.

This fun and fascinating dialogue explores the decoy effect, inter-temporal choice, hedonic treadmill, identifiable victim effect, behavior substitution, the happiness conundrum, keeping up with the Joneses, and even being choosy about who you compare yourself too. It’s a fascinating journey into the human psyche.

NOTE: We are between Season 2 and Season 3. For the next several weeks we’ll bring you encore episodes from the first season of Conversation Earth. Season 3 is in the works. Thanks for listening, and thank you for visiting http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3 and pitching in to make the next season possible. Explore more at http://www.conversationearth.org

Would you believe we've entered a period of "uneconomic growth?"

Robust economic growth has become the Holy Grail of public policy and politics. But some economists and many scientists have come to believe growth has become “uneconomic." Former World Bank Senior Economist Herman Daly explains this in terms we can all understand.

 

Daly co-founded the journal, Ecological Economics, and has written and spoken extensively about the fact that “the economy is a sub-system of a larger system. The larger system being the biosphere – the environment.” And that system has its limits.

 

In this 2010 interview, Herman Daly postulates that, in a full world, the costs of further economic growth exceed the benefits, and we are reaching a point where it is physically impossible to keep growing the global economy. Using easy to understand, real-world examples, Daly delivers an aha moment. After listening to this interview, one is likely to conclude, “Of course! It’s the environment, stupid!”

We're offering encores of our best episodes from Season One while we take a break. Learn more about Herman Daly and find links to his work at http://www.conversationearth.org Cast your vote for another season of stimulating conversations athttp://www.tinyurl.com/ceseason3

“One of the ways that radical ideas become more mainstream is when those of us who hold them aren’t afraid to speak about them.” This thought has guided much of journalism professor Robert Jensen’s work. His writing and speaking often focus on the news that “we live in an economy that is based on the destruction of places all over world.” In this 2015 interview, Jensen explains what he calls “an unprecedented set of threats to the possibility of ongoing, large-scale, human habitation of the planet.”

 

Jensen takes a critical approach to media and power. Much of his work has focused on pornography, a radical feminist critique of sexuality and men's violence, and white privilege and institutionalized racism. He has written:

 

“If there is to be a decent future, we have to give up on the imperial fantasy of endless power, the capitalist fantasy of endless growth, the technological fantasy of endless comfort…we should mourn the world that these systems have created and search for something better. Systems that celebrate domination are death cults, not the basis for societies striving for justice and sustainability.”

Learn more about Robert Jensen at http://www.conversationearth.org

This is an encore presentation from Season One. We're sharing our best episodes while we take a break between Seasons Two and Three. Please cast a vote for another season at http://www.tinyurl.com/ceseason3

Our ecosystems contribute tens of trillions of dollars to our economy every year, but – as L. Hunter Lovins notes, “At present we’re losing every major ecosystem on the planet…What are we doing to ourselves?...We have the…intelligence…to make different choices.” Hunter Lovins co-authored the best-selling book, Natural Capitalism, with Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins. In this interview, she outlines those choices and shares how they benefit businesses and the planet.

One of the biggest challenges to living sustainably, says Lovins, is our belief we can meet non-material needs through the purchase of material things. “We keep spending all this money, and we aren’t getting any happier.” Wouldn’t you rather have more time than more stuff? She observes that we all have a profound hunger for authenticy, human connection, love. We recorded this interview in 2004, but offer it here because the concepts are as relevant today.

Please visit zhttp://www.tinyurl.com/ceseason3 and let us know you want another season of Conversation Earth. Learn more about Hunter Lovins, find links to her work, and subscribe to get a weekly email announcing the next podcast - at http://www.conversationearth.org

Today it could be argued that human beings daily act against our own self-interests. How? Biologist Paul Ehrlich and fellow scientists tell us we are expanding our population and economy beyond the Earth's carrying capacity - at our peril.  Why do we insist on continuing? Ehrlich has been a keen observer of human behavior for over 50 years, and he thinks “we need a millennium assessment of human behavior.” If we can understand how we behave, and why we behave that way, perhaps we can figure out how to behave as though we want to hang around another thousand years.

We're sharing the best episodes from Season One while we take a break and fundraise for Season Three. Please check out our story and pitch in a little at http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3 to make sure the series continues.

 

Ehrlich is best known for authoring The Population Bomb, published in 1968 at the suggestion of the Sierra Club’s first executive director, David Brower. Paul’s wife, Anne Ehrlich, co-authored the book (though the publisher insisted only Paul’s name adorn the book). Paul and Anne preferred a different title, Population, Resources and Environment, as the book was about much more than human population. The book offered dramatic warnings about the impact of the expanding scale of the human enterprise, which included not just the number of people on the planet, but also their behavior – levels of consumption and the size of their economies.

 

Growth boosters have criticized Paul Ehrlich since the 1960s. Some claim his ideas have been disproved and discredited, but generally those detractors have been economists (and not all economists). Ehrlich is a serious scientist with an impressive command of the facts, and the scientific community continues to publish and devour his work. His frank and direct approach, and colorful way with words, have continued to make him a lightning rod for discussion of a question that is central to the notion of sustainability of human civilization: 

 

Can technology and innovation perpetually expand the carrying capacity of our planet?

 

In this 2007 interview, only very brief portions of which have ever been released, Paul Ehrlich shares his opinions on population, economics, hunger and poverty, and climate change. He takes aim at politicians, economists, television news, and human beings in general.

 

“It’s not a matter of needing more science to know what do.  We can use more science, but the big problem is why is there such a gap between what the scholarly community knows and what the politicians and public know and are willing to do anything about.”

Learn more about Ehrlich, find links to his work, and learn more about the series at http://www.conversationearth.org

Rex Weyler has lived the life dreamed of by those who want to make a difference. As a young man he joined early Greenpeace expeditions to document and stop commercial whaling. He went on to co-found Greenpeace International, and as a journalist has covered the subject of ecology extensively.

We're sharing the best episodes from Season One while we fundraise for Season Three. Check out our story at http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3 . Your tax-deductible donation fuels this non-profit project.

“The human machine is just steamrolling…toward disaster.”

Weyler has lived a rich life and has a keen understanding of the source of joy, but there is sadness in his voice when he talks about how civilization grew right past ecological limits to growth.

“I'm not concerned that my children will consume less stuff and have to live lifestyles more like my grandparents. I'm more concerned that my children will have to live in chaos because we were stupid and we tried to drive right past all these limits….”

In this newly released 2010 interview, Weyler shares his observations of “what can happen as a civilization grows out of control.” Technology, economics, consumption, population and politics are all in his cross-hairs. Weyler does express some hope for the future, as well, and outlines changes needed to bring human civilization back to living within ecological limits.

“What I'm working toward in my life and in my community is that we make these changes intelligently, peacefully, within our communities.”

Learn more at http://www.conversationearth.org

What went wrong with the environmental movement? Environmental activist, organizer and author Lorna Salzman shares her thoughts about climate change, consumerism, cheap energy, economics, lawyers and politics. She discusses “what went wrong with the environmental movement,” plus irrationality, denial, and outright lies we tell ourselves, and each other.

Lorna Salzman has the chops to be an outspoken critic of many in the modern environmental movement. She played a key role in the early days of Friends of the Earth alongside David Brower (the first executive director of the Sierra Club), beginning a 40-year career as an environmental activist, writer, lecturer and organizer. A contender for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2004, Salzman is an iconoclast in every sense of the word.

 

In this 2010 interview at her summer cottage, Lorna Salzman shared her thoughts about climate change, consumerism, cheap energy, economics, lawyers and politics. She discusses “what went wrong with the environmental movement,” plus irrationality, denial, and outright lies we tell ourselves, and each other.

NOTE: We are between Season 2 and Season 3. For the next several weeks we’ll bring you encore episodes from the first season of Conversation Earth. Please cast your vote for another season by pitching in with a tax-deductible contribution athttp://tinyurl.com/ceseason3

“The age of growth and the age in which growth is going to be considered a good thing is coming to an end.” The late sociologist William R. Catton was certain of this, but spent a significant portion of his professional life attempting to understand why mainstream society was reluctant to prove his point.

 

Catton authored the landmark book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, published in 1980. He brought important sociological perspective to a subject dominated by biologists and physicists. He observed that our lives are built around an obsolete cultural belief system, developed when the size of human civilization had not yet outgrown the carrying capacity of the planet.

 

According to scientists at the Global Footprint Network, human civilization surpassed a sustainable scale (a combination of population and consumption) in the 1970s. Catton observed a lag between that reality and the dominant worldview that affects our rate of consumption – of both renewable and nonrenewable resources.

Bill Catton passed away on January 5, 2015. At the time of my conversation with Bill Catton, he had just published his third book, Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse.

For more information and links to Catton's work, visit http://www.conversationearth.org

We're sharing some of the best episodes of Season One while we take a break, before launching a 3rd season of Conversation Earth. Vote for a 3rd season at http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3

Stephanie Mills made headlines in the Spring of 1969 when she vowed, in her commencement address (titled The Future is a Cruel Hoax), to conceive no children. “Our days as a race on this planet are, at this moment, numbered,” she proclaimed, “and the reason for our finite, unrosy future is that we are breeding ourselves out of existence.” In this 2010 interview, Stephanie reflects on the life she has led and the important decision she made at the age of twenty-two. She shares insight about “the 500-year war on subsistence,” and the dumbing down of discourse about overpopulation.

Vote for another season of Conversation Earth at: http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3

Learn more about Stephanie Mills and the Conversation Earth series at http://www.conversationearth.org

How big is your ecological footprint? Probably bigger than you think. After all, out of sight, out of mind. As an originator of ecological footprint analysis, population ecologist William Rees knows a thing or two about our impact on the planet. In this interview he provides some fascinating, and surprising insights.

Did you know most of us in the industrialized world have a footprint three or four times our fair share? Or that the “global economy is a giant Ponzi scheme? It turns out localized economies have their advantages over globalization. William Rees points out that globalization has allowed concentrated populations to extend their footprints all over the world. “We’re seeing growth in human technological capacity and human populations and the scale of the economy that’s completely unprecedented.”

Vote for another season of Conversation Earth at http://tinyurl.com/ceseason3

Learn more at http://www.conversationearth.org

Photo Credit: By Nick Wiebe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0]