On this episode, Nate is joined by Peter Brannen, science journalist and author specializing in Earth’s prior mass extinctions, to unpack our planet’s geologic history and what it can tell us about our current climate situation. Humans have become very good at uncovering the history of our planetary home - revealing distinct periods during billions of years of deep time that have disturbing similarities to our own present time. How is the carbon cycle the foundation of our biosphere - and how have changes to it in the past impacted life’s ability to thrive? On the scales of geologic time, how do humans compare to the other species who have inhabited this planet - 99% of which have gone extinct - and will we end up being just a blip in the fossil record? How can an understanding of geologic and climate science prepare us for the environmental challenges we’ll face in the coming decades?

About Peter Brannen

Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, Aeon, The Boston Globe, Slate and The Guardian among other publications. His 2017 book, The Ends of the World covers the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history. Peter is currently a visiting scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was formerly a 2018 Scripps Fellow at CU-Boulder, a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University, and a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3l81C_11D7A

More information, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/103-peter-brannen

On this episode, environmental activist and author Bill McKibben joins Nate for a reflection on the last few decades of climate education and movements – and the possibilities and challenges that we’ll face ahead. Among a system that is dependent on growth and embedded in a biosphere full of limits (which we continue to surpass), working towards shifting our societies to be ecologically balanced is potentially the most important mission to which an individual can contribute - yet this is much easier said than done. What have been the largest barriers towards actual effective climate action since emissions have continued in a straight line up since the 20th century? What power structures stand as a barrier to proactive initiatives, and which ones could we utilize to propel movements forward? How can we prepare and organize at the individual, community, and national levels, as we look ahead to climate - and other - challenges we’re likely to face in the coming decades?

Bill McKibben is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qCrgpdHCO3U 

Find out more, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/102-bill-mckibben

Recorded December 17 2023

Description

In this final Frankly of 2023, Nate outlines some global themes that are worth keeping an eye on in 2024. From climate change to domestic and global politics to an unstable financial system, world events continue to converge. How will the social fabric of our society respond as changes to our current way of life continue to grow? How do these seemingly isolated events interconnect and enhance each other? How will governments, businesses, and individuals respond to these circumstances as more people are propelled from the lives we’ve become used to and into an unfolding Great Simplification? 

For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/51-systemic-themes-for-2024

To watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/xgMv73iabjQ

On this episode, Arthur Berman returns to unpack the complexity underpinning the oil trends of the last 75 years and what new data can tell us about availability in the coming years. After decades of declining oil production in the United States, the past decade of rising oil extraction has eased many worries about peak oil. But the past few years of continued growth have been obtained by using “a larger straw”, merely delaying the inevitability of the depletion of a finite resource. Art presents recent data on well productivity in US shale plays indicating we are much closer to ‘the slurping sound’. How does technology hide the declining availability of oil reserves, causing us to extract and use them faster without creating any new resources? Going beyond geology, how do geopolitics, finance, and social opinion affect oil availability? Where do we go when economically viable oil isn’t available anymore - and will we have the prudence to make the cultural shifts necessary before we have no other options? Have we now passed ‘peak oil’?

About Arthur Berman

Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 36 years of oil and gas industry experience. He is an expert on U.S. shale plays and is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qqTh2nBEcCs 

Find out more, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/101-art-berman

On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by four professionals with decades of experience working with low-income communities, Stephanie Hoopes, Peter Kilde, Marc Perry, and Dalitso Sulamoyo to discuss the state of poverty in the United States. Even in the wealthiest country in the world, poverty is a pernicious problem - and in a future that is more resource constrained it will only get worse. Do the current official measurements of poverty accurately portray the living standards of most Americans? How are poverty and agency entangled, and how do we empower both for people who currently aren’t meeting survivability standards? What role does community and social capital play in alleviating resource limitations and creating a better quality of life? 

About Stephanie Hoopes

Stephanie Hoopes, PhD, is the National Director of United For ALICE at United Way of Northern New Jersey. She developed the ALICE (Asset, Limited, Income, Constrained, Employed) measures for a pilot study of the low-income community in Morris County while at Rutgers University-Newark, and has since overseen the expansion to a national effort with ALICE data for all 3,000 U.S. counties. Her research has garnered the attention of local, state, and national media. Dr. Hoopes has a doctorate degree from the London School of Economics.

About Peter Kilde 

Peter Kilde has been ED of West CAP, an anti-poverty community action agency in West Central Wisconsin since 1995.  West CAP has developed and manages multiple low-income housing projects, and operates homelessness, weatherization, food security, adult literacy and skills, and various sustainable community programs. Peter served on the National Community Action Partnership Board of Directors, where he established and co-chaired the Partnership for Climate Resilience which focuses on how CAP agencies across America can help their communities adapt to Climate Change. Peter also serves on the Wisconsin Community Action Program Association (WISCAP) Board, the regional Workforce Development Board.

About Marc Perry 

Marc Perry has more than 25 years’ experience working with youth and adults from diverse backgrounds. Marc currently serves as the Executive Director for Community Action Inc., of Rock and Walworth Counties where he is responsible for making sure the organization stays true to its mission of moving families toward economic self-reliance. Marc provides training and technical assistance for partner organizations and facilitates cultural equity workshops for both private and public institutions, including school districts, NGOs and law enforcement entities throughout the Midwest.

About Dalitso Sulamoyo

Dalitso Sulamoyo was born and raised in Malawi, South East Africa.  Since moving to the United States of America in the early 1990s, he has made economic and social justice a focal part of his career. Dalitso Sulamoyo has been the Chief Executive Officer of the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission since June 2017. As the CEO, Dalitso oversees a multi-faceted government agency with over 140 different federal, state, and local grants and contracts with a budget of over $6million. The agency’s services range from transportation planning, police training, energy efficiency training, community services, workforce development, economic and community development to early childhood education for income eligible families.

For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/rr07-hoopes-kilde-perry-sulamoyo 

To watch this video episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/359aiDUDHRo 

In this week’s Frankly, we join Nate in a fascinating thought experiment imagining participants in this week’s COP 28 in Dubai are liberated from the usual social sorting mechanisms which constrain real, forthright, challenging conversation around solving our most dire issues.  What questions might participants ask at COP28 if there were no fear of losing social status and how might this liberation change the conversation around global heating?   As social primates, there is a stainless steel ceiling on how much we can say in large groups of other humans -especially high status ones.  Like the famous “smoke under the door” experiment of the 1970s, as the events of our world get more complex and more threatening, our first reality filter is observing the response of contemporaries. If they are unconcerned, we too tend to be.  Unlike the one-room controlled college experiment, we now live in a smoke filled world, and the stakes couldn't be higher. If you were sitting in Dubai at the convening of COP 28, what question would you ask given the state of the world right now??

For Show Notes and to learn more: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/50-cop-28-and-the-smoke-under-the-door

To Watch on YouTube 

On this special 100th episode, Nate is interviewed by his friend and colleague in the metacrisis space, Kate Raworth. The conversation is a reflection on the past two years of podcasting – and how Nate’s worldview has evolved because of it. What fundamental concepts could help us better understand the trends happening around us and the potential futures they point to? With so many moving pieces, how can we begin to create a coherent story of the world around us and - even more difficult - start preparing responses to coming challenges? What should individuals aware of these converging crises be thinking about in order to prepare themselves, their families, and their communities for a materially smaller future?

About Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles. Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.

About Kate Raworth

Kate Raworth describes herself as a renegade economist focused on making economics fit for 21st century realities. She is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries, and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab, based on her best-selling book Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Kate is a Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, where she teaches on the Masters in Environmental Change and Management. She is also Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She is a member of the Club of Rome and currently serves on the World Health Organisation Council on the Economics of Health for All.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GocuMZX3hIs

Learn more, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/100-nate-hagens

On this episode, Nate is joined by co-founder of GMO Financial Holdings, Jeremy Grantham, to discuss how finance, human population, ecology, and pollution interact to shape current trends and what they could tell us about the future. Mr. Grantham unpacks why the expectations of perpetual growth - in the economy, standards of living, and finance - are not so likely and that when looking at the system holistically we should expect large paradigm shifts in the coming decades. What can the pattern of super (stock market) bubbles over the last century tell us about the larger resource bubble we find ourselves in? How will rapidly changing population demographics and fertility rates interact with the other global crises we face? How might endocrine disrupting chemicals impact these other trends? Where should investors be focusing energy and resources towards to make the largest and most positive impact on human and planetary futures? 

About Jeremy Grantham

Jeremy Grantham co-founded GMO in 1977 and is a member of GMO’s Asset Allocation team, serving as the firm’s long-term investment strategist. He is a member of the GMO Board of Directors, a partner of the firm, and has also served on the investment boards of several non-profit organizations. Prior to GMO’s founding, Mr. Grantham was co-founder of Batterymarch Financial Management in 1969 where he recommended commercial indexing in 1971, one of several claims to being first. He began his investment career as an economist with Royal Dutch Shell. Mr. Grantham earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield (U.K.) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, holds a CBE from the UK and is a recipient of the Carnegie Medal for Philanthropy.

For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/99-jeremy-grantham 

To watch this video episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cTvN9iFJ0fY 

In this Frankly, a follow up to “One Ring to Rule Them All”, Nate unpacks the common misconception that AI is the answer to all our energy and ecological problems, specifically climate change. As the development of AI continues to accelerate, many propose that we are entering the ‘Exponential Age’, yet what’s ignored is that we’ve just lived through an age of exponential impact on Earth’s systems. Under this same ‘operating system’, AI can at best act as a more powerful tool for the continuation of this phenomenon - not to restore ecological stability as some would hope.  If AI is based on current cultural goals and aspirations, who will ultimately benefit and who will pay the costs? What types of solutions is AI capable of developing - and more importantly, where is the interplay of AI and human responsibility required to then implement those ideas to fruition?  

To Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/zY29LjWYHIo

For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/49-ai-vs-real-ecology

On this episode, political economist Helen Thompson and Nate discuss how energy and geopolitics have interconnected over the past century, building to the entangled political relationships we see around us today. The dynamics of power on a global scale are complex - stemming from access to energy, financial control, military strength, credibility/trust, and much more - yet we can understand these a bit better by learning the history that shaped them. How have geologic provinces of energy dense carbon created inherent hot spots on the geopolitical playing field? How has the global monetary system and debt evolved to strengthen the power of a select few countries and how difficult is it to break from this system? Do our leaders have the capability/knowledge to connect energy and geopolitical policy in order to guide us through a future of declining energy availability? 

About Helen Thomspon:

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge since 1994. Her current research concentrates on the political economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century. She is a regular panelist on Talking Politics and a columnist for the New Statesman. She is a co-presenter of UnHerd's podcast, These Times and recently published Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.

For Show Notes and More visit:  https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/98-helen-thompson

To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/FQbdNXQcT3E