(00:01):
Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me. Trying to keep my footprints small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Tryin' to save the planet oh will someone please save me? Trying to save the planet, oh will someone please save me?

(00:25):
Welcome to In Over My Head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Mario Pansera. Mario is the director of the Post Growth Innovation Lab at the University of Vigo. His work focuses on responsible research and innovation and innovation for post-growth. He gained a Ph.D. in management at the University of Exeter Business School and went on to a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship in Brussels. Mario's also an international faculty at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town, where he teaches responsible innovation.

Welcome to Enno of my head. Mario, welcome

(00:55):
Welcome to you. And thank you very much for inviting me.

(00:58):
So looking at our modern society, it seems like growth is always the goal. As long as we're spending money, the economy is booming and everything is fine. But it seems to me that prioritizing growth above all else is what got us into the climate crisis in the first place. And I don't know if it's compatible with finding a solution. So I want to explore de-growth as an alternative. Your post-growth innovation lab has several projects that could possibly help me find some answers. So I'm looking forward to discussing your work. Maybe to start, if someone hasn't heard about this term, what exactly is de-growth?

(01:23):
Okay, well this is a huge question actually, because de-growth is not one thing. It's many things I would love to say that's actually is many people with different ideas. And it's quite complex argument because it's something that has to do with academic work. So it's research and it's something that also has to do with lay people trying to challenge the dominant vision about progress, and modernity. So it's difficult to define. There are people that are, try to map the definition of degrowth, and then there are more than 100th definitions. Probably my definition is that degrowth is the idea that we can live a good life independently from the accumulation of material. Staff can be good, can be money, can be status, right? So the idea that we can actually have good life, we can even improve our life even though if we don't gain more money, even though if we don't own more things and more stuff. And even though if we are not consuming more. So this is the basic idea, right? Thinking beyond this idea that we need more to stay better to, to improve our life.

(02:33):
So what is the difference between de-growth and post-growth?

(02:37):
To be honest with you, I I don't see a lot of difference. There is a lot of overlapping aspects. And actually you can see this two like buzzword, if you like, that I say an umbrella concepts used by different community of practitioner or academics in different moments, in different context, okay? If you want to draw a line between degrowth and post-growth, maybe we can say that degrowth is a slogan, which is born to be provocative, right? Challenging because in the north, in the affluent society, it seems many people, including me, think that we reached a moment in which our economic progress become uneconomic as people like Ivan ILI used to say. So the benefit that growth is providing us are less than the damages that economic growth is creating, right? So this process becomes uneconomic and that's why we need to de-growth.

(03:30):
So we need to decelerate, we need to slow down, right? Post growth is something more general in the sense that postal is how we can create a society that is not constructed, is not built around this idea that the more, the better. That's we need to increase GDP, we need to increase consumption to be, to stay better, right? And this is a more general question, more general topic. And I would say it's important to distinguish in which context we can use the growth. I, personally speaking, I never use the growth and never say this specific ne never use this specific buzzword or when I'm dealing with people from the global south, because I think that's who is to the growth, are people in the north, not people in Africa, or not people in South America or many part of Asia in which we grew historically on their expenses. So we actually extract resources to grow. So there is a, a response, different responsibilities, unequal sharing and responsibility about the damages that economic growth capitalism traditionally cost. So in those contests, I tends to use post-growth as a more holistic way of talking about the same things basically.

(04:43):
And so maybe just generally you can talk about the work that your lab is doing right now.

(04:49):
Yes, as you say, my lab is called the Post Growth Innovation lab. So you have post growth in the title, you have innovation, and you have lab. So it's a place in which we have a number of researcher with a very, very diverse background. So we have people who have PhD history for Cambridge, for example, people with PhD in ecological economics, some from leads. You have people from India focusing on science, technology and innovation studies. You have people like me that I originally had a master degrees in telecommunication engineering and PhD management. We have people who studies critical management or critical consumption, critical marketing, huge variety of of profiles. And main founding of the group is coming from the European Research Council, which is a research council funded by the European Union, was principle aims is to found groundbreaking, crazy research, I would say, right?

(05:42):
Like the frontier of knowledge. So this is where most of our money comes from. I would say 80%. And the project that is founded under this this scheme is called Prospera. Prospera in Italian. I'm Italian means prospering, right? Thrive and stands for innovation without growth. How can we imagine a science and innovation system in a post growth era? So this is the basic idea, and the focus of the project is really like science, technology of innovation. Why this is not conventional in the growth studies, a lot of people working in the growth, historically, I focus on frugality, individual values or bigger question like logical economics, studying in flows of energy and materials, social metabolism. Why society, the way the economy is organized is unsustainable, is a deceive process that consumes energy and resources that are not renewable. Why growth physically is not possible.

(06:40):
But very, very few scholars and researcher focus on the role of technology in perpetuating and reproducing this imperative growth or how I call it the religion of growth and innovation and technology and science has been instrumental for the simple fact that innovation and technology, I sometime I will use the two terms in the same way, you know, but actually they're not seen because technology is the, the, the artifact innovation is the process that allows this artifact or the process to produce something to diffuse, to be accepted, right? So you can have an invention that solve a problem, can be an artifact, can be a product when innovation in, in invention is accepted, become an innovation. So one, when is widely used become an innovation. Why inno innovation is important in capitalism, because as the economist Joseph Shpe said in the, in the forties of the, the last centuries, innovation is the essential part of capitalism only through innovation.

(07:43):
Capitalist accumulation is possible, right? Because innovation introduce increase in productivity. So increases productivity, increase in productivity means that you, we you can produce stuff, more stuff in less time, right? And this allow the possibility to basically sell more stuff and accumulate more money. So this is very basic principle of capitalism that's based on a notion of increasing efficiency of the technology and productivity. Now, this process is probably one of the mo most important mechanisms that feeds economic growth. So my question when I wrote the proposal was if innovation, technological innovation is the engine of economic growth, and if economic growth as many post growth, people argue that it's unsustainable and will end in, in the near future. Are we condemned to live in a world that doesn't grow and is not creative and is not innovative, right? Because of this connection between innovation, creativity, and economic growth.

(08:41):
Actually, many people say that we need economic growth to boost innovation. You say let's invest in R& D because through investment in R&D, we will have more innovation. And this is the conventional wisdom. This is the mainstream. Now, for me, this is totally wrong, for many reason. First, because economic growth isn't unsustainable. Second, because reducing human creativity, human ingenuity to the idea that we need to, we put our creativity at the service of increasing productivity, of production is a very miserable way of looking at human beings. , this is my my impression. If you want to get into more details, we can, we can see that's the way we imagine technology as two basic problems, big problems. One is technological determinists, and the other one is technological productivists. So on one hand we say that technology development is inevitable. Whatever we do, there will be always somebody who will invent something new.

(09:40):
So there is a linearity in the technology evolution. And the second point, productivist say that all the new technologies always good. Whatever is new is good, right? We can come with risk, but we can manage the risk. This two principle that dominates innovation studies, but also policy. These are myth. We know that not all new technologies good. Think of nuclear power. Think a lot of weapons and arms industry, think of social media, right? And many other things I can talk about Google cars, driverless car that are not able to identify black people on the street because they're programmer, the programmer of the algorithm of efficient recognition. They were all white. They didn't train the algorithm with black people. And I can list infinite example of how the new was not good and crime associated with tremendous risk. The second one, which is technology is neutral and is as a deterministic process.

(10:36):
It's also untrue. We know that actually values, worldview, even ideology are embedded in the design of technology. As in the, in the example I just told you about the driverless car of Google. People unconsciously feed the algorithm with picture of people that look like them. So technology is biased. All the famous case of Robert Moses, whether it was the, the urbanist beyond the organization of New York and Manhattan, the plan, the bridges that connected the, the Long Island to, to the main island of to Manhattan Island. Too short to prevent public path to go to reach the beach and the places in which people used to to live, right? Why? Because public s station used to be used to lads black Italian. So through technology you actually can create discrimination. So technology is not neutral. So coming back to the projects, the projects look at ways in which organization can innovate according to a different paradigm that innovate not for the sake of increasing efficiency, for the sake of efficiency and productivity.

(11:43):
And then economic growth. This is the first level. The second level, how we can create networks of organization that can innovate without the imperative of, of economic growth. And the third level is the institutional level. How can we create institutions, science institutions that are not copted by the imperative of growth? In other words, how can we decoy science and put science at the service of people? So these are the three main objective of the biggest research projects that, that is called prospera in our lab. Then we also have another big projects that is on circular economy in which we try to debunk this idea of circular economy that we think is an impossibility. And we have minor projects that are more or less in the same line.

(12:33):
Let's talk about that first idea that you had mentioned about innovation. Cause I think that's really interesting that it's not necessarily the technology itself, but it's that idea that it becomes widespread and it just becomes the norm. How do we tackle that innovation challenge?

(12:48):
There are many things about innovation and technology in general. No. What, what is technology? What is our role with technology? One that the, of the dimension that I found fascinating about that there are solid studies, for example, what is called the SDS, Science, Technology and Society studies, which is a big discipline. We know from the seventies that technology is not neutral. It's a political process. Technology is doing politics by other ways that values politics is embedded in artifacts. No, there is a very famous paper, do artifact, have Politics by London winner, seminal paper published in 1980, in which he tells the story of Robert Moses's politics of ESE and how city were designed for cars, how we can use ar architecture for imposing a worldview for certain interests, right? So politics means also that technology comes with a set of values and poli and politics and interest of usually powerful people.

(13:53):
This is very important to say why it's important because this is the first step to imagine alternative way of framing technology in this moments when you, today, if you listen to people talking about science technology, it's always a science. I read a very funny tweet on Twitter during the pandemic saying, guys, stop questioning vaccines. Because science is not democratic. Science is about facts. Science is not about facts. Science is about consensus about scientists, right? And this is something that every scientist knows very well. It's about controversies. It's not about facts. It's not about the construction of truth. It's about how we deal with uncertainty and how we reduce uncertainty is not about reaching the truth. And with technology is the same. So once we accept that, what we see around us, we move in a car, we fly in an airplane, we are talking now on, in, on the internet.

(14:50):
Once we realized that this is only one possible option that was, was determined by a complex set of historical condition, social interest, economic interest. When we accept that, we can also say, okay, this was only one possible option. We can have different option. We can arrange our life in a different way using technology in a different way. So d naturalizing technology and science is the first step. Once you do that, you start looking at alternatives. No, like in the cases of Robert Moses was not a fact, given fact that America should be organized around the cars. We could have organized around bikes, for example. When you open up the debates, then you, you, you can find thousand of possible technological features. Some can be more technological advanced, some can be more frugal. So this is the first aspect that I found extremely fascinating in this.

(15:48):
The second one is the notion of ownership and why our model of sea innovation, science technology is really shaped by capitalism and capital private ownership model because it's really limit our imaginaries. And I always do the example of the Roman Empire that was based on slavery, right? The way we organize companies didn't change a lot since Roman empires. We accept and actually we, we won't. We claim that our states should be democratic. We also pretend that other culture states should be run according to our principle. We criticize Russia. Russia is not a democracy. We criticize. China is not a democracy, Iran and blah, blah, blah. But we never question the fact that the place in which we spend at least one third of our life, the company is not a democratic place. You are not supposed to say to your boss, okay, let's produce this.

(16:45):
Let's build bikes instead of missiles or weapons. How we arrive to this, to to, to the acceptance that the place in which we spend most of our time is not a democratic place. We wanted the other culture accept our, our democratic organization of the state. So once you give to the workers the right to decide what to produce, amazing stuff can happen. Really amazing stuff. And it was very super interesting case failed case. The Lucas Company, Lucas Conglomerates were company that produced engines and all sort of machinery for UK industry. In the seventies, the board decided that to fire a lot of people. So some of the workers come together and say, okay, now why we have to close our factories. Let's produce something different. They come together and say, okay, we have the ability, we have the skill to produce many things.

(17:40):
Let's come together and say what we think is needed in our territory. And they came, came up with a lot of innovation incubators that cost a fraction of their equivalent in private markets is renewable energy. Technology. The plan was a, was a campaigned with the financial plan. So it was also financially buyable in the normal market economy system. And under this login of we won socially useful production, they presented the plan to the board. The board say, no, of course, but not because it was not financially viable. Because assessing the plan meant assessing the possibility that the workers can decide what to produce, not only how to pro produce. That was, that is always the discussion. No, let's say union help us to improve the working condition. But as far as I know, no unions say the workers should have a right or voice in deciding what they're producing.

(18:36):
So if you give the right to the worker to decide what to produce and also what to do with the surplus of production, amazing things can happen. They can say, okay, we want innovation, but no, we don't want innovation to increase the profits of the company. No, we want innovation because we can produce the same amount of stuff with half time and we can waste half time the rest of the time I can spend with my family, we can make love, we can make music, we can do whatever we want. You can see the revolutionary thinking of this. So it's technology and it's social organization around the crunch. So it's not just the ity, the scientific aspects, the materiality. It's also how you around social life, around technology and how technology enables or disables this social practice. Like in Robot Moses example, that kind of technological arrangement enable racial segregation, right? And disable equality in a way like the Google driverless car technology is enable, can enable, but can also disable social practices. I found this extremely fascinating, this, this aspect.

(19:48):
And I think with that example, you know, something that comes to mind is like, where does that change start? Because if I imagine maybe generally it probably depends on what sort of industry someone's working in. Perhaps they just want to, you know, punch the clock and, and they don't really care about what they're making. They just want to do the job and then go home and, and not have to think about it. And then on the other side, I see maybe does that change need to come from the organization itself saying that we want this change and we want you to be involved in what we're making rather than just being an employee. Is is that maybe where the change would start from?

(20:20):
Well, actually you touched a very important point and we should be very careful about that because while I'm sort of critical management scholar, but so I studied the, the usual, the conventional mainstream management theory. And there was this debate at the beginning, like the four, classical four say, how we convince people to work in, in production line because they didn't want to. People in Manchester at the beginning of industrial industrial revolution, they didn't want to to work in factories. They were horrible places. Imagine the beginning of industrial revolution. They used to be working in the field totally free. They're self-organized. So when you oblig people through the enclosure, if you read Karl Polanyi, for example, The Great Transformation, he tells very well how this process of enclosure, this processing people from land creating urban pro. And these people didn't, didn't have any choice to, but working in the factory.

(21:16):
So they had to force people working in the factory. The same happened during four days. So four say, okay, nobody wants to work in the factory, let's double salary. Actually he paid very well. And then management scholars starts wondering how we can convince people to be more productive. And then in the 17, the eighties new frames emerge. Like, let's convince, let's create organizational culture. Let's convince the worker that their interests are our interests. But this is part of the competition, right? But all this discourse hides an important truth. That's the elite managerial, elite interests are not the same of the workers, right? This can be, can receive some bo bonus, some incentive and rewards. But at the the end of the day, the structure of the company is a class structure. So there is a winning, winning class and a losing class.

(22:10):
That's why I'm while in a group, we are very interesting in self-management, self-managed organization, cooperatives, commons occupied factories factor that that's been closed because of outsourcing and being occupied and production and start again from the workers and by the works and for the workers. One of my PhD students is studying a very interesting case of a French factory in Marsai producing tea for Lipton. The company closed the factory, the workers combined together with the help of civil society organization that they managed to restart the production and they're doing quite well. So we are interested in how this can happen and how this can be scale up or scale out as we say, instead of going bigger. So diffuse horizontally, oh, there are be very important movements of occupy factories in, in Argentina, for example. Different models in which we can be producers, but also the owner of our production. No, this is very old notion, Marxist, but, but still these are not totally new new ideas. But that combining with, with the discourses and the issues that I was raising about the way we organize society around technology gain more a different perspective. Right.

(23:27):
And it seems like in some of those examples you've given, it's usually been a disruption that's actually happened where a factory has closed or people have lost their jobs that had caused them to suddenly be proactive and start their own thing. Do you feel like that maybe needs to happen more, maybe maybe more of a disruption to get things shaken up a little bit?

(23:44):
Yes. This is this is exactly the question that I had when I first attend a presentation in which this was, this was this young researcher presenting Argentina movements, right? Urban crisis are always a moment in which human creativity and also solidarity. That's, that's super interesting though. That's how economists are wrong. That they say that's human being a rational, being rational, calculating being. This is neoclassic economics, the theory that dominates, right? That's we are acting only on the basis of our personal interest now, and this is totally wrong. When a crisis hit, you see all sort of solidarity emerging because we are social beings. We are not totally selfish, not totally altruist. We are amidst and the situation of crisis, this emerge, climate change is a so sort of crisis that can create this change. Now the point is that are we going to mobilize and to, and to drive this, this change quick, quick enough.

(24:49):
That's the point. And that's at the end of the day, I think it's the only thing, Michael, I mean, my, my idea is that the only thing that's really prove to be successful in terms of social change is people mobilization. It was a paper that was published this month by Jason Hickle, that is quite nice and quite famous guy now in post growth, DRO, he's from s Switzerland, he's working in Barcelona. And he proved actually that's the real benefits of capitalists only came when unions socialist movements come into action after the second World War. Really were able to share the, the technological benefits produced by capitalists to everybody, true social mo mobilization. So how we can build from this idea on technology, this idea, social system, and this ideas of crisis. So taking advantage of the crisis and create a social movements that's bring together many things, environmental crisis, concern about climate change, concern about biodiversity, but also concerns about good life. Reduction of consumption combined with an increase of wellbeing, eg degrees. So anti anti austerity measure equality, redistribution of wealth, anti-war movements, all the things that in the seventies, in the sixties, in the seventies, both in Europe and in us, were instrumental to create a positive change, like real change in law, in organization, in perspective.

(26:23):
Yeah, no, I, I feel like yeah, with those examples, absolutely the change doesn't come from the top or, or a policy or maybe a lobby enacted, but probably from people being just fed up with the status quo and they want things to change. And then I think if enough people are loud enough, and if enough people care, then I, I would like to think that yeah, that, that change is possible.

(26:43):
Yeah, because the only, the o the other, the only other option left is escapism, and there are two forms of escapism. One is the riches, escapism, you know, that's bunkers and refuge and all sort of compounds, secret compounds underground. And this is a form of riches, escapism. There are also like a hippie form of escapism that are definitely not you going back to the rural, which is totally fine to me, or sort of mid middle kind of form of escapism like mine, right? Renouncing to be in a big university, going to a smaller university. But this is can be only a part of the solution. The other component is, the thing I think is incapable, it's something that is needed is social mobilization, is how we can combine all the different souls of anti-capitalism. Anti-Growth is anti-modern, anti-life. Because at the end of the day, for me, capitalism is an anti-life phenomenon. How we can combine all these different souls to create a movements, then a, it's able to demand and, and and to change things.

(27:51):
Yeah, no, it's a, a big task for sure. I always think about, yeah, can it scale too, right? Because right now our, our current system, the one that we predominantly have, I mean, it's not perfect, but it's working I guess. But you know, these, these kind of niche ideas, even de-growth itself, you know, it's like how, how could we all adopt that? I think that's gonna be a, a big challenge just from, from what I've kind of looked into is to make it kind of mainstream. Cause even myself, right, living in a tiny house, living very frugally, living very simply, that's not really gonna be what everyone wants to do, right? So how do we either maybe convince those more affluent countries to maybe adopt more sustainable behaviors and then also support the the other countries as well?

(28:31):
No, no. You say, you say that the system is working you, right? The system is working, but for whom is working? There is some, some, some recent research about who is prop providing the benefit of economic growth. You can see through this study not yet to trust me, right? Because I don't, I'm not giving you the reference now. That's the aim of the podcast. The study shows that 1% of population is appropriate in 25% of the wealth and of economic growth. It means that economic growth is actually benefiting on a very small part of population, which is also the most, the part of population that pollute the most, which is somehow against the conventional idea that poverty is producing environmental degradation and destruction and goes against the idea that economic growth is essential to reduce poverty. This is another big myth.

(29:22):
Economic growth reduce poverty only if there are specific policy in place, like the vast majority of the people that came out poverty in the last 30 years were in China. China was able to bring out of poverty millions, hundreds of millions of people. True economic growth plus redistribution policy, right? And this didn't happen in Latin America. That followed the recipes of the international monetary fund and the World Bank. So economic growth per se, all economic growth doesn't reduce poverty, right? So the, the system is work is working for a minority. I would correct you with , but you make a important point. Not everybody is going to will to live like you or like me. So how we do that, but then if you think in this terms, we have two option or a force, the growth that can lead to a very dystopic outcome. One, this topic outcome can be ecofascism. We already seen some forms of ecofascism in which a small elite decide who has the right to consume where and how. And the vast majority leads badly, or a plan democratically control and just the growth. I don't see non, no, there is no third option because we don't have the resources in the energy to maintain, there's the level of consumption that's European and American society use.

(30:49):
Yeah. Obviously, not everyone necessarily wants to live like me in a tiny house. And, and I think for a large segment of the population, nor should they, right? They should be growing and they should be doing better than, than they are, right?

(31:02):
Yes. This is absolute importance. So the dimension of justice in climate change, and so in allocating responsibilities and also in this process of transitioning, right? So I cannot go to African African country and say, you have Toro. Maybe I can, I can say that to an elite, well educated elites in London and Paris. No, they send them their kids to abroad and then come back and rule the country, right? But because of the fact that the process of economic growth, that is something reason in history, it has four centuries. Something is, is a singularity, if you want to call, use a physics jargon. It's a singularity in human history. But this growth was possible because of our probation exploration, violence and oppression of indigenous people. So there is unequal responsibility to see what's, what's happening now in terms of environmental des destruction. So they have the rights to grow up to a certain level that will allow them to live a decent life.

(32:05):
And this is very, we have very, we have very interesting debate in the last years in the growth. And then everybody agrees that the growth must be in the north, not in the south. Like people in Milan, in London, in New York. Those people needs to dig growth. But even in our society in the north, drowth cannot be equal. There is a class dimension. I cannot tell to one of my students who virtually had no future heads or very, very dire future with precarity that they have to de grow. Come on guys. No. Who has to grow the c e o, the Christian Ronaldo that's uses the private jets to bring the, the Kitti to his wife, the people who who went to shaik for the co-op using private jets with the tremendous, absurd hypocrisy. So not everybody needs to the growth.

(32:56):
I guess that's the, the challenge if I'm thinking about it generally, you know, because I think a lot of people possibly want to become those people who have the planes and the jets and, and have the money to travel and, and do all of the things and own the big companies. Hey, I could be famous, I could be rich, or I could just be, you know, just really well off. Why wouldn't I want that? So for me, I feel like that's very, very difficult to kind of go against that idea that you want to be the person at the top. Cuz why wouldn't you wanna be, right?

(33:24):
Well, this is how the system works, right? And one, coming back to my Marxist reading, I was my, one of my Italian favorites. I'm Italian. No, I told you. Antonio Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci was an anti-fascist, one of the founder of the communist Italian Communist Party in jailed by mu Mussolini. He died in jail. And he wrote many what's called it notebooks from the jail, in which he says basically actually, he, he talk about famous Marxist principle that that's says in any moment in history, the nominal value of society are the do, are the values of the elites. So, and Gramsci added to this and say that the elites, the rules of society don't necessarily impose their power using violence. It's much more efficient to use discourse and imaginaries and values, right? So they convince people that their interest and the interest of the working class are the same.

(34:29):
And this is exactly what you say. And this how, how society is ruled no together with that many other mechanism like social media, like like media in general. And I'm pretty sure that you're familiar with Noam Chomsky's ideas about the how the media works and how the media instrumental in this mechanism, right? In convincing working class people that their interests are the same of the elite. Now, what Graham she say about disrupting this Graham, she say that we need, we need to be organic intellectuals. We need cultural counter ege thinking. So we had to build alternative storylines, and we need to embed what the organic intellectual are those people in the academia, in the governments, through tv, society, organization that can produce the alternative discourse together with the working class and spread until the country Germany alternative discourse is so powerful, they can replace or balance the power of the demonic thinking.

(35:33):
This is very simply speaking is theory of, of, of change of the state, right? He was a Marxist. So at the end of the day, he envisioned the working class to, to conquer to a revolution, of course, but this is very applicable. Actually. He was talking about crisis. No, he say that, he say crisis are those moment in which the old is still too strong to die, and the new is still too weak to emerge. So there are this moment of uncertainty in which you have clearly something that is wrong with the dominant vision. At the same time you have something new that is emerging and needs to be water needs to be looked after, right? So what we are doing in the growth movements is to do exactly this, create conge thinking, external alternative storylines, which more and more and more people are getting on board.

(36:24):
10 years ago, having this discussion with you, or I'm, I've been invited to give these speeches the European Union levels 10 years ago will be impossible in May. We have a conference in European parliament called Beyond Grove with member of European parliament. Jason Hickle, last week gave a speech in the parliament in the Netherlands talking about this, this stuff. And this is the beginning of how values of people can change. Of course, you will, you will never be able to convince everybody there will be some violence in, in the future. You know? Do you think that your governments will, will be keen of, of giving up important resources and or military dominance over the world so easily without fighting? I don't think so. ,

(37:08):
I think that's a good point that, you know, people are talking about it more personally. I think it's also great to have, you know, those examples, like even yourself, you know, so you've talked about how you've moved to a smaller city to do your research as opposed to being in a, a bigger center. So for me, I think also walking your talk, as we say, you know, living your values, I think the more people that can do that, the easier the change might be. Would you say?

(37:29):
Yes. I mean of, of course, I mean, I see more and more people around me buying this, this story more and more. Even my dad, my father say, ah, you know, ma Mario, I'm producing food, changing for wine. This is the growth, right? This idea are much more accepted now. So the ball is rolling now. The point is that's how we can transform this into political movements. We have a series of podcasts in our group. They are mailing in Spanish. There is also like couple of episodes in English, but we invited the Ministry of Consumption of Spain to discuss about the growth. And it's totally convinced about the growth is a Marxist, but he's totally convinced of it's like Ecosocialist, how this is the way he defines himself. He came here, there was the vice chancellor of the university. There were people from local governments, and we with the freedom, we talk about the needs for the growth, a ministry. Mm-Hmm. can imagine this happening in the US , right? Yeah, of course this is an exception, but we need to convince, we need to talk to political party and talk about this stuff. Because many people, if you really explain what the growth is and what, what, making a life with working less redistributive policy, spend more time with your friends and beloved people, they will understand.

(38:49):
Yeah. And so I guess along those lines, you know, this show is about empowering citizens to take action on the climate crisis. And so when it comes to de-growth and changing society, I know there's a lot to do there, but you know, what can individuals do to have an impact?

(39:04):
At least two things. First, reading, studying about what people at the global level are doing. So be aware that we are connected, we are connected and prone to connection as species, that we need connection and we thrive through connection to other people. And then local action. Pick up, choose, select a battle. The local battle can be a local battle. Battle about how food is pro is provided to your local schools, to your kids' schools, about a pipeline that is supposed to cross your territory about piece of forest that is supposed to become modified and privatized about new, new plan that they want to stole in your territory about any possible things that can affect you and your life and fight, but not tweeting, not posting stuff on Instagram fight and then refit. And, and then the second point, you will win. I mean, this is the only recipe that I learned from Gandhi. You know, right? Doesn't mean that you have to go with a Kalashnikov, there are many different creative ways. I'm a big fan of David Graber's direct action, multiple ways of fighting, right? But fight, fight in your local community. So what's, what's your fight, Michael? What's, what's your fight?

(40:27):
Sustainability generally, but I think I also just, yeah, living with less happily living with less. That's, that's my fight.

(40:32):
That's a big fight.

(40:33):
So this has been an enlightening conversation. Mario, thanks so much for coming on the show.

(40:38):
Thank you very much for inviting me.

(40:40):
Well, that was my chat with Mario. We obviously just scratched the surface of a very complex topic, but let's fight for a better world for something that we believe in. Let's fight. What else can we do? Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Barts. Here's the feeling a little less in over our heads when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see you again soon. In Over My Head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz in partnership with Environment Lethbridge Original Music by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch, email info@inmyheadpodcast.com.

(41:11):
I'm trying to save the planet, oh will someone please save me?