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I very much appreciate all the guests and content of your podcast Rachel. You're such a good host and I always enjoy and admire your interviewing skill and deep understanding.

I would like to hear more conversation about the ins and outs of reducing consumption. Consumption of fossil fuels but also consumption in general. Certainly, it's a hard row to hoe convincing people/culture to embrace a simpler lifestyle and understand the beauty and ease that a life with less stuff entails.

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Thanks Rachel, an interesting interview. While I hope that much of this is correct, I worry that the social and political tipping points necessary for radical action and mobilisation are much more distant than Fisher and others (such as Chenoweth and Stephan) might suggest. Why? First, nearly all of the previous examples I can think of had a human face accompanied by very human demands (women’s suffrage, civil rights, anti-war, regime change), whereas the ecological and climatological crises remain awkwardly abstract and impersonal for many people. Second, as you adroitly noted, this time the necessary changes and responses would require economic and energy sacrifices. And to quote Chakrabarty: ‘The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil-fuel use. Most of our freedoms so far have been energy-intensive.’ It seems very improbable that the majority of the population will accept a political path of less energy, less material stuff, and – in a sense - less freedom until it forced upon them. Most of what is characterised as the rise of popularism, or what Richard Seymour calls disaster nationalism, is the result of an experience or perception of loss, disempowerment and relative economic decline. The demands of activists and environmentalists are likely to be ignored if they aren’t promising solutions to these issues; moreover, the repression and brutalization of those activists seems likely to be tolerated for far longer than if their actions were directed towards more explicitly human economic and welfare goals and struggles. Thirdly, as I think you were implying, political legitimation is at a crisis point because of such factors as misinformation, disinformation, conspiracism, generative AI, Big Data etc. A hundred climate activists could probably be shot on the White House lawn and we now live in an age where a significant portion of the population would view it as fake news or accept an alternative account of events.

None of this is to say that there isn’t a social threshold and tipping point when people will rise up (and small unpredictable events can certainly trigger big actions in a butterfly effect type cascade), but the bar feels a lot higher than many studies and theories of change are predicting. There is a need to get very creative and experimental in how the aforementioned difficulties and wicked problems are tackled.

Gah! Some hopium looks attractive about now.

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All of that said, the social media response to the shooting of the UnitedHealth CEO is ... erm ... interesting. Obviously there is a lot of bad feeling percolating with regard to private health care and similar business interests/practices.

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An act of climate rescue we all hold power to, a passive resistance, is 'don't buy stuff !' To bring clarity to the line between what we want and what we need. Want chicken dinner in a jar ? Need bulk beans, grains and seeds. Want fashion ? Need clothes for shelter from the elements, wear until well worn. Want a better heater ? Learn the basics of double glazing, insulate the ceiling, get a woollen blanket. Car pool app, donut economics. Slash consuming, any way you can personally, any way you feel. Passive reduction. Fights inflation. The sound of one hand clapping.

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Thanks, Rachel, for this interview with this 'apocalyptic optimist' (love that label!) with her passion, fluency and knowledge. It is tempting to view her vision of a rising population overcoming the self interest of accumulated power as idealistic but, not having read her book, I would reserve judgment on that and she appears to be saying that there is precedent.

One think I am increasingly sure of is that we do create our reality. Not in some mystical way or even on the basis of everything is just energy but more simply that what we focus on is more often than not what we get. The fact that don't yet have our Malcolm X is not a cause to grieve if only that it leaves space for a more diverse/dissipated leadership that spreads power rather than concentrates it which is, after all, the very thing that we are seeking to change. Also, in activist terms, if you don't have a head it can't be chopped off!

I note Peter Geoghegan (Democracy for Sale) is asking for suggestions about how to clean up our democracy. I suspect he will be innundated. I'm just off there now....

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Dana's message is echoed elsewhere and is a view I have been feeling is looking more and more like our only way out, unfortunately. I had one climate policy prof (a physicist even) tell me "you have to trust your institutions, Mark" which made me fall off my chair, but I've also heard (also from a policy expert) that one of the most successful strategies to force corporations, at least, to get serious have been those alarming events whereby people glue or shackle themselves to the corporate front doors. One thing is sure: those in power are not going to do anything if they are really entrenched. On the other hand, if a real person, like Rachel, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suddenly popped into the Oval Office, or Number 10, we might have an easier time of things... but then again, they would probably not last long, would they? Rock the boat, and it falls over on you.

But if enough people rocked the boat, they can't shoot us all, can they? There is a thoughtful review of Dana's new book on Amazon, giving it a 2-star rating, saying that practical examples of just how to go about the peaceful, organized protest that would deliver us from this evil were lacking in the book. If that is the case, I'm not entirely surprised. It seems to me Dana's message is not so much how to get it done, as there are probably a number of ways, but more that we need to see a lot more of it before it reaches the required critical mass. And we all know that when it's a place like Pakistan that suffers a flood over one-third of its territory that makes 8 million people homeless, and not a place like the US, UK, France, Germany... then it's a shame but not a real problem. Still, there are enough good people in developed nations who, if enlightened, would amount to far more than enough I think to get things moving. But as long as the news stories continue to read "By the year 2100 scientists say..." as if it is only a distant problem, and as long as scientists go on record as saying that human extinction is not really a possibility with global warming, or that climate change is something we have to live with rather than imagine that we can defeat... well then hell. We will just keep on yearning for a new electric car and an electric bike (since our legs don't work?) as we recycle our plastic and plant a tree in our yards. This is the result of the "positive story" concept of how to bring the reality of climate change to the general public, that does not seem to be working.

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I knew he had something to do with the bullet votes but I couldn't figure out how until you reported the freaking contest he held. JFC Where will it end?

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Yes, thank you again for all your work. A bracing conversation in real politic. To this end, I am sceptical of further protest without a clear understanding of the alternative. The Rebel is part of the System; we have seen the endless stream of villains and bogeymen created for the means of further repression. I agree with the call from some here, that are future lies in the quiet turning away from this charade and to the harder work of literally building soil health in our local landscapes, which will engender the building of community. The answer is surely positive and generative, aligning with the world's truly most powerful forces.

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I feel like Dana never heard your question about asymmetry of military force due to technology being a real barrier to successful protest because she kept interrupting before understanding your question.

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