15 Comments

Looking forward to seeing the fruits of your journey with Planet Coordinate!

Always good to listen to your podcast Rachel.

Good Luck and stay safe!

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Thank you!!

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Great questions, yes 2025 could be challenging! A few thoughts about the questions.

1. There should always be a strategy! That would deliver a route map with when to dissent, protest, etc. on it. I don’t think there is anywhere, where we can all hide!

2. The logic of common good and collective action determines that critical mass (social), isn’t a linear process. It could be closer than we think!

3. I think critical mass and democratic process are closely linked, communication is very important .

4. It is imperative to win the transitional narrative now, otherwise, we would have to endure a period of chaos.

5. To message behaviours is good, to focus on the 1%, is mote effective, initially.

6. Is science making things worse, or is it just how it is reported? There is also the issue of subversion of research, which needs to be addressed.

7. This comes back to US imperialism and the MIC, a truly dominant force, both economically and militarily! Only global challenge will change this.

8. Have as much fun as you can, the most sustainable way you can, regardless of our ultimate destiny!

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Hi Rachel,

thanks so much for the time and thought that you've put into answering my double-banger question.

Such a thorough response, I really appreciate that.

Wishing you all the best for your BIG adventure :)

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Whew! Those questions! Especially #5. Something all activists struggle with, I’m guessing. For #8, scientist and author Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has lots of fun ideas. (She’s here on Substack.)

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Watching on Youtube. Good luck with the new project.

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As a supporting subscriber I love your questions, Rachel. The Pause for Peace initiative started by the Deep Transformation Network meets some core criteria. it is non violent, deceptively simple and non threatening,, escallatory and taps into human collective intelligence. The numbers involved needed to fire change is the square root of 3.5%…not as many as you think. https://globalpeoplepower.org/blog/

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Thank you for doing what you do! The world needs more people like you who are willing to point out the things related to climate change that nobody wants to talk about.

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Concerning the question of flying or not flying-- the decision to not buy a product or engage in a behavior that involves the use of resources or the creation of polluting waste (like CO2) seems to be a pivot point in which we can express our concerns over the state of the world, and make change. But it is all too easy to fall into the trap of imagining that we can save the world through our individual consumer choices. For the most part our personal abstentions from the prodigality of the consumer economy have very little effect on these systems of waste. In the absence of mass movements leading to social consensus and action to radically reform our wasteful and polluting economic systems, we refrain from participating, to the degree we can, in those economies for the private satisfaction we derive from living by our principles, while the economic juggernaut roles on inexorably without us.

In the case of Rachel's proposed itinerary of flights, the planes she is booked on will fly regardless of whether she is on them or not. No movement to ban fossil fueled flying exists as far as I know, and if it does, it has very little chance of having a real impact on the aviation business. Until that changes, until such a movement has mass support sufficient to create political change, we have to live in the world as it is, if we want to live as anything other than monks or hermits nursing their own virtue. This means getting our hands dirty, doing things we know to be wrong; in Rachel's case in order to pursue a project that could have a positive, inspirational impact on the struggle to create a world which is not bedeviled by these terrible dilemmas.

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Overall, this is great and I liked the personal news about your backpacking globetrotting project.

My comment is about your answer at 21:25 when you say that “capitalism will inevitably collapse as fossil fuels inevitably erode away”.

The problem here – as 360.org has been saying for years now – is that the planet is not actually about to run out of fossil fuel. 360.org’s argument is that we have to keep it in the ground because the environmental consequences of burning it will destroy the ecosystem long before the fuel runs out.

Ergo, with fossil-fuelled capitalists in charge, whose primary accountability is to their shareholders, it’s incorrect to predict that capitalism will eat itself out of house and home and usher in a new era that is not dependent on fossil fuels before it is too late.

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I haven't found anything at 360org on energy or oil. But the idea that FF aren't in short supply is faulty: if we at the very least consider, as Rachel pointed out, that when it comes to oil itself, the lack of it has huge repercussions, for example on the ability to extract and distribute other fossils we burn as fuel. And oil is indeed getting harder and harder to come by, as evidenced by the extremes to which the industry itself is going in order to extract what remains from oil wells that reach depletion. If a required element of capitalism is the quest for never-ending growth, reduced energy production will no doubt make such growth exceedingly difficult. As for "before it is too late" I don't think anyone believes that capitalism will collapse in a convenient time frame, which is in itself a hugely important discussion, as most attention to solutions for example on climate are very poorly aware of the time remaining in which to act.

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Thanks, Mark. My comment was based on this one by Bill McKibben. I’ve tracked it down. He wrote it in 2016. Sorry I got the name wrong: 350.org is what I meant.

https://350.org/why-we-need-to-keep-80-percent-of-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground

My Internet search suggests that the world has around 1.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil left, which may last about 60 to 90 years. I didn’t research coal and gas. I guess they’ll add some decades to the total.

So, yes, “capitalism will inevitably collapse as fossil fuels inevitably erode away”. But I still think it’s a misjudgement to focus on that particular resource running out when there is so much of it left and the other consequences are probably worse. I’m not a climate scientist, obviously, but I believe Bill McKibben is worth listening to.

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Brilliant analysis and synthesis. Rachel you've grown so much so fast! (I've been following you for about a year) Dense yet clear. Excited for your new projects. I'm working on a narrative how the poly crisis is well-modeled by the pathology of and recovery from addiction. Your clarity is a continual inspiration. Rock on Homegirl! Thank you.

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I'm honoured. Honoured to be one of the 10 bubbles that floated to the top of the question list. Honoured for your lucid reply, the free-flowing uncut podcast. Hat tip and bow. This world is lost, so much disfunction from the bottom to the top. And yet as strategy, site selection, organics and permaculture, simple, tasteful living spaces, passive energy, music and creativity with a council of the wise. Collective wisdom was lost with pottery neolithic imho. Surplus stored > greed > pride > anger > violence. From Sargon to Maidan Square, Enlil to Gaza. Greed and violence turned abolition/slavery to indentured labour. Prohibition ; swallowed. Environmentalism ; swallowed. I was a part of that 46 years ago. Swallowed. The north Atlantic 'cold blob' may be the coalmine canary. Cold for you, hot for me in the Australian south. Natural law and earth may say to the aware ; "Tune in, switch off." Be not thy brothers keeper, time to get ready for the storm. Design divine. Planet podcast via satellite wifi. Keep up the good work.

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I enjoyed the wonderful sophistry that you used to justify your jet-setting.

The planes will fly because everyone on them is engaged in making the same species of justification.

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