What If Climate Alarmists Were Right? Jem Bendell interviewed for MEER.org

Welcome to the Mir podcast. Our aim is to bring thoughtful conversations that help prepare people to better understand climate change, environmental challenges, and the choices facing society. Today, I am delighted to welcome Professor Jim Bendell. Jim is a British scholar, author, and sustainability expert whose 2018 paper, Deep Adaptation, sparked an international conversation about how societies prepare for the realities of accelerating climate disruption. While somewhat controversial at the time, many of the questions it raised about environmental risk, institutional preparedness, and societal resilience have become increasingly relevant in the years since its publication. His work has since expanded beyond climate change alone to explore what he describes as the meta crisis, the interconnected environmental, political, economic, and societal challenges shaping our future. More recently, he has also redeveloped the deep adaptation framework from four guiding principles to six, placing greater emphasis on practical community action, regeneration, and resilience. Jem, welcome to the Mir podcast. >> Yeah, thank you for inviting me, Kathy. >> So, when Deep Adaptation was published in 2018, many people described it as too pessimistic, too alarmist, or simply too radical. But looking back now, which of the concerns you raised do you feel have borne out by events? >> Yeah, looking back eight years now, um I had pretty much forgotten what the specifics in the deep adaptation paper on the climate science were. And so this year I decided to actually go back to the paper uh and actually isolate the claims that I was making then and compare them to what is actually now observable uh like measured aspects of our climate system and also what the the the best science in the top peer-reviewed journals uh is now saying about uh the climate situation and climate futures And I realized that um I wasn't all that crazy. I wasn't actually all that unusual. Um and so I identified a dozen claims I'd made. Uh and went through them all and thought, well, now, yeah, sure, they were disputed at the time, but now they're demonstrated by reality. um and they've actually become uh uh pretty much near consensus in current climatology. Now that's not to boast. It's horrible news. Um sadly uh my assessment of the climate science 8 years ago as a independent like researcher not within climatology but analyzing the climatology from outside um unfortunately I was able to identify what was most salient for knowing what was happening and um so it's actually all been proven to be true and I mean that's that's also why I accepted your invitation. to come on this podcast because I know people who listen to the mere podcast are fairly unusual. Uh the audience um paying close attention to climate issues, climate news, climate science, climate data uh unusual in terms of the majority of the population. So obviously must be feeling some some dread and sadness and annoyance like all of us. Um and of course that needs to go somewhere. It does in me. Um and so yeah, it kind of kind of galvanized me into action as you say to upgrade the the deep adaptation framework to go back to the original climate science and to say ah okay so myself and people like me the so-called climate alarmists were right our critics were wrong and that matters now more than ever it matters because we need those uh past institutional and psychological dynamics which led to mistakes in under estimating and underpredicting the the climate situation and how messy it would become. Those same dynamics exist today and will be leading to new mistakes. And so we need to look at that together. Um it's not about blaming or boasting. We just need to look at it together and see how do we um not make those mistakes now. And I think there are blind spots with climatology and what we do about it. So, um, so yeah, that's that was how I've sort of tried to do something with my own u dread, anxiety, grief, annoyance is to try and find useful ways of of metabolizing that. >> Yes. When you did look back at at the claims that you had made, were did anything surprise you, even you, about how quickly some of the changes have unfolded in the climate space? It some of the the worries that you had um that have borne out and and why they've become much more accepted in those eight years. So um you know when I about eight years ago when I was making the claims I was making which were um more alarming than establishment climatology as for example represented by IPCC reports. Um I wasn't making those claims based on nothing. I was making those claims based on peer-reviewed science and also observational data in 2017. and um just um previous years um that were coming from top institutions. So it's no surprise to me that um mainstream climatology or establishment climatology has caught up with those more alarming interpretations of the climate situation from 8 years ago. Um, but you also asked a question of of how the climate's changing now and whether it's surprising to me. Um, yes. Uh the pace of climate change is a little bit faster than what I anticipated and I think I know why which is maybe something we we could come to later. is to do with uh carbon emissions only being half the story for man-made nearterm climate change. And that some of what's happened is to do with the loss of the Earth's reflectivity, also known as albido. And that isn't just because of either greenhouse gases or the um knock-on effects, the amplifying effects of those gases in the atmosphere. It's also to do with what humans have done to large forests and healthy oceans to diminish their ability to naturally seed clouds which are very crucial over oceans and reflecting sun because otherwise if that sun arrives at the ocean surface 90% is absorbed and turned into heat and transported around the world eventually. So something we could get back to, but I think maybe what might be helpful is to just mention at least maybe a couple of those core claims in the deep adaptation paper that seem to be um so annoying to some uh climate scientists eight years ago, but are actually completely uh unc unontroversial now. Um yeah so the first one is simply that sea level rise is accelerating worldwide. So I made that claim based on the satellite data that was available at the time. And so in the uh few years like 5 years prior to uh the end of 2017 when I was doing and early 2018 when I was doing the research um that's what you know we had these satellite measurements from the '90s and uh unfortunately sea level rise was accelerating. Now the intergovernmental panel on climate change their assessment report uh number five in 2013 and then concluded 2014 it was cautious on this. It noted that the rate of rise detected during the satellite era so from the '90s onwards was higher than the overall 20th century average. But it didn't make that headline finding. It didn't then confirm it. It just said there's this data. it didn't confirm it as consensus um and didn't prioritize it in terms of what it what it was was indicating. Right? So a new study now in 2026 has confirmed not just an accelerating rise but a doubling of the global uh of the rate of global sea level rise. Now the other crucial thing is that I was looking for what was most salient. So there is a immense amount of climatology published in the past and published all the time. There are thousands and thousands of scientists who are now doing research which uh is added to this field we now call climatology. um and it's um in that it's difficult to spot what is the signal amidst the noise. Now my critics uh many of them said oh her gem is cherrypicking the data and that is uh sort of a porative framing of salience picking from a mass of data and that is what we need to do if we're not interested in simply what's the next question what is it that we don't know on our narrow specialism we're actually looking at this information to think well what to the best of our knowledge is actually happening in the world that's most important. So the problem becomes when if you work in a specialist field naturally you're trying to get ever better at your narrow area and you need to be very good at it and that's great but obviously you're thinking so what still don't we know in this narrow area that's how science is done and that's different from trying to interpret what do we need to know now to manage risk to actually inform society now of course climatologists get together and try and do that but they are not habitually trained or skilled or supported to do that to actually look at all different fields and identify what's most salient significant to know. So coming from the outside as a researcher as a research analyst who had done climatology in the past um I had a different attitude. So I looked at that data on on sea level rise and I thought well why would that be happening unless global climate change is also accelerating because um mainly sea level rise is driven by thermal expansion of uh the seas of water and melting of ice from the land entering the ocean. And so there may be some delays. For example, uh the heating that then takes time to be transferred lower down into the depths of the ocean. But on average, in the end, it is an indicator of what's happening the whole system. And so if cl if if sea level rise is accelerating, that's a massive indicator for climate change accelerating. And if it is then it means that either a lot of um uh self-amplifying feedbacks um uh have already started so that the the planet is heating itself because of anthropogenic emissions of carbon or there are additional additional things going on here to carbon and um not just cyclical like because this is all all the all the minor variations would be sort of evened out in sea level rise over years. So yeah, I didn't dive into that second implication because I was a bit carbon fixated like everybody else perhaps in uh in 2018 2017 2018. But that was my second claim major claim in the paper. Climate change is probably accelerating now. We also uh now speaking in 2026 uh it's uncontroversial now to say that climate change is probably accelerating. It's not even controversial to say climate change is definitely accelerating and there are and there are then debates about um how fast uh how long do we wait before we agree where we're at? Like should we say we're at 1.5 now because we had a year already over 1.5 or we going to frame that as a temporary overshoot and when do we just stop pretending that it's a temporary overshoot? um like what statistical thing should we use to agree that and and there are debates about why it's happening but there's only a few outliers fascinatingly some of the most famous most senior most quoted climatologists who are still saying oh well maybe it's not accelerating or we can't be sure or nothing's happening outside the projections of our best computer models but there's peer-reviewed science from the world's best climat matologists as I see them um that are just confirming that it's absolutely accelerating and it could even be exponentially accelerating uh which would be ridiculously bad news but we're not certain on that. So there's a couple of of claims. I mean I could go on like for example the third claim I made in the deep adaptation paper was that our natural carbon sinks so forests, oceans, soils will probably decline and become some of them if not altogether net sources of carbon rather than syncs of carbon. So natural emissions will increase and this will be a selfamplifying feedback whether or not at the level of a so-called tipping point still there'll be massive self-amplifying feedback. So the planet will be heating itself no matter what we do with emissions. Uh again the consensus of IPCC back in um the AR5 which was the latest one at the time of my research in 2018 uh was that the carbon fertilization effect where carbon increases plant growth um that would actually increase because there'd be more CO2 in the atmosphere so plants would take up more of it and so that would moderate uh warming and only in a very high warming scenario would that be damaged and therefore we might see uh these um current carbon sinks turning to carbon sources. Well, that's nonsense. Uh now we found that um what the the biggest study from last year found that um natural sinks turning to sources already accounts for about 8% of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. So 8% of carbon ppm in the atmosphere is because of anthropogenic um damage to the biome the biosphere uh leading to more CO2 release. So I could go on. There are a dozen I've actually now produced an essay um so I recommend uh people check it out. a dozen claims in a dozen climate claims in the deep adaptation paper which were disputed but are now near consensus or demonstrated by by um by actual measurements our thermometers our our sensors um and so it was interesting at the time some of the critics said ah but it wasn't peer reviewed said yes I know um it was peer- reviewviewed and they didn't want me to conclude what I concluded um and I said well I I can't not and so um was it the editor of the ecologist magazine when publishing ing a critique of it said when I wrote to him saying there are so many holes in that critique here here's a list of them all and he said oh well it wasn't peer reviewed so we're now doing the peer review in public like well we've the deep adaptation pap's being peer reviewed by reality now and sadly it passed >> yes indeed well and as you were talking about carbon sinks turning to carbon sources I mean we've seen the fires too which is above and beyond just the failure to be able to draw down as much. But um we're we're also seeing that aspect of things. I I yeah >> that's a particular thing for me because um so I did geography at Cambridge University between 92 and 1995 and already I was fascin I was an environmentalist and I was fascinated by um the possibilities of climate change back then and in 1993 I did a I chose you could choose like modules and I they called them papers and I chose oceanography and tropical ecology because I was obsessed with these issues and um yeah the um I I was really upset with getting a bad mark on my um tropical ecology paper because it was a question about climate change and how deforestation might contribute to climate change. And I wrote the first half of the essay like all the normal stuff that we' all been taught. And I wrote the second half of the essay was actually things could get so bad particular if we look at the paleo record. It was like what might happen here? Oh so actually forests might burn because of future warming. And I was given a 22 like a bad mark on that. Um because obviously I was I was too much of a alarming extremist doomist back then wasn't I in 1993. So, >> oh, >> the reason why I know that is because it brought my grade down. I see. I don't I see. I don't It must sound like I I I carry grudges. Oh, well. >> No, but it's from 93. I've been thinking every time I see a forest fire and people say, "Oh, it's cuz the forests are more stressed or drying out, more diseased because of climate." It's like, yeah, that was kind of obvious even to an undergraduate in 1993. >> Yes. Yes. Sadly, I think I heard more about climate back in the 80s than than I did until recently. I mean, now it's hard to not it's hard to ignore as we >> Yeah, that's interesting you say that. So, yes, it was kind of like news as in new stuff to talk about in the 80s, wasn't it? And it finally we heard about it and uh Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, I heard it at the end of the 80s, but also as sort of a back then it was connected to a broader critique of capitalism, industrialism, growth society, maybe we need to shift our values, wake up to the fact we're part of nature, not separate from it. Um, and it was kind of like it was kind of like a nice philosophical thing. It was like this this threat that would come real in 2100. So you could talk about it in an interesting way at a conference and be relaxed or a retreat. It wasn't oh It was this more of a interesting addition to a philosophical conversation about redirecting society and our values. >> Yes. >> Now it's more in the realm of I don't know if you can have in your podcast but anyway. Um well on now that we are talking about you know the the gravity of the situation you know let's let's talk about climate professionals themselves have been reluctant to discuss the full scale of the risks. Um can can you kind of delve back a little bit from before and now? you know, why why do you think that happened? And do you think those same pressures still influence environmental discussions today and discuss that that piece of the puzzle and the problem? >> Yeah. So, um that's why I've written the essay um for for ages, partly because I didn't want to exhaust myself and uh put myself back into an emotional funk. I didn't look at the climatology again. I mean, we're all seeing the bad news across our screens, but I didn't want to actually sit down and read all the climate science again or check all the latest data. Um, I didn't want to do it also because I thought what's the point like mainstream or establishment climatology and even the establishment environmental profession doesn't want to hear from me on this. Um so a lot of people reacted amazingly to the deep adaptation paper in 2018 and quit their jobs and became activists or set up projects. I mean uh the founder of the MIA project read my paper and started questioning what he was doing as working in MRI health uh scanning machines and stuff and um decided to set up MIA wrote to me about it and and and um and it's amazing to see what what Dr. Yayo and colleagues have done since. But he wasn't unusual. Lots of people um were shocked by this uh framing of climate change as uh a tragedy already and a threat to humanity rather than some kind of sad thing about polar bears. And so it was a massive massive shift and it shook people up and a lot of people have done amazing things. >> Wow. Uh, and I'd also got quite a few climatologists supporting me, writing to me in private. Um, and that's interesting because like 17 years ago, the Guardian did a a survey of climatologists and I think I think it was 90% that they surveyed says privately thought we would never stay below 2° above pre-industrial. Uh, but they didn't say any of that publicly. And so I think there really needs to be some introspection within climatology uh the people who work in that field and also amongst journalists who report on that field and environmental nos who then uh determine their strategies priorities on the basis of that information. There needs to be an introspection across the board. Um and yeah, because in public I was um people, not just me, but people like me who were considered uh too alarming or too alarmist or then framed as so-called doomists or soft doomists or whatever the phrasing was. Um yeah they uh yeah they they not only dismissed the research and views as unscientific. They also um then said they were unhelpful even though they themselves weren't psychologists or social movement theorists or political theorists or um and they also then some of them uh attacked the character of the people involved. um and our motivations. So there was something very deep going on. Uh and so yeah, I don't wish to blame so I don't wish to talk about the individuals. Um but there are really some important things here to look at. So the I would say the reason why establishment climatology as represented by I mean that term refers to the IPCC and the the the scientists who then would contribute to that and would be most quoted about uh what is consensus climatology. Um, so those people were mostly publicly against alarming readings like mine 8 years ago. Not because of complacency, not because of conspiracy, not because of corruption, not because of stupidity, none of that. Um, not because of cowardice. It was the normal dynamics that are so well known in the sociology of professions and also the history of philosophy of science. Normal dynamics whenever you get an institutionalized field of knowledge there are these dynamics. Um and the first is you you define the the field you you therefore what's in and what's not and that creates specialisms which creates siloed thinking. And so um that's and and you need to be really good and specialist. So if you but if you silo your thinking and your scientific endeavor then that can create a lack of skill and support for the scientists to have lateral thinking and integrative thinking and sal and the capabilities for salience identification. So that means you need to be able to see well what are we assuming here and what is that excluding from our inquiry and uh also you need to be able to take a step back or like have a helicopter view and say well what is most significant to tell us what's going on and what is most important to know to quickly understand to the best of our knowledge what is reality and what is risk right now. Um so there's that. Then the second area is the psychological and institutional dynamics that affect knowledge production and dissemination and that's occupational closure, occupational expansion and interest in peer esteem. So uh if you've worked really hard to get your PhD and worked 20 years to get to the top and then you've got this whole system around you then understandably you need to have uh gone through processes where you have met certain standards and that's great and you want to uphold those standards which is great but the shadow of that is you really don't like somebody who's not gone through that then bringing something new. So it's a dynamic of occupational closure and we kind of need that. It's good. I want to go to a dentist who has gone through all that and knows what they're doing with my teeth. I don't want to go to some person who's a wacko. The problem is not everyone who has a view on my teeth will be wacko if they're earnest and they've got the right research skills and they've really read all the science. So in climatology this is a process that happens. Also occupational expansion naturally you'll be as a manager of a research institute interested in well where can we get the the multi-million grants over multiple years and guess what happened? It was all in the field of modeling. So huge amounts of modeling is done because that's where you get masses of money. Um and then peer esteem in any field it's peer esteem. You want to associate with the the people who are uh high up in your field and you want to avoid any possibilities of being dismissed or shamed. I mean because once you're a career scientist belonging to that uh that profession becomes more important on a daily basis than actually knowing the truth and the problem is people don't want to admit that because the story of a scientist is I work to discover the truth. A third factor uh and I write about it in my my essay uh on on this um is the broad culture of mod modernism within which we've learned to be humans. So um we are deeply taught without realizing it to believe in human supremacy and progress uh and that any problem is something that can be fixed. Um and and we know that we are very good at that. You know, if we have a headache, we take a paracetamol. Um, we might look a bit deeper at what the stresses we're going through or the way we position our neck in front of the computer, but we kind of think we can fix things. So therefore, there's this expectation that we'll all tell each other how we fix it. There'll always be a happy ending at the end of the disastrous study. Um, and we find that even in like like even today there'll be all these publications come out which are just bad news. these scientific peerreview journals, bad news. And there'll always be two conclusions at the end, which is that we need to know more information, more research, more money, please. And secondly, um uh we we need to do more before it's too late. It's kind of like it's almost like you're not allowed to exist as a professional unless you say those things. Um of course, there's an understandable concern about communicating bad news to the public. Um but in that case if climatologists were really concerned about that rather than that just being an excuse they should look at how to bring bad news to the public. Um and uh I wrote about that a lot in the past um because it's a real issue. I don't want to just upset people. We've got to think about how to help people with this bad news. And a fourth factor I talk about in the essay um is the scientific difference and time constraints of uh journalists. Um, so they'll just report what is the standard story coming from establishment climatology. Um, they'll keep quoting the top scientists even if data and science has proven them to be in wrong in the past and others right. Um, you know, if climate and environment journalism was doing its job, they would be banging down the doors of people like Yaya, myself, and others who have been proven right by reality. Um, and what's worse is the opposite happens, which is that those journalists that are interested in that, they see that as a story, they have to cope with the ideological police who are their editors. So loads of times uh editors have cancelled stories that would have argued that deep adaptation science was um credible. The biggest one was NPR the the big radio in the US where one of their top journalists did a whole documentary on me. It went through all all it went through everything was edited was about to be released and then one of the senior editors said no we just can't put that out. So the ideology of editors as well. So all these dynamics as I say it's not a conspiracy, it's not corruption, it's nothing. It's it's just like that. It's just these dynamics occur. They're known about. There's a huge amount of scholarship on them in the sociology and professions and the history and philosophy of science. And those dynamics exist today. The psychological and institutional dynamics in science and in science reporting exist today. And so new mistakes will be made now unless there's a little bit of introspection amongst the people involved. And that's why I've written the essay is I'm inviting us to look at those dynamics and one and ask well what's being overlooked today that could be really really important. And I've got views on that. Other people may have too. I'm I'm going to be sharing my views in a second essay. um just compiling what I've already said elsewhere. >> Um you know, you're talking about the from kind of the the large view, how do you tell the public about bad news? Um you also you've also spent a lot of time creating a forum for individuals to process this bad news. So, can you talk a little bit about about that about how an individual can communicate? I and I'll make it personal. I have trouble telling close friends and family what I know about the climate emergency because I know that I went through incredible anxiety and grief in my journey of learning. And so nobody wants to I mean you know we don't want to to put that on somebody else. You know they've got other things going on in their lives. they've got they've got but at the same time we it's important that people know and and who better to tell than the people we're close to who who trust us and and that's part of getting the word out. And so if you could talk a little bit about your work with people, individuals, and processing this this news, this this reality. Yeah. So the first thing to say is to clarify what this this reality is and what we do and don't know. So quite a few people assume that this reality means uh the the um early death of themselves, those they know and love and the end of anything, any legacy, anything they can contribute to. So there's this sort of totalizing uh assumption. So the first thing to say is if we're talking about catastrophic environmental disruption because of climate change and how it's going to disrupt, degrade, break, and ultimately collapse modern industrial societies probably everywhere over time and that we are already in that process. and here are the signs. That doesn't mean the end of human existence. It doesn't mean that you're uh necessarily in danger right now or even next year or the year after. It doesn't mean there will be forms of life and forms of beautiful ways of life. Um and it doesn't mean that there's nothing still to do or to try to contribute to. Um in fact the opposite waking up to this procarity and the un the the the certainty that the way of life we know is breaking down. But the and the and and the certainty of the procarity like that it's looking really bad and could could speed up and things could fall apart much quicker um soon. Um realizing those two things can can wake us up and mean that we drop um all kinds of things which we have assumptions like well we'll just we're safe, we'll work hard, things that we don't like will go away. um we we don't want to make any major decisions. It's okay to postpone our dreams. It's okay not to make up with somebody who we fell out with. You know, there's all these sort of this sense almost like we live forever which is just there and so we delay so many important decisions in our life. So waking up to this um situation can really open the heart and bring us back to the present and make us realize that oh we don't know how long we've got and so let's get on with what's in our hearts. And um so the first thing is to talk about about that and that and a lot of people will relate to that. It's like yeah of course of course yeah we're always we're all going to die. Oh yeah I was always going to die. Oh everyone I loved was always going to die. Oh, I suppose everything that I care about was always going to disappear. It's kind of impermanence. It's like they'll be they may not use that word. Um but kind of there's that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I knew this. Oh, thanks for reminding me. So, that's um yeah, and so you can talk about it at that point. Um you can also and that that might be them coming to us with their concerns. This is the other thing I used to worry about and didn't really bring this to people. I had enough people reading my stuff and coming to me. So I didn't really go about I didn't I didn't promote these ideas. I didn't I didn't do media back in 2018 1920. Uh and I didn't demand my friends listen to me on this. Um I was there ready to talk about it if they were. But now what I realize is another aspect of this is even people who don't talk about climate change know that their lives are getting um in many cases worse or not better. They know that the friends and family's lives are getting worse not better in various ways. It might be loneliness, it might be health, it might be just generalized anxiety. Um and so they look for stories to explain that and then you've got all these opportunists coming along to say blame the immigrants or blame Trump or blame whoever. It's a blame, you know, it's just whoever wants to come along and say blame them, blame that. And um and people are um really attaching themselves to stories of blame if it helps them feel self-righteous. So you're because there's this wish to somehow be better than the mess and um or think that the mess can be defeated um and that's natural and it's completely wrong and counterproductive. So now I'm thinking uh so I have over the last few years been pointing that to how there is a general anxiety and that there's not that much logic in what people are saying and I've realized that doesn't work. Um it doesn't work. So I don't really don't quite know what to do. Um so for example there are people who are intelligent people who have heard about climate change and have chosen recently because of the information that they've been given to think that their country is under attack under attack by brown people and they've just gone for that story. And so they all they ever talk about is more brown people and we got to stop them. Uh and variations on that. So um it's and it's not logical because uh blaming brown people is is working at a deep psychological level that there's some kind of good situation we can go back to uh where we can be safe again. uh and that there's a specific enemy that can be done something, you know, about. Um and so yeah, anxiety has to go somewhere. And if people don't find community and real action on real issues that we are right to be worried about, they will just sort of become these stressed, angry people in front of their devices retweeting or reposting racist I don't know what to do about it once people have gone that way. And so maybe that's a reason for maybe we should talk about this like >> um for our listeners who who haven't read Deep Adaptation or or know anything about your forum and so forth, could you take us through the the guiding principles, the original four and now the six and and this the way that you have chosen to to frame this because I think I think that's a really nice way to look at it and a really nice way to communicate to to process this information. >> Sure. So the deep adaptation paper in 2018 was only a third of it was climate science, a third of it was on denial and then a third of it was uh mapping out a new ethos for a positive response to a collapsing society. So and I realized we needed ways to talk about it. So I thought well let's have some questions as starters for conversations. Um, so yeah, the the the I've expanded that now to six and so it's probably just I'll just race through the questions. Um, faced with this information that things are disrupted and falling apart and probably it's going to continue that way. Uh, what do we most value that we want to keep? We should start talking about that. It's the obvious starter. Um secondly, oh what should we probably therefore let go of in terms of conveniences, habits, uh hopes for the future. What should we let go of? Otherwise, we might make matters worse if we hold on to them, if we prioritize them, if they can be let go of. Um thirdly, well, we didn't used to live in such high consumption, high energy lifestyles. So, you know, what what is it that we could bring back from the past that might help us get through what's ahead? Um, and that's all sorts. Uh, fourth one is, oh, okay. So, we can do all those things, but we have to exist in a situation where we don't know what's going to work. We don't know uh how much of societyy's going to pull be last and how many of us will pull through and what comes next. So we have to make peace with that. So with what and with whom uh could we make peace with as we become aware of essentially we are reminded of our mortality and our lack of omn omniscience as a species. And then I added yeah I added two extras. Um, in my book, Breaking Together, which was inviting the discussions around what a political agenda for a collapsing world might look like, um, I I I wanted to include how people are responding often to this to this awareness by trying to uh effectively have more sovereignty in their lives and their communities. um uh and seeing the the losing of that into a globalized system as meaning we're losing power to control the future and create opportunities. So I what what do we need to reclaim? What forms of power could we start to reclaim in our lives to give us options uh for the future if if like big government and big markets and corporations will break down or become unavailable to us or unaffordable? what can we reclaim? Uh and then the sixth one which I issued earlier this year um is uh yeah I realized that a lot of people are responding to this awareness by becoming involved in uh regenerating nature locally. Um, and so I thought, yeah, that's that's important to because there hadn't been anything really explicit about ecological work in the original framework. So, it's a question of how can I nurture life? Um, and that is in in any kind of way at any kind of scale. Um and um and it's how can I nurture life because because it's coherent for me to do that it's authentic cuz like why am I bothered about this in the first place isn't it because I love respect honor and wonder at the mystery and of life. So how can I affirm that value as well in um so it connects back to the first one uh the first question. So um that that's the framework. Um and also that final one on regeneration is also relevant to the climate predicament which is um how can we nurture and restore nature's own climate modulating processes. So large forests and healthy oceans which together massively seed clouds globally not just locally or regionally. So it's also bringing us back to that aspect of the uh climate agenda which has been lost by the dominance of uh climate research and thinking by people who like to play with numbers in computer models and people who want to use the climate crisis to get a new series of funding for their renewable energy. So they just want to keep it laser focused on carbon emissions and nothing else. Can you would you talk just a tad more about that cloud seating and and the and the loss of albido globally and how that is contributing um to warm to the accelerated warming that we're seeing. if you could maybe just talk a bit more about that and and >> um >> because in the vein of what can we do um and maybe even just >> from if you'll start with the the big picture and then maybe even down to what you were talking about nurturing life >> as an individual like through permaculture because you're intimately involved in that too. So maybe if you could give us a big picture and then bring it down to what each of us can do in our own backyards. >> Sure. So um just to loop back to what we talked about earlier about um if this the the the dynamics psychological institutional which led to uh past mistaken views and communicate conclusions, views, communications from climatology and those reporting on it. Those dynamics we talked about earlier um those still exist and will make new mistakes. Well, I think they are making new mistakes and they're overlooking areas or or if not overlooking, not prioritizing crucial areas for uh understanding what's happening and what's needed to reduce harm uh to the natural world, reduce harm for humans, and to give the natural world and humans a better chance. uh not fixing things but to give us and wider life a better chance. And so the thing we've just talked about is one of them. Um but just before I want to say one of the most obvious ones is um we need to talk more about adaptation to the climate changes. And so obviously the work that Mir is doing by thinking creatively, innovatively uh about how to adapt through uh reflecting more of the incoming uh solar energy and in ways that are in our own hands rather than just billionaire hands or government hands and ways that are are going to be safe as well and in our control rather than something like risky with the upper atmosphere. I think that's very important. Um, and we can also adapt more by having the kind of conversations using the ethos and framework of deep adaptation, which is let's try and be our best selves in this tragic mess rather than despite it or run away from people and situations. Let's not just hide. Let's try and yeah, let's let's just accept it and get on and and see who we become because of this situation. Um, and more recently I've issued what I call a rainbow prepping framework. Uh, so that's a pneummonic for 15 areas. And there's a rainbow prepping essay on my website, jenbendelle.com. And it's because a lot of people have started to talk about prepping. Um, and I and it's kind of always quite a fear-based uh, defensive and individualistic uh, response. So, you know, have I got enough tin food? Have I got enough ammunition? You know, all that kind of stuff. And a lot of us just get turned off by that. So therefore, we don't really talk about what we can do to prepare for disruptions um whether that's intermittent um uh emergency disastrous events or more generally more long-term. And so each of those letters in the rainbow prepping framework refers to something. and I talk about is like a brighter, creative, more collaborative fun way of thinking how to prepare. So I won't go into that here today with you, but I do recommend people check it out. But then the the the the issue that we talked on about so yeah the the the the important recognition that carbon is only half the story on near-term or or more recent and soon to come abrupt climate heating. Um and that what it's not controversial science now. It's proven that the our planet has lost its brightness, its ability to reflect the sun significantly and much more so than what was anticipated. And uh and it's it's it's super fundamental. Um, so the issue isn't just how much solar radiation that bounces off the Earth's surface is captured by the blanket of greenhouse gases. It's also how much gets to the surface. So the brightness of the Earth matters and like this is really elementary stuff and unfortunately it's not looked at as much as it could be in terms of the implications. So yeah, large forests through um the processes of evapot transanspiration where they basically suck up water from the ground and then it evaporates off them and it creates this this upflow that actually then puts into the atmosphere bacteria and pollen. So that doesn't just seed clouds create cloud condensation nuclei just over the forest. It is transported around the world. So you have snowflakes in Tibet that were created because of uh pollen or bacteria from the Amazon. It's a global process. Um, also other people who analyzed this um, and this is slightly more controversial about or not controversial, it's more unconfirmed by science at the moment, but there's good evidence for it, which is that um, just that drawing up of air, the movement of air pulls in air from over the oceans, which then actually therefore drives the hydraological cycle. The hydraolog hydraological cycles aren't just to do with um you know the um the broad temperature differentials across the planet and the spin of the planet. It's actually also what you could call biohydrarology. It's the role of our ecosystems in those processes too. So yes, we I believe what I I we need more of what I'm calling a pancological approach to climate change that recognizes the role of ecosystems in uh shaping the climate not just through the carbon cycle but also the hydraological cycle and another aspect of that is um healthy oceans. So we have um so a huge amount of uh cloud seeding naturally is done by phytolanton a certain kind of phytolankton that give off dimethile sulfide that then uh seeds clouds and that's there's debate over whether clouds have a net benefit or not um in terms of modulating the climate but we want clouds over oceans um because it's not like there's something super reflective there unless it's frozen If it's unfrozen ocean, 90% of that is just absorbed as and turned into heat. So, um the problem is uh there it's it's consensus science that there's been a decrease in the the good phytolankton we want. Um and that's all for all sorts of reasons but a key reason is toxic pollution and microplastics in the ocean which then uh concentrate the toxic pollution on the surface of the microplastic which then is makes it brings it to a concentration which is damaging to to aquatic life and marine life. So, um there's there's that. Um but there's also some more worrying research uh by GEOS that have found much more of a collapse of phytolanton. So, yeah, it's un we're unsure about how bad it is, but the crucial thing is we could do something to help um on both of those issues I've just described. So we'll start with the oceans one. There could be a role for some fertilizing of the oceans and mixing of ocean waters because there's the ocean stratification that's happened with terms of the the heating at the top and there's less mixing. So you could actually have some human interventions to try and mix that and therefore help phytoer plankton um grow again and restore their cloud seeding effects. uh that could be helped with some iron fertilization. But these things can be that the problem is you've got a very stupid discussion on what's called geoengineering where people just dismiss all of this or and and if you dismiss all of this, you just leave this whole field to the billionaires with their psycho plans which are all more about just getting rich rather than solving the problem. Um that's why I like MIA because it's it's not like that. Um and then you've got we could um and of course we need to just reduce pollution massively and we also need to think about how to reduce microplastics in the oceans. There are lots of interesting ideas about how that could be done with fungi and bacteria and things. So we need more research urgently and ways of rolling that out without having to rely on capitalist uh venture capital funding. We need these things to just the best the best uh solutions to uh be deployed, tested and deployed. Um and then with large forests, well, we know what to do. We need to stop cutting them down and we need to reforest around uh areas that have been deforested to bring them to a certain size which can create this cloud seeding effect. So, this is the disappointing news for those of us who want to do something about these two topics in our back garden. We can't. Sorry. If you and I plant a tree, if you and I plant a tree in our back garden or reforest even a slight little little patch, that might be nice for wildlife. It might be nice for improving the soils, uh, retaining water in the soils. It might be nice, therefore also to reduce carbon emissions from those soils. It might be nice to capture a little bit of carbon uh um and might be nice shade for us and wildlife and it might be a nice talking point about see this tree. What happens if we had a trillion of those all together? What happens is they can seed clouds. So the only real difference that us planting a few trees nearby where we live will make sorry people won't like this is if it is part of that political conversation because if you just wouldn't it be nice if this happened. It's like, well, no, it's not happening that way. And currently, our savings, our pensions, superanuation, um, the stocks and shares we own, the products we buy are all contributing to the opposite of having large forests in the world. They're contributing to the destruction of forest. And guess what? A lot of us who are talking about the climate or working professionally on the climate are also part of the problem because we're encouraging the destruction of the world's last remaining forests to try and get the metals from underneath them in order to wire up the planet and have batteries uh and uh in the name of a green transition which is a fake uh story. Um so yeah um yeah the the I I this is this is why I say I suppose this is maybe the third point uh the third thing that's being overlooked because of the the new mistake because of the old dynamics is um is that uh yeah we we we have an expansionist economic system that militates against anything we need for climate mitigation an adaptation at any significant scale. And those of us who were alarmists in the past, considered to be alarmists because of our alarming readings of the climate situation, were not only right about the climate situation, mostly right. Maybe we did, we were too carbon fixated. Um we didn't see the broader thing. But we were also right in thinking about the implication which is that um we're not going to we're not going to reduce the problem, reduce the catastrophe, adapt well or create opportunities for future generations if we are beholden to global capitalism. We're not. And therefore, anything other than a revolutionary environmental agenda is a convenient self-serving lie. And so most of the environmental profession is engaged in that convenient self-serving lie of there's a techno managerial fix or even a techno managerial remedy to try and make it less bad. There's neither. We have to change everything. We have to change this expansionist economic system because otherwise it will choose the most risky geoengineering. It will choose the most stupid carbon capture machines which are just useless and not going to have a proper impact. It will choose um the so-called nonsense green transition which will just dig up the last remaining pristine wildernesses just so a few more people can drive some Teslas. Yeah. So the um the people who were accused of being too ideological like me, no, we were just sane and we had science and facts on our side. And more than that, we knew that there is ideology involved everywhere. And so the people who criticized us were ideological in a different way. the ideology of expansionist economics and deference to power and um yeah conformity within that system. And that's an ideology too. Yet in it's a it's a bleak picture in in many ways. Yet you continue to be motivated. You continue to write. You continue to do your own permaculture. I believe what would be a a message to listeners today about what we can do, about what still gives you hope, um what still motivates you. And as a wrap-up, >> yes. So, we're all different and we have different capabilities uh intellectual and also emotional. So, um, I admire the people who bring the kind of message I've covered with you in this past hour, who bring that message to the public. And for me, I couldn't live in this space. I I've I've I've really um not enjoyed my last two months as I was spending much more time reading the climate science again and and checking the climate data. Uh it's heavy and and so so I may have sound like I was dissing climatologists in this hour and I'm not. They need to keep doing what they're doing and increasingly they're courageous to keep doing it. Uh it's depressing. Um, but I guess that many of them are a bit numb to it and also wouldn't necessarily welcome criticism and so they have to be even more courageous. They have to listen to the criticism uh in order not to contribute to new mistakes in the ways we've just discussed. So um so yeah, it's heavy. So so so there's work still to be done to do the science and keep going and work to be done. the the Roger Hallams of the world who get very angry at liberal media as well as conservative media and say you're all rubbish. You're all just lying to us. Abs I'm so impressed they keep doing it. That's not for me. Um I I've been yeah I'm focusing on something called the Meta Crisis Initiative which I set up a year ago which provides monthly salons for people who already get this or some part of it to get together and learn uh how and share ideas on how to uh navigate the situation and live their lives with this uh this idea this outlook. >> Do you mind defining the meta crisis as the way you see it just for our listeners? We haven't really talked about them. We haven't really used the term metacar crisis yet. >> Sure. So many people are aware that there are crises, all kinds of crises. And some of those are real and some of those are just cooked up for our distraction. And um and uh so some people talk about them as multiple or multi crisis. Some people talk about poly. But for me, metacar crisis is a is a better framing because it's basically saying um there are all these crises that re that that relate to a a deeper crisis and a crisis in our way of making meaning of our life, finding purpose and living our lives. So it's a a meta meaning above and beyond or it also often suggests deeper. So um as a when it's used as a prefix. So uh so I'm not talking about a crisis in Facebook. I'm talking about a crisis in us and our society. That's what I mean by metacar crisis. And so yeah, I use it as a an invitation to go deeper into what's at the root cause of this mess we got ourselves in and why we haven't been able to realize it and try and fix it or why we're so reluctant to learn from it. Um, I find it a more inviting framing to go deep uh and be curious than talking about collapse. I find a lot of people, even if you tell them that collapse is a process, not an event, and we're in it. It's an unfolding process, not some thing that just suddenly breaks everything at some uncertain future point, most people still think of collapse as that sudden future horrific allending event. And so I decided to use meta crisis as a more generative framing. So we meet once a month salons online suitable for different time zones but also the really crucial thing for me is the peer mentoring. So we create you have the option to join a group of um six to 10 people and you meet and you support each other with this and this is using my old work as a professor of leadership and running a leadership institute. I brought bringing that into the mentoring frameworks uh and so people can support each other in working out what to do um with this awareness and it's different from the deep adaptation forum that I set up in 2019 which does something similar but it's more focused on emotional coping um like uh there are some people who who do more than that within the framework of the deep adaptation forum but most people who go there and most people who volunteer there are focusing on just the emotional processing And that's very valuable work because it's very troubling information to live with. Um, but the meta crisis initiative is different. It's about how can we even thrive? How can we live purposeful lives because of our understanding of metacrisis and collapse, not despite it. We're actually going to say, okay, this is happening. This is reality. And this reminds me how incredible it is to be alive. like I'm not going to be alive forever. Uh humans won't be around forever. The planet won't be around forever. It's absolutely wonderful and mysterious and beautiful and oh wow, I've been reminded of that and I want to live as as fully and as beautifully and as purposefully as possible in that context. Um so that's the vibe. It's a little bit more sort of um uh out there rather than just coping. It's beyond coping. That's the idea. Um, so yeah, you you Oh, yeah. How do I keep going? Yes. Okay. Um, so I was saying there I'm more suited to that which is to work with people who already get it. I I get very depressed if like I have done. I've just felt I got a bad sleep really the last two months. And yeah, it's cuz also working on this kind of science and scholarship just crowds out everything else for me. I can't just pop it away and get on get on my guitar and it just it's just I can but it but there's a lot less guitar music fun sport. It just disappears. I become this awful person just staring at computers reading reading research. So uh yeah what uh how to cope permaculture. Yeah I mean this is I'm wearing see this t-shirt. This is a got this t-shirt last week from the Alia Eco Lodge. Um, I find nourishment through connecting with people who are who get it. They don't need to read books. They don't need to read my new essay on uh who was right on climate, who wasn't, and why it matters. Um, they can just um they just they get it anyway. They want to live in harmony with nature and community and they don't want to they don't want to live so far away from the land in an urban setting where you depend on supermarkets and everything. I mean I depend on the supermarket even with my permaculture but but but um but I have an inclination towards a more wholesome life more connected to nature more in harmonious with with wider nature. So I want to hang out with people who get that and that for me that's what I want to do. It doesn't mean everyone should do it. I mean, if nobody was going out there on mainstream media and getting angry, um, then I would feel like, oh, maybe I should do a bit of it. But, yeah. >> Yeah, we each we each have our role to play. No, that's a nice place to to leave it on um community and living life to its fullest with purpose. Um so thank you very much for joining us today and for sharing your reflections on resilience community how we might respond more with more honesty and more constructively to an increasingly complex world. So >> yeah and thank you Kathy for the work you're doing in uh yeah staying paying close attention to the climate predicament. Um it's it's it's not easy. I mean many people think of me as someone who is associated with that. But I need to put it down and do other things in order to cope. Even though the rest of my life is shaped by this understanding, I can't go back to the darkness all the time. I have to get on with what's bright and fun. But yeah, thanks for what you're doing and everyone else at MI because um yeah, it's important stuff you're doing. >> Thank you, Jim. And thank you to everyone listening. If you'd like to learn more about Mir's work, visit mir.org where you'll find previous podcast episodes, information about our research, and updates on projects taking place around the world. Until next time, thank you for listening to the Mir podcast.