Latest / Abide Meditation App / Why Climate Change Sounds Like Apocalypticism (feat. Dr. Susannah Crockford

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Why Climate Change Sounds Like Apocalypticism (feat. Dr. Susannah Crockford · Abide Meditation App

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Are UFOs and aliens becoming a new kind of religion.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Learn more at religiondepartment dot com. Slash aliens. Something that
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: really really annoys me is a whole genre of pseudo
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: intellectual pontificating that I call everything is a religion. You've
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: probably seen the op eds. Politics are a religion. Taylor's
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Swift fandom is a religion. But wait, Andrew, You might say,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: don't you have a video on baseball magic and fandoms
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: are religion with Taylor Swift literally in the thumbnail. Yes,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: yes I do, and I'm very careful with my comparisons
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: in those videos. Religious studies Gandolf Doctor Jonathan Z. Smith,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: an expert in comparison theory, would be very proud of me.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: So usually when I hear anything in the realm of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: environmentalism is a religion, my bullshitometer goes to red alert.
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  Speaker 1: But this is not the case with the excellent research
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  Speaker 1: by anthropologists Susannah Crockford. She has a new book out
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  Speaker 1: called A Perturbed System, Religion and Climate Change from the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: End of a World. Her research goes way beyond the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: lazy environmentalism is a religion thing. She's interested in climate discourse.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: The stories people used to interpret climate change or reject
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  Speaker 1: it or be scared of it, basically how people talk
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  Speaker 1: about climate change, and she argues that in the US
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  Speaker 1: and Northern Europe where she did her field work, that
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  Speaker 1: discourse is shaped by an inherited Christian theological framework. Even
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  Speaker 1: if you personally are not a Christian, you can still
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  Speaker 1: think with categories that Christianity helped to build into the
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  Speaker 1: surrounding culture. And when people talk about rising sea levels
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  Speaker 1: or carbon emissions, suddenly they start throwing out discourse that
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  Speaker 1: sounds a lot like Christian ideas like original sin, apocalypticism,
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  Speaker 1: the coming of a Messiah. And this inherited climate discourse
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  Speaker 1: shows up among both climate change deniers and climate change activists. So,
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  Speaker 1: for example, during her field work at a Republican picnic
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  Speaker 1: in Arizona, doctor Crockford spoke to a woman she calls Belinda,
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  Speaker 1: who told her that climate change was all up to God.
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  Speaker 1: Only God knew the day and the hour, and anyone
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  Speaker 1: claiming to know what would happen to the planet was
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  Speaker 1: trying to take God's place. God would take care of humanity,
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  Speaker 1: and he had given us the world to use as
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  Speaker 1: we see all fit. In Missouri, Another woman, whom Crockford
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: calls Evelyn, said that nature could not be changed, that
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  Speaker 1: God was in charge, and that everything was God's creation.
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  Speaker 1: She invoked the Book of Genesis and explained that Adam
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  Speaker 1: had been given dominion over the animals in the earth.
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  Speaker 1: So here the logic is explicitly theologically Christian. Crockford describes
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  Speaker 1: a hierarchy of God and then humanity, and then nature.
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  Speaker 1: God has ultimate control over creation, humans have dominion within it,
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  Speaker 1: and they may use nature to provide for themselves. So
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the idea that human activity could destabilize the planet, or
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  Speaker 1: that scientists could confidently predict its future can sound like
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  Speaker 1: assigning human beings powers that properly belong to God. But
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: these are evangelical Christians drawing on their evangelical Christian theology
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  Speaker 1: to talk about climate change. That's not particularly surprising. But
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  Speaker 1: Crockford's argument that there is an inherited Christian framework when
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: people talk about climate change gets even more interesting when
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: nobody mentions God at all. So consider a twenty eighteen
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: paper by the sustainability scholar Jem Bendel. It's called Deep Adaptation,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Bendall argued that the
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  Speaker 1: term societal collapse caused by climate change is now inevitable,
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  Speaker 1: and that people need to reconsider their work and their lives. Accordingly,
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  Speaker 1: he tried to publish the article in an academic journal,
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  Speaker 1: but it was rejected, so he self published it and
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  Speaker 1: it went viral and basically launched a mini apocalyptic movement.
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  Speaker 1: Wece interviewed people who sought therapy, left their jobs, became
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  Speaker 1: climate activists, or considered moving to the countryside. After reading it,
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  Speaker 1: one former advertising worker wondered whether he should simply retreat
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  Speaker 1: to rural Scotland and weigh out the apocalypse. Another reader
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  Speaker 1: quit a senior university position and began looking for a
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  Speaker 1: small farm to Crockford. This looks like a classic Millinarian movement.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Millenarianism is the expectation that the existing social order will
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  Speaker 1: soon be overturned and replaced by a radically transformed age,
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  Speaker 1: often through supernatural intervention. Classic nineteenth century examples include the Millerites,
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  Speaker 1: who expected Christ to return in eighteen forty four, and
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  Speaker 1: a Millinary and thought, because the world as we know
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  Speaker 1: it is about to end, we can no longer live
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  Speaker 1: as we did. People must repent and transform their life
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  Speaker 1: we see this pattern also during the Cold War. The
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  Speaker 1: possibility of nuclear annihilation gave apocalyptic and millenary and movements
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  Speaker 1: a new source of urgency. While past millinary and movements
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  Speaker 1: believed that the end of the world was going to
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  Speaker 1: happen through supernatural means, now humans have acquired the technological
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  Speaker 1: power to bring it about themselves. A good example is
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  Speaker 1: the Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age new religious
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  Speaker 1: movement under the leadership of Elizabeth Claire. Prophet members predicted
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  Speaker 1: a nuclear war with the Soviet Union that was going
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  Speaker 1: to occur in March nineteen ninety, so a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: them sold everything and moved into a big, multimillion dollar
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  Speaker 1: bomb shelter with food, fuel, and supplies. Crockford argues were
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  Speaker 1: seeing a similar pattern form around Bendel's Deep Adaptation paper. Now,
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  Speaker 1: of course, there's a few differences here compared to Cold
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  Speaker 1: War millinarianism. Bendel wasn't claiming any sort of supernatural revelation.
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  Speaker 1: He wasn't setting a precise date for the end of
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  Speaker 1: the world like the Millerites. But it's a scenario where
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  Speaker 1: we have a credentialed insider announcing that societal collapse will
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  Speaker 1: happen in our own lifetime, an imminent reality that mainstream
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  Speaker 1: institution refuse to confront, and those who accepted his message
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  Speaker 1: reorganize their lives in anticipation of the coming end. So
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  Speaker 1: that progression from a newly revealed truth to the conviction
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  Speaker 1: that the present order is doomed to a personal transformation
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  Speaker 1: in response is what Crockford identifies as classic millenarian thought.
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  Speaker 1: And this is the kind of religious studies comparison that
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  Speaker 1: actually interests me and I think is actually good scholarship.
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  Speaker 1: People are confronting a crisis that often has religious sounding answers.
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  Speaker 1: Who is responsible? Is the present order doomed? Can humanity
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  Speaker 1: change its ways? What kind of life makes sense when
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  Speaker 1: the future you had expected may no longer exist. Religious
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  Speaker 1: stories have answered those questions over the course of thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years, So even when people are not explicitly talking
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  Speaker 1: about God or Christianity, older structures of prophecy, apocalypse, sin, conversion,
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  Speaker 1: and salvation can still shape how you interpret and understand
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  Speaker 1: the crisis. This is the argument I wanted to explore
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  Speaker 1: with doctor Susannah Crockford, and I had the opportunity to
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  Speaker 1: sit down with her and talk about her work So Susanna,
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  Speaker 1: welcome to the shell.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
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  Speaker 1: So it's very exciting. This interview will come out after
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  Speaker 1: your book is released. But you just told me that
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  Speaker 1: your new book is coming out tomorrow. Can you just
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  Speaker 1: tell us about the new book coming out?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I can, and I have one of the advanced
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  Speaker 2: copies here. If I put it close enough, you can
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  Speaker 2: see it. It's very exciting. So it's called AURP System
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  Speaker 2: Religion and Climate Change from the End of the World.
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  Speaker 2: And what this book does is it presents the situation right.
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  Speaker 2: This situation is where societies are facing an imminent catastrophe.
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  Speaker 2: So scientists have largely been ignored and instead of leadership,
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  Speaker 2: we have essentially a mad king who calls it a hoax.
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  Speaker 2: Now this sounds like it could be the setup for
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  Speaker 2: a science fiction novel, but unfortunately, that is the situation
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  Speaker 2: we find ourselves in now with climate change. And what
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  Speaker 2: my book does is it takes us through how people
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  Speaker 2: are responding to climate change in the US and northern Europe.
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  Speaker 2: Some people are keeping on with business as usual, some
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  Speaker 2: people are just sort of like partying and having a
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  Speaker 2: good time, and others are in immense grief. And mourning,
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  Speaker 2: and so I put these responses together. I trace these
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  Speaker 2: stories through interviews, through in personal observations that events, protests, courses,
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  Speaker 2: and things like that, but also just social media, which
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  Speaker 2: is a great resource, especially for things like the denial
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  Speaker 2: of climate change, and even just fragments of things like graffiti.
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  Speaker 2: And I put this together to talk about climate change discourse.
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  Speaker 2: And then there's two main contributions. Right. One is an
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  Speaker 2: academic argument that in climate discourse there is a very strong,
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  Speaker 2: unrecognized presence of religion, and in these contexts that religion
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  Speaker 2: is Christianity. And I talk about the long history of Christianity,
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  Speaker 2: which in these context which again is the US and Europe,
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  Speaker 2: tends to be Protestantism, or at least Protestant inflected, even
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  Speaker 2: though many of the ideas that I talk about, So
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  Speaker 2: I trace a number of what site what I call
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  Speaker 2: theological motif things like apocalypse and prophecy and original sin.
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  Speaker 2: The way they appear in climate discourse has these Christian
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  Speaker 2: inheritances which are again in these just in these contexts,
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  Speaker 2: very Protestant inflected. And then there's a wider contribution, which
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  Speaker 2: I think which will appeal to a more non academic audience,
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  Speaker 2: which is, how are people dealing with living in this
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  Speaker 2: time of endings? You know, how do we live in
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  Speaker 2: a time when things around us are dying, ecosystems are collapsing,
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  Speaker 2: mass extinction is going on. The normal that we had
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  Speaker 2: come to rely on is no longer normal? How do
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  Speaker 2: we live with that? How are we coping with that? So?
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  Speaker 2: How do you live in a time of ending? So
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  Speaker 2: hopefully that's something that people will be able to learn
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  Speaker 2: from and take with them, even if they're not as
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  Speaker 2: interested in the more academic stuff.
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  Speaker 1: The first thing that comes to mind, I study earlier
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  Speaker 1: Christianity is the first thing that pops to mind as apocalypticism,
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  Speaker 1: which it doesn't always but frequently talks about the end
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  Speaker 1: of the world. You can more accurately say coming of
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  Speaker 1: a new age or something like that. But when we
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  Speaker 1: think of the apocalypse, we think of the end of
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  Speaker 1: the world. But I'm an American. I have this sense
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  Speaker 1: of the Christians in the US who are most likely
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  Speaker 1: to believe in an imminent end time scenario also happen
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  Speaker 1: to be politically conservative, and therefore also happened to either
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  Speaker 1: don't believe in climate change or don't believe it's human created,
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  Speaker 1: or at least are voting for the Republican Party, which
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  Speaker 1: has not supported climate policy. So is apocalypticism under the
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  Speaker 1: surface here, and is it held by non evangelicals then,
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  Speaker 1: because it doesn't. There's a lot of talk about the
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  Speaker 1: end times coming from evangelicals, and it doesn't seem to
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  Speaker 1: be intersecting much with climate change. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Now, what's interesting about the way I apocalypticism appears in
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  Speaker 2: climate discourse is that the structure that you've just described,
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  Speaker 2: that this sort of catastrophe that then creates a new
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  Speaker 2: beginning is very much present in environmentalist discourse or the
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  Speaker 2: environmentalist sides of this discourse, should we say, But even
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  Speaker 2: not just environmentalism. I also trace it through the media,
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  Speaker 2: for example, which you know, if there's an extreme weather event,
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  Speaker 2: they like to talk about it. It's like it's the apocalypse,
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  Speaker 2: it's the snow apocalypse, it's the heat apocalypse. And this
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  Speaker 2: has its own effects that's sort of undermining the seriousness
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  Speaker 2: while making everyone very afraid. But you're absolutely right about
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  Speaker 2: evangelicals in particular in that they do lean very strongly
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  Speaker 2: towards climate denial. There's some excellent work in the field
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  Speaker 2: on this. For example, Robin Veldman's A Gospel of Climate Skepticism,
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  Speaker 2: which traces this overlap between climate denial and at least
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  Speaker 2: white evangelicals in the United States, not all evangelicals are
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  Speaker 2: would emphasize that. And what's interesting there is that evangelicals
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  Speaker 2: deny climate change not because of their end times beliefs,
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  Speaker 2: but because of the politicization of them as a group
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  Speaker 2: in the US specifically. So it's a very culturally context
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  Speaker 2: dependent climate denial for US evangelical and they're very much
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  Speaker 2: they deny climate change because it's sort of a package
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  Speaker 2: of other things about the secular world that they also reject.
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  Speaker 2: You know, you could include sexuality, you can include race relations,
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  Speaker 2: and these are all sort of rejected as part of,
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  Speaker 2: you know, the secular world that they don't agree with,
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  Speaker 2: and climate change has become part of that. But what's
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  Speaker 2: interesting is that that doesn't mean they don't care about
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  Speaker 2: the planet, and that doesn't mean that they actually think
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  Speaker 2: that things are going well in the environment. So I
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  Speaker 2: did some of my own research amongst not necessarily evangelical churches,
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  Speaker 2: although I did go to a few of those, but
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  Speaker 2: to the US South, which are some very heavily evangelical areas.
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  Speaker 2: For example, I went to central Missouri and I went
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  Speaker 2: to the coastal Louisiana, and I asked the same question
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  Speaker 2: there that I asked in other areas that were not evangelical,
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  Speaker 2: which is, you know, what effect do you think that
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  Speaker 2: humans are having on the planet? And they also said bad, right,
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  Speaker 2: They also saw it as negative. They all sources destroying
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  Speaker 2: this planet that we're meant to have stewardship of. So
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  Speaker 2: they also see us in this time of endings, but
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  Speaker 2: they sort of see it in that way that's sort
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  Speaker 2: of inflected by our own theological beliefs. And then also
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  Speaker 2: you have the politicization on top of that, which does
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  Speaker 2: make them kind of lean towards climate now. But what
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  Speaker 2: the book is about, much more specifically, is this structure
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  Speaker 2: of apocalypticism, right, that you will find in environmentalism, you'll
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  Speaker 2: find in the media. It's not really about evangelicals as such.
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  Speaker 1: And so in when I study apocalypticism in the ancient world,
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  Speaker 1: ancient historians often talk about how it emerges in troubled times.
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  Speaker 1: So we can think of Second Temple Jewish apocalypticism emerging
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  Speaker 1: under Selucid rule when the Solucid dynasty was, you know,
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  Speaker 1: triggering the Maccabean revolt. We think of Jesus as an
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: apocalyptic preacher emerging under Roman occupation. So does that understanding
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  Speaker 1: of apocalypticism emerging out of troubled times for lack of
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  Speaker 1: better words, hold true for climate apocalypticism.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so. I trace it in two different ways.
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  Speaker 2: There's this sense that we're in troubled times because of
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  Speaker 2: what's going on in the climate and the environment. And
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  Speaker 2: then on the one hand, you've got scientists who I
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  Speaker 2: argue are positioned in much the same way as Old
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  Speaker 2: Testament profits, sort of in some of the context you
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  Speaker 2: were just mentioning where they were being called. They were
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  Speaker 2: being called on to bring us back to our covenant values, right,
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  Speaker 2: But scientists don't do that. That's not the way they
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  Speaker 2: see themselves. They see themselves as providing information and then
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  Speaker 2: others act upon it. Right, they'll provide the information, but
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  Speaker 2: they won't tell you anything about values. But the information
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  Speaker 2: they're providing is so shocking and it has so many
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  Speaker 2: existential implications that the call for values seems implied by
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: what they're saying. It's like, okay, you're saying that these
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  Speaker 2: ecosystems are collapsing. What do we do? What should we do?
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  Speaker 2: And so scientists have been positioned as profits even though
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  Speaker 2: they don't want to be and they don't see that
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  Speaker 2: position as something they would willingly inhabit. The other way
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  Speaker 2: that this kind of apocalyptism as a response to trouble
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  Speaker 2: times comes through very strongly is in activism, where you
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  Speaker 2: do get people standing up as leaders to say, you know, basically,
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  Speaker 2: the end is nigh. We need to change our ways
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  Speaker 2: right now. This is what you need to do. And
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  Speaker 2: I talk about some really interesting figures, a number of
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  Speaker 2: them are in Europe, about people who are sort of
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  Speaker 2: saying that social collapse is imminent, right, you need to
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  Speaker 2: change your whole lives. And then the effects that this
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: has had on people when they hear that message, people
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  Speaker 2: absolutely quit their jobs. You know, they start looking for
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  Speaker 2: land out somewhere Western Wales or further afield, which is
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  Speaker 2: you know, classic apocalyptic and millinery and behavior.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So I did a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of research into Robin Velman's work back when I did
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a video on environmentalism, and I seem to remember her
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  Speaker 1: mentioning like she was a studying the end times apathy
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  Speaker 1: hypothesis that if you don't believe in climate change, then
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: you'll be more apathetic about the end times. But the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: folks that she was studying, evangelical she was studying, did
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: show some interest in stewardship for the planet, and that's
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Christian theology has this long history of that humans must
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: be stewards of God's creation. But it's tied to an
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: embattlement mindset that climate change is tied to secularism or
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: left wing scientists. So when you were talking about like
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  Speaker 1: scientists acting as profits, I would say even the maybe
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: conservative evangelical critic would use similar language that you are
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: basically you being this hypothetical climate scientist is basically pushing
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: an agenda, and that agenda might be for money or
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: for authoritarium power grabs to have, you know, more green policy,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to put certain businesses out of business. So I'm curious
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  Speaker 1: to try to unpack this embattlement mindset, like how much
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: do we see this political factionalism playing into this apocalyptic mindset?
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  Speaker 2: This is something that's very key to climate denial, I think,
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  Speaker 2: and absolutely if you pay any attention to the way
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  Speaker 2: evangelicals talk about climate scientists. They talk about them as
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  Speaker 2: playing god, that it is hubris to think that humans
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  Speaker 2: could affect the planet in that way, that humans could
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  Speaker 2: bring on the end times, and that, yeah, they allege
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  Speaker 2: all these sort of motives behind climate scientists. It's usually
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  Speaker 2: some sort of corruption, right, that they're doing it for
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the money, which is sort of laughable if you know
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: how much money is in climate science, right, compared to
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: an average fossil fuel company's capital. Anyway. There, So, there's
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  Speaker 2: a chapter in the book where I talk about climate denial,
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  Speaker 2: and I kind of take on directly the rhetoric that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: is used by people who deny climate change that it
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: is a cult, right, that climate scientists and climate activists
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  Speaker 2: too are in a cult, and that that cult is
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  Speaker 2: a form of bad religion. And it's making a theological argument, right,
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  Speaker 2: they're saying that these climate scientists and activists will tell
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  Speaker 2: you that it's the end of the world, but that
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  Speaker 2: is bad religion. You're following false prophets. You know, you've
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  Speaker 2: got to listen to us and listen to the true word.
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  Speaker 2: And we know that fossil fuels and our prosperity and
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  Speaker 2: everything it's built on is fine because it's what God
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  Speaker 2: gave us. And this use of the word culture is
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  Speaker 2: really pivotal there because it really casts science as this
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  Speaker 2: sort of not just socially unacceptable but theologically heretical position.
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  Speaker 2: So it undermines the scienceness of science and brings it
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  Speaker 2: into their domain of theology.
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  Speaker 1: I've seen something similar with Young Earth creationist activists like
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Answers and Genesis. I remember ken Ham, who's this, you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: famous leader of Answers in Genesis using a similar like
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: using religion as a slur ironically toward evolutionary biology. Just
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: let's say, like, oh, you you are yourself believing in
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: a religion having faith in the theory of evolution. So
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: it is interesting to see language and in the case
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of cult, it's a pretty you know, obviously polemical term,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: but using the language of religion and faith and cult
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: as a polemic to try to I don't know, is
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it trying to discredit or undermine the science. I'm curious
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: about that rhetoric.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: It does a number of things. It is often accompanied
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: with sort of specious uses uses of science itself. So
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: there's a number of figures who will do this. So
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: people like Glenn Beck will do this as well. Quite sadly,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: one of the current Trump administration directors also calls climate
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: science a cult. I think he's in charge of the
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: EPA or something quite significant. No, it's a department of energy.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And what they do is they sort of couple sort
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: of these uses of science to say that scientists are wrong,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: and they always try out the same standard points like, oh,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the medieval warm period is one, they say, right, you
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: know it's or that you know, the way that they're
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: drawing the hockey stick graph ignores the whole like two
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: thousand histories beforehand. And scientists will spent a lot of
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: time and effort debunking these claims, and you can keep
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: on debunking them, but actually the use of science isn't
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: really the point. That's sort of there on the one
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: hand of their attacks. So that's one side of the rhetoric.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: But the real punch that they're going for in the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: rhetoric is by saying that actually what scientists are doing
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: is taking the place of the true religion and the
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: true faith right because they're predicting the end of the world.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: So in a way, the denialists are taking climate scientists
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: more seriously than I would argue many mainstream politicians do,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: especially here in Europe, where they're very good at sort
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: of saying yes, yes, it's very important, and then they
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: keep on building airports and you know the rest of it,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: and not really doing anything about it. At least in America,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: they say yes, listen to them, they're saying it's the
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: end of the world. But then the key thing the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: rhetoric does is to say, well, they're saying that it's
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the end of the world. Therefore what they're doing is religion,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: and they're not doing it properly. They're false profits and
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: they're doing bad religion. And this is where my argument
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: about these kind of the importance of religion in climate
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: discourse really takes its force because this idea of their
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: being true and false religion and therefore having the right
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: belief as being the way to salvation is what's underlying
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: this discourse, and therefore just by debunking their facts, you're
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: actually never going to get out of this rhetoric. You
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: have to understand that actually you're in a religious argument,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: and this argument is about what you know, someone like
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Pololitial call ultimate concern, right, what is really important? What
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: are our values? What is going to happen to us
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: on an existential level, and these are religious questions.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've been focusing so much on the denialist
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: side of the coin. So let's talk about the activists
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: or the ecological activists who are trying to push toward change,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: trying to push more toward consciousness about the climate crisis.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Where do we see theologies of climate emerging from someone
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: who is deeply concerned about collapsing ecosystems or rising sea temperatures.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: For example, I.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Studied a range of climate movements that became popular in
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen, which is when I was
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: doing my field work, which I sort of call loosely
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: new climate activism, and that's things like Extinction Rebellion, Dark Mountain,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: and the school strikes which were started by Greta Tunberg, right,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: that's where children didn't go to school for one day
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: a week to protest inaction on climate change. A lot
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: of these movements were more popular in Europe and places
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: like Australia than they were in the US. And what's
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: interesting about these movements is that they've moved away from
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: just raising consciousness. They actually directly attacked the former environmentalist
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: movement and things like greenpeace as being single issue, not
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: powerful and off, not really taking on the larger systemic issues,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: just sort of aiming at single things like you know,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: we've got to save the whales, and they are instead
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: what they're trying to do is a chief system change, right,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: and in extinction rebellion in particular, what they say they
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: wanted to do. They're much less popular now, they sort
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: of fell apart over the pandemic. But what they said
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: they wanted to do was to get the government to
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: admit the truth, the truth about climate change and then
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: act appropriately and to set up citizens assemblies. So I
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: was always put this when I was in meetings. I
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: was like, so we're saying we're going to overthrow the government, right,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: And they were like, no, no, no, we just want
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: to set up citizens assemblies. I was like, but that's
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: an entirely different political system to the one we have now.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: So what you're saying is we need a new political system.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: We actually want revolutionary change. So they were saying some
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: very revolutionary things, and the way that apocalypticism shows up
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: here is what they were doing was this sort of
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: movements in troubled time trying to change the system that
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: they're in, much like the apocalyptic movements that you were
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: mentioning earlier, right, a lot of them were kind of
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: aimed at kind of disrupting Babylon, right. But the Babylon
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: here and now is these leaders and these politicians that
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: we have that won't do anything about climate change. So similarly,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: we need to get rid of them and to save
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the planet. So not only do you have millenarianism and
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: apocalypticism and activist rhetoric, you also have messianism, which, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I talk about messianism as dating from the nineteenth century,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: this idea that there's is one person who's going to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: come and save us all by completely revolutionizing the system.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Because and you'll probably know this better than me, messianism
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't actually have a very strong routing in ancient texts,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: but it does have quite a good lineage, at least
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: from the nineteenth century of being this sort of idea
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of a certain way that millenarianism can be structured. And
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: so what I'm arguing is that activists, when they talk
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: about things like saving the world and looking for a
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: leader who's going to help us save the world, and
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: that maybe positioning themselves in that way, often implicitly. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: not something that they do explicitly, that what they're doing
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: is that they're using these religious frameworks.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's unpack messianism, because as you were talking
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: about messianism, I was trying to scroll through my brain
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of examples of that. And I do feel like, at
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: least in the American political context, there was this surge
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: of populism in twenty fifteen. Bernie Sanders, this insurgent candidate,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump and surgeon candidate who obviously ended up
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: being very successful. Neither of them, I would say was
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: deeply tied to climate change. I mean, like Donald Trump
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: famously talks about being a Chinese hoax and siding with
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: fossil fuel companies. Bernie Sanders is more focused on universal healthcare,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: wealth inequality. Are we talking about like Greta Thunberg here
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: as a messianic figure or how do we see messianism
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in this, let's say, climate apocalypse.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: So in a way that I studied it, I'm looking
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: at a much more local level than any of those examples,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: because I'm an anthropologist, so I tend to study small communities,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: and so what I was looking at is the way
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: that in fact, activists took it upon themselves, is this
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: sort of individualism in messianism, that they had to do
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: something personally rather than something that's a collective effort. But
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: interestingly amounta gretitum book. She does actually get set up
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: as a messianic figure, but actually usually by climate denialists
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: who are saying, look, she's the leader of this crazy
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: sect and she's being the climate messiah. And that was
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: actually a term of abuse that was used against her,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: was that she was a climate messiah. So yes, sort
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: of it shows up. I don't really like the term
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: both sides, but it shows up in the rhetoric of
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: activists and it also shows up in the rhetoric of
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: denials in different ways, this idea of like having an
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: individual messiah who needs to save the earth.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious because when I think about climate change,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: climate crisis, my gut feeling is overwhelmed where it's too
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: big of a problem for me by myself. So there's
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: not much messianism happening in my heart when it comes
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to trying to fix the climate crisis, even though I
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: am deeply concerned about it. Want to see it fixed.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious did you encounter much nihilism or apathy
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: in the folks you were studying for this book, because
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: those are the feelings I need to fight back, a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: sense of like this is hopeless.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely the final chapter, at least when I was writing it,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: I always thought of it as the doom chapter. There's
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: an awful lot of nihilism and apathy and just this
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: paralyzing sense of overwhelm, as you mentioned, like that nothing
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: can be done, so I'm just going to carry on
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: as usual. In fact, I would say that that was
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: probably the most common response that I found. Much more
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: common than denial or of trying to be an activist
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: or trying to do something, is people just sort of
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: plowing on as usual. And when you plow on as usual,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: despite the fact that you can see all around you
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: these very ominous signs of chain, like the heat wave
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: that I'm currently experiencing now in England, this is not
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: how summers in England are meant to be. We have
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of jokes about, you know, the British summer
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: and it's like one week of sun and it gets
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: to twenty five degrees in June and that's it. But
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: now we've got these like over thirty degree days day
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: after day, So obviously everyone can see and feel this happening,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: but the explanation is not obvious. And then the nihilism increases.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: And so when I talk about doom, I talk about
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the people who name this sense of despair and then
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: basically say this is inevitable and how this leads to
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: an even worse form of paralysis. And I say that
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: that doom is the overse side of denial because it
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: ends up in the same place in just doing nothing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: So we need to find a way through despair, because
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: despair is no way to live, while also appreciating the
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: scale of the trouble that we are in, that it
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: is more than one person, that it will require collective action,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: and that processes are already occurring in earth systems that
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: we have limited agency over, so there's only so much
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: we can do. Sea level will increase whether we stop
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: using all fossil fuels now or not. However, that does
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: not mean we are doomed for the worst case scenario.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: That does not mean that there will be imminent social
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: breakdown and food shortages within the next few years, which
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: are some of the things that are being talked about
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: in this discourse. So I think what's really important is
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: to take that middle path where you're neither denying it
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: nor are you falling into despair. And that's really where
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: the book ends up. And so I really hope that
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I do help people who feel such as you do,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: and as I did when I started this research. I'm
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: just like, oh, there's nothing to be done, but actually
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: there is always something to be done.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I sometimes wonder if we need a dose of utopianism
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: in the twenty first century. I'm an enormous fan of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Star Trek, especially the next gradation, and Star Trek is
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: so utopian, and this has been coming up a lot
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: because of the surge of the artificial intelligence, these these
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: large language models, and there's so much fear about the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: chatbots taking our jobs, of everybody being unemployed for no
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: fault of our own, having a permanent underclass. And when
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I look at Star Trek, there is artificial intelligence, like
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the computer system on the USS Enterprise is way smarter
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: than CHATCHYPT and yet the people of that, you know,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the crew of Jean Lupicard, live full human lives. And
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I sometimes wonder, is our fear of large language models
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: or our fear of artificial intelligence, because we have not
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: built a world where the chatbots do take over so
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: much labor is existential to us, Like we can envision
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: a world where there is enough food and we can
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: go do whatever job we want for ten hours a
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: week because the AI is doing the rest. So apocalypticism,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: at least in the ancient context, is not about the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: end of the world. It's about the changing of ages,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: that a new kingdom, new having a new Earth. The
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: current system is under the sway of Satan or demons
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: or evil powers, but God is going to enter history
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and inaugurate a new kingdom. So it's really about a
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: changing of ages. Can you envision a theology, an apocalyptic
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: theology in the twenty first century that envisions that kind
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: of new age and not just nihilism, not just apathy,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and not just like we are we're all going to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: die here, Well.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: We're all going to die. That's mortality.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: This is well unless they's transhumanist, are right.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think they are. Okay, So there's like a
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: number of things that I want to say, though, but
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: I think just like the most important thing I think
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: to remember about AI is that who is society? Right,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Society is for humans. And I think the reason why
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: we're afraid of AI is not because of the technological
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: implications but because of the social and political structure that
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: it is being created under, one which even if AI
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: isn't going to do our jobs for us or take
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: our jobs, it is going to be used by the
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: owners of capital to make large amounts of people unemployed
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: on the promise of AI, whether it can do that
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: job or not. Right, because you know, Captain Picard still
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: made all the decisions, right, the ship just pilots, they
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: still take the decisions, and that's going to be the
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: true with large language models as well. Right, they're not
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: decision makers, or at least they shouldn't be, and when
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: they're used in place of that, they tend to work
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: very poorly. Now, there's other things that they can do
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: very well, and that, as you say, could rerolled into
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a utopian thinking rather than dystopian thinking. But there's so
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: much dystopianism now that I just don't think that we
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: have the imagination to think of AI in a way
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: that is constructive and productive rather than destructive. And obviously
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: it has a mist environmental costs, and that's for me
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: as one of the deal breakers with AI, I'm like, yes,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: you could use it, but find a way to power
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: it and give it water in a way that isn't
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: exacerbating the climate and ecological crisis that we're already in.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: So in terms of imagining a theology that could kind
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: of get us beyond despair, I think it's absolutely possible.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: But first what we need to do is look at
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: the sort of what is our technology doing right at
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the moment. Our technology is destroying our environment and our
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: habitable planet, and then on top of that, what are
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: our social and political systems doing. Well, they're taking profit
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: from that planet destroying technology and using it to create
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: immense power for a few people. That's what we need
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: to change, and that is what a life affirming theology
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: that is collective, that sees a way of creating society
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: so it does actually provide for all humans rather than
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: just a few. That's what it could do, and that's
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: what collectively we need to work towards.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Which then makes me wonder what was it about the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: sixties that brought about Star Trek, and then what it
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: was about the eighties that brought about the next generation
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: because those those times were troubled as well, and yet
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: they were able to envision this utopian world without literally
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: without without capitalism, without money, and with with medical technology
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: that makes humans live to one hundred and forty years old.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: So it is this brings me back to the nihilism, Like,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: are we just living in this deeply nihilistic apathetic age
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: because we're seeing the effects of climate change finally, or
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: we're seeing just the continuit or like the dying of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the excitement of the nineties with the growth of the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: US economy, Like I don't know, Like I sometimes I'm
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: kind of baffled by the complete lack of utopian visions
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of what will it look like if we can be hopeful,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: what will it look like once we defeat climate change
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and fusion power is finally invented, and like, no one's
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: gonna want no one's gonna want fossil fuels because is
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: just so much better.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: I do think there's a failure of the imagination going on.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I would agree that we're in this deeply nihilistic age
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: and it's absolutely undermining our ability to imagine not only better,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: but just imagine otherwise. And then you sort of enter
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: into this sort of Mark Fisher capitalist realism, that it's
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: easier to imagine the end of the world than it
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: is to imagine the end of capitalism, which again isn't
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: because capitalism is, you know, the answer also totalizing that
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: we can't get out of it. It's just because we're
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: in a complete failure of our imaginations to think otherwise
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: of other ways of living. And I think that for
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: now we just haven't got there yet. I think it's possible,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: you know, like you mentioned the sixties and the eighties
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: and why even though they were troubled times were, they
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: still kind of created these utopian ways of thinking. And
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I think that we just haven't quite got to the
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: point yet where utopianism feels possible. Partly it's a nihilism,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: and partly it's like this not just nihilism, but cynicism,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: where if you're sort of a utopian and hopeful, people
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: look down on you like you're incredibly silly and cringe.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: And that's part of the problem, right, It doesn't seem
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: worth the risk to want better for ourselves or anyone else,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: because we're so stuck in this idea that humans are
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: this destructive force and all we will be is just
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: this sort of corrupt and it's almost gnostic in a way. Right,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: the humans are inevitably bad and all we're going to
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: do is destroy things. And so I do like to
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: think back into religious history and just think, well, actually,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: we go through these phases right where there's troubled times
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: and some people will go, oh, we're so bad, we're
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: all condemned forever. And then out of that will usually
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: come some form of utopian thinking that will allow this
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: imaginative expansion that will produce a way forward. And I
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: just think we haven't quite got there yet. The water
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: isn't quite high enough for us to start.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Swimming yet, right, which brings in sin or harmartiology. I
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: forget the theological term for like a theology of sin.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Has this come up in your research as well, how
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: people talk about humans destroying the planet. Is it some
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: sort of original sin language?
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely. In fact, there's a whole chapter called original
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: sin which is about how we think about extraction, So
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: the process of taking fossil fuels from the earth, that's
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: what I mean by extraction. And when people talk about this, sorry,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: I root this chapter in Louisiana, which obviously has a
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: well developed oil and gas industry. So I talk about
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: talk to people who work in that industry in Louisiana,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: but also just people who live there. They tend to
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: support that industry, but they also tend to talk about
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: the actions of humans as inevitably using up resources and
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: that this is human nature, that it isn't our nature
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: to use everything up for our own needs until it's
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: all gone. And I relate this to ideas yes of
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: original sin, this idea of concupiscence, right, that we're doomed
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: to basically undermine and erode our own resource space because
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: humans connect no other way. And when you put it
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: in that theological context, I think you can help understand
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: that actually, that's not human nature. That's just one particular
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: theological way of thinking about what humans are, and actually
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: we can be otherwise. There are other ways of thinking
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: about humans and our capacities. And then once we start
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: to expand beyond these Christian inheritances that we're just irredeemably
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: simpul right, that actually we can start to think of
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: a more hopeful future. So I do argue that some
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: of the theological concepts that in clinate discourse are sort
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: of constraining and undermining, whereas others are more helpful.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: So maybe the gnostic theology would be because the gnostic
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: theology is a better sending, I guess in this case
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of you escaping Earth though, so it's not necessarily a redeem.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: That could go a bad direction, right, because I'm really
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: not down with this whole Let's just go to Mars
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: because Mars doesn't have an atmosphere that would take a
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: huge amount of resources. Actually, we could just say we
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: could make life better on Earth and do more for
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: our environment on Earth than we ever could by putting
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: all the effort into going to Mars.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess the true gnostics closer to the
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: transist humanists as well, where you're trying to become a
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: disembodied disembodied mind.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I also feel like gnostics would sort of
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: looked down on all the tech involved in transhumanism. They
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: would be like, no, you've got to be staffing yourself
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: for like twelve hours a day to do this properly.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe some of them do that too.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it might feel counterintuitive to someone who's
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: interested in climate science to think about it through the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: lens of theological discourse. Like how a theology of the
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: climate emerges from people talking about the end of the world,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Like why should we be thinking about it in this way?
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I can absolutely see how even just putting together the
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: words religion and climate change can seem counterintuitive. What do
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: they have to do with each other, because and that's
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: to do with the way we've come to understand climate change.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: So we've come to understand climate change is this problem
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: of the technical composition of the atmosphere. Climate change is
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: there's too much carbon dioxide and that is causing this
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: heating effect, and that means average global temperature is increasing.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: The problem, therefore, is to reduce the carbon dioxide. We
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: know this. Scientists have explained this very well. It has
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: not happened, and in fact, during the time that we've
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: known this, emissions have only increased. So clearly science isn't
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: providing the answers right. They are not, in fact during
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: their job as profits because they do not see themselves
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: in that way, and they see themselves as providing information.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: If you provide information right, and you assume people are
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: going to act on it in the right way, well,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: what's the right way? You need someone or something or
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: some movement to conceptualize that right way. So I started
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: thinking about climate changes. Okay, this's this technical composition the atmosphere,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: it's become disturbed. This is a problem. How do we
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: fix that? And then I was like, well, it hasn't happens,
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: so obviously the problem is in our political system, right.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: So it's a sociopolitical problem, right, why can't our politicians
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: do something? But that also ends up in this circularity
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: right where politicians say, well, we'll try and do something,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: but then the voters will vote us out. Right. And
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: there's many examples you can point to where this actually happened,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: like if for outstage producer fuel tax and they ended
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: up with a protest movement against it called digitalision. Voters
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: don't like things that make their lives more expensive. Taxing
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: carbon would make their lives more expensive. They're not going
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: to vote for politicians who do that, right, And then
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: the voters say, but oh, someone needs to do something
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: about it. Why don't we look at the producers and
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: the producers I either fossil fueld companies or say well,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: we're just supplying demand, right, You want our product and
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: we supply that, And so it just ends up in
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: this circularity if you look at it just as a
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: social and political problem. And one thing I learned, and
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: this is not something I very much learned from my interlocutors,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: from the people that I spoke to through my research,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: is it's not only an atmospheric problem. It's not only
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: a social and political problem. It is also a spiritual crisis.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: It is a crisis of our values. What do we
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: want from our lives? What do we think is important
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: and valuable? Is a clean air valuable? Are clean oceans
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: valuable if they are well with them? We need to
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: start acting appropriately to make that happen. And that's where
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: that disconnect, at least from the way I've understood it
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: in this book. And so I would say, if people
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: are wondering, what, why do I need to think about
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: religion when this is clearly a scientific problem, the answer
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: is it's not just a scientific problem. It is also
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: a spiritual problem. And this book will tell you how
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: and what to do well.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: And Susanna, thank you for coming on the show. Thank
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you so much for having me, Thanks everyone for watching.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this conversation, you actually have another opportunity
• 41:38
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• 41:40
  Speaker 1: giving a live lecture for the Religion Department Disclosure How
• 41:44
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• 41:46
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• 41:51
  Speaker 1: This includes early flying Saucer beliefs UFO religions like Heaven's
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• 41:58
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• 42:02
  Speaker 1: One idea that ties a lot of these together is
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the belief that the US government knows the truth about
• 42:06
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• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the present political order and the beginning of a radically
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: different age, in other words, another modern form of millenarianism.
• 42:17
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• 42:20
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• 42:22
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• 42:24
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