The Dig: Eco-Socialism and the Climate Crisis
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2018
⏱️ 109 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's episode is a long one. It's the first of two this week on climate politics: a live event that I hosted at Verso Books in New York a couple weeks ago. Or, at least part of it is. The event livestream, which we grabbed the audio from, malfunctioned for the first half hour or so of the episode. And so, dear listeners, we made lemonade out of audiovisual lemons and re-did the first part of the interview later over the phone from Providence.
Dan spoke to Audrea Lim, Thea Riofrancos, Ashley Dawson and Daniel Aldana Cohen about how the left should respond to the climate crisis—and how that response, for better or for worse, will require a deep transformation in social and economic relations, and also in our built environment and how we inhabit it. In other words, eco-socialism is the only solution because we can't achieve real ecological balance without socialism, and true socialism that delivers liberation would be concretely impossible without ecological balance.
Thanks to Verso. Check out so many good lefty titles at www.versobooks.com
And please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at Patreon.com |
| 0:05.3 | and by Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you. |
| 0:19.6 | One that you might like is New Dark Age, Technology in the End of the Future by James Bridal. As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. |
| 0:26.6 | Underlying this trend is a single idea. |
| 0:29.6 | The belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and that more data is |
| 0:34.0 | data is enough to help us build a better world. |
| 0:37.7 | In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, |
| 0:41.0 | increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. |
| 0:49.0 | Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. |
| 0:54.7 | Despite the apparent accessibility of information, |
| 0:57.5 | we're living in a new dark age, from rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy. |
| 1:06.4 | We no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. |
| 1:11.4 | The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, |
| 1:17.0 | while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer |
| 1:24.4 | James Bridal surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems and |
| 1:30.0 | reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime. |
| 1:35.0 | New Dark Age, technology in the end of the future, by James Bridal, |
| 1:40.0 | out now from Verso Books. Welcome to the Digg, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm |
| 1:57.1 | broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island. This week I have two episodes on the climate crisis. |
| 2:05.0 | On Friday I'll be posting my interview with Elizabeth Rush, the author of the book Rising, |
| 2:11.0 | Dispatches from the New American Shore. |
| 2:13.0 | Today's episode, the first of the two, |
... |
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