The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Giorgos Kallis: "Cultural Surplus and 'Dépense'"

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

On this episode, Nate is joined by ecological economist and degrowth scholar Giorgos Kallis. He and Nate discuss the science and philosophy behind the degrowth movement and some of the challenges behind implementing such an enormous task. As a system precariously based on growth becomes more unstable, it is important to turn to those who specialize in 'out-of-the-box' thinking. This doesn't necessarily mean we, as a society, are going to advocate or plan for degrowth - but postgrowth societies are on the horizon, and in many places are already here. Perhaps, the larger purpose of degrowth scholarship (and conversations like these) is to act as Overton Windows - to help people imagine and actualize behaviors and networks that will help us adjust in a post-growth world.  About Giorgos Kallis: Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist and political ecologist working on environmental justice and limits to growth. He has a Bachelor's degree in chemistry and a Masters in environmental engineering from Imperial College, a PhD in environmental policy from the University of the Aegean, and a second Masters in economics from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. He has been an ICREA professor since 2010. Before coming to Barcelona, Giorgos was a Marie Curie International Fellow at the Energy and Resources group at the University of California-Berkeley. He has also written numerous books, including his latest, Limits: Why Malthus was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care.  For Show Notes and More visit https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/52-giorgos-kallis To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/4VlVqw_BKdU 

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. Giorgos Callas is an ecological economist and a political ecologist, working on environmental justice and limits to growth issues. He is a professor at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona, Spain. In this conversation, Georgios and I discuss the science and philosophy behind the degrowth movement and some of the challenges behind implementing such an enormous task within.

nations and globally. As viewers of this show know, I don't believe mankind is going to plan for degrowth, but that post-growth reality is coming to a nation near you very soon. So, in my opinion, the larger purpose of de-growth scholarship is to act as like an Overton window to get more people thinking about planning and maybe reconsidering their trajectories into what will event become a post-growth world. I am pleased to introduce Professor Georgios Callas. Let's get to it. Kalimera, Georgios. Kalimera. Hi, mate. How are you? Good. And yeah.

I only know a few works in Greek, and most of them in their swear words. You are Greek living in Spain and doing this podcast in English. Yeah. How many languages do you speak? Three, actually. These very three, Greek Spanish. You know, in preparing for this, we're going to talk about degrowth and your recent book and your recent papers and your work. But related to degrowth, I had a thought that the United States has the richest geological province in history. And we have the world's largest economy.

We have the seigniorage from the U.S. dollar. But there's also this lingua franca that it's a novelty that I took French and Spanish in college, you know. But people in Europe, they speak multiple languages all the time. What's that like having to do your work and your papers in English, which is not your native language? I mean, it's like an extra burden when you're growing up and working or how do you all manage that? Yeah, when you grow up, it is a problem. It's also a class thing. If you're from a high class in your country,

somehow English will arrive naturally to you. The lower you go down in the ladder, the more of an uphill struggle it is. I was in the middle, so let's say it wasn't easy, but it wasn't also very difficult, as difficult as it is for other people I encounter here. So for me, I did private classes. I wasn't very good until I studied abroad.

Then I started practicing, but I don't think it was until after my BADSD that I went to the US and I met also my wife and I kept talking more and more English that my English improved you know and it so it took it took years for them to improve and are you teaching your children all three languages yes so I speak to them strictly Greek my wife she's Mexican but she grew up in the US so she speaks to them English and then our caretaker that helps us speak Spanish. And then in school, they're going to learn Catalan.

So they're going to beat me by one language. I love languages. If we weren't facing a post-growth world, I think I would have been a linguist. I studied Chinese and then had some French and Spanish. But I just think the evolution of human language is fascinating. So let's get into it, Giorgos. Many previous guests on this point. platform have covered this topic.

But could you articulate your flavor, your assessment of the linkages between energy, materials, technology, and growth? What's your overall worldview on that? For me, it's quite straightforward, and it's the basis of ecological economics, that we understand the economy as a process of converting resources into useful goods.

into waste. So in that sense, the more the economy growth, the more resources in one way or the other it's going to need. Technology is mediating this relationship, but there is up to a certain extent that it can mediate it. At the end of the day, a compound growth which is 3% per year, which means an economy 19 times bigger within a century, will use more and more resources. So we see a direct link between the growth of the economy and the need for fresh and more resources. So you're not a devotee of the decoupling camp. No, I don't believe, I mean, I do believe that certain resources or certain pollution, certain forms of waste can be reduced while the economy grows.

But the more fundamental these goods are for, or these resources are for the economy, the harder is this decoupling. Fossil fuels is a border case. I mean, it's super fundamental. The whole industrial revolution happened because of fossil fuels. Fortunately, there are renewables or other forms of energy, but the economy is quite coupled with fossil fuels. I think there can be some form of decoupling, absolute decoupling also,

but I don't know if it can happen fast enough in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Now, if we talk about energy or resources in general, I don't think that absolutely decoupling is possible. So the more the economy grows in one way or the other, it's going to use more energy and more resources. Using better forms of energy or better forms of resources is possible, but again, up to a limit because if the economy is 19 times bigger within a century and then I don't know how many times,

hundreds within two centuries, even a benign, relatively benign form of energy starts having the cumulative impact. I agree. Later in this conversation, I'm going to talk about something that you and I both agree on, even though we haven't spoken about it, which is we can and hopefully will decouple our well-being

and our experience of life from energy and material use. And I know in your new book you've written about that. But first, let me continue to set the table here. You are known in the degrowth movement and the degrowth movement is diverse. Can you give me your own interpretation or your own definition of what degrowth means when you say it? What does it mean and how might it come about? We can think of the substantive definition, which is on the one hand it points to a process and on the other hand it points to a critique. So the process it's pointing to is an egalitarian.

adjust social and political transformation, that its end result is a radical reduction of resource use. And by resource, I mean material resources and energy. But the important is to put the, how do you say, the horses before the track, no? So the horses are, that we need the social and political transformation, whose result is going to be this resource, dramatic resource and energy reduction.

Apart from that, de-growth also is pointing to something else. something else it's like the world decolonization which is d it's against the idea or the ideology of growth so it's also a set of ideas that they're coming together and to launch a very strong critique against the social and material effects of growth but more than that to the very ideology of economic growth that we argue is something like what religion would to be for religious society so it's like a kind of taboo totem that cannot be question that everyone has to agree that it's good and it's not to be challenged. So degrowth is both this challenge of the ideology of growth and it's also pointing to a particular process

of social transformation towards much less research use. So speaking about the religion part, de-growth is a word that post-growth market technology-focused people really dislike. Why do you think that is. Yeah, post growth, with post growth we are doing well. I mean, I just got a big project with the word post growth in it. So we are using it. Yeah, I saw that. Congratulations.

We are using it every now and then when we want to be a little bit less confrontational. By the way, I'll chime in and say from my perspective, I see it as D growth is what we should do. And post growth is what we're going to have to do. That's a good way of thinking about it. I mean, that one way or the other will have to manage without growth. And de-growth is also, in a way, it's a harder challenge. But speaking about why would techno-files or green-growth people would not like de-growth? Because in the general imaginary, in the general common sense, I would say, of all of us.

now economic growth we tend to think of this process that happened after the second world war mostly bridges highways spacecrafts airplanes you know so it have associated that as being a economic growth that came up with an explosion of new technologies and new ways of doing things so in their view to criticize that and go against that sounds like backpedaling now, like retrogressing, saying no to all this and saying like we're going to live some simple ways that they were before industrial revolution and that this is wrong. Well, of course, that's not what we are arguing. But I can explain their reaction to that in the sense that they feel that we are challenging all that. And that a different form of all that being like renewable energies, geoengineering or other forms of technologies that could emerge now.

that they believe it would be the salvation and that we are turning our bucks to that for something that it's untenable politically and socially. That's what I see as the criticism. So when most people hear the word degrowth, there's kind of a connotation that happens. What do you think the average person gets wrong when they hear the word degrowth or see a degrowth article or something like that? Yeah, I mean, it depends on what article they see and how the author of this article frames it. I mean, if they just hear the word, again, it depends always on context. Words never work on their own outside of a particular context.

It's always a person saying something. So it's one thing if I say degrowth and they hear it, and another one if a journalist says it dismissively on the TV or another, if I don't know, someone from an instance, a journalist, a journalist, or a journalist, a journalist, think tank or a professor who wants to completely deride what we're saying says it now so the context of how it will be presented makes a big difference but let's say a negative reaction to it can come from what i said that to the extent that we associate growth with a good period in the global north in the europe and north america after the second world war where growth has generally been perceived as elevating people from low incomes to to a

to a middle class and if this was growth and you want to reverse that you want to go back then you want to do something bad no so it might sound as something negative or if you understand degrowth has the period where GDP declines or when the economy has recessions and depressions again within a growth economy growth-based economy periods of no growth are very problematic they are very unstable so for all of us there is the association of where the economy is not doing well we don't want to be there now that these are not nice years so if that's what you mean by the growth the reaction is I don't want that no I'm not I'm not part of it I think both both reactions are misplaced and I when I'm the one explaining I can explain in the sense

that first of all the glorious period of the 30 years after the second world war has come to an end 30 years after the second world war more or less with the 1970s crisis and we are 50 years after and for these 50 years growth has not been a marvel or a miracle you know on the contrary we've seen increasing inequalities and no improvement in the quality of life so if growth was good for a particular period of time which could be or it could be other things that coincided with growth but it no longer is and about recession again I would respond that yes of course we're not calling for recession we are calling for a different way of organizing the economy around

human needs and obviously a model that would have to be stable in one way or the other. No one wants instability, unemployment, poverty in the name of the growth. No one would advocate that. So how do you or we as a society implement degrowth in praxis, especially in a geopolitical context, possible loss of hegemony for the United States and maybe wars? And also there's a financial aspect. The moment degrowth, the moment de-grosses, the moment de-grosses, is implemented or happens, there's financial market crashes and leaving less stability for society. So in the degrowth movement, are there two questions really, which is what would a landing spot look like using degrowth research?

That's question one. And question two, how do we get from here to there, given the financial overshoot and the complexity in our current world? Do degrowth scholars separate those two questions or is it all kind of one? No, we start separating and you are asking actually the best questions right now, you know. Like we've finished the best people on this field, we've finished writing a literature review article on the 50 years from the publication of limits to growth. And two of the most important questions that we think are under-explore. that we identify there are the ones that you very nicely highlighted.

The one concerns the geopolitics and what room if any there is for this type of futures that we advocate within re-emergence of spheres of influence of a sort of cold war and geopolitical competition that has always been there, but I think now it's more evident. There's very little thinking on that, but I know that there are international relations scholars that they now start grapple with these questions. And the other concerns financial stability and includes financial stability again in a geo-economic context of if any country was to face prolonged stagnation or go in the direction of the growth. There is always the, especially if it goes, let's say, intentionally in direction of the growth. There is the real fear of capital exodus of punishment by the international economic institutions bringing back in line. and all these things that can make a process that could be in principle or in theory smooth or stable,

can make it unstable within a matter of days. So these are like hard questions. I don't have answers to them and I would be hypocritical if I said I have answers to all that. But I think these are the questions we should be asking and because you know the opposite is okay, this sounds like almost insurmountable, impossible. so let's try to think that we're going to do some technological miracle. I'm saying if we start from the premise that the technological miracle is not in the cards, you know, like how do we start dealing with this type of questions?

One potential first answer to what you're saying is that the system is already unstable and it's not because of de-growth. So geopolitical competition, possibilities of war, wars, worst wars than we've seen for a while, etc. are re-emerging and that's again within the contours of the current system. Also, the financial system is in many ways, has been unstable and many people keep telling us that it's a piling pyramid waiting to collapse. So again, there's a question of how unstable.

It's a question of how unstable. Yeah, yeah, okay. true and many people might have said the last 50 years that it's fading the collapse and doesn't collapse but I mean the the amount of debt public and private right now is on a record level in comparison to what we are producing so there is a question up to when we will be able to produce so much debt without because all that debt is a claim on energy yeah it's a claim on energy it's a claim also on human labor it is a claim on future generations so I don't know that you've read my

papers and work, Giorgos. But how I see it is we won't voluntarily contract and we will continue to kick hands, financially, rules, everything to keep the financial system growing because of the necessity to pay back prior debt and the interest isn't created when money is created. But eventually we will run out of ways to do that and then we will contract involuntarily. So the reason that I'm not directly in the degrowth movement is because I am trying to prepare society, individuals, nations globally for this smaller economy. I call it the great simplification. But the reason I'm a fan of the degrowth movement is because you are expanding the Overton window of the ways that we might choose to live differently using less energy, less materials,

more social interactions and things like that. So to me, the degrowth isn't going to happen the way that it's prescribed, but it's a good advertisement for researching and people thinking about living possibly substantially differently. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I mean, I don't think that it's going to happen smoothly and intentionally and voluntarily and somehow avert climate change. I think it's going to happen through conditions, if it were to happen, no?

It's going to happen through conditions of partial collapse and partial forced simplification. I think it's important always in the face of historical changes to know what is it that you're proposing and what you're envisioning so that it becomes part of the reality that it's unfolding. Because if you don't have this counter-narrative, so... Yes, my narrative is positioned within an understanding that the scenario you are describing is quite likely. So let's get into that. You recently are a co-author of a paper in Nature. Congratulations on that, called Energy Requirements and Carbon Emissions for a Low Carbon Energy Transition. Can you give our viewers and listeners an overview of the purpose of that paper and the general conclusions of that paper.

Yeah, I mean, that paper was written by P. Dijs, a student of mine, Alyos Slamr-Sack, who developed like a Hans, an idea that I had that no one has calculated how many emissions and how much energy we're going to use in order to make a transition to a low carbon system. Because building windmills, continuing to get oil in order to build solar panels, etc., is going to burn carbon, carbon as long as we still use oil, gas, etc. So no one had calculated that and no one had seen how much energy we're going to use in this process

and how much energy will be left for other societal uses along this way. So we thought about calculating it. We followed one approach. I mean, there are many different approaches one could get to that, but we took the scenarios that the IPCC has produced, which are quite unrealistic, let's say, by now scenarios of how we can stay within 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. So we looked at, okay, what sort of energy trajectory is to do they foresee these scenarios?

And then based on that and based on some calculations called energy return on energy investment, where it's calculation of how much energy you need in order to produce a unit of energy by fossil fuels, by gas, by windmills, by solar panels. Alyosah did very complicated calculations that I can't. I don't know what he did, but he did it well. The reviewers said he also he did it well. So he did an amazing job there. We calculated that.

What are the core findings? I mean, there is a good side and the bad side. So I was, at the beginning, I was very, I was more in a catastrophist mode than I was saying, just trying to do the transition, we're going to burn all our remaining carbon budget, and we're going to overshoot limits. So it's not that bad, you know. So it's definitely much better to burn this carbon to decarbonize

than not burn carbon ever again, to put it simply, than to prolong this thing and go slowly and keep burning carbon for everything you need to do. So in one sense, it's not catastrophic these numbers, but they are quite high, you know. So we see that a substantial proportion of what we can emit and what energy we're going to use in the next decades is going to go purely for the energy system. living less for the rest of society. This is in a best case scenario that we really do something about climate change.

No, that it's not, it's not at all the case right now. But we are saying, okay, even in this best case scenario, what would that mean? I mean, I think, that's what our research is showing, that we would have to use less energy for other things, which is manageable, is doable, but I don't think it is, And there is awareness around it in the dominant green growth narrative, which is, you know, we can use more energy, do more things and at the same time do this energy transition, clean energy transition. I have a lot of questions.

I read your paper and I think it was a real novel approach. But you're basically saying is that if we are going to optimize for climate and somehow culturally we think that's important, which I'm skeptical that will do that. But under that scenario, we have to massively increase the energy used to move to a different energy system. And that move itself will require a lot of hydrocarbons. So my first question is you're actually asking the second of two questions,

which is what would be the biophysical map, if something would happen. But the first is a governance and market-related question, and I know that's not your expertise, but I'm just curious because right now, we are growing renewables quite rapidly, globally, but we're still growing fossil fuels. So from a climate change standpoint,

we're just extending the use of the fossil fuels because then we need a little bit less natural gas because we have more solar and wind, but the total emissions are high. But how could we stop Disneyland and Las Vegas and Ryanair and all the other aspects of society that are using energy in order to invest that into a lower carbon energy system? Like what would be the mechanism that would allow us? I think in your paper you talked about 15 to 20 percent or something like that of, current energy needs to be directed towards this plan.

Is there any suggested pathway that that could happen politically and economically? It wasn't part of this research, but it's part of the big research project we start now. The one we called post-growth deal and it's going to be for six years. So there we're asking precisely the question you said. So one we want to think of policies of doing something, let's say, that happened during the lockdowns, but doing it in an organized way, definitely in a more participatory way and a more accepted way, which is to prioritize essential from non-essential activities

and use the power of regulation, of policy, etc. to restructure the economy towards the activities that we consider essential rather than the ones that they are unessential in a context of climate change and energy transition. Now, yeah, that's the idea and that's the scientific part. Now the political question is very difficult. Like how would you imagine closing down Ryanair or Disneyland? That's not in the say cards right now.

It's not going to be anytime soon, but I think it is important to think of the processes and the mechanisms through which area allocation of energy to the important factors are going But I don't know if you have thoughts on that, on these hard political questions. I'll say this. I have a lot of questions for you, Giorgio. They're going to sound like their critiques or hard questions, but they're under an umbrella of deep respect and thanks for your work, because I use, as you just said, we need to understand this and ask these questions, kind of like passing the baton to more.

more people to get them involved because this is what we face. I don't see an easy way out of this. So you have to be doing the research and asking the questions. I think we'll keep kicking cans and then respond. And hopefully there's models and pilots of living differently, using energy differently, which brings me to my next question, does this have to be a global thing?

Or could Spain or Greece or New Zealand do their own kind of degrowth, move towards more renewables, less fossil fuels, in tandem with a smaller economy. I want to think that each country can't do something to the extent also that, as you said, in a post-growth context, they might be forced to adapt to that. I mean, you have Japan 30 years without growth. This becomes the new normal. So one way or the other countries have to accommodate the fact that they might not be able for their economies to grow, and at the same time accommodate the fact that

they have to do something about climate change unless the whole world comes to ruin, which is a very possible scenario, as you were saying. But this combination, I think, forces even individual countries to think differently. Now, for something more organized and more like a development of a different economic model or a different social organization model of reorganizing activities, etc., I think to go like really outside of the of the main path right now, I think you need like regional clubs or association. So I think the EU could potentially do something like that,

as the US could do something like that as a big country or US with Canada. Greece alone, I doubt it. I mean, Greece alone tried not to pay its debts and was brought in line quite quickly. So I don't think a small country can do it alone. Just as an aside, last night I discovered the analytics for this channel. And of the 15 most popular cities with people watching this podcast, seven of the top 15 are in New Zealand or Australia. And from a population standpoint, that makes no sense. But I think it's because they are at the end of the supply chain and they recognize,

emotionally the things discussed on this podcast with respect to climate change, degrowth, energy, scarcity. And so I think, I don't think the United States is going to take the lead on anything degrowth ever. But I do think smaller countries could act as models. I gave a presentation to government of Sweden last week and a couple months ago government of Finland. And I think the Ukraine-Russia situation

has all of a sudden put energy and the future prominently into many minds, especially in Europe. Have you noticed since the Russia incursion into Ukraine more interest and intensity and urgency in your field or other people outside of the field suddenly paying attention to it? Yeah, I've seen, but I wouldn't put it to the Russian invasion. I mean, I think it starts with the pandemic and the lockdowns and also in a context of complete stall in relation to progress with climate change.

So I think it's many things coming together. I think the pandemic psychologically had an important effect in the sense that we show like, okay, that the biophysical world can hit us. you know, it's not, it's not just scientists saying like out of their minds that, I mean, I was someone who never cared about pandemics, right? I was saying, this is one problem too many to worry about, you know. And so in that sense, I was a denier in something, you know, that hit us. People were saying it's very likely, it's becoming more and more likely. I was like, well, yeah, okay, it did happen. We lived, we saw, we saw our fragility, and we, fragility, and we, we realize more and more how fragile we're going to be to climate change,

which is an even bigger thing and how little we are doing. So I think there is recognition, even by those who deny or want to delay, that there is a recognition that something is not going well. Now then on top of that, you have the Russian invasion, then you have prices going up the roofs. You have like a resurface of nuclear threats and potential nuclear war. So the whole thing is like coming to an explosive mix. And in that sense, I think people right now are a little bit lost of certainties,

and this has opened up space for ideas that they were considered to heterodox, to be given space five years ago. In the same way that Australia and New Zealand are, or at least the people following this podcast, paying attention to energy, economic decline sort of scenarios, Do people in Spain get the immediate, it's called an availability cascade, the salience of climate change because it's so hot there? Are people, and plus when you had the limits this summer where you could only have the air conditioning to a certain level, does the general person in Spain absolutely believe in climate change and is worried about it and wants to do something about it?

I would say beliefs, I wouldn't say he wants to do something about it and I don't know where would it rank in terms of priority of problems. But I say like the common sense now is that the climate is changing and that's among everyone independent of political beliefs at least in Greece and Spain that I talk. It's very hard to deny it anymore, you know. Like the summers are much hotter than you have some freak events. then you know like here it's December and the first cold days were like two three days ago so people see that the climate is changing it's still not a devastating change it's still something that seems manageable if it were to stop here but people understand more or less understand what we're saying that this is not going to stop here you know it's we haven't stopped emitting carbon so this

is going to get worse and worse so i think there is a there is an understanding of that that is it's quite assimilated, but I don't think there is an awareness or an acceptance that something radical has to be done. And I don't know, that's my hypothesis. But my hypothesis is that most people are aware of that tension,

you know? So if I want to use a metaphor, it's like, you know, when you know you're still sleeping and you know that you have to wake up seven o'clock and do something terrible that you don't want to do, but you know it's coming,

you know, but you're still sleeping a little bit. bit and you wish you could sleep forever but you know that at seven you have this terrible wake-up you know it's this feeling and then you don't feel well about it you know but you don't want to think about it also well it's right now it's metaphorically 630 a.m. georgios and we want to hit the snooze for 10 more minutes but 7 o'clock it's coming soon um i'll point out i can't move my camera at the moment but it's it's negative 20 celsius here and people might say, oh, see what climate change, but that too is probably caused by climate change with the polar vortex,

letting the Arctic air come down here. So getting back to your nature paper, that paper outlined three EROI energy return on investment scenarios, high, medium and low. Some would argue that even the low EROI scenario is optimistic, first of all, because it starts with an average of a calculated current EROI figures for renewable energy. The higher-end figures in that batch are disputed by some as unrealistically high, so that would skew the average of the low EROI scenario into optimistic territory. Then the low EROI scenario projects are projects a rising energy return for all renewable technologies. But what a rising EROI for renewables actually happen under conditions of global declining resource quality and declining

fossil fuel EROI, considering, as you said earlier, that fossil fuels will be supplying energy for the construction of renewables throughout most of the transition. So my question is, why didn't you include a truly pessimistic or some would say realistic Euro-I scenarios more in line with your colleagues 200 kilometers to your west. Capelan Perez at Vailad Vaildo Lyd University. I can never pronounce that name. Any comments on that? I mean, the technical details of that Alosa could better say it

because he's the one who really studied the Euroin numbers. he knows the literature and he thinks our scenarios are reasonable. But I mean, behind every paper there is also a story and the story of that was that one of the reviewers was like was very strong that our low-heroes scenario is not. We had one low. Basically, law was like taking the lowest estimates of the estimates of Eroy right now as the basis for the low-euroi scenario.

But then one reviewer was insisting on the point. that even the law right now have been proven wrong and it's better to take the media and we had a long debate about that you know and and at some points when you it's it's almost a religion right there there are pro-renewable fanatics and there are anti-renewable fanatics and I believe the truth is in the middle renewables have arrived they're robust they're scalable they are incredibly eroI positive relative to energy sources that humans have used in the past, but they're not going to power this civilization. So I know, I believe you, there's a huge politics behind the paper.

No, there was a politics. No, I mean, one of the reviewers, I don't think he was a renewable energy evangelist, but just thought that the low-heroi values are unrealistically low. So insistent on the point that we should have the median ones for a low scenario. And at the end, you know, it's not a politics, but it's like, okay, do I want to risk the whole paper not being public? or am I fine to do with the median? And we were fine to the extent that also when we were including the low Eeroi values,

it wasn't that the result was very different, you know. So the scenario was not changing. So it wasn't a dramatic change given the low Eeroid values we had. So it's not that we diluted our findings or our message for that. So it's always a give and take in this process of publishing. You know, there is this nice cartoon which says my paper before and my paper after it's a car and then the paper after is like a car with the exhaustion up in the window, etc. You know?

Unfortunately, it's a little bit of that, but yeah. Believe me, I know my superorganism paper had much the same feedback. So here's how I see it. Tell me what you think of this. So all of these prognoses and forecasts and technological predictions happened during a time when our energy was growing. every single year. We use 100 billion barrels of carbon every year, coal, oil, and natural gas. And that roughly works out to around 500 billion human laborers added to the economy. So now we can use some of those labors and invest them to make new low-carbon laborers in the form of solar,

wind, geothermal, et cetera. But very soon, for the first time in the last century plus, that 500 billion of laborers is going to be declining. So as it declines, then we have the financial overshoot question, but setting that aside for the moment, how can as that declines the EROI of those other things go up enough to offset it? And then another thing we haven't talked about is complexity and this six-continent supply chain of how everything is fit together. And I know you're just trying to set the table for these questions, but I am curious about as the total amount of coal oil natural gas declines pretty much year over year at some point in the future, how renewables can fit that gap, even if they are,

let's say, 10 to one wide boundary EROI, something like that, which arguably on the surface is higher than some fossil fuels, but then there's the energy quality differential as well. So do you have any thoughts on all that? No, I mean, there is a huge transformation. I mean, what you said at the end is really important, that also the energy productivity or the euroi of fossil fuels right now, it's probably lower than we thought, and it's close to renewable energy. So in that sense, it's not a fundamental, it's not as fundamental the problem as we thought

before when we thought that, okay, the erie of fossil fuels. fuels it's much higher than renewable so if it's close the transition is probably easier on that side but then there are all the problems that have to do with the quality or the reliability then the intermitteness of the renewable energy all these problems that people are talking about and the overall problem which is that we have to use generally less energy for other environmental reasons and also for making this transition possible so there I follow the type of work that my colleague Julia Steinberger is doing and with whom we're going to

collaborate, which is trying to think, how can we secure 9 billion dignified lives with a fraction of the energy that we use right now? Is it physically possible biophysically? And I think research demonstrates models that it is biophysically possible. But then once you get into the political questions, how do we get from here to there, it starts getting tricky because probably there's no space for can you can you link your project with julia on the post growth

with some like do your work but link it and form alliance with some political uh the sort of um scholars on governance questions and how this might unfold or is that too complex no i would like to

send i'm open to two suggestions with whom to to link it i mean i'm responsible for the package on politics. I'm not a political scientist. I call myself a political ecologist, so I'm interested on how power relations govern access to resources and resource distribution. But yes, it's a huge challenge and it's more like I'm jumping into water without knowing what I'll find because I don't think there are many people thinking about this governance and political questions. I know that they are the most important questions. So it's an important,

exciting but also Friday in research on how we're going to grapple with these questions without saying something either trivial or completely utopian, you know, because we have to say something that it's also actionable. Yeah, I love that philosophy, I have to say. I agree with you. This is really, really hard. I'm going to ask one more hard question about this paper, and then I'm going to move on to your new book, which is kind of the meat of this conversation, I hope. I doubt you read my PhD thesis 15 years ago, but I wrote a paper that was an ambio about multi-criteria analysis on the EROI that when you just focus on energies, sometimes you neglect other important natural resource inputs like water or materials or copper or

things like that. So in the various EROI scenarios, did you, you look at the potential, if energy, if we have enough energy for renewables, does something else potentially become limiting like copper or lithium or cobalt or nickel and at the levels required to feed nine billion souls in some sort of a reduction of our material energy footprint? Do some other elements become limiting? Is that a question you've thought about? No, it's a great question. It's not something we looked in this paper.

In this paper we just stayed on energy and emissions, but the group you mentioned from Vagadolid with a different model that it's also designed to ask these questions. I think they're addressing precisely these questions. What material requirements are going to be in this energy scenarios and also the geography of these materials? Where are they going to come from? Because one question is the scarcity, whether there's going to be enough of these materials. Another that it's very close to home here because a big group, with which we are in the same institute

and with which I'm collaborating under John Martinez-Alié is looking at all the conflicts and the violence that it's taking place in this so-called commodity frontiers from the places that we don't see and where all these resources are coming from. I think it's a super crucial question and it's one that should be

on the front of any program for just energy transition, but just that has to think also the implications of where these resources are going to come from. Yeah, I mean, this gets back to the morality of all this is if all of a sudden the global north decides we must continue to grow for the next 30 years, and that growth is going to have to come from,

as we decarbonize, we're going to have to rematerialize, as Olivia Lazard says, And a lot of that rematerialization is going to be from countries that are in the global south, have climate impacts, have civil strife. And what are the ethics of that? And hardly anyone is talking about that. Yeah, what are the ethics and what are also the geopolitics and geopolitics of that?

Because it seems that they might also not be willing to sell as cheap as we want them up here, you know. And then what's happening. So that's also for me what's frightening because if you read the whole discourses about the new realignment now and Europe and the North America versus China and Russia, etc. You see that on the back of the mind is an unfolding war over access to resources. So, I mean, it might come the other way up to the north. It's like the global south is not. just anymore in the subservient position used to be and it might demand its use for releasing these resources. Yeah, so many questions. Okay, you recently wrote a book called Limits, why Malthus was wrong and why environmentalists should care. What were the core messages

from this recent book, Giorgio's? Yeah, that's a we're turning page because you know in this book up to now well there's a lot to cover in a short conversation I know I like that I like that it makes me reflect on my fragmented and not call it a worst name personality and intellectual interest because I'm very much like into ecological economics biophysical economics like working with Alyosa calculating you know this and that era of that energy source but then this book was quite a philosophical exploration, you know. So some people sometimes are surprised that I'm the same person, you know.

And then I have like even discussions with people that they are very studious scholars of Malthus. And then they ask me all these questions. Did Malthus really say that? Why do you think that Malthus say that, you know? So it's very different worlds from calculating energy to arguing whether Malthus said this or that. what are the core messages of the book? Let me put in a direct way, you know. So I don't like, I don't like Malthus.

I don't like what he wrote. I thought they were very problematic in ideas that he wrote. And I think these ideas have been carried to our days partly by the environmental movement that I see my part of, myself as part of. But I never associated with these ideas. I was always surprised when people would tell me, you're a Malthusian because you are in favor of the growth. you know i was like i'm definitely not a malthusian you know i've read malthusian there's nothing more

distant from me than a english aristocrat who was against the french revolution and wanted the poor people to wrote in their poverty you know um so that's the initial reaction but then you might say i'm not a malthusian and people will tell you still know you are a malthusian you don't know it so i was like okay if if i'm not not because it's personal no because if the ideas that we we are talking here are not Malthusians. Why are they not Malthusians? So I went a little bit more in depth to study what Malthus has said,

how his ideas have traveled over time, to make an argument that within environmentalism, there is another strong notion in defense of limits, that it's not like, oh, we are running out of things and we should do something about it. But it's an idea that we are destroying the planet, we are destroying our own liberties, we are destroying our own quality of life,

And we should organize in order to put a limit to ourselves, to limit our activity, to limit and channel our desires to paths that they are more constructive than destructive. And I tried to separate two different ways of understanding limits and reclaim and defense this. May I say it's social, but it's not social because it also has a very strong biophysical component, you know, we are destroying the planet and we should stop destroying it. But that puts the emphasis back on us, you know, as agents of limiting ourselves and understanding that what you are calling a great simplification, simplifying the way we're living, living with modesty,

is also what the good life is about. I call that self-limitation, collective self-limitation. I could call it also simplification, but I wanted to play a little bit with the idea of limits. and limits to growth. So I'm saying about we want to limit growth. We don't care if growth comes to an end and it's limited itself, you know. We want to do that.

Does collective self-limitation start from self-limitation of an individual and then scale? Or is it collective imposed on the self? No, I think it's co-evolutionary. This is a term I learned from my mentor, Richard Norgaard, at Berkeley, who had written about co-evoluntary. evolution. So I think in many in many ways this dichotomies we make in a modern science way of thinking. Very often are because we are caught in egg and chicken situations that they're better thought as co-evolution. So you need the one in order to feed on the other in order to feed the other.

So to put it in this way, unless you have people who want to live a simple life, you will never have a collective structure or a state that would promote a simple life. Now, unless you have a stage that opens pathways and lets people live in simple life instead of force them going in a particular way, you would never have the people who would be able to live a simple life and wouldn't be like just a marginal radical ones, you know? So you need the two and the one is fitting on the other and egg and chicken that it's getting bigger and bigger, no? But you need both. I agree with that. so if our needs reproduction and consumption can be internally limited then nothing is scarce

because we'll always have enough what does it look like what might it look like to internally limit resources what would it look like personally i think personally it's personal of us can say what would it look to live a simple life within the contours of the life now. And then there is the question of what would it look like to live a simple life or a limited life, self-limited life, within the context of a system permitting you to live in a different way. So it's one thing, if I live in California and I say like, okay, I could live it myself and not have a car, but then I would probably die in my house now because I couldn't go to the hospital, I couldn't go to work, I couldn't go anywhere, like just walking outside of your houses,

you need to walk like 50 kilometers to reach the grocery store, right? So there, like this self-limitation is not possible. But of course, if the city is organized to have the public transport, etc., then more self-limitations become possible. So I think there is the question of each one of asking within the current life and within the context and infrastructure that we operate, what would it be to live a modest life and know how to put limits to what we want and do what we truly want rather than what we are pressed and forced to do.

That's one question. And then the second question is like, what would it look to organize things differently, to allow us to live even more modest and simple lives in a good way? And I think this is where Julia's work comes that tries to quantify and try to give a little bit of picture. Okay, what would it look at a world where we consume 20% of the energy we consume now? No?

What kind of houses would we have? Yeah. So here, too, is a chicken and the egg. We need to each of us as individuals move a little bit in the direction of simplification and consuming less. But in tandem, we need the culture to move and the infrastructure and things like that. And the more that the culture and the infrastructure is aligned to smaller material throughput future, the easy it will be for the chicken, us, to live in that environment. Yeah.

And very important, there is public infrastructures. So speaking of car, for example, if you have a good public transport is one thing, or if you have proximity to your workplace is one thing. If you don't have it, then the car becomes almost a basic need. So a car, you can say a car is a basic need in one context, but in another context, it's not, and it's a huge difference in terms of energy, emissions, everything. Right. So I am fortunate to have traveled a lot in my life.

And of all the European countries I've been to, Spain is my favorite. Can't say why. The people, the food, just there's this vibe there. Now, Spain, to my knowledge, uses half the energy per capita as the average person in the United States. Better health care system. If I got sick or injured when I was in Spain, I could go. one of the Spanish hospitals. And I'm not glorifying poverty or anything like that.

But Spain seems to be closer to a degrowth model than the United States for sure. Why do you think that is? And are there any examples in Spain of active pilots or communities that are at least going in the path that you and Julia are describing? I mean, Spain is the general difference of Europe. compared to the US and the way I think the big energy use. I mean, I studied as a water scholar and I was always water studies, you know, and I was always surprised why is per capita water used in the US two or three times bigger than in Europe? What can you do, you know?

And then, of course, it's a whole arrangement. A lot of flushing toilets. A lot of flushing toilets, a lot of toilets that use more water, lots of gardens, a lot of houses that they are big and then you have also the garden, etc., etc. And then when it comes to energy, again, it's the same. You know, the way the cities are structured with a lot of private personal commuting with cars. These are like fundamental different structures that explain the different energy use. Now, Spain has very nice things in terms of urban model that they weren't done in the pursuit of the growth or anything.

It's how the system has evolved. But probably what you're also describing as a positive social experience, you know, which is like pedestrianized centers of cities with good public transport that you can access them, walk around, you know, and have like a pleasant beer out in a plaza. This was not part of the growth, or it hasn't been part of degrowth of post-growth,

but I think it is a model upon which you can build and at least a model that we can mobilize to resonate with people and say like, I mean, look, you can have, pretty nice things for for very little and you don't need much more much more than that so there is a good basis here that's what I meant I just

I know that you're not pursue Spain is not pursuing de-growth but there's it's easier to do and say these things in a country like Spain de-growth the words are kind of anathema to the United States experiment at least for now I mean there are pockets of people

I'm not sure if it's easier anywhere. I don't fully agree with that. I understand what you're saying about the US. But the US, if we say the ideology of growth, the ideology of growth, we can call it also the American dream in the sense of the American dream of the 1950s of the suburbia, the cars. So this dream is quite prevalent everywhere, you know.

So it's not, even if in Spain, you know, it didn't take hold as it took in America itself. it's still an important part of the imaginary and it's still an uphill battle to challenge that and to challenge the idea of growth so don't think that we have an easy task here what I can say is that there are real lived experiences so there is the square now not everyone spend their time in the shopping mall so there is the square and you can mobilize this experience to say you know there is something upon which we can build but There is quite a lot of reaction here.

There is reaction in Greece. There is reaction everywhere to our type of ideas. There's one Spanish cultural tradition that I wish the United States would adopt, and that is the afternoon siesta. It's a nice one. So in your writing, Georgios, you use a French word de Ponce. Could you describe what it means and why it's important? Yeah, that's very, okay, that's.

as wild as our ideas go. It's ideas that we've developed here in group with Jaco Montalisa, my colleague here, my co-author, another Italian scholar, sociologist Anofrio Romano that recuperated this idea from a strange French philosopher,

George Batai, who has written very crazy sexososomado-histic novels and philosophies, etc. So a very strange and controversial character George Batteig, but a very original and unique thinker. Some people are appalled by what he wrote. Others, like one of a Romano from whom I took this idea, say that there are things

from Batai that they are so brilliant. They can be useful even if there are many other ideas that one wouldn't share. So one core idea of Batai is that societies make meaning and find joy, if you want, by expanding their excess. So rather than thinking in terms of of societies being in a constant battle against scarcity, have to think like, okay, what is it that gives us pleasure? And at the end of the day, the pleasure and where we make meaning as societies is in expanding whatever surplus we might have,

surplus of energy, surplus of human labor. And if you think that, I don't know, ancient Egypt was expanding the surplus to make pyramids and create a meaning as trying to reach the god with the pyramids. in a modern capitalist society or in the American dream, you might say, you know, you're expanding it in the soaping malls and in the... Las Vegas and Ryanair. Yes, Ryan.

Yes, the cornucopia of plastic things around, etc. And the gas buzzels, the cars. But we are expanding. And it's important to understand that, let's say, diagnostically, analytically. That's where societies make meaning and where they find joy. it's in their expenditure. So we are trying with this idea to say to break a little bit the mold

that a society of the growth is only a society of restriction of confinement, of doing less and less, you know, and think like, where would we expand our extra energies? What sort of joy would we create by expanding the surplus? Less as it might be, there will still be a surplus, you know, above our immediate basic needs.

where would we expand it and how. And we take there the ideas of expanding it, that the importance is to expand it collectively, you know, in collective feasts, in collective knowledge, humanities, curiosity. But it's important to keep in mind this depends. This unproductive and non-utilitarian expenditure, that you are not expanding in order to produce more in the future

or do something else, but you are simply expanding, and that's the moment actually that you're happy. if we might put it this way. I love that idea for two reasons. First of all, you're a biophysical economist. So we have resource and energy inputs and resource and energy outputs

that give us brain experiences. And right now a lot of that energy input, we always look at it as what does it produce? So this is, you know, you and I and people in our network are in some ways peddlers of fear because we're talking about limits and that society's going to have to change because for climate and energy reasons and many other reasons, including equity and some of the things you're working on, what we're doing now cannot continue. And that is a fearful thing, but we actually need to lead with a carrot or something creative and hopeful. And DePonce, to me, my quick take on it is

it's where can we imagine that we could expend our surplus in the future, even if it's a smaller surplus. And I often say that after basic needs are met, which for many humans, they're not. But after they're met, most of the best things in life are free or close to free from a biophysical perspective. So is that kind of what you're getting at there? Yes. Yes.

And it's important these things that they are free to remain free and expand them free. because this is where pleasure is coming. So this siesta you were saying it's two hours, but you're being very unproductive, no? You could stay and work and check emails, et cetera, et cetera. But you're being unproductive, sleeping for two hours, doing nothing, you're basically nothing, but it's also like a huge bonus to your quality of life

and your well-being. And it's precisely things like that, that we need to recover the capacity to expand things that they are for free and expand them for free. Because we think capitalism the opposite. It's like everything is squeezed in order to use it in order to produce more. So it's like how can we squiss the siesta so these two hours that they are lost, no, come back in the machine in the form of human energy and human energy is also fossil energy,

no, because these two hours I'm probably in my office with the lights, etc. In order to produce more, no. So we're saying no, just let it be. Release it. We are happier and we are also using less of our human energy and of our fossil energy. I did want to offer my analytical take and also philosophical take. I have not been a Malthus scholar. I know that he predicted that exponential growth in demand would outstrip the geometric growth in food production and that we would have a problem. Well, he was wrong in my book because he didn't know about fossil fuels, number one. And then Paul Ehrlich and others 170 years later wrote a book, The Population Bomb.

and Paul was wrong because he didn't know about debt and globalization. And then we hit another wall in 2008 where the central banks took over the role of commercial banks in propping up the monetary creation. And then COVID, and we had this massive control of governments to stabilize the economy. We're running out of cans to kick in my philosophical observation, which is why I agree at the core of your work is the next can to kick is in our minds, that we don't need all this energy and stuff to live good, meaningful human lives. Most of it is wasted. In my movie, I say we're turning billions of barrels of ancient sunlight into microleaders of dopamine. And I think serotonin

and oxytocin and other of our evolved neurotransmitters have been de-emphasized. And so to go into the de pence or the siesta or other things, that is the stakes where we're at, is how can we culturally recognize where we came from, what we're doing, and where we can go, and it's not going to be using more energy and stuff that gives us meaning. That's my personal view on that.

What do you think? No, 100% agree, but I mean, I have a different interpretation of what Malta said, but I don't think it's so important. Sorry, I wouldn't stick with that, but I'll tell people to read your book. Yeah, read my book because Malthus didn't predict that, and he was actually much closer to how economists thinks nowadays than we tend to think.

I mean, the way you described what Malthus thought is the way Elrhic recovered him in the 60s. But I think it's interesting, and that's what I saw in my book, to go and read Malthus without the glasses of Elrich in the 1960s and the debates we have now, you know, and read him in his own terms. and then you see something much closer to an original economic argument about arguing in favor of growth in the name of limits and in the name of scarcity, which helped me located there. And I think it's a problematic trap that we still keep falling in as environmentalists. So quickly to summarize that, you think that my take on Malthus is,

popular and simplistic and probably incorrect, that there's a deeper nuance there that most people don't understand. Yeah, there's no problem. I mean, in what you said, I agreed in everything. So the way you said, there wasn't any problem with that. And I'm not like scholastic to say, oh, no, but you shouldn't say that Malthus said that. But there is a bigger problem to the extent that there are certain environmentalists that reproduce a certain type of thinking that stems back to Malthus and to the way Malthus framed these ideas, that can be problematic. So there it gets important to say what Malthus precisely said, which is different from the way we often tend to think is what he said.

Sure. Okay. Final question before I get to my closing questions. And again, probably each of these questions could be an entire podcast. I noticed that one of your ideas is to eventually somehow tax resources instead of labor. This is something I've looked into quite a bit because I think that's one of the only viable long-term pathways. Can you just briefly expand on how and why this would work and how it might come about and any other summary thoughts on that concept?

I mean, economists on this question, they have developed quite a lot of thinking. I was in the PhD thesis of a student here from our department who was doing a new type of models around this idea and the implications and the different designs. but it's a pretty simple idea right now the majority of tax revenue is coming out of taxing our work, our salaries, etc. A different way of doing it. Like 95%. 95%.

I think we should tax also wealth a little bit more for equity purposes and redistribution. But apart from that, we can tax our energy use or our carbon use in order to raise the revenue. And in this way, thinking now as a... as an economist, no, you would incentivize activities that they are high in terms of their human energy or human value, but low in terms of their carbon contact, because you would tax the carbon contact and you wouldn't tax the human labor. So in that sense, it's a simple, intuitive idea. There are questions then of design. So how would you do it in a way that it's also socially progressive and not regressive.

There are different designs. Whether you would give money back as tax cuts to everyone, only to those working, whether you would give a basic income or a dividend, and there you enter into models, you can study all these things. But I think the basic idea is very intuitive, very strong and very correct. The next question is why it hasn't. caught up because it has been around for 20 or 30 years now and it's not also it's not also like a radical idea let's say it's an idea that even mainstream economists have toyed with but still it has

been difficult to to push it well now people are recognizing the validity of it but every year that goes on the haircut that would have to happen on a financial system gets larger um so it becomes politically harder by the year, even though it cognitively becomes more relevant by the year. So I hope you and your new project can work on that. So do you have 10 minutes or so more to do some final questions? Excellent. These are more on the personal note. So given your lifetime of scholarship and reflection on these issues, Do you have any personal advice to the listeners of this show going into this time of global polycrisis, potential post-growth living, etc? I mean, the advice I have to give them is the one I try to tell myself too, but it's like live the way you want the world to be, you know.

So try to be consistent. In our book, we joke, we say like up to, in the case for the growth book, we joke, we say less than four contradictions if you have in your life. you're a hypocrite, right? More than Antonio Tureel has said that here in Spain also. More than 10, you're a hypocrite. More than 10, you're a fanatic. No, less than 4, you're a fanatic.

More than 10, you're a hypocrite. So in between you can have... I didn't know that that came from Antonio. Pedro Prieto uses that quote all the time with me. People here in Spain use it. And I think it's a good one, which is within the limits of knowing that you're going to have some contradictions,

try to leave the same. you want to be and try to come together with others that they want the same chains and organize and associate. I think that's the main advice. I give and that's the best or the first step that all of us can and should do. Not to sidetrack the conversation so much, but on the DePont's topic, Spanish phrases are the most colorful, interesting, coolest phrases ever. There's so many of those little things like I am not not really from Bill Bao. I'm like, if you're from Bill Bao,

it's like you're a tough guy and there's some joke about shaving. And like, I've heard hundreds of them. They're, they're hilarious. We don't have that in the United States. This one is a contradiction. We have to find the originator because I don't know.

I keep saying some of these people signing one another, but I don't know who, who, who, who coined it first. It's a funny one. We'll, I'll have Lizzie,

the podcast curator, look it up. So, Georgeos, you are a college teacher. and also a champion in the degrowth movement. So you're teaching these things to students. What specific recommendations do you have for young humans who become aware of our climate, energy, equity, biophysical constraints to the human enterprise?

I would say don't depress and act, you know. Live your life and organize to act. I hear a lot about climate anxiety, climate depression. I fully understand it. But I have to say that all generations, most generations living in this planet lived in pretty difficult times. So in bad times. We live in quite bad times in some ways. In other ways, those of us living in the Global North live also in quite good times.

The future is gloomy, but the future is always open. And many terrible things have happened for humanity in the past. But people have come together and they have. have overcome them, walked through them, created new things. So my main advice would be don't depress and act, act, you know, do what you can and organize with others to bring chains. Now is not the time for depression. Do you have a good response from your classes at the end of the semester with your students

learning all this stuff? Yes, our students are quite a self-selected sample of people coming here to learn about the growth, etc. so they are they are there so I do get good responses I did get a response from a student that she told me that after taking our masters probably she didn't know that much about the growth before so she interacted during our masters she told me after I got the masters I developed very high levels of anxiety and depression you know so this this has struck me a little bit as a

as a talent you know how is it what why is it that yeah material. I can understand why, because the reality is hard to stomach and for us, because we work with it and we keep talking about it, it's like being in psychotherapy all the time. You know, you keep talking about it so you neutralize it. If you first encounter it, it can be like a difficult encounter. That's exactly right. Two quick thoughts on that. One, not everyone is the same. So there will always be a distribution of responses for humans coming across this. My reaction, a lot of my students, they found more depressing things in my Reality 101 course, but they didn't find them depressing because we processed it as a group. And to know the landscape, to see how these things

fit together is actually really enlightening and helps with your neurochemical response to these things. So I think it's a combination of having a community to discuss, like you were saying, we're working on this all the time. And an understanding, a clarity, it's comforting in a weird sort of way. So, Giorgos, what do you personally care about most in the world? Yeah, right now I care for my daughters. I have two twins that they are three years old,

so I really care about them. But I think also caring about them fortified my feelings of caring about the rest of the world because it's a great gateway to empathy, you know, like feeling about how much I care for these two human beings and how much other cares equivalently for their human beings and how much we have to care for one another. So it kind of strengthened my feelings of care and empathy for others and for the future, especially of the once. That's beautiful. Of all the issues we've discussed or any other issue on your mind, what are you most concerned about in the world in the coming 10 years? Yeah, I'm concerned

about nuclear war to be honest or a war between US and China. Yeah, I'm concerned with a faster collapse than climate, you know, that then climate would come on top of its own on a I'm concerned because I see like, you know, like in Greek tragedy, they say, what's the form of a tragedy? The form of a tragedy is two actors, each one looking at their own rationality and their own logic without any limit and then pursuing it to the very end, to the common ruin, you know, to the ruin of both actors, of both protagonists. And there are elements in the current moment that you can see the superpowers pursue. doing particular logic to which one cannot see an easy way out of it. So that's what concerns me for the next 10 years.

Dude, we got to talk more often. I only know of your work. We've never spoken before this. And we agree on almost everything you've said today. That's nice. I agree with you on that. So in contrast, what brings you hope in the next 10 years or so? what are things that you're hopeful about?

I think there are openings and I think precisely because it's not a comfortable conformist era of things are more or less fine. Why should we rock the boat? The boat is rocking a lot. So people are moving around and trying to find new meanings and new senses. And I see more and more young people coming here,

abandoning careers, in comfortable jobs, in marketing, etc. because they feel they have to do something. So I feel something unexpected and big, politically interesting will come out in the next 10 years. I don't know what form we will take, but I'm pretty confident it will. If you were a benevolent dictator or something similar and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing, one policy, one thing that you would implement to improve human and planetary futures? I would abolish dictators and resign myself.

I'm very stunned democrat. And I mean, I'm not saying it like that. I was reading about Solon, you know, who in my book about limits, I try to explain the logic of self-remitation and then go back to ancient Greece. Solon instituted democracy, you know, in ancient Athens. He said, these are the rules. So he was the most powerful person at that moment. And then he says, like, I'm exiling myself.

He got self-exciled. And he said, because precisely me accumulating all this power that I have right now, and I could use it benevolently to say, I'm going to stay here forever to protect democracy and to let it have its first steps. And you really need me because I'm the mastermind of the whole constitution. He said, no, if I stay here, I'm accumulating power, which is precisely what I try to institute here again.

So he left the city. He said, excited. I'm not waiting for you to exile me. I'm exiling myself. And I think it's a great metaphor. We need politicians like that. I keep seeing politicians that they say, I'm really important for the movement.

I'm not going to step down. Not like get out, you know, step out. Even if you're very important democracy and people need rotation, you know. They don't need the benevolent one person figure. So that kind of links your idea of DePontz and the chicken and the egg of collective versus individual is we have to advocate. for an open society and use less resources and kind of expand awareness to others of that. And our society and the growth upswing is focused on monetary power,

which leads to political and absolute power. And there's going to have to be some sort of different arrangement if we're going to make it through this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Thank you so much for your time. Georgios. Is there anything else you'd like to share to those listening? No, thank you. It was a wonderful conversation with that's on many topics and I really enjoyed having someone that with whom my ideas align and asking, let's say, the really important

questions. To be continued, my new friend. Thank you, Nate. If you enjoyed or learn from this episode of the Great Simplification, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and visit the great simplification.com for more information on future releases.