Living Well As Society Transforms: With legendary writer Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates on the urgent need, and inviting prospects, of a transition away from fossil fuels. He’s the author of 14 books including some of the seminal works on our current energy and environmental crises. I remember reading The Party’s Over 20 years ago, and have followed Richard’s work right through to his most recent book (and excellent parallel podcast series), Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival – and what praise that one drew, from people like Bill McKibben, Joanna Macy, Wes Jackson, Maude Barlow, Peter Buffet, Dahr Jamail, Douglas Rushkoff and Dennis Meadows.

Richard also features in countless film and other productions, along with the online course developed with the Post Carbon Institute, where Richard is a founder and Senior Fellow. And seven years ago, Richard was kind enough to be a special guest on a panel event I brought together on energy transition, which attracted a couple of hundred people and later became episode 23 on this podcast. Richard is also an outstanding musician, with an extensive tour and back catalogue extending from the ‘60s. All the more reason that after the event we did in 2017, we resolved to catch up if I ever made it to Santa Rosa.

That’s where this sweeping conversation took place, on transformations in energy and food systems, us humans, and his own fascinating life. Culminating in Richard’s crystalised framing of the unprecedented challenge facing us, and how we might pull it off.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers and a transcript, also available on Apple and some other apps. (Note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.)

Recorded by a restored Santa Rosa Creek on 30 April 2024.

Title slide: Richard & AJ in Santa Rosa (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).

Transcript

Richard: 0:00

You can go around the world right now and find societies that are using energy at half the per capita rate of North Americans, and some of those are in Europe. And these people are not living in caves, right. They're living in beautiful cities that have, you know, existed for centuries, and they have art museums and symphony orchestras and everything. And you can even find societies that use energy at half the per capita rate of Europe and are still doing quite well.

AJ: 1:00

G'day. My name's Anthony James and this is The RegenNarration featuring the stories that are changing the story live from Turtle Island / USA, ad-free, freely available and entirely listener supported. So thanks a lot to new generous subscribing members, Matt, Brett and Sebas Lopez Llovett. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining Matt, Brett and Sebas for as little as $3 a month or whatever you can and want to contribute. Subscribing members get exclusive access to behind the scenes stuff from me, online chat space and more. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com/ support and thanks again.

AJ: 1:48

Richard heinberg is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates on the urgent need and inviting prospects of a transition away from fossil fuel. He's the author of 14 books, including some of the seminal works on our current energy and environmental crises. I remember reading The Party's Over 20 years ago and have followed Richard's work right through to his most recent book and excellent parallel podcast series Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival. And wow, the praise that one drew. From Bill McKibben to Joanna Macy, Wes Jackson to Maude Barlow, Peter Buffett to Dahr Jamail, Douglas Rushkoff to Dennis Meadows. Richard also features in countless film and other productions, along with the online course developed with the Post Carbon Institute, where Richard is a founder and senior fellow and yes, we had a little chuckle about that name over lunch, given last week's episode with Paul Hawken, but really it's enormous kudos to everyone there for its 20 plus years of invaluable work. And seven years ago, Richard was kind enough to be a special guest on a panel event I brought together on energy transition, which attracted a couple of hundred people and later became episode 23 on this podcast yes, way back at the beginning.

AJ: 3:16

And what not many people know is that Richard is also an outstanding musician, with an extensive tour and back catalogue extending from the 60s. All the more reason that, after the event we did in 2017, we resolved to catch up if I ever made it to Santa Rosa, so when I arrived in California, guess where I beelined it to next for this sweeping conversation on transformations in energy and food systems, us humans and his own fascinating life. It all culminates in Richard's crystallised framing of the unprecedented challenge facing us and just how we might pull it off. G'day Richard. Thanks very much for meeting me here. Perhaps let's bring the listeners in as to where we found ourselves.

Richard: 4:07

Welcome to my town, santa Rosa, california, and we're sitting alongside Santa Rosa Creek, which flows right through downtown Santa Rosa, so we're hearing a combination of creek sounds and city sounds. We may hear some traffic, we may hear some angle grinding from a nearby light manufacturing site, but what we're seeing in front of us is this beautiful restored creek and a few birds flitting around.

AJ: 4:40

When you say restored, it's because it had been.

Richard: 4:43

Yeah, yeah, it was channeled into just a cement line channel and part of it is still covered over, part of it is still in pipes. In fact, city Hall is sitting on top of Santa Rosa Creek.

AJ: 4:59

Oh, is it really.

Richard: 4:59

Yeah, now they're thinking of undoing that.

AJ: 5:03

How would they do that?

Richard: 5:04

Well, they'll have to, you know, rebuild a new city hall, then demolish the old city hall, then uncover the creek and restore it. They're thinking about that. Yeah, they're thinking about it.

AJ: 5:15

It is interesting that that's we're coming to recognise this at these levels, that it's becoming a bit more of a thing in cities, certainly around the States, but elsewhere too to be doing this sort of a thing.

Richard: 5:26

Yeah, yeah, and there are some cities, like San Antonio, texas, that have a creek or a river as a major feature of the city, and then there are businesses right alongside the river and so you can, you know, go to a restaurant and sit there alongside the river and enjoy a meal or a cappuccino or whatever. Unfortunately, they did this in Santa Rosa, hoping that that would happen, but the businesses have completely ignored it. So there's no cafe here on the creek where you can sit and enjoy it, but there is a nice little pedestrian walkway, yeah, there is how interesting.

AJ: 6:06

It's also interesting, I mean, to think it sounds so obvious that a San Antonio would be like that and that you would think people would come back to this too. But it goes to show what seemed obvious a while ago when these places were covered up. They were the dumps, yeah right, and the sewerways, absolutely, and not long ago, yeah, yeah, dumps.

Richard: 6:22

Yeah, and the sewerways, absolutely. And not long ago, yeah, yeah, the whole purpose of the creek was just to get rid of excess water and waste and waste. And then, you know, cover it up as quickly as possible.

AJ: 6:33

What I take from things like that is we talked about it a bit off air before that shifting baselines, how norms move and what I take from that is that okay, what are we doing today? That seems that stupid. Oh yeah, don't get you started right.

Richard: 6:52

I mean, you know we're, we're still covering over the mistakes of the past, yeah, and we're just assuming that that business as usual today will continue and should continue into the future. Maybe, you know, necessarily by slightly different means. You know, instead of gasoline in our cars we'll have electric cars, but we're still going to have cars. And having cars means we have to have roads and cities designed around cars, and whenever you build new housing you have to make sure they have parking and so on.

AJ: 7:22

So basically, we're still designing our cities around the mode of transportation that is, you know, going to be unique really to the 20th century and dribs and drabs of the 21st yeah, that's a good case in point because in a way, I mean certainly with the eyes you bring to it, and I meet you there with the benefit I might out of guidance that I've had in my life to get there.

AJ: 7:47

But it makes me think that in a way the level of waste in that system just 80 kilos a person and for two tonne of metal and plastic and whatever for a start sort of tells you but we could go into the depths and layers of the waste, that it's akin in a way. Maybe I could draw draw this thread to the creeks being seen as waste ways and in that sense I guess maybe at some stage we'll get to the point where because I know, for example, the talk today and for some time the talk in official circles has been all about the 15 minute city and be able to walk everywhere like this isn't new, but it hasn't. I mean, maybe it's happened in bits, but by and large it's not the model. The model's still the old model. Yet we know the theory. So I guess what can we learn from past experiences where we've actually changed, based on what we've known, like perhaps these waterways, versus where we stay put with the devil? We know, even though it's not actually serving us very well.

Richard: 8:54

Yeah well, I'm a believer in what anthropologist Marvin Harris called cultural materialism. This is a theory he created back in the 1970s and 80s, and the basis of the theory is that all societies have three realms the infrastructure, which is how you get your stuff from nature food and materials and so on. The structure, which is the social arrangements structure, which is this social arrangements, economy, politics and so on. And then the superstructure of beliefs and ideas that sits on top of it. And the core insight of cultural materialism is that social change really begins with the infrastructure.

Richard: 9:41

Now, a lot of us have glommed on to the idea that you make your own reality by what you think. But Harris was saying, yeah, it's just the opposite. It's how you get your basic needs from nature that forms your social structures and how you think you think. So you know, once we started getting our basic stuff from nature via fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, mining and so on, that changed. Well, our societies became much bigger and more mobile and more complex and so on, more people living in cities, more urbanized, and the way we think changed as well, the whole superstructure of modernity, where we see nature as little bits of preservation, here and there, of something beautiful, but basically life is all about the stuff that we build. You know, yeah, this never existed before.

Richard: 10:49

Maybe in the Middle Ages people thought of nature as being something to be tamed. Even that was kind of unique in terms of all of human history. If you go back to when we were hunters and gatherers, nature was like the source of everything. It was sacred, right, it was the sacred reality in which we were embedded, and we had an obligation to maintain the relationships with plants and animals and ecosystem. Well, of course, the term ecosystem is modern, but that's another story.

AJ: 11:22

Yes, An important one too, but go on an important one too.

Richard: 11:29

But go on, yeah, right, right, right. But uh, you know, here we've created this, this as a result of this infrastructure, we've created the structures and superstructures and we assume then that this is normal because it's what we're embedded in. And so some of us have realized, oh, this isn't normal, this isn't sustainable. So we realize fossil fuels aren't forever. Fossil fuels are creating climate change, so we have to imagine something beyond, until we're actually forced by climate change or fossil fuel depletion to make other fundamental arrangements about how to live, in terms of how we relate to nature, how we get our stuff from nature, how much stuff we get from nature. Then we're still stuck in the old structures and, for the most part, for most people, still stuck in the old, old structures and, for the most part, for most people, still struck in the stuck in the old. Interest is superstructure as well.

AJ: 12:29

Indeed, which elicits for me in this moment. It elicits a lot of compassion. Yes, if this is the way we are, mm-hmm, then we're doing our best, right? What we might find lamentable, yeah, but it's almost our species by nature to be doing this and not to be able to change sufficiently.

Richard: 12:57

Yeah, cultural change is not the norm. Culture is conservative. Unless you're forced to shift in how you're doing things, you'd much rather just you know.

AJ: 13:09

Just keep going, you know, unless it gets, yeah, I guess, unless it gets too painful yeah, life is complicated enough, yeah, you know.

Richard: 13:15

So just just uh, paying the bills and and uh and staying reasonably healthy, and you know, doing what you're expected to do. Hey, you're a good person, right? But what if being a good person entails doing things that are actually imperiling future generations and the rest of the biosphere plant, other species and so on? Well, what do you do with that information?

AJ: 13:43

I guess, in my case, as someone who, as a young guy I remember talking to John Fullerton about this, in my first episode actually, and I said, yeah, at about, I don't know, 15 to 18, I started to think what is this all for?

AJ: 13:57

It wasn't making much sense to me and he said, oh God, if only I thought that then. And I guess, but it wasn't, I wasn't in a good place, it was a rough time. So I guess that comes back to your thesis too, isn't it, that when it gets hard enough materially, then we start to look elsewhere. That's right. Seems to be a consistent theme too, actually, from all sorts of perspectives that I'm getting through the podcast, and in that sense it might feel like, oh bummer, that we have to wait till we're hit again and again, and again.

Richard: 14:31

And there's no guarantee that our adaptive response to natural disasters or whatever is going to be a good one from a long-term perspective. You know a good one from a long-term perspective. Nevertheless, having been through, you know, a couple of natural disasters, I've observed that people's immediate response is not to go out and loot and to take advantage of their neighbors and do that kind of thing. People's immediate response is to pull together and share things and try to make sure everybody's okay.

AJ: 15:08

It's a beautiful part of our nature. It all comes together. This is the broader package of who we are.

Richard: 15:15

The older I get, the more I appreciate. We are complex creatures and you know we have those good bits, where you know we can be incredibly caring and creative and capable of making you know beautiful art and music and everything. And yet yet we have this other side of us that can be violent and cruel and you just wonder where does this come from? Because you, some of it is. People are capable of cruelty that you typically don't see in nature.

AJ: 15:45

Yeah, I was just talking with a friend the other day just about colonial histories and just how bad they're, our people, so to speak. Right, right, that bad. I mean. Sure there were superstructures of eugenics and you know all those things. That time that we're, in some ways we're encouraged to sort of understand the times. You know that they think, but, but sometimes you just go, wow, that's just even so. Yeah, it's like way beyond the pale of violence, but such is our nature that incorporates that too, I guess, particularly when you think you're being the banality of evil thing, when you think you're just being a good person trying to get right right, this is normal this is normal.

AJ: 16:28

So I'm wondering for you, richard, speaking it triggers empathy, knowing some of the dramas that you folk here in california have been through recent times and us in australia have shared in many ways certainly fire, to say nothing of anything else. But I wonder, was it similar that you materially reached points of such trial that it prompted some of your insights that you've sort of gone on and made a very public name for, or what changed?

Richard: 16:59

you? Oh, what changed me? You know it's hard to say. I have to say, personally I've had a very what's the word?

Richard: 17:14

Abundance was everywhere and yet, you know, for my generation, the baby boomers, it felt so uncomfortable because it was so stultifying. You know, in the 1950s, the sexual mores and every you know. So of course we rebelled against it and, yeah, I went through the whole hippie thing and took LSD and played in a rock band and the whole thing. So what was the infrastructural push for our generation to do all of those things? I think it's complicated. It's not that we were suffering and we had to change so much.

Richard: 18:08

As you know, there were opportunities opened up to us that didn't exist for a previous generation. It's a strange thing, you know, for people who grew up in the 1930s and were facing the Great Depression and then World War II, it was like, you know, the safety of that kind of constricted worldview of the 1950s just seemed like the right thing and it was easily defensible. But for those of us who grew up in the 50s and there was just advertising and consumer products and easy, this and that and everything was relatively living, was cheap, you know. So it was like this isn't what life is about. Life is about self-expression. You know, it's not about paying the rent and all of this.

Richard: 18:55

We can be artists and musicians and, you know, live on the surface of everything. No generation prior to ours had that opportunity.

AJ: 19:04

And this was the fossil fuel boom.

Richard: 19:06

Exactly, yeah. So we had this infrastructure that made a new kind of superstructure possible, and we were all about exploring that superstructure using psychedelics and loud music, you know, plugging in, tuning in and dropping out.

AJ: 19:22

Speaking of which, given the resurgence on that front that's happening right now, was that transformative for you, oh?

Richard: 19:29

absolutely yeah. What do you recall of it? Well, you know I'm glad I took psychedelics because I think it jarred me out of the way it. You know I was not going to be like a corporate guy anyway.

AJ: 19:46

You and me both.

Richard: 19:48

Even in high school, you know, I was in art and music and stuff like that. I wasn't taking classes in economics and stuff like that.

AJ: 20:00

Interesting, given where you've come. Yeah right, you're so steeped in it now.

Richard: 20:03

Right, but I forget what you've come. Yeah right, you're so steeped in it now, right, but I forget what you asked me.

AJ: 20:08

How transformative.

Richard: 20:10

Oh, how transformative was that? Yeah, well, it did wonders. From my memory, as you can tell, no.

AJ: 20:19

It was a while ago, let's face it.

Richard: 20:21

Right? No, I mean, you know it shook us out of the status quo and that was a good thing, but it didn't automatically put us back in touch with what was genuine and sustainable long term.

Richard: 20:37

That's a bigger journey stuff about how the real world works, how nature works and how we've gotten away from that, how we've alienated ourselves from nature. And psychedelics may open a window to that, but you've got to go through that window. You've got to do some work of your own and fortunately I had some good teachers along the way in doing that. It took some time, but that's very interesting.

AJ: 21:06

An old mentor of mine that we were talking about before, who I regularly allude to on this podcast and give a lot of credit to, was the one who really opened my mind to going on with it. And, yeah, he used to say, then what? And it's another instance of then what. So for you, who were some of those people that played that role, that helped you with that, Well, you know, for me a lot of it was in books.

Richard: 21:33

It was. I'm a very introverted, bookish kind of guy, you know, and so it was, and I didn't pursue much of a university education. You know, I went to, I stuck with it for a couple of years studying art and music, but then I dropped out and did the rock band thing and so on. So I didn't have many mentors. I studied Buddhist texts in. Was that first?

AJ: 22:00

In university.

Richard: 22:01

Oh really, yeah, Along with art and music, I studied Buddhist texts and philosophy a couple of philosophy classes, and those were good teachers. I learned a lot there, but again, it was more from reading than from the people themselves. And so what was I reading at that time? Well, I was reading, you know, the autobiography of Malcolm X and stuff like that, but the big book that I read at that time was Limits to Growth.

AJ: 22:31

Ah, thanks.

Richard: 22:32

And that stuck with me because I realized for the first time that the society I was living in was functioning in a way that was fundamentally unsustainable. And I got that and so I, you know, over the net. It took me like 30 years to really process that information and to figure out you know why it's unsustainable, how it's unsustainable. What does that mean?

Richard: 22:56

for me personally. How do I relate to a society that's fundamentally unsustainable? You know all those big questions, and it takes a while to figure all that out. It took me probably longer than it needed to, but anyway, there it is, we're talking about change and the prospect of change.

AJ: 23:13

I mean, that's relevant too, isn't it? It took decades, and again, this isn't uncommon in the podcast I mean arguably younger folk today, because of their context and a bit more materially pressed yeah, um, it's perhaps fair to say on a few fronts are changing faster, but then that's got its downsides too, and you're changing faster. So, yeah, it's all very relevant, I think, and it's so for you to continue the thread. When did you start to feel like you were piecing a puzzle that was worth expressing publicly, in that sense where the writing really kicked in, and so forth?

Richard: 23:51

Yeah, In my 30s I figured out that I wanted to be a writer. Yeah, how did that dawn on you? Well, I was reading, I love to read and I had done well in writing in school and I figured you know I could do that and I realized that writing was, for me, the way to figure out what I thought.

AJ: 24:18

Yeah, I hear you. And had the rock music ended.

Richard: 24:22

Yeah, pretty much, I'd gone back to playing classical. As a teenager I studied classical violin, oh wow. And so, you know, which made me extremely unpopular. And I was already unpopular because I was this bookish kid and you know, by the time I was 20-ish, I kind of wanted to have a social life and I realized that I'd have a better chance of that if I was playing some of this new rock and roll music that I was hearing so much about, you know. So I, I listened to, uh, I started listening to Grateful Dead, and, and I kind of learned to play guitar by listening to Jerry Garcia wow yeah, I could do a fairly good imitation of Jerry Garcia at the time and and you end up plugging an electric violin in.

AJ: 25:08

Was that in that time?

Richard: 25:09

Oh, yeah, yeah, because I already had the skill on the violin. I was playing electric violin too. But you know guitar was more fit in better with with what we were doing. So I played more guitar than violin at that time. But you know, toward the end of the 70s I kind of I got fed up with loud music. I was that was really. It was just too loud. I could tell my I was losing my hearing yeah, totally, I ended up getting special earplugs.

Richard: 25:39

But they probably weren't available then no, they weren't available then and you know it was, it was fun but it was painful and and uh, and I tell where music was? It was going to our disco and you know, in around 68, 69, 70, rock music was like revelatory. You know it was like, it felt like it was our philosophical lifeblood of our generation. You know ideas and feelings and Joni Mitchell and all the you know, crosby, sills and Nash, grateful Dead, all these people you know were somehow channeling this divine wisdom through our generation via electrified music and by the late 70s it was, you know it was. I mean, the best thing that was going on was something like John McLaughlin, the Mojavechian Orchestra, something like that.

Richard: 26:34

But it was like many art forms. They start out with this upwelling of new ideas and passion and exploring this uncharted territory and wow, that's so groovy. And then, after a decade or two, it starts to get. The same thing happened with jazz. You know, you listen to Louis Armstrong in 1924, 1925, 26, and wow, my God, nothing like this ever before. And then and then you listen to jazz in the 1940s with something like Glenn Miller, and you know it's maybe still worth listening to, but the good stuff is not there anymore.

AJ: 27:12

I think you talked about John McLaughlin there briefly. I think we in our rock time picked up a bit of that thread. I was telling you, before we had a bit of East-West and toured and recorded in India, Picked a bit of that thread up. Before we had a bit of East-West and toured and recorded in India, Picked a bit of that thread up. And of course we got the grunge era, which in a sense tried to return to some roots of meaning through music as well, but just through what was our generation of rock. So that was that trajectory for you. And then, yeah, the writing kicked in. And was that about when you went to Australia for the?

Richard: 27:41

first time. Yeah, I went to Australia for the first time in 1985, and I was working on my first book, which was Memories and Visions of Paradise. So I was collecting myths of some lost time, of when we were more in touch with nature and our inner nature, the world of nature around us and the wellspring of insight within us. And so I wanted to research Aboriginal mythology and I had met a guy named Alistair Black who was, I guess it's fair to say, a professional didgeridoo player, and we went together to Alice Springs and spent a couple of weeks just poking around, meeting Aboriginal folks and playing music, and that was a pretty magical time, wow.

AJ: 28:37

And that's gone on to be a thread in your work right through the decades. I recall you said in your recent podcast Production Power, which is excellent. I reveled in it and would highly recommend it that you said you've got do I remember correctly a 19th century book of Native American speeches. You found it really quite amazing to delve into the speeches of Native Americans at that time. Yeah, what stood out to you or comes to mind now?

Richard: 29:06

speeches of Native Americans at that time. Yeah, what stood out to you or comes to mind now? Well, first of all, these folks were obviously from an oral culture as opposed to a written culture, but you might think that would mean that their thoughts weren't as well organized as somebody from a writing-based culture, but it's exactly the opposite. Their thoughts were extremely well organized and in, and using very tactile imagery and poetry. And well, what can I say? Marshall McLuhan was that it was the great master of media, understanding media. That was the title of his seminal work, and he talked about the difference between oral cultures and cultures based in writing. And writing is a great convenience, it enables us to do amazing things, but, as with all technologies, it's a technology of communication. As with all technologies, it's like a prosthesis, you know. It enables us to do things we couldn't do before, but then it often results in a kind of atrophying of some more natural, body-based sense or ability that we had previously.

Richard: 30:25

And so with um, so, what do you lose is always a prescient question yeah, yeah, with, with uh cultures based in writing, words become kind of a uh, a commodity that you can, you know, mass produce and then everything else, whereas whereas in an oral culture, words really mean something and you, you have to stand behind your words in your community, because it's that's, that's who you are, it comes from who you are.

AJ: 31:00

Yeah rather than floating out there. Yeah, very interesting drawing a thread when you've credited these cultures with another aspect which, yeah, rather than floating out there in the ether, very interesting Drawing a thread. I mean, you've credited these cultures with another aspect which ties back to your Limits to Growth experience, and that's self-restraint. But you've made the point that this crosses over spiritual traditions of cultures. So you looked into Buddhism, so Eastern philosophical traditions, but also Western religions, modern religions, encased within these. Self-restraint is key to not just moral living but kind living, just sort of good living, healthy living, we might say it sounds like you've come to the belief that almost surprise, surprise that this is important today.

Richard: 31:47

Yeah, well, the word religion, of course, comes from religare, to bind back, To bind back to what? Well, to some essential or core or inner or original truth or source. So what is it? I mean, people philosophize all the time about what that is, and sometimes projected into all sorts of imaginary or mythological realms. But you know, at its core, we're talking about binding ourselves back to the core of our own being, you know.

AJ: 32:27

Well, if I was to pick up the thread from there, something that came out of the Power podcast was to be able to reclaim and we talked before about what you trade off or what you lose with these prosthetics, these technologies that we add on and then become normalized, and then become normalised that, if we have a sense of being powerless, to have more of a sense of being empowered, that you need to actively move into the world, you need to do something, you need to learn something, take something back of what we've given up. It was consistent with a lot of the literature that would say example if you're feeling overwhelmed, don't hide more. Get involved more. That's what will actually alleviate as much as because you'll be filled with the good stuff, the uplift of being, with being connected back to community and you and yeah, arguably you're the core of who you are. You know, you think you're a good person.

AJ: 33:25

What about acting that out in these new ways? What will that feel like? And it tends to feel pretty good. Yeah, right, right, um, get out of the car tends to feel pretty good. But a lot of the narrative around this stuff is still sacrifice. And oh, we can't ask people to sacrifice. That'll never work, oh yeah, but in fact, inviting people to get stuck in a little bit more into the juice of life, if you like, yeah, can trigger the virtuous spiral to more of these outcomes that we seek in the world increasingly to avoid these disasters, and to live live a healthier life, and so forth yeah, yeah, well, you said it.

Richard: 34:02

Yeah, I know I well. We live in this world where so much is done for us you know, we have machines to do our thinking for us, indeed and so so much of us has atrophied as a result, and we take this for granted and then we become fearful about losing it, and then we become fearful about losing it. I think we you know before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about some of this that even though the environment, the human-made environment that we're in, the fossil-fueled environment, is causing us to lose our sense of community, our ability to feel at home in nature, you know it's poisoning us in various ways. You know all this stuff and yet it's familiar. So the idea of being cut off from it in some way, or the notion that it might self-destruct, you know, through resource depletion or climate change or something like that, it raises a lot of fears.

AJ: 35:13

It's unnerving.

Richard: 35:14

And it's understandable, because whatever happens when cultural change often entails times of turbulence.

AJ: 35:26

Yeah, we're in it. Yeah, that's for sure. Maybe the window's open at least.

Richard: 35:31

I suppose in that sense.

AJ: 35:32

So I wonder, Richard, what is taking your interest in the moment? What's sort of hot for you right now?

Richard: 35:42

Oh boy, you caught me between essays. I wondered Because if you had, one going.

AJ: 35:48

You'd be like bang.

Richard: 35:50

Yeah, you know, I wrote this book on power a couple of years back and did a podcast around it and everything. And it was like a big download, major download and research and then pull back in and find a way of taking all that information and formulating it into a coherent story. It was a big picture book. You know which, unfortunately, the time for big picture books is? It's not. It's not a great time for them. You know, the 1970s and 80s were, I think, a little bit more of a fortuitous time. Good thing you did a podcast then.

Richard: 36:37

Yeah, right, right. So it wasn't a huge seller, but it was a big thing for me to kind of a big download of ideas and information, and so I'm still kind of operating in the wake of that to a certain extent. Not that there are, no, no new ideas or things to write about. I mean we're, we're on the verge, I think, right now, of some some more turbulent times. Um, certainly here in the us. I think we're in an election season, yeah, and I, uh, I think it's going to be a it's outcome. I don't think Trump is going to be elected president again, you don't, I don't but the process of getting from here to six months after the election, I think, is going to be very difficult. The country is so divided, very difficult. The country is so divided and it's hard for me to understand how people take this guy seriously.

AJ: 37:45

We think it says something about their cultural, material circumstances, don't we? And they must be communicating something fundamentally different to our health.

Richard: 37:56

Yeah, well, the whole the media sphere is so divided, you know, you have whole radio stations and TV networks and everything that are just devoted to being contrarian and questioning, and of course we need to question the status quo. You know the status quo is driving us toward ecological suicide, so we should be questioning, but the questions that they're raising are not not nudging us in in a, in a direction that will help us, you know, solve any of these problems. So it's a very difficult time.

AJ: 38:35

I know of some of the brilliant. I mean we were talking before about some of the amazing resurgent democratic movements happening in Australia right now. I know there's a bit of that going on the ground here, and perhaps because of Trump's initial election in 2016,. Like it was, we always needed to get moving. But now we really need to get moving and it's sort of springing up in grassroots forms. Arguably, this system it's even more binary than ours. It's harder without preferential voting and compulsory voting maybe even and the like, but I'll look to explore that. Certainly, it's a real point of curiosity for me as we go across the states. But what are you feeling about why trump won't be elected at the end of the year?

Richard: 39:18

yeah, I, I, I don't think that there's a plurality of of people in the us who can support him, and we saw that in the 2020 election.

Richard: 39:29

Yes, uh so it's, you know, the, the commercial mainstream media. It's to their advantage to have a, you know, a two way fight. So, even though Trump is, even though he's a couple of years younger than Joe Biden, I think he's showing signs of senility. And well, I'm not a, I'm not a diagnostician, I'm not going to, you know, say what it is exactly, but he, the guy, is no longer making much sense and his handlers don't trot him out in public that often anymore as a result. So is he going to win this election? I really don't think so. I don't think he has the brainpower.

Richard: 40:12

I don't think people aren't donating money to the Republican Party as they were in past elections. He's poisoning. He's poisoned the. Well, you know, he's taken over the party and the whole party isn't crazy about that. Maybe 80 percent of it, but that other 20 percent is going. What is going on here? You know we've really made a deep mistake. So I think, I think biden probably will win the election, but that's. A lot of people are dissatisfied with the way things are going. They, you know, they, they think he's too old, they, they're unhappy with the way the economy is going and the economy is probably going to do a lot worse very soon.

Richard: 40:55

You know we've we've actually had a good couple of years indeed in those conventional terms, yeah, but you know we we can't keep going on like this, forever paying for everything with more debt and uh, and relying on on a fossil fueledueled infrastructure that has no future.

AJ: 41:15

Yeah, speaking of no future. I mean it's stark when you talk about it. I mean you come from a farming family, yeah right. And you've written about how the caloric output of farming is about one unit for every ten that you put in Like just mind-bogglingly inverted.

Richard: 41:37

This is modern industrial agriculture, modern industrial agriculture.

AJ: 41:40

Yeah, that's right, and you were, I guess, growing up at a time when that was coming on.

Richard: 41:46

Yeah, no, I didn't grow up on a farm. My father grew up on a farm, so I'm one generation removed. Got it, did he?

AJ: 41:54

leave the farm out of the dust bowl.

Richard: 41:56

Well, this was right after World War II. He was the first member of his immediate family to go to college and his brother remained a farmer. So my dad got a college degree, went into chemistry, became an industrial chemist, worked for a big meat packing conglomerate as a quality control chemist, and I got to visit him where he worked and saw where the hot dogs came from, and so when I turned 20, I became a vegetarian.

AJ: 42:38

I just watched Food Inc 2 last night and this was front and center as much, because it says something that that's where our food system has gone to chemical observation to make sure that the experiment we're coming up with passes those tests, even if when we let it into the world we don't know really what it's doing. But of course I raised that spectra of ag and that extraordinary energy mismatch 10 units in to get one out. We could go back to the car for a similar if not worse.

Richard: 43:14

The only way this is possible is because of fossil fuels.

AJ: 43:17

And the illusion that it's not costing more than what we're paying at the pump. Yeah, and that's only going to get more costly too. And ag inputs, et cetera, et cetera. So the cost of living crisis we hear a lot about this in Australia right now, but you've got to be able to connect it back to the roots of where it's coming from, don't you? But it also, then I mean a lot of what I've observed in the podcast and certainly traveling australia, but I've connected him with international guests too. Obviously your good self seven years ago is that there's a lot of change afoot, and certainly fooding too goes there in the back half of the film the food movements, regenerative agriculture, some extraordinary stuff, and I see some of the energy transition stuff too.

Richard: 44:02

the stuff we think of the industrial energy systems. Let's say yeah, yeah, solar panels, wind turbines, batteries.

AJ: 44:06

Yeah, and I know you've grappled with this you know you've got your EV. You've just changed out to your second one after a bunch of years. I think you've done the same with your solar panels too, I recall.

AJ: 44:16

Yeah, we're on our second set of solar panels, yeah, yeah, which is important, right that they have limited lives too, and we need to have that, and you've said that it's still on a fossil fuel boosted foundation that this happens. So I'm wondering if and where you're seeing transitions that capture your imagination, where people are changing in ways that make you go hello.

Richard: 44:39

Yeah, well, you know, I think the only way we're going to get through this bottleneck which is what I think climate change is imposing on our species is through reconnection with, and restoration of, natural systems. So that is certainly true with regard to the food system. There are ways of growing food that restore soils, that store carbon back in topsoil, and that's what we need to be doing. There's really a bifurcation in the response to climate change. On one hand are the folks and they're the most prominent people the scientists and commentators and so on, who are all about technology. You know, we're going to build machines to suck carbon out of the air. We're going to all trade in our gas-powered cars for electric cars and basically continue living pretty much the way we are, except, you know, just by different means.

Richard: 45:42

I've done some analysis. Well, actually I didn't do so much of the analysis, I did most of the writing, but I worked for a year with a guy who's highly capable at energy analysis, david Fridley of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory smartest energy guy I've ever met and we wrote a book together called Our Renewable Future, and our analysis showed that, yeah, everything is possible on sort of the desktop level.

Richard: 46:14

You know, you can name a problem in the energy transition and you can solve it on the small scale. You can capture carbon and store it underground. You can build an electric aircraft it won't be able to go very far or carry very many people, but you can do it. Or you can make synthetic fuels, but at what scale? At what cost? So what we kept coming back to again and again was this problem of scale. Yeah, you can do these things, but the scale at which we're currently operating industrial society globally is a scale of energy use that is extremely unlikely to be matched by energy sources other than fossil fuels. So that means, you know, we can't solve all of these problems just by building more machines, which is what, of course, people want to do, because that's how we're used to solving problems and it creates jobs, it makes profits for investors. We know how to do machines right. We've spent the last couple of centuries solving problems with machines.

AJ: 47:24

But have we solved?

Richard: 47:28

Yeah, well now we're dealing with the problems we created by solving all of those problems. So you know at this point what's. So I said there's a bifurcation. What's the other path? And it's regenerating natural systems. First and foremost, seeing how nature works and then finding ways to first align ourselves with that and align our thinking with that, and then, if we can find ways to bring those natural ways of doing things together in a way that solves some of our immediate human problems, great.

AJ: 48:04

It's very interesting that it almost suggests there's a way to get to the super infrastructure. Super structure Is that what you said? Superstructure, yeah, to commune with the living world first and foremost. Maybe the psychedelics resurgence is part of that too.

Richard: 48:22

Yeah, we sort of have to anticipate the infrastructure that we're inevitably headed toward and pre-adapt our superstructure to that infrastructure, which is getting the cart before the horse, in a way, in terms of how societies typically evolve, and that's why there aren't that many of us who are thinking this way.

AJ: 48:45

Yeah, yeah.

Richard: 48:46

You know, most people who look at climate change try to imagine a future based on an extension of the existing infrastructure. Okay, we'll change the infrastructure a little bit, we'll tweak it here and there. We'll, you know, install solar panels instead of oil wells, but that ain't going to work. The superstructure, or, excuse me, the infrastructure, is going to change in profound ways.

Richard: 49:13

There aren't that many of us who realize that, but once you do realize it, the next thought in the train has got to be well, how has our thinking got to change to fit that very different infrastructure? And it means a lot for our thinking. It means we have to give up with the technocratic impulse that we have developed over the last decades that makes us want to solve every human problem with more technology. And we have to look back inside ourselves, to who we are as biological organisms, where we come from in nature, how, how we're related to nature, and and nourish those connections, rather than ignoring them and paving them over, which is what we've been doing the other part of your power thesis, of course, relates to this, doesn't it?

AJ: 50:10

and some of what we've talked about already, in the sense that it's with that conglomeration, that techno approach, that we disempowered ourselves. You know, as a broad polity, so much the food system ends up in five companies, hands tech's, the same right, etc. Etc. I'm always conscious, you know, and you know, you've got it through your life. It's like, oh, you're painting this doom picture. It's like no.

AJ: 50:34

I'm not. It's like it could be better over here, if you have a look, and as much because of power, like what feeds into this. Well, this election dynamic we talked about, it's come from this approach Dehumanizing, ultimately denaturalizing, deadeningening, we might even say right. So if the inverse of that is I mean, I just spoke to paul hawken for the podcast and we're talking about regeneration right if the if the way out is regeneration is life itself.

AJ: 51:09

You're sort of echoing these themes now and including how it relates to power, including how it relates to power, including how it relates to actually getting in positions where we're in control of our lives again and democracy functions. Yeah, okay.

Richard: 51:23

Yeah, right, right. I mean, once you have sources of energy that can overpower individual human beings and human communities, which is what we have with fossil fuels, then it disempowers us at a psychological and spiritual level.

AJ: 51:47

Which is what so much of this time is about in my ears. Yeah, it's how demoralized people are.

Richard: 51:56

That's right. We feel like we can't do anything.

AJ: 51:59

You know, we have no choice.

Richard: 52:01

You know you just got to go along with it because otherwise you know what can you do?

AJ: 52:06

Yeah, but there are these other opportunities and it's interesting you come back to that natural regeneration as well, because that is where the couple of hundred episodes of the podcast have gone to. In some ways people mistake it for a regenerative agriculture podcast. It ties because of how much things have come back to how to change the living, how to set the conditions up so the living world can regenerate itself and then be guided by that.

Richard: 52:33

Well, food is a good place to start, because, of course, we have to eat, but it's our immediate, daily connection with the natural world. If you're getting your food in ways that are destroying the natural world and ruining your health, then it's time to do some thinking.

AJ: 52:55

You know, you said something else here, relevant too, because when you talked about this sort of changing our superstructure in anticipation of the shifting cultural, material circumstances, in a way that opportunity arises, much like your growing up, the 60s opportunity arose out of the 50s as an opportunity because we can anticipate so much on the basis of the fossil fuel foundations and all the ways of being able to forecast that we've developed. Mind you, as I say that, so many stories of Indigenous folk that could anticipate two years out climate and other things and avoided tsunamis while modern technology didn't pick it up.

AJ: 53:35

So you know, maybe we're not sacrificing anything on that front to come back to our biological roots, but nonetheless, the scientific method and everything that came from that in the Industrial Revolution has given us the ability to foresee some of these ways, that things are going to change dramatically and that we can start to prepare and fire our reconnection with the living world, our superstructure. And it's interesting to then map it back on to the 60s in another way, because something you said was perhaps I wonder if you still think this perhaps what we can imagine is a what was it? A 2000 watt each, you know, in energy terms, society, and that that would be about as equivalent to life in the 60s in the states, and I think your words were at the time something like it's not so bad, yeah, right, right. So can you explain that to us?

Richard: 54:29

well, folks in north america are accustomed to using energy on a per capita basis at a rate that is absolutely unprecedented in all of world history, and you know. You go around the world and there are a few countries that use energy at the same per capita level as, say, the United States, but not many, and we're talking about Arab states with oil gushing out of the ground. So you can go around the world right now and find societies that are using energy at half the per capita rate of North Americans, and some of those are in Europe, and these people are not living in caves, right. They're living in beautiful cities that have you know, existed for centuries, and they have art museums and symphony orchestras and everything. And you can even find societies that use energy at half the per capita rate of Europe and are still doing quite well. You know. So who are we talking? Some of the so-called third world countries.

AJ: 55:42

Yeah.

Richard: 55:43

Oh yeah, I mean people are perfectly. You look at how people's actual self-reported level of happiness with their lives and there's not that big a correlation actually between energy usage per capita and and Self-reported levels of happiness you're bringing back to mind places like Kerala in India. Yeah.

AJ: 56:07

Where I think it was even against the Human Development Index. But the similar sort of domain, their sense of doing well in life yeah, Was was right up there and nature was a strong part of it that a living world being in good state Despite being considered third world in the financial terms, and there were a multitude of other examples I think I'm recalling now in my international development you know, formerly international, development times, from human relationships and from work, that they can see the results of their work and connection to their environment and the people around them.

Richard: 56:49

And life in modern industrial societies is often, by comparison, much more alienated and alienating. And we, we're dealing with industrial, uh, processes and materials and environments that are almost inherently anti-life, you know, and so of course we we feel kind of miserable and drug addiction becomes a problem and unemployment and oh it's, it's it's an unsustainable situation, not just environmentally, but psychologically as well.

AJ: 57:24

And I remember talking about particular policy shifts that might help with this grading back of energy use to healthier levels. Last time we spoke and that's out on the podcast, so I'll link to that too. But to wind us up, I want to keep on our biological roots, our reconnection to the living world through a really interesting way that you've, I think you mentioned, to empower, which was through James Nestor's work and breath. You said something like almost akin to not just using less energy but even breathing less or maybe this was my extrapolation. Is this mine? Have you read james book? Maybe it was mine.

AJ: 58:04

I was thinking one of the key points out of james nestor's extraordinary book breath, is that we are breathing too much. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, because we're all hyper tense. Yeah, and chugging through so many breaths that there there's just literally in the similar terms, there's's just a lot of waste, a lot of byproduct and waste and, of course, yeah, the stress and all that things. So to think we actually would benefit and more people are coming onto this by breathing more consciously and so breathing less, coming back to healthy levels of breathing the fact that that fundamental of our biological being follows the same thread, I find that very interesting but also very enticing. It's like, ah, this is starting to make sense and in terms of getting away from that sort of doom or sacrifice interpretation of the narrative, no, no, there's a return to roots here that is fundamentally enlivening and, in all sorts of ways, we've scarcely perceived. Yeah, right?

Richard: 59:10

well, we've gotten so used to, uh, quantity over quality in every aspect of our lives. Yeah, because, you know, with fossil fuels, we have all of this, this energy available to us, we and, and so what do we do? We've gone crazy with it and we make, you know, food and consumer products and everything and entertainment, and you know, we're entertaining ourselves to death. We have, we have, movies that that create, you know, realities that are far more so intense that normal daily life seems boring by comparison. Right?

AJ: 59:51

It's so interesting you say that because recently our football code in Australian rules football has taken to the American style of hype up and there'll be so much noise before the game starts. Australian rules football has taken to the American style of hype up, yeah, and there'll be so much noise before the game starts that when the game starts, the music and the noise drops off, leaving the game itself in almost sheer quiet. And it feels that feels like the downer the game started, whereas I remember as a kid the first bounce, as we call it, had so much anticipation. The noise was building from us as participants leading up to the bounce and then crescendoed at the bounce. Yeah, like in the interest of hyping us up, it stripped the actual thing Right Of its vibe. Yeah, it's another metaphor, I think.

Richard: 1:00:36

There was a book a few years ago called Coming to Our Senses, and the name of the author escapes me right now. Metaphor, I think, to draw a thread A few years ago called Coming to Our Senses the name of the author escapes me right now, but the basic thesis was you know, we are kind of entertaining ourselves to death Because there's profit in it. We live in this capitalist system where everything is mandated by profit and we have so much energy that we can use that energy to create a myriad of consumer products, whether it's sound or visuals or experiences all kinds, and it's overwhelming our nervous systems.

AJ: 1:01:14

Yeah.

Richard: 1:01:15

So we can't think anymore, and it takes getting back a going to a natural place and just sitting there for a while to clear your mind, so you can even start to think, and so it's nice to be sitting here and listening to this water flowing past us.

AJ: 1:01:35

It's case in point, isn't it? And yeah, a place of restoration. It is amazing how much nature's got our back in that sense, if we give it a leg up. Yeah, it surprises us. On that theme, then, another way to get to these places. Back to music to wind us up. Yeah, I said before that we tell a little tale about a piece of music that's been significant in life. So in this case, for you, I wonder what comes to mind.

Richard: 1:02:04

Oh, boy, that's. You know, I've spent my life immersed in music rock and roll music when I was a teenager, classical music when I was even younger, and then again later on, playing classical music in orchestras and string quartets. And then I've, more recently, lost the ability to play the violin as a result of a nerve injury and in one of my fingers. So I've started learning to play the piano, and so that's exposed me to a completely different set of musical ideas, and I've gravitated not to classical piano but to early jazz, you know Jelly Roll, morton, and then all the way up to Thelonious Monk and not that I can play all of this stuff expertly, far, far from it, I'm just.

Richard: 1:03:00

You know, I'm just dipping my toe in the water.

AJ: 1:03:02

Is that why Louis Armstrong was a point of reference to you before? Oh, absolutely.

Richard: 1:03:06

Louis Armstrong was an absolute musical genius and his life is so inspiring because he grew up in devastating poverty in New Orleans, louisiana. But a few people were kind to him when he was young and it made all the difference in his life and he became just an absolute amazing trumpet player and human being. And especially his recordings in the late 1920s are just revelatory.

AJ: 1:03:43

Recordings in the late 1920s are just revelatory you know it's something that you know never, never happened before, never happened again.

Richard: 1:03:48

That story's like a fable for the times too, isn't it?

AJ: 1:03:50

yeah, I'm glad we ended up there. Is there a particular song?

Richard: 1:03:53

oh god, west, west end blues is would be a good one, yeah AJ: all right, beautiful.

AJ: 1:03:58

I'm gonna go look that up. Richard, I can't thank you enough for spending the time in your busy schedule in your day today in your place, and and all the more for bringing me here winding up here. It's a great pleasure to meet after all these years and and having followed your work for 20 of them.

Richard: 1:04:15

So the pleasure is mine too.

AJ: 1:04:17

Thanks, mate. RH: Yeah AJ: That was Richard Heinberg generously joining me in his hometown of Santa Rosa. For more on Richard and his extraordinary body of work, see the links in the show notes. There are a couple of photos on The RegenNarration website too, and more for subscribers on Patreon. And it's thanks again to you, generous supporting listeners, for making this episode possible. If you're also valuing this, please consider joining us by just heading to the website or the show notes and following the prompts, with all my thanks, and even more thanks for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your preferred app. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.