Robert Bryce 0:04
Hi, and welcome to the power hungry Podcast. I’m Robert Bryce. On this podcast we talk about energy, power, innovation and politics. And we’re gonna probably be talking about all of those today with my guest, Lee Phillips, who is the author of austerity ecology and the collapse porn addicts at defensive growth progress, industry and stuff. Lee, welcome to the power hungry podcast.

Leigh Phillips 0:25
Hi, Robert. Good to be here.

Robert Bryce 0:27
I warned you. I’d my guests introduce themselves. So now I’ve given the title of your book. But I’m sure you can introduce yourself well, give us 30 or 45 seconds is a brief introduction, if you don’t mind.

Leigh Phillips 0:39
Sure. So I’m also a science writer. We’re in fact, that’s mainly what I am. I’m mainly a science writer. My works appeared in nature, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, so on and so forth. The Guardian that worked as a reporter in Brussels for about 10 years, covering these sorts of issues, a lot of climate change and energy policy issues, but you know, environment more broadly and infectious disease brings up other issues as well. And I’m also the author, co author of People’s Republic of Walmart, to my second book on the history of the word popular introduction to the economic calculation debate.

Robert Bryce 1:16
Good. Okay, well, that’s a good a good introduction. And you’re Canadian. You’re in Victoria, British Columbia. We’re not going to hold this against you the Canadian thing we had other Canadians on here, we’ve even had a few Brits on there we need the limeys level,

Unknown Speaker 1:29
England so both British and Canadian. Okay, well, we’ll we’ll

Robert Bryce 1:33
that’s okay. So let’s jump right in here because I told you before we started recording I’ve been reading austerity ecology and just loved it I thought you know your your your cynicism, a lot of ideas really rhymed with a lot of the things that I’ve been thinking about. So you talk about in austerity ecology you talk about this that what the anti capitalist degrowth eaters and so but what is collapse porn and and why are so many people addicted to it? Why are so many people guess getting off on collapse porn? Yeah, really mix my metaphors here.

Leigh Phillips 2:07
Oh, collapse porn is just my term for what I guess these days is called being called Doom Doom ism or Doom or is the the sort of wallowing and almost appreciation of the, their belief that the end of the world is not the sort of people that maybe a generation ago would have been, you know, standing on a street corner with a sandwich board, say, again, is nigh, and everybody would be walked past them walking past something, these people are crazy. Today. This is this is a very mainstream politic perspective, particularly on the left. But you know, the liberal left more broadly, the Guardian has almost completely pivoted towards a very, very numerous or collapse porn perspective. I mean, it’s beyond just that there’s a very important sort of journalistic argument around this where the only story that has been told is the worst possible interpretations of climate science or biodiversity loss or nitrogen pollution, or plastic pollution, what have you, there’s no day will be cherry pick the absolute worst sort of possibilities without any sort of discussion of the of the probability there.

Robert Bryce 3:25
So RCP 8.5, being the one that says Roger Pilkey, Jr. has written a ton about it. And I’ve talked about that on the podcast that here’s this scenario that we’re that it calls for these massive increases in coal consumption globally, that aren’t clearly are not happening yet. And it is the most extreme of the climate projections that have been put out by in the various publications. But it’s not that’s not gonna happen. That’s not that scenario is not connected to reality. So the question, as you were saying, that popped in my head, you were talking about that, about this collapse porn. But is this new? I mean, from what I’ve read, you know, when I looked at in some of the books I’ve written about, you know, the progress and so on, this is as old as Rousseau or is even falling, but going back further about the lap Syrian that we’ve lapsed from grace of God by by divorcing ourselves from nature, is this, a continuation of that? Because it’s a religion unto itself? No, you can

Leigh Phillips 4:24
go back to the ancient Greeks. And there would be people in the cities writing, you know very well to do people in the cities writing tracks about how a Greek society has lost its its vigor, having moved from the countryside to the city of the city with the urbanity is in feebles humanity. So it’s always we’ve always had that aspect.

Robert Bryce 4:50
And Jefferson Jefferson talked about that as well. Right.

Leigh Phillips 4:54
Right. The Yeoman farmer his vision of the of America was a human farmer and he was very, you know, very critical of Hamilton’s sir perspective of nation building. But in, even though it’s always been with us, it is traditionally a fairly minority Aryan perspective, it’s a relatively new thing where it is very, very dominant in the in the discourse. And I would make the argument that I mean, I think there’s there’s a couple of things that have led to this. The first is, I do think, many with many respects, certainly publications like The Guardian are being led by their nose, that is to say, in a world where advertising revenues for newspapers and journalists more broadly are collapsing, that’d be collapsing for about a generation, as a result of the internet. And this sort of clickbait sells, it is what you know, in the in the desperate search for advertising, the they’re basically two stories about climate change that sell one is a sort of climate skepticism. The other is one that is the end of the world is denying this collapse porn, and a nuanced perspective about how this is a real problem. These are the potential solutions and how to fix this. And let’s change this the technologies in the face of new evidence that’s a very nuanced, historically very scientifically driven, or evidence based perspective, just doesn’t sell because it doesn’t come you know, you’re not producing really sexy headlines.

Unknown Speaker 6:23
It’s too many too much nuance. Too much nuance. Yes, absolutely.

Leigh Phillips 6:27
And the second thing that I think is driving this, particularly on the left is that since I think it’s it’s fundamentally a product of what on the left, we would call neoliberalism, a retreat for in the in the 70s and 80s, from a comfort with government intervention, with real integration of Trade Unions into it into society, the union busting in the 1980s crackdown on and cuts to social forms, that whole package of things called neoliberalism really broke the power of the working classes across much of the West. And the the sort of intellectuals who historically were integrated into the working class to the trade unions, or alongside the trade unions. So retreated from the class and to the academy and to the media to the NGO industrial complex, and got completely cut off from regularly or regular, ordinary working people. And I think that while there’s definitely always a role for intellectuals in any sort of social movement there with the sheer the sheer social weight of ordinary working people, integrated into energy systems into integrated into transport systems, agricultural systems, manufacturing systems, they just knew how things work. Because they work literally at the coalface every day. They they work that that’s their integration of intellectuals in the working class work to discipline intellectuals from their crazier flights of fancy.

Robert Bryce 8:07
And that’s, and that’s been lost.

Leigh Phillips 8:09
Destiny lost. Yes, absolutely.

Robert Bryce 8:12
Well, I like what you’re saying there, because I think it is exactly in line with what I see in terms of some of these academics, elite academics, and I’m just get so sick of it. I gotta tell you, you know, for an MIT, you know, a Princeton, you know, better study after Oh, well, we can do all this with renewables, you know, no problem, no problem. Oh, and it’s only going to cost this many trillions of dollars with no understanding of what it means for the working class for the people who don’t, as Jennifer Hernando says, Don’t don’t live in the keyboard economy. But this has been adopted wholesale here in the US by the Democratic Party, which in theory has been the party of the working class. And now it’s completely flipped. So yes, idea of energy as the basis of the economy and what it means to the working poor and the working class has been completely lost in their discussion. And now dominated by this, again, this catastrophism that is a similar dynamic at work in Canada is what you

Leigh Phillips 9:11
absolutely I mean, it’s it’s it’s the same in Canada, it’s the same in Britain, it’s the same in Western Europe. There’s there’s there’s no sub region of the Western world where this this hasn’t happened. And I would argue precisely because of this dislocation of the intellectual class, intellectual classes from the working buses. In Canada. The the center of the country is whether we’re talking the basically the prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba. These are areas which are very, very resource dependent. Albert, of course, famous infamous internationally for its oil and gas production. I guess we absolutely recognize that we have to be switching in making a clean transition in order to to to solve climate change. But the set of solutions they’re putting they’re put on the table again by the serve intellectual class 100% renewable energy those the pipe fitters, the Boilermakers everybody who’s who is in that sector they can see they look that the the, the wages for slapping solar panels on racks because the solar panels course made in China and they’re saying, Oh what 16 bucks an hour but and it’s in the the seasonal work and it’s a unionized and this in no way is going to replace the like maybe $100,000 a year that I’m earning good family supporting union work nonseasonal a skilled intellectually stimulating

Robert Bryce 10:49
in manufacturing and wherever making or an oil field or coal mining or whatever.

Leigh Phillips 10:57
And yet the that is that same sort of intellectual professional in in the Academy would never make the same sort of mistake about the suppose it fungibility, fungibility between say pipe fitting and slapping solar panels on the rack, and say, between a dentist and an adjunct professor, they’d be very, very clear that a dentist, no professional is earning, you know, maybe 150,000 $200,000 a year, an adjunct professor also have the intellectual class or the professional class, but infamously poorly paid because they just got out of university. There’s a you know, a surplus of university educated folks and so they’re it’s it’s a buyers market on the part of the the the administration’s of universities, these people are infamously even, like, potentially more poorly paid than, than minimum wage. Nobody would ever make that mistake of the there’s the the dentist and an adjunct professor are fungible in terms of work, saying like, Oh, well, there’s no word dentist, like you mentioned that we can’t have dentist anymore. Everybody can get a job as an adjunct professor, maybe that’s ridiculous, that the loss of income would be appalling. Well, they’re not able to make the same connection with respect to between a pipe fitter, or Boilermaker, or whatever it happens to be. And somebody said, the unskilled, seasonal labor of somebody slapping solar panels on racks or roofs? Because they aren’t in that world, they are unfamiliar with it with a

Robert Bryce 12:27
human Yes. And yet we hear and we hear that same argument, oh, well, this clean energy code is going to create jobs. I mean, you know, this is the the justification for it over and over and over again, I’m going to cut to a couple of things here, because I don’t want to spend too much time on Rousseau and the rest of it. But I you know, in reading a lot of what you’ve written about the the kind of the, this the intellectual background of the our underpinnings, really of this modern austerity, austerity, and as you call it, the promoters of this austere lifestyle, that you said that in the in the summary, you say that you argue that progressives must rediscover their historic promethium ambitions and counter this reactionary Neo Malthusian ideology that only returns human flourishing, but won’t save the planet anyway, we want to take over the machine and run it rationally not turn the machine machine off. We know that was great because this idea of Prometheus and I had to look at Prometheus is one of the analyse says he represents his Prometheus represents the striving of humans and the search for scientific knowledge. He’s associated with intellect, knowledge and genius. the giving of fire to humans can be seen as symbolizing the gift of gifting of reason and intellect to humans. It’s a long question or long intro to this point. Well, in January, Bill McKibben, who you criticize me throughout the book, he said in January in an article in The New Yorker, the basic rule of thumb for dealing with the climate crisis is would be it would be to stop burning things. He’s saying, we abandon fire. I mean, that’s what he’s saying. I mean, he’s saying, We humans have to abandon fire. I mean, I can’t imagine a more anti human kind of ideology than that. Am I wrong?

Leigh Phillips 14:15
Well, I mean, I think he’s probably I’m certainly no fan of Bill McKibben. But I think he’s probably to be to be as generous as possible to Bill McKibben. In this case. You don’t have to

Robert Bryce 14:25
be you don’t have to be generous here.

Leigh Phillips 14:29
Probably being poetic there with respect to the combustion of fossil fuels. But if we take the issue of retreat from discovery, retreat from technology, that sort of anti Promethean perspective, then he’s very much emblematic of that and we see right across the left the the argument from Naomi Klein through to extinction, rebellion, Greenpeace, there is an argument that we need to do grow we need to do Funded in Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything is that her best selling book on climate change? See, she argues that the fundamental problem is west the Western idea of progress, and that we made a mistake. You know, the very first mistake that we made was was Francis Bacon’s desire to dominate nature. Well, this runs completely counter to the the history of the left, and I’m a man of the left, you can go back to, to even Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and a lot of people know about the book but don’t actually read the book and that that includes many so called Marxists. If you read the book, you see that it is his absolute pin to the to the marvels of capitalism, and tech, industrial technology. The thing was that he wanted to strip modernity of its inequality of its of its unfreedom and read the wonders of modernity to to everybody, not to retreat from eternal modernity, the word there were historical or utopian socialists, that he raged against, he wanted to retreat who are more Rousseau, Ian, we want to retreat from modernity. And he just he hated that the absolutely despise that. So it is. So people like Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, all these figures that believe the modernity is, is that industrial modernity is is the fundamental error. They run absolutely counter to to the history of the left.

Robert Bryce 16:29
Well, so let’s talk about that a little bit. Because you say you’re a man of the left, and you write for Jacobin, which is, or Jacobin, which is a socialist magazine, describe your politics because I’m my politics. I’m completely confused about where I belong on the political spectrum. I’m, you know, I’m, you know, I’ve been, you know, with liberal publications, I’ve been in conservative outfits, and I’m, you know, just anymore, I’m just calling myself disgusted. Tell me, tell me, why you identify as part of the left, and how do you? How do you describe the left now?

Leigh Phillips 17:03
Like? It’s a good question with respect to describing the left right now. And I think the left is very, very, sort of broken place at the moment. But it’s, I mean, I’m, I’m a Democratic socialist. So that means that I believe that, that I have critiques of markets. I, I believe that there’s a distinction between the, the, let me put it another way, I, which means that I want to see a democratization of society that I don’t believe that democracy is only for the political world. But I believe that democracy is for the entirety of society, society, the entirety of the economy, anything that affects me, I need to have a democratic saying, then so yeah, so democratic socialism is simply the extension of democracy to the entirety of the economy. And it is just to be very, very clear, this is very, very different from what we saw in the Soviet Union, in, in under Mao’s China, if the very sort of definition of socialism is the extension of democracy. In those countries, there was no democracy. So they can’t be they can’t be socialist in the same way that you know, the Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t a democracy even though they have democracy in the name. So just, that’s it. That’s your 32nd? Sure, sir.

Robert Bryce 18:22
Well, I like that because the one of the things that I’ve taken away from your work, and also, we have a mutual friend, Emmitt Penny, talking about the societal goods and the identify, and you know, I write a lot about the electricity, business and electricity markets and so on, is the idea of the the electric grid as this Commons. And then it would be one of the ultimate expressions, the physical network itself, one of the ultimate expressions of democratic social ideals, right, that’s going to make this system work for every one. And we’re going to make electricity cheap. And that’s one of the things that just grills my cheese about what’s happening in the United States in terms of the Democrats pushing these fundamentally elitist energy policies that are in direct opposition to what happened during the New Deal and the rural electrification. Absolutely. In Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee Valley Authority in the public utility Holding Company Act of 1935. This was a democratic demand democratization of energy networks. And so that I think that that’s the part that to me, really, it was strikes a chord in me in your work and emits work is this idea of an absolute essential reality of understanding the basic network that supports the rest of industrial society? Am I am i Does that make sense to you? Am I honest?

Leigh Phillips 19:43
Oh, no, you hit the nail on the head. These these systems are cathedrals of I mean, I would say I would say to be very not provocative in any way. I always say that the Tennessee Valley Authority is a cathedral of American socialism. It’s no it is a gorgeous Promethean vision of this incredibly complex machine that we’ve built collectively, to support to support all of our support all of us to continue to advance and to increase our prosperity to lift people up. I mean, they’re one of the reasons that led in, you know, the very beginnings of the Soviet Union before he got turned into the horse or under Stalin, you know, Lenin described when he was asked, what is the definition of socialism? It was workers, councils, Soviets, in Russian, so it’s plus electrification of the entire country.

Robert Bryce 20:40
Right, right. Right. Yeah, I use that I use that quote in my new book, a question of power. Yeah, right. Just amazing. You know,

Leigh Phillips 20:46
Harold Wilson in the 1960s, one of the great Labour Prime Ministers of the of the UK, you know, his he has this very famous speech about the white key to technology, but making extending it to, to everybody to lift everybody. And that was always the vision. So I don’t understand when I see the Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein’s of the world and Greta Thunberg, calling for a breaking up of that of the grid of decentralizing it. I mean, to me, that is the breaking up of the commons. It is they they dress it up in socialist language, but it’s the most neoliberal thing possible. It is. It’s breaking up this gorgeous cathedral.

Robert Bryce 21:31
That’s a really interesting point there, because one of the points you make and it’s one that I didn’t realize until I Mark Nelson was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and we were talking about this, but that the the rise of Enron and my first book was on Enron, now almost 20 years ago, but that it was the the Enron ification of the grid in America started at roughly the same time, the Enron ification of the grid happened in Britain. And now both are suffering and within a few months of each other’s suffering the same fate, right failures of the grid in Texas, but failures of the grid in Britain skyrocketing prices, all because of this lack of social I would even that broad term, the social control, social democratically monitored, measured, regulated management of the grid, because it was undermined by this neoliberal attack from, oh, we’re going to open it to markets and it’s going to be the great way to add renewables. It’s a point you make an austerity in, in in your book austerity ecology, am I right?

Leigh Phillips 22:29
Yes, absolutely. And if it were slapped with the with it with the name Enron on it, the left would be the liberal left would be able to critique it. But because it comes slapped with a green fig leaf, this is the only way that we’re going to force the big utilities to embrace intermittent wind and solar, then so and we’re gonna break it up so that local communities can control it. It’s suddenly sound, it suddenly sounds not neoliberal anymore, except it’s exactly the same thing in and modification is exactly what happened. The same thing happened in Europe and where the Green Party’s in the European Parliament where they basically allowed the Neo liberals at the heart of the European Commission, and within the European Council to to finalize the the the the end, breakup of public and what remained of public energy companies in the in the EU, breaking up transmission for distribution generation from transmission to span distribution. And the greens, I’m remember interviewing one of the leaders of the Green Party in the European Parliament is saying, how, how does this fit with, I thought greens were supposed to be progressive. And he said, Well, you know, I would prefer that, you know, we just renationalized enforcement to this, but that’s not gonna happen, because they’re mega projects. And so we have to break them up. And so ironically, neoliberal breaking up of, of the grid was was performed. Under this yeah, as I said, with a green fig leaf, they were the ones they were the sharp end of the spear there that allowed the final breakup of the energy companies in Europe,

Robert Bryce 24:15
because they saw that as a way to promote wind and solar and add it more quickly into the grid. And and it could be these private corporations that were the ones that were doing it right that that was the one saying, oh, yeah, well, Enron can do it couldn’t

Leigh Phillips 24:27
possibly come they wouldn’t enter their mind that it could be might just possibly be the case that those experts in the the, the, the energy companies and the trade unions in the in the energy companies were saying, actually, if you integrate variable renewables at a very high level you’ll be under you’ll be fragile but mirth Anglin calls this fragile icing of the grid, right? The the only possible understanding of the green left at this point is that will they’re only doing that because they’re captured by the fossil fuel. lobby, rather than just actually cheering. This, this doesn’t work

Robert Bryce 25:05
well, but even for you to say that is that the left has been captured by the fossil fuel? Well, no, of course not. We hate fossil fuels. Right. You know, that was the Natural Resources Defense Council, you know, their self defense after the closure of Indian Point, which was they pushed for, and they said, Oh, well, we’re really pushing against the hydrocarbon business. What happened after Indian Point closed, and of course, it’s replaced by gas fired generation. Hello, now, this is the least surprising thing ever.

Leigh Phillips 25:29
Right? So yeah, and the irony of all this, of course, is that, you know, Greenpeace in Germany, technically is also a natural gas company, you know, they have a profit making venture that is, includes the sale of natural gas. The Green Party in Belgium, as you probably heard, has the energy ministry portfolio in that government and heading up the the shutdown of clean nuclear energy to be replaced by natural gas. So again, over and over again, we see the green left being despite their rage against fossil fuels, regularly captured often by natural gas interests, because it marries so well with with variable renewables,

Robert Bryce 26:12
right? will suit talk about Europe, I mean, you’d live there for some time. And you mentioned that you’re born in Britain. And I was just looking at the headlines today, we’re talking just a couple days before Thanksgiving here in November, but that the day had prices in the European marketer and simply says over $300, or 300 euros per megawatt hour. I mean, they’re just seeing a catastrophic result now, from this, frankly, insane skein of policies that over investment, over investment in renewables under investment in hydrocarbons, and premature closure, they’re calling nuclear plants. So I mean, it’s almost like they’re committing energy suicide, and they’re only now starting to realize how dangerous has been I mean, that’s my view, how do you see all this happening? Or what do you see? Well, I

Leigh Phillips 26:58
think I very much worried that once again, because the green left is is utterly cut off from ordinary working people, as the have been championing precisely these policies, and these policies are resulting in scandalous electricity prices, I think there will be a generalization of the phenomenon of the GLA Joan, the yellow, yellow jackets, in France, but across Europe. And there is a real risk of completely undermining even good climate policies as a result of this to these suicidal yeah, as you say, scheme of climate policy. So the irony, of course, dollfuss, is that these are really appalling ways to decarbonize society, we know that a good foundation of of of, of nuclear energy is both clean. And you know, the UN report just came out a few days ago showing that the nuclear power is is genuinely it is the lowest carbon of all energy sources. It’s firm, it delivers, you know, high paying off and unionized family supporting incomes. So those, so the unions themselves they’re calling for this is the main pathway, do we need to work the foundation of the pathway to to deep decarbonisation, so you don’t have that backlash from, from working people, they can see themselves in the future in a clean, clean economy, not thrown under the bus, just no matter which the land footprint of, of nuclear is teeny tiny because of the energy density of the fuel. So, you know, we, when we talk about climate change, we can throw biodiversity loss under the bus. And the you know, the largest cause of biodiversity loss is land land use change. If that’s our concern, then once again, nuclear with its tiny land footprint, is a bit of a no brainer with respect to, to overcoming the issues around biodiversity. So whatever metric they were choosing, ironically, the pathway of a broadly social democratic, eco modern perspective that the green left rages against, would deliver a much more rapid decarbonisation of the pathway that they are they’re promoting.

Robert Bryce 29:22
Well, so let me talk about the timing here. Because I know austerity ecology came out in 2015, which was the same year that the Eco modernist manifesto came out. So read Yeah. Was this just happenstance where your book came out? I think if memory serves six months after roughly six months or so after the modern eco modernist manifesto was published, so it was just great minds think alike here and you were on similar paths.

Leigh Phillips 29:47
I think there’s a lot of us on the within the environmental community and on the left, the liberal left more generally who were just paying a lot of attention to the evidence. I mean, when it did What happened with me was as a journalist in Europe, I was spending a lot of time in my articles trying to deconstruct climate denialist, or climate adverse climate skeptic, because I think denialism is is a deliberate application of Holocaust denial, and I write whatever, however much you may disagree with, with climate skepticism, or some levels of climate skepticism. They’re absolutely not in same categories as Neo Nazis that deny the Holocaust. So let’s just use the word climate skepticism, I spend a lot of time digging deep into the literature, to to be able to to counter that those those arguments. And it was the same with respect to genetic engineering, the green left in general liberal left is very much opposed to genetic engineering, they’re opposed to industrial agriculture. And they just kept coming up over and over and over again, and the literature was saying quite the opposite of what these people were, were saying that, you know, that these genetic engineering actually reduces the use of pesticides. That, that, you know, nuclear power actually is the the safest, safest form of energy that we have, with the fewest deaths per terawatt hour, and so on and so forth, you know, the whole year, you know, so and so I’ve kind of like looked around, and my own team, the left. I’m spending all my time raging against what I consider to be the right on climate skepticism, and I’m with, you know, all the scientific literature. I’m saying my own team isn’t paying attention to the scientific literature either. And I just got very, very destabilized. I think that didn’t just happen to me. I think that happened to people like Ted Nordhaus and Mike Shellenberger. I think a lot of people had that. That experience of whoa, hold on a sec, my own team is, is making some Same, same errors, as the people that we historically considered to be enemies or ideological enemies. And I think, in 2014 2015, it was coming to a bit of a head. And so there was a lot of sort of emergence discussion with that. But now we’re really seeing the maturation of that there’s a whole eco ecosystem, right? Of flat, broadly, eco modern thinking, with eco modern groups sprouting up in Finland, in Australia, in Canada, people out to defend a nuclear power, people working alongside the trade unions within the trade unions to to defend nuclear power. And to be honest, I’m really excited about this, because this has a much greater social weight than the professional managerial sort of elites within the NGO, university, media complex industrial complex, because there’s just so many more people. So I’m very excited about what’s what’s going to be happening in the next coming years as sensible, rational, ordinary working people who begin to dominate the decline of discourse.

Robert Bryce 33:05
Well, it’s maybe the catalyst is going to have to be maybe the energy crisis that now is facing Europe, because I mean, Europe has been leading in in the same with California put them in the exact same boat in terms of the same things we talked about. And it’s what I testified before Congress or the Senate last week saying over and over investment in hydrocarbons under an over investment in renewables under investment in hydrocarbons, premature closure of your nuclear and coal plants. And now you’re relying on Russia for your natural gas. I mean, this is a bad place to

Leigh Phillips 33:33
be all. Absolutely. The only question is which political forces are going to be able to capture the the energy kind of capture the energy coming out of

Robert Bryce 33:43
the political the political distaste or the political upheaval, I guess, or political unrest? Perhaps because if people start dying in droves by because of cold weather, you know, you would certainly expect this to get a lot more. Really mixer make Heath right on the politic. Say, you’ve got a you’ve made a big mistake. You’ve got to figure this out.

Leigh Phillips 34:02
Yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s a great danger that perhaps the far right capture some of the anger there. And I would like to see the anger sort of directed in a more constructive progressive direction. already. We’re seeing in Finland, the true Finns are what used to be called the two fins I guess they’re just called the fins now, which is it’s a bit a bit of an exaggeration to call them the far right, but they’re certainly a right of center target. Right. And they are very much you know, a capturing of deep anger at climate policy. So sometimes very irrational climate policies to be fair, but that that direct, you know, that that anger being directed in a party that is, you know, critical of immigration, very conservative on a range of different issues. And I find that very, very worrying. I mean, it’s the Milene lapins and the true Finns and the the FDS of those Germany of the world that captured the anger, rather than, you know, a more democratic socialist perspective. I think that’s it’s a recipe for chaos and disaster. Also, fundamentally, because they are on the right, they will not have the I, I would argue that they do not have the correct economics to be able to deliver on the promise. I’ve said for a number of times now, that the left has the correct economics to deliver on the promise of nuclear energy and other technology, clean technologies like carbon capture and storage, synthetic hydrocarbons, negative emissions technologies, because it’s so capital intensive, upfront that

Robert Bryce 35:46
it’s going to take a strong hand of government to make it right,

Leigh Phillips 35:49
whether we’re talking about industrial policy or just state build out. It does, it will need some sort of governmental shepherding of the process. And the right conventionally is much more market friendly, right? They may be embracing the correct technologies, but they don’t have the right economics. The left has the right economics, but the wrong technologies because they’re anti nuclear, they’re anti CCS, they’re anti anti aviation in some cases.

Robert Bryce 36:16
And if I can interrupt because there was a guy that I knew at VIP Greece who worked at the Department of Energy explained it very succinctly, he said, The problem with nuclear is that you need strong governmental support. And so the problem in the US is the Democrats are anti nuclear and pro government, that Republicans are pro nuclear and anti government, usually politicians who are pro government and pro nuclear, right. So that that that becomes the challenge for this effective climate action at scale, right, is that it’s going to require that strong government hand and I think that’s one of the reasons why the nuclear in the US as you know, I’m adamantly pro nuclear, but I just find it you know, it’s stuck, let’s be clear, it just is stuck, because it doesn’t have the kind of, of government backing on Capitol Hill that other industries do. Let me shift gears though. And let me reintroduce my guest, Lee Phillips. He’s a science writer, based in Canada. His book that we’re discussing mainly today is I’ll start austerity, ecology and the collapse porn addicts, defensive growth progress industry and stuff. You can find him at Lee Phillips dot work and also on the Google and that’s li l e. IG H. Phillips, you had a really good piece I you know, one of the I read your book on Kindle. And you know, one of the great things on that thing is you can you can highlight things and then email your let me read this because I really thought this is a really beautifully written bit of bit of writing here, you said, in this way, energy can also be seen as a rough proxy for a society’s freedom, as a result of our density, our ultimate resource, each of the limits imposed upon us by nature that we have breached from fire that allowed us to expend less food energy and take on digestion and permitted more energy to be given over to our expanding brain through electric lighting that allows us to stay up after dark to the technologies of the bicycle, the washing machine, the pill, abortion, and fertility treatments that have chipped away at patriarchy has required a growing consumption of energy. And it’s beautifully written and it really encapsulates a lot of the ideas that I mean, some of the things I’ve written, but also just broad more broadly that the absolutely essential reality of energy to human flourishing. And yet you’re you repeatedly point out that Mckibben Klein, the rest of us, oh, we have to use less we have to do yes, we do. We less, less less, where you do too much do too much. We need to go back to the garden. I mean, this is the same kind of thing that we see in Edward Abbey and Thoreau. And so and we’re Malthus that we’ve done too much got to go back got to go back. But that’s not an argument what you wrote there is not an argument you see coming from the left.

Leigh Phillips 38:53
The historically you did, I would say that that mean, Marx, Engels, Lenin, that this grand sweep of social democrats of Europe and Canada, Australia,

Robert Bryce 39:04
the new the new dealers in the 30s? Yeah, it’s

Leigh Phillips 39:07
all very, very clear that energy is absolutely essential. I mean, we just take to take the, you know, go back to your, you know, high school physics classes, and when you very first learned about what, what is the, you know, the definition of energy, it’s, the formal definition of energy within physics is the ability to do work, right? That is to, you know, to move a massive distance, well, within society that we, that’s actually very applicable. All that energy is, is the ability in society to do to work, the more energy doing, you’re able to, to, to, to capture from, from the rest of the cosmos, the more we are able to do stuff, right and doing stuff is basically that’s that’s freedom, the ability for us to overcome the barriers around To us, that prevents us from doing things whether that is well, I mean the the invention of the development of the vaccines that without the vaccines we would have been our freedoms were delimited. Right both by the disease and our attempt to or trying to prevent infection energy is freedom and the left historically been you even again, I hate to get just like bang the mark drum of Karl Marx. But

Robert Bryce 40:34
no one else has done it on the podcast yet. Haven’t been have a bongos drums, you know, whatever, you had Tiffany’s, you bang the drum for

Leigh Phillips 40:42
overarching angles, all you like. And there is a there’s a sort of widespread misunderstanding, the primary concern of Marx was was inequality. I wouldn’t say he wasn’t interested in that. But fundamentally, he’s concerned about freedom. Drawing on on this vague alien understanding of history that be the steady the story of human history, the red thread that runs throughout all of human history, is the the steady expansion of human freedom. And Marx just basically makes the argument that an extension of the radical enlightenment, saying that there are certain contradictions within within within markets within the commodity form within capitalism, that need to be transcended in order to expand our freedom still further, and whether you agree or disagree, doesn’t matter. The point being that freedom with iron does the freedom was the beating heart of Marx’s argument. And if energy is freedom, then the the argument that we should pull back from energy that we should reduce our energy consumption now I’m absolutely interested in energy efficiency, there’s no point in wasting anything, but at the same time, we should always be wanting more energy to ever expand our freedom, that the expansion of energy consumption is in many respects what Marx is calling for. I know that sounds weird in the contemporary left, but I would say the Marx was an energy maximalist

Robert Bryce 42:08
Wow, that’s great. I you know, I don’t know my marks I, you know, I There are a lot of books I haven’t read. And

Leigh Phillips 42:15
when this comes out, I’ll be absolutely destroyed by the Marxists on Twitter.

Robert Bryce 42:21
Marx was an energy maximalist, I like that. Yeah. But it was, you know, I’m thinking back about the New Dealers and Burton Wheeler from from Montana. George Norris, from Nebraska. And Norris was a great populist right started as a Democrat converted to a Republican senator from Nebraska. I mean, he was a tremendous proponent of energy for the people that he saw this as the absolute way of liberation of farm women of farm of farm girls that this and and Lyndon Johnson got to Washington Ave in 1937, after the bill, you know, RTA in the public utility Holding Company Act were passed. But he saw it became from the rural areas in Texas, right. And this This was his same view. It was FDR, his view. I mean, FDR is some of his first speeches he gained what gave when running for president. We’re talking about electrification and the ability of providing more energy to everyone. Right, and including the rural areas. So it’s an interesting parallel and one that I think is largely forgotten and unfortunately by American Democrats completely forgotten because all of the policies that they’re proposing particularly this build back better act I look at it’s all regressive every darn bit of it. It just it’s, they’ve lost touch with as you point out, I think that’s really important one, that the intellectuals have lost touch with the working class, and that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous, isn’t it?

Leigh Phillips 43:44
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we could go on a tangent to talk about how the attractions of conservative populism. Speaking to those to the to to rustbelt America or to the north of England, the deindustrialized, north of England or the the red belt and the north of Paris that has been did de industrialized and it historically voted for the Communist Party. And how those people are being, you know, seduced by the right wing populism, because traditional the traditional liberal left is no longer speaking to those those communities is completely Neo liberalized and refusing to talk about reindustrialization large projects infrastructure that can can return families, as I say, you know, family supporting unionized incomes to those to those communities. I do think that the moving forward, the real solution is this sort of eco modern, progressive social democratic populist perspective that is able to restore We’re in the United States store, the American family, it’s a store, family supporting incomes to the rust belt can can make life livable again in the deindustrialized, north of England can make people comfortable in the center of Canada, the resource community is there. And, you know, stabilize society a little bit. Right once again,

Robert Bryce 45:24
but it’s very distinctive. It’s very, very unstable. And ah, sorry. Well, no, it’s definitely unstable now. But I want to follow on what you said there, because you make another point toward the end of austerity ecology about this need for planning, right, that there needs to be a, that there need to be policymakers and regulators who are deciding how we’re going to plan for this. And this is one of the Meredith penguins point in her book shorting the grid about these RTOS. They’re not charged with planning, they’re charged with making sure the well the electricity flows here, we’re not in charge of resilience and reliability. That’s not our thing. Right. So but your argument then, is, could you put it this way? Or is it correct for me to put it this way? You’re arguing for a stouter government that’s more responsive to people but the government that is going to do big projects do and nuke nuclear being a key part of this? Because Okay, here it pennants emit Penny say is that, is that a fair assessment of what you’re what you’re saying?

Leigh Phillips 46:26
I mean, my second book that I co wrote with, with economists, me, however, sworsky, was at the People’s Republic of Walmart, is it? Is it offensive economic planning? In many respects, it answers the question that I that I posed in austerity ecology, where in history ecology, I say, the solution to, to climate change to other environmental issues. It’s not it’s not D growth is not retreat from modernity, it’s not retreat from industry. It is, it is economic planning. That’s actually the solution.

Robert Bryce 47:01
And embrace and embrace of industry and embrace it planning to understand what needs to happen for adaptation, adaptation and mitigation, then

Leigh Phillips 47:08
it isn’t, it isn’t just about sort of mega projects, even if we talk about sort of small modular reactors and other forms of advanced nuclear, the grand dream there is that this is a technology that hopefully will be much more amenable to markets, maybe, because you can produce that in a potentially in a factory or in a shipyard. And then you have economies of serious production. And hopefully, the idea there is that the upfront capital costs are much lower than a large, large nuclear power plant. And never at the same time, because this is I wouldn’t say it’s unproven technology, but it certainly it’s it’s new technology, and we need to be able to take it from the lab bench and, and even sort of paper reactors through to commercialization. Right? Well, that valley of death requires a lot of government shepherding, ie industrial policy. So whether we’re talking about sheer, you know, conventional public service, publicly owned Energy Utilities building out big mega project infrastructure, or are we talking about industrial policy, where we’re still at the end of the day have market actors? It’s still government that is, is is is planning that is shepherding the economy, it’s a retreat back to another retreat. It’s a it’s a revival of the ideas of the sort of mid of the mid century. I mean, the the French build out the under the Mesmer plan, they’re built, they’re built out of nuclear power plants in the space of about 11 years. That was a very a tatty, as in French, they would say at least a very, very sort of governmental list project. And it’s near the breakthrough Institute did an analysis and found that this was the most rapid decarbonisation that has ever occurred in history. So we do have to go, I mean, my main arguments, we really do have to get over our phobia of government planning. The crucial thing is that we have to make sure that is genuinely democratic. The one of the reasons that the Thatcher the market factors and Ron Reagan’s of the world in the 1980s were so, so successful and why they electorally successful, why their arguments fell in such fertile soil was that there was a real paternalism I think, within the social democratic welfare state, you know, things like within, you know, council estates, or what you would call projects in the, in the, in the US in the UK, you know, you have these stories about how there would be the the council of state bureaucrats checking whether young women had had a met a man over for for the night, because if they’re unmarried, they’re not supposed to do that. And that level of like, Who is this bureaucrat telling me who I can sleep with, right and so they were We do have to like it isn’t merely returned back to the welfare state of the 40s. Through the 1970s, we have to come up with a new vision, which is genuinely democratic, not paternalistic, that isn’t a group of bureaucrats that are set again, once again, separated from ordinary working people.

Robert Bryce 50:20
It has to respond responsive government

Leigh Phillips 50:23
responses, absolutely. 100%. Yeah.

Robert Bryce 50:26
It’s a toll charge.

Leigh Phillips 50:29
It is going to be harder in the United States. And I think in some of these other countries that have a long tradition of social democracy, I think Bernie Sanders, I was a big supporter of Bernie Sanders and still am, because he led this revival of, of social democracy or democratic socialism in the United States. I disagree with him profoundly with respect to nuclear energy, I think he is climate policies are completely captured by the, by the NGO, the green left blood fundamentally, his economic policies are exactly what I what I think is necessary. If we could have a sort of Bernie Sanders, maybe a younger Bernie Sanders next time around, sort of figure that is absolutely economically populist, but is an eco modern. And I would also add, maybe, you know, drop the the sort of the identity politics as well. I mean, I think he he’s actually he’s very good on this. I think AOC is not very good on this. I think Bernie Sanders is doesn’t have a lot of time for the identity politics. I think he’s much more Universalist. But I think that would be I think it would be an amazing package. I think it’s a winning package. And I ironically, I think sometimes I some of the things that even Joe Manchin talks about with when he goes and speaks to the AFL CIO, and about decarbonization. You look at his, his speech, the AFL CIO, and I think it was 2019 or 2020. I wrote about it recently in an article that’s coming out in next few days. You know, he talks about how the American working class built this country, and we did everything that we were supposed to do it. Well, you did everything. I’m not American, but I you know, my career’s there in many respects. Sure. And, and then with the it’s, he describes it as being like the venum that coming home from the war and not being wanted, it was like, you know, the coal miners, the pipe fitters, Boilermakers. Everybody, they the Teamsters, they built the country and then the with the, with the clean transition with deep with decarbonisation, it’s like, we don’t need you anymore.

Robert Bryce 52:34
You’re forgotten this system is betraying them. Exactly. And so even or again, or bending them maybe abandoning is better than betraying but nevertheless, abandoned, but how much of that?

Leigh Phillips 52:46
Say, Go ahead. So even somebody like Joe Manchin, if if he’s honest, if he’s really being honest about what he said in that speech, that he’s also even he which is a quote, he’s supposed to be moderate. Even he is talking about with respect to, to economic populism, there’s an element of that there and what he said as well. Now, again, I don’t know if he has the right economics to back that up. But certainly we can’t write off those people either, if that is, if they’re talking about and getting applause at DFS. They started the AFL CIO being the the major trade show Central. Not everybody might, might not know

Robert Bryce 53:24
that so well. Right. And I think it’s interesting, you know, to talk about mentioned, because where does it come from West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the country, right. And I used to be a blue state, right, and now is in play, but it’s also that it’s a hydrocarbon producing state and a big one that’s heavily reliant on coal. And that, that he knows, he knows where he’s coming. He knows where he’s from, exactly knows who’s gonna vote for him. And so he can’t go, he can’t ascribe to this same. I’m gonna call it what it is this elitist energy policy being pushed by Nancy Pelosi and all of the, you know, an AOC. And the rest of them, who all of them come from big cities, and they don’t really give a shit about what happens in rural America will mention does any better, because it’s gonna be out of job.

Leigh Phillips 54:10
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was reading an article in, I think it was in these times, which is a sort of venerable old left range magazine in the US, and it was an article about exactly this. And there was a description of the United Mine Workers of America, u m. W. have, you know, had so many struggles of the years where the the coal companies have just abandoned their commitments to payments, pensions? Sure. And disability and you know, they’re mining is a is a difficult job. And so there’s a lot a lot of widows there’s a lot of disabled people and and this article in these times, dismiss the UN UNM wa as well. They’re basically retirees organization these days. They’re not really a fighting union anymore. It as a way to explain why they were critical of AOC, green New Deal. And I just thought I was furious when I read that the struggles that these people have fought over the years and bitter struggles. There’s an ongoing, you know, many months long strike at the moment over exactly these issues. And the

Robert Bryce 55:30
goes back, it goes. It’s the detachment of the illegal actuals from the working class, right this, this, whoever this writer wasn’t I’m not familiar with the piece, but I don’t think they’ve been to a coal mine because I’ve been to coal mines. I’ve seen those UFW stickers on the on the on the Ford F 150s. Right. There are a lot of them. Yeah. And there’s, these are. These are serious working folks. And they they know, but it’s that it’s that reversal that, you know, to go back to what you talked about before that the Republicans have then become the party that appeals to the working class because they hear Trump and others. Yes. We know what you’re suffering for. We know. Yeah,

Leigh Phillips 56:04
absolutely. Interestingly, I think the only other person who was able to go into West Virginia and not be booed. Is was was Bernie Sanders for exactly the same reason.

Robert Bryce 56:18
economic populism? Yeah.

Leigh Phillips 56:19
Nine o’clock. Listen. Yeah.

Robert Bryce 56:21
Interesting. You in your bio, I noticed this in a couple of places. In your bio, you said that you write about the interface and sound somewhat similar. And I’d say this is a complement between how Roger Pilkey describes his work Roger Pielke, Jr. The interface between science and society, especially philosophy of science, economics, and politics. If there is a theme that unites most of my work, it is exploring the emergence in the 21st century of a framework of geo anthropic systems governance are the struggle over how we, as the globally dominant species, are beginning to steward human and earth systems in a more rational, democratic and egalitarian fashion. So I mean, that that sounds you’re an eco modernist, right, that this is the Anthropocene and you’re wanting to figure out how government makes it better. Is that is that a way to think about it as well?

Leigh Phillips 57:08
I mean, not just government. I mean, I think technology and the right philosophies and in society as well, I think I actually, I would say, and I’m very excited to be living at this moment. I do think it’s a very, very thrilling moment in human history to be in the days when we as a species realize that we command the earth. And we have to move from being unwittingly commanders of the Earth into conscious commanders. I mean, I just that’s that’s a fascinating, scientific, technological engineering, political, philosophical, religious, I’m not I’m an atheist, but it’s a spiritual moment to be in where we we are becoming these as God’s basically, I mean, I think

Robert Bryce 58:03
Stuart Stuart brands Uber as God, we might as well get get it. Well, Sulan talk about atheism, because that’s interesting, because I still identify as a Christian, I’m raised Catholic, but the religiosity around the Doom ism, the religiosity around the catastrophism is something I’ve talked about on the podcast, I had Sally Trembath, on his at the out theologian talking about these very same things about this catastrophism of climate change as being a you know, the end times right, and yet we’ve sinned, and we have to go back. So how does your does your atheism inform your writing then in that regard, because I’m saying I’ve had Christians on I’ve had giussano talking about, you know, these issues, but I don’t know that I’ve talked to anyone about it, who’s a self professed atheist talking about some of these same issues.

Leigh Phillips 58:48
I mean, I am very religiously informed by maybe an atheist now and have been for many years. My faith just fairly, steadily dropped away over the years. But I was born into the church of England’s of Anglican Episcopalian in the UK, in the US, you’d say. And raised in the United Church in Canada, which is a Protestant church, mainly because that was the closer church than the Anglican one. And my mum

Robert Bryce 59:20
didn’t want to go that far. Yeah. Church of convenience, that’s okay.

Leigh Phillips 59:28
They’re nice. They’re really friendly. So let’s go there. But actually be as a as a teenager, the liberation theology, the Catholic Worker Movement that had a huge, like, profound influence on me. And that was probably what led me into becoming a Democratic socialist. So even though my faith dropped away, I’m still very much informed by by a lot of that, and I started They know about the history of religion and churches and so this Millenarianism yeah, there’s always been some people within religion who it’s not a mainstream idea within religion, but certainly the turning of the the last village, not 2000, but 1000, you know, there was a period of heightened Millenarianism Doomer ism. It’s something that recurs in human society. I think there’s I don’t know what the psychology is I I didn’t study psychology University, one of the sciences, I didn’t study, my mum’s a psychologist. So maybe I should read a bit more, maybe there’s something in there to be able to describe why it is that there’s a section of humanity that regularly is attracted to that sort of do mongering? I don’t have any answers on that, either from psychology from science or from religion, I just know that it does regularly happen.

Robert Bryce 1:00:59
Well, but I mean, isn’t that this that always been so that the religion requires this idea of the catastrophe looming for to then do instill the, the need for penance, right that we need reform we need to we need to get right with in this case is Sally trim that target get right with God and God just happens to be right and that this is a that Earth supplanting God is the one to be to be worshipped.

Leigh Phillips 1:01:26
As an atheist, I’m very attracted to that idea that there’s something inherent within religion that leads to a sort of doom mongering. But the the truth of the matter is that most of the people that we’re talking about with respect to the the green left to climate left, most of them are atheists, or just non religious. And so I think it’s something deeper than that. Also, on the other hand, I know lots of religious people who have no time at all for the end of the world is nine stories. So

Robert Bryce 1:01:56
yeah, that’s fair. That’s a fair point.

Leigh Phillips 1:01:58
So basically saying, I don’t know, I just don’t know. I mean, there’s, there’s a, there’s a book to be written about that. Gotcha. Well, they’re gonna be written not by me,

Robert Bryce 1:02:07
not by me, either. Well, so describe what’s happening in Canada. Now. You live in Victoria, British Columbia, right. Is it? I was there a long time ago? I remember going to Busch Gardens. Let’s see. Oh, really? Yes. Okay, quite, it’s quite lovely, made a big impression on me. I thought, Wow, this

Leigh Phillips 1:02:23
little university town. Capital is, you know, is one of many of these places in North America, where the capital of the state or the capital of the province is actually one of the smaller towns or smaller cities. So it’s Yeah, as if you’ve been here, you know, it’s, it’s very quaint like that.

Robert Bryce 1:02:39
Right. So tell me about the politics in Canada. Now. I mean, you know, Trudeau is under a lot of pressure, and it seems in the schisms within Canada, in terms of the provincial interests. And you mentioned Ontario versus Alberta, Quebec versus Alberta. That you what’s the state of play in, in your view, as is true with How’s Trudeau doing in your view?

Leigh Phillips 1:03:01
Well, gosh, not very well, I don’t think. I mean, I’m, I’m a Democratic socialist. So I’m a supporter of the New Democratic Party here, which is our Social Democratic Party. It’s basically a Bernie Sanders type party. Yeah. Which unfortunately, I think has the right economics, but again, the wrong, wrong technology. There’s a lot of anti nuclear sentiment within the party. Although the party isn’t I don’t think officially anti nuclear. Anyway. The liberal party is the centrist party, which governance governs our country and Liberal Party pivots between a sort of center right in the center left and is currently controlled mostly by the center left Trudeau. Chrystia Freeland, our deputy prime minister, those sort of figures, they definitely come from the left of the party.

Robert Bryce 1:03:50
And your environment minister Guilbeau is right. His famous anti nuclear activists to Chris Kiefer, confronted recently Yeah,

Leigh Phillips 1:03:58
I can’t stand him to say he’s no he’s he’s the classical classic example of everything that I hate within my book, austerity ecology that sees just and I think it’s a real shame because a few years ago, the, the Liberal government under Trudeau did actually commit to, to a small modular reactor roadmap revival of of nuclear energy. I think it’s a shame that it wasn’t broaden out to revival of a of how to make to revive the candy reactor, which is just like it’s a right. Yeah. Again, it’s a cathedral Canadian innovation. And do a sort of South Korea where we begin to, to sell it around the world. I think Canada, one of the selling points of Canada is that we’re basically trusted around the world in terms of our regulation, that if Canada gets it right, it must be okay must be broadly Be safe, right in a way that Russia and China aren’t really that trusted in say, subSaharan Africa or India. And so I think there’s a real Canada could have been, and I worried that the window and now it’s closing for this, but Canada really could have been the force in the world that begins to revive nuclear in the developing world. I don’t think that’s the only thing. I think that’s a small lab directors are absolutely essential as well. I’m not one of these people like Mike Shellenberger, who is like 100%, conventional remote extraction is not going to be able to be decarbonized without small modular reactors, remote communities. So I can Nunavut and in the far north, that really is the is the pathway forward. So I’m in all of the above there, but I thought broadly, the the federal Liberals were leaning in the right direction I wished, I mean, again, I felt because they’re, they’re centrist. They could have been a lot more robust. There were 10s of millions thrown at small modular reactors, instead of, you know, some more substantial billions. And I think the NDP, the New Democratic Party would have been able to actually more robustly support that. But even then, I think it is beginning to close now. And I think the problem is, we’ve moved there was a cabinet shuffle. And so the Minister of natural resources, which he was really very bullish Seamus O’Regan, a really, really great guy. He’s from from from Newfoundland, I think that if he were from the west coast of the country, he would have been a new Democrat. Unfortunately, in in Newfoundland, on the east coast. There aren’t a lot of New Democrats. So I think he he joined the Liberal Party, but I think he’s he’s just a classic, classic social democrat. And it really, you know, he’s really banging the drum for nuclear. So we can’t have decarbonisation without nuclear it was, you know, I thought this is this is actually pretty much what I’d like to see, like see more robust funding, but it’s it’s pretty good. But I think that Trudeau because Trudeau is a bit of a flibbertigibbet, he’s very capricious with his policies, if something doesn’t work within a few months, it doesn’t produce immediate political returns, he’ll move on to something else. And I think he thought the nucleus small modular reactors would result in an overnight increase in Liberal support in the center of the country. And it didn’t, of course, it’s not it’s going to take some time to to

Robert Bryce 1:07:21
take takes years. This is one of the problems right?

Leigh Phillips 1:07:25
Absolutely. And so now he’s, he’s, he’s pivoted away from that he’s stuck Steven guilbeault in the environment and climate change ministry, and he is in natural resources. It’s what’s his first name, last names Wilkinson. Anyway, and he’s very, very soft in nuclear as well. And certain Stephens. Guilbeau, is anti nuclear. And so I think what what has happened, and I’d really like to speak to some people in the cabinet to find out on background to find out exactly what’s gone on there. But I really suspect it. The Trudeau has pivoted away from that. And I think it’s just it’s a really, really great shame for Canada. I hope I’m wrong. I hope folks like Chris Kiefer and mobilizing nuclear labor and Canadians for nuclear energy, you’re going to be able to turn that around. But at the political level, that sort of high political level, I’m more pessimistic than I was just a few years ago.

Robert Bryce 1:08:15
Well, it’s interesting as you say that because I was just thinking about McCrone in France, now. Yeah, the energy crisis. They’re saying, hey, SMR is yeah, we’re all about it. We’re gonna make this happen now. But let me come back to Canada. I you know, I’ve been to Canada a few times. And one of my heroes now is Jordan Peterson. I don’t know if you’d like him. But he’s remarkable. And his I don’t know what you think about Rex Murphy. But I’ve listened to a podcast where Murphy was interviewed by Peterson. I thought Rex Murphy, who’s a columnist with The National Post. I don’t know what you know, if your politics aligned with his but I just thought he had a remarkable story. He was a Newfoundlander. And just his life story was just remarkable to me, and he’s got this great voice and then the two of them together I just thought was just remarkably

Unknown Speaker 1:08:57
okay. So this is probably

Leigh Phillips 1:08:58
where you and I will have some disagree. Okay,

Robert Bryce 1:09:00
that’s fine. You can’t you know, you hate Jordan Peterson.

Leigh Phillips 1:09:04
I can’t say Jordan Peterson. I, you know, you know, his 12 rules for life. He says, you know, clean your room. The video is over and it’s complete. cluttered mess. No, I think he’s, he’s a snake oil salesman. I, to be honest, I think that Jordan Peterson and this is very different from any sort of discussion around climate change. But I do think that what the success of Jordan Peterson comes from the fact that there’s a group of young men, not all white men, there’s a lot of men of color, who also feel this way, who feel very lost at sea in your current environment. They graduate from university or college or not, and there are a lot of jobs students. They’re struggling to pay the rent or to get a mortgage because of the housing crisis. And it’s really, really tough and All they see all day long in the media is that men men, men are just the worst, the worst, the worst, the worst. So I think that Jordan Peterson was able to speak to those people. And I wish that we on the left, were able to speak to them and said, and this is where it comes to my arguments around identity politics versus universalism. If we are seeing that the even working class men who are really struggling at the moment, are, are horrible human beings, if we can say that a black female billionaire is oppressed by homeless, white, straight white man, I think we’re our moral compasses fundamentally broken there, right? Universalism wants to lift everybody. Yeah, and recognizes that it is not actually in the interest of men, for there to be sexism that is not actually in the interest of straight people, for there to be homophobic, it’s not actually in the interest of white people for there to be to be racist. I mean, that the Social Democratic Socialist argument historically with respect to racism was that racism divides the working clocks, if one group of workers that have one color is is is is raised up against another group of workers will have a different color, well, that group of workers will cross the picket line when the other group of workers goes on strike, and vice versa. And so both of them are undermining each other’s ability to have higher wages and better conditions. This is why the very first sort of organizing against racism in the United States in the 1930s came from the communist party from from the trade unions. And it was out of the, we’re being fucked here, because our workers are divided, everybody will stand on each other, depending on their race, we have to overcome racism in order to have a unified union,

Robert Bryce 1:11:46
that there was I see, so the racial differences have to be put aside and put the class issue first.

Leigh Phillips 1:11:53
That’s right. It is in white people’s white working class people’s own interest to overcome racism, which, which transcends this idea that we should feel sorry for black people? I mean, I do think it’s, or our Hispanics or Asians, or indigenous people, it’s a no, no, no, we’re being screwed over by this as well, whenever, whenever anybody, any working class person’s being screwed over on the basis of race that undermines our our wages and conditions, it is our own interest. I mean, you One should also fight against racism just because race, but fundamentally, it is in your own interests. And

Robert Bryce 1:12:29
that’s amazing. I like I like that idea. Because I see so many of these issues now, particularly in the US, it’s divisions along class lines. Right, and that this is one of Michael Lin’s arguments as well, right, that this is really the division in America that and and I tend to agree with him. I think that that is absolutely right. That there is and you know, we see this now with is soaring inflation, energy prices that who’s getting hurt? Well, it’s the poor in the working class, right? They’re not, you know, the wealthy folks. They can afford Tesla Powerwalls and EVS and all the rest of the working class, hell no, they’re driving driving old Ford F 150s and Silverados. And they’re, you know, they price of gasoline matters to them a lot. And so that, that that, you know, to bring it back to the, to the the energy issue, so I just want to talk a little bit about we’ve been talking for more than an hour now. And so I want to tie it up here pretty soon. My guest is Lee Phillips, you can find him at Lee Phillips dot work li l e IG H Phillips with two L’s I just want to talk for a minute about your book, the People’s Republic of Walmart, how the biggest corporations are laying the foundation for socialism. So I wrote this question, how are they laying the foundation for socialism? Because I generally think we shop at Walmart a lot. Do you shop at Walmart?

Leigh Phillips 1:13:40
I do. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Robert Bryce 1:13:41
So how is it laying the foundation for socialism? Because that when that’s one book title that I liked, I thought, Okay, now, I didn’t have time to read that book. I read a study ecology, but how is it laying the foundation for socialism?

Leigh Phillips 1:13:53
So it’s more laying the foundation for questions around economic planning. Okay. The that subtitle, the the publisher came up with that came out there was like Bernie Sanders and there was Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. It’s very popular, very salient, sir. We’re, I mean, I and this

Robert Bryce 1:14:11
book was published in 2019. Right? Yeah, where’s the start sturdy ecology was 2015. That’s okay. Yep. Please continue.

Leigh Phillips 1:14:20
So it’s, it’s a the People’s Republic of Walmart is a popular it’s a popular introduction to the economic calculation debate, sometimes called the socialist calculation debate, which began in the 1920s between conservative economists and left wing economists as to whether it was feasible to engage in economic planning. The argument was got a few minutes left here. So how can I serve construct this? Basically, that any level of planning requires an understanding and knowledge of so many variables in the system all along Production supply chains, that a set of bureaucrats to be able to capture all that information will inevitably make mistakes, they won’t capture the entirety of it. There’s also discovery within markets about what people want. And how can bureaucrats grab and find this information, they will there will always be gaps and therefore those gaps will lead to mismatches between supply and demand those mismatches between supply demand will create a chaos, that chaos will result in authoritarianism, straight result that that have been better boom, you’ve got Soviet Union under Stalin. So this is sort of the the irony is, of course, the Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, in terms of revenues. Its revenues are not quite as large as the Soviet Union at this time, but certainly on this roughly on the same scale as a union, even though it exists within a market internally. It engages in vast planning of millions of products. And,

Robert Bryce 1:16:05
and country $100 Plus complex supply chains, complex applications on complex logistics, trucks, airplanes. It’s a logistical wonder what employs two to two and a half million people something is a massive business.

Leigh Phillips 1:16:19
It is absolutely gargantuan. And there was a there was a sort of throwaway line from this sort of Marxist literary theorist Frederick Jameson about 10 years ago or so, where he said that you know, the left is insufficiently a utopian at the moment, it’s insufficiently visionary. The real visionaries of the moment are Walmarts. And it was just a throwaway line in a little essay that he’d written. And me and me Hill resort ski and my co author, we thought, well, well, let’s that’s kind of true, actually. It is a logistical wonder, let’s, let’s let’s take Frederick Jameson throwaway line there and actually expanded actually investigate. And so we do a lot of research into how Walmart is structured, its supply chains, its logistics, how it works. But not just that, we also look at Amazon, which is another logistical wonder. We look at the National Health Service in the UK, this fully integrated socialized medical system, we look at Sears where ironically, the the the incoming CEO of CEO of Sears a number of years ago, was so much of a libertarian when he took over the company. And he looked inside the box and he thought, all this planning going all this economic planning, this is socialism. And so we instituted markets between between different departments. And of course, these different departments are completely they’re competing against each other. There’s no interest in, in, in profit making for the entire for the enterprise as a whole. And it leads to the well as we know, the series has basically fallen apart. Sure. And then we use a number a couple of other different examples, we’ll talk about the Pentagon and draw on some of the work of the sort of Neo Keynesian economist Marian Mariana mazzucato, in how the Pentagon is a great example of, of, of economic planning and industrial policy to come up with new technologies, pretty much all the the major technologies for miniaturization to GPS to Siri, in your smartphone, were basically developed by by the Pentagon why why was it able to do that is because the Pentagon being a public service doesn’t have to have a return in investments by the end of four quarters, or whatever. So it is there’s an entrepreneurial ism mistaken anyway, B, we use all these different examples to talk about how that conservative argument and the 1920s about economic planning this is just wrong. The the evidence is in now that economic planning at scale can work.

Robert Bryce 1:19:10
And it can bring higher living standards to the people, right? goods and services more available at lower price at more convenient, but 100%.

Leigh Phillips 1:19:20
If we look at China right now, and I certainly have as a Democratic socialist, I have enormous criticisms of the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. But I would say that the Indicative planning, which is not too different from some of what Andy was doing that post war post decolonization period and what France was doing the post war period, where the state really is sort of guiding the economy while they’re still large parts of of market activity. There’s no question that has been an economic miracle. They’ve lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty within a generation It’s abs, it’s absolutely outstanding. Economically, let’s see if we can’t marry something like that to a democratic structure

Robert Bryce 1:20:10
that would be more would be responsive and democratic and that would be solving taking on these big challenges. Well, so Lee, this has been a great conversation. If you, I like to ask two questions at the end of my podcast, because I’m always interested, you know, there are a few questions I like to ask. I always ask entrepreneurs, what’s the hardest part of your job? And you know, they invariably say, managing people, but I always ask my guests. So what are you reading these days? What books are on your shelf? I know you have in front of a whole shelf full of books. But what’s at the top of the list these days?

Leigh Phillips 1:20:43
It was the top list these days. And I’m reading a couple of books on. Other hominins so other hominid species? So Neanderthals Denisovans. I can never pronounce this right, but the florists that anyway, other early human species, for a long time, we thought, had lived at very different epochs, then, then humans, and now we realize that there was about five, or maybe even six different human species that lived at the same time. And I’m finding this very, very fascinating. I am also one of the reasons I’m reading these books is doing a bit of research into it’s helping with a research for my next book, which is tentatively titled dominion, a it’s sort of history, exploration of the history and science and philosophy of human exceptionalism. It’s going to be making a defense of human supremacy,

Robert Bryce 1:21:47
human supremacy in terms of the Anthropocene about our management,

Leigh Phillips 1:21:51
a long line of what we’re talking about a few minutes ago. Yeah. But rather than that, we have to basically recognize that the reason that we should be concerned about climate change, biodiversity loss, these sorts of issues is because they undermine humans. So because undermanned the underlying the planet, planet isn’t dying. Planet, it is incredibly robust,

Robert Bryce 1:22:10
right? It’s part of the planet, it’s gonna be fine. It’s us.

Leigh Phillips 1:22:14
It’s us, you know, even even if it isn’t endangered, it’s we’re undermining the optimum conditions under which we flourish. Right. So. So the argument, it’s a sort of marriage of sort of deep geological discussion, a paleo ecology, anthropology, so discussion of early the emergence of humans and pro

Robert Bryce 1:22:38
progeny. That’s a word for me so that the history of the human species then the emergent with the emergence of urgency, the human species, gotcha. So and when is the Dominion? Would you have a publication date on that, or I

Leigh Phillips 1:22:50
don’t have a button. I know, my agent is like, I’m sure he’s pulling his hair out that I still haven’t got the early part of the manuscript to him, which is supposed to be with him a long time ago. He can go,

Robert Bryce 1:23:06
I’m not gonna bust you over that. So then, well, last question, then Lee. So what gives you hope?

Leigh Phillips 1:23:16
What gives me hope is that I love humans. I mean, I think we’re just an absolutely incredible species. We’re the universe becoming aware of itself. I think we’re profoundly precious and and I definitely think that we’re the big S. O, which is named David Deutsch, the the physicist in his book at the beginning of infinity, I think he’s not wrong, but this is moment is the beginning of the infinite expansion of human freedom. If we you know, from basically 1750 through to today, this this moment is you know, geologically and even in terms of this university, so blink of an eye, but this is the the the scientific revolution, the the radical enlightenment, the deliberative democracy and freedom. That revolution that is incomplete and that we’re living through at the moment is is we are is the beating of a very radical upper trajectory for our species. And I am profoundly optimistic about what we will achieve.

Robert Bryce 1:24:30
I like that, my friend Molly, Ivan said optimistic to the point of idiocy. That’s, that’s

Leigh Phillips 1:24:36
I think that’s probably what my left wing critic critics would say that yeah. Optimistic at the point of idiocy that they generally think that I’m an idiot because pessimism for them is the the bread and butter. At the moment, I think we need a healthy dose of optimism.

Robert Bryce 1:24:51
Amen to that, my friend. Amen to that. Well, great, well, Lee Phillips, this has been a great conversation. I really have enjoyed it. Yeah. lat. Lee is the author of austerity ecology and the collapse porn addicts, a defensive growth progress industry and stuff, as well as the co author of the People’s Republic of Walmart how the world’s biggest corporations are laying the foundation for socialism. Those are available. I’m sure we’re all fine books are sold. You can find me at my blog from Walmart too. You can get them from Walmart, they’re even better. And you can find him at Lee Phillips dot work on the interwebs. So Lee, thanks a million for being on the podcast. I appreciate it. Yeah. And to all of you in podcast land tune in for the next episode of the power hungry podcast until then, see ya.