“Breaking Together” – Jem Bendell

Pinchbeck talks with Jem Bendell, the sustainability scholar whose 2018 Deep Adaptation paper argued that climate-driven societal collapse should be treated as likely, about his subsequent book Breaking Together. Bendell describes writing it while living with his father, who was dying of cancer, and explains why he spent years reluctant to press the argument publicly after the paper went viral. He says the evidence indicates the breakdown of modern industrial consumer societies has already begun, that both mainstream and populist alternative media keep the subject taboo, and that suppressed anxiety about it feeds the nostalgia politics visible worldwide, from Make America Great Again to Take Back Control. Pinchbeck raises unseasonable late-October heat in New York, the Israel-Gaza war, and Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Bendell released the book as a free download.

Guest: Jem Bendell

In brief

• Bendell argues that the collapse of modern industrial consumer societies is already underway and that there is a substantial evidence base for saying so.
• He says the taboo on discussing collapse across both mainstream and alternative media converts understandable anxiety into derangement and leaves people open to manipulation.
• Bendell attributes the worldwide turn to nostalgia politics over the preceding seven years to that suppressed anxiety rather than to any single national grievance.
• He criticizes liberals and progressives for remaining wedded to older assumptions about progress, and calls instead for a solidarity-based politics fitted to an era of breakdown and retraction.
• Bendell says anticipating societal collapse improved his relationship with his dying father, offering it as an instance of what darker expectations can open up.
• Pinchbeck cites Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto as the opposing position, one that treats unconstrained technological development as the only hope and casts sustainability advocates as enemies.

Full text

conversation we've been trying to get to this point for a couple months now I think um so gem um originally came to my attention with um what was the name of that that earlier paper deep adaptation that's right yeah 2018 five over five years ago now yeah which really had an impact on a lot of people that I that I knew and got shared around a lot and um uh you know made more people aware of how severe the ecological uh was and uh five years later roughly followed it up with breaking together uh which is a terrific book uh definitely not for the the faint of heart uh but yeah definitely something that people need to uh you know uh know about and read and and think through um yeah a couple you know momentary data points uh you know I've been in New York this weekend which is the end of October and it was like 80 degrees last night you know at 3:00 a. m. you know Halloween reelers were out on the sidewalks you know girls in there their thongs and bikinis not even shivering uh like I've never seen you know it be warm like this it it just feels like the warming curve I mean it's sort of documented all around the world has taken off on a vertical at this point um so that was interesting and we're speaking obviously as this uh you know Israeli Gaza war is happening um you know with all the with all the sort of parameters of that and ancient history there and then also you know thinking about your work and and other people who've been studying global warming and climate change I you know I sort of Wonder okay they're fighting over these like pieces of desert uh and they're all hating each other for these thousands of years but um you know what happens when that area becomes just unlivable you know which could be like 10 15 years away and what have they what what have they been fighting for you know I mean um so that was on my mind and the last little data point of my weekend was uh reading what's his name mark andreon you know him oh yeah he's one of the biggest most influential investors in Silicon Valley and he just published a piece called the uh the tech Optimist Manifesto uh where he where he um you know basically argues you know that Tech is the most positive thing in the world that we should not try to limit its development whether it's like Ai and actually Tech is our only hope to you know uh for Progress to save the world and he even he even sort of looks at people who are into things like sustainability as like his his enemies and sort of calls them out and when when he's talking about the people who might you know be be against this type of hyper progress that could bring about you know beneficial uh you know progress for everybody wow I'm I'm so surprised I've never heard those ideas before yeah yeah so data points from my side yeah I'm glad we finally um got to chat I'm back in the UK this is actually my father's uh lounge and this is where um he had termin he he passed away just a few days ago and that's why I'm back here but um it wasn't a surprise he had terminal cancer for wow I don't know 20 months I think and and I I owe him quite a lot because I left my normal life to come and live with him for a bit in this flat where I know nobody in this town and just if it wasn't for that and if it wasn't for my dad whenever I bring him a cup of tea cuz he was bedbound saying how's the book going cuz he knew I had a deadline and and he was just basically saying no don't stay here and watch Telly go back and do the book he and so this really drove me on so I'm sort of back here and I'm thinking great wow wow I mean yeah if it wasn't for Dad the first half of the book wouldn't have got done because it was a it was a hard SLO um going through all the scholarship on on you know what's breaking in societies um so yeah I'm I'm back here and it's it's um I'm feeling a bit proud of myself and actually oddly grateful that that all these things came together and so that book got done um partly because of my dad's terminal cancer really I don't know what book would have been otherwise yeah um and um yeah well in in uh breaking um you talk about um the path that led you to write the book and how it was basically the last thing you wanted to do and I was the introduction feeling tremendous empathy for um how kind of ridiculous you know what an awful position to you know be spreading this message that most people don't want that costs you uh you know money and position and yet feeling that um you know that somebody has to to sort of push it forward you know even though it's yeah was for a long time I wasn't for a long time after that deep adaptation paper went viral um I didn't really want to shout from the rooftops about this stuff um I was very nervous about bringing this message and how to do it and I was concerned about the emotional impact But A lot's changed in five years um the opinion I talk about it in the book opinion polls show that people no longer believe that um their kids are going to have a better life than them so many people think that climate change is going to collapse societies but all this stuff is kept Taboo in mainstream media and in a populist alternative media really um uh and so you know we have to stay positive somehow in other otherwise it's somehow disgusting and disgraceful and um and yet that suppression of the anxieties that people understand understandably have can lead to all manner of derangement and manipulation and and I saw that that's probably why Nostalgia politics has taken off worldwide uh in the last say seven years um everywhere not just uh make America great again you know or Take Back Control in Britain but but everywhere you know people electing dictators sons and that kind of thing so like the rightwing has has sort of tuned into this because all they're into is winning power and keep keeping power but the the so-called progressives liberals leftists still wedded to Old ideas about progress assuming that you know we can somehow if we get the right policies the right people in power uh we'll fix all the problems and and I wanted to encourage a solidarity-based politics for what I see as an era of collapse an an era of breakdown an era of regress and retraction and so um and I felt yeah I couldn't walk away I couldn't just you know go do Kian and Buddhist Meditation Retreats and organic farming and all sorts of good fun stuff I couldn't do that and anticipate a general derangement of of public dialogue and and um and not have at least tried I don't know if I'll succeed in doing anything but I felt I had to try and and then I realized to actually get a good hearing on this I've got a really study um what what where are we at with societal disruption breakdown and possibly collapse and so then when I went into that more and more and more I realized that oh it was far worse than I'd imagined before and there's a good evidence base to argue it's already begun meaning the the collapse of modern industrial consumer societies which is an ongoing process slowly unfolding ultimately going to affect everyone everywhere um so yeah it was uh I'm I'm pleased I'm through the other side and I'm I'm looking forward to what some people call more the the the post Doom Vibe um but at the moment I'm still talking to people about the the sadness the anxiety the grief the letting go before you can let come and reimagine um so what you're saying but I'll be done with that soon I'll just want to I'll just want to live to the max in this new context in this new but yeah um so you know you all sorts of questions run into my mind and you know want to be like tumbling forward uh what is curious you know um what's your perspective like what would you say the likelihood is of humanity just actually going extinct let's say in this Century do you think it's um you know probable possible inevitable at this point um so um firstly uh we're at least the 15th homonym um where the previous ones didn't blend into us and went extinct so I think there 14 homonyms that didn't become us um they went extinct and so this planet produces big brain bipedal a that end up looking and talking a bit like us I guess at least singing making noises a bit like us and maybe dancing around and scratching things on walls who knows but um and then going extinct so um Homo sapiens will go extinct um when and why don't know um it could be uh this Century because of all manner of things um could be because of the toxicity that we've already released into the environment forever chemicals uh how they then combine with microplastics and what that might then do to the oceans it's already happening what that might then do to the atmosphere or climate change itself uh particularly with these self-reinforcing feedbacks that there's obviously scientific debate about how many of those amplification feedbacks have begun and how much is uh how much we can might be able to moderate things we might get super desperate or a bunch of billionaires might get super desperate and try and do some GE geoengineering and it all go terribly wrong um so yeah it's it's very you know it's incredibly difficult to then sort of and to say what did you say probably possibly um or certainly going extinct this Century uh um it's a distinct possibility that the human race will go extinct this Century because of the damage we've done to the environment and the Knock On effects that will do to society to aggression to war and all manner of bad stuff um do I think it's probable this Century um no but I'm paying attention over the last five years uh with a bit of a Hawke eye when I look at like okay what's happening with methane in the atmosphere if because that's that's the quickest route to to us going extinct which is if if we are if we do begin to see more suby Frozen methane actually uh make it to the make make it out uh make it to the surface in the Arctic um a lot of it most of it just dissolves in the water column but um that would then create within 10 years just a just impossible temperature rise and that would be so weird I know people get very excited about how Humanity could have some kind of mass Spiritual Awakening because of the ecological crisis um books about and I and I yeah and I wonder I think actually the only thing that would sort of make that like likely is uh a methane bomb going off in the Arctic so basically Anyone Who Had any capability for logic any capability for escaping uh cowardly delusion would think we are truly we are all going to die uh in in the coming decade possibly even a couple of years and um then then it would be interesting however interesting not in a good way I mean but like I would rather you know I don't want to see that just for the chance of a mass Spiritual Awakening um uh yeah I'm not that dark so I know it's Halloween weekend but um um yeah there we go oh yeah I mean so yeah well I I wrote books my book 2012 sort of s um you know potentially we're moving into you know cat catastrophe mass destru then also potentially like Awakening mutation transform and you know there are a number of people like um who've you know been on that track writers and thinkers and some people have actually like there's a book called LSD and the mind of the universe by this guy Christopher he's like a you know respected kind of mainstream academic but he went on like 150 hios LSD trips with his wife as his trip cter and he encountered this whole like prophetic vision of the future where things would totally break down but as they broke down Humanity would kind of like awaken and reform these kind of mellal community networks and after you know some period of time there would be this you know regeneration and New Movement so I guess I've often had that type of uh um idea but I mean I'm also interested in like you know you know tellart uh this Catholic Mystic and paleontologist and the whole idea of the new spere um so you mean because you talked about um yeah there have been previous Apes with brains who could sing or or talk or make weapons or whatever and that could happen again but I guess one issue would be in terms of the life cycle of the plan as a whole uh this was our one shot to build like a global industrial civilization uh you know withle fuel resources the minerals so that doesn't transition into something else then the planet's like one shot and you know it it you know it might also be you know from like the guia hypothesis idea these are I know these are sort of mystical or Le kind of like theoretical that like um you know maybe there is like a underlying like purpose or tilos you know and um actually yeah like in the same way that um you know a fetus develops in the womb with very specific signals and and processes of development like the brain becoming it almost feels like Humanity has been doing that on a global scale you know if you're look at it in terms of like you know building a satellite dish is kind of like the mic you know microorganisms building the structure of an eye you know building um the network of communications is kind of like a brain learning to to uh recognize itself and be able to communicate with itself and so on so um yeah so I still hold out a faint hope Al although I'm you know I suppose more pessimistic that there might be a as as unlikely as it seems an underlying like new aspheric purpose like actually that uh that it's only obviously some kind of intense uh crisis that there would be an evolutionary shift because at the moment we're into tribalism and um you know Psychopaths and sociopaths rise to the top of corporate hierarchies all that kind of stuff okay so there's a there's a few things there um yeah uh wow where to start so um when I think of any of these uh explanations narratives um hopes wishes stories even if they are associated with either ancient wisdom ancient prophecy or Altered States uh non-ordinary States Of Consciousness and um in the end when we are uh using language uh we are speaking to each other we are trying to make sense of the world we in that process there is the ego and there is the ego wanting to affirm uh and reassure and feel safe and feel like there's meaning as well and so I'm always thinking well what are all these stories doing for us and why might they be attractive to us um and and I'm very critical in my book of of uh what I call over modernity so like modernity on steroids gone berserk and so therefore I'm thinking well what are some of the deep stories like the notion of uh humans at the center of the universe um or that progress occurs um and is inevitable and is good uh whether that's to do with humans or to do with uh Evolution uh or Consciousness and so I look at all those things and I'm I I kind of I I question them um and I'm wondering you know what not only what the evidence is for them but what what kind of ideological work are these stories doing and what work are they these things doing and just helping us feel a bit more safe uh uh and what maybe they're distracting us from so that's always in the back of my mind when I talk about any of these ideas um and I'm also very very influenced I think I couldn't have got the book done I couldn't have lived the way I've done in the last 5 years without um learning a lot from Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist practice where I've got to this level of just allowing uh reality including all the things that we may label good bad evil beautiful uh dark light progress regress just just just allowing all of that and that has also I think helped me realize that actually perhaps the highest form of Consciousness uh on planet Earth uh in the last few hundred thousand years might not be humans and if it is humans it might have been how we were 20 30,000 years ago or it might be the indigenous people still in the forest in Ecuador uh not us not the kind of people who are like me that are writing books or like you that are writing books um for me all that all of that is is possible and so I'm yeah I I don't get super excited with stories of how this cataclysm how this apocalypse how this collapse how this breakdown whatever words we want to use for the unraveling of Life as we know it I I don't I don't I don't need to see it as as this sort of like uh right of passage into Homo sapiens having higher Consciousness and therefore delivering on their grand purpose in the universe or on planet Earth I don't need to see it that way well and I and I'm and I'm careful about that because I think that can distract us from just being fully present to how to be helpful kind wise uh in the moment so there's a lot of suffering right now for humans and wider life and there's a lot more to come and there's a lot of unnecessary suffering that that we could avoid um if we just be attentive to what's going on and Care rather than and anything which numbs us is a problem and I do wonder whether some of this it's almost like spiritual bypassing in this context becomes planetary bypassing or like way like oh well all this mess it's okay because you know it's our destiny so I'm I'm yeah I'm always coming back to like what might help now for us to reduce harm now and so that's also so I I question any of these stories in that way as well make sense or not it does make sense I mean um you know it's I think it's a fun discussion to have you're saying that Buddhist practice has become part of your life and you know I mean Buddhism you know obviously has a kind of metaphysical understanding you know budhism talks about samsara is nirvana you know there's kind of conscious unfolding through you know the different BAU States on there's reincarnation and so on I mean do you have any um feeling or Association or curiosity about those types of ideas or is it more really just the the staying focused staying present kind of um um yeah good question so for me just to say that like and for me what's happened by studying social and environmental problems and coming to the conclusion that industrial consumer societies are already breaking down and things are going to get really bad what's happened for me is that's become uh a spiritual invitation and for so many people I know who take this seriously and allow it to them up emotionally psychologically create create despair in them allow that despair in some cases depression it it has allowed them to um emerge um more beautifully in the same way grief does you know um there's been you know quite an unusual amount of death in my life around me this year compared to rest of my life and it it it totally brings this sense of Honor and gratitude and and wonder to about life because it ends and because it's something about life has gone forever so I think that's what's happening so a lot of people are are getting that kind of spiritual invitation it doesn't mean that everyone will there'll be a lot of people who just sort of react with ego affirmation and worldview defense and just get really aggressive with the sticking to the you know doubling down on their world View and psychology theories Terror management Theory shows that will happen to many people but many people yes it's been for me the only way well it was my way of living with this Outlook was to really um look to to benefit from spiritual teachings and ancient wisdoms and Buddhism it was the big one for me so yeah I could talk a bit about that um reincarnation I'm not that bothered with um uh what I love about Buddhism is uh the idea of um some of the ideas of original human nature so this Brahma vihara these aspects I talk about it in the book um and that's really important to me that actually the original human nature is to be compassionate is to feel vicarious pleasure other people's Joy is to have a general benevolence benevolence to life and is not to need any of those feelings to have some equinity and and so those are four things which are also seen as virtues but what's crucial for me is they're seen as the original state of the human prior to sort of emotional injury through growing up in society and and and getting defiled and deluded through Society so it's a it's a view that actually therefore that we just need to help people come back to who they really are um and and that's very different from we're constantly bombarded with messages that somehow you know we're dangerous to each other and that uh in a desperate situation like climate change that we all need to be you know um controlled and disciplined more for our own good so so that aspect of Buddhist philosophy is very important to me when you say we need to come back into you know our essence or whatever why why do we need to do that um oh um I have this strong um I have this strong wish for commitment to um uh people living uh from a a spirit of of universal love from kindness and openness and curiosity um I have a a strong wish and for more people to be fully who they are connected to themselves to others to wider nature I have this sense of um not just sadness but anger about people being manipulated coerced controlled um yeah so I'm I guess spiritual Liberation is is is a big thing for me um and that's you know I I I maybe my life would be a lot easier if I didn't feel that way but it seems to be just part of who I am does that answer your question well yeah I mean going down a metaphysical B you know you know kind of like um which you know maybe we can talk about more in person or something but I mean um yeah implicit kind of millenarianism or sort of a chiliastic impulse even in that idea uh which to me not that distinct from the that I'm talking about I mean I think we have like a deep in our internal Compass a sense of like you know the world is not supposed to be like this like there's a way that we can move else and in that is a kind of yeah it's like it's like it's like an esoteric kind of Yearning or something to anyway so it just popped I I suppose one thing I would say on that is that um there is there does seem to feel a a fun fundamental truth like like as in this is the re the realest way of being um that comes from non-ordinary States Of Consciousness where your sense of a separate self um is lessened or disappears and either through a sense of we space with others or just connection and immersion and co-being into beinging with nature or or even beyond that with the widest Cosmos and Consciousness in general so I in that and some some people are lucky enough to have have have experienced that I I am and and I'm pretty sure you have too from all the stuff you write about and your your your interests and so that that's there as a as a reality that seems deeply and eternally true and therefore oh yeah I'm I'm interested in in in uh helping reduce the unnecessary impediments to people and me included being in touch with that truth you might have enjoy I think I even recommended him to you before I've been recommending him all over the place this uh philosopher Bernardo castrop did we talk about him he wrote a book I did a podcast him too if you're okay but he wrote a book called why materialism is baloney uh and another book called the idea of the world so he was like a rational scientist working at CERN and um you know sort of like fascinated with the hard problem of Consciousness and so he began to realize that um you know if you looked at quantum physics if you looked at uh you know philosophy you looked at the Hard problem of Consciousness you flipped the whole thing and uh sort of recognized um kind of that Consciousness is actually the the the reality like everything is actually Consciousness projected or expressing itself and ultimately there's like one unified Consciousness that's uh instinctively you know expressing itself through us and through all of our creative capacities and so that wants to know itself kind of like through us then it all everything sort of makes sense like the the hard problem dissolves the the paradoxes of quantum physics dissolve so he he's become the most um kind of powerful uh kind of um uh proponent of of this analytic idealist philosophy and as as an aspect of that philosophy which I really think is is much more sensible than reductive materialism or any form of uh you know dualism in a way is um yeah that that if there is a this Consciousness that's instinctively kind of expressing itself through all of us to learn about its creative capacities to to play with its possibilities and so on that also means we have the intrinsic right to understand our worlds allegorically again which is very much how uh you know Alchemists or animists or shamans understand the world like a if a you know if if you know your father just passed away like if a butterfly was to come into your window and and and you know jump on your finger like you would intuitively feel it's like a message from the other worlds but then you're rational mind like no that's not the case whereas for these animistic cultures you know they would they would support you and they've built up these these sort of um structures of like language and being that that are around um the correspondences and the signs that they believe come to us all the time through through the world yeah so I I've I live in a way where I hold the all of these things as possibilities so um I don't see it as macabra I see it as an incredible honor that I I I missed my father's death but I got back just a few hours after he died and so I sat with uh his lifeless body for a couple of hours and in that situation talking to him and I thought so Dad wow you might be merged with the total Universal Consciousness now what a trip that is you know so there was this sense of wow dad you're having an like w but then also hold on no you might be dad Consciousness existing as dadness pet Peter Bendle my dad um and you're here you're kind of still here around me and and so I can talk to you with that idea and then okay in that Cas what do I want to say and and and and and mark this moment or wow you could be reincarnated wow are you're going to what's that's going to be another big trip wow good luck with that and I started thinking saying some things on that and then the the other idea was actually maybe everything that you were has gone you are just Flesh and Bones here dead in front of me and the way that that you have existance is all the the memories the impacts that you've had on other people and so I'd noticed in the 3 hours since I'd known he four hours before i' known he died before I got there um I was having conversations with him um so he was more alive suddenly in my Consciousness but maybe I was just having a conversation with my idea of my father and so for me all these things are are possible and at this at the moment I think I'm okay it's almost like I'm I'm richer I'm um I'm more in awe of Life by allowing all of those possibilities and um yeah and then I don't know where yeah and for me that's where I'm at now and and so at the moment I don't need to pick one story of uh the nature of the universe and Consciousness and everything and how humans fit in with that and where we're going and in order to somehow have a sense of a foundation for my life I don't I don't I don't seem to need that I just want everyone to be a lot Kinder as Things Fall Apart let's transition out of the metaphysical things for going down that so let's talk about the the falling apartness um yes so you know give me a little bit so you did all this research you looked at the whole situation years you talked to you know economists uh you know everybody else what do you what do you think is where are we going to be in like 10 years or five 10 years like or even maybe three years like you know do do you think that we're in this you know yeah like you know I mean I'm I'm personally have I must admit getting very concerned about uh you know farming Food Supplies you know the fact that the Colorado River is is is now like a Colorado stream you know you know reading about um the effects you know already like olives have got up or twice you know olive oil is twice as expensive as it was a year ago or something feels like there's a massive unpredictable changes happening and you know even in New York which is Inc incredibly absurdly expensive place like all the prices keep going up and up and you're like wow I can't believe I just spent like $40 for a pickle you know um so um you know let's let's let's uh you know I'm Cur I'm curious what your perspective prognosis uh you know gentle predictions might be you know sure um well Daniel if you want to and if any of your viewers want to you will come up with excuses to postpone uh changing your life changing where you live um coming up with oh maybe it's a bit bit and that's what I did yeah I just but now I'm at a different place whereas that I could tell you okay this is what's happening this is how long it might take this is a research paper I read this that and the other but everything could actually snap tomorrow and you know suddenly if uh the financial system snapped tomorrow um w wow I wouldn't want to be living in a big city um a long way away from where food's grown um yeah so for me every time now because I've chosen to live very differently I now live in a rural place uh I've chosen deliberately to live there and to work close I've launched an organic regenerative farm and a farm School I've I've decided to I've decided to live beautifully according to my values in a way also which deals with this sort of uh panic I feel every time I set foot in a city now because that's just it I do I do feel the fragility of all these International Supply chains and everything so um I'm going to answer your question but I'm going to say but you and people who watch this could listen to it and go yeah that's interesting oh that's a bit oh I'll just just I'll just forget about that for now um so at some point um you're going to have to make a decision like do I want to is it more according to my values and who I am to live my current life to the fullest most caring most helpful most creative until things go snap and then I'll just I'll just be in a disaster Zone like everyone else queuing up for a bit of bread and waiting for the truck to take me off somewhere like and that's that's a conscious choice you make and I know some people who've made that conscious choice they think they don't no I'm just going to stay here and live my life and try and help my neighbors with techniques like nonviolent communication and and and help my community become a bit more loving and to try and help us collapse with a bit less nasty but this is certainly not a place to live if I'm interested in further longevity so um but that's you know so you don't have to all just decide to go and try and you know grow your own veg or live in in community that requires less electricity to get through the day um so having said that to answer your question well one second does it actually right does it actually require less electricity I don't even believe that I mean my friends who to Costa Rica or New Zealand and communities yeah they're growing you know they've got beautiful little things they feel good about themselves they're preparing for the end times but you know they're driving all over the place and they still fly conventional conferences I mean um yeah I just don't I don't even know because I feel that cities are actually vast economizers of shipping and uh energy consumption and so on I mean like um compared to people who live in you know suburban and rural areas so I I don't know I think in a way city city dwellers could be seen as the ecological heroes in a weird way and um you know I don't know just uh turning it around a little bit yeah um I'd rather live in a place that uh has some rain all year round because it's in the middle of a tropical ocean with with volcanoes which then provides gravity fed irrigation for very fertile soils with year round growing season with no harsh Winters to get through so therefore no heating required and also its own natural air conditioning by just going up the mountain if it gets a bit hotter so uh and and yeah and when the population all has still has small Holdings and is used to farming for themselves as well as each other and pulling together when there is economic collapse which Bary has had uh periodically quite often so um i' I'd rather live there and I have chosen to live there and I'm plan and I'm planning on and and I know I am living a very sort of light life if it wasn't for for coming back for family reasons I wouldn't have stepped on an airplane now although I'm doing planning my first world tour next year for first in seven years to get the book out in Spanish Chinese I guess I also feel a little bit of resistance I have so many friends who've gone off to ballet and Costa Rica New Zealand yeah it also kind of feels like um a continuation of a of a sort of Western mindset it's like yeah like just go somewhere else and our place is is now so we'll just move to a more beautiful tropical place and I mean it feels a little bit to me like a form of like high-end colonialism um yeah there's absolutely an issue of privilege but um so I'm being anti-colonial in what I'm doing I've only taken a lease on land for 15 years and we're working with very much with the in partnership with the community and local Nos and we're only going to be promoting uh organic resilient regenerative farming to the extent that the local people want to do it and and um so yeah I'm very conscious of those things I am relatively privileged there but privilege is a relative thing and I couldn't afford to do anything like this in the west because property prices have and land prices have been inflated by our banking system where all the money like 80 something percent of money in the UK issued into circulation is in form of mortgages that pumps up so I I I am relatively poor in the UK um but I'm relatively rich in the country I've chosen to live in so yeah a lot of people can't do what I do because they've theyve they've for example got kids and all responsibilities and wherever they're living I didn't I had the freedom to choose and but I'm was just AR I I I've made the choices I have for the reasons I I explained to this other issue of whether cities uh yeah no I I can't agree with you because um from an old Paradigm the one I worked in for 20 odd years of trying to encourage a sustainable transition then absolutely let's try and green the city make it as efficient energetically as possible and all the things you mentioned about um you know uh maybe uh the shipping and stuff would mean that you know distribution in ways which will have a lower carbon footprint um but I'm talking about a new situation where complex Supply chains will break down so I just want to be closer to um where I I want to be less reliant on the world I want to be more reliant on my local area for my basic needs and I want and I that's that's that's that's the shift when you begin to think like this um that means I don't have a very positive message for people who live in cities in fact uh and and I and that felt really bad and I know there are people who will therefore say oh this is a really callous guy who's just dismissing uh the future of billions of people who live in cities well um but that's kind of like well no I'm not I'm just me seeing things as I am and making the choices I am and I'm absolutely continue living in cities and try and make them as green as possible good and um fine but but I still have my view of it's not going to work and so I want to live somewhere else I gu I this at this point I'm like you know I'm not hyperfocused on feeling that I have to survive to the to the moments you know um I mean we'll see what happens but I mean I I also feel like I'm kind of indigenous to New York I have like a sort of historical connection to the to the cultural Legacy of New York like my mother was part of the the Beats my dad was an abstract painter you know I feel like this is my indigenous home and awesome maybe I go to like Berlin or something which also feels you know very close to me but I mean um yeah sort of like all right like I'm just this is this is the the story you know having a story through me you know of of you know this New York psychedelic intellectual you know witnessing you know the the approaching you know catastrophic end times and I'm just going to like yeah you know so you're you're making excellent choices too in terms of your gifts your networks and your where you found meaning and where you have an audience and and people need you to still be you and continue being you and where you live is is is is a system that creates you being you so I'm not saying uh go and become a boring farmer that would be that would be unfortunate the last minute one of my friends will take me in to their Utopia and you know oh yes yes yes yes by the way if any of my friends are watching this don't expect that of me because a lot of people do and that's just not it's just not how it's going to work sorry but I noticed you slightly no but but that I say that as a bit of a joke but you know of course we'll try but there are so many people who actually think that I meet people who say oh yeah I'm sorted they say why are you sorted oh well I know someone who's got a love F it's like okay did they know you think that oh well I'm sure they'll take me in yeah how many dozens of friends think like that but anyway um yeah of course um I felt that you slightly uh dodged the uh the question a little bit I was asking you for the time I probably just forgot what was the question the timetable of uh you know prediction oh yeah there we go okay all right so um okay things have got extremely scary because of what's happened with the climate in 2023 so um uh um the iaf they're in Vienna and they do the best modeling on uh International Food Systems um and they uh published I think a paper in 2019 um which uh crunched all the numbers from past multi- breed basket failures uh so that's so there are a few crucial um places for exporting the main grains so we're talking wheat corn or mazee barley rice and um and that you know the China America Ukraine in India there are a few places that are just massive for for wheat for example and yeah so they did a modeling and they said that um so sorry to so a multibreed basket failure is where a number of those are all damaged at the same time and the problem is with a increasingly wavy jet stream because just like a river gets more wavy when it loses energy um so the same happens with the jet stream and that causes blocking of air and therefore more droughts or more intense periods of cold or heat or more intense periods of precipitation it just becomes more wavy it becomes more problematic extreme weatherwise and then because that's happening in across of the northern hemisphere that's going to could hit all those um bread Baskets at the same time so they predicted that within um uh once the world has gone past the 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial average temperatures um the a multi breed basket failure is certain within 3 years and if you're comparing that with intergovernmental panel and climate change past projections where they were saying in 2018 oh um if we manage to cut carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 that gives us a 50% chance of avoiding 1.5 degree warming by 2050 so that was only 5 years ago when they saying that um and you compare that with what Berkeley Earth said about three weeks ago that it's very likely that 2023 will on average be 1.5 degrees above C above pre-industrial um so we're there already decades ahead of what the consensus institutional science was saying uh so yeah put two and two together and therefore we'll what that would mean by the end of 2026 2027 uh multi Bread Basket failure what does that mean doesn't mean that we suddenly don't have food but wow that will create uh well we know what happens countries will start Banning exports I mean India has already um that'll all happen um so it will compound the problem and there and then of of course we have these the international tradeing grains is controlled by these multinationals and so they won't do nice you know they won't suddenly become humanitarian actors so the suddenly the prices will just go absolutely crazy and that will kick off um unrest um and understandably so and um so that could start a real downward Doom Loop um uh just in uh just in three three years from now yeah that's one that's one way there are multiple ways where it could all get very messy very quickly um so that so we could talk about that and but we could also talk about something else which is just that um you mentioned prices earlier the way that people living normal urban lifestyles will experience well not even urban lifestyles just Lifestyles where we are consumers the way we experience the creeping collapse of Modern Life is through prices and they're just going to get more and more expensive and it's not going to be of any kind of temporary inflation it's going to be reflecting um the degradation and destabilizing of the biosphere and the atmosphere so um as well as internal contradictions of capitalism and you know all the all the other stuff that's going on that I talk about in the book so project projections um I would be astounded if um uh uh I would be astounded if people living in in where I am now in the UK or where you are in America are um having this the similar levels of modern convenience uh supermarkets full of affordable food at least for the majority of the population um within 5 years um I think less than that and that was my projection back in 2018 um I didn't say it in the paper I said I thought collapse was inevitable collapse of modern industrial consumer societies because of environmental change particularly climate change but I but when I was interviewed I said well I'm living my life as if life as I know it modern conveniences and capabilities so um will have broken down wherever I'm living by 2028 so I still think that really um the the push back would be obviously I was just you know pulling up this Tech optimism Manifesto which is a very extreme stat oh yes I mean I remember back in like 2008 uh I was very compelled by uh the peak oil theorists Like Richard and Demetri orov and they were basically saying you know it's um it's Kut you know then obviously they discovered non-conventional sources of oil like sh and so they kept the machine going so I guess the you know the tech Optimist the um you know Market driven fundamentalist answer would be yeah there's problems but that's just going to fuel Innovation and um you'll see things like nuclear fusion is on the horizon uh you know using genetic I love it it's always on the horizon for my entire life ever ever since I could even like read it's on the horizon but uh you know so the engineering so the ecomodernist argument is is Julian Simon the ultimate resource 1981 he was the the big famous proponent of it um what do I think about that well I just so I I didn't realize how much I believe that I didn't realize how much I was an ecomodernist until I actually looked into the into it so a couple of data points um just the UK where I am here 1% of the world's population um if all uh combustion engine Vehicles were to all be electric vehicles that would take up twice the annual uh Global Production of cobalt which is uh currently needed in the batteries so using current Technologies so that's just 1% so so then the technos salvationist ecomodernist respones oh but then we'll find new batteries there's always a a new or we'll learn how to mine the asteroids so um the International Energy agency of the UN did a critical minerals report about two years ago and they they looked at um just for transport and household which is a small part of the total energy consumption on the planet but they looked at that and they thought for the batteries required for that um it anywhere between 400 and 4,000% increase uh in in in the annual production of of of the The crucial rare earth metals and that that's just impossible and then there no plans to do that and guess what where are those metals they're under the feet of indigenous peoples who are the most pristine environments so basically this ecomodernist dream uh they're just You' mention colonialism after in order for them to drive their Teslas and live the dream and pretend to lie to each other this this is the future they're going to be destroying um the last amazing Wilderness areas on the planet and um in a new wave of so-called green colonialism and it's already started and there's a belligerence behind it Elon Musk said you know we'll coup whoever we want to when someone said um oh but all these these Metals you need for Tesla and Bolivia um so it's just we're going to see the same old same old and um and and for me this is Terror management Theory the the the Ecom modernists uh they're not being scientific there there's no way that they're presenting a theory that could be refuted so there's no possibility of falsification and yet they sort of claim to somehow be um uh using you know they claim to be wedded to Enlightenment values and Science and Technology it's pure ideological fanaticism they're not actually proving anything when they put these ideas forward and what I'm doing is just pointing to existing Trends and extrapolating that's all there's no magical speculation and because we're in a culture that assumes human Domin Dominion human progress um there's this idea that the burden of proof is on someone like like me or or I'm the one who's being a bit odd and pessimistic no they're just being wackos but because we live in a wacko culture that assumes that technology is so Supreme and humans are Supreme which comes from a deep delusion of our separation with nature um that people think that that's the the the kind of the more positive way of being no it's not it's just Madness just for fun I thought I would read you a little bit of from The Mark Andre techno Optimist uh met okay he identifies there's a section called the enemy uh we have enemies oh yes our enemies are not bad people but rather bad ideas our present society's been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades against technology and against life under various names like existential risk sustainability ESG sustainable development goals social responsibility stakehold holder capitalism precautionary principle trust and safety Tech ethics risk management degrowth the limits of growth this demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past the zombie ideas many derived from communism disastrous then and now that have refused to die you scared I'm bored I mean that's just someone that's just someone writing it sounds like someone just writing something to have a bit of a laugh you know I gave up debating at University I thought it was a bit stupid back then I'm much more interested in actually what's the truth and and looking and and and dialogue but that just sounds like a pure is entertainment got it well listen I'm excited like yeah I mean maybe there's something much more substantive in his work so I don't mean to be just dismissive and rude but that is that that was that that was just that was just yeah pure rhetoric it's just a all comes from communism how how how stupid like like really I know many of people a bunch of people in the valley like high level ecosystem sustainable development goals by the way is the ultimate of capitalist ideology that we can spread capitalism and consumerism to every corner of the planet and include everyone in a consumer industrial consumer way of life and he's calling that something to do with Communism it's moronic it's indicates absolutely no understanding of anything why would one even keep reading past that sentence fair enough yeah actually I remember reading about that in your book also and of course I've had the same thought but tell me a little bit about your critique of the SGS in that sense well the whole I mean sustainable development is a concept you know that we can meet to everyone's needs today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and that all sounded lovely and it was super exciting for me as a young person in 1992 thinking about what I was going to do in my in my career and so yeah I I believed I worked in sustainable development that was my vision that was my hope but so but basically it is it was about turning the whole of humanity into consumers of in in mass-produced products and turning everyone into a worker in in corporations within capitalism uh and it you know the the fall of the end of the Cold War that happened around the same time sustainable development becoming like the new sort of global framework the new ideology for international cooperation and globalization I mean that that just took off but um that's coincided with the absolute annihilation of of life on Earth so in for example I'm I'm 51 and in my life is it I think about 64% of wildlife has been eliminated by us humans so we've got to point now where only 4% of mammals on Earth are um anything other than humans pets or livestock so you know we we've massively destructive and and the things all manner of things that will be called sustainable development have been part of that engine of total Destruction um so yeah I now no longer like the notion of sustainable development and also in the book I I I then judge sustainable development ideology on its own terms so the 17 sustainable development goals look at how we're doing the un's own report on them and we're failing on all of them and we have no chance of getting anywhere near any of them we're going backwards on most of them now um and what I also talk about is if you look at the data the human development index the numo quality of life index all these things you crunch all the numbers together you realize that when they were all on the stage in New York at the UN all the world leaders signing off on their stgs agenda 2 30 for the majority of people on that stage their countries had already started their persistent decline into ultimate collapse and it's the fact that they're all privileged that they just don't know about this and this is the problem of our systems is the and this is the people who study the collapse of anent civilizations say well it's clearly that the elites the leaders the people in charge politically ideologically perhaps spiritually because a lot of these places had temples they were so disconnected from the reality so um good points it's the same thing with the SGS it's just load of nonsense got next have another question for you um so I'm looking forward to also because you're going to be part of this um kind of seminar we're doing building our generative future uh which we hope is vaguely possible in some long-term sense um but I I what I know one thing I saw in the book was um you were kind of coming up coming against there being sort of like big Central Iz Solutions and basically focusing on uh you know kind of individual resilience Community sovereignty as um the path forward and some of that seemed to be kind of inflected by the whole thing that happened with the coid vaccines in a way and the sort of movement against you know for like bodily sovereignty and health and so on so I thought maybe you could uh you know explore a little bit about about your hypothesis there yeah this book they can't see it the subtitle is is Freedom loving response to collapse and um I actually quite enjoyed how that might great with a lot of the sort of the normal sort of middle class middle of the road greens which is my kind of professional and epistemic Community um because it's really odd how interest in Liberty Freedom personal uh human rights has kind of become denigrated as somehow selfish and Reckless um um in in through the mass media in many Western countries what I've lived um I've lived uh half my adult life in the global South different countries and I think there's a very different feeling about what Freedom means which is it's just naturally understood as collective struggle against oppressors rather than this idea that it's always it's just being selfish you just want to do your own thing you don't care you're immoral well you don't wear a mask you're not going to get vaccinated to save your grandmother you know all that sort of stuff which is this this sort of new anti anti-freedom or pro- Freedom discourse that this bation that's happened in the west particularly in America perhaps um so yes I in the book I Advance something I call Eco libertarianism it's not right-wing libertarianism for me right-wing libertarianism is fundamentally flawed for not looking at how large corporations actually steal our freedoms and take over government and there's this corrupt merger of state and corporations that occurs and that if we um if we want to uh enable each other's freedoms um we have to work collectively against oppression uh and coercion no matter how it shows up through whatever institutional entities whether that's religions corporations the state um so it's a left libertarian view therefore um and Eco libertarianism basically means that um we believe that if people are not coerced and manipulated and rewarded for behaving in ways which are uh destructive to each other in nature then we wouldn't have arrived at this awful situation and so that for me I I have a whole chapter explaining the expansionist monetary system and how it drove collapse um I talk about us being unfree I talk about the whole information ecology being distorted by the power of cap capital and money in that way um so we don't most of us don't know what's going on and we don't have good quality dialogue about what's going on and what to do about it political processes completely hijacked by different factions of capital so I talk about all that and I say that um the one upside of what is it sad scary situation of societal collapse the one upside is new opportunities as we become free we we get freed up from the the the system of systems of control mind control political ideological control uh so yeah in Practical terms I'm I have a whole chapter celebrating people creating economic Alternatives local currencies relocalizing uh trade um and all that kind of stuff so let's make that a focus when when we come back together for the for the webinar I think that' be great sure um and by the way I should say the reason why I put that for forward is I wanted to advance a solidarity based politics for an ER of collapse um because I noticed that quite a lot of people are secretly turning authoritarian and okay they became quite overtly authoritarian during the coid crisis the the early phases of the pandemic it's not over Co is still super damaging and we should take it seriously but for me taking it seriously means recognizing what's failed and what we could be doing differently about it in future but um but yeah the many environmentalists now are so understandably freaked out by how bad the environment is and how ineffectual their efforts have been that they are becoming authoritarian they're kind of saying oh well we just have to force everyone to change because otherwise it's too late and we you know and and for me that's just reflecting that's that's that's their fear allowing dominant ideology to work through them um so I'm offering something other than Eco authoritarianism in this book and what would for you then what would be the proper role for government or the state in this kind of trans you know managed transition you know is the Poss is there a possibility of some kind of like you know if there was an acceptance of this you know inescapable collapse yeah could could the governments in the states become valuable allies for for the human cause or is it really just too late for that or or what would that look like in an ideal sense so if I could W would it depend on which state in which part of the world but if I could wave a magic one then they would be doing emergency relocalizing of production of food uh the they would be helping people um have community-owned local exchange systems and local currencies they would be there would be brutal honesty with lots of compassion about how we're now in a in an era of retraction and regress and disturbance and there would be some kind of Truth and Reconciliation about a process about how we got into this mess where we recognized that it yeah some some ideas some institutions and some people were more to blame than others yes there's some blame but we don't want to just get hung up on blame and seek revenge that's not going to help get us anywhere but we shouldn't pretend that there's no blame so we need some Truth and Reconciliation there's all manner of things once should do it but that's if I had a magic wand and that none of that's going to happen so it's just all going to collapse none of that's going to happen because people who uh seek uh Power Within hierarchies are uh uh generally um people who are well adjusted to the succeeding in those hierarchies playing the game and most of them I know are extremely uh emotionally psychologically needy people who need the affirmation and so they're not going to really go deep also because once you're in charge of a big organization uh there's this sense of responsibility to just keep the show on the road for that organization I'm speaking from experience of hanging out with world leaders since 2012 at Davos and the UN and I haven't seen any states person ship or even capability for it got it okay J well we're closing in on like an hour and a half here um all right sorry anyway cheers any uh yeah like um you know any any um I don't if that would be positive thoughts or Redemptive hopes or anything you'd like to leave people with well I thought I was being positive you know the elites have got further to fall yeah let let let them you know they got further to fall that's great the collapse of the elite yeah no what's positive about it well um all right I'll tell you this I was thinking about it today I went down to the beach uh where Dad used to go with his dad and they used to go mael fishing as a kid and I I love that story um that doesn't happen anymore like a rowing boat off the coast and I was thinking at my dad and thinking I thought initially he changed a lot in the last 5 years and then I thought actually no it was me as well and it was the the fact that I thought that oh life could fall apart it brought mortality in general and my mortality in his into my mind and into his mind I did talk about some of this stuff with him and with that context I think um we slowed down and became nicer to each other more appreciative and respectful with each other so I think I had a much better relationship with my father precisely because of my anticipation of societal collapse now probably many people aren't as you know up as me and they don't need to anticipate societal collapse to have a good relationship with my dad but in my case I think it really helped so I felt gratitude about that today oddly um so you know I'm there's there upsides to even the worst darkest stuff aren't there was it the lau said uh the way to illumination is is through the dark or the path of Illumination is is is is through the dark so all right well maybe that's a nice little note to close on but it was great to hang out with you and uh yeah look forward to more you know yeah I'll see you again in your um yeah in the thing you're doing maybe in Bali never know check in with my friend Paradox I don't know if we if you ever made that connection yeah thank you I'm I'm I'm I welcome any anyone who knows anyone in barley who's who's um not into spiritual bypassing and not into being colonialist um and wants to help collaborate with people who want to make barley more resilient regenerative than get in touch well oh I guess you know oh you can find out about my project there actually Beck and. net be is is a word in Buddhism for healing it's the the medicine Buddha mantra beckin a. net and then you can see what I'm up to there what about the finding the book and all that kind of Social Media stuff so this book is um you can download it for free see I'm not trying to profit from the apocalypse um uh it's gel.

com you can get a free EB there um uh if you want to buy it then um there's also links to places to buy it is now going to be in more online retailers it's not in your local Bookshop it's not the kind of thing that penguin or Random House quite do just yet but um yeah uh oh it's on Audible as well if you just want to listen to it um yeah awesome Budd thank you for your time all right cheers bye bye

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.