Patrick Simons: I feel that deep down, a lot of humans do feel kinship with the natural world. But this also gets back to politics; tigers and elephants don't sit in our political chambers or corporate boardrooms. He says French President Macron's admission that the age of abundance is over would be laughed off the stage in the U.S. The Great Simplification podcast airs weekdays at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.com/Heroes.
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