Energy Crises & Global Power Shifts: The Struggle for Stability in Israel, Iran, and Beyond | Helen Thompson
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2024
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(Conversation recorded on November 11th, 2024, prior to a ceasefire declared between Israel and Lebanon on November 27th, 2024)
If you've followed TGS for some time, you've heard Nate speak about The 5 Horsemen – the biggest risks for humans and civilization in the coming decade. Today's episode delves into one of the most rapidly escalating: geopolitics.
Today, Nate is joined by Political Economy Professor Helen Thompson to explore the evolving understanding of energy's role in international relations, particularly in the context of recent conflicts in the Middle East. They discuss the challenge of anticipating the volatile changes in energy supplies, the complexities of navigating information in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, and the role of global powers like BRICS and OPEC.
How will resource conflicts continue to shape the long-standing tensions in the Middle East? What would a transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world mean for the global geopolitical landscape and its energy implications? Given how connected these issues are to the delicate balance of our world, how can we increase awareness and preparation for future crises?
About Helen Thompson:
Helen Thompson has been Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge since 1994. Her current research concentrates on the political economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century. She is a regular panelist on Talking Politics and a columnist for the New Statesman. She is a co-presenter of UnHerd's podcast, These Times, and recently published Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're just kind of condemned to carry on these trends until the crisis is so overwhelming |
| 0:05.3 | that actually something else comes out of it. |
| 0:09.1 | Historically, it tends to be that something else has to come after a great deal of suffering |
| 0:13.1 | and trauma. |
| 0:14.2 | So the question in a way is, what would it mean to have some kind of reset that changed |
| 0:20.6 | the path that we were on in a decisive way, |
| 0:23.5 | and how could any of us as individuals have any influence over that? |
| 0:31.4 | You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Higgins. On this show, we describe |
| 0:37.1 | how energy, the economy, |
| 0:39.3 | the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:44.8 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play |
| 0:50.7 | emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 0:58.4 | This platform will not typically chase news events because I think that looking at the longer-term backdrop |
| 1:10.7 | and the systemic underpinnings of all the different |
| 1:13.9 | situations we find is more valuable. I don't want to have sensational. This happened yesterday, |
| 1:20.6 | sorts of things. So with that in mind, I am rejoined today by political economy professor Helen Thompson |
| 1:29.5 | for an update in energy and geopolitics from her perspective as a historian and an academic. |
| 1:36.6 | And today we discuss some of the most difficult questions that are arising around the rapidly |
| 1:42.5 | evolving and high-stakes situation in the Middle East, |
| 1:46.0 | Russia and Ukraine. This episode was recorded before this morning's IRBM missile from Russia to |
| 1:56.7 | Ukraine, and there's lots to learn about, and the implications of that are huge. |
| 2:02.3 | But I'm no expert on that and neither is she. |
... |
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