Act: Inspiration

Team Human Podcast: There’s No App for That, with Richard Heinberg

October 11, 2017

Playing for Team Human today is Post Carbon Institute fellow Richard Heinberg. Richard is the co-author of Our Renewable Future and most recently, the manifesto, There’s No App For That. On today’s show Richard and Douglas challenge the idea that technological “progress” is a panacea for solving systems-level crises like climate change. Richard’s work calls on us to look at the fundamental ethical problems underlying climate issues such as overshoot, unsustainable growth, and inequality. Heinberg then challenges us to step out from hiding behind our technologies and acknowledge the deliberate moral intervention that is urgently needed if we are to foster a more resilient and more just community and ecosystem.

Check out Richard’s manifesto, There’s No App For That  at http://www.postcarbon.org/publications/theres-no-app-for-that  and you can begin with this video primer, “Hello Humanity, It’s me, technology. We need to Talk”

Read why Richard thinks Climate Change isn’t our Biggest Environmental Problem here

Learn about Post Carbon Institute and their efforts to mobilize strategies centered on “Community Resilience” : http://www.postcarbon.org/program/resilience/

Today’s show begins with a monologue on the Trump distraction machine recently manifested in the NFL National Anthem “controversy.”

And a huge thank you to all of our listeners who helped us achieve our first Patreon funding goal. Your support makes this show possible!

Please remember to review us on iTunes and help spread the word about Team Human.

Our music today is thanks to Dischord Records and Fugazi as well as a Team Human original.

Photo by Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, as well as a dozen other bestselling books on media, technology, and culture, including Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, Life Inc and the novel Ecstasy Club. He is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens. He wrote the graphic novels Aleister & Adolf, Testament, and A.D.D., and made the television documentaries Generation Like, Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and Digital Nation. He lives in New York, and lectures about media, society, and economics around the world.

Tags: appropriate technology, building resilient societies, powering down, Technology