Downstream: The Next Shocks Will Hit Wealthy Countries Hardest. Here’s Why w/ John Rapley

Novara Media · Mar 2, 2026 · 1h 34m

The notion that the Global South is affected ‘first and worst’ by global shocks they didn’t cause, namely climate change, is one of the cornerstones of leftist thought. But what if it’s not entirely true? What if, contrary to this tenet, it’s wealthy Western nations who have over-developed and lost their resilience in the process? This is the argument made by John Rapley in his latest book ‘Icarus Economics’. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Rapley discusses how the West’s growth has reached certain limits, most notably those imposed by the natural world in which we are all embedded. Has a…