The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - 2000-Watt Society: The Realities of Living a Low(er) Energy Lifestyle with Peter Strack

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Caught between increasing energy prices and rising carbon emissions, the idea of reducing our energy consumption is a practical and forward-looking necessity. Yet, with communities in the United States averaging ten thousand watts per year - with other Western countries close behind - our excessive energy consumption is built into both our physical and cultural infrastructure. How much energy do we truly need to lead fulfilling lives, and what changes would be necessary in our neighborhoods and cities to achieve that? In today's discussion, Nate is joined by Peter Strack, a French researcher and author, to explore the concept of 2000-Watt Societies—innovative models that aim to balance reduced energy consumption with the well-being of the people who live there. Peter explains the historical context of energy consumption and origins of lower-energy communities, as well as the necessary changes in infrastructure, social dynamics, and personal habits to reduce energy consumption while sustaining a lifestyle that is fulfilling and caring for residents.  How can building relationships based on trust and reciprocity within our communities enhance resilience and help reduce energy consumption? What models already exist for communal infrastructure and sharing the labor needed for maintenance and care work? Finally, how could the 2000-Watt Society offer a more comfortable, connected way of living for more people – perhaps even more than high-energy Western lifestyles – while staying within our environmental and resource constraints?   About Peter Strack: Peter Strack worked for 40 years in industrial research and engineering at MAHR France. After retiring, he became aware of the environmental crises facing our planet and the energy constraints limiting popular solutions. He went on to research, study, and advocate for 2000-watt neighborhoods, including authoring a book titled Practically Sustainable: 2000 watt eco-neighborhoods - a model for a sustainable lifestyle towards a post-oil democratic society (which is currently only available in French). The 2000-watt neighborhoods offer a different, arguably more desirable, way of living that drastically reduces the power demands of the people living there compared to their average counterparts in industrial societies. Learn more about Peter's research on 2000-watt societies on his website. (Conversation recorded on December 17th, 2024)   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future   Join our Substack newsletter   Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners  

Most people are just not aware about the problem of energy. Think what could happen if energy prices double or triple. How are you prepared? Then try to create relationships in your neighborhood, relationships of trust. Because before you can even start thinking about sharing stuff, you have to have a relationship with a neighbor. So it really takes a village. You're listening to the great simplification.

I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification. Today I'm joined by Peter Strach to discuss the logistics and possibilities of 2,000-watt neighborhoods. Peter Strach worked for over 40 years in industrial research, but after becoming aware of the environmental and economic crises facing our planet, he began studying and advocating

for 2,000-watt neighborhoods, about which he wrote a book, Practically Durable, which is currently only available in French. The 2,000-watt neighborhoods offer a different, arguably more desirable way of living that drastically reduces the power demands of the people living there compared to their average counterparts in industrial societies. For reference, the average person in the United States uses 10,000 watts, not 2,000. In this conversation, Peter shares some stories about how successful, low-energy communities throughout the last hundred or so years, particularly in Europe and the United States, it is my hope that models like these might act as inspiration for other pro-social humans around

the world who are wanting to live differently, but need some guidance and framing on where to start. If you enjoy and learn from this conversation with Peter, please consider sharing it with some other like-minded people in your networks, in your community. That's how we grow this podcast with people who are rolling up their sleeves, playing a role in the collective cultural transition. With that, please welcome Peter Strach. Peter, great to see you. Welcome to the show. Great to see you and thank you for an invitation. My first question of many is who is, who is?

the face of the man on the book behind you on the shelf? That's Jacques Elyle. It's a French economist and philosopher who had about 60 years ago already seen how our society might evolve in the wrong direction. He thinks a lot about technology already in the 60s. and he said our society gives too much importance to technology and does never check really whether this technology does have some social implications that in the end we may not like.

So we just do what's doable and what's profitable without too much thinking. And so he wrote about 50 books and many of them are translated into English. Okay. Thank you for that. So this conversation could go multiple directions because I know you have a wide and deep understanding of many aspects of the great simplification, the human predicament, based on the emails that you and I have exchanged over the years. But I would today like to focus on a particular interest of yours and expertise of yours, which is the concept. of a 2000-watt society. So let's just dive in.

What is a 2,000-watt society and then why 2,000 watts specifically? So 2,000-watt society was in the beginning developed by the Swiss Research University from Zurich. And they had to find something that can be communicated easily. So give it a round number and that will help.

But in the origin, they were inspired by the work of a Brazilian, Jose Goldenberg, who wrote a paper which is called, which you still find in the internet, basic needs and much more with one kilowatt per capita. He wrote that in 1985. And he wanted to know how does it come that some people that seem poor are happy and some people that are rich are not. And of course, some poor people are really unhappy. So he wanted to know, is there any correlation between energy and happiness?

And that's his work. And he found out in Brazil, 1985, that if people can go up to 1,000 watts, of permanent average energy consumption, that would mean 1,000 watt every single hour, every day. That means per day that would make 24 hours times 1,000 watt or 1 kilowatt. That would make 24 kilowatt hours per day. And that makes maybe something like 8,000 kilowatt hours per year. And that's the, he found out that the limit of where people get happier if they can increase their energy consumption, that limit is around 1,000 watt of permanent average energy

consumption. And he found out that if they can go beyond thousand, they don't really get happier. And that's the thing that he published. And then the Swiss Research University, that's the university, by the way, where Einstein was a teacher and was also a student, just to give you an idea. Is that ATH? Yeah, ATH. Yeah. So they started to look at his work

and then I thought now Switzerland is a colder place with a lot of mountains we may need more energy just to keep warm and so they didn't want to get into some kind of number so they said

we would need 2,000 watt in Switzerland to get the same result and so they didn't really think very much about local 2,000 watt they thought as much about how could the whole world be happy. How much energy would we need in average for every human being on the planet?

Because they knew very well that if you have some places that need a lot of energy, all other nations will want to have the same kind of lifestyle. And so they tried to figure out where is the limit of what everybody could make happy. So they had very much in their mind thinking about energy justice. And then of course they looked also how would that look like in Switzerland. But their

global framework of thinking is how would it look for the whole world? And though they came up with this is 2,000 watt for Switzerland and for Europe. That was the beginning that started about, the thinking started in 1995

and the whole concept was published and about in the year 2000 now in Switzerland that has become quite a reference it's it's known even though most people won't really understand what it means for their practical life but they know that it exists that they know that it's one of the goals of the Swiss government I really care about this topic everything you said makes sense and of course it's not the I mean there's a differentiation between wants and needs. And I think our needs could easily be met in a 2,000 watt society.

It's the social marketing carrot of social primates where we see others have 10,000 watts. And then you have some advertising and you aspire to that. So a big part of the equation, which I expect we'll talk about later in this interview, is the cultural and social aspect. But let's stick with the numbers for the most. moment. So 1,000 watts was the origin in Brazil, double it because you're in a colder place. How much energy is used on average? And of course, there's a distinction between average and median in Switzerland, in Europe, in the United States, and in the world, do you know,

relative to the 2000? It's somewhat difficult to say that because if you look just as the government numbers, they usually exclude the gray energy that you import and export through all the products that you import and export. And in Switzerland, that is a huge difference. So on the website of the Swiss government, you can find the exact numbers, but for example, under French government, you couldn't.

That doesn't work. They only look at their own energy inside the country, and they don't see that if you export luxury goods, Hermes bags and you import steel then you both may have 20,000 euros for one thing and for the other thing

but the energy that's behind these 20,000 euros is very different. In Switzerland they say it's about 6,000 if you only look at the Swiss. And if you look at the imported energy, it's more like 8,000. Okay, and Europe

countrywide? And now the official number that the Swiss government publishing is 7,000. Because there were two theories and two studies that were

controversial and they didn't want to take position for one study or another one. They said, just go into the middle. Then we have no political problems.

So the official number in Switzerland is 7,000. And Europe? Europe depends. Germany is about the same. It's a little bit lower. But basically, you could look at GDP that correlates very much to GDP.

So in France, the number is about 5,500. If you don't look at the gray energy that we import. I looked at the numbers, I don't have them all in my head now, but I looked at the numbers on my website. You can find an Excel file where you can see everything. And it correlates very much to GDP, with the precision of about 5%. And the U.S. is around 10,000 watts, correct?

Yes, yeah. And what is the global average? There's no gray in the import export because it should net out in the world. What is the world average? Yeah, now it's a little bit over 2000. It's closer to 3,000. When ETH started to publish their numbers, the average global energy was 2002. So I think in the year 1999, 1999, it was 2000.

So at that point, it wasn't some radical shrinkage. they were discussing. It was more of a distribution for, you know, equality and a good, you know, meaning of life like Jason Hickel is talking about these days. But now we're above that and some countries are substantially above that. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, they thought it wouldn't really be a big problem for the whole world. Just if we stay there, of course, the Indians and the Chinese, they would like to increase.

So if they increase, we would have to decrease. Yeah. But how do you do that in a democracy? So that's the really big point. They were thinking about that too. How do you do that in a democracy is if you have really wise informed people who care about the future? I speculate. Okay. So as you are aware, because you follow this podcast, oftentimes when we discuss the energy transition in our culture, in the media, in the popular websites and the news, the discussion is mostly around the supply side, changing hydrocarbon-based energy to devices that harness the sun and the wind, so-called renewables. Yet your proposal and what you've become a scholar and a practitioner of for the 2,000-watt society, very specifically targets how we change our demand for energy.

with some attention to what type of energy, but mostly about changing our demand. So why take that approach, Peter? I maybe I can give some personal information. When we became grandparents about six years ago, all of a sudden my emotional horizon moved to the year 2100, because you will have grandchildren that probably will be still alive.

And so I really started to get interested into how could their life look like? Because I knew already that we are probably running into problems during this century because I read when I was a teenager, I read the book from Meadows about the limits of growth. And so I was having all these curbs in my head, all my life. So I really wanted to know. And then I looked at what was published so far. on this subject and I found so many contradictory publications and papers that I said, how do I find out?

So we started together with one of my sons and one of our daughters, both our engineers, in different domains, we started to convert all industrial processes, all machines that use fossil energy, convert them to electricity. So because the yield isn't the same, because in fossil energy you have primary, energy and if you have an electric motor you have a useful energy so we tried to convert most of those processes and found out about to replace all the 137,000 terawatt hours of primary fossil energy we would need about 100,000 terawatt hours of electricity and that's the conclusion we came to about early in 2020

And then, of course, the next question to us was how much would it cost to produce 100,000 terawatt hours of electricity? And I found then there was a very interesting website for I think it belongs to the American government, national renewable energy something website. they published an exalt table that they expected the development of the cost to produce energy, electrical energy by solar panels or by wind turbines or by nuclear. So they looked at how would they expect the cost to develop until 2050? So we took an average of those more optimistic estimations and found out that the cost, cost, even if we don't calculate very much for interseasonal storage, would just be incredible. We came up with about the number of 250,000 billions.

That's not possible. What would be possible? So I looked at the entire energy sector in Europe. How much do we invest all energy companies, including fossil fuel companies like British Vitrorym and Total and all the others? Then we multiplied that number by three and found out. that we end up by about 2,000-watt

society. So that's the origin of how we came to this conclusion. And then I was really surprised that the French society that is responsible and owns the whole transmission lines

within France for electricity. They published a report also, maybe something like 2018 or so. for how should the energy sector in France look like by 2050? And they published the curve. No, it's not among those that I proposed you.

And they ended up with a certain amount of terawatt hours. I used that number divided by the number of people in France and divided it by the number of hours in a year. And then we came to 2,000 watt. And then, of course, the next thing we were looking at, Now, how would life look like with 2,000 watt? Because that's the most important question that most people want to know. And then I go to know these 2,000-watt neighborhoods.

That's how we developed the whole thinking. How many of such neighborhoods are there? In Switzerland, there may be something like 50. Some are bigger and some are smaller. The biggest one, I think, is called Green City in Zurich. It has about 300,000 inhabitants and offers the same number of jobs, about 3,000 jobs, because they think they have to do things local as much as possible. So do people just live there and it happens they use 2,000 watts,

or do they consciously, proudly live there because they want to use less energy and make a statement about their values and care about the future and conservation and such? They consume much more than 2,000 watt. Because I just looked at the infrastructure in Zurich, in the county of Zurich, infrastructure, gray energy. Look, if you have to invest gray energy and, I would say, mortage it to 60 years or something. And then look at the public administration, public transport, hospitals, army, everything. And they only in Zurich, whatever is from the government and infrastructure needs already 1,300 watt.

So it's impossible to go to 2,000 watt in the neighborhood. So most of the neighborhoods are much above that. But basically, if you want to move into that neighborhood, you agree that you would want to work towards that goal. So there's definitely, you can't just, because everything is so connected within a city, within a country, within a continent, within the world, there's a fixed versus marginal component of the energy usage, right? I mean, you could live in, but what about like the military and, you know, some of the macro

things that the Swiss government spends and then you divide that expenditure by the number of people, even the people living in those 2,000 watt societies bear some of the energetic cost of the, you know, the government level utilities that support the country, yes? Yes, of course. That's why I say today, 2,000-watt, that's not possible. And my friend, you know, I talked to you about Matthias Brovshd, who he was working for the ETH, and he was also a founder of one of the most advanced 2,000-W neighborhoods. he said that he tried to figure out how they would have to live

and that Swiss would never be willing to do that kind of lifestyle. Well, never say never. But I would like to come to some other very, very old experience, which I find very interesting too. Maybe you can look at picture two, family stairs. That was 1860. and there was a man who founded a company that makes stove, caused iron stoves.

And he earned a lot of money. And then he saw his workers often being drunk, often being sick, very often being tired. And he thought, how would we find a way of living so that my workers could have the same comfort as the rich people in Paris? that was his goal find out how we could do it because he

came himself from a rather poor family he wanted to have his workers a better life and then he founded these families there there was room for 1,500 workers and maybe 200 to 200

technicians and he then said poor people have there was no transport. There were no cars, no bicycles. They had to carry

coal or wood and food and everything for transport. It was complicated. He said, we have to find a place where they live together and share most of the things that we can share and they built that house. These buildings.

And you can see to the left there is a glass roof he thought in the north of France it's often cold weather or rainy weather so the children they want to play outside

let's put a glass roof on it and they then he made old apartments there and the workers could rent them at the same price that they could rent the small house outside and they had central heating

and they had a shop where they can buy groceries groceries, they had a school because he said if mothers have small children, they even had a daycare and it was all organized by the workers themselves or their wives. He said we could never invite

a group of people playing theater but it would be interesting if the boys and girls of these workers could learn to play theater themselves so he built into these complex a small theater they could have gardening and everything really was put together what was able to put together

and they had a really much more comfortable life after that and when new people got into that building they very quickly adapted to the mentality of the people that were already living there so people that are problems

with being drunk all over a sudden except of course there are always exceptions but most of the people changed their lifestyle they brought their children to the school because in France there was no public schools at that time in 1860 they brought the children to school

or do daycare if the mother wanted to just do some grocery outside buildings she could bring the children to the daycare and pick them up when she comes back so everything was free and they shared a lot of things They had a laundry room together, they had a workshop together. They had spent many things doing together and everything was self-organized.

You find a book with all the details, even the financial details on the French National Library. It's free as a PDF file. You can look because the man who, the owner of the company and of this neighborhood, he published even the numbers to see that the shop where they can buy, all their groceries and their food. Does it finance itself? The daycare, how does it finance? How do we finance a teacher?

So we spend everything and so on. And I thought they put into practice the same what the 2000 neighborhoods do. Except when was this? What years was that in a... 1860. Yeah, so they weren't remotely using 2,000 watts. No.

Yeah. No. But all of a sudden, you had these workers that had almost the same quality of life like the, we say in France, a bourgeoisie in Paris, because the rich people could afford a girl to look after the children. The poor worker couldn't.

But if they have a common day care, they would have the same comfort. I'm very interested in all this. So let's get back to the modern day, Peter. You said there's 50 such communities in Switzerland, give or take. and that there's not one, one model. There are multiple ways of getting to 2,000 watts. Yeah. So walk me through, if you walk to one of these communities,

you said Green City is one that has 300,000 people. No, no, 3,000 people. Oh, 3,000 people. 3,000. Okay. And 3,000 jobs too. Tell me how that place or any other of the 50 communities that you're aware of, like if you walked into it, an observer would notice things that are quite

different than a regular 7,000-watt Swiss suburb or city. Like, what would you notice? I studied the one where most papers write, the ETH, were published. So I can tell you much more about that. It's the one that I visited to several times. I visited other ones. I met the managers of these neighborhoods. So I don't have all the detailed data about all these 50 neighborhoods.

I just studied really precisely two of them. Great. And I also know the people because some of them were friends. I think if you move through Zurich, you probably wouldn't see any difference, except that you always find people outside that do something. You move at a weekdays, you go to the neighbourhood and see two young men

playing ping pong outside. Usually you wouldn't see that maybe except during vacations. But there is, then they have restaurants. There are always people in those restaurants from the neighborhood. But otherwise you probably,

yeah, they don't have many cars because in that, neighborhood, which is called, translated into English, more than just housing. That's the name of the neighborhood. You probably wouldn't see except that they have a bunch of electric cars, small electric cars outside on the parking, no other cars. And of course, that there is always people around and there is some social life,

more social life that you would expect in other neighborhoods. We may first have a look at the total energy consumption, picture number four. Here you can see the Swiss average and the neighborhood, which is called Hunziker, or which is also called more than just living. And the gray energy, that neighborhood is about 40% lower. That's also because they need much less infrastructure. I calculated infrastructure into that thing because they'll have much less transport,

they have much less traffic on the roads, and of course also their buildings are designed to last long and have a relatively slow, low garden footprint. Then you look at food. They have almost the same food habits as the rest of Swiss, because the people are not selected by their opinions. because one of the goals of these neighborhoods is to represent the rest of the city.

So if the Zurich has about almost 40% of people that were born abroad outside Switzerland, the neighborhood tries to have the same percentage. If you have a lot of people that have a lot of diplomas and other people don't, they like to represent the city because the goal of that neighborhood is to show to the rest of the whole city,

how life could be like. So people don't, people live there because they enjoy living there and this lifestyle, but some of it is a statement and a message to the rest of the city, like the people that live in the 3,000 people you mentioned earlier, like they want to show that this is possible to others. That's part of the reason for doing it. For some people, yes, for others not. But they all, if you want to go and live there,

then you have to agree that you theoretically work for this goal. But there's no control, no check. They think in a democracy you can't put social pressure on people to achieve a goal because that would never work on the whole nation. So if these neighborhoods have to be an example

for the whole nation, you have to use the same principles. Let people free, but still have a goal. They have to see how it could be different. For example, mobility. They share common electric cars. That's the only thing that is really prohibited. You can't have your private car in some of these neighborhoods. Except if you are either handicapped or you need it for your job.

Then you have to fill in a forum to get an exception. But otherwise, people use the cars that belong to the neighborhood, to do the cooperative to the neighborhood and they have an app on the phone so it's very easy you can rent the car and then the car with the neighborhood app

and you use the cars but it sounds like for most things you wouldn't need a private car in fact if you're living in a city it's probably a pain to have a car and parking and traffic and all that yeah and Zurich has such

huge infrastructure with public transportation, you really don't need a car. Of course, this would be a different structure in Minnesota. This graph number four, it looks like the big difference is the building. The building, they are really pilot buildings. Now it's a Swiss standard. It has become Swiss standard. You can't have a new building if they need too much energy. I think it's somewhat limited to 15 kilowatt.

kilowatt hours of heating per square meter per year, heating and cooling, everything together. The standard that these 2,000-not neighborhoods put into practice has become almost standard now. So that's really very, very little. The building is really optimized. In fact, on my website, I publish a book, how to make that kind of buildings.

And one of the points is that the building is not, to be more than 10% more expensive than Swiss average in the beginning. So they had to do some real effort to have a very low energy building without too much cost. So how much of the movement towards a 2,000-watt society is about the infrastructure and the policies in a city? and how much is a change in lifestyle and a mindset of the individuals living in that city or society? I looked at that, not from the Swiss point of view, because Switzerland is such a rich country, which that would be somewhat unprecise. And I couldn't talk to it in my lectures in France.

That may not sound very convincing. But I looked at the Excel table that was published by the International Energy Agency. how to have a decarbonized economy. And they listed all the details of how many things we would have to do. And if I analyze these details, they came to the conclusion that one third can be done by the individual people. One third can only be done by the economy and the government. And one third can only be done if those two work together. Oh, there's a synergy for.

Yeah. Interesting. So let me ask you this. Let's say that lots of people would like to live this way. How much is the sunk cost of our existing infrastructure and institutions and metabolism and everything? How much is the sunk cost a barrier? for people in the United States or people in Europe or people in Australia to name a few moving to a 2000 watt society. For instance, if we had a certain amount of land and X amount of resources and 10,000 people, it seems it would be easy to build a 2,000 watt society versus if we had 10,000 people that were already living in a society that was using 7,000 watts, it would be more.

very difficult to transition there. So how much is the sunk cost of our existing circumstances a barrier to what you're working towards? I think it's really necessary that those that can, those that have the means that they consume less and invest more. Just invest in their houses, insulating their houses. The French government does give. some help for people that want to improve the insulation of their houses.

A friend of mine insulated his house and he cut his heating costs by five. One of our neighbors did some insulation and some work changed windows too. He caught his heating costs by five too. And he now, his house has become even a reference to our local town. So part of the move to a 2,000 watt society is just about efficiency at the micro level. Yeah, I think so. If you look at

the building on the chart this 2,000-1 neighborhood, I think that makes a big difference. And then of course, lifestyle, the richer you are, if you compare poor people to rich people, the difference is not how much bread they eat.

That may be the same. The difference is mostly that rich people, they travel much more. So, for example, when I move to go to my grandchildren in Toulouse, I take the plane. If I want to see my son in the U.S., that increases my footprint terribly. So I think a lot of it is by traveling. So it's difficult to say in a 2000-od society probably we just can't travel that much anymore. not long distance travel.

So that's not compatible. Paint a picture for me. The average person in the United States, granted, there's a wide disparity, uses 10,000 watts continuously, which is 100, 100 watt light bulbs turned on 24-7. You just said the average person in Switzerland is 7,000, and I think in Europe it's closer to

5 or 6,000. How would those average people lives differ from someone living in a 2,000 watt society in the communities you've tested. Maybe just walk us through a day in the life of someone in a 2,000 watt society and how that differs from the average person outside of it. I think a very interesting way to measure it is how much money do you need to live there. And I asked the people that live in those 2,000-watt neighborhoods, Some of them have good diplomas.

They could make 10,000 euros a month. Said, how do you, if you spend your 10,000 dollars a month, you never get to 2,000 watt. And then the managers told me they don't know of any person in such a neighborhood that works full time. They just can't afford to work full time. Otherwise, they make too much money. I don't understand. Make too much money. Why wouldn't they just save the money then?

Yeah, but the people they say, I want to have more free time. I don't want to make that much money. So the social living experience, the wealth you get from that social and human capital is experienced as such a windfall and such a benefit that people choose to experience that rather than make more money. Yes, they really like, I could tell you a little bit about things, what they do. But the managers told me they don't know of any single person that works full-time, except if they have poor income jobs.

So that's at one point. Because when they're working part-time, then what do they do with the rest of the time? For example, one of those neighborhoods, they do. they do have their own vegetable garden. And they have created a cooperative company where people from the neighborhood can become members and then they can work with professional vegetable gardeners in that big cooperative that does gardening

and produces vegetables for many people. So if you want to have organic vegetables the whole year, you've got to work there in that garden neighborhood or garden cooperative for at least five days a year. That's just one thing, for example. Then you get to a good price, you get organic vegetables the whole year. that are shipped directly to the neighborhood. So don't even have to go out of your neighborhood to get your organic vegetables.

But you have to work there for at least five days a year. I mean, I work in my garden because I enjoy it anyways. But if I choose to not make extra money because I don't have, I don't want to spend it on anything, I have to be doing something very interesting with my time. What do they have like ping pong tournaments and like, festivals? I mean, what are they doing that really makes them happy to choose to not to work extra? So I don't know that many people about their daily life. So many people, they work still four days a week.

So they don't have that much more spare time. But Matias Brobtsch, for example, he told me that he and his wife together just work four days a week together, both of them. And otherwise they like to spend time with their children. They like to work to create new 2,000-1 neighborhoods. He was also president of the City Council of Zurich for a year, where he don't make money with. That's an awful lot of work. And other things, there were men that do like small toy toys. trains.

Can you imagine model 12 trains? I remember when I was a boy, I had a small train like this. Whenever my mother

wanted to have the Wackham cleaner, I always had to unmount everything and remount and that's all troubles and so they thought

rather than everybody having his own train, let's ask the cooperative that we couldn't have a big room and make a

perfect huge train together. So you have boys and retired men like me. Some of them engineers, some of them carpenters, or they don't know what. And they are building a big train.

So the boys they come there, they learn how to work with wood, with metal, with electronics, how to program remote control for the locomotives or how you say that the trains, they do learn all kind of things. And they might don't have to invest into a personal toy train in each family.

They have learned something. They have much more. And that's just one thing. I have so many questions. So there's obviously an economy of scale with a 2,000 watt society. It's not like in Montana someone could say, I'm going to live with 2,000 watts. I mean, they could, of course. But there's an economy of scale with, like you said, the parents and the children, they share the, uh, the endeavor of building and maintaining and playing with a toy train or they share a electric car to go do errands and such.

So there is a, a threshold of a number of humans, dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands that's needed to get the maximum effect of the sharing and the sharing and the, efficiency from the buildings, etc. Yes? Yes, but this threshold is relatively low. Okay. I maybe some one point more about these 2,000 one neighborhood that has a train. They also have a sauna, a sauna on their rooftop. So imagine you have people that don't have much income, maybe single mothers, low income,

they can go up to the sauna. After a sauna with their friends, they can take a beer below a bergola and have a view on the whole city of Zurich. Imagine someone, a very rich person in Zurich, he doesn't have that. He doesn't have a sauna in his neighborhood. He doesn't take a beer below a bergola

and have a beautiful view over the whole city. He may have a Rolls-Royce in his garage, but he doesn't have that. So there's been time taking a beer, below the bergola after a sauna. I mean, that's desirable, isn't it? And that's the point. It's got to be desirable. I visited smaller ones with just three families.

And then I visited the other ones. They had 17 families, one with 27 families. And I think the one in Toulouse, I visited there. There were 17 families or households. And they shared a lot of things. They even pushed it a little bit further than those in Switzerland. Because when these families decided to make a building together, they decided to have the building together.

They sold their houses. Those that did have a house, they sold it, they made a building together. And they decided to have some common rooms. And they, of course, they don't have that many common rooms. They wouldn't have a room for a small train with 17. families you couldn't. But they do still have a bergola on the rooftop and they put even equipment like the equipment you need to have a cheese fondue or raclette or other equipment, just small electronic equipment. They had privately, some of them did that anyway, they put that

into a room and so whoever wants to use them, he uses them, cleans them, puts them back into the room. So I asked a poor lady that a single lady that showed me through the neighborhood and she was a freelance. So sometimes she had really low income. Such a low income that probably, she was

already at the 2000-wap level. And yet, she could invite her friends, take all the equipment she needs from the common room, go on the rooftop, have a barbecue, or have something else below Barakala with a view on Toulouse, below poverty level. Yeah.

There's so much here. And by the way, this is your story and I want you to keep talking about it. But there's so much low-hanging fruit here. Not that I'm intentionally trying to live in a 2000-watt society, but the magnitude of things that can be shared is almost limitless. So I have a friend who listens to the podcast. Mike, if you're watching this, I'm going to talk about you. He lives about a half a mile away.

And we decided that between the two of us, we only need one log splitter. So we share the log splitter to split the logs for a fireplace. We also just yesterday decided, why are we both growing the same things in our summer garden? So we're going to focus on garlic and tomatoes. And he's going to do the beans and kale and grow enough for many. And we're just going to like share. It's just the beginning. I mean, I could, you know, with more effort, really talk to people around the neighborhood and start doing those sorts of things.

So my next question for you is you just talked about the 17 family, you know, 2000 watt society in Toulouse. how does someone start that? Like have a couple of friends and say, we should try to live like this and we should try and share some things and then we'll pool our resources and build a sauna and eventually then they get to 17 families. I mean, do they buy some land somewhere?

How does it all come about? There are websites. If you have projects like this, there are websites and there are, I think there are about 400 projects like this in France today, projects. Some of them are about to work. Others, they are still trying to find the number of people and trying to find the finances.

Some want to build something new. Others, they just buy an old factory, a small factory, and they might transform that one into apartments or something. There's plenty, plenty of projects going on, and there's a website, you can say, I want to start something. I have already this or that. Who wants to work with me? And that's how today

people find each other. And very often, in fact, it starts with a group of friends. They think, okay, let's start something and see whether we can find some more people. I think this is going to be huge. And I actually don't even think that climate is going to be the driver.

I think economic hardship and a loss of meaning and the meaninglessness of our over-consumptive, disconnected modern society. I don't know about Switzerland. I'm just talking about the United States. A lot of people would like to live the life that you're describing, but they don't know how to start it.

So there's really two vectors, right? There's two, well, first of all, you have to want to do it. You have to be skilled and, you know, have the ability to contribute and do this. But then there's two vectors. One is, let's say there's a giant, like the state of Minnesota is unoccupied. This is a speculation, of course. And there's all this land and we have some resources. How would we build cities that would ascribe to this 2,000 watts ideal?

What would be the infrastructure? That's a separate question than we have Minneapolis and Rochester and Bimichester and Bumigi, how do we transform what we have now in the direction of a 2000 watt society? And it's not, I'm not even talking about top down. I'm talking about people within those communities choosing to move in this direction. And I know it's not moving from 10,000 to two. There's probably a stair step directionally. How can I think about that question?

What are your thoughts? I think in our family, the children grew up with some view that is not shared by every French family. So the social problem is I think it's rather difficult to start that kind of thing now because the economic pressure isn't big enough. Oh, it's coming now. It's coming. It's coming. I often tell people in France, just imagine that Trump decides. energy equals power.

I want power, therefore I stop exporting gas to liquid gas to Europe. It's possible. That's possible. We won't have the Russian gas, we won't have the American gas. We had that situation for a few months.

In 2022, yeah. Yeah. And the gas prices, they were multiplied by six. Now, imagine people having to heat their homes with the price that is six times higher. Just look at farmers if they have to have nitrogen fertilizer

that is so energy intensive to produce. I mean, you just need one of those single events without a huge catastrophe, and that would change a lot. But for the time being, it's very difficult because I have two and a half acres of land. We can build our own 2,000-od neighborhood, and we have really difficult time to find people interested to go to such a project.

You follow the podcast. You are a brilliant scientist and practitioner, because I've known your emails are very erudite and insightful, even though we haven't spoken too often. That's why I think this work is really important, because we're not going to get much warning before lots of people want to live this way, because they're going to be a force to by necessity. So we need to have education and information and pilots and blueprints and trials and experiments.

What are some recommendations you have to the people listening that kind of can see what you're describing? And it's somewhat even not if it's fully appealing. If it's somewhat appealing to them, what sorts of avenues for individuals listening? to start transitioning how they live now towards a 2,000-watt neighborhood. Do you have any suggestions? There are things for which you need money and things that you can do without money.

For example, the way you'll educate children can make them have a very low frustration level or have a higher frustration level. If they have a very low frustration level, they will, whatever they're, friends in school have or what they see on advertisement, they will need it.

Otherwise, they are frustrated and unhappy. If you can educate them that they have a higher frustration level, that's much easier. And I think one point of educating children to have a higher frustration level, get them away from the screens and go into nature.

You know, the screens, social media, they adapt to you. They adapt to you. and they always propose you what you like. Nature does not adapt to you. So I go with our grandchildren to our field, as we call it, and then try, we have plenty planted a lot of trees, and I cut the branches in such a way that they can climb a tree.

And then you tell them, okay, now you can climb the tree, but wait, I will go back to the house and pick you, some gloves. Otherwise, your hand will be all sticky because pine trees, they have some liquid that gets out and they have very stiff. So they have to wait for two or three minutes until I come back with the gloves. If they don't, the tree will not adapt to them. They will have to adapt to the tree because after that they have sticky hands and they have to go back to the bathroom and get all that thing out if they don't listen. So that's just one example of how you can educate children with nature so that they get a higher.

What do you mean by a high frustration level? That you can live very well, even if you don't get everything you want immediately. So you have a higher threshold of becoming frustrated and upset. Yeah, I see. Okay. That's a higher threshold. Maybe that's a better way to say it, a higher threshold before you get upset. Yeah. And I think that's important. I try to do that with our grandchildren. I tried with our children too.

And they sometimes told me, yes, we were really frustrated because we didn't have Nike shoes at high school. But now they are grateful for it. So let me ask you this. Of course, you haven't done this test. I'm just asking you to speculate. The people that are living in these 7, 17, 27 family, 2,000 watt societies or the green city, which has 3,000, would you hypothesize that these people have a higher threshold for frustration than the general population? And if so, is it because they're living there?

Or were they the type of the temperament had a high threshold for frustration? And therefore, they chose to live this way. Now, I think because the people are not selected by whether they would agree very much about a certain lifestyle, they are not selected by that. For example, in one neighborhood I showed you the graph, they have a waiting list of 400 families that want to go and live there. What? Really? Yeah. There are so many people that want to go and live there in that neighborhood with 1,500 inhabitants. So they have a huge waiting list.

They can choose people and they choose them in such a way that their neighborhood has the same kind of people that the city does. And then it's the way of living. You can't go, as I told you, in such a neighborhood, everything is organized in such a way that you have to get to know other people. you have a common laundry so you get to know other people you have to organize

they have for example a room if you have a child that wants to learn to play an music instrument like a trumpet a very loud music instrument so they have a room that is especially insulated against noise so the children can go into that room and play

their music instruments and they of course they will go there to learn their music instrument but they also get into contact with other children that don't have an instrument and so they get to know each other. Just because you have some infrastructure, a relationship between people changes.

I ask them, you have so many foreigners and Zurich is an awful place to be a foreigner if you have to learn language because the Swiss don't speak high German. They speak a dialect, which is quite different from German, so children coming from abroad,

they have often a difficult time at school. And so I ask the people at school, how many of those foreigners that live in your neighborhood are school dropouts? And they said, I don't know of any. Maybe there are, but we don't know of any. Because if you have children that play music together or they go to do some with the trains or whatever,

they're so many, I think they have 40 different work groups. You can learn to do cooking, vegan cooking, if you like. You can do gardening, woodwork, whatever. And so they know to each other. And if then you have a Swiss family and his neighbor has children, the parents don't speak German, and the child has problems with homework, they invite it to come to their home to do the homework. But that's something that's not organized,

just because they have common infrastructure that develops over the years. That was my next question is, What is the governance structure on these? I suppose with the seven families, it's pretty loose. But with 3,000 people, there's got to be some rules and standardized things. Yes. Yes. I prefer to take the example of the 1,500 neighborhood.

Because the 3,0001 is, there are many different organizations. Okay. That's not just one. But the one with 1,500 is just 1. cooperative as we call it. Does that exist in US, a cooperative? Yeah, that's... A financial structure?

Yeah. So you have to become member of the cooperative. You have to give some money, become like a shareholder of the cooperative, if you want to have an apartment. And that amount of money you have to get in, to give in order to get the apartment, depends on the size of your apartment

and to some extent to your income. But that money you will get it back once you get out of the neighborhood with maybe 1% yield of the capital or something. But so people are engaged financially. All those 500 families in this 1,500 family neighborhood they became shareholder of the cooperative.

And then they, of course, in the beginning, the founders, they created some rules about how the whole thing works. But then every decision is being taken by the assembly of all those people. So how do we get from here to there or some of us in that direction? You would send me a slide, slide number three. Can you walk us through those points? We've talked already about energy efficiency. That's one of the things I show at my lectures.

Energy efficiency, it's insulating your homes to change your mobility, either travel less or have an electric car that you do. charge with your own solar panels. So with food also, you have more efficiency if you become more like a vegetarian, for example. Then, of course, optimal use about everything that we already spoke a lot about, where you share infrastructure and machines and objects. But of course, that needs a relationship of trust.

That's something you have to work on. Yeah. Then growth of quality, that's one point. I always try to buy quality and then it lasts long. I have still a personal computer that is 17 years old. It works perfect. I just changed the battery and programmed everything so that the battery, when it's on the charger, it doesn't charge too much and everything. So it's 17 years old. It works perfect. The battery lasts for four hours. and it starts very quickly because I reinstalled Windows 7. So you can have things that last very long. I grew up in a neighborhood, in a cooperative neighborhood like this. We had a washing machine that we shared for eight families.

The washing machine lasted for more than 30 years. You know, one machine, one machine shared with eight families that use the same machine that runs all, every day, and it lasted for over 30 years. Yeah. And we had another machine that, how you call it, the laundry wrinkler or something, that lasted as long as to build. Building, they tore it down after 60 years.

That machine was still working. Yeah. I mean, this is something that's overlooked is the capacity of the built things that exist today and how long they could last. The material you need, if you have everything that lasts three or four times longer, the material you need, it's divided by three or four, almost, because top quality has a little bit more material, but not that much more. So what is your main message to the people tuning in? In the United States, we use 10,000 watts. You're advocating that we could use a fifth of that and have meaningful, health.

lives with all the things we need and better social relationships. Like what is your message? What do we need to do? How do we get there? I'll be a spokesperson for 2,000 watts society, Peter. Yeah. I think become energy aware. Most people are just not aware about the problem of energy.

And think what could happen if energy prices double or triple. How are you prepared? Then if you think about that, you will probably start to insulate your house because freezing in a house is really awful. You may be thinking about how can I reduce my mobility footprint. You consume less and invest more. That's one thing I would say to people that own house. And I think in the US you have many that do.

Then the next point, I think, is try to create relationships in your neighborhood, relationships of trust. I think that's very important because before you can even start thinking about sharing stuff, you have to have a relationship with a neighbor. That, I think, is important. And then the one point, those were really important to me, even at the age of 15, try, tried to get rid of the influence of all the advertisement and commercials. I think that's really, at the age of 15, I was asked, what would you change? And I said, I would prohibit all advertisements.

Now, at my age, I became a little more reasonable because you know that life is more complex that you think at the age of 15. But I would still think Get rid of the influence of advertisement Try to create your identity By other things Than looking at stuff That it's always thrown at you at old advertisement Stop thinking that people

That drive a big car They are worth more You know, just a small story In two of these 2,000 not neighborhoods, they shared common laundry. And as you can see on one of the pictures, not all people have the same notion of what's clean. What's clean.

Now, typically Swiss person, they may think clean is very different from an immigrant front that comes from I don't know where. So they had real problems. they had quarrels the community had the managers had to make a meeting and find out how can we

solve the problem now they didn't who did have the solution both neighborhoods that I visited and asked the same question they said they had both the same problem and they solved it both the same way even though they didn't know

talk to each other it wasn't the lawyers that found a better rules book it wasn't the engineers that found better machines

it wasn't psychologists that did a better job with people trying to solve problems it was the cleaning ladies

that proposed to go and clean the rooms so the solution it wasn't academia it was the cleaning

ladies that said okay to get our peace back into our neighborhood we go twice a week

and clean these rooms and then the neighborhood said okay we are going to pay you for that. So I often think about the book by Hillary Clinton.

It takes a village, which is an African saying. So it really takes a village. If you want to live well in such a place, you have to really know that we need each other. Just imagine if the garbage collectors don't do their work. Look, imagine New York, Manhattan, two months after the garbage collector stopped working. Or two days. Or two days.

Yeah. So we need everybody. And please tell you, make your cleaning lady and your garbage collector feel that they are important. That's your we may start to create relationships of trust. I had a clinic collector coming to our home, selling a calendar, and I gave him more money than what he would expect it. And then he was a little bit surprised. And I told him, you know, I really appreciate your work.

I really appreciate your work. He never heard that. And then I told him what I said. So we need everybody. I could tell you many stories often on that, just on these subjects. because you really need and become conscious if we need the mechanic, we need the cleaning lady,

we need the garbage collector, we need those repair roofs, and please show them that they are important. They have the same value, whether they drive an old car, small car, or a big SUV. Or a bicycle. They are just the same value.

Or a bicycle. That's in your constitution, the American constitution. We are all created equal. Just put that into practice. Yeah, you know, You know I agree with you. What advice would you have for young humans?

You said when you were 15, you took a stand against advertising. What about 15 or 20-year-olds that are listening to this conversation? What sort of advice would you have for them? Yeah, try to get rid of all these influences that push the whole society into the wrong direction. It's at the age of high school and student that you can create a network of friends. That's the best time to create a network of friends. I still have to, most of my friends, when I was between 15 and 20, I still have them. Make a network of friends, that seems to me very important.

Try to create your identity by other things than stuff. The person that wears a Rolex isn't worth more, even if the French president tells you so, not the present, present in the past. You are valuable because you're a human being. And every human being has so many qualities. You just, most people don't imagine the potential that they have to do all kinds of things.

What do you care most about in the world, Peter? Of course it's my family, my friends, and I hope that we can continue to have the same kind of a relationship with our family. All five families spending at least one week of vacations every year together by renting a big house somewhere. and that memetic desires that one of the children does have a bigger car or a smaller car that all those things will not pollute

our family life. We didn't so far and I really hope it doesn't in the future so that we can somehow be a little bit of an example to the rest of society. If you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse

for your decision to your status or security, what is one thing you would do to improve societal or planetary futures? You can't imagine. I already gave some of the answer. I would prohibit all advertisements everywhere for one month. And after that, people could only advertise new products if they reduce the carbon footprint. Okay. I really have just scratched the surface. I mean, a 2000-watt society is such a monumental shift. there's a fixed versus marginal component of it. There's a built infrastructure versus starting from scratch component.

There's a technical component. There's an energetic component. There's a social human behavior component. And this was just the first pass at this. If you were to come back for a round two episode, what is one aspect of your work, a 2000 watt society. One topic relevant to our futures

that you would be willing to take a deep dive on that one thing. I think it's how to create your identity without too much mimetic desires. There's a huge work that was done by an anthropologist

René Girard, a French, but he became very famous in the US before he became famous in France. And I think he did a really important job on that because really the mimetic desires, it's what's fueling our society. Is mimetic, is that similar to material desires? No, memetic means what other people think that you should have. No, you want to have what the other one has.

Right, right, right. In my lectures, I give an example. You have, imagine a kindergarten. kindergarten with children that are maybe four or five years old and there is a puppet that's broken it has an arm that's missing and it's maybe even dirty no child does ever want to

live and play with a puppet and then after six months one child goes takes the puppet and plays a nurse with it it shows a lot of empathy to the puppet or I will try to help you that you get your arm back and chose a lot of emotion. And then all of a sudden, all the children want to have the same puppet.

It's not because it's beautiful. Because people think, the child thinks, oh, it has so much emotions, they want to have the same emotions. They do it get the wrong way. This is relative fitness. This is in biology. I have three dogs.

And there was this weekend, there was this little pink fabric of material on the yard that's been there for two months. None of the dogs ever cared about it until my golden retriever picked it up and started walking around with it. Then the other two dogs all of a sudden wanted it and they fought for it all weekend.

And we're much more social creature. So I totally agree with you on the memetic desires. So you've got a lot to say about that topic. That's, anyway, that's, I think it's something we have to work about, if you want, to succeed to change what we can. I can't change the present of the United States,

but I can change a little bit of my environment and to the lectures I give to people that they start to change the way they think. There would be a lot of, to be said about that. Let's do it. Thank you so much, Peter, for your time today and also your dedication towards understanding and inspiring people with the 2000-watt society.

Okay, thank you, Nate, for having me and for the nice conversation. I enjoyed it. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit The Great Simplification.com for references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagan, Sings. edited by No Troublemakers Media and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyan, and Lizzie Siriani.