Hey everyone, welcome to season 2 of reversing climate change.
We are doing that podcasting. Now, in launching a patreon, you
can find it at patreon.com slash Nori podcasts.
There are various tiers with different types of goodies
available. Do you want to receive a special
newsletter digest of what Nori knots are reading that week?
Be a part of a Nori book club. Get special access to Nori
events. Go take a look at patreon.com
Nori podcast for what we're offering and in that Spirit of
being lean and that So kind of way that, you know, we like to
do this list of goodies is subject to change and we'd very
much like your feedback. Is there something that you'd
really like to see? But it isn't listed here.
Honest, feedback does a lot to help us shape what we offer to
you, you can send an email to podcast that nor e.com or fill
out our podcast survey anonymously in our newsletter,
which you can find at nor e.com. Subscribe, and thank you so much
for listening to another season of reversing climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate Podcast.
I'm Ross, Kenyan lead strategist at the Nori carbon removal
Marketplace. Today, we have an alumna back,
dr. Holly Jean Buck research fellow
at The Institute of the environment and sustainability
at UCLA. Holly, you wrote how to
decolonize the atmosphere and Progressive International, which
gave me the chance I needed to invite you back on to do a bonus
episode. So, thanks so much for being
here. Yeah, thanks for having me, what
led to your writing this article?
And I don't know that we've actually covered this before
which is Is potentially even negligent on my part.
But what does it mean to be colonized the atmosphere?
And what does it mean to be colonised generally?
So I was inspired by a lot of recent writing, including the
Red Nation that put out the red deal.
So these different series of explaining what that is the
third, the third part about indigenous action to save Earth
is about healing the atmosphere, right?
And they say that first world Nations have colonized the
atmosphere with their greenhouse gas emissions and that Producing
an absorbing emissions to decolonize.
That atmosphere is what we urgently need to be doing.
And I thought that was a really good starting point for thinking
about what carbon removal means. If you think about all those
emissions, the weight of them taking up the space, it's the
first world emissions u.s. emissions.
What does it mean to remove that?
Can that be a d Colonial practice?
And I just say that, it might seem very far-fetched because a
lot of of the conventional ways of thinking about carbon removal
would actually just further entrench, settler, Colonial
infrastructure. So this is very radical
departure from how a lot of people are thinking about it
today but I think it's an interesting and important
provocation. Yeah.
Okay. Those are that's the first time
that those terms have come up on the show.
I'm pretty sure. So when I think of settler
colonialism I usually think of it as contrasted against
indigenous He or being in business, would you mind
sketching a little bit of what these terms mean for someone who
may be encountering them for the first time?
Yeah. And I but I mean I will caveat
it that I'm not an expert in so I'm really drawing from thinkers
like Nick asta's Winona, Laduke, Kyle white other people who have
you know explain this to me that I'm trying to learn from right
but as Winona Laduke and Deborah come and say in a recent article
about Beyond wendigo infrastructure, they say
infrastructures The how of settler colonialism, settler
colonialism being this form of colonialism where people come
and settle on the land Outsiders.
Usually very violent extractive process in find was capitalism,
in many cases. And so carbon removal
infrastructure, would that also be, you know, another extension
of settler colonialism or can we imagine an infrastructure for
removing carbon? That's in their words.
Elementary something that's life-giving in.
Its design, its Finance its effects.
That's how you know it's a huge question that I want to explore
with people especially people that are better singers than me,
frankly about these things and we should have some of them on
and do greater Justice to this topic because it's certainly
interesting and of interest to our audience and we have not
covered it nearly as much as we should.
So that's enough. We will be doing in the future
but I guess how exactly might one?
Pursue a project, like, Addie Colonial carbon removal regime,
because as your work has documented, and we've had you on
for your book after geoengineering and this has come
up, other places. How do you make sure carbon
removal? Doesn't become a business as
usual, kind of strategy. What needs to change in order to
make carbon removal, liberatory, or your work specifically, seems
to be how does the left use carbon removal in a way that
fits in with. Their broader goals and
worldview as opposed to being something that reinforces the
structures that they do not care for that currently exists.
Is that is that a fair summation of your work?
Yeah. And I think that one way to
approach this is through the green New Deal framework since
that centers, equality and environmental justice kind of by
definition. And so that's what I've been
thinking about for a while and what a lot of this article and
Progressive Internationals about.
And it's interesting to kind of Think about that at the same
time as looking at the Democratic climate crisis,
action plan that came out recently.
I guess a week ago now, maybe two weeks ago from the the house
committee, right? Because it talks about carbon
removal in ways that would kind of synergize with the green New
Deal framework, but are not quite as Progressive as what I'm
describing in this article. So I think there's basically
three things we need to do to Be more radical with this.
One of them is Lincoln carbon removal with the manage decline
of fossil fuels and thinking about these has The same project
basically looking at supply side policies that integrate carbon
removal whisk for their production of fossil fuels.
So that could be something like a carbon take back requirement,
meaning that companies are required to take back carbon
that they emit or produce, just transition programs to support
workers to transition from fossil fuel extraction, jobs to
carbon management, carbon Services, carbon cleanup jobs,
and then minimizing The remaining a mission.
So really making residual emissions a political matter.
Not just kind of a calculation of what's left over.
But really politicizing that in line with science and
biophysical reality, of course. Okay, I'm trying to decide if I
want you to lay out the outline of all three or we just dive in
because every every one of those you you laid out in the first
pillar, I know I know what does it mean to politicize?
Residual missions. Like what?
What exactly do you have in mind?
When you say That. Okay, so as I say most of your
listeners now so net net zero targets by 2050 or whatever
assume some amount of residual emissions.
And that there's going to be negative emissions capacity to
balance those and usually, the residual emissions defined by
different entities. Whether that be a nation state
or a US state, or a city or a company often, work out to be
between 10 and 20 percent of current.
Um, Sentence Goldman Sachs and their carbon Atomic support has
a figure of 25 percent. I mean, generally there's some
significant portion that is difficult to decarbonise, mostly
for biophysical reasons, but not necessarily, right?
So I think that this needs to be both Technical and political
conversation about how many residual emissions we can cope
with and should cope with. There's one other one you
mentioned in there too. You just quickly named the other
ones that you Have mentioned. Yeah, I mean, in terms of
integrating carbon removal with the manage decline of fossil
fuels thinking about just transition and thinking about
supply side policies, I mean, I think that needs to be a much
bigger focus of the whole climate policy writ large.
Yeah. By the way, are you going to
allow this a supply side because it makes you sound like a
reaganite? I don't think you're allowed to
do that, step 1 and then so what is that?
And then also just transition policy, I think is very
interesting too. Could you outline a bit what?
These mean. So, I mean supply-side, I just
feel like a lot of climate policy is focused on Curbing
demand and we need to think more about curbing production as well
in a much more planned regulated way.
It's like industrial policy rather than changing your light
bulbs, something like that. Yeah, so that we could mean
production quotas for fossil fuels, it could be linking
production with two certificates of obligation for carbon
removal. All just a much more planned
heavy-handed approach than just letting the market decide about
that. And then just transition as I
understand, it has been more about what do you do with people
who have invested a lifetime and learning the skills necessary to
be Roughnecks in the oil patch or something like that.
And now what do they do? How do you get buy-in from
Working Class? People who are sort of their
like, God, this is, this is the worst type of economy is amiss a
but they're stranded assets. Themselves, right?
It's like what do you do with human stranded assets?
That's the worst most neoliberal thing.
I've ever said on the show, you can cast me in into the far
left, outer Darkness for that statement.
Have, I mean, this is something I'm really concerned about, you
know, is in the petroleum Museum, in Midland, Texas and
the Permian Basin where there's a lot of enhanced oil recovery
and in this Museum, there's a this exhibit about, you know,
what's going to happen to? Two workers, if oil runs out and
this Q&A and answer is we're not going to run out because
enhanced oil recovery will keep jobs coming for the foreseeable
future. I mean, it was really pitched at
the oil workers that are worried about.
Should they even get into this industry?
What's the future going to be? And so, you can see that, you
know, enhanced oil recovery perhaps coupled with carbon
removal, policy could be a way forward for people who already
have skills. That industry and it's been
interesting to see, even the global CCS Institute has a
recent report where they use the language of the just transition.
There's a new report out from rhodium about jobs and direct
are capture. I think that this is a
increasingly of interest to people on both sides of the
aisle. Yeah, we use this Frederick to
and then I've also seen in other places lately but they're
trained to pull hydrocarbons and carbon molecules out of the
Ground, can we just reverse the process?
Do those skills transplant effectively into the new carbon
capture industry? I hope so.
I do you think that's actually going to happen in the way that
people are hopeful for. Maybe I am also starting to have
a few concerns about it because it doesn't necessarily change
the mode of production which is that which is what I'm more
interested in. And I also think that if you go
to a place like Denver City Texas, which is where Is really
big CO2 flood infrastructure. I mean it's the gender Dynamics
and this town are just like the craziest you've seen like and
you can see this in the Census Data to about earnings between
men and women. It's like the men have these
high paying jobs and the women if they have a job will be in
these Gas Station restaurant. Service industry jobs and as a
just transition switching, this two carbon removal.
Going to just replicate those gender Dynamics.
I don't know. I just wanted to throw that in
there. Yeah, Bots difficult.
Sociological knots to untie on your know what you, what you do
in cases like that. But okay let's let's keep going
to your second pillar here. Holly.
So the second one is ensure the public has ownership and return
on investment. So what did you have in mind for
this pillar? I guess.
This is kind of my offhand comment a minute ago about the
mode of production, so, Carbon removal.
Just going to replicate the same kind of social relations between
big energy companies and workers as we have now or is there a
chance to change it? So that the public has ownership
Stakes collective decision, making and get something from
this new infrastructure. We're thinking of building out.
I'm curious about this, too. It just came up on Leah Stokes
is episode a bit as well, which is that some types of public
ownership. Particularly for utilities have
not been as Progressive as people had, maybe poked.
So do you think there are are things that were?
Maybe missing about how utilities should be transformed
moving forward. Probably yeah, person to comment
on that. Yeah yeah.
Fair enough. It's a it's a hard one.
I'm not totally sure either but I think people do tend to think
that public ownership itself changes the dynamic Enough that
it's not a Panacea that was put in place just solves everything
there. Some of those same incentive
still exist, independent of that ownership structure.
So I guess, what do you do to have a truly Progressive utility
or something like that? Yeah, I guess when I was
thinking about that point, I was thinking about both Municipal
operations in waste management, and I was also thinking about
agricultural coops because I was out in the field, talking to
people who cooperatively owned, And dairies with, you know, 100
owners or were using these kind of new arrangements to make
agriculture work economically for them.
And so, I think that I mean, utilities is the obvious thing
to look at but we could even go. Further, afield to look for
other models of how that might work.
And this return on investment what exactly is meant by this,
where might that money be flowing into what might these
industries BP funding Beyond themselves.
I think this really depends on the form of carbon removal
because obviously there are some forms like bioenergy with ccs
where you have a usable good at the end.
And then I see direct are captures more of a waste
disposal service. So I mean the the economics of
those I think are pretty different.
Yeah. Certainly.
But I guess, so the concern then is, as policy is being created,
how is it being done? Start giant companies that the
average person has very little control over that doesn't just
become the future for director capture or some of these other
carbon capture methods there's an element of wanting to change
the the structures of these such that they are more democratic or
under public control or something like that.
That's that's the vision. Yeah, I guess part of the reason
I was thinking about this is because I have a paper I wrote
coming out soon in interphase Us Focus, which is a scientific
journal, that looks at the history of Waste Management,
both in liquid waste and solid waste over the past couple of
centuries and how there's this kind of tension and going back
and forth between, you know, should these be viewed as
private Industries and opportunities for Private
Industry? Or should they be civically?
Held maintained infrastructure? And the history is kind of
going. Can force a bit.
And I think that for carbon removal at scale of Public Works
model just makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, because it Nori for-profit, private company
trying to create a Marketplace for carbon removal.
Obviously, what you just said, baited me a little bit, Holly
you must have known that from four years ago.
But why do you think the incentives or the structure of
something? Like, what we're trying to do,
is potentially inferior to something that is more inside
the public domain, I guess you could say, Say, well, I think
this thing here is scale and I think that what you're trying to
do probably works really well from million ton type scale.
But then when you get to this gigaton scale, I mean I maybe it
sounds radical when I say it but I'm thinking back on the rhodium
report, from May of 2019, capturing leadership, where they
suggest that maybe the government could undertake the
task of CDR itself and you know, should we have what they call a
federal carbon Removal Administration that's chartered
by Congress to kind of help manage this, that the million
tons scale. I can see a pretty obvious role
for a market. Please connecting particular
projects and that does gigaton scale.
It's harder to imagine well, maybe for you and, you know, a
couple of other wonky report writers.
No, not. I think there's a fair point
there, too. And people Can legitimately take
that is also easier to imagine that scale coming from.
If the government created an Administration to deal with this
at scale that would clearly have a gigantic effect and seemingly
because those bureaus can be created, just that a pen stroke
from a president, right? That's good.
Seemingly happen, very very quickly, whereas scaling up a
voluntary market place, there's different Dynamics at play.
Is that sort of what you're getting at.
Yeah, there's a milestone interesting proposition thinking
about the us as a territory having these geological storage
assets, that could be rented to other countries that have less
geological capacity for carbon storage.
I mean, you could apply this principle about public having
ownership and return on investment there too.
So you know if the US was to sequester carbon would that the
flows from the Funds. Go back to the public.
Would they be used? I mean, how would they be used?
Like thinking about this throughout all the different
scales? You know, it's just a very broad
principle and I didn't develop it in this article, it's like
one paragraph, right? But I'm hoping that people from
all different fields will continue to think about this
public ownership question. Yeah, absolutely.
I'm sure there will be more discussions about this in the
future and then so you're hinting at this third pillar
then which is advocate for a global framework.
I work for carbon removal. So what might that look like for
the World At Large? Yeah.
So we're going to hear a lot of discussion about this in the
next couple of years and I think that people in the NGO community
and in policy who have been seeing what happened with red
plus seeing what happened with the biofuel boom-and-bust really
want to avoid some kind of mechanism, which just has the
global South generating carbon removal capacity for continue.
Missions in the global North. So I think people are reasonably
aware of that danger and figuring out how to avoid that.
Right? Because what we need is really
quite an opposite thing. We need the global North to
develop and pay for carbon removal to clean up our Legacy
emissions in doing so in ways that It's tricky.
Because if carbon removal is an opportunity, you don't want
other countries to lose out on that opportunity.
But of carbon removal is a burden.
Then I think I think it's arguable that the US and other
heavily industrialized nations with large consumption.
Should be taking up separate and the in terms of what a global
mechanism looks like. I mean I think that you know,
there's talk around mechanism. I think maybe article six in the
Paris agreement to have some of this out, it's hard to imagine
that not being a part of the, you know, International
negotiations in the next five years.
Just because now that Nations have these Net Zero, Targets in
thinking about and drawing up detailed plans, looking at their
expected. Residual missions, looking at
what they have within their borders to secure that negative
emissions capacity. I think a lot of them will be
looking beyond their borders. And so that's when the global
framework discussions will come in, I'm very curious how that
plays out just because there's something that's so
fundamentally unpopular politically It probably also
just personally about taking responsibility for your actions.
I have a hard time imagining a president saying hey we're
responsible for the bulk of the world's emissions.
Who we need to tax everyone here to pay for this like that
person's gonna get voted out of office very quickly.
I think even if that's the just thing to do and the right thing
to do, we should we should do it and take responsibility for our
levels of consumption and Emissions.
But it seems just some challenging to admit that you've
done this. Slang.
I don't know. Do you think it's a little too
pessimistic? I think since this has been the
heart of climate debates for many years now, this question
about historical responsibility and then you know, we have
Frameworks like contraction and convergence that have emerged to
talk about it. I agree with you that it seems
far-fetched from this standpoint but I also think as activists
it's our role to push the window, you know, get get it.
It a little bit closer, right? Even if it doesn't seem like the
most likely thing for politicians to do in the near
term. Yeah, fair enough.
Okay, I'm going to punch difficult a little bit.
You can tell me if this is this is right or wrong in your view
but I think the like average American is probably.
I was reading the other day. That the average person is left
of where politics are now when it comes to economics and class
issues and right of the median, when it comes to cultural
issues, how do you think this poly Falls more into a cultural
issue like admitting responsibility Possibility for
this are taking responsibility for our climate emission and the
average person in the Country Republican or Democrat, probably
doesn't want to pay more or cut consumption or admit that
there's really anything wrong with it that they have to pay
the personal price for it. I don't know.
I have such a hard time seeing that transforming.
I don't know. That idea of guilt.
This is slot. Holly, I don't even know what
I'm trying to say here. Can you make what I said
intelligible? Yeah, I mean, so there's,
there's definitely a reckoning. Inning.
I think that people have an easier time Reckoning with waste
and they do with something like colonialism.
I mean, I think we need to reckon with all of it obviously,
but I think that in terms of cleaning up your own waste,
that's something that people can generally get on board with
because they have experience of what happens if you don't write.
And so that's why I find this Waste Management framing.
And Klaus lackner and Kristoff food, a great article in issues
in science technology about this, which which everybody
should read in, which they simply say that, you know, it's
a waste management problem. We put the carbon there, we need
to clean it up. That's something people can get
on board with because it takes away the guilt and kind of, you
know, makes it simpler in a sense.
And so I do think there's a bipartisan cross-cultural
staying there which which is also a mattock on the other
hand, if you believe that we actually need to get to the
deeper, we think about our whole history, basically, in this
country, Andre narrate, what happened over the past, you
know, for centuries which is the point that I hope to my teaching
and work and that we can get to. I think that makes a chrysalis
still talks about that quite a lot and the waste management
framing is definitely less controversial.
No one likes a litterbug. I don't think.
From the most conservative to the most Progressive.
I can't imagine anyone is out there being like, yeah, you
should litter. Littering is a great thing to
do, I think, everyone's at least a little bit ashamed of it, if
they do it at all. But that being said, I lived in
this apartment building that I was living in surprising, how
many people would like leave boxes in the trash room and like
not take them down and like not or just like leave stuff in
there that I could have opened the the shoot and thrown out.
So part of me is less trustworthy that that will
happen. But But I think when people hear
Justice talk, they do start to hold onto their wallets are like
oh God. How much is this going to cost
for how much pain is going to cause me?
And having to think about these sort of intractable issues that
are sort of baked into the country in the World At Large?
I think things are getting really worried, I think, I think
you are right that Waste Management does diffuse some of
that. But then is the point to defuse
conflict because shouldn't we also be having conversations
that make us uncomfortable to? Is it not?
Just to just ignore that entirely, this is that kind of
what you're after. Yeah, and I don't think we
should not talk about it because we're afraid that the
conversation will take us down a road, that's really
uncomfortable. Like the idea of returning land
to indigenous people may be really uncomfortable for some
people, right? And so, if I think they might be
a tendency, if the conversation looks like it's going that way
that some people might want to Veer into.
To a safer Direction. I think we should go you know
everywhere and I think about this because I wrote this paper
some years ago in a scientific journal that mentioned the word
colonialism in it once and the reviewer said you know that's
not appropriate to mention in the scientific journal and I
took it out because I was an earlier career scholar and I
thought, you know, it wouldn't get published and I've always
felt bad about not pushing back, but I think we need to take
these little Stu first pick it. Okay.
To say the word colonialism in a scientific article, whatever
those next steps are. Let's do it.
Yeah, it's a good question of. Like a lot of the discourse is
he around climate change. Nori our Communications Stars
crime to be, are closer to meet people where they are.
For instance, I just read a really great book called.
It's called all hell. Breaking loose.
The pentagon's perspective on climate change, by Michael
Clare, have you read that book? I haven't read that one.
I've read a few Few of his earlier works.
Okay? That was the first of his I
read. I thought that was the single
best book to show to conservatives especially if
they're somewhat hawkish and their perspective on foreign
policy because it basically shows like military preparedness
is really Under Siege by climate change.
Is going to cost a fortune to keep bases open and to patrol
the Arctic and all of the various things that are being
stressed and the military. Having a humanitarian function
for disasters, are all of that happening at a much greater
level than now. So this is a great book to share
with someone. But is there something that is
problematic about meeting someone where they might be?
Because doesn't matter like why someone cares about climate
change so long as they end up in a similar place?
Where do we really need to all except all of the same premises
about why climate change is important in order for us to
address it in a appropriate way? I think it's really great to
start by meeting people where they are and I definitely don't,
you know, approach interviewing people in Kansas or Iowa was
talking about and return to fight.
But I also think that the danger if we don't move it past that is
then we get forms of carbon removal that reproduce
inequalities. So if we don't eventually move
the conversation to that and Design, Turn itive forms and
alternative infrastructures. We will be in trenching.
All these structural inequalities.
So then there's a question of. Okay, well, how do you move
people along? How quick does that happen?
I don't know. I mean, I think that fix it, the
Democrats that the house committee did a good job in
their plans, talking about this because they have tons of
interesting things about how the military can play a role in
scaling up CDR, right? I can see that as being a great
Saying to leave with, you have know, if you've read this, but
it's pretty cool military. Procurement of fuels made from
captured carbon building, on the sea fuel act to have rd&d
projects with direct are capture Etc.
I mean, that's the starting point I can see that.
Oh yeah, yeah. And then you say, oh well, we
have energy Independence, were less dependent upon OPEC or we
don't have to deal as much with like Persian Gulf States that We
have various types of relationships with, we could
just do this internally, there's a by domestic angle to it.
This would be done inside the country.
It helps the military be more. Independent can maybe stay at
Sea longer if they're able to capture CO2 from the atmosphere.
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons to if you care about
that a lot. And that's the thing that you
care about, there's cool reasons to think about it.
But that isn't, the only reason these are, the question is, if
we could solve climate change without addressing all of the
other problems that the country in the world, It says, would it
be worth doing it? Sounds like we should do this
all at once. You just bought a house.
Holly so it's like if you're already taking the cabinet's out
of the kitchen, should you put in a new Range while you're at
it and bringing gas from the street?
You're already in there? Why not just do it all at once
is that totally infantilizing and a stupid with footed know?
I think that, I mean, this is a question that's come up a lot on
your show. I think my way of looking at it
is that you know, climate change is a crisis.
We need to start on what we can, how we can with the tools we
have. But at the end of that process,
we could be living in a world that still sucks.
Even though it confronted climate change.
Maybe there's like creepy carbon surveillance apps that fixed it.
But now, we're being monitored all the time or like, maybe
we're dealing with, you know, other types of environmental
challenges. It's not like climates the only
thing going on. So, No, it feels like the
country is tearing at the seams and we have how many crises can
you even name? One time that are all on top of
each other at this moment? Is it fewer than 10 for what?
It's probably more. We got a problem.
Like turn off before we finished the list.
I thought someone be like I thought it'd be fun to to like
live in the 60s and be in the Civil Rights era but now you're
like in the Civil Rights era and the Nish, flu and 1939 with like
maybe World War 3, on the horizon, just like naming.
All of these things. It does, it does feel
cataclysmic. I try to be, I try to be
optimistic. As, you know, you listen to the
show enough to know, but some of that stuff is really freaked me
out and I would like us to live in a society that we could be
unalloyed proud of. I would be like to be nice to be
able to like be proud of America without having to give a single
caveat about anything. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. I think the thing is that a lot
of analysts see them all is like one it's one in crisis, right?
It's just this Mega crisis that we haven't evolved the right
language for whether you call it, you know, World ecological
crisis, or biodiversity crisis. I mean there's all these
different words but it's all one thing colonialism you could call
it that, I mean, so yeah, I'm interested in this too.
So we had Eric holthaus on and he, at least, Ali attributes,
this root cause that idea of ownership.
And it's an interesting idea of trying to diagnose what are the
cascading effects of fundamental ideas that caused these sort of
like internal contradictions in the systems that come up around
him. So that's sort of like a mark
seen way of saying it right there.
Like once you have competition and private property is there a
sort of a process that is almost like coded into history that
unfolds as time goes on? So I don't know if you do buy
that case. Like, do you think Is a root
cause or is that too reductionist.
I feel like if you keep going back and back and back and you
get to just really kindergarten stuff about like being mean or
not sharing her like these really fundamental thing.
You know, somebody with a PhD we're taught to complicate
things and that's like a verb we use in our writing but I think
it's really kind of a moral spiritual crisis, something
really deep in the route. Particularly of people from
settler Colonial ancestry like like me, right?
I think that you can now, you can locate it there with coming
to a different place and killing people.
Yeah, being mean, I think, I think it comes down to being me
and I think your your thought about that, the game theory of
it is terrible. I can imagine people that we
don't have words for it because they just haven't survived was
tens of thousands of years ago. I'm sure there were Peaceful
hunter-gatherer societies that live near warlike neighbors, who
were just exterminated. And then the only way that other
groups could survive was to also become Warrior societies and
have this sort of balance of power against others.
And then what do you do when the whole world is essentially that
how do you live peacefully in a world of Warriors?
I don't even know. But the incentives of defecting
from that like Baseline are good in your entire society and
family and everyone you know is is murdered and slave etcetera.
What do you do with that? I don't know, I don't know.
Are we going to to Elliptical here?
Is this too weird? I think that there's a there's a
problem because the vocabulary we use in the academy and you
know professional sectors and the way we've fragmented our
knowledge with all these disciplines keeps us from
talking about these like, more Elemental.
If I don't think it's wrong or dumb, but I think we don't have
a lot of practice with it, right?
Yeah. No, he doesn't solve it ends up
sounding, like, kind of like a little hippyish.
If you say it in the wrong, kind of way and people like scarf and
you even I'm guilty of doing that sometimes.
But these are the only two solutions I've really heard for
this sort of game theoretic. Environment is well.
Okay I'll preface a little bit. Do you know Danish maken Burgers
work? No.
He's interesting. Sort of like, complexity and
risk theorist, but basically posits within a competitive game
theoretic, environment as technology advances, we get
closer and closer to like, the Doomsday Machine going up.
And like, we need to transform this Dynamic before there's
weaponized, Ai and like, drones that like, run themselves
basically, because then you end up with Skynet and bad things
will happen or there's accidental nuke, launch that
sets off the whole thing, So we need we need to like, dig down
and figure out what is wrong with the incentives and I
thought that was a great thought experiment, to wrap your head
around. I've heard two potential ways
out of this one is a ramez naam who's a Nori advisory and
futurist and science fiction author his book called Nexus.
Which is what if people could take this compound and it erases
the boundaries between people it's sort of like either like
heightens the the psychic actor beats of people so that they no
longer see themselves as Individuals.
But a sort of you, social beings.
So, like almost like how? Like maybe ants or bees, see
themselves, like identify with the hive more than as an
individual. Like that's one thing or you
have sort of like a really strong like Christian social
ethic like Tolstoy and you're just like fundamentally like
turn the other cheek resist not evil and you're just willing to
like really model that and go the whole way, even at Great
personal cost and just like live that Christian Dynamic.
Those are the only like two, like a spiritual Revolution.
Ocean, or some sort of like Tech biochemical ramez naam thing
that allows us to get Beyond just individuality.
That's the only ways I've seen the break that game theoretical
cycle. Sorry, I didn't do like, just go
on a lecture, but I've been thinking about that one for like
two years now. I don't know what to do beyond
what I just said. What do you think about that?
Well, I've often thought that maybe psychedelics to obviate
the need for geoengineering, like, instead of this Earth
moving techno fixed. We could just have a bio
Chemical techno fix because it seems like we're farther along
with drug development than we are with geoengineering, but
nobody ever takes me seriously. When I suggest that, I think
that there's something though, to I mean, you mentioned about
religion, I think there's something to social norms and
the way they're enforced in this current moment, that could
actually be used for good. I mean, right now we see kind of
manifestations of that power like with Feed shaming, or mask,
shaming Roots, regards to covid, like these kind of wars on the
internet, right? And then all the discussion
about cancel culture or whatever, but there's a force
there of people promoting Norms wanting to have those Norms
wanting to be on the right side of things.
We just had this crazy moment where people sacrifice
tremendous amounts to protect vulnerable people, and I feel
like that's totally been lost and all the The, you know,
culture of warfare around these lockdowns, but it's really kind
of amazing what happened. And so can we figure out how
that's all working and apply it to climate change?
Maybe we have a shot at steering ourselves in a more moral
spiritually. Hold Direction.
I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a good
example. Humans are both better than we
expected worse at various moments.
Yeah, I don't know what you do about that.
I hope that capacity is there to break that cycle.
It just seems like the people who do break it first like pay
the cost and then you have a free rider problem which is it
only works if everyone basically does it but there's great
incentives for you personally, not to in some cases.
I don't know. Unless there's some sort of like
external ethos that you ascribe to that keeps you.
Honest in that way. I don't know how we get there or
you just it's like a psychedelic thing or a tech thing that
allows us to break sort of Visual identification in some
interesting, new kind of way. So I don't know.
Is religion. Just the analog version of that
and your text psychedelic version is the digital.
Is that, is that what it is? That company?
You know, I mean, there's this all this writing like in the 90s
and early 00s about like, how the internet was going to
connect us, all right? And would be kind of one.
And I actually Wonder now watching the response to covid
if that's actually happening. Like All around the world you
know people are sensing what's going on.
They're wanting to act, I guess. Okay.
Maybe this might just be the way social media is monetized and
and promoted, but I mostly just see people who are like the
angriest most pity. Tweets are the ones that get
retweeted the most. I think.
Do you think that is building something important or does it
seem like? It's just cutting us more into
different groups who like to argue with each other?
Well, right now, it definitely is but it's because the
infrastructure is, you know, built in this capitalist way,
right? So, coming back to this
infrastructure issue, we now have the potential to connect
everybody to build social norms in a positive way, were limited
by the infrastructure we have which is via these few private
tech companies, right? But we could do it differently.
Yeah. I we're talking about Before the
show, I think there are things about capitalism that are worth
preserving. I like various aspects of
private property markets prices, I think they're they're valuable
and should not be thrown out or spoken up to cavalierly.
That being said, I think one of the best cases against
capitalism is almost certainly. The way that social media is
monetized where the longer you stay on Facebook.
The more ads, get served to you. The best way to keep people on
Facebook is to have them be angry and commenting and yelling
at each other. So, all the incentives that are
Therefore that and you see a similar Dynamic, that's perhaps
a little less sophisticated but on with cable news, right?
So like whether you watch MSNBC or CNN or Fox, they're all
they're sort of pandering to their base and pointing out how
the other team is really stupid. And that's not to say that the
other team isn't often ridiculous in their own ways.
But think it's really damaging that that's the way that we
consume news / entertainment, which is just biting.
I think. I think that we're, like,
seeking out reasons to be. Angry by consuming the type of
media that we are doing. And I don't know that like
Facebook making money off of that really is in the long-term
interest of us as individual people.
Or as a polis, I think this is, I don't know what to do about
it. Holly it sounds like maybe you,
maybe there should be like a public option for social media
or we should just have news hour with Jim layer on PBS.
That should be like the main show.
Everyone watches. What do you what do you suppose
instead? Yeah, I think there should be a
public infrastructure. And I think that it would be
great for climate change. I mean, maybe it's the best
thing we could do for climate change.
You know, we're focused very much on building out physical
infrastructure, which is also important.
But at the same time it could be a huge multiplier to have you
know reform this science media policy interface.
Yeah we should talk about that and perhaps we should have you
back on but maybe I can link to it in the show notes.
Will you tease our Us with a little outline of that other
paper you've mentioned around now trying to remember and
working on like four of them. Oh, you're saying that like the
way that like scientist published now is with an eye
towards posting on social media. And this has sort of changed the
directionality of Science and how science and knowledge work
is produced or some such. Yeah, well, that's a theory.
It's something I'm concerned about.
It's something, I haven't collected empirical data on
which I think it is an empirical question.
But Concerned that, you know, the incentives in science which
has been underfunded under neoliberalism had to use that
word. Once in this podcast, you got
it. Nice.
You know, people are driven by the need to get large grants to
have high-profile Publications. Increasingly to have tweeted
Publications or Publications covered in journalistic outlets,
right? And so how much is of that is a
driver of Of research on different ideas.
Big question would love to find out.
Well yeah we talked about this on a previous episode with J
Martin true. Sue's a travel writer but
nowadays it's no longer good enough to write fiction or
Memoirs that are just really good.
You also have to have a baked in media reach be like, oh on
Twitter, I have half a million followers.
And then publishes say, oh, I don't care.
What kind of drivel you, right? So long as you can pitch it to
With the people who follow you, and God is the same thing
happening for science to is that, please tell me, please,
tell me that's not the kids, I'm worried because if you see some
of these things that have happened with regards to covid,
like the retractions and the Lancet and different things, I
mean, you can say, are these bad apples, you know, obviously,
egregious fraud, or are they part of a structural problem
that has developed around this science media policy interface?
And if So what does that mean for a topic like geoengineering
to be introduced into that media ecosystem?
It's something I've been thinking about for a long time
but covid really Ring the Alarm bells for me there.
Wow. Well Holly, you're all that
hurts to even think about. Yeah, I am not really on Twitter
like at all. In fact, someone sweet at norio
today was like and where's Ross, is he not on Twitter?
Like what's Deal. I'm sort of made a choice.
I don't feel like it okay. I would put myself on the back a
tiny bit Holly and like the point of the podcast is like we
try to have people from many different schools of thought who
probably don't all agree with each other but we try to have
respectful and interesting conversations with everyone.
I don't feel like that happens in social media like at all.
Like every time I log on to Twitter or Facebook is just
people assuming the worst of the people that they're talking
about or talking to. And I don't really want to play
in that. Ecosystem.
So I've made kind of a choice, not to that being said, because
I defected from the Baseline. I am punished because the
podcast would be more popular. Probably, if I were hanging out
on Twitter & BS thing with everyone all the time, I don't
know, like to do it. I don't know that we need that,
but it's, that, that means the show probably gets less and a
little sooner than it should then.
So was this even the right choice?
I don't know. But God, that's a depressing
thing that you just told me. And I only see part of that in
my own life you could read. Sad by Design on platform
nihilism. So gear loving because he talks
about this. You know what, we really need a
public alternative for the health of our society, right?
But maybe Twitter and these things Facebook are just kind of
growing pains on our way to a better internet in a better form
of connectivity. We can help.
I've heard this before, I hope that's true.
I hope that everything makes it that long.
So, whatever comes next Next, it doesn't seem like Tick Tick.
Tock is healing the country, but I've seen some that have been
hilarious, so that's okay. But yeah, whatever comes next, I
don't know. Is there some way to incentivize
us to be the salmon, discussants with one another?
Like I know I'll haul you seem like pretty even-keeled but
surely you must get riled up in feel the pleasure of righteous,
indignation, right? Occasionally?
Yeah. Yeah.
But I think of a lot of people that's like They're like living
off of that. I think that's like the main
thing that they got in some of these cases.
Well, I feel like my gender is conditioned me to reflexively
curb it. I mean for worst frankly, but
there might be some of that going on.
You don't want to be like the loud angry woman and ones like
Boo. That's really not like coming up
her. I mean if you think of a
contrarian think about the people that come to mind, are
there any women that come to mind when you think contrarian?
Nope, I first person I thought it was sort of like a guy who
brews his own beer and listens to me.
Richard Dawkins. That was the first person I
thought of maybe unfair to those people.
Sorry new atheists, that's who I thought of but it was not
someone like you and it was not a woman.
No. Yeah, because if you have a
contrarian opinion, then you're just like crazy or ignorable if
you're a woman. But if you're a dude, it's like,
oh, you're so edgy. Yeah.
I might have been a miniature rant but I think that, you know,
the I mean these platforms reward different person.
He's right? And if you have to like have a
certain personality to succeed at them.
Yeah, I think about that, sometimes too were people who do
get really angry on to even if it's Justified, sometimes I get
a little turned off by it because done in the wrong sort
of spirit and I end up in these weird epicycles of
second-guessing myself. Yeah, I mean, I just basically
try to avoid it but in terms of your question about like, what
platform would incentivize better things you mentioned?
Reddit, I think before the show, and, I mean, that that has a
mechanism at least for like people saying, what's good,
right? Yes, somewhat of an improvement.
Yeah, you so much is B in the inherent, in the design of like
the code, right? Yeah, I think maybe it's the
length, the Twitter being Kapoor, you have to read like
unfurling threads if it gets really detailed.
But I remember reading read this, I just feed me personally,
but reading read it and see I'm going to wrote a very fair
critique of something that was often in great detail, I would
say like cool. You can have an upvote.
That's really cool. But then there's also various
parts of credit that are subject to extreme group think and even
and I've seen some post, I have gotten like some post.
You look at you can sort by the top voted or you can sort by
controversial and some posts, the comments that are
controversial to have like a mixed up and down votes.
Those are like the ones closest to the truth but because they
didn't conform to the ideological.
Standards of the subreddit just got downloaded to Oblivion.
So yes, the design matters. But it isn't that right?
It is some sort of paradise. There's as much of this jerky
Behavior as anywhere else. How much of that is design
versus how much of it is that humans like splitting into
groups and fighting which I think is something that, like I
said this on the show like 10 times at least but like, that's
one of our favorite things to do as a species.
We like like cutting into groups and yelling at each other and
fighting each other. So I think we might just find
ways to do that almost no matter what.
I hope not, that's depressing. But yeah, yeah, but wait, maybe
we can use it productively. You know, I was thinking about
the group think and researching different climate change
approaches, right? I mean you could have a research
program that What's called the red team, blue team approach,
where each team really goes for poking holes in the other side
of the science and the design and so forth.
And then that's like a safeguard, right?
So I think it's, it's a human tendency but it can be used
productively if we realize we have that tendency and like work
with it again. Yeah, yeah, I hope so.
I thought there's some new platform by didn't really read
about it was called something called persuasion.
Did you see that? No, I didn't.
I saw some, some big people were on their Board of advisors, but
I didn't really look into it, but I wonder, I hope someone
figures out how to get us to talk to one another sometimes I
think people they look back at the eras when there was like
three channels and people all consuming this ain't ya.
You know, everyone watched Walter Cronkite for Edward
Murrow or whatnot and we all certainly agreed on the
fundamentals of society and how much of that is whitewashing of
History. Like did the people actually
agree with each other more in the 50s?
Like we had a Red Scare. There is Eisenhower era, which
at least had that veneer of stability and Suburban Comfort,
Leave it to Beaver, but I think that's sort of in imagining.
I don't know that. That's actually how that era
really was. So did we actually agree with
each other more back? Then, do you have any idea?
You know, I think there's, you know, empirical studies of this
did I haven't read. I think that we should probably
be looking for words, not back because all the problems is that
system have been documented to that, that As mass media.
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Allegedly a bonus episode turned
into quite a long one and we ended up talking about all sorts
of fun things. Okay.
How about I wrap my that's me. If I want to listen back to and
trying to wrap my head around but a lot of fun to have you
here. Holly thanks for being on.
Yeah. Thank you.
And then also if you're listening you should read
Holly's book after Nearing, because it is a great read.
We've also done a previous episode with Holly dug into all
those details, which is a really, really cool show.
Actually, is there anything else going to plug?
I guess you're on Twitter, your Twitter handle is in the show
notes to, is there anything else you'd like to point people to?
Yeah, I mean, I want to point people to the red Nations, red
deal, especially part 3. He loved our planet.
I think that that's a good starting point.
Some of the things we kicked off this episode with.
Yeah. Right.
I need to just read that in its entirety and also just do more
shows of that ilk because yeah we really should and apologies
if you're listening or saying how come you never cover this?
That's that's my fault. And I would like to let me do
that. So stay tuned.
If you have any good show ideas or topics that we haven't
covered, you can always reach out to podcast singular.
Pod, Cas, T at nor e.com. And let me know.
Let me know what you'd like to hear that you haven't gotten so
far from the show. Yeah.
Holly I'm putting a pin in it. This is the end.
You can look at Ya. Thank you.
If you like the show, please
written review us on iTunes up a podcast Stitcher, and thank you
so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening.
If you like the show, please rate and review it in apple
podcast and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get
this content to a wider audience.
If you think what we're doing is, Oh interesting fun.
Hopefully all three. We certainly appreciate your
rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nor
e.com where there is a newsletter that's nor u.com
slash subscribe. There's podcast there's a whole
bunch else or you can send us an email at podcast at nor e.com.
We are also now on patreon at patreon.com slash Nori podcasts,
if you'd like more content engagement and community and
thank you so much for your support