Just Stop Oil !? Part 4 - The Intersection | Frankly #41
In the fourth and final part of this Frankly mini-series, I suggest responses that reside in the intersection of the ‘Four Horsemen of the 2020s’ and the ongoing/accelerating risks to Earth's ecosystems, and the web of life. What can we do? How can pro-future thinkers reconcile ‘Just Stopping Oil’ when the Superorganism dynamic of the global economy will continue trying hard to ‘Keep Pumping Oil’? The ‘what to do’ part of this story will always be the hardest, because a) it’s incredibly complicated and complex and b) what one chooses to do depends a lot on what they care about, and what their life circumstances are.
Here I briefly outline 10 ‘guideposts’ that could benefit both post-growth human economies as well as protecting Earth’s biodiversity. From planned decomplexifying at various scales to a change of consciousness arising from more humans focused on "Inner Tech", there are many ways we as individuals and greater society can meet the future halfway - while still remaining grounded in the reality of energy, technology, human behavior, and the economy.
More on these themes to come.
In case you missed it…
Today, I’m joined by Doomberg - the pseudonymous energy/finance analyst team (visually presenting as a talking chicken icon) who uses an energy lens to analyze global economic trends. In this wide ranging discussion, we cover the interactions between geopolitics, debt, climate policy, and - of course - energy. While there were areas of divergence between Doomberg and I, we agreed on a large number of central issues, and this episode resulted in new perspectives I hadn’t previously considered. I.e. it has gotten me thinking.
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Au Contraire Nate
First:
We must disconnect the "turbocharger" of Capitalism. This is the most critical aspect of degrowth we are going to need to address. We have to do this before we can "look ahead". If we want to get ahead of energy, technology, and profits and get two steps ahead, we need to change the root-cause of the growth & profits. We need to change the incentives. What CAUSED the system, and its incentives?
The key will be the development of complementary currencies.
Financial Capital, our money and all our economic systems are built on something that cannot possibly exist in real Universe.
All our most intractable problems have their roots in that impossibility.
The thing that cannot exist is our money: as we create, define, and use it.
Money is anything that a society agrees to accept in exchange for every other thing or service in that society. When we use money in exchange, it represents the work that was done to earn it.
Real things, and real work obey the laws of thermodynamics, just as every other real thing in our universe obeys those laws.
But OUR money is special. Money, as we use it now, represents debt: it is created as debt with interest.
We define it by the way we use it, and we use it as though it breaks the laws.
But we can’t break a law of physics. We can only break something else, somewhere else, probably belonging to someone else.
What if money really is limited by the laws of physics? What if we have built our entire socioeconomic system on a mistake? What if we have constructed the entire massive edifice of human civilization on a foundation of sand?
Complementary Currency:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Shift-Rethinking-Governance-Economic-ebook/dp/B075FMLXW4/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505084479&sr=1-12&keywords=the+big+shift
Money that actually works:
https://bjchippindale.substack.com/p/coming-soon?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile&showWelcome=true
Great work. I love the call to individual action - what can I do? I feel the more people who are exposed to the thinking, to understand what the real issues are, the more society could start to embrace some of the actions needed. However, the battle against misinformation and the status quo is unbelievably hard.
Here in NZ we are soon to go to an election and I've never seen it more stark - it is a contest between those that would maintain the status quo (and go further with existing thinking) and those intent on progressive change. And, at the moment, the status quo is winning!
Keep up the great work.