In which is told about Nate Hagens and his message, about the inevitability of a major change in the way we live, about the ways in which we are blind to reality, about all kinds of difficult news and why that difficult news does not mean after all that a wonderful world is not possible (just different than we often imagine now).
“We are alive at a time of wonder, peril, and possibility. Ahead are a million unknown destinations—some dark and foreboding, and some welcoming and beautiful. Many of us sense that something is different, something is coming. But we lack a shared understanding of the path that brought us here and of the terrain ahead. Which future we expect depends upon which lens we use to see the road.”
Nate Hagens
“Whether you call it the metacrisis, the polycrisis, or the human predicament, the challenges we face are novel—in scope, in number, and in nature. To understand where we’re headed requires a systems lens that integrates as much of what we know as possible.”
Nate Hagens
A two-hour presentation by Nate Hagens on the meta-crisis, the coming Great Simplification, and possible paths to a more beautiful world. A fascinating talk by one of the world's experts on the ecological crisis, energy, the financial system, and the other systems that keep our global technological “superorganism” running. Warmly recommended! Don’t be scared off by the length of this presentation, Nate is an excellent speaker and takes us on a fascinating tour of our present predicament, without giving in to despair or despondency, quite the contrary. There is a path to a brighter future, but it will not be easy and will require very different kinds of action than is currently understood.
The audio version of this blog post, read by myself.
Dear readers and followers of A Biosphere Project,
In the recent blog post 'What to do (reprise)' I talked about the question of what is ours to do individually and collectively in the ecological meta-crisis we are going through.
Truly a question to which no short and simple answer can be given because the situation we and the planet find ourselves in is complex and does not require or even tolerate any singular or one-dimensional 'solution' . Single solutions are doomed to create more problems than they solve, so to speak.
Especially the issue of individual responsibility is a bit misleading, because the sum of our individual well-intentioned efforts (driving or flying less, taking shorter showers, buying less clothing,...) are never going to 'save' us. The meta-crisis is a systemic crisis, and requires a massive change at the level of the systems that make our global 'civilization' work (I always put the word 'civilization' in quotes because I agree with social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger that we haven't really reached the level of civilization yet).
Yes, our individual behavioral change matters, but it is not enough because only a system-level change can lead to a livable world for our descendants and the millions of other species with whom we share the planet. Each of us individually can of course also contribute to that systemic change, but that happens more at the level of raising awareness, sharing information, establishing organizations and networks, participating in grassroots activism in all sorts of fields, and anything that can lead to more networks of collective change of perspective. So again, it is at least partly a matter of what you and I choose to do, but in a different way than is commonly thought.
But why is it that a major transformation is needed at the systemic level? Aren't technology and economic growth going to save us? Isn't the right thing to do precisely to move forward even faster, and fully commit to a massive turnaround in, say, “renewable energy”? Isn't the Green New Deal the way forward, a path to ever more prosperity in a way that is more in harmony with the planet as well as enabling continued economic growth? Can we not rest assured that our political and economic systems will provide the right solutions and that our current system can survive in a 'green' way?
As you might already begin to suspect from the way I posed the questions, the answer to all these questions is 'no', although no politician will dare to tell you that at this point (if they have any suspicion at all that 'no' is the right answer).
And that is exactly why we all need to become aware of our situation and become active in societal transformation in some way: because the current political and economic systems will not be able to.
In the coming installments of the blog, I will be featuring some experts on energy, economics and ecology to clarify why we are collectively racing along in a dead-end street. That insight may seem painful or depressing, but all of these experts and thinkers maintain a hopeful perspective: the fact that our current trajectory is rapidly heading for a brick wall need not mean that no other trajectory is available, and that a different and even more beautiful world would not be possible. It’s just that that more beautiful world won't come about through more technology or economic growth alone. And especially the concept of “economic growth” will prove to be the nail in our coffin. But economic growth, which can now almost be seen as the sacred cow of our “civilization,” is not what it seems to be, and it does not appear to be at all necessary in order to provide everyone in our global society a prosperous and healthy life.
The first expert I hand the word to in this thread is Nate Hagens.
And the message he brings also seems at first to consist mostly of bad news.
So does the Blog represent the bad news and the Musings the good news? The Blog the stick and the Musings the carrot? I wouldn't put it that simply, but it can seem that way sometimes.
In this lecture, Nate Hagens delivers both the bad news ànd the good news: he explains meticulously and with lots of “hard” numbers and facts why our current economic model and our current global chain of production and consumption will of necessity fail, or rather, will be forced to shrink dramatically. Nate calls this coming contraction 'The Great Simplification'.
But Nate is not a doomsayer: he argues that we will certainly have to give up certain things, but that these are mainly things that do not necessarily make us happier at the moment. And other aspects can take their place that might indeed make us happier: the best things in life are free.
For example, there may arise more tight-knit and local communities, we may develop a re-localized economy on a human scale in harmony with what our planet can bear, free time and creativity may replace the endless economic arms race between countries, companies and individuals, and so on... but let me not get ahead of myself.
I have already featured Nate Hagens in the recent Musing “Somebody's Gonna Win,” in which he delivered a beautiful message in response to the fears surrounding the U.S. election.
Nate Hagens (Nathan John Hagens) is co-founder and president of the Institute For The Study Of Energy And Our Future, an American nonprofit whose name already tells you what it does. He is also the author of the podcast ‘The Great Simplification', in which for years he has been interviewing the bright minds of our world about very different aspects of the meta-crisis, the convergence of several crises in our human society with the crises in the living ecosystems of which our society is a part.
Nate is also the author of another podcast on YouTube, 'Frankly'. He is co-author of the books 'Reality Blind: Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures, Vol. 1', and 'The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century.'
In a previous life, Nate Hagens worked in academia and in Wall Street finance, but since 2003 he has shifted all his attention to a systems-theoretical approach to what is called the “meta-crisis”: the sum total of all the crises that threaten our system and our global society, such as: the various ecological crises; economic, financial and political instability; new and as yet unpredictable factors such as A. I.; the renewed arms race; mass migration due to climate change; the unsustainable accumulation of debt in a financial system that is actually a veiled Ponzi scheme, and so on and so forth.
His experience in academia and finance, coupled with his years of research for The Great Simplification and the hundreds of interviews he has had with the world's experts in the relevant fields, mean that Nate Hagens is extremely well positioned to provide a synthesis of our current situation, and more importantly, to clarify why our current thinking models are absolutely not going to help us turn the tide. He is a systems thinker, which means he does not look at problems from one discipline or domain of knowledge, but from a perspective that unites many disciplines: ecology, economics, technology, sociology, psychology, biology, and so on. Systems thinking is indispensable for overseeing the complex tangle of problems we face and formulating answers from as broad an approach as possible.
Nate Hagens is not a doomsayer: he sees several paths forward to a world that can be livable, sustainable and even regenerative, but in ways that are currently barely, if at all, in the focus of social and political discourse and the media.
As already mentioned, he calls the transition that awaits us ‘The Great Simplification’.
The Great Simplification will be a consequence of a number of fundamental processes concerning energy, economics and ecology that cannot be stopped because they are bound by physical laws that we will not be able to circumvent. But that great simplification can begin to happen in a number of different ways:
somewhat planned, ordered, and socially cohesive in a way that will not cause our “civilization” to collapse but will cause it to “land” on a more sustainable and probably more humane and even more pleasant level.
Unguided and disordered, leading to a convulsive continuation of our current system with less and less energy available and more and more wars for that remaining energy and resources (what Nate calls the 'Mordor Economy')
Unguided and disordered, leading to the 'Mad Max' scenario resulting in total collapse of social cohesion and societal structures: the option that has already been explored in countless dystopian Hollywood films and therefore may seem most familiar to us.
Needless to mention, the first option is by far Nate's (and our) preferred option: a planned and ordered “strategic retreat” and the downsizing and re-localization of the global economy on a human scale and in a way that is more consistent with our planet's carrying capacity. It is also the option that bears many similarities to what is also called “degrowth”, an economic model that also envisions the orderly, equitable and ecologically responsible downsizing of the global economy.
It also needs no mention that this option is by no means yet on the table for any political party in the rich industrial world (including the European green parties). Infinite exponential economic growth is our religion, you might say, and Nate is one of those people who can explain why that is as impossible as changing your cup of coffee into a comet. Should you desire such a thing at all.
The embedded video is a two-hour online keynote presentation Nate gave for the Canadian Environmental Studies Association to the Academic Congress of Canada 2024,
By his own admission, this is his longest presentation ever, but therefore perhaps the most complete exposition to date of his thinking and an ideal introduction to The Great Simplification.
Don't let the length of the presentation deter you: Nate is an excellent storyteller with a sense of perspective and humor, and enlivens his talk with many illustrations and witty slides. He builds a compelling and rock-solid argument that can be both a punch in the gut if you are not yet familiar with the economic and technical realities of our global machine, ànd at the same time nonetheless a hopeful message should you already have gotten to the point where you think we are doomed in any case. No, we are not doomed yet, but very big changes await us, and what is needed above all is for all of us to get active ourselves in what’s to come. That we become part of the transition rather than spectators. And by that I don't just mean cutting back on consumption or travel, or saving water from the washing machine to flush the toilet (however desirable all these things may be), but becoming active ourselves in the grassroots movements that will have to carry this transition. From Nate's presentation, it becomes clear why politics as we know it will not be able to do this in the first place.
A few key points from Nate's presentation:
Our society and economy are “energy-blind”: we are oblivious to the essential importance of fossil fuels in everything we do, which is why we are failing to consume even one iota less oil, coal or natural gas. Moreover, we assign the same monetary value to fossil fuels as we do to any other marketable product or commodity, whereas that value is of an entirely different order within our economy. This sounds a bit complicated, but Nate explains it very well in the presentation. This is the cause of our “energy blindness”.
We are irrevocably heading for the downward curve of the energy boost that fossil fuels have given us as a kind heroïn-shot since the industrial revolution, as those fossil fuels are irrevocably running out. There is no immediate alternative available, resulting in energy becoming scarcer and more expensive. “Renewable energy” and nuclear energy are only applicable in the production of electricity, but electricity represents only 20 percent of global energy consumption and the remaining 80 percent will be impossible to electrify in the near future. A higher cost for energy has an immediate and devastating effect on economic profitability in the current system, as was evident in the energy crisis at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
“Renewable energy” is not renewable but “rebuildable”: wind and solar energy are inexhaustible, the machines we build to capture that energy (the construction of which requires a lot of fossil fuels and rare-earth minerals) are not. Moreover, due to economic growth, the new capacity of “rebuildable” energy is an addition and by no means a replacement at this point. There is no “energy transition” yet at the global level, only “energy addition”.
Money is not a neutral technology but a claim on resources and energy, partly due to the phenomenon of interest. The creation of money always represents the destruction of a part of our planet and ecosystems. We are literally turning our living biosphere into money. This seems like profit at first glance, but try eating your money when the crops begin to fail.
Infinite exponential growth is an idea that is simply insane. Any system that grows at some point stops growing when an equilibrium is reached with the environment. The opposite is sick, and in an organism we also call “cancer”.
The feedback loops already set in motion by our uninhibited discharge into the atmosphere of the gigatons of CO2 that have been stored in the ground for millions of years will also make it increasingly difficult to keep the current system running. The disrupted climate will deliver more and more sledgehammer blows to agriculture, the economy and the financial system, not to mention the human cost and disruptive effect on countless ecosystems and species of life.
The above is just part of the viewpoints clarified in this presentation. Nate does not stop at merely pointing out the pain points and blockages and crises, but also outlines different possibilities for the future and different paths that can lead to an actual transition to a different world, but one that will also be truly different, not a so-called 'green version' of this one, because that is not possible. And Nate also outlines many ways in which change can be initiated on a systemic level as well as on an individual level, with many suggestions for personal initiative. So, again, this is not a doomsday scenario, but a realistic panorama of what lies ahead, coupled with a hopeful spectrum of possible paths and ways in which each of us can become part of the coming transitions. The account is not exhaustive (nor can it be: two hours is not enough to solve all the world's problems). For example, the section on the psychology of addiction to stimuli that keeps our capitalism going is somewhat incomplete in its emphasis on the stimulation of our “hunter-gatherer” instincts by our modern consumer circus, and neglects a bit the aspects of philosophical and metaphysical alienation of modern mankind, and the dissociation of self and world that results. But as mentioned, even this long account cannot claim completeness, and Nate is also the first to admit that and also to acknowledge the limits of his own knowledge. His modesty and sense of humor mean that his approach never becomes dramatic or zealous, nor does it invite despair or despondency, quite the contrary. He is someone who faces the facts, but engages in imaginative and enthusiastic thought exercises about what is ours to do.
Therefore, I cordially invite you once again to watch the attached presentation by Nate Hagens. Take your time, it is well worth it. The talk is chock-full of information, and deserves to be watched several times. I promise you that it need not discourage you, although it may sober you up at first if you were still optimistic about the current state of affairs. But the “reality check” Nate Hagens gives us here is much needed to get down to the real work, and we can all participate in that. Including you, yes! The situation is not hopeless, but it will be all hands on deck. Let's roll up our sleeves and get started.
Thanks for reading and watching, until the next installment,
All the best to you,
Filip
