I’m often asked to give presentations and usually do 30-40 per year, mostly online. But almost always the hosting organization asks for a time limit – typically 45 minutes. As those of you deeply versed in the human predicament know, it is VERY hard to describe what is happening in our world AND offer some direction for response and personal agency, all in 45 minutes or even an hour. As followers of The Great Simplification are aware, I increasingly want to discuss and work on ‘responses’ but there are still vast sections of society – academia being one – that don’t yet integrate the magnitude and urgency of our systemic predicament.
So when Kira Cooper, of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada, invited me to do a talk ‘with no time constraint’, for 10,000 professors across Canada, I put something together that was reasonably comprehensive – and it ended up being about 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The talk is in four parts:
1) an explanation of the core drivers of the human ecosystem
2) a synthesis of how the emergent property of these is a (mindless) energy/material hungry economic superorganism
3) scenarios and implications for the future
4) suggested interventions and responses at various scales (global, community, academia and personal).
There are over 200 million college students in the world. What are we teaching them and what curriculum will be more appropriate for the world we’re heading into? It is my hope that many professors, post-docs and university affiliates around the world experience this synthesis. And even if they may not fully agree (or if they fully agree!), that it may act as an Overton Window of expanding the conversations, research, curriculums and actions of the good people at universities around Canada, and the world.
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I no longer take anyone seriously who does not take Regenerative Governance seriously. How can one do that yet claim to be a systems thinker and seeker of systems knowledge and solutions? Still, if I can find 2 hours to slog through this, will offer feedback.
If The Accountability Group summary is an example of the intellectual foundation of "regenerative governance", I think the promoters of it are mostly selling 100 proof jargon.
The accountability Group has nothing to do with Regenerative Governance. They are using it as a generic term, or should be, not in reference to the Regen Gov model.
The only person who should be using Regenerative Governance, capitalized, is myself and it is a specific, though simple, model for bio-regional organization and decision-making that is perfectly aligned with known regenerative societies and regenerative First Principles. It's the only model useful at large scales of socio-economic-political systems that is.
Lyn is aware I do not accept the use of Regen Gov for anything but the model. I understand what she is trying to bring to organizations and businesses, but it's only in the broadest sense touching on regenerative thinking rather than teaching them Regen Gov, the model.
I.e., her materials do not reflect Regen Gov, with capitals.
Not much new here for long-time followers of Hagens. While his presentation is very clear presentation of the reasons for the imminent and dramatic collapse of modernity, Nate just can't seem to go all-in on doom, holding out hope that there is a great simplification that preserves the advantages of modernity without too-large negative externalities or a rapid dieoff of humans. Sid Smith does a slightly better job of explaining our cultural and ecological history, including the consequences of overshoot. Episodes 3, 4 and 5 tell the tale.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNcGo6a-yKuIubvDb6mIyd0KHQ-7UasJH
First major flaw: The 1st Horseman: Debt must be repaid in energy. False. Debt is a construct. It can simply be erased from the ledger – and society. There is no route to a sustainable future that does not include a global jubilee and the eventual end of the financial system, period. No simplification without the end of that system.
Mistake: We don't face resource shortage, but a longage of expectations. (The image said "research shortage.")
Resources should never be spoken of this way. It is both misleading and factually incorrect – which you had already covered! You get far too esoteric at times and it is misleading to those who do not already know these things. There are biophysical limits, PERIOD. And this should not be watered down by intellectualizing or by downplaying. One cannot understand the problems and the risks, nor the solutions if one does not fully assimilate this simple fact: Resources are finite.
Mistake: We need to talk about these things behind the scenes to create emergency responses.
Huh? How do you do sustainable with a bunch of eggheads and VIPs in back rooms? This is a bizarre response the the predicament given *sustainability is ultimately local.* We need the PEOPLE making the change. The principles of current governance and business are the exact opposite of regenerative societies and systems. They cannot and will not lead to a regenerative future.
Incorrect: There are different solutions for different sectors of people/bota. Completely incorrect if one understands it is a single system – which you say yourself speaking of the superorganism, but here you dissect the superorganism? There is one system and one set of solutions. Changing "solutions to responses is more over-intellectualizing and basically giving into the avoidance of hard choices. There are solutions that fit regenerative systems – and that must be the entire planetary ecosystem.
Incorrect: Three timelines. Again, it's a system. It is deeply interconnected. If one facet fails, it all fails. This is what is called a trophic flow ending in a trophic collapse. It's Jenga. All or nothing. The solutions do not change depending on the timeline, only the speed of implementation because regenerative is a STATE, a THRESHOLD, not a continuum.
OMG… the elitism… First you said the Big Brains should go behind the curtain to solve things. Now you clearly imply, at least twice, a regenerative future will include markets, prices, ownership…. in other words absolutely no fundamental changes except to pricing. THEN you advocate the extremely elitist raise prices, reduce consumption! Yes – among the POOR! Rich people don't give a DAMN about prices and they are the primary consumers of resources. There is no way to create a truly regressive tax scheme: The rich will always be able to buy. Only the poor are hurt by this. Perhaps you were never poor, Nate?
False: Prices will drive innovation and create solutions. No. people create because people are creative. Price signals put limits on innovation, limiting supply of materials and thus what is possible.
Elitist: Council of Elders. You mean a council of PhDs/eggheads/VIPS. I have shared the only viable large-scale socio-economic-political solution currently in existence that is also regenerative and you have flatly refused to engage for over a decade. Sustainability is LOCAL. It is created LOCALLY. Local sustainable areas create a quilt of a bio-regional regenerative system. #RegenerativeGovernance (Any use f regenerative governance without my name explicitly attached is not a workable and legitimate example of regenerative governing.)
You don't know the answer to governance? It has existed in the form of Regen Gov explicitly since 2011 and generally and in principles for tens of thousands of year, but you think political scientists, who know nothing of regenerative systems or governance, who created the massively maladaptive and destructive systems we have now should be given the authority to create a regenerative governance framework – even though an explicit one already exists and there are a hundred or more examples around the world already?
Intellectual elitism. Regenerative systems are built by communities and bio-regions, not eggheads/VIPs/1%ers.
Wrong: The red star belongs well down the slope. We can't have lost 9% or more of the ecosystem and consider the system near the top of that curve. The climatic and weather events of 2023 and 2024 indicate we are in the middle of a major bifurcation. And the temp rise actually began in 2016.
1:16:45 More to come.
Joe is right – nothing new for old hands. Nor is it short/shallow enough for school-level. It is what it is; a fast treatise aimed at academics.
I thought the 'what you can do' was a little optimistic, technology-retention-wise.