11 Comments

This truly feels down-to-earth, visceral and connecting. Kris, what an inspiration. And thank you for pulling this together Rachel. Now how do we get ourselves some double-helpings of urban anarchy?!

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Perhaps it is that I have become so immersed in the meta crisis output that Kris's position on tech seems utterly uncontroversial. His life is necessarily peppered with compromises just to be part of the world as tech has so captured our lives that functioning without any of it is to cut yourself off both socially and often physically in rural areas.

The segment about meat sums it up quite well. We need animals as part of our agriculture system but we need to learn to eat less. Just substitute tech for animals and life for agriculture.

Now, where did I put the mangle....

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There are many points in this discussion that urge me toward response, but I will mention just four that come easily to mind.

As an 83 year-old who has for 50+ years lived off-grid (mostly solar with fossil fuel back-ups), living what has been called (depending on who's speaking when) an alternative, or back-to-the-land, or drop-out, or semi-voluntary poverty lifestyle, etc., I note first that the discussion is principally applicable to urban living and, second, that it more or less assumes youth and health of advocates and practitioners.

Third, I would suggest that certainly among the most important aspects of the efforts all of us are making to at least deflect or defer the full catastrophe of climate change that is in the offing, are determination to resist the dominant capitalist extract-exploit-consume-waste paradigm, to do what we can to wither and subvert it, to drastically pare down our own material needs, to ask ourselves repeatedly what our true values are, what is tuly important, what is our very short life really all about.

Fourth, I note that some of us began talking about urban anarchy several decades ago and that Murray Bookchin, the best-known urban anarchist and planner of that era, deserves to be better known today.

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Michael, thank you for the reference to Murray. I'd not picked up the urban anarchist label with him and it seems Ecology of Freedom is a good place to start perhaps? Your point #1 is interesting because it seems to tie well with a previous piece Rachel did with Matt Huber ... that we have a climate class war on our hands. I guess it seems we've always had a problem of relatedness where we can't help but discuss/opinionate/solution from the perspective of our class (loosely grouped around wealth / age / place / race).

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The only issue I have which tempers my Low Tech enthusiasm is my mum is chronically ill and necessarily needs high tech medicine to survive.

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Aug 16Edited

She is the last generation to have this privilege. If we use up or stop al oil there is no healthcare at all. Low tech or hightech. Boomers are pulling up the ladder.

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Alot to love about this episode, and a fair grasp of the agricultural perspective. I think the attachment to an urban lifestyle, and the necessary footprint of even the mist ecological city hovers in the back ground. The city itself is a form of centralised technology which has its scale issues.

This also relates to the realist global Militarism positions which come up, themselves predicated on the unquestionable right of people to live in cities and not grow their own food. If you redistribute the provisioning of life (you and your community make the things that you need for a good life from your bioregion) then the pillars for industrial militaristic society are taken away. Murray Bookchin was talking about this back in the day, local agrarianism and anarchy syndacalism can go hand in hand.

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Yo Rachel I've been looking back at this article from Kris https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network/

And a bit more about HS2 in the UK, and I'm wondering if you'd be down for doing an episode on high speed rail. The arguments for it seem to be that (a) it will displace domestic air travel and (b) it will move express trains off the conventional track allowing more capacity for commuter trains.

Problem is you can achieve these by (a) banning domestic flights and (b) running fewer intercity express trains and if people really need to travel intercity they can take the slow train. These are both consistent with a more local and low energy society advocated for by the degrowth movement.

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Not trying to be that guy, I hope you delete this comment lol. I want your front face to be as inscrutable as possible

Climate corruption journalist investigating why the world in crisis—and what to do about it.

You're missing an is.

Thanks,

Rick

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Recently discovered Low Tech Mag and was thinking about tweeting you to get Kris on, and then you did it anyway! Amazing stuff. Feel like there's a lot of similarity between him and Chris Smaje.

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Seems incredibly liberating.

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