There's always room for more efficiency or better mass traps, but the problem is that we need a new way of being civilized. You have to ask ingenuity to what end? Is it more wealth and power? More consumption than destructive force. If we tame technology, for example, I mentioned Bali with electronics. There's nothing wrong with electronics. But if those electronics fit in to a stable, healthy, grounded society, that's one thing. Unless we change our ways, we'll just be slaves to the machine until it breaks down.
Today, ecologist, political scientist, and author Patrick Ophuls joins Nate to discuss his new book, The Tragedy of Industrial Civilization and The Future of Politics. As he’s been doing for his lifetime of scholarship, Patrick unpacks how energy, ecology and our political arrangements leave us in a predicament with no simple solutions. Before we can even begin to plan for the future, we need to understand the enormity of the biophysical challenges we will have to face - Patrick Ophuls helps us do just that.
About Patrick Ophuls:
Dr. Patrick Ophuls (who writes under the pen name William Ophuls) is an American political scientist, ecologist, independent scholar, and author. Patrick has a PhD in political science from Yale University and has been a prominent voice in the environmental movement since the 1970s. His award winning book in 1977 is on the bookshelves of most people I know. He has written 10 books including ‘Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity’, ‘Plato's Revenge’, ‘Politics in the Age of Ecology’, and ‘Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail’.
For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/47-patrick-ophuls