Nate Hagens on Century of the Self(less)

Nate Hagens, the ex-vice president of Lehman Brothers turned generalist Limits to Growth scholar, wrote and article that introduced me to the wonderful documentary 'The Century of the Self', about how psychoanalysis was used in pubic relations and advertisement to bring consumerism and stable, western style democracy to a whole new level. Here is the link to the article for theoildrum.com on the BBC documentary 'Century of the Self'. I seriously recommend both the article and the documentary.

"I've recently rewatched The Century of the Self (COTS), a four part BBC special on the birth and explosion of public relations/advertising, and it's impact on American culture. The series documents how the Freudian theory of subconscious irrational behavior was seized on and manipulated by governments and businesses in the 21st century, initially spearheaded by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and consultant to several administrations (Coolidge, Roosevelt, Wilson per COTS). While watching, I had to agree that the 20th century WAS the century of the self, and in no small part from the cultural push/pull of advertising/media. The films creator, Adam Curtis, seemed to suggest that studying the behaviors of individuals is interesting, but that the real power to move societies lies in the ability to impact the psychology of crowds, via appealing to subconscious desires (for freedom, status, etc.)"

Documentary 'The Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis and the BBC

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Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Timeline: Historical overview of Afghanistan

Stop the War officer John Rees provides a short history of imperialist intervention and local resistance in Afghanistan. Timeline is a series of programmes on political history presented by John Rees and produced by the Islam Channel [ http://www.islamchannel.tv ].

Stop the war coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

http://www.counterfire.org

Marxism 2009: some highlights

Unfortunately, finishing my bachelors this summer turned out to mean I could not attend Marxism festival 2009 in London. However, some of the most prominent speakers have had their speeches filmed and posted on Youtube.

Slavoj Žižek on reinventing socialism and what it means to be a revolutionary today.



Tariq Ali on recent international politics: Obama, Pakistan and the US empire.



More can be found here, including speeches by David Harvey, Chris Harman, and Alex Callinicos (the diehard leninist).

Charles Hall in New Scientist -Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil

One of my favourite academics who address the importance of natural sciences to economic issues is the loud-voiced Charles Hall. He managed to get the undiluted message of the limits to growth published right there in the New Scientist. His article is really worth a good look.

"The world today faces enormous problems related to population and resources. These ideas were discussed intelligently and, for the most part, accurately in many papers from the middle of the last century, but then they largely disappeared from scientific and public discussion, in part because of an inaccurate understanding of both what those earlier papers said and the validity of many of their predictions. Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications
of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society.

(...)

No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers. Despite considerable potential, renewable sources (other than hydropower or traditional wood) currently provide less than 1 percent of the energy used in both the U.S. and the world, and the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics. Our new sources of “green” energy are simply increasing along with (rather than displacing) all of the traditional ones. If we are to resolve these issues, including the important one of climate change, in any meaningful way, we need to make them again central to education at all levels of our universities, and to debate and even stand up to those who negate their importance, for we have few great intellectual leaders on these issues today. We must teach economics from a biophysical as well as a social perspective. Only then do we have any chance of understanding or solving these problems."

Charles Hall Speaking at ASPO VII in Barcelona, October 2008

Tariq Ali at the Parkland Conference

Tariq Ali speaks at the Parkland Conference in Edmonton, Canada, on November 16, 2008. Amazing speech on The Dictatorship of Capital: Its Impact on Politics and Culture. With the fall of the Berlin Wall what happened to diversity and freedom of expression? How did market-realism establish its ascendancy in Western culture? He also quotes from and addresses the admirable culture of resistance that is an integral part of Arab poetry.

June 24th: Presentation on Peak Oil and Geopolitics in Amsterdam (Dutch)

Rembrandt Koppelaar, chairman of peakoil.nl (or the Dutch branch of ASPO) and I, Freek Blauwhof, will hold a joint presentation on peak oil and the effects of increasing resource scarcity on international politics coming wednesday evening. I invite everyone in the neighbourhood at least able of understanding Dutch with some Power Point visual support to come an join the discussion!

Election Fraud in Iran?

The Real News and Asia times reporter Pepe Escobar gave an in-depth analysis of the power structures in Iranian politics, and the events surrounding the recent elections. While most other media outlets are content with reporting the obvious fact of disagreement between the Ahmedinejad and Moussawi camps about the fairness of the elections, The Real News addresses the actual issues in great detail. Very informative.

Michael Parenti: US War on Yugoslavia

Simple and clear introduction into marxian critique of imperialism by Michael Parenti on "The U.S. War on Yugoslavia" given May 16, 1999 in Seattle. The rising confidence of the left in America at the time can be felt throughout this great talk, and much of the issues Parenti raises have a relevance now he could not have foreseen at the time.

The war on Yugoslavia and the subsequent war crime trials in the Hague have been universally distorted and quickly forgotten. During the war, Michael Parenti exposed the elaborate plan started in 1989 to split up Yugoslavia into right wing ethnically divided separate states; a country that was built on the pan-Slaves coming together into a viable socialist nation. This is not to say that politics in Yugoslavia was perfect, but the progress all the Slavic nations have lost is without a doubt astounding. The plan Parenti described seems to work out very well today. Funny how, unlike the plan for Iraq becoming a blossoming flower of democracy in the Middle East, this one worked out quite well.

Interestingly enough, the US still have large bases in Kosovo. One strategic reason is the competition with Russia over control of the energy infrastructure network in Europe and central Asia. Several thousands of US soldiers protect the pipelines through the Balkans that are necessary to link pipeline networks connecting the oil and gas from central Asia to the export ports and the European pipeline networks. Pipelines in the Balkans Pipelines in the Kaukasus

Michael Parenti is author of many books, including:

Contrary Notions, City Lights, 2007
The Culture Struggle, Seven Stories Press, 2006
Superpatriotism, City Lights, 2004
The Assassination of Julius Caesar, The New Press, 2003 (A great talk about Rome, Ceasar, history as a science and class bias of historians can be viewed here.)
To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso, 2000
History as Mystery, City Lights, 1999

Documentary: The Take

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the current depression is making more and more places take a path similar to Argentina. And indeed Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein are now at the forefront of a growing progressive movement to call for nationalisation and cooperatisation of the American auto industry for example, to put the industry to work for the public good. http://thetake.org/

Documentary: A Place Called Chiapas

'A Place Called Chiapas' is a breathtaking Canadian documentary of first-hand accounts of the EZLN, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the south west Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.

Paper on Heidegger and Social Philosophy

Even though it's quite academic and metaphysical, I thought this paper on Heidegger on historicality and social phenomenology might provoke some thought. It deals with a small piece of the question of what distinguishes real existential or social philosophy from Dr. Phil psychology on societal scale. In other words, how can you be sure your philosophical social or cultural analysis really strikes the core of the lifeforms you describe.

For the real philosophy fans I found the 1947 letter exchange between Marcuse and Heiddegger on the internet. These letters shed a great light on the pain thinkers like Marcuse, Arendt, and Sartre must have felt to see their philosophical mentor embrace Nazism.

Annie Machon: How to Counter the Spies

Annie Machon is a former MI5 (British Security Service) Intelligence Officer and whistleblower. She left the Service at the same time as her (now ex-)partner, David Shayler, due to Shayler's disclosures about crimes committed by the intelligence agencies. Annie is a prominent member of 9/11 Truth Movement, and in 2005 she wrote a book called "Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair". This is a presentation she gave about the role of intelligence agencies in the current era of the unending “war on terror”, how they monitor citizens and left-wing activists in particular, the implications for our democracies, and what we can do to fight back.

Helen Scott on Rosa Luxemburg

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A wonderful introduction into the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg, the early 20th century German revolutionary. Helen Scott is editor of "The essential Rosa Luxemburg : Reform or revolution & The mass strike".

Shell on Trial and Antonia Juhasz on “The True Cost of Chevron"

These two in depth Democracy Now reports on Shell's and Chevron's practices of 'externalising costs' proved to provide a great deal of the history of these companies' shady dealings in the third world.



A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins this Wednesday in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.



Now Chevron’s annual report reports that 2008 was the company’s most profitable year in history. Just ahead of Chevron’s shareholder meeting, a new report released today tells shareholders more about the hidden and underreported costs of these profits. The alternative annual report is called “The True Cost of Chevron.” It brings together stories from communities across the world—Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States—all directly affected by and in struggle against Chevron’s operations. We speak to the report’s author and James Craig, media adviser for Latin America for Chevron.

Presentation: Ecological Critique of Market Society

I thought I'd post this presentation text I've written for a philosophy department course called 'Concerns of the Market'. It is aimed to be a short introduction into the ecological critique of, as the course called it, 'market societies'.

It refers to a power point presentation that can be downloaded here or viewed here.

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1 Introduction

In this presentation, my aim is to give a short summary of the critique of market society and neoliberalism from the perspective of environmentalists and ecologists like Dennis and Donella Meadows, the authors of ‘The Limits to Growth’. This presentation will require some scientific discussion that is instrumental for a philosophical perspective. I believe that any fruitful philosophical inquiry into the moral problems of sustainability will have to rely on recent scientific discourse in order to ask the right moral questions. For example, questions like future generations’ rights to oil resources are outdated when it seems unlikely that there will be much left for these future generations, even when there is a consistent political-economic move to sustainable consumption. Rights to energy resources more generally might be more appropriate in this case.

I will break down this critique in two parts; the first dealing with the use of ‘sources’, the other with disposal of waste and pollutants in ‘sinks’. [figure 1, 2, 3] By sources is meant all natural resources that are used in an economy, from fishing stock and arable land to water supply and fossil fuels. By sinks are meant the capacities of ecosystems to absorb pollution and waste, from bacteria in rivers that break down sewage to the adaptivity of atmosphere to greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously central to this critique is the notion of sustainability. I use the word here as meaning natural-economic conditions of necessity for the realisation of any reasonable interpretation of human flourishing for most people over time. Sustainability is often mistaken as some kind of moral value by itself. But, as long as we can agree that human flourishing in the future should also be an aim of political morality, so I can skip a lengthy discussion of Derek Parfit, what other value should political action ultimately have in mind, if not sustained human flourishing for all? Sustainability, then, concerns the natural boundraries for the sustained possibility of this moral end.

The question is whether societies in which markets are the dominant mechanism of allocation of goods and services are, or can be made capable of dealing fairly and effectively with the problems of increasing scarcity of resources and pollution. In other words: is there a morally acceptable capitalist road to sustainability? As I am approaching this question through looking at natural resources and sinks, Herman Daly’s widely used criteria for sustainable use of resources and pollution I think hits the nail on the head [figure 4]. If there are no questions about this definition of sustainability, I would like to proceed with the overview of the ecological critique of market society.

2.1 Sources

In countries where the price of non-renewable resources and unsustainably used renewable resources are set by the market (or are even subsidised), there is a gap between the use value of that resource and its exchange value, the price. As any normal commodity, natural resources are traded in the market, where supply and demand determine price. According to a central justificatory thesis in neoclassical economics, which treats natural resources like any other commodity, the market mechanism ensures efficient allocation of goods; but, of course, in this case we are dealing with depleting natural resources. Once used, they are gone, and somewhere along the way of depletion, (where maximum supply exceeds demand) price is set no longer by supply, demand and marginal production cost, but by natural scarcity and shortage.

So in so far as there are good reasons to assume that the exchange value, as set by the market at times of relative abundance, is much lower than the real use value of the resource, the market mechanisms of supply and demand cannot be relied upon to allocate non-renewable resources and depleting renewable resources efficiently. It follows that a society that allocates non-renewable resources in this market-based way is, from this perspective, wasting the ‘bank account’ of elementary resources considerably.

But the critique can go more fundamental. Market-based societies are also ill-prepared to adapt to depletion and scarcity of vital resources like energy or food that its economy is reliant on. A political-economic tradition of leaving allocation of non-renewables to the market produces a dependent economic infrastructure with the high consumption patterns that result from market underpricing. These infrastructures are the aggregates of long term investment; it takes several decades to replenish without extra costs the stock of cars, ships, factory equipment, electricity plants and so on. A market-based society that finds one of its essential resources depleting can maybe change allocation systems quickly, but it is stuck with the economic infrastructure and capital stock that is accumulated over time. This kind of exposure to resource shocks combined with the highly discussed increase in worldwide inequality can have morally unacceptable consequences- think of stagflation after the oil shocks of the 70s, food or water shortages and even the collapse of civilisation like on the Easter Islands. These are results of what the authors of LtG call overshoot- when a (socio-economic) system passes its external limits.

My own literature research into the depletion of different non-renewable and depleting renewable resources has convinced me there is cause for concern in many cases; oil and natural gas production are in dangerous stages of decline considering the level of dependency of most societies on these resources. [figure 5 and 6] Potable water, fish stocks and soil fertility are, albeit in different ways, at more or less maximum sustainable levels of extraction or beyond these levels. Contrary to a still dominant academic consensus, I found that the models of the Club of Rome have been quite right so far.

The fundamental question for this course is whether sustainable use of these resources can be reached with ‘market based solutions’. My position here is a negative one. Sustainable use of resources seems to be contradictory to a central thesis in neoclassical economics and market-based politics: that supply and demand allocate resources through setting prices. This conclusion I see supported in historical economic and energy policy in capitalist countries. The countries that have made the most considerable steps towards resource sustainability, Sweden, Iceland and Cuba, have done this through direct government involvement and investment. But rather than expanding on my own political opinion now, I invite discussion on this topic after this presentation.

2.2 Sinks

The question of pollution and waste shares many characteristics with the one concerning (renewable and non-renewable) resource depletion. There are sustainable levels of pollution that can be absorbed by ecosystem sinks, but exceeding these levels for a longer time results in problems of overshoot.

The most global and well-known example of overshoot by polluting sinks is global warming. There are lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions that increase temperature, but will be corrected by the world ecosystems correction mechanisms. After a certain point, however, the ‘positive feedback loops’, or the ecosystem mechanisms that reinforce global warming, become stronger than the balancing correction mechanisms. The current scientific debate concerns when exactly this point is most likely reached. The debate ranges from 350 ppm, which was reached around 1985, to 450 ppm, which would be reached in 35 years at current rates of emission. [figure 7 and 8] This is a very serious issue: if greenhouse gas levels stay above this critical point for a longer time, the genie will be out of the bottle. Humans will have lost their grip on this potential global catastrophe.

Again, the question for this course is whether there is a credible market based road to sustainability on the pollution side of the ecology-economy system. There is one especially prominent market based scheme for reducing emissions, cap and trade. This is the system in place in the EU at the moment, and it is the one that is being proposed by the Obama administration as well. At first sight and with some generous reading of the institutional argument, it seems it could work. All that governments need to do is to set the amount of emission rights, and these can then be allocated by the market in these rights. That would mean that there is a limit for emission, while the market can efficiently decide how exactly these emission targets will be met.

But if one looks a little further into the range of institutions that are involved in these schemes, there are a lot of practical problems with such a solution that I would argue are not just accidental, but institutional and necessary. Emissions can be reduced by all kinds of administrative mechanisms (fe offsetting emissions in seperate projects abroad). Furthermore, markets in emissions rights create a secondary derivative market with its speculative bubbles, and corporations always have an interest in expanding the amount of rights that are actually issued. When the system was just introduced in the EU, for example, the market and lobbying power of big corporations like the German automobile industry was so strong it even accomplished to create rights for more emissions than are produced to begin with. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, emitting corporations universally denied global warming, in a fashion rather like the tobacco industry that denied smoking caused cancer. The history does make one suspect there is a logic in this so called 'partnership of the state and the private sector'. Most environmentalists, and myself included, would argue this is because corporations always have an interest in externalising costs and internalising profits, and will use their resources to obtain their end. This market power of corporations is an institutional fact that directly contradicts any credible move towards sustainability. As long as the market is at the centre stage of environmental policy, this policy will be the result of a tug of war between even the most well-meaning governments and international governmental bodies on the one side, and corporations that externalise the cost of battling against their pollution on the other.

3 Conclusion

If one tries to imagine a credible integrated road to sustainability on all the vital topics adressed and more there seems very little room for market dominance. The most market-based ideas that aim to address these issues in cohesion all emphasise a need for stable and unjeopardised move on the different fronts, requiring price stability for long term investment. A good introduction into these arguments is supplied by Richard Heinberg in 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. This necessity implies a government setting prices and pushing the market in a sustainable direction. But such a scheme will have to fight the same battle with contradicting economic institutions and mechanisms, like corporate lobbying and externalising of costs. Therefore, considering the actual scientific debates and economic-political practice, I am led to the more philosophical conclusion that capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Real solutions for the problems of an overshooting ecologic-economic system necessarily lie outside market thinking and market practice. Whether this should be a reformist taming of the forces of the market or a radical overcoming of its logic I leave up for discussion. In any case, it seems only a fool could expect that forces from within capitalism itself will save it from its own overshoot.

Ralph Schoenman: The Deeper Politics of 9 11

In this lecture Ralph Schoenman gives I think one of the best possible arguments for why 9/11 is not just a distraction from the present and future, but, to the contrary, provides another overwhelming insight into the shadow sides of state and class.

Ralph Schoenman was a comrade of Betrand Russells in the '60s, and apparently even got tortured in Bolivia for trying to submit evidence to acquit french Marxist Regis Dubray from execution. Schoenman must have been quite a powerful character; in this memo, Bertrand Russell describes him as a quick minded and energetic young optimist who is convinced of "his unshakable belief in the penetration and breadth of his understanding". In 1969, Russell tragically distanced himself from Schoenman, since he had a tendency to exploit his proximity to Russell. As Sartre put it in a letter to Schoenman: "You can't both hide behind Russell and put him in your pocket." But much can be said for Schoenman, since he did not sell out like so many people of his generation. To the contrary, he now perplexes online biography writers by adhering to the language of marxists in the '60: "He reads a long, tedious tract, filled with phrases like 'the workers council were the proletarian power in embryo, but these were smashed by the Stalinist reaction.'"

This lecture makes me suspect however, that he is not just a relic from days when radical groups split over discussions on Trotsky and Stalin. It looks like his confidence and radicalism allows him a great amount of insight into the darkest political facts and structures.

His books include 'P.R.' (1967), 'Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century' (1967), and 'The Hidden History of Zionism' (1988).

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land

From The Real News: "'Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land' was broadcast on the French CBC on October 23, 2008, provoking a flood of complaints to the Canadian network. These complaints overwhelmingly took the network to task for running what they deemed to be a "pro-Palestinian" film, largely sidestepping the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary's explicit focus on how pro-Israeli pressure groups methodically influence American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

CBC management asked the network's Ombudsman to launch a full-scale investigation into the substance of the complaints and the central charge that the film was unduly biased.

On December 8, 2008, the Ombudsman released her findings. She issued a report concluding that Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land should not have been shown on French CBC at all."

The funny thing is that this film addresses the propaganda war in favour of the Israeli state, that uses strategies like creating an atmosphere of fear to keep journalists from stepping out of the official narrative that justifies the occupation. It is an analysis of the very practice this Ombudsman's report is an example of.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Nate Hagens on Energy, Resources and Human Demand on a Full Planet

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Nate Hagens is an ex vice president of Lehman Brothers who voluntarily left his business career some years ago out of concerns about 'negative externalities'. Now he is doing his PhD at the University of Vermont Gund Institute for ecological economics, establishing connections in his research between the limits to growth and different possible responses, both in terms of alternative energy sources and change in consumption behaviour. I don't always like his reductionist take on questions of behaviour and ideology, explaining patterns of behaviour in terms of biochemical brain functions, but he has a lot to say about the predicament of the limits to growth.

His university page introduces Nate Hagens in these terms:

Nate is studying the impacts that a decline in liquid fuels will have on planetary ecosystems and society. On the supply side, he is exploring net-energy comparisons of the primary alternate fuel sources to oil: coal, wind, nuclear and biomass. While many new energy schemes will produce profits from a bottoms-up perspective, an EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) analysis from a top-down perspective limits the scope of energetically and ecologically sound replacements for fossil fuels.

Because of this, real progress on the human and planetary scale issue will likely come from a reduction in consumption. On the demand level, Nate is studying the evolutionary mechanisms that cause humans to seek novelty, act impulsively, and value the present over the future (steep discount rates). Specifically, our neural plasticity combined with a culture promoting growth and consumption results in biochemical positive feedback loops akin to addiction. We can however, be happier, healthier and more sustainable by consuming less, if we are provided with a different cultural carrot. Nate’s thesis lies in modeling sustainable scale solutions to the future decline in EROI by researching ways to reduce the steepness of our discount rates, thus giving more weight to the planet’s future.

Meet Mumia Abu Jamal

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Before his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, most notably 'Live from Death Row'. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that his original conviction of 28 years ago would stand.
Despite all the setbacks and defeats in the struggle for his own life, Mumia is still regularly broadcasting broadcasting his insightful and eloquent columns trough Prison Radio.