THC 97: Guy McPherson | Environmental Degradation, Ocean Acidification, & Collapse

00:04 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times but we're far from 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration We offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Carlwood And these are The Hireside Chats How's it going, Hireside Chatters? You know the routine. I'm drinking a little drink, smoking a little smoke and getting my head right for the journey ahead. I'm self-medicating people because I reflect upon the totality of humanity's many mistakes against itself in its own environment in exchange for a rigidly controlled concoction of convenience and servitude... And I just have to take the edge off

00:56 But it's a good day to be alive. Guy McPherson is here, a listener in the subreddit requested Guy offering a $100 bounty for the money bomb so I delivered now it's your move man but also guy is a great follow-up to Michael Rupert Mike cited guy a few times in our interview and I'm a big fan He's been teaching and writing about the damage we've done to our planet for a long time, and I would say in this conversation... ...I had the vast damage we've done to the planet explained to me better than it ever has been. And it's fucking shocking guys! But I think that's the only way we can move on to other systems We need to understand the extent of our current failure

01:35 When you really lay out the themes that make up THC, economic slavery, the censorship of history science and so many other fields. Today's topic included the mind control elements of mass media in Hollywood Gnostic wisdom corruption in our leadership and long-standing institutions The destruction of our health and pharmaceutical companies A fucked up medical system and corporate farming that produces what seems more like the equivalent of wet socks than nutrient rich fruits and vegetables But all these subjects, all this damage and deceit on this show I point these things out not to stir up fear or to drown you in negativity. I point these things out so that when we hear the mantra of The Machine that repeats That This is The Best System We Have, we recognize that for the bullshit it is And It sounds dumber to us every day and I want people to understand how I want to understand myself How bad it is? How integrated it is

02:31 how all-encompassing it is so we can know that any proposal that comes short of halting all the damage done by the machine, any solution that doesn't reel back all the power and all those corrupt systems that channel it from humanity and the planet itself Those solutions aren't going to save us. Say what you will about the Zeitgeist Movement or The Venus Project, but the solutions we need are gonna be so radically different it's gonna be fucking scary and it's gonna be a gamble and the more information we have about the absolute worldwide grid of control and exploitation, the more apparent it becomes that this system is beyond being tweaked and the closer we collectively get to taking that gamble And that's what I want

03:16 I want to see us roll the dice on something and hopefully, the conversations we've had in the higher side chats move you closer to that realization. I know today's with Guy McPherson has made an impact on me. Hopefully you'll feel the same! Now, I do want to say Guy had a bit of an audio issue. He took our conversation from the study room at the University of Arizona's library and the room was a little too big and empty which gave us some echo. That said, I sent the file over to a listener named Dave who emailed me many moons ago and said if ever had some audio that needed cleaning up he would happily take a crack at it and I think you did a bang-up job! So thanks Dave

03:51 Dave actually runs a website called Looper Star where he does several music-related things and sells some pretty slick looking guitar pedals. I don't know anything about guitar pedals, but i just know the guy fixed up this audio in a day and sent it back to me And I think its a huge improvement! The file I sent him actually had cut off the first few minutes of our conversation So you'll notice that after about the 5 minute mark guys side of the conversation sounds a whole lot clearer And that's thanks to Dave. It's also just part of having a Skype and phone based show, there is only so much you can do to control the quality on the guest send. I'm going on and on but it really isn't even that bad! The content is so important that often got lost in without noticing but I want to give a shout out for Dave for the hookup. Here's a little spot for the money bomb which is sitting at a kinda low $85 dollars I believe at my last count

04:44 And this next one is episode 100, so I really hope we can blow it out of the water for the hundredth show. And I know...we will It's been a huge success so far and I couldn't be happier So thanks all to you who donate that said let's get it going and we'll be on the other side with the almighty Guy McPherson Hey people, I gotta take a second to tell you about something we do around here called the THC Money Bomb. What i do is every 5 episodes, I total up the donations that I've gotten in that period of time and half keeps me and the show going, I take the other half and gift it back to random listeners. So far were hitting 500 each round

05:21 be happier about it. So consider throwing in 5 or 10 bucks, it's cheaper than a hand at the blackjack table with better odds and scratch off ticket. Plus you know half supports the show you like and at least half will go to a like minded person who could probably use a nice surprise in these troubled times? When you make a donation I can see your email address and that is how I pick the winner! To keep things kosher, you can also get in the pool by sending your info on a postcard to me. Greg Carlwood PO Box 635223 San Diego California 92163 I got no subscription fees here No paid archives no paid bonus shows and i want to keep it that way on principle But im not a millionaire with a podcast on the side this is it for me

06:00 And I'm the only one who knows trying to help people out as well. That's my man! So help me help you If you want to play along go to thehiresideschats.com slash donate and get in the game Dollars, bitcoins it's all good to me and that is what we call The THC Money Bomb Boom Folks, it doesn't take much insight to see that our philosophy of infinite growth and expansion is not sustainable on a finite planet. And if you're like me you can feel it in the air that these are very troubled times as many researchers are starting to feel as though we've already passed the point of no return There's a lot of noise and wishful thinking on this subject but today people I'm looking for the facts and we got just the man to give them to us Today's guest is Guy McPherson who's a retired professor of natural resources ecology and evolutionary biology

06:54 at the University of Arizona and the author of several books including Going Dark and Walking Away from Empire. He's also the man behind the blog Nature Bats Last, fresh off an appearance on Conspiracy HQ with our friend Rob Davin. Guy is the man when it comes to analyzing the damage humanity is inflicting on Earth and monitoring ongoing changes that result from our self-destructive path...and I for one can't wait to have my day ruined! Guy McPherson how are you? I'm very well, thank you. Appreciate you having me on the show today Of course it's a real pleasure man and i'm half kidding about the day ruining thing obviously no one wants to hear negative doom and gloom all day every day but unfortunately on this show I like to hear the real deal so that sometimes puts me in a contradictory position but what can you do right? Yeah meeting with a friend tomorrow having breakfast with her

07:44 She was the founder of Poetry Inside Out, a program I participated in for several years. And she used to call me that exact thing. She'd call me Dr. Day Ruiner. I had Michael Rupert on the show a few weeks back and it was one of those episodes where the audience got real vocal with me about their thoughts on it. Most didn't want to hear it, but there were opinions on both sides and Mike cited your work several times and I've enjoyed hearing you speak on some of these topics so I'm really happy we could do this but of all the topics we cover the idea that we've done too much damage on the planet at this point to recover without some massive human die-off

08:22 It's definitely received the most backlash and I was wondering if you find that in your work, that there is a bit of denial or head-in-the sand syndrome when it comes to some of these environmental issues? Oh yes. Absolutely. Time and again i hear that we're clever We cannot and will not do anything that will contribute to our own demise That we obviously depend upon living planets so we aren't going to hurt them At the other extreme, we don't even need other species. We'll engineer our way into and out of anything at all." So yes there's a tremendous amount of discord created by my work. It is better to get to the truth though! I mean it is what it is...

09:09 I mean, I can't say how many any better. You know, I eat things that are bad for me we all carry cell phones and sit next to Wi-Fi routers and there seems to be a lot of data accumulating that those aren't very safe things to do so i guess I'm just as big of a hypocrite in some areas Well you know at some level, I am going to quote my friend Timothy Scott Bennett here We're all born into captivity Right? I mean were born with this set of living arrangements and in many cases there is little or nothing we can do short of moving to a cave and sucking the guts out of bugs that makes any difference at all so where's your work were born into captivity choose when you're gonna be boring where are going to be born were borning this civilization

09:55 Right, that's a great way to say it. We don't have the education on what it would take to live a more sustainable lifestyle and thats a sad piece of the puzzle and important piece as well but I mean like any topic that involves a lot of money being made at the expense of things are far more important there is There's a ton of misinformation and propaganda out there about how bad things really are. I mean, corporations and lobbyists are misleading us, governments misleading us so it is hard to know to what extent this problem...how far it goes but if you can give us a better understanding of the general health of the planet? Is Earth terminally ill at this point?

10:38 Homo sapiens is terminally ill. I think that because we're driving to roughly 200 species a day to extinction, that's going to have some consequences that as near as I can tell are destroying every aspect of the living planet that we need to survive and so it's no surprise at some point the species we take into the abyss is us We're following the air and dirtying the water, washing the soils into the world's oceans at an astonishing rate. That is going to catch up with you at some point. I think we see plenty of evidence that catching up is underway for example—and it's just one example but on a climate change front, we are seeing events play out in real time that previously have happened in geological timescale where we've triggered

11:36 30 self-reinforcing feedback loops, including firing the clathrate gun or the methane bomb in the Arctic. And it doesn't end there by any means. Industrial civilization apparently forces us to go into human population overshoot deeper every day by adding more than 200,000 people to the planet that's births minus deaths and by polluting the air and water and destroying the soils, and all those things that we do that ultimately lead to such wonders as iPods and smartphones. And apparently that's a trade-off we're willing to make for a long time. Well you know one thing I had heard you say recently in

12:27 some of the cases of pollution, which I thought was really scary is it takes 40 years for the effects to manifest in the environment. Is that true? That seems like a pretty damning situation because we've perpetually damaged it more especially in the past forty years Right and so this with respect carbon dioxide emissions greenhouse gas emissions the primary one of which is carbon dioxide It's 40 years between cause and effect, between emissions and temperature rise. So the temperature rise we are seeing today is a result of emissions from 1974. We've emitted more carbon dioxide in the last 29 years than in the previous 236 years of industrial civilization so none of those

13:20 Baked in yet. I mean they're baked into the cake there underway, but we haven't observed the outcome guys that is terrifying So you so you're right? That's that's horrifying It's very damning in that there's nothing we can do about it now We can't go back and undo those emissions And we haven't even begun to see the temperature rise That will result from those emissions Wow On the plus side from an individual perspective, and I think this is really important. On the plus side what that indicates to me is that we're not to blame

13:58 You and I, we had essentially nothing to do with it. Not only are we born into captivity and so we don't even get a choice about when or where were born what sort of conditions under which were borne but in 1974 I wasn't even driving yet 40 years ago i was not driving car certainly was looking forward to driving a car I thought that was going to be awesome And also bear in mind that most of us didn't really know anything about climate change in 1974 So I don't hold you and me responsible. That's a good point for For actions that we took when I was an early teenager, hey well i'm always willing to accept an excuse to blame shift but Well tell me about this This arctic methane bomb you had mentioned? I have not heard much about that well it was the first self-reinforcing feedback loop

14:51 widely reported in the scientific literature, in the refereed journal literature. And these methane hydrates or clathrates are little cages of methane and the methane is in cold storage at relatively shallow depths in the Arctic Ocean and they're found a lot of other places too there for example they're found in Antarctica at relatively shallow depths in the ocean. But these things are just sitting down there and have been sitting down there for a long time, millions of years and with as reported in the journal literature relatively minor increases in temperature

15:40 would cause upwards of 16,000 tons of methane to be released each year. That's from the June 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. Well as it turns out we haven't experienced a minor increase in temperature in the Arctic We've experienced a pretty major increase in temperature at the Arctic and as a consequence those methane clathrates having been warmed are now floating up to the surface and as they warm even more, the clathrate or the cage breaks away. So that methane is emitted directly into the atmosphere How important is that? Well methane in short term meaning less than 20 years More than 100 times powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide molecule for molecule so it appears that starting 2007

16:33 there was more than 10 million times the amount of energy per year necessary to dissociate subsea Arctic methane hydrates. So starting in 2007, the clathrate gun went off and because there wasn't enough energy in the ocean warming the ocean to start those clathrates bubbling up even NASA's CARVE project in the summer 2011 was pointing out very large methane plumes 150 kilometers across in fact

17:12 And that's as of mid-July 2013, mid July of last year. So the CARB project had been going on for a while and as of last summer they documented 150 km across plumes rising out into the Arctic Ocean Obviously they didn't do that with a boat right there in the midst of it You would have been able to see methane as far as you could see in every direction But then you would have been dead because methane is lethal at those concentrations, at that proximity. So they observed this with satellite imagery so these plumes have been coming up out of the Arctic Ocean and they're large and it appears we fired the clathrate gun about seven years ago

17:55 And that's the self-reinforcing feedback loop that James Hansen particularly worried about in his book, Storms of My Grandchildren. So this is a big deal and it has been documented in the referee journal literature for about four years now that methane hydrates are bubbling out of the Arctic Ocean but we've had enough energy for seven years to cause them to bubble out at an accelerating rate so one One analysis conducted by Sam Karana of those methane's, of the methane plume indicates that it has gone exponential and as a consequence will have more than 4C warming on the planet by 2030. That is important because there have been no humans on our planet at 3 1⁄2 C above baseline

18:49 And we're headed for 4C and an exponential polynomial curve fit to the data. Forecast into the future indicates based on that one feedback alone, we're headed for more than 10 C warming by 2040. Wow yeah that's also scary! 30 of these different feedback loops which just piles on an already scary situation. But let me ask you about some of these specific areas of environmental concern and maybe you can help shed some light on the damage assessment in those areas for me

19:25 Let's start with fracking. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that the majority of people who tend to say it is harmless have some ties to the industry almost always People are lighting their drinking water on fire That seems hard to argue against But how much environmental damage does this practice really cause? It obviously hugely detrimental to water. It requires a tremendous amount of water to implement fracking and The fracking itself contributes to water that when it comes out of the tap can be lit on fire. And this is pretty well documented in places like Wyoming where they first really started getting rolling with this hydro fracturing idea and more recently in Pennsylvania. So I think if you can light your water on fire when it comes out of the tap, that's probably not a good thing

20:28 I wouldn't be drinking that water and in fact those people aren't. So they are instead shipping in their water, trucking it in so they have water to drink. And talk about a mitigated disaster! So now we're burning more fossil fuels... To bring back the water that was already there? Right! We need more fossil fuels to maintain this than living arrangements always. Always have to have more and more and more And so it's clear that we're willing to destroy even drinking water for ourselves just so we can have a little bit more fossil fuels at our disposal. What do we use it for? To haul ourselves water!

21:12 Yeah, I mean it the whole fracking thing seems like a real play of desperation oil companies seem to be taking much greater costs and risks to keep up with this demand and it seems pretty evident that we are exhausting the last few options for oil extraction doesn't it certainly seems that way to me. We are willing to go to those lengths to have a little bit more and in the grand scheme of things, the shale bubble is a little bit more. The hydrofracking bubble is a little bit more It's it's a little bump on a curve that going down way down So if we're willing to do that things must be pretty dire this is tight oil

22:01 This is the kind of oil that we didn't used to have to go after. Like Macondo in the Gulf of Mexico, We didn't use to have to go 7 miles below ocean surface and then another mile deeper below sea floor to get oil That's how desperate we are Yeah, there's been a lot of talk and analysis about the peak oil situation and what year will be out. And of course there are a lot of factors that ebb and flow so it's tough to really know but it does seem like I'll see in my lifetime

22:38 Yeah, it's inconceivable to me that we won't see that within the next few years. I think we're already seeing consequences from an economic perspective and that's what expensive oil does is it throws sand into the gears of industry so what that means is well we have a Wall Street advisor who about three or four weeks ago refusing to be identified said that the unemployment rate in the United States is not 6.6 percent, as is officially reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact it's 37.2 percent. Well that's about 50% more than at the depths of The Great Recession

23:22 That's a big, big number. So you can't tell me there aren't people feeling the impacts already. We're well within the age of contraction... economic contraction. Well, let's talk about the oceans a little bit more. I mean outside of these huge methane releases there are definitely other concerns. The Gulf oil spill did some damage and I don't even know if it is still leaking or not but outside of the methane releases what do you see as some of the biggest oceanic concerns right now? Ocean acidification is a huge phenomenon and is massively underreported. Ocean acidification results from carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans, so the oceans are absorbing that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and what that means it's essentially turning into carbonic acid. So it's becoming increasingly acidified

24:25 And so what are the consequences of that? Well, we're already seeing coral reefs die as a result of bleaching acidification and higher temperatures. We're seeing the phytoplankton die and that's been attributed to the acceleration of acidification So where 0.85 degrees centigrade above baseline, we've already seen ocean acidification has caused half or more of the phytoplankton to die in the world's oceans within the last few decades. Well, we're headed for three-fourth sea in a relatively near future you can only imagine what consequences will be for ocean acidification where just under 400 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now and there is no indication that anybody is interested in stopping

25:23 And we were 280 parts per million at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when we had all of phytoplankton with great abundance in the ocean and therefore a tremendous number of fish. that now it's almost impossible to find. Look in Benjamin Franklin's journals from when he floated across the Atlantic Ocean going to Europe, and he describes the fish being so abundant—the ocean fish—that they were smacking into the ship. You basically couldn't get away from them damn things! They were an inconvenience.

26:01 Wow. And you know, there's a lot of concerns about overfishing too throw that on the pile I mean we...I've heard people say that we'd be almost out of fish by 2025 That's a weird thought. I mean combined with the acidification and everything else We're doing everything we can to make that just a dead pool and nothing right? That's right Jeremy Jackson gives a great TED talk on The dying of the oceans There have been people People who are not scientists, who are just sailing across the oceans where they've been sailing for their entire lives. They're reporting hey the ocean's all but dead I can't find a living thing in there There is the Pacific Gyre The great pacific garbage patch that is bigger than Texas Right As you pointed out

26:52 The condo that blew up in the gulf that probably will never be there are thousands of other wells that are decomposing degrading, but they're allegedly kept but they are not gonna last forever. You know we kept them and walk away and there's no monitoring system for those nobody paying any attention and the loss of thermodynamics indicated things break down and then it was well Yeah, yeah. Jeez man! Let's talk about Fukushima I mean that's another huge man-made disaster and there seems to be a ton of mainstream downplaying and censorship on the issue. I've had some people tell me it is the largest environmental disaster in recorded history and others have said that anybody who worries about it they just don't understand how harmless radiation is which sounds ridiculous but again its tough for an average guy to know How bad is Fukushima in your assessment?

27:51 Fukushima is really, really bad. I'm not a nuclear engineer or scientist so I will quote some other people here. tried to stifle news anchor Sankhya Udgar, and I'm pretty sure that's not the right name. And that has been well documented. Nuclear engineer Arne Gunderson pointed out in October 2013 that governments were withholding the truth about stillbirths deformities and health defects and also suppressing studies on deformed animals. Dr. Timothy Mousseau

28:33 nuclear ecologist gives an overview of nuclear nightmares in March 2013. He documents the destruction and demise of animals in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, leading up to extirpation as local extinction. With respect to Fukushima, in early September 2013 he said quote given the vast amounts of material that was released I think there will be measurable amounts of radioactive cesium hitting West Coast blanketing the West Coast for some time to come. Christina Consola indicates that billions of people could die from release of ionizing radiation just from Fukushima alone, billions, billions of people! That was in August 2013 September 2013 Yale professor Charles Perot concluded that events at Fukushima could lead to fission fuel rods and quote all humanity will be threatened for thousands years

29:31 October 2013, Canadian scientist David Suzuki most people know as this voice to the conversation calling Fukushima quote the most terrifying situation I can imagine. It's already terrifying for the 71 sailors assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan who responded to the Fukushima disaster four days after the meltdown in March of 2011. They've reported radiation sickness, they're filing a lawsuit against TEPCO and at least half those sailors have contracted some form of cancer These are very young people in their prime lives 37 of them out of the 71 who were sick have already contracted some form of cancer That says that as few months ago

30:15 So it's horrifying is it represents a significant threat to human life in the northern hemisphere for thousands of years to come. Yeah me and his. Definitely a depressing thought, but I've heard about all the different possible effects being so exponential. Things people don't even think about you know... A bird eats a radioactive fish and then is shitting on your car of course it's in the weather but the food supply is just the real scary thing! You know an over-radiated fish eats a smaller fish now its compacted and that gets put into our food supply

30:58 Man, it seems like it's really interwoven and almost impossible to weed out at this point. Yes, it is and its worse than that! It's not just us eating fish...it's us eating pretty much anything if you drink milk for example Where does that milk come from? It comes from a cow. Where does that cow come from, what is it eat? It eats the alfalfa. Where does the alfalfa come from? The alfalfa is grown in a field that was either directly watered by rain falling out of the sky, Fukushima rain or it was irrigated with river water that's contaminated with Fukushima radiation I think you'd be hard-pressed at this point to find any milk

31:48 in North America that did not have measurable quantities of ionizing radiation. Oh my god, man. That's scary stuff! I had milk before this interview. Right? And it just goes up the food chain right? Yeah The whole thing biomagnifies as it goes up the food chain so yeah you're drinking milk your eating eggs It doesn't really matter what you ate whatever you ate eat something else or drank something else Or got the water from somewhere else and that somewhere else is contaminated with ionizing radiation from Fukushima

32:24 Man, so I mean on this subject. So there's no escape Okay yeah that was my question is if there was gonna be any if there's any type of supplements or Any type of pill you can take like I've heard about iodine Or something you could take to offset those? Yeah you could take potassium iodide Sure you can take potassium iodide and it will reduce the risk of certain kinds of cancer Hmm well but better than nothing I guess Well, right. And so you can eat seaweed for example which is really high in Ki and potassium iodide and that will save your thyroid for a while. For awhile? But you have to make sure of course that the seaweed came out of an area that was not already affected by Fukushima. Great! Right, so you have to go back and find the old stuff

33:21 And all of this indicates to me that, first of all we're in the age of economic contraction. So it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with things like Fukushima and to deal with San Onofre, the exact same design nuclear power plant she designed in southern california so what it was closed down in a hurry it was the cooling palms that water and then was held in with plastic and broomsticks wow. and duct tape. I did not know that! You know, we're in the age of economic contraction so we just don't have any money to throw at these big projects like we did in the age expansion. And so some point all of the world's 407 nuclear power plants go Fukushima

34:10 Well, if they don't if we maintain this little image was forever. We've maintained industrial civilization forever It makes carbon dioxide emissions and methane emissions and all other greenhouse gas emissions much much worse Increasingly worse every year so those are your choices you get to ratchet up climate change which is going to kill us in the near future or You get to stop climate change by collapse of industrial civilizations And then we all get today from ionizing radiation Great. Well, I mean yeah if this wasn't enough let's talk about global warming and some of these extreme weather events that's another area where skeptics will tell you that the only reason hurricanes and tsunamis in these things seem worse these days is because the scope of recorded history when compared to the life for the earth is such a small sample size and this type of cycling might be pretty average by comparison I mean is that a valid argument or are these people missing the boat?

35:07 Well, at some level it is a valid argument. And that's why climate scientists are so reluctant to attribute any single event no matter how horrific to climate change So yes! That's right However we're seeing an increased and increasingly frequent series of these extreme events Each of those extreme events by the way contributes to more climate change. Let me give you an example, we have a hurricane say that sweeps up from the Atlantic and batters the eastern seaboard of the United States but one of the consequences is that battering is that a bunch trees die

35:56 A bunch of them will lose their limbs, they fall off and then a bunch of trees die. And so what's the consequence to that? Well all of sudden we don't have those trees sequestering carbon anymore now they're contributors of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere they're not taking CO2 up They are giving it up! They aren't sequestering it through photosynthesis They are decomposing instead So every one of those storms contributes to more tree death and therefore acceleration of the cycle But, you know certainly we've had events like this within Earth's history. But here are a couple of things that we haven't had within human history. A few examples were 396 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is the global average right now 396 parts per million. That hasn't happened in the last 20 million years. We have humans on planet for about 2 million years

36:55 So we're in uncharted waters here. Methane levels in the atmosphere at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution were about 700 parts per billion, now they are routinely measured at nearly 2,000 parts per billion and they average up over 1800 parts per billion that's two-and-a-half times what we ever experienced in human history before those are just two, just two of the greenhouse gases we're emitting Beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the global average temperature was a little over 14 degrees centigrade. Now it's at 15 degrees centigrade doesn't sound like much but they

37:39 As pointed out in October 1990 by the United Nations, 1C warming is truly catastrophic. It leads to self-reinforcing feedback loops the kind of which we're seeing now in fact so we've been warned about this for a while and and we're in this arena accelerating non-linear climate change. We've had the warnings for a long time, none of this None of this information that is coming out, that I'm aware of. None of the projections going forward... none of this takes into account an excellent paper in Climatic Change published online in November 2009 by Tim Gehrig that points out only complete collapse of a set of living arrangements avoids runaway greenhouse.

38:36 only complete collapse runs when we're gonna have that was almost five years ago and in the interim we found out about all 30 of those over enforcing feedback loops Wow yeah reported by scientists geez man let's just keep piloted on I guess um let me ask you about Let me ask you about overpopulation in general, because of course 7 billion people is more than we've ever known but I've heard a recent statistic that seems kind of hard to believe but they say that if you took all seven billion people and grouped them in line with the population density of New York City We would all fit inside the state of Texas And I'm not sure if that's true But either way I wonder if we really have too many People or if we just have too many people to keep doing things the way we've been doing them. What do you think?

39:20 Yes, I think that's exactly right. And I've heard that figure several times and I don't doubt that if we stack all the people like cordwood we could fit them into Texas. Really, I think it's not a bad idea either for 6.9 billion of them and then the rest of us can have the whole planet to play on. Yes, so yes it's the issue is not where we can fit physically. It's our footprint that it takes to keep us alive so people tell me all the time hey I live in a city and I live in a really small apartment and I'm vegetarian so my footprint is really small

40:04 Okay, and then they tell me and you live on 2.7 acres we can't all go live on two point seven acres Because there's too many of us to live like you do it live up two point seven acres That's why I lived in this small apartment. Mm-hmm. Okay? So let's think about that for a minute What do you eat even if your vegetarian it requires more than three acres of industrial agriculture To support simply the food you eat More than three acres. The way I live takes 2.7 acres to feed five people because i practice high intensity organic gardening instead of industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture if you eat meat, you're up to at least six acres

40:49 that requires you to support, it is required to support you rather. And so that means that if your living in a city on really small apartment taking public transportation all the time and eating low on food chain its still takes three acres for your lifestyle but you can't escape that just because you live in the city doesn't mean you're not eating and then you're not consuming planet to support your way of life That's only for Americans though, that three to six acres. You live anyplace else where they don't actually have the absurdity mastered like we do and it takes less

41:31 Frequently when I speak to high schools or on college campuses, I will have the students calculate their ecological footprint. There's a simple online calculator that allows you to do that and they have them calculated based on how they're living right now so for most of them that means grid-tight electricity in a house with three to six people and they eat at certain point in the food chain and on and off and they discovered that being an american requires somewhere between four and seven earths to support 7.1 billion people living like they do, i think it was horrible that's awful nice and i say what is a lot of something but you don't have any control over so example let me calculate your age ecological footprint again and do the exact same way give all the same answers except change the country girl

42:29 Just pick a country, any country. Some picked Kenyan and some Australia. Most of them picked countries that are not dissimilar from ours in that they're westernized industrialized countries What they find is that whereas it required say five hours to support their lifestyle living in the united states takes two if they're living in. France and only text point nine if they're living in kenya and there really confused about that right how can that be there living exact same way and i said okay how could that be,

43:05 We have a long discussion and finally we trip on to it. A few things that are different here in america than they are other places the world for one thing anytime you go into business in this country any business at all, the temperature is set of the same level year round day and night You don't get that in South Africa. You go to a store in South Africa and it's the same temperature inside as it is outside! In addition, who has the most lethal killing force in the history of humanity? Yep, that's right, that's us.

43:47 And i didn't vote for that now and nobody in the room voted for that but thats what we got that takes a tremendous. Call on your ecological footprint no you didn't vote for that but you got it anyway isn't it isnt cheap to maintain the military industrial complex, And even if you didn't vote for it, you got it. So that's part of your ecological footprint living here in this country. Right... yeah. There again for me this points to a whole bunch of this is not our fault A whole bunch of this is not the fault of you and me and that person

44:38 living in Bismarck, North Dakota who makes an honest effort to take the bicycle to work and all those kinds of things. We don't have any control over what the military is doing and it gets worse every day we don't have any control over what Congress is spending our money on or so many aspects this age of industry they're going on without us they'll continue to go on without us A great deal of control over any of that even if we wanted to and i suspect most people are not willing to go the tim garrett route climatic change in vote for complete collapse of industrial civilization. Yeah it's a,

45:23 It's a weird thing, but I think since the Occupy movement there has been more talk about smaller communities self-sustaining off the grid type living. I think that getting back to the land is making a big comeback these days. I think it is too and I'm a huge fan and...I think its too late even if we all go back to the land. I think its too late to undo those self-reinforcing feedback loops, 28 of those are irreversible at temporal spans relevant to the human condition. So it's not something again that we have much control over at this point when you kick a soccer ball on a soccer field the friction from the grass slows it down pretty quickly so it stops

46:20 But if you kick a soccer ball over a cliff, it doesn't stop. And that's what we've done with respect to these self-reinforcing feedback loops Man, so I guess let's talk about maybe something we can do. I mean it bothers people being left without hope but then again is it better for a guy in Guantanamo Bay to think he's getting out tomorrow when we all know he isn't? You know what I mean? But if you were given a blank slate and someone said to you, Guy we got 7 billion people We have the technologies and resources right now help us out Is there any way that you could see making this work for everybody without sacrificing the future

46:57 Well, I think a primary response if I were king for a day. I would first and foremost shut down every nuclear power plant in the world as quickly as possible those are ticking time bombs and keep going off and we If we have if we have anything we can do at all is What are the things that we could be doing is shutting down those nuclear power plants and that might mean people are without electricity for a while. That doesn't bother me at all you know right we live for two million years about electricity there's still a lot of people on the planet who lives out electricity in. I think it's a luxury to have electricity for a few hours a day i think that amazing and my youth

47:55 in the small backwoods redneck logging town where I grew up in Northern Idaho, the power would go out. And it wasn't a big deal. The power would just go out and it would come back on later. Almost nobody died within 20 minutes of the power going out you know? It just wasn't that big a deal. I'm pretty sure we could get along that way right now without much hardship but most people I know think Thank you really instead of being life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. It was like Liberty in the pursuit grid-tied electricity Right, that's not what it says Let's not assume that we're so entitled That every time I flip a switch a light has to come on Mm-hmm And so the first thing I would do finally to answer your question is shut down every nuclear power plant world There's more I would love to

48:57 Take some action that involves carbon sequestration and here not thinking about. Do engineering proposals that have been floated i'm thinking about people actually doing permaculture living different ways of working today i'm not under any delusion that will save us but i think it will get people closer to the planet upon which they depend and it might even make them more content human beings as a result. So I would like to see people better connected to the planet they live on, better connected to the human communities that they're apart of and stop treating living planet as if it is ours to exploit those are few things I'd like to see done. Yeah

49:46 Yeah, those would be definitely great steps in the right direction. I mean obviously a lot of us are addicted to those modern conveniences and the 24-hour electricity and Wi-Fi that's a big problem but there are people like Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph who were kind about on the fringe but they say that there are technologies we could switch over too like solar wind tidal geothermal etc... That if we fully realized those potentials These people think they would sustain us on the planet without really impacting our energy needs Is that possible or is that too far-fetched in your assessment? I used to think that was right and I even wrote a book about it proclaiming the glories of renewable energy that book was published in 2004 and I subsequently come into my senses and realized that

50:37 There are no renewables, there are no replacements. There are derivatives of the current fossil fuels so it takes a lot of oil as one example to build the solar panel It takes a lot of oil and other fossil fuels To build wind turbines and distribute them all over the country. It takes a lot of oil to tap into geothermal resources And then we built the electrical grid All right, so now we have the grid. What does that take? It takes a tremendous amount of liquid fuels to maintain it because every time we have an ice storm or every time the wind blows or every time it gets too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry there's some sort of maintenance that needs to be done on the grid and all requires liquid fuels at this point So I don't see a way out

51:27 the monkey trap or we've caught ourselves in a monkey trap and I don't see any way out of anything resembling a temporal span that catches up with those self-reinforcing feedback loops. Interesting, depressing but fair...I mean These are scary times, man. Like you mentioned not only do we have all these environmental concerns but the global economy seems to be on pretty shaky ground lots of people are paralyzed by debt unemployment is way too high corporations are posting hundreds of millions of dollars in profit but they're paying their employees minimums or keeping them off a full-time when you factor in these concerns with the environmental situation it's really hard to be optimistic about anything

52:16 Well, yes except Except we have this. We you and I in everybody listening to this program We have a tremendous advantage that almost nobody and nothing in the history of the planet has ever had We get to die And then makes us lucky ones because it means we get to live We can't live here now at the most amazing time In history we get to see the end We can just see the end of industrial civilization and therefore a comeback by the living planet unlike anything we've ever seen before the alleviation oppression will be astonishing that would you say the end, where i can't imagine situation in which were not among the last humans on the planet. And now we get to live the odds against

53:14 DNA, we know a lot about DNA. We've been studying it for a long time and we know the odds against any collection of DNA forming human beings me and you the odds against any of us being here ever exceed the odds against plucking a single atom from ran at random from the entire universe We know that there's between 10 to the 80th and 10 to the 100th atoms in the entire universe. The odds against plucking a single atom at random are far greater than the odds of DNA coming together in this form, I think that's pretty incredible

53:52 So let's live as if our lives matter what is the life of excellence let's treat people as if they're decent and treat them humane like an act with kindness and compassion do all those things that we say humans are great because they do. Let's do all those things instead of grubbing for another dime instead Instead of buying fifteen pairs shoes just because we can't because we have the world's reserve currency let's do all those things that make up. Life better for humans and other organisms in the time i have left, because even if you look to a very old age the time we have left is not very long.

54:32 I don't find many hundred-year olds saying, yep had a good run. I'm ready to die now. I think everybody remembers a few things we have a few memories we take with us into the grave We remember those moments Good bad otherwise but there are relatively few of them that people remember even if they live to a very old age. So let's try to create those moments, let's try to create those moments of beauty and compassion and human greatness really where we actually exhibit our humanity in a manner that is positive, that looks good for us and for those were interacting with

55:17 Well said. I mean and in that thread to try to be positive and give the people just a little direction Let's assume, you know We are gonna face extreme weather or economic collapse and decline of excess in our cushy American lives I mean how would you advise the people on a personal level? I mean are there places To go on the planet or steps to take to increase those positive moments and be less impacted by The decline of everything Well, if your goal is to extend your life and the lives of your family members for as long as possible then I think among the last places that have habitat for humans on this earth will be south. Way south. Places that are surrounded by a lot of water That are along way from nuclear power plants

56:16 that are the southern tip of Chile and southern Australia and New Zealand, southern South Africa places like that. But even then I'm guessing you don't buy yourself a very long time so maybe we should take advice from Nietzsche here live as though the day were here to live is if we matter so did people around us Yeah, that's a fair point. I mean it's kind of like a bubble boy conundrum You can protect yourself from everything but at the cost of enjoying anything you know yes Yes, I suspect that's exactly right We can extend our own run as individuals or A little bit but certainly not forever Nobody gets out alive right? Right And so what does it mean what does it mean to live well

57:17 Those are the kinds of questions that I'm interested in pursuing at this point. Right, like how long do you want to live in the zombie apocalypse? Isn't it easier to just go? Bingo! I mean, I'd kind of like to see a zombie apocalypse obviously It's such exciting stuff when you see it in the movies True But but I'm not sure I want to be around for the end of these zombie apocalypse I'm not sure what turn into one of those zombies Exactly Man, well that is pretty much enough positivity for me for one day. I feel like we should all go watch Shrek or Up or some kind of over-the-top feel good movie now to bring us back out of the gutter but hey in some weird way it was still a pleasure

58:01 Well i appreciate the opportunity on and people ask me all the time why do this when i do what i do it is that i think people have to write a note yeah but the science of saying about our future. And another part is really trying to encourage people to pursue this information with bigger if this is the end if you realize he don't have much time left i would argue that's always been true, if that's the case if you accept this information if you take it and internalize what does it mean i suspect it means your not living in a cube farm anymore but you're not going to work to job you hate, add and saving for future that never comes. Either because we are in the age of attraction so your retirement is gonna be taken away from me or because climate change right now radiation shortening your life more than ever imagine possible

58:59 So I think this is incredibly liberating and I've heard many people tell me the same thing. It's incredibly liberating, now I can do the things that I really wanted to do but culture was screaming at me not to do them." Yes 100% agree! I'm actually 30 days out of my 9-5 job and it all just kind of came from this material...I thought you know if the economy does collapse tomorrow i'm gonna feel really silly going into a nine-to-five job I hate for the past two decades Yes. So I'm with you on that, I think that's a pretty... That's the most positive message anyone could gain out of this if you don't have a lot of time make the best of it and stop worrying about exactly how many seconds you can squeeze out of life on the planet but hey i very much respect your analysis and thank you for sharing everything you have with us man would you like to tell the people about your website or where they can keep up with you before we let you go?

59:51 Sure, I suspect if you put nature bats last into your favorite internet search engine it'll take you right to my website. It's at guymickperson.com and follow all of my work there that leads to all the essays i'm writing for other websites as well anytime somebody shoots video when im speaking it appears there as well. Very cool Alright, well thanks again Guy. I mean do what you can to enjoy the rest of your day alright man? Thank you Greg! I appreciate the opportunity and have a great day You too take care Bye There it is guys i hope the audio issues weren't too distracting I think I do a lot of things well but I don't have an audio guy and I'm deaf in one ear so I do the best I can until I find my Brian Redband But its always getting better And I think it has to if we're going for the gold That said Guy McPherson Jesus

1:00:42 I know it's a bit overwhelming, but instead of tuning that out or channeling it into an angry comment to me about how depressing it is. Channel it into an angry tweet to ExxonMobil and take a second to publicly shame Walmart. They make over $300 billion dollars a year off forcing the prices so low that only companies that use cheapest labor and materials on earth can be a player in their 300 billion dollar marketplace! Which, I might also note is three times the amount it would take to end poverty in America. If we could somehow spend just a third less on shit at Walmart and give that directly to our poor, no more poverty. So fuck Walmart either way the power lies only with the people and we have to start applying some pressure And have fun with it! It's fun to publicly shame a corporation on Twitter...it feels a little dangerous Tag me in those tweets and I'll broadcast them to 40k people gracious enough to follow us on twitter And we'll all have a nice comforting circle jerk

1:01:43 I love you guys. You're making my dream come true and i think we're making progress in this fucked up world tomorrow, I might feel like we're all fucked but right now Progress that's what I feel Now, I was editing this episode and reflecting on the implications of its information. And this song No Children by The Mountain Goats pops up on my iTunes! And if you don't know it's the most angry and depressing but truthful and honest breakup song that i know of. As I was thinking about all the lyrics as a symbolic message to the earth and nature in our own humanity I thought it really clicked. So, i'll leave you with that if we collectively wrote a song that captured the message were giving to the natural world with our own actions until we make some radical changes It would probably sound like this for better or worse Donate to The Money Bomb Share the show where you can You are the water that helps this little THC seedling grow and ill see ya next week Your move humanity

1:02:44 I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us. I hope we come up with a fail-safe plot To piss off the dumb few that forgave us! I hope the fences we mended fall down beneath their own weight And I hope we hang on past the last exit, I hope it's already too late and i hope The junkyard a few blocks from here someday burns down And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away, and I never come back to this town again. In my life! I hope I lie... ...and tell everyone you were a good wife and I hope you die. I hope we both die. I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow. I hope it bleeds all day long

1:03:55 Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises We're pretty sure they're all wrong I hope it stays dark forever, the worst isn't over And I hope you blink before I do Yeah, I hope I never get sober And I hope when you think of me years down the line You can't find one good thing to say And I'd hope that if I found the strength To walk out, you'd stay the hell outta my way! I am drowning There is no sign of land You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand And I hope you die. I hope we both die