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The Sustainable Hour no. 596 | Transcript | Podcast notes
How do we collectively manage our atmospheric commons? What happens when humanity leaves behind the climate stability that allowed civilisation to flourish?
On 24 June 2026 in the 596th episode of The Sustainable Hour, futurist, researcher and political activist Jose Ramos takes us on a journey into what he calls the “Post-Holocene world” – a future where climate certainty can no longer be taken for granted and where humanity faces an unprecedented challenge: learning how to govern our shared atmospheric commons.
Before that, Mik Aidt opens the program with a reality check on Australia’s energy transition. While some politicians continue to claim that renewable energy is driving up electricity prices, the latest figures tell a different story. Battery storage is expanding at record speed, gas generation is falling, wholesale electricity prices are dropping, and in some parts of Australia electricity is even being offered free during the middle of the day due to abundant solar generation.
In his Global Outlook, Colin Mockett OAM reports on legal setbacks for Donald Trump’s anti-wind agenda in the United States and discusses warnings rnings from international weather agencies about a newly declared El Niño event which could bring severe heat, drought and bushfire risks to Australia and many other regions.
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QUESTIONS OF OUR TIME
Our conversation with Jose Ramos explores some of the biggest questions of our time. How do societies imagine their future, and how do those stories shape what becomes possible? What happens as humanity leaves behind the climate stability of the Holocene and enters a new era where we must learn to govern our shared planetary and atmospheric commons?
Along the way, the discussion touches on inequality, democracy, regenerative farming, renewable energy, artificial intelligence and the growing need for equity and care in our political and economic systems. Beneath all these topics runs a deeper theme: that the solutions we need are not only technological, but cultural. If humanity is to navigate the challenges ahead, we may first need to rethink how we see ourselves, each other and our place within the web of life.
Jose argues that many of our current crises stem from deep assumptions about humanity’s relationship with nature. He suggests that one of the most powerful shifts available to us is moving from a worldview based on domination and separation towards one grounded in what he calls “the web of life” – recognising humans as one species among many, deeply interconnected with the living systems around us. Understanding that humanity’s challenge is not merely technological. It is cultural.
As Jose puts it: “We’re moving into a new period of human existence where we’re not going to have that climate certainty. We’re going to have to do unprecedented things. We’re going to have to learn how to govern our planetary commons, our atmospheric commons. That is a huge step change for a primate that just came out of the savannahs of Africa a few hundred thousand years ago.”
In the program’s traditional “Be”-segment, Jose offers a simple but profound suggestion: “Be this larger idea that we share this planet, that we’re brothers and sisters, and that we’re in this together.”
→ Journal of Future Studies: jfsdigital.org
→ Futures Lab: futureslab.org
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SONGS
The episode features two original songs:
‘We Are In This Together’ – a new song about stars, the Earth, humanity and the web of life, and about the future we can make together. Inspired by excerpts from today’s conversation with Jose Ramos and with voices including UN Chief António Guterres, astronaut Neil Armstrong and American author Jeremy Lent.
‘Symphony of the Shift’ – a reflection on the deeper social, ecological and cultural transformations emerging around the world.
We Are In This Together | Lyrics
– An upbeat and optimistic song about the future we can make together.
Symphony of the Shift | Lyrics
– A song about community resilience in a collapsing world, inspired by our interview with Michael Haupt in The Sustainable Hour no. 549
“What if we take a new perspective, which is very common to preindustrial societies and indigenous societies: the web of life. The web of life being that we are a species among many species, understanding the interconnections between these different ecosystems, different beings, a deep respect for the beings that live around us, whether they are bugs or birds or mountains or forests. And what if we took that new perspective into a place? A domain? What if I’m working in fashion? What if I’m working in energy? And if I take a new perspective, and then I say: ‘Well from this perspective what new opportunities does this bring forth? What new perspectives on the future does this bring forth?”
~ Jose Ramos, Futurist
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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PAPER BY JOSE RAMOS – 14 JUNE 2026:
Cosmolocalism and the transformation of the production of everyday life
Cosmolocalism means sharing knowledge globally and creating solutions locally – using the wisdom of the world to strengthen communities close to home.
The image of Earthrise is only a recent one, the Apollo missions glimpsing a spectacular life filled Earth rising from the cratered and barren landscape of the moon. Although sages of past millennia reminded us that we are all brothers and sisters, it was not until the space race that we could look back upon ourselves as a totality, a species interdependent with a planet. Both the beauty and fragility of our cosmic existence struck people deeply. Carl Sagan wrote:
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. (Carl Sagan, 1994)
Recent discoveries in science have brought this view home further. From evolutionary biology and genetics we know there is no such thing as “race”, this is a human invention. We are a species, or more accurately scientists think we are several species (Homo Sapien, Neanderthal and Denisovan) mixed together. Just as fundamental is the anticipatory aspect of our shared existence. We are facing a series of crises like never before, that require a new level of cooperation. If we continue to behave as competitors and adversaries, if we do not work together to address our challenges, we do not stand much chance of addressing our shared challenges and protecting our shared commons. If we come together as an Earth Community (Korten, 2006), we can overcome and indeed learn and grow from these crises.
Geologists have even created a new geological era, the “Anthropocene,” a new epoch that signifies humanity as a transformer, or a terraformer, of our planet—producing effects comparable to grand geological shifts. The Anthropocene is playing out in three “movements” (Bauwens and Ramos, 2020).
The first movement is simply our planetary scale impacts. This is the classic definition of the Anthropocene. Yet if this were the only dimension of the Anthropocene, we would be no different than the species that generated the first planetary crisis approximately 2.5 billion years ago, anaerobic cyanobacteria, which led to the Great Oxygenation Event (where the planet was literally poisoned by excess oxygen, a waste product of cyanobacteria).
So, the second movement of the Anthropocene signifies an awareness of ourselves as a planetary species with planetary impacts. Although there is still denial and ignorance, with fits and starts we are coming to grips with the crises we have created.
Finally, a third movement of the Anthropocene closes the loop on the first two, reflexive planetary responses, which signifies the capacity for humanity to leverage planetary awareness, toward coordinated, intelligent responses to the challenges we collectively face. This third movement of the Anthropocene is by far the most embryonic, and yet ultimately the most crucial, without which we have little hope of any real long term viability. These three aspects play out a classic action learning cycle, act—reflect—change, but at a grand scale that we have only begun to experience today.
Cosmolocalism is one of a number of praxes for this third movement, reflexive planetary response. It represents an emerging and coalescing body of theory and practice (Sachs 1992; Manzini 2015; Kostakis et al 2015; Ramos 2017; Escobar 2018; Schismenos, et al 2020). At its heart it envisions a planetary mutualization of knowledge, in which localities benefit from and contribute to all other localities through open design, open hardware, open technology and open knowledge, all of which supports and accelerates human wellbeing and a transition to low eco-footprint / carbon economies, empowers communities as producers of what they need and generates livelihoods for those most in need.
In a historical context cosmolocalism inserts itself at a time when the neoliberal project is in crisis through several structural contradictions. First, an ecological crisis typified by unsustainable pollution, growth and consumerism. Secondly, a populist revolt against economic globalization. Thirdly, the contradiction between immaterial cognitive and relational labor and the way in which intensive capitalism (Robinson, 2004) acts to commodify this.
Thus cosmolocalism picks up momentum as Fukuyama’s (1989) “end of history” has transformed into the seeming end of neoliberalism itself, its cultural hegemony greatly diminished. People are looking for a way to change a capitalist system typified by extractive logic into one with generative logic, to protect our shared commons and to avert a worst case scenario for humanity.
As a matter of point, the scale and urgency of the climate crisis itself demands a planetary scale mutualization of knowledge, if only to liberate clean tech intellectual property and innovation for distributed use / problem-solving, which can rapidly accelerate a carbon drawdown. Equally, cosmolocalism can support livelihoods in diverse settings even as we anticipate an era of post-growth economic change.
→ Continue reading Jose Ramos’ paper on futureslab.org
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 596
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:06)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:24)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour Podcast. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was nurtured by First Nations people for millennia before their land was stolen. In that time, by focusing on their country, nurturing their country and their communities, they acquired a great amount of ancient knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that we are going to be very helpful for us as we face up to the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt: (01:15)
If you rely on certain Australian politicians and the mainstream newspapers for your energy news, you can’t be blamed for thinking that renewable energy, that’s what’s driving our electricity prices up. Because now for years and years we’ve been told this story that wind and solar are unreliable and batteries don’t work and we need coal for baseload power and so on.
But listen, folks, the figures from Australia’s electricity market, the facts, tell a very different story.
For instance, here in the first quarter of 2026, battery systems across Australia tripled the amount of solar energy that they shifted from the middle of the day and then into the evening peak. That’s compared with a year ago. So three times more battery electricity in the evening.
So instead of wasting all this surplus solar generation that we now have in the middle of the day, batteries are storing it and then releasing it when we out in the houses need it most in our households after sunset. Batteries deliver up to 3,500 megawatts into the grid during the evening peak. And what does that mean? It means that wholesale electricity prices fell by 12 per cent nationally compared with a year ago.
Don’t buy the lies that renewables make electricity more expensive. It’s a lie. It’s a hoax. Prices fell, and that’s a fact, by 12 per cent nationally this first quarter of 2026 compared to a year ago. Here in Victoria, the story is even better. Prices fell with 28 per cent.
So what does that mean? That means that gas is being squeezed out. We used to use gas generators to make sure that we had enough electricity in the evening. We don’t need that anymore. Now we have these large-scale renewable energy battery storage and they replace gas. So gas-fired power generation is now at its lowest level since 1999.
One in 25 Australian homes now has its own battery. And it keeps growing. Battery capacity expanded by 8 gigawatts. In just the last 12 months. It’s one of the fastest growth rates anywhere in the world.
And it’s being noticed outside of Australia. But somehow we can still have politicians here in this country who claim that our renewables don’t work. How do they get away with it? I really wonder.
And in some areas in Queensland, in New South Wales and in South Australia, it’s even better than that. Some of the electricity retailers are now beginning to offer electricity at no charge between 11am and 2pm. That’s free electricity three hours every day!
And how is that possible? Because there’s so much solar, there’s such an abundant amount of electricity in the network during the day in these hours between 11 and 2 that the electricity prices actually fall below zero. So that’s why you know retailers are just passing on.
Some of those savings directly to their customers. It’s not everyone who can access free electricity yet, but it shows which direction we’re going. That’s the reality. We are entering an era where electricity sometimes is so plentiful that the retailers give it away for free.
How does that match with being told that renewables make electricity more expensive? We, the consumers, are benefiting from renewables. And that’s not a hoax, I have to say it, it’s not a hoax. It is a fact.
And that’s the story that the politicians and that the media should be telling you. Every solar panel and every battery is not just lowering our emissions, making our climate more safe. It’s also strengthening our energy security so we’re not reliant on fossil fuels coming from the Middle East and so on.
We’re saving money and it’s making our energy system more resilient regardless of what turmoil there might be out there in the world. That’s the story. “Renewables…” You’re being told a hoax when you listen to Pauline Hanson saying that “Renewables are a hoax”. It’s actually the other way around, and that’s what we should be singing out loud and proud from our rooftops.
And I think you should remember next time you’re voting in an election. What about bringing in some honesty and some integrity back into politics in this country? Hmm? Should we?
Anyway, it’s time for some global news. Over to Colin Mockett OAM who has always been looking at what’s been happening around the big world in the week that passed. Over to you Colin. What do you have for us?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Colin Mockett: (06:31)
Yes, thank you, Mik. And yeah, I’ve got an interesting little list of things here. But I want to reiterate all of the things that you’ve been saying, but
add on to it too, that the Murdoch press is very much into that. The Murdoch press is totally opposed to any environmental change, as is Donald Trump.
And that’s where our roundup begins: In America, where the Trump administration has abandoned its legal efforts to halt wind energy projects across the United States. It also dropped its challenge to the court ruling that threw out the Trump law that had stopped federal permits for wind projects. The states that had challenged his order, that’s Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New York issued a joint statement describing the new ruling as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.
And the decision finally validates the December eighth ruling by the US District Court Judge Patty Saris which concluded that Trump’s January 2025 executive order was unlawful. In doing so, it called the sweeping ban on wind projects arbitrary and capricious and exceeded the President’s authority. This is a neat setback, a very a major setback for the Trump stopping Biden’s rollout of environmental projects.
Not surprisingly, environmental and wildlife groups applauded the move, and Nancy Pine of the Sierra Club, which is the largest environmental group in the US, said renewable energy continues to prevail and grow in spite of Trump’s relentless attacks.
Now, home to Australia where the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed that last week that a very strong El Niño global weather event had been declared, and it forecast that it could be the most severe in decades. This elevated the risks of drought, heat waves, and bushfires for all of Australia in this coming summer. But the forecast is likely to be much more severe in India.
Where scientists are warning that a strong El Niño would be disastrous for the whole region, which is already grappling with deadly heat waves along with an energy crisis due to the crisis in the Middle East. The warning states that if El Niño causes the rains to arrive later, which is likely, the heat wave that has engulfed India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in recent weeks is will continue longer.
This will cripple livelihoods and potentially lead to thousands of deaths. Delayed rains would prove particularly devastating for farmers who are relying on the rains for their next crop planting season. A heat wave there in May had already caused damage to wheat and mustard crops.
And it was feared that El Niño could worsen drought conditions and have a devastating effect on food security throughout the subcontinent. El Niños are triggered by warming the ocean around the equator and a weakening of trade winds that blow around the Pacific Ocean, which reduces the rainfall on Australia’s eastern seaboard.
And Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology was later among the international weather agencies in officially declaring this year’s El Niño . The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared it at the beginning of June and warned them of its effects. They said that it would rank among the largest events in the historical record going back to 1950.
Japan also declared the El Niño alarm more than two weeks ago. Now the last El Niño in our region ran from spring 2023 to early summer 2024, and it included Australia’s driest three months on record. That was August, September and October 2023. That was the summer of bushfires, if you remember.
Now the new BOM statement said it’s too early to say how the current El Niño would play out, noting that a rainband had swept across the southern Australia this week. But with El Niño underway, the three-month weather outlook is for hotter temperatures and below medium rainfall.
The Bureau said that a warmer Pacific Ocean usually caused global temperatures to rise saying that Southern Australia had already experienced above average temperatures this year and this winter. It added that global warming had generated a long term warning trend and noted that since 2000, Australia had recorded 14 of its 15 warmest years since records began. Most models suggest this event is likely to be “strong to very strong”the Bureau statement warned. And a statement from the United Nations’ weather service, that’s the WMO. They said “El Niños have a global reach that are associated with severe storms and flooding in the Americas, droughts and floods in North Africa and Asia, and heat waves, droughts and bushfires in Australia”
So we can’t say we haven’t been warned. And that relatively unhappy note ends our round up for the week.
. . .
Jingle: (13:05)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (13:12)
Our guest this morning is Dr Jose Ramos. Jose is an action researcher, a futurist and political activist focused on the planetary commons. He is founder and co-director of Futures Lab, a network of over 1,500 experimenters and action foresight, a leading boutique futures consultancy. Coeditor of the Journal of Future Studies, and co-founder of the Participatory Futures Global Swarm, all focused on the future. So Jose, welcome to The Sustainable Hour!
Jose Ramos: (13:55)
Thank you.
Tony:
With that obvious focus on the future, tell us about how that’s all evolved.
Jose Ramos (14:02)
Well, I got involved quite a while ago. I’ve been in what people term the Future Studies or Foresight Field for about 25 years. I initially had finished the postgrad… I did my bachelors in California at UC Irvine. And I was essentially just kind of exploring what to do next.
I had lived in Japan for a couple of years, I had lived in Spain. I was sort of in-between things and I was looking for a field that would allow me to explore the future and also address my kind of an intuition that I wanted some agency. I wanted to understand how change actually happened.
So I discovered a couple of programs. I began in Houston, actually, studying with Peter Bishop. They have a program in Studies of the Future at that time, it was the University of Houston Clear Lake.
And then I met a beautiful, incredible Australian woman who convinced me to come to Australia. And, you know, I… mister Romantic here – I ended up in Melbourne. And then I ended up… Luckily there was a program at Swinburne, and I finished the the degree at Swinburne. So I did my master’s in Swinburne in what’s called Strategic Foresight.
And then I took a bit of time in-between. I taught at TAFE, political economy at TAFE for for a while in a bridging program. And we ended up moving to Geelong, actually, where you’re at, because my wife started teaching at Geelong Grammar. And so here I was, next to an oil refinery and Corio.
But I had enrolled in a PhD by that point. And what I was really interested in is… – and I think because I had been introduced to what globalisation was in the 1990s, I had lived in Taiwan, I had lived in Japan, in Spain, I had, you know, grew up in Los Angeles. So I really had a kind of visceral experience of the global economy. And I wanted to understand these things, but I also knew there were some serious problems.
I had been keeping track of the protests against the WTO in Seattle, you know, I had been an an activist from my college days, in my community college days. I was campaigning on the Rio Summit, back in 19…, I think it was 1991.
So I had that in my background and I really wanted to experience, I really wanted to understand… You know, we’re locked into this globalisation process, but what are the alternative visions and pathways for ecological justice, for social justice? These are some of the criticisms that were leveled against economic globalisation. How it was essentially creating almost like a political policy buffer zones for corporate expansion, but wasn’t supporting environmental and social goods. So that’s what my PhD was about.
So I did that at Queensland University of Technology, and it was on alternative globalisation pathways, but it looked at the World Social Forum, which was a really important social process at the time. It was a CounterDavos.
Davos, you know, the World Economic Forum is where the the billionaires gather to formulate their plans, and that’s the forum for capitalism. And the CounterDavos, which emerged in Porto Alegre, was to say, ‘Okay, well, another world is possible!’ That was the motto. ‘We can go past this, we can do something different. So how do we do that?’
And so that brought literally millions of people together over multiple decades. To discuss, to dialogue, to share ideas, to have interchanges. They happened all over the place. Porto Alegre, Mumbai… I went to the Mumbai one, Caracas in Venezuela, a number of different places around the world.
And I also was a co-organiser of the local Melbourne branch. So we did a Melbourne Social Forum as well. In fact, that’s where BZE launched their initiative, you know, where Matthew Wright actually said, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ He got incredible support.
And it was just that kind of place where we were open to… We knew that we, you know… We knew even back then that, you know, like… We’ve got some serious challenges here, and we have to take our imagination one step further. So we attracted those kinds of people into that space, and it became a networking space and a connecting space alongside many other I’ve… as many other venues and events around Australia.
So that was sort of my path and then after I finished my PhD, I just slipped into doing contract work for different agencies and governments and, you know, I had a young child, I had a mortgage, moving into middle age, so what that shtick is.
But you know, I’ve always continued to write about the commons, write about alternative globalisations, and I’ve developed that thinking. And I continue to develop it, and my work under Futures Lab is really focused on that kind of transformational experimentation. You know, how do we experiment with ideas and approaches that can address our real challenges that we’re facing.
Colin: (20:24)
That is wonderful, Jose! And you’re the first person we’ve had on that I can recall who has studied the future. I would really like, first of all, an overview from you. As somebody who’s taken a really micro look at where we’re going as a planet, if you like, have you got a positive outlook for mankind?
Jose: (20:54)
That’s tricky, it’s complex, that one, you know. And we have to be careful, like, we don’t want fatalism. We need to search for our power, search for pathways.
What people would say in future studies is that optimism and pessimism may not be the most useful frameworks. Because optimism can often mean that you think it’s gonna be fine. So, why do I need to be involved? And pessimism can also mean it’s all screwed and in that case, ‘Let’s just have fun while the party’s going!’ – right?
So I think the view in future studies would be to critically assess our emotional landscape and our cognitive landscape with reflect to our image with the future.
One of the founders of Future Studies, he is a man named Fred Polak. He wrote that civilisations that have a positive image of the future or an animating image of the future actually create motivation. They create power within that society. So one of his diagnoses is that we are affected by like a malaise of negative imagery around the future. And we are struggling to find positive images of the future.
And the person who translated his work into English was a woman named Elise Bolding. She was an incredible scholar in her own right, a feminist, futurist, and she wrote several books on the underside of history. So she documented the emerging images of the future that give us hope, that give us pathways. She saw what Polak was saying and said, Okay, well, if that’s part of the malaise, then how do we find these new pathways? What are the new images?
And I think over the last, at least over the last half century, the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s were really a rich time of the emergence of new images for the future. I think the fact that we’re living in a time of the decline of of U.S. hegemony and the grip that the fossil fuel industries and and capitalism has on that empire means that it’s kind of it’s kind of like the the extra weight that we have to carry as we try to find new pathways. You know, we’re being pulled back.
As we’re trying to go forward we’re being pulled back. But I would say personally that I’m optimistic long term. I think in the short term, we are going to have to go through quite a lot of pain. That pain is fundamental transition in lifestyles, transition in energy, and political transitions.
Long term – what I would say is that we’re moving into a Post-Holocene world. That we’ve been in this Holocene for the last 12,000 years or so, and that human beings, we tend to… we’re cultural beings, so we tend to pattern our way into particular forms of human life that we assume are going to last, they’re just gonna keep on going.
And the Holocene was a period, you know, that we’re still right at the tail end of, of really good weather, really good conditions for human civilisation. We’re moving out of that. We’re moving into a new period of human existence where we’re not going to have that climate certainty. We’re going to have to do unprecedented things. We’re going to have to learn how to govern our planetary commons, our atmospheric commons.
That is a huge step change for a primate that just came out of the savannahs of Africa a few hundred thousand years ago. And what that means is cultural change. It’s not going to happen overnight. So that’s just one of the challenges in a Post-Holocene world: How do we collectively govern, manage our atmospheric commons? Yeah.
Colin: (25:36)
One of the biggest problems that we face, Jose, is the widening gap between rich and poor, which is at the root of many of our social problems. Can you, or any of the people that you’re engaged with at the moment, can you see any way at all of closing that gap and making life fairer for the growing number of humans on the planet whose life is worse every year? By taking something from the small number who just get richer every year. Surely if it carries on this way we’re heading for another revolution.
Jose: (26:23)
Yeah, I mean, every country produces its own pathologies. You know, if you look at the United States, you know, the high rate of incarceration, the opioid epidemic, cultures produce their own unique pathologies. As societies, as cultures, we have to have a strong emphasis on equity. We have to build a value of equity, we have to build a value of care that has to be built into the fabric of governance. It cannot be just you know, some kind of political football that we kick around.
So to me, that’s gonna take a very deliberate effort where a worldview that we understand that we live with everyone in society we live with, our children would live will live with, their children’s children will live with, in perpetuity, into the future.
Why would we create a world that’s unequal where we’re gonna create social problems that our children and their children’s children are gonna have to live in? so I think that that that has to be plied into how we create the political economies, our social economic structures. and obviously capitalism has an incredibly powerful it’s an incredibly powerful force and it influences governments and it undermines legislative processes in many different countries. So these are the things that we have to be deliberate about.
Tony (27:58)
Jose, are you aware of – or is there any group of people that gives you optimism, like, you see them as going in the the right direction?
Jose: (28:11)
I see I see many, many, many groups, and many more than I’m personally aware of doing many creative things around the world. You know, it just depends on where you’re talking, what sector, what field. If you wanna look, for example, in the U.S., there there’s many people that understand that governance is broken, that something new needs to be fundamentally reborn. There’s many efforts there.
We know that the food system is incredibly unsustainable, and there’s people working on regenerative farming all over the world. All over. You know, the the permaculture international movement is vibrant. And there’s people that are creating incredible systems and experiments in many different parts of the world. There’s people that are working on climate and health equity. You know, there’s… that’s a huge process because people know that, we’re going into the Post-Holocene. We’re gonna have to find a way to support people’s health in this changing climate. So I see a lot, and it is just a non-exhaustivlist of creativity.
You would know, Paul Hawkins wrote the book ‘Blessed Unrest’. And he said that “for any problem that humanity’s facing, there’s an autoimmune response.” That people from all over the planet will respond to that that challenge or that problem.
And I see that with everything. I see that from… if you just even look at how renewables have just completely transformed over the past 30 years. It is unrecognisable, right? Like, 30 years ago we were just dreaming we would be in this situation where renewables… You know… In the U.S. I think I saw that little stat that renewables just surpass coal. Incredible. Right?
So I’m with Paul Hawken on this. You know, I see the blessed unrest, and I see people from all over. Does that mean that the short term is gonna be easy? I don’t think it is. I think it’s growing pains. I think it’s… The butterfly has to fight its way out of the chrysalis, and that is not an easy thing to do. But I am optimistic. I would say cautiously optimistic, in the long term, because human beings are cultural beings. So if we learned a kind of an industrial form that was unsustainable over several hundred years, we can unlearn that. We can learn something new.
. . .
SONG (30:58)
‘We Are In This Together’ – audio mp3
Intro:
Feel the pulse, feel the beat
A new world beats at our feet
A vision bright under the stars
Reweaving the stories of who we are
NASA Apollo 11 Mission Control Center:
“11, Houston. Thrust is GO, all engines. You’re looking good.”
Feel the pulse, feel the beat
NASA Apollo 11 astronaut Neil A. Armstrong:
“Roger. You’re loud and clear, Houston.”
Jose Ramos:
“What if we take a new perspective? The web of life.”
NASA Apollo 11 Mission Control Center:
“This is Houston. You are confirmed GO for orbit.”
Jose Ramos: “The web of life being that we are a species among many species, understanding the interconnections between these different ecosystems, different beings, a deep respect for the beings that life around us, whether they are bugs or birds or mountains or forests. And what if we took that perspective into a place – a domain?”
Jose Ramos: “You know, I see the blessed unrest. And I see people from all over.” “Be this larger idea that we share this planet, that we are brothers and sisters, and that we… we are in this together.”
Verse 1:
Humanity united, like rivers we flow
Countless connections, a force we all know
Together we rise, together we stand
Grounded in purpose, a global hand in hand
Chorus:
This is our call to the pulse of the Earth
Reimagine the world, give rebirth to our worth
Jose Ramos: “The web of life”
Living systems thriving, a shared humanity
A life-affirming vision that sets our spirits free
Jose Ramos: “The butterfly has to fight its way out of the chrysalis.”
That sets our spirits free
“The web of life”
Under the stars
Verse 2:
Look at the trees, hear the rivers hum
Nature’s voice calls us, it’s time to become
Curators of culture, in harmony with the land
Renewing our spirits, together we stand
“We are in this together”
Feel the pulse, feel the beat
“The web of life”
Bridge:
We are the architects of a future so bright
Crafted by hands that refuse to take flight
With each step forward, let’s breathe in the hope
Embodied by visions, we learn how to cope
Chorus:
This is our call to the pulse of the Earth
Reimagine the world, give rebirth to our worth
Living systems thriving, a shared humanity
A life-affirming vision that sets our spirits free
Jeremy Lent:
“The wills to live in midst of life that wills to live.”
…that sets our spirits free
Jeremy Lent:
“This is life speaking through you. That is the kind of transformation that can begin with ourselves.”
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General:
“We are all in this together.”
Verse 3:
We’re turning the tide, breaking all the constraints
Let’s sow the seeds, ignite the vibrance
To challenge the systems, the old paradigms
Together in rhythm, we’ll shift the times
Feel the pulse, feel the beat
Verse 4:
As echoes of progress swell through our veins
with every heartbeat, together we’ll reign
A future’s calling, and our spirits arise
Unified in purpose, enchanted we’ll fly
…Enchanted we’ll fly
A new world beats at our feet
A vision bright, under the stars
Jose Ramos: “We are in this together”
…Reweaving the stories of who we are
Jose Ramos: “We are in this together”
Jose Ramos: “So if we learned a kind of… an industrial form that was unsustainable over several hundreds of years, we can unlearn that – we can learn something new.”
. . .
Mik: (35:18)
So, Jose, we have a new player in the room. And last week we heard Colin referred to a federal politician who had given a speech, and the speech was basically about human extinction because of artificial intelligence. It’s coming, and I see what he’s talking about. Because what AI does is it amplifies who we are as humans.
So if we are dominating, if we have bad intentions, then AI can be used to amplify that. If we’re good, it can also amplify good, of course. But there is a worry here because we have, as you talked about the long perspective, we have centuries and millennia of tradition in a way for men being very dominating, and nature and women being oppressed. And if we then put that into our AI systems – that attitude – we’re in trouble!
Jose: (36:25)
I don’t disagree with you. I think there’s a couple layers for me. I think humanity’s relationship to technology is vexed. Because we’re technological beings, and technology was the way in which that was our success formula. You know, we began using fire, we began cooking, that transformed our gut, it transformed the size of our brain, we began developing tools. We’re a continuum with technology from the very beginning.
So it’s not us and technology, because we are expressing technology as an expression of our being. But we’re all very unconscious about it. I think that was partly what I get from Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey is this really unconscious relationship that we have. That we’re like the, you know, I wish I could find a metaphor for that, but you know, we’re the car driving really fast and there’s a cliff.
But we’re not slowing down, you know. We’re we’re so I think that partly it’s a species level challenge, I would say. That we have to mature as a species, and we have to begin to own the technological impacts and reverberations that we have. And I we just keep on doing it. You know, we did it with fossil fuels, we did it with nuclear technology, now we’re doing it with AI. And we’re gonna do it with genetic engineering. Like, it just like sometimes I just I think: Is it human beings? We just love it so much. It’s a reason why we can have this conversation as well. You know, it’s got it’s got a real duality to it.
But then at the other level I would say is the political economy. If you got a capitalist political economy, then expect what you got when we were you know, when we saw the big social networking platforms commodify relationships, commodify our data. How is this gonna be any different?
And then, like you said, you know, these these things are powerful and they can amplify the power that we have. I couldn’t agree more, you know, and and in that regard, like if you look at traditional societies, they regulated human behaviour.
So there’s this vein in Western philosophical thinking around liberalism that we should be able to do what we want to do as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. But that whole it doesn’t hurt anyone else is usually the thing that’s left until something seriously gets hurt.
So I think we have to again, like, yeah, we have to rethink. We have to rethink how our societies function. I think AI should force that kind of rethinking, and we need to really think what’s an appropriate engagement with that. There’s so many things in AI – that’s ten podcasts just there, isn’t it?
Tony: (39:35)
Yeah.
Mik: (39:37)
So that… Do you get where I’m trying to get at, in a way? Because what I’m saying is: If we are to stand a chance to survive, we need to have more focus on the masculine, the dominating attitude of humans.
Jose: (39:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that. I agree with that. I think that there’s particular unconscious ways of seeing the world of behaving. Patriarchal or domination of nature, not understanding ourselves as part of the web of life that we sit atop. I think there’s some pretty fundamental assumptions that sit within the current way of living.
And I think that, yeah, I wouldn’t disagree… If you add more power to that… One of Herman Daly’s points, you know, he talked about Doughnut Economics before it was Doughnut Economics, right? You know, the steady state society. He said the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough energy, it’s that we have too much energy. You know, we have so much energy that we can impact the world around us in such a disproportionate way.
So I would I would take Daly’s comment and kind of put it on top what you’re saying. You know, that if you have a particular worldview and the power to change, yeah, of course. You know, worldview plus power equals something, right? There’s an equation there.
Tony: (41:05)
You’re listening on The Sustainable Hour to Jose Ramos – and Mik is eager to ask another question.
Mik: (41:14)
Yes, I am, because I would like to hear your version of what do we do about it then?
Jose: (41:21)
Well what I what I focus on in my work is and a lot of the my colleagues and the people that I’ve learned from is around what might be, you know, in academic terms you’d call it epistemological intervention. In lay terms, we would say, what’s a new way of seeing the world and understanding the world and then and then bringing forth action from that new place. So I’ll give you an example.
Instead of that, you talked about the domination mindset, right? That might be associated with the Judeo Christian tradition, you know, the man at the top and man above nature, etc. etc. Right? Well, what if we take a new perspective, which is very common to preindustrial societies and indigenous societies: the web of life.
The web of life being that we are a species among many species, understanding the interconnections between these different ecosystems, different beings, a deep respect for the beings that live around us, whether they are bugs or birds or mountains or forests. And what if we took that new perspective into a place? A domain? What if I’m working in fashion? What if I’m working in energy?
And if I take a new perspective, and then I say: ‘Well from this perspective what new opportunities does this bring forth? What new perspectives on the future does this bring forth? So that’s an epistemological intervention, it’s taking a new perspective taking a new discourse, taking a new paradigm, taking a new… And it could be within… These are embedded and embodied across the world – that there’s people from everywhere that have this diversity. But that diversity tends to get pushed out by the logic of the dominant system. But it’s there.
Here in Australia, it’s here with what I would say, the Bush Mechanic. You know, The Bush Mechanic, which might come from the convict background or the… You know, there’s different threads here that I think are very profound. They’re very rich. There is the indigenous people. Even within here, we’ve got a diversity of communities and people that see the world differently. And it is about leaning into those types of thinking, exploring it and seeing what avenues that they give us.
A lot of these will just be experiments and thinking. They’ll they’ll help us to see the world differently or understand the world differently, but some of them might actually help produce solutions. You know, and it’s an exploratory process. It isn’t you know, there’s no like logical flow from one thing to another that you’re gonna get this, you know, automatic kind of solution. So so that’s that’s how we work, you know, and my colleagues work is
We’re looking for new perspectives. I use the the logic of the commons, because the commons makes a lot of sense. I draw on Elinor Ostrom and Christian Iaione on the urban commons and many other people who’ve talked about the commons. There’s a variety, there’s a whole community around commoning. To me, that’s one of the best frameworks for understanding our contemporary challenges.
So that’s a different perspective or paradigm from which to come at the challenges that we’re facing. But then there’s many other perspectives as well that I think are incredibly important. And it’s about exploring those and honouring the diverse knowledge that exists in society. We have incredible resources in that diversity of thinking, and oftentimes that thinking is not being given the light of day because of that dominance – because of the logic of that dominance of the main system.
. . .
Jingle (45:44)
. . .
Mik: (45:46)
That’s how much talk about the future we could fit into one sustainable hour today. Thank you very much to Jose Ramos. So Jose, if people have become interested in this field, do you have some recommendations to where should we go and find more of what you’re talking about?
Jose: (46:06)
The best resource, and I I’m biased here because I’m a co-editor for the journal, but it’s an open access journal. It’s been going since 1992. So it’s got several decades behind it. It literally has over a thousand articles that are open access. It’s called the Journal of Future Studies. And you can find everything from short essays to three thousand word things on every topic. Every topic, including personal futures, including everything under the sun and it’s free. So that’s a great resource. I would point people towards the Journal of Future Studies. if you’re interested in the work that I do, it’s futureslab.org.
Mik: (46:49)
Now this is going to be interesting. We always have a B section in the sustainable hour. We call it the B section because we are asking you, Jose, to come up with what should we be? When you think about it, what should we be?
Jose: (47:05)
Yeah, I mean, the thing that comes to me, and this is very personal, is that this this experience we’re having is incredibly impersonal. You know, why am I conscious in this body at this time? Why wasn’t I born you from your mother? Why wasn’t I born from somebody else? We could have been anyone. And the sages of the past, from the Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad or many others told us we’re brothers and sisters. And that’s also what evolutionary science tells us that we’re brothers and sisters. And then in contemporary philosophy, people like John Rawls and his Veil of Ignorance say: ‘If you’re going to create a society, create a society in which you could be any one of those people and still be happy, still be cared for.’ Right? So to me the being would be: Don’t be yourself! But maybe: Be this larger idea that we share this planet, that we’re brothers and sisters and that we’re in this together.
. . .
SONG (48:32)
‘Symphony of the Shift’
Verse 1:
At first we saw it as a climate crisis
Then we found it to be so much more
As threads began to unravel
And the meta crisis converged
Inequality, control
oligarchs and emperors
Bridge:
The world we knew started crumbling
But that’s when we found direction
We discovered that old song
of the natural evolution
Chorus:
There’s a signal in the chaos
There’s a stirring in the wave
This is our time, this is our reality
This is our symphony – of the Shift
Verse 2:
They were midwives of what came next
as humans gave birth to a values-based path
interconnected, indigenous direction
seedbeds emerging, regeneration
Bridge:
There was an invitation
There was collective imagination
The mechanics were the easy part
The mindset was the harder climb
Breaking down hierarchies
Stopping extraction – and the greed
Chorus:
There’s a signal in the chaos
There’s a stirring in the wave
This is our time, this is our reality
This is our symphony – of the Shift
Intermission – spoken:
The shift is not above or below
It’s middle-out
It’s local
It’s conscious
It’s creative
It’s alive
Verse 3:
Not in palaces, not with power
But in hands that plant
In hearts that listen
Co-create with compassion
Every rupture
opens doors to complexity
A call to coherence
Chorus:
There’s a signal in the chaos
There’s a stirring in the wave
This is our time, this is our reality
This is our symphony – of the Shift
Outro:
Evolutionary impulse
We’ve found our voice
These are our choices
These are our values
This is our world
When we listened, we could hear
the world ask us to grow up
– and come home
. . .
Audio clips in the song:
Antonio Guterres:
“If we are not able to reverse the present trend that is leading to catastrophe in the world, we are doomed.”
Michael Haupt:
“This is big stuff we talk about.”
Sir David King, former British Chief Scientist:
“We have to move rapidly.”
Michael Haupt:
“This is big stuff we’re talking about. It requires the citizens to organise themselves first.”
Michael Haupt:
“It will be a global values-based civilisation. When nation states have disappeared completely, we view each other as a global family caring for the host that is carrying us around this universe because the planet itself is evolving and we are agents of that evolutionary process.”
Michael Haupt:
“Is this all going to happen in time?”
Instagram clip: (52:28)
I have a computer engineering background and I work in the manufacturing space and I know we can make it happen. Starting at self-sufficiency, then you got communal coordination, local systems, national infrastructure, global consciousness. At a small scale, I plan to start bartering in my local community and then start a UPIC community garden. But in order to make this a reality for a lot of people, here’s my plan:
Sharing the story of my journey and how I’m using tech to work in hand with nature, teaching and spreading awareness, gaining a following, building a network, and raising capital, then building systems in alignment, setting new standards, and driving change. Humanity’s collective consciousness is calling for better, but we must build it from the ground up, just as today’s world was built in the visions of those that decided to.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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