limits to growth

Join us on March 13, 2024 for the launch of our sixth season, in which Jason, Rob, and Asher explore escape routes from industrialism, capitalism, consumerism, and a bunch of other "-isms" that are causing the polycrisis of environmental and social breakdown.

LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• LaUra's book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet
• The Good Grief Network's 10 Step Program
• LaUra mentioned Bayo Akomolafe and his work on "questioning our questions."
• Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects
• Video of Dr. Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 breathing technique
• David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs
• Crazy Town episode 34, "Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or... the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom"
• Fiftieth anniversary book review in the New York Times: Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death
• Ayisha Siddiqa's poem "On Another Panel about Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem"

Asher, Jason, and Rob reflect on 2023 – a year filled to the brim with Crazy Townisms like the COP climate conference being held in Dubai, an anti-aging nutbag who parasitizes his own son, and the hijinks of the world’s dumbest billionaires. After a few predictions (all with money-back guarantees), they turn to some personal resolutions that might even help you cope with what’s coming in 2024.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

References:

• 183 regional and local conflicts around the world
• Zuckerberg’s tragically misguided Hawaiian bunker
• Anti-aging nutter
• When do we get to use the guns?
• The 10-step program of the Good Grief Network

The most vomit-inducing document of 2023 has to be the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto," written (oh so obviously) by a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Join Jason, Rob, and Asher if you feel like sharing in some outrage and learning about a WAY better manifesto that just so happens to focus on the world's smallest monkeys.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

References:

• Marc Andreessen's horrifying "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" 
• Peer-reviewed paper featuring Jason's far superior "Dehumanist Manifesto"
• Description of the pygmy marmoset
• The idea of Beth Sawin's Multisolving Institute
• The dark triad -- narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
• The original paper on the taxonomy of Phalse Prophets
• Article by Richard Heinberg about free will.

Investigative journalist Leah Sottile writes articles teeming with insights, and she produces and hosts podcasts filled with ah-ha moments. Rob tries not to sound like too much of a fanboy as he interviews Leah about political extremism, environmentalism, and the craft of storytelling during the Great Unraveling.

Resources:

• Leah's website
• Leah's Substack page, titled "The Truth Does not Change According to Our Ability to Stomach It"
• Article in The High Country News "The 90-foot sentinel of Butte, Montana"
• Bundyville: The Remnant, a must-listen podcast about the patriot movement and right-wing extremism
• Burn Wild, another must-listen podcast about the Earth Liberation Front and left-wing extremism

Just how much has the extractivist growth mindset come to dominate Phoenix and other cities in the desert Southwest of the United States? Prepare to turn your indignation meter up to 11 as Jason, Rob, and Asher consider desalination, pipelines, and the folly of pursuing infinite growth in a dry climate.

What do Saddam Hussein’s information minister and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have in common? Hint: it starts with a “d,” ends with “enial,” and isn’t just a river in Egypt. A new and virulent strain of climate denial could be called “doomer shaming.” Instead of acknowledging how logical it is to be distressed about the state of the climate (and the pitiful worldwide political response), delusional boosters of the status quo would rather belittle people who worry about rising temperatures, wildfires, super-storms, and ecosystem breakdown. Jason, Rob, Asher, and Melody consider how to manage climate anxiety and use it in service of caring for planet Earth.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
References:

• Video of Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob
• Allysia Finley wrote this Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Climate Change Obsession Is a Real Mental Disorder”
• Nature article dismissed by Finley
• Lancet article dismissed by Finley
• Rebuttal written by PCI Advisor Leslie Davenport and published in the Wall Street Journal
• Rebecca Solnit’s article in The Guardian, “We Can’t Afford to Be Climate Doomers.”
• Survey on climate distress by the Yale Program on Climate Communication
• Gen Dread newsletter on climate distress
• Climate Psychology Alliance
• Good Grief Network

After hearing a story of woe on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Jason, Rob, and Asher cover the four critical ways of cultivating personal resilience to navigate the Great Unraveling. The report we reference several times is Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

What does it take to avoid global collapse?  Is there still time?  And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there? 

This week's guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible. 

Gaya Herrington received her first master’s degree in Econometrics from the Liberal University of Amsterdam and her second master’s in Sustainability from Harvard University. In between she worked for KPMG, for the Dutch Government as a regulator and then back to KPMG in the US, where she now lives. She is a member of the Transformational Economics Commission of the Club of Rome, a recurring guest lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and works at Schneider Electric as Vice-President of ESG Research.

She wrote her thesis for her second Masters on the seminal Limits To Growth work that first came out in 1972. The paper she wrote as a result of this went viral - and she expanded it into a book called Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse. She has made this freely available by download and I have put a link in the show notes - because this is absolutely essential reading for anyone on this path. The take home message though, as you'll hear, is that if we all work together, there is still time. Which should be a fairly familiar idea to those of you who have listened to other guests. But this time, we'll really unpick the data and concepts behind it in the company of someone who has worked hard at the coal face of the old system and has seen how to change it. 

Gaya's book https://mdpi-res.com/bookfiles/mono/6206/Five_Insights_for_Avoiding_Global_Collapse.pdf?v1682069789
Gaya's paper at KPMG https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html
Manfred Max-Neef https://gaiafoundation.org/the-barefoot-economist-manfred-max-neef/
Club of Rome: Earth for All https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-book/

Asher, Rob, and Jason explore the lessons and dangers of the brotherhood of Phalse Prophets and consider better ways to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. Along the way, they examine how to start a cult, turn the insufferability index on themselves, respond to listener feedback, and repeatedly mispronounce amygdala. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Meet Elon Musk, the Muskian mogul who Elon Musks his way to the pinnacle of Muskitude. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Prepare to be wowed by the Musk Foundation website.
• Luc Olinga, "Errol Musk, Elon's Dad, Prompts a New Controversy," TheStreet (2022).
• Musk's attack on Jane Goodall
• Cade Metz and Neal E. Boudette, "Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars," The New York Times (2021).
• Andrew J. Hawkins and Umar Shakir, "Elon Musk unveils a new Master Plan, a path to sustainable energy future, but no new cars," The Verge (2023).
• Adam Kovacs and Adam Westbrook, "Elon Musk Has Some bad Ideas for Mass Transit. We Have Solutions," The New York Times (2022).
• Adam Something, "Elon Musk’s Loop is a Bizarrely Stupid Idea," YouTube (2021).
• Ted Mann and Julie Bykowicz, "Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America," The Wall Street Journal (2022).
• Nikki McCann Ramirez, "Paul Pelosi Conspiracy Theory Trends on Twitter After Elon Musk Pushes It," Rolling Stone (2022).
• Ted McCormick, "The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world," The Conversation (2021).
• Marina Koren, "The War in Ukraine is Testing the Myth of Elon Musk," The Atlantic (2022).
• Radhika Viswanathan, "Elon Musk’s plan to bring a mini-submarine to rescue the Thai boys," Vox (2018).
• A podcast episode from Backpacker that describes the amazing Thai cave rescue
• Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, "Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first," Platformer (2023)
• Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi vision should concern us all," Salon, July 17, 2022.

Meet Steve Bannon, the Molotov mixologist who wants to light the world on fire. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 1 with Daniel P Aldrich, Amira Odeh, and Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.
• Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 2 with Dean Spade, Joanna Swan, and Aliza Tuttle, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.
• Dean Spade, "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),"  Verso Books, October 2020.
• "Democracy Rising" essay series on deliberative democracy
• Global Tapestry of Alternatives
• Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols, "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read," Politico, February 7, 2017.
• Lisa Marshall, "Inside Steve Bannon's 'War for Eternity'," CU Boulder Today, April 22, 2020.
• Joshua Green, "Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia," Vanity Fair, July 17, 2017.
• David Breitenbeck, "A Brief Summary of Traditionalism," The Imaginative Conservative, March 21, 2019.
• Generation Zero, Bannon's poorly reviewed documentary
• Guo Wengui's video for his song, "Take Down the CCP," -- the third best comedy yacht video of all time.
• Douglas Rushkoff, "How to Avoid Becoming a Fascist: Why I turned down an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast," Medium, October 21, 2021.
• Olivia Goldhill, "The neo-fascist philosophy that underpins both the alt-right and Silicon Valley technophiles," Quartz, June 18, 2017.
• Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’," The Washington Post, February 23, 2017.

Meet Guy McPherson, the extinction enthusiast who undermines legitimate climate concerns by predicting we’re all going to die yesterday. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Guy McPherson, "Near-Term Extinction blog post," Nature Bats Last (last updated 2016).
• Scott Johnson, "How Guy McPherson gets it wrong," Fractal Planet, 2014.
• Michael Tobis, "McPherson’s Evidence That Doom Doom Doom," Planet 3.0, 2014.
• Nathan Curry, "Humanity Is Getting Verrrrrrry Close to Extinction," Vice, 2013.
• BizNewsTV, "'Humans will be extinct by 2026' - 'doom and gloom prophet' Prof McPherson on abrupt climate change," January 19, 2023.
• Shannon Osaka, "Why climate 'doomers' are replacing climate 'deniers',” Washington Post, March 24, 2023.
• Jerome Roos, "We Don’t Know What Will Happen Next," New York Times, April 18, 2023.
• List of McPherson predictions

Meet Barrett Moore, the bunker-building bullshit artist who helps capitalists survive the apocalypse with beans, bullets, and bravado. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• History of the Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center
• Article on Kelly Butte in the Atlas Obscura
• A Day Called X -- video of a dramatized atomic evacuation of Portland, Oregon
• Donald Fagen's "New Frontier"
• Sam Biddle, "The Rise and Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper," The Intercept, July 5, 2021.
• "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" -- episode 1 of season 3 of the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.
• National Geographic produced the popular video series Doomsday Preppers.
• Molly Redden, "The American Elite Are Planning Their Escape — And It Starts With Paying For Passports," Huffington Post, March 19, 2023.
• John Ramey, "New statistics on modern prepper demographics from FEMA and Cornell," theprepared.com August 4, 2021.
• Bradley Garrett, "Living with bunker builders: doomsday prepping in the age of coronavirus,"The Conversation, May 14, 2020.
• Interview about Bradley Garrett's study of prepping
• J. Oliver Conroy, "We mocked preppers and survivalists – until the pandemic hit," The Guardian, April 30, 2020.
• Walter Karp, "When Bunkers Last in the Backyard Bloom-d," American Heritage, February/March 1980.
• Red Cross’s Preparedness Checklist
• FEMA’s 12 Ways to Prepare
• Tom Prugh, "Democracy Rising 1 Introduction: Idiots R Us," Resilience, October 27, 2021.
• Jana Reiss, "For today’s Latter-day Saints, it’s food storage light," The Salt Lake Tribune, January 27, 2023.

Meet William MacAskill, the puerile professor who helps crypto capitalists justify sociopathy today for a universe of transhuman colonization tomorrow. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Andrew Anthony, "William MacAskill: 'There are 80 trillion people yet to come. They need us to start protecting them'," The Guardian, August 21, 2022.
• Guiding Principles of the Centre for Effective Altruism
• Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality," givingwhatwecan.org.
• Sarah Pessin, "Political Spiral Logics," sarahpessin.com.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down," Time, March 29, 2023.
• Emile Torres explains the acronym TESCREAL in a Twitter thread.
• Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, "Is it ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good? An in-depth analysis," 80,000 Hours, March 26, 2023.
• William MacAskill, "The Case for Longtermism," The New York Times, August 5, 2022.
• Emile P. Torres, "Understanding “longertermism”: Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic," Salon, August 20, 2022.
• Nick Bostrom, "Existential Risks," Journal of Evolution and Technology (2002).
• Nick Bostrom, "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development," Utilitas (2003).
• Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi visions should concern us all," Salon,  July 17, 2022.

Meet Mark Jacobson and David Keith, the leading techno-fixologists who overpromise overhyped “solutions” to the climate conundrum. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The Solutions Project
• Carbon Engineering
• David W. Keith et al., "A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere," Joule, August 15, 2018.
• Christopher T. M. Clack et al., "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar," PNAS, June 19, 2017.
• Natanael Bolson, P. Prieto, and T. Patzek, "Capacity factors for electrical power generation from renewable and nonrenewable sources," PNAS, December 20, 2022.
• Simon Michaux's website
• Richard Heinberg, "Can Civilization Survive? These Studies Might Tell Us," Resilience, December 19, 2022.
• Average household electricity consumption
• David Fridley and Richard Heinberg, "Can Climate Change Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline?," Renewable Energy World, June 19, 2018.
• Mark Jacobson on Late Night with David Letterman
• James R. Martin, "Energy Transition & the Luxury Economy," Resilience, October 31, 2022.
• Yamina Saheb, Kai Kuhnhenn, and Juliane Schumacher, "It’s a Very Western Vision of the World," Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
• Mark Z. Jacobson et al., "Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries," Energy & Environmental Science (2022).
• Nicole Jewell, "Leading Stanford climate scientist builds incredible net zero home, complete with Tesla Powerwall," In Habitat (2017).
• Raymond Pierrehumbert, "The trouble with geoengineers 'hacking the planet'," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2017).

Meet Stewart Brand and his band of merry dematerialists, the Silicon Valley salesmen who undermined environmentalism with planet-saving fantasies that reek of technofetishism. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, 2022.
• Anna Wiener, "The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s 'Whole Earth Catalog'," The New Yorker, November 16, 2018.
• Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison, "'Life Goes On' With Stewart Brand," Palladium, September 14, 2022.
• "Ecomodernist Manifesto"
• Timothee Parrique, "A response to Paul Krugman: Growth is not as green as you might think," Resilience, February 28, 2023.
• Low-Tech Magazine
• The Long Now Foundation
• Revive & Restore

Meet Bill Gates, the philandering philanthropist who attempts to remake the world's operating system in his own image. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, 2021.
• Alan Guebert, "Given What We Don't Know, Why Do We Act Like We Do Know?," Food and Farm File, September 25, 2022.
• Gates Foundation, "Bill and Melinda Gates Pledge $10 Billion in Call for Decade of Vaccines," January 2010.
• Bill Gates TED Talk, "The next outbreak? We're not ready," 2015.
• Erin Banco, Ashleigh Furlong, and Lennart Pfahler, "How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight," Politico, September 14, 2022.
• Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, October 1, 2019.
• Timothy A. Wise "Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa," Tufts University, July 2020.
• Anmar Frangoul, "Bill Gates on why he'll carry on using private jets and campaigning on climate change," CNBC, February 7, 2023.
• Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy, Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth In The Time Of Collapse, October 17, 2022.

Meet Tom Friedman, the mustachioed metaphor maven who thinks we can have our cake and listen to it too. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Thomas Friedman, "Foreign Affairs Big Mac I," The New York Times, December 8, 1996.
• Matt Taibbi's critique of Hot, Flat, and Crowded -- "Flathead" Strauss Media, November 21, 2014.
• Jason Hickel et al., "Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015," Global Environmental Change, March 2022.
• Thomas Friedman, "The Earth Is Full," The New York Times, June 7, 2011.
• Thomas Friedman, "Something's Happening Here," The New York Times, October 11, 2011.
• Thomas Friedman, "Want to Save the Earth? We Need a Lot More Elon Musks.," The New York Times, November 16, 2021.
• Thomas Friedman, "How We Broke the World," The New York Times, May 30, 2020.
• Belen Fernandez, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, November 1, 2011.
• Here's the archive of Global Citizen columns by Donella Meadows.
• Ian Parker, "The Bright Side: The relentless optimism of Thomas Friedman," The New Yorker, November 2, 2008.
• Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1999.
• Thomas Friedman The World Is Flat, YouTube video of Yale University Lecture, 2009.
• Garrett Graff, "Thomas Friedman is On Top of the World," Washingtonian Magazine, July 1, 2006.  

Meet Bill Clinton, who converted the Democratic Party into slightly less loathsome neoliberals. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Lily Geismer wrote an outstanding and comprehensive book, published in 2022, on Clinton and the legacy of neoliberal policies called Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality.
• Lily Geismer, "How the Third Way Made Neoliberal Politics Seem Inevitable," The Nation, December 13, 2022.
• Alex Parnee, “The Disastrous Legacy of the New Democrats,” The New Republic, May 16, 2022.
• Michael Pierce, “How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions” The Labor and Working-Class History Association, November 23, 2016.