S2E19: A current tour of The Future Earth with author Eric Holthaus

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podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon today, I have with me Eric, hold house meteorologist climate correspondent at the correspondent and author of the future Earth. A radical vision for what's possible in the age of warming. Eric, thank you for being here. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, my pleasure. What inspired you to do this? Take on climate change because it does seem in some ways, it really illustrates the stakes of climate change, but there's also quite a lot of optimism built in here. R2. It seems like you got me on both sides. That's great, that's great. You're the target audience then right, train triangulated right in the middle no this book has a long backstory.

It originally started about five years ago as a letter to my oldest kid before he was even born and I started it not even

knowing at all. What was going to happen by the time I finished and then it's harder to have a baby than I expected and so that book projects got sort of derailed and put on the back burner and then I rebooted the book project as a Choose Your Own Adventure book which is sort of like here are the possible Futures and I sort of had an active plan of having sort of two-thirds of the scenarios being disasters because I figured like, you know, that's about the Is that

we have or I, that's what I thought at the moment. And that was probably roughly early 2018. I have they gotten better or since then, but it's gotten better. It's gotten a lot better, I think. Yeah. And it and it showed in my writing to, as I was going through the year 2018 writing, that started to have the green New Deal come into prominence and the school strikes in the ipcc report and then I started thinking like my good sir.

Mario's are already kind of way, farther along than I expected. Then to be like you know I had some things sketched out for the late 2030s that were happening just nine months. After I started this project and then my editor came back to me and said how about let's scrap that entire idea and focus on the good scenario, you know, the scenario where we do what we need to do. So I mentally rejected the idea of Oops and and then sort of rewrote the book.

The third time with an idea of this is what has to happen. There's really no choice left for sort of a middle path that it's now or never and we need to act that way. And that urgency, I think came out in the final version. One of the things I think is strongest is definitely the visions that you're painting of the future and what kinds of changes might come about as a result. Result of climate change and most of them do seem to be

really positive. And you, so, you see this as a moment, we associate this with strongly with Naomi Klein but you see climate change is a chance to sort of right the ship as it were and fix many of the problems that have been permanently baked into the countries foundations, or the world economic structure. This is sort of the last chance or that might exist to fix these things. Is that broadly how you see this crisis? I don't think it's the last chance at all.

I think there are always chances continuously. I think every day actually is a continuous stream of choices that we're making and I think that we can create our own chances. So maybe that's the most optimistic part of the whole book is that it doesn't have to wait that we don't have to find some perfect moment that the Stars aligned just so happens this year in 2020.

There's a lot of change happening and it seems suddenly Not that far-fetched to imagine transformation on the scale that the ipcc sort of recommends is necessary. I think that having a picture of what we're fighting for and not necessarily what we're fighting against changes the Dynamics of the climate movement and that sort of the main intervention that I want to make with spoke and you're right.

That a lot has changed this year. There are positions that related to the prison and police abolition. Were once friends of mine who were pretty deep on the left reading, Angela Davis, and people like that, I have suddenly became come mainstream policy positions for a lot of people or nearly mainstream.

I don't know if you see it in the same way that climate has had this to where the influence of Sunrise, movement and gratitude Berg. Those positions are seemingly more and more mainstream if they're not already. So it does seem like quite a lot of changes happening fast and I doubt we've seen the end of it. Yeah, I definitely agree. I see the numbers coming out. Out of places like data for Progress who who's kind of sole reason for existing is to put

numbers on these issues. In a way that other polling firms. Don't asking questions about detailed policy of the green New Deal, how does that pull nationally? It's kind of shocking to see how quickly those ideas have also become mainstream like 100% renewable energy which was really kind of laughed at Just a couple of years ago in the climate movement, the idea of the wedge issue now is, is do you count nuclear power as

renewable energy or not? It's not really a question of this is never going to be politically possible, so why do we even talk about it? It's become how quickly can we make it happen, you know, is it possible to have 100% renewable u.s. electrical Grid in 10 years? Maybe it seems a lot more possible than it was 18 months ago. That's for sure.

So I do think that if you pull the general public, that may not have a technical understanding of what that would require it pulls, probably even better than it would among climate experts, which means that the climate movement is constantly being pushed and shifted from sort of democracy. From what people think is necessary to do this work the

right way. I see the that sort of maps with how I understand it too. Would you allow me to read your own words back to you? Sure. Sure. Okay. Maybe this will help us frame this next part of the discussion, you wrote success on climate change, where it can exist will look like democracy to build a sustainable and just world for the next Century. Everyone will have to participate especially those who have been excluded from the political process for far too long.

And inclusive Society is a just society in which we all listen. One another with genuine care where to start. I am not that sort of like a key nugget that I think helps understand the entire book. But thank you Steve.

Yeah. So it isn't just about climate change. You have a bunch of other quotes in there about how if we could just magically remove excess, CO2 from the atmosphere and get down to an appropriate parts per million. That's still wouldn't be good enough and we wouldn't have, I don't know. What do you mean is the right way to say it? Because there's an intensive and bad way to say it. But if you could solve climate change without addressing any of the Racial injustices or inequality.

Should we even consider that as a possibility or do you need to address them all at the same time? Yeah. No. This is a great again speaking from June 2020. This is sort of the question that suddenly on everyone's Minds is is how far deep does the climate movement go at its core, is this a movement for equality and justice? I think that case is being made pretty clearly and forcefully. Now in ways that may not have Gotten the attention. It deserved even just four weeks ago.

So, yeah, I think that the starting point from this book is that kind of an open question to the reader of what is the world that you're trying to create like what is the point of what we're doing here in like a civilizational scale? Like is it to provide a good life for everyone within planetary boundaries? I mean I think that's kind of what I would answer that question.

Too often, I think the climate movement gets caught in the goal is to reduce emissions or the goal is to advocate for a renewable energy. I think those are just sort of

like tertiary goals. Climate change itself, is a symptom of a broader structural unjust society that I don't think climate change would have happened, if we would have really lived out the values that are in, And like, for example, in the US, declaration of independence because unalienable rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we haven't really acted that way as a country that all ever.

And I'm just sort of wondering like what would have happened if we did, and we still can pretty much any day, we can change that. So and I know that those roots run super deep and we're talking about hundreds. And hundreds of years of History here. But that doesn't mean just because that's the way we did things in the past, doesn't mean it has to be the way we do it in the future. And I think that having climate change be seen as a symptom of the problem rather than the

problem itself. I think lends itself to a whole list of solutions that are not, maybe immediately thought of as climate Solutions, universal access to housing and food. Water and public services focused on care or rather than on upholding certain rules that were put in place to serve small groups of people without sized amount of power. I don't know. I feel like we wrestle with details that I think if we just all took one big step back would

sort of drift away. I think that we really agree on a lot. More than we think we do and that thinking of climate as a justice issue primarily makes it a lot easier to align with other Justice movements in a lot easier to think about what it is.

We're actually trying to do what I say in the book is that the issue is really with this and the the concept of ownership because if you if you go back in, this is Kind of A New Concept. It's only two or three hundred years old the idea of private property and what ownership means. I think that before the Industrial Revolution that we were working a lot more with a general common understanding of community ownership and

community property. I am definitely not an economist or a lawyer or well-versed on what happens over the last 300 years to change that That but I know that if you change the prevailing mindset of civilization which of course easy to do that, we are all sort of here on a finite Planet together and only through caring for each other and caring for our home. Will we be able to survive? Which is kind of the situation we're in right now after two or three hundred years of extractive?

And of wealth into a few people's hands. We're at the point now where it's clear to see. That was destructive for many, many people in many places. So in the book, I have this conversation with Samantha Earl, who's a philosopher talking about liminal space and specifically about the idea of ownership. So thinking of liminal space as this. Transitory time, you know that the future will be very different from the present, you know, that you will be making a

fundamental transition. But you don't know exactly what it's going to look or feel like or what you will be or what will exist at the end when you're done with that transition. All, you know, is that the transition is going to happen. So, we are in that space right now. As a civilization really I think for the first time in a conscious way, we are all Connected and all understand that climate change has put a time limit on this transition.

In that climate change itself, has physically connected us in a way that Collective decision-making hasn't really before on a global scale, but in the book. So I just summarize this idea of ownership. I'm just going to read a little bit. With ownership comes control, with control, comes hierarchies

of power. Those who own more can marginalize and take advantage of those who, unless the concept of ownership is connected to all of our social struggles, misogyny racism, colonialism and the corruption of modern democracy. And of course the concept of ownership has directly resulted in the climate emergency which is really a crisis over consumption by those who are ready control. Most of the world's Resources with dire consequences for those who owned almost nothing.

Is to a world built on ownership may feel unfathomable right now, but it's what we all need to strive for if we're going to survive the century. So with that, I mean that when we are in this sort of Uncharted Territory, as planet now is the time to sort of go to the root of the problem and imagine completely orthogonal. Completely Divergent ideas that don't recreate the problem that we have spent the last 300 years trying to fix. And that's what I really mean.

That's what I'm trying to take a first stab at with the whole book is what could the future look like in a world where we challenge that sort of formational issue of. Climate change exists in the first place, huh, ownership? It's an interesting Locus to pin this on.

There's multiple levels to think about it, on which the first one is just kind of obvious is institutional, which is what sorts of property rights and property rules might exist is something more like common pool resources like Elinor Ostrom is this something like old peasant rotational writes something from various indigenous Traditions but But broader than just, the institutional point is one about the ontological phenomenological experience of your human relationship with objects and I

suppose it would change how we viewed the world and things that we quote unquote own if we didn't see them as being owned but us is merely being stewards of them or guarding them for our descendants or for the World At Large. You're saying that it's almost more like a spiritual change is that Yeah yeah exactly. You know I'm getting close to it. Yeah. Yeah. You I think you got it. And again hopefully I'm very transparent about this.

In the book is that I don't know the first thing about, what should come next. I think that the job that this book does is just identifying the problem, and actually doesn't even I'm clearly not the first person to talk or think about this this way, I'm trying to sort of assemble A group of voices that are hopefully, a little a little bit coherent in the way that I put it together about, what kinds of things

should. We be working for in the climate movement, and what kinds of things can happen? When we do that work together, when we try to imagine a world that is still this world. But different?

Yeah, well in your Twitter bio you lost yourself. As an Eco socialists. I'm at imagine there's some relation between the ideas that you're talking about here and the vision of Eco Socialism or are they diverging somehow? No, I think that's true. And again, I have a conversation with credit une Berg and with Kate raworth in this book, talking about what kind of system economic or political system could come next door or might come next, if we get

through. This sort of 10-year Green New Deal, transition moment and that opens us up to an opportunity to sort of put in place, a totally different governing ethics. Then, what would that look like? I honestly don't know and that was Greta's answer to me is that it just hasn't been invented yet. Like, we're doing it all for the first time in this context. Clearly like we've never had a

year. 20 before. So we don't really have anything to base this on and I think, yeah, thinking about it, more of a sort of philosophical or spiritual problem. I think is closer to what it actually is. We're sort of trying to strive to figure out what we're going to be right now and that is a very much open question. But yeah. In Kate, raworth also sort of pushed back on the idea of Socialism or capitalism or any

label saying that. That why bring that baggage with you if you're making this sort of transitional bleep to a new type of world, then why bring those labels with you? So I don't know. Maybe it doesn't even need a label but maybe I should take that out. Twitter bio, I don't know. I think that in the Twitter bio at least it's mostly like a provocation that I think that to get people to ask me the exact question that you asked me. Oh man, I fell for it, huh? Yeah.

I think that what needs to happen is an ecologically focused world. Going back again to sort of the core of who we are like we are animals and we live on a planet with other animals and plants and other living things and that's really what it is. You know, I don't know, like everything that we should do should extend from that as the fundamental truth that we're all sort of part of an ecosystem.

We are a part of an ecosystem and our politics and our economics, should all be sort of drawn out of that truth. I guess that's what I mean by Eco socialism is that we will not be able to survive if we're sort of in a competitive focused economic system on a finite planet and that at the same time, I Still, You Know, believe in those aspirational.

Words of the Declaration of Independence that we are all entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that that is possible with the resources that we have on the planet in a way that it doesn't destroy the planet at the same time. I mean, that's a belief system that's like a, you know, again, we're talking about spirituality like that's like bordering on sort of like a religious belief for me. Maybe, I don't know because otherwise if It wasn't true.

Then I don't really know what to do. I don't have a direction for my life. If it's not possible for us all to live, or to enjoy the world. And if it's not possible for us to respect all the other millions of species that we're here with at the same time, then

I'm not sure what we're doing for enough at this. I respect that you're willing to say that you don't know things which that that has gone out of fashion. Of things that I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Myself included. I also, I really like that point, I can't write worth Meg's that those words, capitalism. And socialism do have a lot of baggage, and even myself, sometimes I can end up feeling

defensive or triggered. If it's framed in the wrong kinds of way, because there are things about capitalism that I do, like, I like cooperation. So I think you're trying to make like a, like a kropotkin. Mutual Aid. Cooperation is a stronger predictor for evolutionary history than competition. Yeah, that's that's a point worthy of being made. Made. But there's also things I like about competition to there's

things. I like about certain types of property rights that I want to be preserved. I like I like markets to but there's also really interesting work that Kate does. And then also radical markets by Glenn while on Eric Posner. I really like to which is there thinking about how do you use markets in ways such that they equilibrate in driving towards egalitarians outcomes? And I'm like oh this is creative this sort of breaks the right left thinking on markets and a really really cool.

A and it preserves what I like about markets to sew but you always wonder about things like that. Does that does that mean everyone agrees and converges on it? Or does everyone find something that they hate about it and reject it could be either but in any case though I think not talking at the level of capitalism or socialism is good because the details matter right there are good and bad versions. Probably a both of those actually I don't know if you agree with that or not but

depends on what we mean. Yeah, and I think I would just go even more fundamental and say like, what is the world that needs to exist and then just do it. Like, I don't know, I don't know that. It's worth really even comparing different systems. I guess in that way, it is, sort of like a market-based system in a way where it's just like, you try a bunch of things and keep doing what works and don't do, what doesn't work. I guess that is kind of what a market is.

Yeah, like that's the type of competition maybe. But then there's other types of competition where I think we could both be like, yeah, this probably isn't in Humanity's best interest to compete over this, right? Yeah. And that's where I think there's should be and it is sort of like a baseline governing document for human civilization, which is like the universal Declaration on human rights or something like that.

I think there are opportunities to redo those documents that include more voices other than Just sort of like the Europeans that wrote them, but I think that there are very basic things, that, that people can agree on, and then the goal of broader Human Society should be to cooperate with each other to make communities able to carry those out at the local scale as best as we can, and it's going to look super different in different places with different embedded.

And geographies and people and traditions. And so yeah, what I mean, what Kate raworth is really also a big fan of distributed production. So she's talking about, you know, democratizing everything, basically, saying that decision, making production design of systems, all of that should be sort of able to be self-determined even like a house.

All to community level scale that there are things that we can sort of share in common like blueprints for 3D printed parts and then like, let people do what they need to do with that and I love that information, sort of just like libraries or is it a library? Is a great invention in that it's a community resource. But any individual can use it at

any time. I don't know, we have If we have a seed Library here, where you can check out seeds, plant them in your garden and then like redeposit the seeds the next year when you harvest them. So, I don't know. I think that they'll be opportunity for that kind of stuff and all that is, of course, lower carbon than having the sort of hyper globalization that we have right now.

I mean, because you can see how hyperglobalisation breaks down when you have a pandemic or when you have a shock to the system. Anyway and then the people who are left out during those breakdowns are the people who are marginalized in the society. So even here in Minneapolis, use have seen over the last three or four weeks, a huge outpouring of the, these ideas and groups focused on Mutual Aid people, caring for Neighbors, caring for

each other. The same thing happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. I feel like that is a little bit more of a model. For sort of Effective Government in a period of escalating chaos and shocks. Like we're going to have for the next 30 to 50 years and probably longer climate disasters that keep getting worse. No matter what we do.

Even if we stopped all emissions today there is a roughly 50 year, equilibrium period where temperatures are not going to start going back down for about 50 years or so. Because of the physical sequestering of carbon in the ocean that takes that long for the ocean to turn over to sort

of update itself. And so that is part of what I have running in my head this entire, throughout this entire book, is that things are going to keep getting worse, even though they're getting better at the same time. So you sort of have to have the Long View by definition. Because the work that you're doing today is not going to Potentially lead to better real outcomes for a long time.

In the meantime, the next few decades is going to look like all of us in crisis mode, caring, for each other. That's just sort of my take. Yeah, well, there's certainly is

a lot there, I like that. And I like often. When we have conservatives on the podcast to one of the convergent things that we all land on is sort of the scale. Of these relationships is too big right now and some ways. One of the most radical things you can do is actually know your neighbors and take care of them. And I think I think that's just sort of a universal Grand. I live in Seattle and so even yesterday, I was walking down the hall and someone

deliberately looked away. It's like, I know you, man, I know you're not. He's Dragon trouble looking like a little Synod, the mark of the human-like. Give me a little nod. No, but I'm in the process of moving right now. I'm really trying to get the note being Neighborly and actually doing that.

And one of the criticisms of the left from the left that I've always really liked is from Dorothy Day, who says something akin to. The welfare state has meant that we have outsourced, our Christian duty to take care of our neighbors to the sort of impersonal distant entity and really like your duty is to do that yourself as a work of Mercy, as she might say it. And so I like your focus on care

work, I think. And I think that's it's both good for the person receiving it and the person giving it. And I think we would live in a happier healthier place of people did that, right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was also thinking this is getting a little bit off topic. Maybe I do maybe not, you should just go for it. I think Stu, you know, my last five years. Like I said, in the intro, has been mostly defined by me, becoming a dad.

And so I've been understand and I had both of my kids are boys. So I've been Trying to think about what it means to be a man, raising two, boys in this world. And I think that honestly care work, and sort of understanding the complexity of your relationship to the world, is how everything you do. Impacts, everyone else is such an essential part of masculinity in this world that the book is set in, you know, the next 30

years. If we do it right, it's going to Men feeling comfortable and secure in the fact that they can care for each other and love each other.

In a sort of, like Society building kind of way, like, if you want to call it, toxic masculinity or any any number of different labels for it. But I think that is such a huge part of what this whole struggle is, is feeling entitled and feeling, Like, you are somehow above doing all of that work that everyone else has to do. But for some reason, you've purchased that right for yourself to not have to care

about that kind of stuff. I feel like grow when I was growing up in a small town in Kansas and like playing on the football team. That was definitely sorry. Felt like what is just like? This is how you're taught, how to be a man is that you're tough and like you don't Have to care for each other. That you can do it yourself.

And when you get into such a hyper individualized way and realize that you aren't able to do it yourself but yet you have not developed any skills, how to ask for help or how to admit, you're wrong or how to reach out, and genuinely, check in on your friends, be there for each other. Like, that's the work that needs to be done right now. And I think If men did that work more, that it would all kind of

work out. Maybe that's like to essentializing the problem too much, but I think that's a huge part of what the hurdle is right now, is that is that we need to sort of think about what our responsibility is to each other and then just go and do it. Don't wait for someone else to teach you how like learn on your own and do it.

Everyone's capable of doing that.

Yeah, that's a good point. I find, even when I speak with people, that I might not agree with on everything, I think there's something about social media that exacerbates this, a hundredfold, but if there are people that, you know, from around your neighborhood, where that you see around and they have up a persistent, even if you thought that they were upset, for no reason telling someone that they're upset for no reason doesn't seem to solve that problem ever, not really?

Yeah, for anyone who has Rocket with humans for a long period of time, you should should know this one. Although I seemingly have to relearn it every so often part of it is just like getting good at listening and knowing how to even like interact on that level. I don't really connect that to my thinking on climate change but I think part of what you're saying is that some of this non listening kind of aggressive, toxic masculine attributes are

linked. Perhaps to your views on ownership and how it sort of like a dominance mentality, is that Fair to say, yeah, but I think in my experience, the dominance comes primarily out of fear where you are, afraid to do things that are uncomfortable. And so you just choose not to, and then it snowballs and then it gets out of hand. And then you end up with 300 years of like, colonialism and slavery. I don't know. It's also, yeah, I mean, to be more explicitly climate-related.

It is pervasive throughout the environment. Metal movement, this kind of idea of we know what's better for you than you do. Like solar panels aren't super important if they're connected to a system that is sort of perpetuating a consumption based culture. What is that called? Is that jevons Paradox? Where increases in efficiency actually end up creating more total consumption and the end. Yeah, so like like lighting is a perfect example. Oh, we're Total Electric use

electricity. Use on lighting has actually increased, because you have things, like cities, installing LED lights everywhere, where maybe they, they didn't previously have the budget to do that. Now that the cost of lighting has decreased by 90% or more, same thing is probably happening with batteries right now. I mean, this is General is like the push to Electrify.

Everything is going. Create hyper-consumption of all of these Technologies. If we don't have it attached to a system of Ethics that prevents that from happening. Yeah, I don't want to get into the Michael Moore movie. Let's all I had a feeling he said something that caught my ear for that, but we don't ya where-where's. Like the point of that movie to me, was I say, I don't want to get into it and then I start talking about it. The point of and you ignore it and keep going.

Yeah, the idea was that the in renewable energy industry is actually worse than the fossil fuel industry because you require Mining and consumption to create solar panels like you have to be so pure that you have to exist as like a pure energy being to have no footprint and the world like which it clearly

doesn't happen. So there's that, there's a risk of getting into that like a logical trap, but there are also the opposite could happen where we focus as a society on reducing actively reducing inequality, like repairing. The harms of the last few hundred years in a world where we have a wealth tax and distribute that income to improve standards of living for the 20-ish percent of the world. Who Still doesn't have the still don't have access to

electricity. We could do that very easily and sort of at the same time, reduce total emissions potentially. So we just repurpose the emissions that we currently have away from things, like luxury, air travel in business class for the weekend to things like guaranteeing universal access to housing and food and water and Even internet and libraries and health care and all of those things that have become Necessities to having a good life.

I think it's possible to redistribute that and not have a net change in our missions. And also in the process of doing that transition, we would have a world that was explicitly focused on making things better for the vast majority of people. And so, I think we would sort of break that addiction to Over consumption in the process. Anyway, now, I'm just sort of like, throwing ideas out. No, it's fine.

It's totally, totally welcome. Yeah, I'm gonna ignore the Michael more stuff and Skip ahead to the other side. Yeah, the the points about consumption, I think are interesting and I think there, maybe this link is less strong that I think it is, but you talked about maybe having a four-day work week and a basic income and I most the time when I buy stuff off of Amazon, assuming it's not stuff that I could like make myself a Make make a book that I want to read

besides stuff like that. I like doing stuff myself. I do a lot of crafting and increasingly more crafting and gardening and trying to like buy less stuff. And I found my enjoyment is actually increased. I don't feel deprived that I don't get instantaneous satisfaction. I like becoming better at things and you don't become better at things by buying things off of Amazon. You have to do that by going out in your garage and whittling something or using a lathe,

that's how you sew. I don't know. I think I kind of associate that a little bit with care work, even though maybe it's self-care or just learning makes you feel good, but I wish it was more common. Yeah, yeah. And of course, there's a lot of privilege baked into being able to have time to do all that

stuff. Like, I have a garden and I spend, you know, maybe a half an hour to an hour a day, not even actually yeah, it doesn't actually take that much time, but I know that it also doesn't fulfill all of my food requirements. Or any right now, actually, because I haven't Harvest anything of it off of it yet.

So yeah, there are things that we've become dependent on in the world that we have and the Frank honest truth is that's going to have to change a little bit and that's I think the reality that the environmental movement shies away from when we're talking about and especially it seems to be like a hot-button issue on flying where almost everyone gets to Pensive when you talk about flying myself included, even like several years ago, I

decided that I would never fly again like on spur-of-the-moment decision. And then I took a job based in Amsterdam and so I have had to fly a few times since I made that decision and I get very defensive even in my internal monologue about it. When I talk about like, well, I wouldn't be able to do the work if I didn't take this flight, I don't know. I think that again, The last three months of the pandemic ho has proven to us that we can

live radically different lives. They've been forced on us so suddenly that they've become really damaging for a lot of people who didn't have time to prepare for it, but it is possible to have a radically different way of doing things like air travel is not really a necessity. I don't think I mean obviously that a lot of people will disagree with me on that, but the fact that we have families Spread all throughout the world now makes it functional

necessity. If you want to have a relationship with them in person so there I think there will be a transition time. Yea like I said like 50 to 200 year period of transition time where we are sort of not only are we zero-carbon but we are rebuilding. The whole purpose of our society in the zero-carbon context like it's easy to reduce emissions. Zero even but it's hard to sort of have entire world. That makes it stay that way

where everyone has a good life, I think. Yeah, I think you're probably right about air travel and you give appropriate caveats for it before. The covid happened. I would have to travel maybe once a month, maybe twice. For for work travel. I am happy that I no longer have to do that. I used to think that I enjoyed getting to see See various cities from around the country and around the world for work. Now, I'm happy to just stay in my little Nook, actually.

Find travel very jarring in an airplane, so I would like to return it airships. I want Zeppelin's and I want transoceanic liners. I think, I think they should have a return. And maybe if we had more time and weren't, I know, so many people are, you can't miss a day or a couple days of work or it's really perilous. Maybe in the future, people are better taken care of and could afford The time off to travel more slowly.

Also I love bike trips. I like traveling by bike a lot too and I wish I was more people had enough leisure time or availability to do so because there's a pride in that and I don't think flying really does it for you. Mmm. Yeah. This is one of the things that happened when I was in Amsterdam last year. Is that, you know, they have the most, they have the densest bike trail Network in the world and I just, you know, like woke up in my hotel.

I'll rented a bike out front of the hotel and biked to the ocean and back that day. Like and I think only maybe three or four times today actually Cross Road in this sense that you Crossroads all the time in the US. Like there is no real concept of a independent National Bike Network here where it doesn't interface with the roads at all, where there are just like random bike only. Lee Trails carving through people's fields in the middle of the country and that's the bike Road.

It's used primarily as a bike road and it has over passes over. The highways just, as any other Road system, would you just don't even have to interact with cars if you don't want to, which is just so weird to me that you could travel halfway across the country without ever having really touch to car based infrastructure. That's possible, I could exist right now.

Like that could exist in the US and fifty years, or even in 10 years or even like in three years if we will actually wanted it to there are some of it already. It's not on all the way across the country uniformly that I just saw an article the other day at various states have it. There's also the Canal Trail that goes from like DC, pretty far west. I think they'll like Ohio or something but there's a whole bunch of intersecting ones.

Yeah. But I wish I wish it was like that because maybe more people would do it. If so, So or maybe it would just be nerds like us. He like getting on bikes, I don't know. Yeah I don't know. I mean I really think like I mean you go to the Netherlands and they're people of literally every age and ability that are in bikes and there are caveats to the system for people with disabilities that need

assistance. And there is, I don't know if I feel like it was just sort of like a conscious Choice, the country made about 50 years ago to shift to like bike, Focused infrastructure. And you know, if you had electric assist bike, there isn't really anything stopping you from using that as your primary mode of transportation permanently in that kind of a world that where the hills don't even really matter anymore that point.

Yeah, I do think, you know, there are many things I like about having a car and I like the freedom and individualism of being able to just go somewhere on my own and not look at any schools. Schedule or to have anyone's permission. I just go but also I think it's bad that every city is essentially built for cars and to not have a car, means you're stuck on public transit which often doesn't even go, where you need it to go Etc. And if anything is just like a giant waste of physical space

like 30 to 40 percent of cities. Surface area is car infrastructure, something like that so you can build you can put a lot more. Houses and shops and parks, and all that kind of stuff in there without all of that wasted space. And also here in St.

Paul to connect everything. Again, there is a neighborhood called the Rondo neighborhood, which is historically black neighborhood made that way partially, because of racist housing policy 100 years ago, but then it was cut in half by building Interstate 94 that they Surly excavated a line right through the middle of the neighborhood.

Cut out a canyon built the highway in the canyon and now the neighborhood does doesn't exist anymore in any real way that it did before in that same pattern sort of happened, all across the country where there were, there were people and neighborhoods that were considered Expendable for infrastructure designed to use, you know, fossil fuels and and quote stimulate the economy, you know, in the 50s You know, cars were probably one of the main economic engines of the country,

you know, auto manufacturing. So you had the government helping that industry along by literally destroying people's neighborhoods. Yeah, I remember reading about Jane Jacobs, fighting with Robert Moses in New York. Yeah. Same thing happening. Yeah, I don't know that we're better off for having the highways going through that, you can still tear him out.

Out. I mean like it's there's nothing stopping us from tearing out the interstate highway system and replacing it, with something better. Yeah, if you want to go from Seattle to Spokane, you better get on your bike because that's that's the future Eco socialists want, right? Just kidding. I had to review a little bit. No, I people people should do that. It's pretty fun. Well, we just start wrapping it up. The fun as this has been are Where can people buy your book

and working? They follow you personally. Yeah, I do. Most of the Social Media stuff on Twitter are called house. And I write primarily entirely for the correspondent now, which is the correspondent.com. And the book is available everywhere. I've been trying to direct people to Bookshop dot org, which is a network of independent bookstores, local bookstores. So you can buy it through there and it will be filled by your local bookstore.

I think, in theory, that's how it's supposed to work. Cool links are in the show notes for all of that, thanks for being here. Yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me. Wow, it's a lot of fun. If you like the show, please write interview US on. ITunes up a podcast or Stitcher, tell your friends, and thank you so much for listening.