Empires rise and fall. And while we understand these cycles conceptually, there’s a bizarre notion that we are somehow immune. That we can continue to evolve toward greater ease and material abundance generation after generation. That our potential for growth is somehow unlimited. But natural resources are finite. So, what happens when we run out?

Dr. Jason Bradford is the Cofounder of Farmland LP and Cohost of Crazy Town, a podcast produced by the Post Carbon Institute that explores “climate change, overshoot, and runaway capitalism”. He is also the author of The Future Is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Dr. Bradford joins Ross to explain what differentiates ecological economics from other schools of thought and why some resources are simply too valuable to price.

Dr. Bradford shares his prediction regarding a great simplification of civilization, describing his vision of a future where we might still enjoy modern conveniences but at a very different scale. Listen in to understand why we he thinks we can’t ‘artificial ecosystem’ our way on to other planets, why industrial carbon capture is a bad idea, and how we might build a lower-complexity society that is sustainable for the long term.

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Resources

Crazy Town podcast

The Future Is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification by Jason Bradford

Farmland LP

Post Carbon Institute

Tom Murphy’s Do the Math Blog on Economic Growth

Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill

Paul Kingsnorth on Reversing Climate Change S2EP53

Ted Nordhaus on Reversing Climate Change EP100

The Breakthrough Institute

Kim Stanley Robinson on Reversing Climate Change S2EP51

Novels by Ursula Le Guin

Bernard Lietaer