Rev Left Radio - Climate Vanguard: Organizing Toward a Livable Future

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Inea, Noah, and Jack from Climate Vanguard join Breht to discuss their organization, the role of youth in the struggle for a livable future, the various ecological crises facing us, eco-leninism and the importance of the Party in eco-socialist struggle, practical revolutionary political strategy, the essential role of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, degrowth, climate change, the interrelated nature of the many problems we face, and much more! Check out their brand new brief on the importance of an eco-socialist party as a key instrument for building such a social majority, unpacking its functions, activities, and structure HERE Website: climatevanguard.org Instagram: @climatevanguard Twitter: @climate_vguard Outro Song: "Broken Belief" by Bob Moses   Get 15% off any book at Left Wing Books HERE --------------------------------------------------------- Rev Left is and always will be 100% listener funded. You can support the show and get access to hundreds of bonus episodes HERE Follow Rev Left on Insta

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. I'm your host, Brett O'Shea, and today on we have Jack, Noah, and Ineia from Climate Vanguard to talk about their organization, its strategies, goals, and aims, the Marxist-Leninist concept of the party, eco-socialism, the discourse around de-growth, the climate and biosphere crisis that we're living through, why socialism is the only option for a livable future, the strategy is employed by the ruling class to maintain the status quo in the face of a collapsing biosphere, the importance of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle in the struggle for an eco-socialist future, a vision for what an eco-socialist future actually

would mean and would actually look like, which is something, you know, I think there's far too little attention paid to those visions of the future that we can offer people alongside our critique of the status quo and so much more. This is a really wide-ranging conversation with three incredibly engaged, thoughtful and insightful comrades and human beings. And I just had a wonderful time. We touch on so many different aspects of the climate crisis, the biosphere crisis, the crisis of capitalism, imperialism. And it takes us in so many, I think, fascinating, worthwhile, and generative paths that we tread in this conversation. So I think people will find it inspiring, educational, and edifying in all the right ways.

I also want to remind people that we have an ongoing collaboration with our friends and comrades over at Left Wing Books. And at checkout, they have countless books, memoirs, texts of theory, biographies, and the socialist and communist tradition broadly conceived. And they work with us such that we can offer our listeners here at Rev Left 15% off anything. in their library. So if you're engaged in political education and you're organizing circles and you need some resources, this is a wonderful way to get them at a cheaper cost to you and your organization, but just individually if you need to shore up certain aspects of your own political education, which is an ongoing and lifelong process, this could be beneficial as well. So they're very much

in line with everything we do here at Rev Left. And so whenever there's an opportunity for me to help some good comrades, get the word out about their work as well as offer my audience, a little bit of a cost-effective discount when it comes to getting texts for political education, I jumped at the opportunity. So the link in the show notes will be there for left-wing books, and I'll already have the code typed in. So if you click that link in the show notes, it should auto-generate the Rev Left code at checkout and automatically apply the 15% off. So shout out to them. But without further ado, here's my conversation with the NAA. Noah and Jack from the climate vanguard.

Enjoy. Yeah, so my name's Jack. I was born in the U.S. in Washington, D.C. and grew up there until my sort of early teens. And then moved to Switzerland with my family. My parents were global health doctors. moving back to the U.S., and then I ultimately decided to go to university in Scotland, so that's where that's sort of what brought me to Britain, and that's where I'm still

based. I'm living in London now, and I guess politically, that's mostly sort of, I've been mostly politically active in the climate movement more towards the end of kind of grassroots direct action and mass mobilization stuff. Yeah, and my name is Noah, similar to Jack. I'm originally from the U.S., but I've been living in Britain since 2017. In terms of my organizing background, it's primarily focused on climate justice, but more recently have been organizing at the intersection between climate justice and Palestinian liberation. And I meaneia, I grew up on a small organic family farm outside of Madison, Wisconsin, but moved to Switzerland as a teenager and now have lived in Barcelona for about a year.

My organizing background includes some anti-alcerity organizing at my high school, some more food and agriculture, activism, and climate activism at uni. Now, Climate Vanguard takes up most of my political energy, but I'm also a member of the Communist Party of Catalonia, where I'm in a working group trying to come up with a de-growth eco-communist program for Spain. Wonderful. Well, it's a pleasure and an honor to have all of it. of you on here. I know this episode has been in the works for quite a while. Glad to finally make this happen. So yeah, let's just go ahead and get into it. Most of this conversation will, of course, revolve around the organization, Climate Vanguard, but there'll be other avenues we explore as well, like eco-socialism, the degrowth movement, and other things of the sort. So let's go ahead and dive into that first question, which is, can you just discuss

your experiences in the climate movement broadly and the fundamental motivation for climate Vanguard. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, certainly for Noah and I, we politicized in really important ways through getting involved in the youth of client movement, which, I don't know, really sort exploded maybe five to seven years ago. And that was with sort of Fridays for Future, you know, Sunrise Movement in the U.S. in groups like Extinction Rebellion, which came on the scene around the same time. And I know that's not a sort of youth specific movement, but that brought in a lot of young people to the client movement as well. And I guess by being politically engaged, during that wave of activity, we had a number of reflections, really, on both the strengths

and the weaknesses of that moment and the type of organizing that was really being done at the time. So I guess in terms of strengths, we definitely recognize really the power of young people. I mean, the capacity to move climate and ecological breakdown into the political limelight and really places it at the center of political discourse, whether that be in the media or among the political class or just sort of generating really popular, or sort of popular, awareness around climate breakdown and I think this moment also really produced and

provide a lot of young people with political experience and politicize so many young people and that's like a contribution that really can't be overlooked so I think those are really important parts of the moment but I think we also saw many weaknesses and those were I mean I think first that we saw

young people really exercise some form of moral power but really not engaged in any sort of process of building social power and I guess connected to that so much of the political activity at the time was focused on making appeals to those in power, you know, asking the political class to act on the science. And I guess underneath that assumption, uh, underneath that, that type of demand of that political current is an assumption that what we're dealing with is an information deficit that, you know,

if just people knew about the science, then they would take the appropriate or the requisite action. And maybe at the more radical end of that political moment, we saw, you know, some groups focused on trying to replace the existing political, leadership or political class with more progressive climate-conscious leadership. And even at that end, you see sort of the assumption is that, you know, we're in this mess because they're just a few bad apples in power. And I guess underneath all of that, there really seemed to be a lack of understanding of capitalism and imperialism, which are the systems driving ecological breakdown.

And we did see some latent consciousness, you know, that a whole system needed changing. We saw this expressed in slogans like system change, not climate change. But I think from our experience, it didn't seem like there was sort of deep enough understanding among youth about what those systems were, how those systems really operate, how they reproduce themselves, and therefore how to construct effective strategies to challenge them and uproot them. That was the fundamental thing that we saw as a real weakness and was lacking. And I guess to be clear, also, this critique comes from a wholly comradly place. I mean, we ourselves are and were part of this movement. it's easy to understand that young people, especially those socialized in the belly of the beast, kind of don't have a strong analysis of these systems. You know, it's not taught in schools,

it's not taught in society, it's not taught by many of our parents. But this, it was really from this perspective that we saw the need for a youth group to lead on this, to provide some movement facing support of this type. And that was the fundamental motivation for climate vanguard, which we saw as really kind of the most effective contribution that we could make to the movement alongside our continued personal engagement and organizing. Yeah, I think there's a lot to say there. One, I mean, many of the weaknesses of those movements that you were describing, they can all sort of be in one way or another, categorized as forms of liberalism and the weaknesses of liberalism more broadly. I mean, one of the weaknesses

of liberalism is the idea, you see this in many different forms, that if people just had the right amount of knowledge, facts, evidence that you could change people's minds. And I think what Marxism offers, among many other things, is an understanding of people's material interests. And that is not always as simple as just introducing somebody to a new set of facts. Some people, especially people in power, they tend to be much richer, they tend to be much more comfortable, they tend to be much older. And they have deep material interests and not changing things in the radical way that honestly needs to happen if we have any hope in a future. It often strikes me as somebody born in the 1980s.

When you hear climate projections, they often go out to about the year 2100. And, you know, for a lot of people, including myself, it's like I'll be gone by then. A lot of the people in power will certainly be gone well before then. But if there's babies being born right now who will be 76 years old in 2100, which is well under the life expectancy span for most countries around the world. So the people being born now, young people, and maybe the introduction of certain medical technologies will even make people who are 10, 15, 20, 25 years old now be able to live much longer than the 80, 85 year old lifespan that we're sort of accustomed to. So young people have this vested material interest in solving and addressing this problem, and that's immediately at loggerheads with the ruling classes around the world. And it's frustrated even more, in my opinion, sorry for rambling a little bit, but it's frustrating.

frustrated even more by this ebbing and flowing of the importance of the climate issue. Like there are certain moments where the climate issue is obvious to everybody. It ramps up popular support for movement and political action on the climate front. But then those moments pass. Other things come up. The media cycle is so quick and metabolizes things so quickly and moves on that it's really hard to stay. focused on any one set of issues for long periods of time and you know at certain moments i'm like oh the climate issue is like the number three issue in the united states right now um because obviously

there's these wildfires or you know these crazy drought or whatever it may be these horrific hurricanes and then very quickly the news process goes on and that dips down to five six seven eighth place and in certain polls for the last election in the u.s for example it wasn't even on the radar um for most of these pollsters at all. So there's a frustration with that. All right. Let's go ahead and move on to the next question then. And that is what personal experiences radicalize do you? I'm interested in this personal part because we all have a certain set of life experiences that bring us to the conclusions that we have politically. And I think those are important to think about and talk about. But also, you know, how would you describe your politics, the politics of climate vanguard more broadly?

and how do those politics inform you're organizing? So I politicized in large part through my upbringing, actually. My parents had a general left politics with strong socialist instincts, even if they wouldn't have used those terms back then, though they would now, because I've been doing some critical interventions. Nice. But because of this, I was made aware of ecological crises and U.S. war crimes from a very early age,

which was particularly salient during my childhood in the early 2000s, and with the legal invasion of a doc. And, yeah, I mean, a regular soundtrack of Amy Goodman reciting the number of trolled in your government has slaughtered that day is a good foundation for fast-tracked radicalization once you're exposed to radical ideas. But that actually didn't happen until later when I was in uni. And actually another aspect of my politicization was being raised on a farm

because it gave me both a great proximity to how beautiful and creating a community that food production can be, but also to the deep rot and dysfunction of the capitalist industrial. food system. And so I, as a politically minded person, studied agricultural science in the hopes of gaining knowledge that would allow me to make the lives of people like my parents of it easier and also to reduce the food system's disastrous ecological consequences. But the liberal, technocratic, reformist explanations and solutions provided by a mainstream education were uninspiring and very unsatisfying.

But fortunately, some dear comrades introduced me to Marxism, which helped me finally make sense of what was driving the crises in the food system and socio-ecological crises more broadly, especially through exposure to anti-imperist, communist scholars that write about the politics of land and the food system like Max Isle and the incredible comrades at the Grand South Journal, like Percieros, I'd leave it there at that, if that's okay. So it's a similar story to Inay, I suppose, that my riot globalization started quite young. I think both my parents kind of raised me to be critical to the system, but also from a specific climate angle. And I think in high school it was really where I rediscovered that ecological

breakdown is an existential emergency. And that really created a paradox, I guess, because when you're that age, you know, you're told that you have your whole life in front of you and you can do so many amazing things in life. But at the same time, I also realized that I might not even have a future to pursue any of the things that I want to. And that was kind of like an awesome realization, if that's the correct phrasing, a point of departure, which put me on that path to seek political answers to the moment that I found myself in. And what that process looked like was really just like peeling back the layers of the climate crisis. First, just getting my hands on any single book that was about the climate crisis and increasingly books and pieces of work which unearth the political economic dimensions of the climate crisis. And then also getting involved in some movements, specifically a youth climate movement when it came on the scene in 2019. And that led me to certain political conclusions, which I think we all hold here at client Vanguard. The first, in terms of the root causes of ecological breakdown,

really understanding that they are capitalism and imperialism. I mean, capitalism's never-ending drive for profit and accumulation is fundamentally incompatible with a livable planet. And then also more recently understanding that imperialism is this international expression of capitalism, it's focused on draining value from the south to the north, and in the process, the lives, communities, and ecologies it destroys is so fundamental to understand an ecological breakdown,

both in terms of its current shape but also where it might go. And I think the second aspect of my politics, and again, the politics of climate vanguard is that we really position ourselves in the revolutionary left tradition. I think we all understand now that when working people come together, they can make history when you're united and collective struggle,

we can transform the systems that we live in. Yeah, I think for me, again, somewhat similar. I think like growing up in times of turmoil and crisis, like how could you not have some reaction to the news that the planet is? is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. And I think it was really through that prison that I radicalized, wanting to understand what was the root cause of this.

And pretty quickly, I think, in some form or another, that brings you to become an entity capitalist. But I think for me, like I went, I studied a university, I studied international relations and economics. And I was really, like, trying to study those things from the perspective of trying to understand the world and what was driving the things that I saw around me. And I guess particularly economics, like,

was a radicalizing experience from the perspective. that it had nothing to say about the things that I saw around me. You know, it had nothing to say about inequality levels. It had nothing to say about the relationship between a growth-based economy and climate crisis. And so that pushed me into pretty intense kind of personal exploration and reading, if you will. And I think some notable things on that journey were sort of the writing and work of Jason Hickle. So the book Less is More is a very approachable introduction to Marxism and to critiquing capitalism. And then other people who are writing in the sort of ecological space, people like Andreas Maum, who also are bringing in Marxism and talking about Lenin.

And that was like, wow, this makes a lot of sense. It's very interesting, at least. And from there, I think, yeah, I don't know, I just went deeper and deeper down that path reading Marx and Lenin directly, as well as many others. And I also, of course, I have to give a huge shout out to this podcast for being just like an absolutely fantastic resource that helped me discover and dive deeper. deeper into the left. I also, I mean, I should also mention sort of like the past year, I mean, the ongoing genocide and Gaza are the way in which moments of crisis like this really rip the mask off the system and expose it for what it is. And so, like, I think sort of watching a genocide in real time has come alongside discovering more anti-imperous Marxists, like Ami call it Cabral and

Walter Rodney. So that's a sort of more, I don't know, intellectual or theoretical side of things, but also just being engaged in organizing has been like a radicalizing experience. I mean, for me, there's nothing like sort of getting involved in movements and feeling the power of being on the streets to radicalize you. And I guess, yeah, one aspect of that helps. So, like, for me, as a white dude, it wasn't until I became involved in various forms of street protests

that I really sort of, like, understood the role of police in society and developed my continued burning hatred for police. So, like, things like that, like the merger of sort of, theoretical stuff in the practice. I guess in terms of my politics or what that produced, I mean, I would describe them as sort of ecosocialist, Marxist, communist, like, any of those. But I think also like an interesting anecdote that comes to mind when thinking of like, how do we describe our politics? We had a moment actually with one of Inez's flatmates, Fierras, where we asked this question to Firas, we were like, oh, how do you describe your politics?

You know, communist, Marxist-Lonis, Maoist, maybe. And without skipping a beat, all Fierrez said but it was feed the hungry and we're like, well, that's such a good answer. And I think sometimes that can just be the best way to describe our politics. You know, we can get very caught up in various tendencies and whatnot. And that's really important for sort of meeting, understanding our differences and clarifying those differences. But, you know, ultimately, it really does feel quite simple. Like, what do we want? We want everyone to have enough food. We want everyone to have a place to live, ever going to have access to education and health care. And we want to sort of achieve those things or meet those things without wrecking the planet. So maybe people just in line with

fear us to leave it at that to feed the hungry. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. I mean, there's so much there that resonates with me. And I'm sure large chunks of our audience who share similar or overlapping processes of what was called in this society radicalization, but it's really just, you know, humanization. It's really just opening your eyes, looking around, having a fucking heart that beats and a mind that functions and seeing the world in such a decrepit and decaying place and wanting better for people. What I always say, you know, we talk about Marxism, Leninism and, you know, this jargon that we all know on the inside of these movements, but, you know, when I'm talking to regular people, I put it very simply. Socialism is the belief that we should organize human

society around human flourishing, and capitalism is the belief that we should organize human society around profit maximization. We want to maximize human flourishing. And, you know, that does not mean consumption forever. That does not mean an endlessly growing economy. That means living in sustainable harmony with the natural environment and focusing our life on things that actually matter, family, friends, community, communion, you know, a sense of connection, de-alienating ourselves from the natural world, from the people around us. That's what we really thirst and hunger for at a deep level. And I think, you know, there's many things in my path of radicalization that resonate with everything that all three of you have said. But one of those things as well

is my early as I was sort of blossoming politically, intellectually politically, I was also blossoming spiritually. And I spent lots of time alone out in the natural world, you know, camping, hiking, meditating. And, you know, through those practices, getting more and more deeply in love with the natural world. And importantly, I think, seeing the distinction between me and the world fade away to be chipped away at to the point where you at least at times genuinely feel yourself to be and not in some hippie-dippy new age way but literally scientifically through physics chemistry biology deeply interconnected with this natural environment such that we are the earth become conscious like we're not separate from the earth we're not aliens to the earth

trying to protect it and save it as something outside of ourselves, but we literally are it. We are the way that the earth becomes conscious of itself and experiences itself and its own beauty. And so there's naturally, I think, a part of us that wants to be in it, to be in communion with it, to not be alienated from it, but also this deep hurt that occurs when we look at its devastation, the devastation of the biosphere more broadly. We share 33% of our DNA with dandelions. I mean, every single plant and animal on this planet ancestrally are traced back to a single ancestor. And so we are not only just spiritually or intellectually connected, we are biologically and chemically connected to all life on this planet. And once you

feel that in your bones, not merely as an intellectual statement, but feel that in your bones, you can't turn away from the devastation. And also, I'm also a father of three children. So there's this element of like this is their future too and you know whether or not i'm here whether or not i die tomorrow i have three children out in the world that that i care about deeply and as james baldwin said sort of you know zooming even out from that all the children on our ours right we have a responsibility a deep existential responsibility um to not only the children that exist today but the children that will exist tomorrow the children that will exist in a hundred years and to take that responsibility seriously i think is is crucial to growing up um especially at this

time in human history. So let's go ahead and talk a little bit more about climate vanguard itself. Can you kind of discuss its construction as an organization, its activities, and what you're sort of aiming to achieve with the organization overall? Yeah, so climate vanguard is a youth-led organization empowering youth movements through radical political education. And we can maybe talk about strategy later, but our aim is really to act as a hub or some sort of piece of movement infrastructure, if you will, that provides young organizers with a place to engage in theory, analysis, reflection, you know, all these things that are really part of practice, which are often lacking from many movement spaces where there can tend to be an over-emphasis

on sort of action or activism, taking that word quite literally. So our aim in doing this is to support our process of, I mean, really building revolutionary mass people power that can transform society. And we carry out this political education in, a number of ways, and we organize our modes of political education, our work streams on sort of a sliding scale from sort of breadth to depth. So really on the breadth end of the things, we do social media work. And of course, we recognize the limitations of social media, the serious limitations of social media. But we also have to recognize our conditions and that this is where many people are, especially where many young people are. So that's the real breadth end of

things. And then moving along that scale, we write briefs sort of semi-frequently, which are designed as sort of accessible pieces of base political education. So these are short, really accessible written pieces. And they're generally written to provide some clarity on our political moment. So for example, earlier in the year, we wrote a piece defining imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism. And this was done in the context of the emerging consciousness that was developing with the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We wanted to provide some theoretical clarity about what these systems are and their relationship to one another as well as well as to capitalism. Moving further down the spectrum, we do events and that's sort of these are often connected to our briefs to allow people

to kind of negotiate the content of our briefs and discuss them and have more engaging process that accompanies the briefs. And then even further down the scale, we do movement-facing workshops. So this is either with specific groups or with sort of more open-ended workshops that are available to a more wide range of organizers. And we do these both in person, but also online when we have more of an international group. And then finally, at the furthest depth end of that spectrum, we'd be sort of most in-depth form of political education is a multi-month organizer training program that we call a Comet. It's sort of a cadre development program that we're actually going to be launching in the coming weeks. And the program will actually start in the new

year in 2025. But this is specifically for youth organizers in Britain, what will be kind of like a multi-month intensive process of political education, of skills development, of building unity amongst organizers and different movements and whatnot. I guess commenting on these work streams, in general, I would say that although it's our background, we don't only work with organizers or groups in the climate movement. So we work with organized youth that are engaged in a variety of different struggles, whether that be Palestinian liberation, tenants organizing, trade unions. And that's really important to us in our mission of building unified power. And geographically, we work with groups internationally, focused mostly on the Imperial Corps,

but we do have a tendency to work with groups in Britain, especially with some of the modes of political education that are towards the depth end of our spectrum. So the sort of in-person workshops and the Organizer Development Program, Organizer Training Program. Yeah, that all sounds incredibly wonderful and important. And the cadre development in particular sounds great, the connection with other organizations. But importantly, the political education and the skill set development. You know, the political education part really sticks out when you, as we were discussing earlier, see the limitations of the sort of default liberalism that people are ideologically conditioned into from birth.

And if that is not rigorously challenged, confronted, and dismantled in our own minds and the minds of our comrades, then that is always going to be something that continues to reappear and create limitations on what we can do sort of politically. So I think that sounds wonderful and is incredibly important. So let's go ahead and let's talk strategy. What is your approach to political strategy in particular with climate vanguard? Yeah. So our political strategy is built on three. pillars. And the first focuses on youth. So we think that young people are a very dynamic political subject. As Brett, you mentioned, young people have the greatest interest, of course, in the stable,

prosperous future. But also at the same time, they don't have much of a material stake in the system. And we think that these are really prime conditions for political polarization. And I say polarization specifically because it's not guaranteed that those conditions lead in a left direction. oftentimes as the media tends to suggest. Actually, I think what we've been seeing is that there are concerning among young people who are gravitating towards the far right. For example, in the Netherlands, the so-called Party for Freedom, which is led by Gerard Wilders,

who's a fascistic politician who made a name for himself by calling for the ban of all mosques in the Quran, which is, of course, absolutely disgusting, was the most popular party amongst 18 to 34-year-olds. And we see similar levels of support for Marine, the Penn's National Rally in France, and Georgia Maloney's Brothers for Italy Party. And of course, we can also look to the U.S. where Trump recently overperformed amongst youth voters. That being said, obviously young people have been also at the forefront of left-aligned movements.

We said this a couple of times now, but in 2019, we saw the explosion of the youth client movement. And this year, we also saw the student movement for Free Palestine, which Brett, you and Allison, noted in previous podcast, showed like really impressive levels of organizing. organization, discipline, and bravery. I think importantly, a level of political development where lessons were learned from earlier struggles involved in the climate movement. And also historically, we've seen how young people have often been at the forefront of revolutionary movements. And I think it's helpful to name some of these examples. So the Bolsheviks, for example, had a significant youth base. In 1907, in fact, 75% of Bolshevik members were under 30 years old. Granted, I think probably that point in Russia, the life expectancy wasn't that.

high, so it was maybe not that unique, but I still think it's a historical facet that we should be aware of. Also, the Black Panther Party had a key youth composition. So Huey Newton was 24 when you co-founded the party along with Bobby Seal, who was 29 at the time. And obviously, Fred Hampton was only 21 when he was assassinated by the Chicago police and the FBI. And in a lot of national liberation struggles, we've seen the role of young people. So Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Camille de Janeiro Fuegos, respectively were 27 and 29 and 23 years old when they founded the 26th of July movement. And Ho Chi Minh was very young when he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, which

was a Marxist's organization dedicated to educating and training committed revolutionaries. So we really see young people as a key turn of struggle, one that requires specific interventions to pull them in a left direction. And I think that's nicely captured by this quote by Lenin, who said, he has the youth, the future. So that brings me to the second ploy of our strategy, which is really focused on raising revolutionary consciousness in youth spaces. And when I say consciousness, I'm specifically referring to three key areas. But the first is consciousness on the root causes that we're up against. And for us, that's clearly capitalism and imperialism. And we really need to be

unified or groundless analysis. The second area is a program for the future. For us, that is forming a concrete vision of an eco-socialist future, a world transformed where everyone's needs are met within planetary boundaries, and building a vision, a North Star, that will guide our struggle. And the third is consciousness on strategies. So really unpacking revolutionary transition from capitalist imperialism, the eco-socialism, and thinking about how can we get there. And as I said, I think the youth movement for Free Palestine showed a significant jump in consciousness, especially because it crystallized this latent anti-imperialist sentiment within youth spaces. From our perspective, we were involved in climate struggles,

and we are very familiar with the narrative that the global north is causing by a breakdown in the global south is going to bear the costs. So there's already kind of the seed of anti-imperialist consciousness there, but I think it fully flourished through the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where young people were able to, especially in the imperial core, develop a more full-fledged analysis of impure. and that's really important. But we do think there's a lot of work still to be done in crafting greater ideological, political, and strategic unity, specifically on the

organizational form of the struggle that youth should put effort in providing. And that brings me to the third pillar. For us, this organizational form is the party. You know, a lot of young people in the Imperial Corps have grown up in a deeply anti-communist society where left parties have been pretty much completely marginalized. They've lost a lot of their mass character and relevance. Obviously, that has been due to anti-communist repression. But because of these historical conditions, a lot of young people have gravitated towards movements, which, although we've seen progress on this front, still oftentimes lack clear strategies and the necessary structures to realize of them. And I think in addition to your point, Brett, this ideological liberal

conditioning, which still restricts their liberatory potential. But right, right? now in a law of use spaces, there is this emerging consciousness around the fact that movements in and themselves are not enough for revolutionary transition. There's a sense that we need something more, and we want to push that consciousness in the direction of the party, making it clear that it's an organ of struggle which time and time again has proven essential in revolutionary movements. And for us, as we make clear in a fourth-coming piece of work, the party provides these three core functions. The first is that it's able to unite popular forces engage in counter hegemonic struggle. So not only like direct action groups that are

combating big oil, but also like tendency of unions who are up against exploitive landlords or the mass movements that we're seeing in the streets all the time was putting pressure on politicians which are enabling a genocide in Palestine. The party is able to unite those progressive forces into a coherent national project for eco-socialism. The second core function that we see a party providing is that, no, it provides clear strategy. It has an analysis of root causes and a vision of a world transformed, but it's also able to formulate situational objectives that advance the struggle on the turbulent terrain. It's able to formulate strategies and tactics which are able to push in certain directions and also to formulate strategic retreats

when those conditions shift. And the third core function that we see is simply endurance. The party as dirty dean oftentimes right is about is able to capture the energy of a mass demonstration, sustain and nurture it for the long haul and also it's able to pass down knowledge from past organizing so we don't make the same mistakes that comrades in previous iterations the struggle might have made.

So basically what we were going to do is make the case to organize youth not only in the climate space, but more broadly all of the radical youth struggles that are ongoing, that the party as a coordinating force for social movements is needed in this moment,

especially as a clear political window is opening up. I mean, right now we are seeing the collapse of the extreme center. And in the U.S., there seems to be some kind of political realignment. In France, the new Popular Frontist one, the left coalition of forces won. And in Germany, the coalition has collapsed, and there will be elections in February. So we definitely are in this world historical moment. There's a political window that's opening up. Unfortunately, it's the far

right, which is much more organized. Obviously, that is because they're well resourced by the ruling class and the capitalists, but we really need to co-cure left forces into the organizational vehicle which can push us into an eco-socialist direction within this world historical moment. Brilliantly and incredibly well said, I agree with every syllable of that. I love your points about the strengths of the party. It's incredibly important to remind people that there's a sort of liberal delusion that youth equals left wing, or progressive or whatever, and that's just not the case. When the center works, as we've seen at work in the UK, in the U.S. and around the world, to prevent the emergence of even left populism, to say nothing of like revolutionary left movements,

but, you know, left social democracy, democratic socialism, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, etc. When the center works to strangle and prevent the emergence of that form of politic, it's not surprising that right populists, you know, will reap those benefits because what people, for various reasons, ideologically, and in various places, etc., they want fundamental change. You know, there are reasons for wanting change might not always align perfectly with our own, but people broadly want change. And the only option is the corporate, military, industrial complex, status quo maintaining center parties, or the right populist parties, which are at least naming enemies, promising to break things up, you know, promising to bring about change. And so it's not, it's not, you know, surprising whatsoever to me that people choose right populism, nor is it necessarily. pessimism inducing right you can sometimes see the rise of right wing movements and get very pessimistic and surely there's a place for that but i i often you know counteract that pessimism with an understanding of people just want change and you know if they are offered robust left movements rooted in working class you know realities that you know there's no reason to think

that people will overwhelmingly choose right wing faux populism because ultimately the right wing populism because ultimately the right wing populists don't actually bring the change that most people want to see. They scapegoat, you know, certain, you know, they scapegoat certain minority populations. There's a lot of emotive force behind right wing populism. I always find it ironic that here in the U.S., one of the favorite slogans for the, for the MAGA right, is fuck your feelings when it's so clear to me that the MAGA rights entire political momentum is centered around the emotions and feelings of those on the right wing. I mean, you know, it's very, very rarely is it rooted in like a deep structural analysis of the problems of our world. It's a motion-based. And that's always been the advantage of

fascist and right-wing populist movements is that they are fundamentally emotive. And they speak to people's emotions. And that is, you know, it riles people up and it gets people going, but it doesn't ever solve problems. In fact, it protects capital and maintains the core aspects of the status quo, it pretends to change it. But one thing I do want to focus on here is two points you made that the future vision I think is essential to have. We can't just be criticizers and deconstructors. We have to offer a robust vision of what life could look like, you know, what a better world would be like. And I think that's always crucial for us to keep in mind. Nobody likes somebody that can just criticize everything else but not build something themselves. And so that

that aspect of having a future vision is is essential and then the other thing i always tell young people i try to convey on this this show quite a lot is what are young people looking for with when they think what am i going to do with my life they want purpose they want meaning they want connection they want to feel useful they want to feel like they're contributing something meaningful and what capitalism does is narrow that that band that spectrum of of imagination so that people think okay what am I going to do with my life well let's accrue money let me get as much status as I can get let me see if I can become an influencer or gain fame um acknowledgement validation for my ego and that will somehow bring me meaning purpose etc happiness even and of course it never does

so what I tell young people is think really deeply about what will actually bring your life meaning and if fighting for a future fighting for future generations unifying with other people with huge hearts and sharp minds to try to build a better world, that is a meaningful, purposeful life. You're immediately connected to this beautiful tradition of human beings spanning millennia who have risen up against oppression, who have carried forward progressive values even under incredibly hostile conditions, and in the last several centuries, the explicitly socialist and communist movements of some of the best human beings on the planet fighting and sacrificing their lives to try to advance the cause of human flourishing.

And so if you're a young person looking for meaning and orientation in the world, getting involved in movements and struggles like this is always going to be much more meaningful and purposeful long term than pursuing what capitalism tells you to pursue, which is your own hyper individualist, careerist, machinations such that you can get more resources for yourself. You can do that. And sure, it'll bring you comfort, but it certainly won't bring you happy. happiness, purpose, or meaning. So something that young people have to really, really think about as they're entering those years of their life where it's decisive what decisions you make. You know, your early 20s, whether it's fair or not, it's a decisive time for people to figure out who are you going to be. What are your values? What do you believe in? What is a meaningful life for you? And I think all young people should be asking themselves those questions and thinking incredibly deeply about what those answers are. But we have mentioned multiple times in this conversation,

far the concept of eco-socialism. And of course, the prefix eco-attached to the word socialism is sort of self-explanatory, but perhaps we can dive a little deeper. What is eco-socialism? Would you consider it an actually separate tendency on the left, in your opinion? And what is its sort of fundamental orientation as a political project? Yeah, so we know, of course, that capitalism is not just incapable of addressing social and ecological crises, but is actually driving them. So on a very basic level, eco-socialism is a radically different social system that centers collective human and ecological flourishing instead of profit maximization. So then I guess we have to ask ourselves, what does human and ecological flourishing entail and

how do we achieve it? Of course, as the name suggests, and you just said, Brett, eco-socialism is a Marxist project that is firmly grounded in Earth's system science. So in other words, eco-socialism aims to transform production and the organization of society more broadly in line with socialist principles so that the needs of all people around the world are met and their lives meaningfully improved in ways that minimize and repair harm to the planet. So to your question about whether eco-socialism is a specific tendency on the left, I personally consider it more an update or evolution of socialism that incorporates our current conjuncture of escalating social and ecological crises.

Crises that have to be tackled in tandem and crucially with the understanding that the collective reproduction of human and non-human life on Earth are inextricably linked. And I suppose it's actually worth mentioning that this notion is, in fact, reflected in the work of Marx himself, who recognized that capitalist progress was and is based not only on robbing or exploiting the worker, but also robbing the soil, as he put it, but you could expand that to ecosystems more broadly. I also think it's worth to mention that a lot of eco-socialist words have been spent on, or words by eco-socialist scholars, to argue that Marx himself was, in fact, ecologically minded rather than blindly productivist.

But to be honest, while this may be an interesting intellectual exercise, and while the three of us all love marks, this is not actually what our interest in eco-socialism is about, because we are more interested in grounding it in what is or what could be relevant for movements that are struggling today for a better world. And exactly as you said, eco-socialism provides a much-needed positive political vision of the future, a vision that's not utopian, but one that emerges from the class society that's written with contradictions that we inhabit today. And thus it's a vision that can be useful in guiding action and strategy to abolish the present state of things, while also providing that hope and stretching our collective imagination of what's possible and what's desirable and giving people something, yeah, to feed their hunger for change, as you said.

Actually, to make this more tangible, we did develop an eco-socialist political program last year that specifically geared towards movements in the north. So if you're curious, I could tell you a little bit about that. Sure, yeah, please. So this program comprises three central structural elements to envision a society that's in transition, that's working to overcome the structural contradictions of class society. And in developing this, we were greatly inspired by the work of various eco-socialist thinkers and collectives,

including Jason Hickle, who's been mentioned already in Max Isle, as well as the Red Nation. These three structural elements are democratized, decommodify and decolonize. And I can explain each in turn. But before I do that, I guess to your question from before about the fundamental orientation of eco-socialism as a political project, the three structural elements I'm about about represent a root-and-branch transformation of society that's breaking with capitalism.

And as such, I just reiterate that for us, eco-socialism's orientation is fundamentally revolutionary. Yeah, so the first element, democratization, we must dismantle capitalist property relations and establish social ownership and democratic control over the means of production. In this way, with society's productive capacities wrested from capital's control, we can carry out the large-scale democratic ecological planning that's necessary to transition away from our current trajectory of collapse and towards an economy that's oriented around serving real human needs in accordance with ecological regenerative capacities. This would entail a process of assessing which forms of production should be scaled up and invested

in, such as agro-ecological food production or renewable energy, and which forms of production should be scaled down or done away with entirely like industrial agriculture or marketing or arms manufacturing. And this democratic planning should be decentralized where possible, and carried out at the scale that's relevant to the decision at hand. So, for example, given the global nature of the climate crisis, a response should be coordinated internationally. But what happens with the productive capacity of a nationalized corporation, producing stuff that's ecologically harmful

and that we don't really need, say, general mortars, could be determined at a national level. while a region's public transportation system should be decided at a regional or city level and also in dialogue with a national plan for transport. And through this greater democratic participation in ecological planning processes, as well as greater workplace and communal democracy, this democratization of the economy and society fosters something called popular protagonism among the people, which is the sense that we are the active protagonists,

active characters in our collective liberation, and the shared mission of transforming society for the better. And this sense could also be fostered through a public job guarantee that provides everyone meaningful work. And so by doing away with the profit motive and rationally planning production and work, we could properly valorize underpaid forms of work that are usually gendered and racialized, especially social reproductive work,

and we can reduce work time, freeing time for what actually matters in life, like the things you've mentioned before, of creation, creativity, and community. And that actually brings me to the second element, which is the decommodification of the means of survival. Under eco-socialism, we would guarantee everyone access to the things that we all need to reproduce ourselves and live a safe, dignified life. So this includes housing, health care, energy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food, sanitation, transportation, internet, education, and so on. By doing this, we would decommodify these essential goods and services.

This would go hand in hand with the first element of democratization because what these services exactly entail and how they would be executed could be democratically deliberated and integrated into ecological plans and their provisioning could be made possible at least in large part through a public job guarantee. But I also do want to say that this universal provisioning of basic services

in the Imperial Corps cannot rely on exploitative extraction of resources and labor from the periphery, which brings me to the final element of decolonization. And this one is pretty expansive and has to do with the global economy, of course, but also forms of repression and containment in society

more broadly. So the global economy must be radically reconfigured to dismantle imperialism and colonialism and the polarized accumulation on the world scale that they enable. This requires numerous actions

including sovereign debt cancellation for countries of the global south, and the payment of climate and ecological reparations by countries of the global north. And both of these measures are crucial to provide southern countries with the fiscal space to pursue sovereign ecological development. Then we'd have technology transfers, as well as a reimagining of global trade based on principles of solidarity and mutual benefit and cooperation rather than exploitation. So closely tied to this is demilitarization. Imperialist military forces are defunded. International bases must be shut down and nuclear weapons must be disarmed.

This is also important because militaries are massive carbon emitters and generally extremely destructive of our ecological systems. The U.S. military is, in fact, the single largest institutional emitter of carbon. in the world and is exempt from international climate agreements and yeah and we have to also demilitarize at home with the abolition of police and prisons as well as demilitarizing our borders and ensuring rights and justice for migrants could go on for a long time but i won't um i i hope that that provides an adequate picture of how we envision an ego social society i suppose it's worth Caviating that much of this assumes a revolutionary worker state. But I'd also say there's important work being done on what the less centralized aspects of an eco-socialist transition would look like.

For example, some comrades, Kai Heron, Kira Milburn, and Bertie Russell have a book coming out next year called Radical Abundance that is looking at just this through the perspective of public commons partnerships. And it's absolutely brilliant. But, yeah, I've spoken for a long time now. No, yeah. I mean, I love everything you laid out there. And speaking for a long time is essential when it comes to laying out to offering this vision and what you do with the democratization, the decommodification and decolonization is crucial aspects of not just what we would prefer to happen, but importantly, what has to happen? If we are going to have a livable, not talk about utopian, just a non-dispopian society, we have to grow up. up beyond the confines of, as I always say on this episode, what Albert Einstein called the predatory phase of human development, i.e. class society. The splitting up of human beings into the haves and the have-nots and the domination of the planet and the masses of people by a relatively small elite who are interested first and foremost in accumulation. This is an insane, irrational,

and unsustainable way of running the world. And we're just now beginning to see the consequences of trying to run the world like this for a couple centuries in a row. It can't continue on. And one of the things, you know, there's many things to say here, but one of the things that would sort of be a quote unquote tradeoff here is that we would have to, all of us would have to give up mass consumption. We would have to, as part of decommodification. Commodification means the buying and selling of things for their exchange rate on the market.

You know, humans are turned into commodities under capitalism. nature itself is turned in to a commodity under capitalism and what is known as the anarchy of the market is the production of superfluous non-needed goods and services that are there just to create a profit and then along with that comes the need for advertising industries to promote things that people don't actually need but have to get them to think they need or get them to want and desire in order to maximize and create a profit stream. and so our vision of the world it does involve less nonsense less shit less you know you're not going to be able to have something delivered to your doorstep the next day just because you want it the overproduction of completely unnecessary goods which are huge swaths of the market just look around your house and think about the amount of things that are just not necessary i mean even if it's just like the iPhone if we don't need it we don't need to all have these little microchipped computers in our podcast I mean, there's certain benefits. There's a lot more negatives. But think about a world

organized around human flourishing, which doesn't create this massive alienation and this deep psychological unworthiness that is then filled by just constant endless consumption, where the horizons of a human life are not limited to how big of a house, how big of a car, or new of a car can I have, how expensive of clothing can I have. This is a childish, as well as a fundamentally irrational and increasingly insane way of organized human civilization and it has to change and so you know I think as we advance this vision we also have to talk about its utter necessity that is not just a preference among many it's not just our preferred opinion on how the world should be it is the only path broadly speaking to a livable future on this planet and that is not an overstatement

and the changes required are going to be fucking massive they have to be but But just on the scale of the shift out of feudalist monarchy to liberal democracies and capitalism and the industrial revolution, we look back on those processes that took a couple centuries, and we said the change before and after is absolutely massive. But it did happen. Go back to the agrarian revolution. Go back to massive changes throughout human history that have occurred. That's part of the Marxist understanding of history, that the societies and human civilization is in a constant state of evolution determined by. by its interaction with the world around itself. And so the changes are going to be absolutely huge and fundamental, but they have to occur, and they're not unprecedented in the history of human societies, quite the contrary. They are the path that human societies have taken in their evolution towards where we are today.

And evolution never stops. Evolution is not a process with the peak and a pinnacle. Evolution is an ongoing process. And so, you know, those are the terms in which we are, We have to sort of think about these issues and argue them to the people in our lives and people more broadly. So let's go ahead and continue moving on incredibly well said, my friend. What are some of the core challenges, right, that this broadly conceived eco-socialist left has to face in our shared struggle of building a better, more sustainable, just, and egalitarian world? It's one thing to offer a vision.

It's another thing to argue for the absolute necessity of that vision. And then it's a third thing to actually overcome the challenges, the invested interests, the entrenched interests, the power centers that don't want to change. American imperialism in the military industrial complex do not want to be shuffled off the world historical stage, right? Those who accumulate massive amounts of capital and live lives of complete luxury and comfort do not want to give that up. And they will fight to the death to prevent that. And we have to be very sober-eyed about that. So with all of that in mind, what are some of these challenges as far as you can understand them? Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question.

Something certainly we're thinking about considering all the time. And I guess just picking up or building on what Ineia said that we don't see eco-socialism as a sort of deviation from the Marxist left, but rather building on it. And so from that perspective, the eco-socialist left is really facing the same challenges that the left generally is facing. And I guess when thinking about that question, I mean, there are a number of things that come to mind immediately, in particular thinking about the left and the imperial core. We touched on this a little bit, but I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is thinking about the question of how to build power

and political organization. As NOAA laid out very well, I think, we see that a key component of this is the need for a mass working class party. And this recognition possesses, or sort of carries with it, I guess, various challenges. And these challenges are depending on the place, depending on the conditions.

I mean, taking the example of Britain, there are a number of questions that surround this question. Like, how to work with, does that mean working within established parties like the Green Party or to form something new? How to negotiate the fact that there already are dozens of left groups that call themselves the party, you know? If it is indeed something that's new that's needed, what is the process for its formation? Do you build the party first and then try to catalyze movement or try to sort of kickstart a movement and then from there, that cohere into some form of more structured party organization. How does such a political party operate in a first-past-the-post electoral system? Not that electoral engagement is the primary function of the party, but certainly one

terrain of struggle. So these are some of the questions that I think surround the challenge of building an organization in Britain. I imagine, I certainly hope that similar questions are being posed on the left in the U.S. so I think that's like one really big challenge an important challenge another one is the question of like how to do mass work I think with the current state or the composition or structure of the working class you know the working class just people in general are incredibly incredibly atomized and this is an important question that needs to be considered like where are people where are collectives of people that can be reached and we really see like no or very few mass institutions unions I suppose present themselves as one of the few remaining mass working class institutions of some form. But throughout neoliberalism, they've been defanged. And, of course, leadership can often be very conservative.

I guess some deviation on this. I mean, I listened recently, Brett, to a conversation that you had with Allison, where you both discussed the sort of potential or possibility of tenants unions as a type of a workaround in some way for reaching workers. And I agree this is a really important and interesting approach. One amazing start is that in the, general election in the UK this past summer, only 34, or sorry, sorry, 37% of tenants actually voted in the election, which is just like sort of absolutely staggering statistic, I think,

which shows how asset poor people in this country feel about establishment politics, like a huge opportunity. But sort of coming back to the point, I think so many workers are also not unionized, you know. Many young workers in particular have never been in a union, have no union experience and don't particularly see them as institutions that they want to engage in. So this issue of atomization is just like a very important question and a huge challenge for the prospect of doing mass work. And maybe within this broader challenge, some more particular questions that arise for eco-socialists around what around this question is what ecological unionism could look like. For instance, how can the climate justice movement engage and

support workers, especially those in ecologically destructive industries, to realize a transition away from those industries. So that's maybe more of a particular consideration that ecoscients are considering in this question of mass work. I think another challenge that we've touched on a bit in this podcast is, as the center is collapsing, we see the far right providing, proving much better at seizing the political vacuum that's emerging. Now, of course, this job is much easier from them, given that they don't actually challenge the ruling class. or capital in the same way that the left does. But it doesn't diminish how big of a challenge, I think, the right is posing.

They're currently proving much more effective at winning over our class than we are. And I think connected to that is how we deal with increasing repression, which is, I think, connected, but maybe distinct. I think we're seeing this everywhere, really. I mean, again, taking the example of the UK, we've had this really draconian legislation passed not too, too long ago the police crimes sentencing courts bill, which really sort of vastly expands police powers, you know, for stop and search for surveillance to literally arrest protesters if they subjectively deem that the protest is too noisy and disturbing

the peace. And we're seeing people get sort of multi-year, you know, prison sentences for nonviolent direct action. I know you're facing similar things in the U.S., especially with the incoming Trump administration. So I think that's a real question. It's like, how do we maintain resilient movements in this environment while resisting the chilling effect that these measures are intended to have. And I think we know that repression is obviously just going to continue to increase as crises worsen because the ruling classes are constitutionally incapable of dealing with the root causes. I mean, something you're mentioning earlier, but around like what options do young people have? And I think like one way of having people fall in line, if you

will, is I guess there are two tactics. One is like the carrot and one is the stick, you know, this constant offer of if you just don't question the system, don't rebel, don't rise up, then you'll be offered some level of comfort. And if you don't choose that, then we'll see repression. But I think the carrot is increasingly not becoming a useless tool for the run class, like on the largest scale because of ecological breakdown. You know, young people are saying, like, what future are you really offering me? So that carrot is no longer available.

So we see the stick become the preferred tactic or the necessary tactic. So I think these are some of the primary challenges that I think the broader left is facing right now or some of the important ones. There are many, many. But including the eco-socialist left is facing these challenges. But I think there's probably one other challenge that the eco-socialist left in particular is wrestling with, which is, I mean, quite simply just trying to figure out how to practice revolutionary politics in a world on fire. And I think this question sort of covers everything from, I mean, on one hand, like how to balance the need to engage in the disciplined and patient organizing, the type of organizing that's necessary, you know, to build an organization, to build social power, to construct a new hegemony, how to balance that with the urgency that's really imposed on us

by rapidly accelerating ecological breakdown and the possibility of smashing through various irreversible tipping points. So that's one dimension of this question, but I think on the other hand, we have other aspects of this question as well that include considerations around like how do we see increased pressure and challenges on the revolutionary process on top of the pressures that already exist, you know, like counter-revolution that we see throughout history. But what does it actually mean to effectuate a transition away from capitalism during a time in history when our planetary systems that ensure for a stable bias here are breaking down? How do things like, you know, crop failure, extreme weather, extended heat waves that impact working

conditions? How do all these things that are already baked in, in part, place particular pressures on a revolutionary process? I think like one example that I think about is sort of how Mao's ambitions during the great leap forward were complicated by severe drought and crop failure during 1960 and 1961. That's like with one glimpse into like the types of challenges that will be facing on a much larger scale and with increasing frequency for any type of revolutionary transition at this world historical moment. Yeah. Incredibly thoughtful and important and insightful response. One thing is

for sure that these struggles are going to intensify and you talk about the state and the power centers using the carrot and the stick. And when they have to de-emphasize the carrot and over-emphasize the stick, it is a form of weakness. It's a form of them losing grip. One of the things about modern liberal capitalism is it loves to obscure its own power and its own violence. It loves to naturalize it. And when that is forced to come out to the forefront and the state has to crack down in very ostensibly illiberal ways, right, that that facade begins to drop. And we've mentioned throughout this conversation, several of you have mentioned, you know, the Palestinian issue and how that is one way in which one aspect of the mask of the facade

begins to crumble. Everything that the U.S. and the so-called West says they stand for is directly shown to be a lie in Palestine. And they're now in this situation where they have to give one line of rhetoric when it comes to, you know, something like Ukraine, the big country, Russia, invading a smaller country, liberty, freedom, self-determination, and they have to try to at the same time make those arguments or conceal those lines of argumentation obscure and mystify those lines of argumentation when it comes to Palestine. And again, anybody that can look at that situation and not be completely bamboozled by ideology can see quite clearly what the truth of the matter is. One of the issues we

talk about is, you know, you mentioned the absolute necessity of discipline, patience, working towards something much bigger than yourself, the responsibility and dedication that that entails. And what I think of as in addition to all the wonderful, you know, things that you said, the important things that you said, is this clitoscopic form of spectacular entertainment that you know the average person is being hit with 24-7 you know now the the corporations have colonized the planet they've colonized the land and what they're quite literally doing now is they're turning to human attention span and colonizing it the human sensory system and trying to colonize that and there is a disorienting way in which buying in to their shallow spiritually empty

but dopamine-inducing entertainment complex of these gadgets and glitzes and these psychologically calibrated algorithms to, you know, squeeze every bit of attention and keep you scattered, right? If you're, I often say if you're scrolling on these social media apps for hours a day, you're not only being hit in several ways to your attention span, your cognitive capacity, it's an emotional whirlwind, right? You go from some stupid meme of the dog sitting in his kitchen chair with fire and saying this is fine. And then you scroll up and you see the dismembered body of a Palestinian child.

And then you scroll once more and you see some outrage bait by dumb fuck Elon Musk. And you scroll again and you see your favorite sports teams touchdown they just scored. And this is a disorienting, you know, spectacular form of really destroying people's ability to be. disciplined, to have a long-term focus on something, to, to hone in on their own values and meaning. And it's just this passive way in which people are really kept distracted and thus obedient, right? And also, go on Instagram, and it's pure ego glorification. Everybody has more than you. Everybody's richer than you. Everybody has bigger houses than you. Everybody has prettier families than you. It's this, this house, this fun house of mirrors that lowers yourself

worth makes you compare yourself to others agitates the ego is very emotional a subrational it hijacks into you know the animalistic lower forms of our brains and and i think this is one of the things that we have to think very deeply about in our own personal lives when it comes to how do you want to fucking spend your time on this planet how do you want to spend your time on this planet when you are in your deathbed do you want to look back and say i spent 13 years of my life just scrolling and you know is that what you want or do you want to say i spent the best years of my life fighting for a future for humanity and it's not to self-aggrandize there's no one person or one group that can do this it in it requires the submission of your own ego to something much

bigger than yourself it requires massive cooperation um with other human beings in every facet of your life and again these are things that we have to deeply deeply wrestle with and think about on a collective level as well as on a personal level because this is one way in which they do kind of keep us subordinated, distracted, scattered, and disoriented. And we have to, we have to fight back against that as well. So let's go ahead and move forward. And I'm kind of interested in kind of thinking about the current situation. So we understand the wonderful organization of the climate vanguard, the strategy, the main obstacles to an eco-socialist left. But kind of looking out over the terrain of where things are right now environmentally. What's your analysis

of the current situation globally, not just with the climate, but I mean with the biosphere crisis in all of its dimensions? And where do you kind of see things going, particularly in the short term? I know we've talked about long-term visions, the dystopian maintenance of the status quo over long periods of time or, you know, the radical revolutionary rupture from the status quo and offering an actual livable future. But short-term, what is the sort of analysis of the current environmental situation and where things seem to be tending at the moment. Yeah, I mean, that's a really important question. And I'll run through both the short-term and the long-term trajectories. I'm going to rely on some science, but I do think it's very important to have an empirical basis

to make our assessment off of. So I guess to begin with where we're at currently, there are record atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. And these are the three main greenhouse gases. Specifically, the concentration of carbon dioxide is higher at this moment that at any point in the last three million years. And actually, the rate of injection of carbon dioxide is 10 times faster than even the most extreme periods within the age of mammals. And for the context, the early age of mammals was 50 million years ago. So we are really in unprecedented times. Currently, we're at 1.2 degrees Celsius heating above pre-industrial times. And I guess I'll just go over some of these impacts that we've already seen, some of which

Brett you've already mentioned in past podcasts. But I think these impacts can be categorized into two broad areas. The first are these kind of slow grinding impacts, specifically in the form of food charges. So we've seen food charges in special commodities like oranges. It's like in 2023 US orange production reached its lowest level in more than a century. It produced only 16 million boxes instead of the usual 244 million. boxes. And that was a combination of extreme weather and citrus greening disease, which brings in also the ecological dimension. But it's not just like these specialized commodities, but also stock commodities, which the vast majority of humanity depends on, like rice. In July 2023,

rice prices in Asia soared due to concerns around dry weather that would damage crops. And India was also forced to put an export ban on certain categories of rice due to unusually heavy monsoons. But kind of contrastive with these slow grinding impacts, are these acute moments of climate disaster. I mean, there have been so many in the past couple of years. I guess I can just focus on some that have happened in the past climate that are ongoing. You know, the first being Hurricane O'Lean, which unloaded more than 40 trillion gallons of water onto the southern U.S. People have had their lives ruined. People don't have insurance for their homes and are really forced with trying to rebuild their lives without any form of state support.

And also right now, the worst drought in a century is impacting southern Africa with some 21 million children malnourished. Besides the climate impact, obviously we have to zoom out and look at the ecological situation more broadly. Six of nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed, and also we're currently in a sixth mass extinction with one million plant and animal species threatened with extinction in the next decades. Actually, between 1970 and 2016, so over the past both decades, we've already seen global wildlife populations decline by 68%. So that's kind of where we're at currently looking towards where we might head in the short term, I think it's important

to highlight that there are some signs of acceleration of client breakdown. So the rate of heating between 1970 and 2010 was 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade. And from 2010 to the day, this has increased to 0.32 degrees Celsius to decade. So we are seeing an increase in that decadal heating rate. 2023 was the hottest year on record at 1.4 degrees Celsius. And this January, we crossed 1.5 degrees of Celsius for the first time and we're likely to permanently cross 1.5 in the 2020s. 1.5, as some of your listeners might have heard before, is this very key threshold above which we risk setting into motion certain irreversible tipping points like the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which would happen over thousands of years, but also the collapse of coral reefs, which would happen in a much shorter period. as few as 10 years. Looking towards the long term.

So what's amazing is that the current targets, which are entirely voluntary, which different countries have put in place and submit to the UN, those would lead to 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius heating by the end of the century. And again, those are entirely voluntary. Actual policy would actually lead to over 3 degrees Celsius heating.

And I guess like to wrap our head around what this level of heating actually looks like, we can look toward our geological history. So the earth warmed by four degrees Celsius between the last glacial maximum, the 21,000 years ago and the beginning of the Holocene, which was around 12,000 years ago, the Holocene is this geological epoch, which had this trademark climatic stability,

which enabled for human civilization to emerge. So that was 4 degrees Celsius heating in 10,000 years. We might have 3 degrees Celsius heating in three centuries. So, like, this is an immense amount of heating in an insanely short amount of time. Some of the impacts of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius heating, I mean, there are a lot of them which I could go over, but one in particular is that 2 billion people could be driven out of the climate niche, which is basically the temperature zone in which humanity has traditionally flourished. Specifically, that means that 2 billion people might be exposed to annual temperatures above 29 degrees Celsius. currently that accounts for around 0.8% of global land surface, most of which it's concentrated in Sahara. So basically this is a form of eco-apartheid, which would be imposed primarily in the

people in the South. And it would be forced with this question of to leave or to die. And I guess I would also stress that ecological breakdown is a non-linear process. It's like two degrees Celsius is not twice as bad as one degree Celsius, but it represents an accelerated level of severity. So that's kind of the ecological snapshot. I think it's also really important for us to turn to the response of the ruling classes to make sense of the political and economic facet of this current crisis they're in. In terms of fossil fuel investment, there have been no signs of this slowing down. So the 20 largest fossil fuel companies that nominally at least support the Paris Agreement are planning to invest $1.5 trillion into new oil on

gas fields by 24DV. I think it's really important to note that in 2021, the International Energy Agency, which is kind of one of these premier energy in climate organizations, which produce a lot of research, said that there could be no new oil and gas if we are to limit heat into 1.5 degrees Celsius. So like the 20 largest fossil field companies are planning to invest over a trillion, which, yeah, we can make our own conclusions about where that might take us. I think the other really important point is like there is no green transition currently. I think We hear that a lot in the media that there is an increase in renewable power, which actually is true. But the caveat is that renewable power, the increase renewable energy capacity is only meeting additional demand.

So we might be increasing the amount of renewable power that exists, but that's meeting additional demand as energy consumption overall increases. So basically we're adding a green layer on top of the existing fossil base. That is not decarbonization. I mean, we actually need to be talking about reducing. emissions, not just having a plateau in emissions. So if you look at like continued fossil fuel investment, the fact that there's no green transition, there is a huge problem for capital. And that's the fact that, you know, when capital and the assets in fossil fuels, they expect profits over a multi-decade horizon. But the policy action required to even limit heat in two degrees

Celsius, which is catastrophic in his own right, could lead to $1.5 trillion in stranded assets. obviously that's completely antithetical to capital so it's caught in this contradiction right where is it going to continue to invest in fossil fuels and extract every last bit of value from the planet and also risk undermining the actual conditions for profitability in the first place or are they going to find some alternative mediates to overcome this contradiction and in our understanding and some of the research we've been doing all signs point to the ruling class at some point triggering solar geoengineering and specifically stratospheric aerosol ejection.

So stratospheric aerosol injection is basically a process where planes pump sulfate into the atmosphere and they reflect incoming sunshine and they cool the earth. They cool the earth by over 100 degrees centigrade. And as we can imagine, this would cause catastrophic impacts from disrupted precipitation pyrins to weaken agriculture productivity.

but most like starting, I suppose, is that it would cause the sky to be this permanent milky white. But I think this is where the capitalist class is going. And what I would finish on is kind of reiterating the words of the president of Colombia, Rusava Petro, who said that Gaza is the future. Global apartheid, fortress borders, and genocide of violence is what the ruling class has planned for a future of ecological catastrophe. Obviously, that is unless we build this revolution.

movement that can finally dig the grave of capitalism and imperialism. And now more than ever, I think this is true that it's a revolution to not run. So perfectly articulated. The contradictions within capital's long-term investment to profit ratio is an important thing to think about. And yes, just this nihilistic death drive towards collapse or environmental calamity where we have these assholes spraying shit into the atmosphere, fundamentally changing the aesthetics of the sky so that they can continue to extract profit out of this world and

plunder everybody we're talking about mass and miseration you know what the black plague was to to europe this is going to make it look like you know the the flu epidemic compared to what's coming next the mass migrations that are going to happen in the face of climate breakdown where the least resourced most equatorial and poorest countries are impacted the the first and the hardest creating mass migration which as we've seen with just the syrian civil war and the migration crisis into europe this creates the elements for backlash for fascism um for scapegoating which which we've seen on a small scale but which will be brought to an enormous and disastrous scale under these conditions the the change in the in the temperature we

go back and we look at these historical you know examples of of these massive changes and we're looking at like over thousands of years it rose four degrees or we're talking condensing that into a couple lifetimes that amount of change so that rate of change means that among many other things the biosphere simply cannot adapt in anything like the time necessary to be able to survive let alone flourish um and so we're talking about agricultural diooffs we're talking about biosphereic um die offs and you know what we understand as marxist with a dialectical understanding but just as human beings that understand things scientifically that ecosystems are deeply radically interconnected and once you start pulling the threads from even seemingly innocuous aspects of that of that

biosphere of that ecosystem um these biomes very quickly can collapse and uh we've already seen certain examples of this we're in the six mass extinction event currently and this is the stakes literally all i'm saying is the stakes literally could not be higher and and you know that the status quo is going to lead us in to this insane dystopia where they try to maintain these class hierarchies in the face of full civilizational and ecological collapse and if there's anything in the world worth fighting for it's to fight against that and we are all born at this time through no fault of our own and this is the responsibility that has landed in our lap and as human beings with consciousness right here and now in the 21st century we have yeah as i keep saying this immense

responsibility to the future. And we can either fulfill that responsibility or we can fail to meet the challenge. And the consequences are going to be dire and they're going to be in perpetuity going forward. So yeah, it's not meant to induce pessimism to the contrary. It's meant to inspire action as our only hope is to inspire action and dedicating your life to this movement and this broader movement for a better world. There's literally no better way to spend your time, your one precious life on this planet than doing precisely that. So I know that we've mentioned a little bit about the importance of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. We've talked about how, you know, the Palestine situation has really shown the, has really stripped naked these forces to millions and millions of people around the world.

And that idea that Gaza is the future that the ruling classes have in mind for us is very salient and incredibly, you know, nauseatingly correct. It's going to have to be that way if they want to maintain this rotten, anti-human status quo that they're trying to prop up and are deeply invested in. But is there anything else that we can say about the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle and how it is connected ultimately to this broader socialist struggle and just a struggle for a livable future? Yeah, I mean, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are absolutely central and can't be overstated in their importance. This is both because the social and ecological crises that eco-socialism aims to address are playing out along colonial lines, as well as along lines of class and gender and race and ability, of course. But also because the social forces that are waging meaningful resistance against the systems driving those crises are anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles. So I can talk about both of those in turn.

So first, the colonial and imperialist nature of social necological crises. The capitalist world system, of course, is characterized by polarized accumulation on a world scale, with the ruling classes of the global north, systematically appropriating value from the countries of the south, which are deliberately maintained in a state of underdevelopment, or even de-developed to maintain these imperialist and super-exploitive dynamics. And, yeah, this, of course, leads to immense and thoroughly unnecessary social deprivation, poverty, hunger. And I say thoroughly unnecessary because we know that global productive capacities are far more than sufficient

to enable good lives for everyone. In fact, a recent study published by Jason Hickle and Dylan Sullivan found that only a third of current global resource and energy use would be necessary to provision 8.5 billion people with decent living standards. And that's more than the current global population. And again, underscores, as we all know, that social deprivation is completely political. And so imperialist extraction takes place in large part through a process called unequal exchange

in international trade and in global commodity chains, in the form of a net appropriation by wealthy countries of labor and resources from the rest of the world to the tune of trillions of dollars per year. And so this drain of value from the periphery hinders investment in development and reproduction which in turn has huge impacts on how ecological crises play out, both through the direct impacts of pollutive resource extraction and manufacturing that are concentrated in the global south, and through those countries' inability to appropriately prepare for

or respond to climate disasters, which are more in the coming, as Noah is talking about. And again, this is all due to underdevelopment caused by impact. imperialism. And this leads to the extremely unjust reality that the nations who have done the least to contribute to climate and ecological breakdown are the most vulnerable to its consequences. And the capitalist so-called green solutions to allegedly address the climate crisis that are offered by capital states and corporations, simply we produce these imperialist dynamics. For example, with mining for lithium, for batteries to boost the electric vehicle fleet in the imperial core. So instead, for a global green transition to take place that

truly embodies the value of climate and ecological justice, the liberation of oppressions is fundamental. And this brings me to that second part. of anti-imperialist resistance and eco-socialist struggle. If we follow revolutionary anti-imperialist thinkers like Amicale Cabral, national liberation is a nation's realization of sovereign control over their productive forces. And without this material self-determination, economies of the Gulf of the Gulf of South will continue to be forced to serve northern capital, rather than the needs of the local population.

And they will be incapable of carrying out that democratic ecological planning that's necessary for societal transformation on a global scale that I was talking about before. And I say this to illuminate that the social forces that are at the forefront of resisting imperialism and colonialism, like those in Palestine and Lebanon and Yemen right now, are key agents in the struggle for global eco-socialism. And as eco-socialists, even if we don't have the exact same politics as all of these movements, we must recognize that we are in a common struggle against capitalist imperialism and we owe them radical solidarity and must heed and uplift their demands. And this includes organizing workers and people more generally here in the core

to weaken the capacity of our states and of corporations to exploit the global working classes and weaken their capacity to repress the movements resisting them so that these movements have better conditions to win in advance. For example, we can organize right now for arms and energy embargoes on Israel. And actually, I would like to highlight our comrades at Energy Embargo for Palestine who are doing just that right now. They're a London-based anti-imperialist climate group who are doing super important intellectual work map mapping energy flows to Israel, including identifying pressure points and actors that can be targeted like BP and Stokar, the state oil company of Azerbaijan, and they're agitating

in the broader climate movement, both in Britain and globally, to take up this demand for an energy embargo. And of course, Piang, the Palestinian youth movement, is doing an incredible campaign against the logistics company Mersk that transports military supplies that are used to bomb Gaza and Lebanese children. Of course, also central to

eco-social struggle are indigenous land and water defenders around the world, including, of course, indigenous nations in the heart of empire in the U.S., both for their active opposition to fossil and other forms of devastating capital's infrastructure and extraction, but also

because they are incredibly important stewards of biodiversity and holders of lost ecological knowledge and non-extractive forms of socio-ecological relations. So yeah, so for eco-socialism, we must build a global alliance of the working and oppressed, and anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are central to our collective struggle for a livable and qualitatively better future. Amen. Absolutely. And that's, you know, one of the things that I that I find optimistic or I find, you know, to be sort of edifying in the way that I look at the future is precisely these resistance movements. And as I always often argue on this show, that the human spirit, something fundamentally deeply human just absolutely rebels in the face of another human putting their boot on your neck. And so as you ratchet, up the oppression, you also simultaneously and inexorably ratchet up the resistance to that oppression. And that's one thing that it seems like no matter how much time passes, the rulers of this world

never learn that lesson, that you can't stomp on a human face forever, you can't have your boot pushed on a human throat forever. It is in our nature, the deepest parts of our nature, to fight back and resist. And that is deeply inspiring to see some of the people, some of the poorest people in the world some of the people with the least power much less power resources comfort than any of us have putting it all on the line fighting back sacrificing everything they shouldn't have to be in that position for sure but they are and they fight back and what i see there is that the world is not simply going to allow this relatively small amount of elites that run the world to take us off the motherfucking cliff they're going to try and they have all the

power and all the money and so that that gives them a lot of advantage but the human spirit will always fight back and rebel against that and what we're going to start seeing especially as the the climate crisis continues to intensify is you're going to start seeing radical experiments so you're going to start seeing i think largely countries in the in the global south begin to fundamentally reorganize their political and economic systems as part and parcel of their fight against imperialism and colonialism, but also as their fight for a livable future, especially in those places that are under-resourced. And what you see is when a society over here decides to, it's already fucked by global capitalism, imperialism, let's say it's already under, you know,

multiple sanctions, it's already constantly threatened by the empire. It has no real investment, just like young people don't have an investment. in this system long term, so many of these countries that are on the wrong side of empire have no interest in maintaining this global status quo, and it have been and will continue to rebel against it. And what you'll start seeing is societies begin to shift. And probably first, I believe, in the global south, where countries will start to organize themselves much more rationally along eco-socialist lines. They'll be met with huge amounts of global repression, but will also be inspiring to people around the world. You'll see various,

other societies try different forms of experiment as they're increasingly under the stick of the empire but the empire is only so big it's only so powerful it really can't stretch out across the entire world i mean we already see it stretched pretty thin with regards to trying to fight this war in ukraine trying to help israel conduct its genocide now it's looking over to taiwan i mean this is the stuff of world wars but it also shows the weakness and the decaying nature of of the empire status globally. And that will continue. And so this idea that humans never give up, that humans always resist, that we're going to start seeing experiments in different ways of organizing societies develop, emerge, and catch on and spread. You're going to see internal resistance

to empire within the imperial core alongside these external developments. And so I think there's a lot there to find optimism and inspiration from. This is not just going to be a death march. off the cliff the human spirit will always rebel humanity is incredibly adaptive and when you shove its face when you shove humanity's face into the shit of a major existential problem like the ones we're facing now with empire in the biosphere humanity time and time again has has at least historically risen to the challenge and there's no reason to think fundamentally that humans are incapable of doing it this time and so you know there's a lot of reasons to be pessimistic but there's also a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

And as diletticians, we understand that wherever you're pushing, there's also pulling. Wherever you're oppressing, there's also resisting. Wherever horrific conditions take hold, there's a rebellion against those conditions. There's a human creativity and adaptability against those conditions. And so that will continue to develop as well. And so we should find heart and inspiration in that. And that's also the necessary aspect of showing deep, profound solidarity with all these resistance movements.

And, you know, that is absolutely crucial. And internationalism is going to be and already is utterly crucial and a fundamental pillar of everything that we believe in and all of our visions for a livable future. But you did mention Jason Hickle, who has done some pretty popular work on the degrowth movement. And degrowth, you know, there's some controversy surrounding it. Even on the left, there are people that have various levels of skepticism,

toward it. Obviously, mainstream economists and people in capitalist imperialist ideology are going to be against it. But I was wondering if you can kind of talk a little bit more about your thoughts on the degrowth movement and maybe how you would explain it to someone who either isn't aware of it or might have the knee-jerk reaction of turning away from it since so much of our ideological conditioning is premised on this hyper fetishization of endless growth. People are really inculcated in this idea and it's really hard for people to imagine. I mean, what would a world economy look like that isn't centered on growth? I mean, when growth stops for a couple months, we're in a recession and a little bit longer, we're in a depression. And so it seems deeply

counterintuitive that we would invite that or build a world around that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. The growth can be thought of as kind of a school of thought that centers a critique of infinite economic growth, particularly in light of the ecological consequences of said growth, and because that growth does not serve to lift all boats, but rather enrich the wealthy and increase economic inequality. So degrowth advocates for the planned reduction of the global economy's material and energy throughput, or its resource and energy use, with a focus on wealthy countries, with high levels of per capita consumption, to enable a global convergence of developmental levels. And I stressed planned because a lot of people will think

degrowth is recession and the recession is, of course, not planned. This is a planned reduction. Yeah, and this planned reduction should be done by shrinking certain sectors of the economy that are ecologically harmful and don't contribute to social well-being, similar to the ones that I mentioned before when I was talking about ecological planning. So yeah, like industrial animal agriculture or automobile production, etc. In addition, degrowthers coalesce around a critique of GDP as an indicator for social progress. And they critique what they call growth ideology. So the narratives and beliefs that serve to legitimize economic growth as a societal goal that benefits everyone. I personally think of degrowth more as an idea or framework, which has really

gained popularity in the past five or five years or so, probably more, especially in European ecological movements and in academia as well. There's a certainly a community of degrowth intellectuals and activists forming around it, but I don't think that they are really taking collective action to struggle for particular concrete demands. So I don't really think of it as a movement. An important point that I'd also make here, which I get from Kai Heron, who was a co-editor of a recently published handbook on degrowth, is that no inherent or coherent politics emerge from the central ideas of degrowth that I was talking

about before, like critiquing GDP, critiquing growth ideology, critiquing growth, especially because these critiques are not often tied to an analysis of growth being a function of capital accumulation. So there's often like a missing Marxist analysis. And accordingly, degrowth is kind of an umbrella term that has a attract. active people from all flavors of the ecological left, including liberals and, like, more social democratic liberals, anarchists and autonomists and a positive development of an insurgent wing of anti-imperialist Marxists. And unfortunately, Jason Hickle, who is one of the most prominent voices in degrowth is definitely of that last group. And this is great because a lot of the

people who come to degrowth do so through him. It's probably also worth mentioning that degrowth gets a lot of criticism for being a quote-unquote politics of less, particularly by a few loud voices based in the US and including the editorial board of Chacobin but honestly this is a shit take I think Americans Americans are not okay

with having less that's crazy yeah it's wild enough I was recently in the States and just like being in the American suburb really revived my conviction that some form of tea growth is necessary and

yeah so it because I I think this really represents a capitalist conception of what makes the good life that's not based on relationships and having time to yourself and human development, but is defined by high consumption of consumer goods. And like egos socialism, I believe degrowth is seeking a qualitatively different and qualitatively better way of living, even if I think the politics and analysis are kind of half-baked. And ultimately, I think it's useful because it allows people to start developing a systemic critique of capitalism that connects social and ecological crises on a global scale and

pushes them to think about alternatives to capitalism. And we've seen this with tons of young people, especially climate activists who, as Noah said, have grown up in very anti-communist and who maybe still shrink away from talk of socialism and certainly communism, but de-growth kind of allows them, gives them permission to think about another world. And in fact, a good friend and comrade once told me that de-growth is a gateway drug to communism and provided the right Marxist political education. If you can intervene at the right time, this can totally be true, which, is, quite frankly, why I think our work is pretty important.

Absolutely, yeah. It's a fascinating sort of discourse, and, you know, I don't want to completely dismiss people who have genuine critiques of the movement. I think any robust and meaningful discussion will have to include dissenting voices or people that have a certain level of skepticism, but I think the discourse overall is certainly worthwhile, and certainly those critics need to be acting in good faith, which I assume, you know, some of them certainly are this idea of having less is is a bit of a misnomer though because it's not an overall having less it's it's a having less and having more of some things right you have less of maybe the gadgets of the superfluous commodities of the little trinkets and plastic nonsense that

we fill our lives with um but there's more in the sense of we could have more free time we could have more community we could have more meaning and purpose you know i don't need a $120 pair of shoes and two laptops and a MacBook and a PC and a smartphone and a three, you know, 70 inch screen TVs in my house. Those are nice, but those are little, those are bobbles. Those are little toys and what is more meaningfully, and I think what humans really want because it's certain that consumption does not bring happiness, consumption does not bring fulfillment, people want something deeper.

And the problem with desiring things is that desiring never stops. If you desire money, no money is enough. In fact, the getting of money increases the desire for more. If you desire fame and recognition, no amount of fame and recognition is whole enough or validating enough, you'll always be seeking more. And there's a way in which human beings, because of our alienation, because of our lack, we desire, desire, desire, and consumption is one of the main ways that society says, try and fill this hole in your soul, this whole where community,

and meaning and ritual and communion and oneness should be that's not there and it's never going to be there in this society so buy shit and like people we treat it as a as a as a as a drug people are uncomfortable or have uncomfortable feelings what do we do we consume we go to the fridge or we open up the amazon app and there's a short-term relief that we get from just a very act of consumption and and i think looking deep in our own selves our own desiring and seeing the machinations and the mechanisms of desire, seeing how we use consumption to fill moments of discomfort as subtle as they may be,

and trying to work against that innate impulse for more, more, more, realizing that no matter how much you get, it will never be enough. And so it's actually a false promise. Desire is sort of a false promise because there's this implicit idea that the more you get, whatever that is, the more validation, the more friends, the more sex, the more money, the more status, the more things, that somewhere you're going to get just enough where you're finally happy. And that day never fucking comes. And it never will come. And there's a

collective dimension to this, which you spoke to beautifully and movingly. And there's a personal element of this where we have to look inside of ourselves and see how that mechanism, how that hamster wheel operates within ourselves. And I think part of growing up is not only addressing the political, the external, the global dimensions of these problems, but growing up also is going to entail a psychological and emotional development of human beings in this process where we aren't infantilized by our perpetual need to consume and get more and more, but we actually find deeper meaning and deeper union in things that aren't commodities, that aren't things to be consumed but are actually experiences to have, relationships to build,

There's something much more meaningful, enduring, and ultimately human about pursuing a life of that type than the type that we're given in capitalist society. It can be fun, right? But it's an empty fun. It's like eating candy at Halloween. Sure, the first few pieces of candy tastes great, you know, but by the time you're eating, you know, you're into your fifth handful of Snickers bars, it starts to hurt. And there's something pathological about that collectively and individually that I think is worth thinking deeply about as. as just human beings in this planet, but precisely at this moment. But yeah, very well said, and I would love to have Jason or Kai on.

I think we've even talked about it in emails about finally getting them on where I've left to have even a more robust discussion about their ideas around this subject, because I do find it fascinating. But we're almost at the two-hour mark, and I've absolutely loved this conversation. This is such an honor and a pleasure to have all of you on, and I deeply appreciate your willingness to be generous with your time as well as your knowledge, and I just know for fact that many listeners will find this conversation inspiring and edifying in all the right ways. But as a way to end this conversation, I was wondering if there is any recommendations

or even general advice that you might offer to people out there who would like to get involved in this sort of struggle in organizing and then ultimately where listeners can find you in climate vanguard online. Yeah, we've also had such an amazing time, Brett, and thanks for bringing us on the podcast. As Jack said, it's been an amazing source of political education for our ourselves, and it's had a huge impact on the general trajectory of behind vanguard. So we're deeply indebted to the service that you provide to all movements and people who are struggling for a new world. In terms of your question, I think I really operate on this basis of pessimism of the

intellect and optimism of the will. As I laid out, and we did throughout the podcast, we are certainly in a moment of crisis. but also there are opportunities for us to change the general trajectory of things. And for me and I think the other camarader as a client vanguard, that really comes down to two principles. The first is transforming ourselves and our communities through practice. And that can be as simple as just attending a protest for the first time. Many people aren't that political and are even kind of scared of going around to the streets, and that's pretty understandable.

But if you take that first step in each joint protest or a mass rally, you can really build confidence and in turn build the capacities that will sustain other forms of struggle, which could include joining an organization and ultimately pushing a movement in the direction that we just outlined in terms of reviving party-esque forms of organization and in general pushing for an eco-socialist trajectory. I guess also paired with just engaging in political practice, also taking the time to reflect. That can be as simple as reading a book or an article or listening to a podcast, really engaging in some form of political study to sharpen our strategies and tactics so that when we repeat that political practice, we can be even stronger and more effective. And I think that cycle is so important for healthy generative movements. And I guess last day, he's just with Lenin, we can ignore land, of course, is his famous conception of history is not linear, but it moves and leaps and ruptures. just as ecological breakdown is accelerating, I think also social change does not follow up a linear trajectory in that there are ruptures that will emerge,

but it's up to us to organize and take advantage of them and to ensure that we push our system in a direction where we can secure a livable future for everyone. Yeah, and then just picking up on the final bit that you asked about Brett in terms of where our listeners can find us, I mean, our website, cornetvanguard.org, where you can sign up to our newsletter, where we notify folks of updates and also, right, like bits of political analysis and also

of any sort of publications or events that we'll be running. Otherwise, on social media, we're on Instagram, on X and TikTok. And if you want to get in touch with us directly, you can just DM us on social media or our emails are available to find on our website as well. So, yeah. Beautiful. And I will make sure, of course, to link to those in the show notes so people can easily and quickly find the organization and get the necessary information needed.

And as a very closing statement on my end, and feel free if any of you have anything else to say to round this out. But my one recommendation or piece of advice would be to people to go out and spend time in nature. You know, step away from the digital dopamine casino that we are constantly immersed in, take your headphones out, put your phone on silent, leave it in the car, go on a hike, go camping by yourself, go meditate in the woods, go out and be still and silent in the natural world. And that might sound hippie-dippy or weird or whatever, but there is a deep connection that you can consciously foster by spending alone time out in the natural world to get

into rhythm with its rhythms, to see its nature, to come across the beauty of flowers you've never seen, to watch animals, you know, live their lives around you, what you can't help but foster in that context is a deep love for the natural world and a deepening union that you can viscerally feel with the natural world. And this is regenerative mentally, emotionally, and politically. Because not only is there a mental and emotional break from the chaos of the spectacle and the constant clitoscopic entertainment that's at our every beck and call, but there's a political motivation that arises within you when you spend time in these places and love them. Learn to love them, the plants and the animals, and to see yourself as one with

them, that I think is regenerative in the sense that it creates the conditions emotionally, mentally, and politically for long-term political and social engagement. You know, not just these quick iterations of, I'm going to get involved in this protest, and then people kind of burn out very quickly. They try to do too much too quickly. But to have that deep connection ensures that you have a lifelong love and respect for the natural world, which naturally and inevitably propels you forward into political and social struggle, or at least has the real capability and capacity to do just that. So I would like people to think about that as well. But this has been the climate vanguard. Thank you so much, all three of you for not only coming on the show,

but for your real political work and your inspiration. And I hope, Listen to this, learn something and are inspired to take action themselves. And, of course, you have an open invite anytime you want to come back on Rev Left for any reason whatsoever. You always have an invite to come back. We live in the air of purpose. We live in the air of youth. When the wise man, I'm just a poor boy begging for truth. We live in the air of purpose.

We live in the air of youth. The wise man's worthless, I'm just a poor boy being for truth. So, baby, you say that with me, oh, come on, you taking what you wanted for me, ah. You kept it down on my knees for so long. A victim of your broken belief. Ah, ha. Now there's a crack in the surface, The dark is seen through We live in the land of the many We live in the grip of the few

There's a poor girl crying for justice There's a rich man playing the fool All the wise man long for purpose And for all just looking to you baby you're staying in with me oh come on you taking what you wanted for me ah you kept me down on my knees for so long i've been to the market broken in me oh oh come on come on come on you got it Come on, yeah, come on, come on, come on, you got it. Come on, come on, come on, come on, we're in.

We're in the air of purpose. We live in the air of here. On the wild, that's one that's one of us. I'm just a poor boy, baby, and for you're trying to be. We're in the air in the air of purpose. We live in the air of here. The wise man's warning to It's nice

I'm just a poor boy They're in the truth They want it So baby You stay there with me Oh come on You taking what you wanted for me

Ah You kept me Down on my knees For so long A victim of your broken really Ah So baby

Staying with me Oh, come on You take it What you wanted from me Ah You kept me Down on my knees For so long

A victim of your broken Billy Ah Oh Come on, come on You got it Come on, come on, come on Come on, come on

You know, we want to be able to be, you got it. And more, the more, the more, the more we want to be. Thank you.