Our Growing Economy with Richard Heinberg

“We are victims of our own success”


Has economic growth destroyed us all? Usually economic growth is
seen as a good thing right? Or at least that is what politicians
would have us believe. 


In this episode prepare yourselves! Put your seat belts on! As
Richard Heinberg does not hold back. There is no softness or
sugar coating here, he has been spreading the word of our
impending climate crisis for many many years…


Richard is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon
Institute, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost
advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil
fuels. He is the author of fourteen books, has written essays and
articles, delivered hundreds of lectures and interviews for print
(including for Reuters, and Time), television
(including Good Morning America, National Geographic, Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Al-Jazeera, and C-SPAN), and radio (including NPR, WABC, and Air
America). 


Not to mention, Richard has appeared in many film and television
documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour.


Needless to say, when it comes to the climate crisis, he’s the
man! In this episode, we jump straight into the core of it all.
Richard talks us through everything from the limitations of
renewable energy, the growth of capitalism, human ingenuity, to
eco-living, community resilience and the power of ascetic beauty.



“Ascetics have been hijacked by capitalism, in biology
it’s called ascetic decadents. That’s where the competition of
production and enjoyment of beauty takes off on its own and it
actually leads to the evolutionary bottleneck in a species. The
classic example is the Irish elk. Which is this type of elk that
used to live in Ireland and started to evolve bigger and bigger
antlers, until the antlers were so large… and it was doing this for
ascetic purposes. The elk just ultimately could not persist and
they went extinct. Now we are doing the same thing with our ascetic
pleasures, they have been hijacked by capitalism and by
consumerism, so that most of the ascetic consumption that we do in
the modern world, is all based on just making money and trying to
think a certain way. Everything is ascetically designed to make us
want to buy more so it’s serving the very process of economic
growth that is undermining our future. So we have to take back
ascetics from capitalism and consumerism, and once again it needs
to serve our long term wellbeing.”




Don’t worry it isn’t all doom and gloom! We left the conversation
feeling slightly beat up but overall hopeful and empowered.


We look forward to hearing your thoughts on social media!


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Big love,


Dave and Steve x


Reference


Naomi Klein


Helena Norberg-Hodges


Satish Kumar Magazine


Zach Bush MD





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