Fighting the Polycrisis with Radical Honesty
Mike Berners-Lee, author of "A Climate of Truth," argues that radical honesty in politics, media, and business is our highest leverage point for tackling interconnected global crises. Having evolved from carbon accounting to identifying truth as the most powerful tool for collective action, Berners-Lee offers both stark analysis and practical hope for navigating climate destabilization.
In this timely conversation, Berners-Lee explains why we're currently "accelerating into the problem" rather than making progress, despite having technical solutions readily available. He makes a compelling case that our "wobbly times" require us to insist on truthfulness at all levels of society, while maintaining that social tipping points could bring rapid, positive change as most people already agree on the need for climate action.
Topics Discussed:
The evolution of Berners-Lee's work from carbon accounting to truth advocacy
The three layers of the polycrisis and how they interconnect
Why honesty is the point of greatest leverage for systemic change
The impact of political instability on climate progress
Practical steps individuals can take in media consumption and daily choices
Finding perspective and optimism despite challenging circumstances
Links:
Episode Transcript:
Mike Berners-Lee (00:00):
The thing that I focus most on in the book, I think it's the point of greatest leverage, is we need to respect the truth just as the truth in a way that is so insistent and clear.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (00:16):
Hello everyone and welcome to We Are Not Doomed. We bring you interviews with industry leaders, authors, journalists, and real people who are making an impact on climate change. Every day We Are Not Doomed is produced by Puddle Creative here in Portland, Oregon. I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld, the executive producer today. My guest is Mike Berners-Lee. He's the author of a new book called A Climate of Truth. You may have heard of him from his bestselling book. There is No Planet B. Mike Berners-Lee is a world renowned researcher, professor and has been widely known as one of the pioneers in the carbon accounting. His new book talks about the poly crisis that we're living through and why truth is the most important thing now and as we move forward. Honestly, I think this book is coming out a very important time, especially in the US with the new Trump administration. And it seems like every day it's harder and harder to call ourselves, not doomed, but honestly as someone who speaks the truth, lays things out plainly. Mike was surprisingly optimistic in some of his viewpoints and we got into at the end what people can do to make a difference. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Mike Berners-Lee.
(01:38):
Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today on the We Are Not Doomed podcast.
Mike Berners-Lee (01:45):
That's a pleasure,
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (01:46):
Especially on a Friday evening there in the uk.
(01:49):
So Friday morning over here. But yeah, we're going to dive into talking all about your new book, A Climate Truth that I have a little advanced copy of here. And I think I wanted to say at the outset, because this book is all about truth, that I have not finished the book. I haven't read the whole thing through yet. So I know that's one thing I was thinking about right before we talked is when authors go on TV and stuff and you have the presenter being like, I loved this book. And you kind of know that they probably didn't read it the whole way through.
Mike Berners-Lee (02:22):
Well, thank you for your honesty. It's better to be honest than to be perfect.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (02:26):
Exactly, yeah. I think a lot of people listening may know who you are, may have read your previous books, but I wanted to start by maybe just tell me the story of how this book came about and maybe put it in the context of your other books you have How Bad or Bananas book and There is No Planet B and how did this kind of come along as an evolution of that
Mike Berners-Lee (02:48):
We better go back 20 years or more. I was working in sort of general consultancy, always interested in sustainability. I was really into doing stuff on change management and climate change was obviously becoming a bigger and bigger deal and I was getting very critical of the consulting industry because it didn't seem to be able to sell in the change. You couldn't get anyone to take any notice of it. So after a little while I kind of thought, well, come on Mr. Change consultant, you better, you better see if you can do any better instead of complaining about everyone else. So I set up a little consultancy really from scratch. I didn't know anything about what I was doing on climate and I thought, well, I won't bother with the carbon numbers, I'll let the people who do carbon numbers do those and then I'll just do the broader consulting.
(03:31):
And then I found out that you just couldn't get the carbon numbers from anywhere. A company just could not go anywhere to find out what on earth was going on in its supply chains. It was ridiculous. So I rolled my seeds up and ended up on this big carbon footprint journey and out of that came how bad a banana is, the carbon footprint of everything, which is now just called the carbon footprint of everything in the us. And that was kind of helpful up to a point, I kind of felt like I'm taking away one showstopping barrier to us all getting on the case of climate change by making sure we can all understand where carbon is in our lives, in our work and globally. But that wasn't, the world still wasn't waking up to climate change and taking the action it needed. So I wrote the next book, the Burning Question with Duncan Clark, which was a big picture take on climate change saying, look, if you look at emissions from fossil fuel, they have been mathematically exponential for 160 years.
(04:27):
Something very big is going on here. There's a big system dynamic at play and the little actions of individuals and companies are only worth anything if they help to bring about a big systemic intervention at the global level. Well, that was all fine, but we're still not getting anywhere. So I wrote the next book, there's No Planet B, which was really saying if you look properly at the climate crisis, what you find is it's just one symptom of something much, much bigger that's going on for humanity. That bigger thing is we've arrived in this era called the Anthropocene, by which I just mean humans are suddenly so powerful with the biggest thing affecting the ecosystem. And our failure to adapt to that new context so far has led to a climate crisis, a land quality crisis, a pollution crisis, all sorts of problems. And so that book was a big picture take on what do we need to get on top of all of that because all these problems are technically solvable, but we're still not getting anywhere.
(05:28):
We've now had 29 climate cops and emissions are still higher every year than they were the year before. So that's led me to write a climate of truth because the premise for that book is really to say, look, we are not getting anywhere. It's not honest to say that we are people who say in a well-intentioned way, well, we're making progress but not fast enough. It's not true. We're accelerating into the problem. We're making the planet worse by a large amount every year than the year before. I know this podcast is called We're Not Doomed and We're not, but the hard reality is we will be if we don't wake up and raise our game. So the premise of the book was to say, look, if what you're doing is not working, you need to stand back, look at the problem with a new way.
(06:13):
You need to get some new insights that we haven't had before in order to try and find something that will work when everything else has failed. And I think smart people these days when they look at what's going on, they get it that we're hurtling into a crisis, they get it that we're not getting anywhere. And sometimes they wonder, well actually, are we doomed? There are people who just get, they're smart enough to see what's going on, and that takes them into a point of depression where they just think, you know what? There's nothing we can do about it. And it turns out that's not the case. I'm not going to say we're definitely not doomed, but there's everything to play for. We really need to wake up. So the book's all about saying, well, if nothing else has worked, what might? So it's about searching for the point of highest leverage over the issues.
(06:59):
And it turns out that the point of highest leverage is we just need a platform of honesty. We need to get honesty like we've never had it before into our politics, our media and our business. Now I'm conscious that you are in the states right now and that feels pretty difficult. And if it's any slight consolation, it's not that easy in the UK either. And I'm not saying it's easy, but on both sides of the Atlantic, we've been lazy about this concept of truth. And the good news is that we don't have to be, we need a reset, we need a wake up. We need to go that boring truth stuff. There's a reason why we've banged on about it as something important over the centuries and we've lost track of it right at the time when we need it more than we've ever needed it before.
(07:49):
We need it more than we've ever needed it before because the complexity of the problems and the ease with which people can pull the wool over our eyes is greater than ever before. So we just haven't got the room, we haven't got the headroom to allow the spanner in the works that dishonesty creates, right? We can't make high quality decisions on climate if some businesses are being dishonest and stirring misinformation or some politicians are being dishonest or some media's being dishonest. So the book is all about saying, it doesn't have to be like, this is how we can have it different. And this is what all of us can do. And the good news is that we all have far more agency than many people thought they had because we can do far more than just cutting our own personal carbon footprint or some of the other actions that people talk about. We can insist on a radically different culture.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (08:43):
Yeah, I was smiling when you said the thing about truth because I do think this book has very good timing in terms of coming out as the beginning of Trump's presidency here in the us and it feels, one of the things that really stuck with me is you were talking about these times feeling wobbly than they ever have. And that really, really resonated with me as someone who very much felt the effects in November when the election happened, but then those effects have been tenfold since the inauguration and things have really just felt so wobbly. So the other thing that I wanted to say about the book that my first reactions as I started to read it is that I do think, although it obviously brings up some urgent and pressing needs, I do find it to be a calm and clear-eyed book in a way that you are talking about something urgent, but in a very sort of a way that as you talk about with truth, it doesn't make me like my heart rate go up all of a sudden. It's very measured and the approach I think is just, it was very nice to read.
Mike Berners-Lee (09:57):
Thank you. The funny thing is all my work, it's really about trying to find the most important thing in all the complexity. What are the simple, important things we can be absolutely sure about? And then just hanging onto those things and running with them and say, well, if we treated this important thing as if it really was important, what would we do? And that takes me to so many simple conclusions. So the first half of this book is mapping out the poly crisis and showing we're not getting anywhere, showing that its techniques is solvable. And talking a little bit about what it would take to do those technical solutions. And some of the things that come out of that are just so simple. We need to live the fossil fuel in the ground, duh, we need to reduce the total energy supply. And there's a simple bit of logic and we don't talk about that anything like enough because the energy companies generally speaking don't want us to.
(10:50):
And so they succeed in misdirecting us away from these things. But it's really, really simple. And then if you look at the food and land system, it's very, very complex, but some incredibly simple things come out at you. The science is screaming from all directions to say, let's have less meat and dairy in the global diet. I mean, it just couldn't be clearer than that. And yet we don't talk about, some of us are starting to talk about it more and more, but some of these things are so obvious that it's not the difficulty of the analysis in getting there. It's something else that's stopping us. So that leads us to looking at, oh, what is it that's preventing us from seeing some really quite simple things? And then the premise of this book is that truth, honesty, especially in politics, media and business really, really, really matters.
(11:40):
And of course it does. If you can't tell someone to be honest with you, what's the point in them talking, right? If you've got a politician who's actually misleading you in some way, deliberately misleading you in some way that you so much about them tells you they can't possibly have your best interests primarily at heart, otherwise, why would they attempt to mislead you? And it tells you not just that you can't trust them about the thing they've just said, it tells you you can't trust them about anything at all. It tells you you can never trust them about anything at all unless they have a really quite unusual experience that sort of suddenly creates values in them that they never have before. And it also tells you, you can't trust their colleagues, any of their colleagues who are standing by quietly in the knowledge that they're being dishonest because it tells you they don't care enough about this as a value either. So some really good news on the one hand, it can be quite difficult to work out who's being honest and who's not being honest over a single event or a single thing that somebody says. But once you do get to that point of a clear cut example of somebody deliberately misleading the public, it tells you so much about them. You never have to ask yourself again whether to trust them or not. You already know the answer from that one example.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (12:56):
Yeah. You touched on a bunch of it already, but I want maybe to step back and talk about how you've organized. A good part of this book is about the layers of the poly crisis and sort of the outer layer and then getting to the center layer in the truth. Do you want to talk about how you've come to that kind of peeling back of the layers?
Mike Berners-Lee (13:16):
Sure. Well, if we're in a situation where what we're doing is not working, then we need new angles on it. So the book is about saying there's a bit about standing further back from the problem to see it from a bigger distance. And a lot of it is about joining up the different dimensions of the problem. So systemic and interdependent. And you can't look at it sensibly without doing that. But then there's another side of it which is to say, look, we need to go deeper under the surface of why we're not getting anywhere. We need to ask ourselves the reasons behind the reasons behind the reasons. So the first part of the book is mapping out the kind of presenting symptoms of the poly crisis, the physical things that are going on, a food security crisis, biodiversity crisis, a pollution crisis including an eruption of plastics.
(14:00):
Alongside that, we've got population growth and disease threats and so on. And they're all technically solvable. It's great news, but it's so frustrating as well, isn't it? So then we ask ourselves, well, with these problems are technically solvable, and it's not like wearing a hair shirt. We're not going to have to suffer in solving them. They're also, we can solve them in ways that improve our quality of life. So what's stopping us? And that takes you down into the next layer. I call it the middle layer of this poly crisis, which is to say, well, actually our politics isn't working right. Our politics isn't allowing us to make high quality decisions. Why is that? While our media's not working right, it's not informing us properly, it's not directing our attention to the things that matter the most. It's not giving us the clearest view of reality that we can get or why is that?
(14:44):
Well interlinked with all this is our businesses aren't working right, most of them, a lot of them, they are actually lobbying politicians in unhealthy ways, skewing our media in unhealthy ways. They're pushing for things that are against the global interest, and we're allowing it and linked to all of that as a whole, our whole economic framework, a free market economy, can't deal with global problems. And I know that's quite, it's heresy to say that in many circles, especially in America, but that's the reality. You can show the logic of it very, very simply. The free market cannot deal with global problems that require the whole global tribe to be on the same side. And then we've got problems of inequality, which is bad in the uk, but it's worse in your country. And that level of inequality boils down to a deep disrespect for the people at the bottom of the pack.
(15:38):
There are 8 billion of us on this planet like it or not, and we've got to treat everybody with a spec within countries and between countries, and we're just not wired like that at the moment. I could go on in this middle layer. We also have a new relationship that is required with technology because it's given us many fantastic things, but it's taken us to a very dangerous place going forwards. We need the right technologies like crazy, but we need to get much better at leaving the wrong technologies on the shelf and making sure that these new technologies that can have good applications only applied in good ways. And that's very, very challenging, especially in a market economy because if anything gives anybody an advantage in any way, they run with it and then everyone else has to run with it. And then how do you put that technology back in the box if you suddenly realize it's not doing us any good overall?
(16:28):
So that's the middle layer and then the inner layer is to say, well, we could sort our politics out. There's nothing physically stopping us. There's nothing physically stopping us from reworking our economic framework and dealing with inequality and so on. So what's the reason behind the reason why we're not getting anywhere? And that takes us into how we think and some values that we haven't got strongly held collectively at the moment, but we're capable of them. There's evidence from neuroscience and history and genetics and everywhere you look, we are capable of cultivating the values that we need to have if we're going to survive, if we're going to thrive. And we've been letting those values go. I just talk in very simple terms. We need global empathy. We need to care about other people, obviously we need to tune into the environment more. We need to respect the environment in a way and treat it like a fragile important thing in a way we haven't done before. And then the thing that I focus most on in the book, I think it's the point of greatest leverage, is we need to respect the truth just as the truth in a way that is so insistent and clear. And if we can raise the standard on that and to the extent to which we can raise the standard on that, we will find ourselves better able to deal with whatever's coming down the line at us from the poll crisis, however bad that gets.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (17:55):
Yeah. One thing that I thought about was there was a section where you talked about how many more people think that their governments should be doing something on climate. I think globally it was close to 80% or maybe close to 90% of people think that their government should be doing something on climate, but then those same people thought that everyone else, that it was probably close to 40% of people who thought they should be doing something. So there's this whole idea that really most of us want this, and we're afraid to be the first ones to stand up because of our social.
Mike Berners-Lee (18:33):
Yeah, the human psychology is so interesting. You know how uncomfortable it is to be the first mover on anything to be the odd one out. So I think back to the pandemic, and if you ever found yourself the only person in a room who's wearing a mask or the only person in a room who's not wearing a mask, it doesn't matter what the rights and the wrongs of it are, it's really uncomfortable to be the only one. And we're all like that on climate, and we all think we care more than the people around us most of the time. And you know what? Most of the time that's not true. So in the book, there's research from something like 125 countries where they asked everyone the question, would you want to see 1% of your income going on dealing with climate change? And 1% of your income is a lot if you are considering there's a good chunk of the population that's really struggling to make ends meet, especially at the global level.
(19:24):
And a huge majority of people say, yeah, they'd be up for that. But a far smaller proportion of people think that that's how well the people around them are thinking. So it's weird. We're all thinking we're worse than each other. And I do a lot of talks to people in a business context, so a lot of business talks and I lay out what I think is going on in this poly crisis, and I lay out a pretty stark picture, much more stark than you're likely to hear if you turn on the radio in the morning. And I ask people, I've been doing this now for a year or two, I do the same thing every time, so predictable. What happens? I ask people to just put up their hand if they think the problem is about as serious as I've said it, or have I fundamentally exaggerated it or have I fundamentally underestimated it? And it's always the same. It is always the same that the clear majority of people think I've got it about right. And there's always more people who think I've under egged it than think I've exaggerated. And then they said to people, keep your hands up and look around the room, and did you know that that not only do you get it, but everyone else here gets it? Isn't that weird? We're all just waiting for each other to be the first mover.
(20:39):
And so we've all got to be a bit more courageous and be that first mover in the knowledge that everyone else will look at us and go, thank goodness I won't be so weird if I did it.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (20:49):
Yeah. And I almost think of that in the context of you start at the human level and then it turns into the country level too, where you just need a few first movers, countries who are willing to do this for other societies to look around and say, and there's some famous video that I'm going to butcher a little bit. It was about kind of crowds and how it's a video of a concert and everyone's sitting down and then there's one person who starts dancing. And it's sort of about how in the beginning that one person has to dance for quite a while by themselves before they're joined by a few people. But then the end part of the video, the space between five people dancing and everybody dancing is like that because there's a switch that happens when there's sort of this critical mass and all of a sudden it becomes you are the odd person out if you're not dancing all of a sudden.
Mike Berners-Lee (21:45):
And that's really uncomfortable. Have you ever been the only person on the side of the room? You say that's uncomfortable too? Yeah, and this is really good news for humans. I mean, on the one hand I look at this element, our behavior, and I think, oh my goodness, how can we be so dopey? How can we be so sheep? But on the other hand, it's really good news because it tells us that we could flip in the right direction very suddenly. So anyone who's tearing their hair out, and I know a lot of people who are, and I'm sure you do too, overall where things are at in the world at the moment and how can we be in the mess we're in? And let's be honest about it, America is in a real mess right now. Anyone who's tearing their hair out a bit, the ray of hope is that you can have a social tipping point in the other direction.
(22:34):
A lot of people are going, this isn't right. This isn't right. And if you look around you and the people around you are thinking the same. And then something tips. I think there've been times in the recent history where it's nearly tipped. I think in the UK when Extinction Rebellion were doing a whole lot of stuff about six years ago, it really felt like things nearly tipped and the government was getting behind it, racking up its targets, and I'm a business consultant, and I had the conversations we were having with businesses was really changing. They were all getting on the phone to my company for a different kind of conversation. It all felt really optimistic. And then Covid came and a few things that we can talk about why, but it sort of boiled down again. But the climate crisis isn't going to go away, and the reasons why we need to wake up aren't going to go away. At some point, we will wake up and the only question is can we do it in time? And nobody knows the answer to that, but if we'll push hard, we might.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (23:31):
Yeah. I was going to ask you where you think we are in that right now of are we at a point when only one person is standing up and dancing or I think there's, like you said, there's been rumblings before. It's definitely rumblings now. Where do you feel like we stand?
Mike Berners-Lee (23:48):
I think people get it. More and more people get it. If you ask people, the people I talk to, the people I give talks to, they get it. Maybe that's because they believe me when I talk to them, but I don't think it's just that people get it. I think the UK is slightly ahead of the US in terms of the kind of cultural norm on this possibly not that we're so brilliant. There are other countries probably ahead of the uk. I think it's a difficult time in the US at the moment. It must be. A lot of people are kowtowing. I think Trump is a very skillful bully
(24:24):
And it takes some bravery, I think in your country to say it like it is and to call for the stuff that you know is true and the media is being wrapped up. And so we're not going to be getting from the mainstream media such as strong message about the things that we need to be caring about. And so we've got to do this ourselves. We've got to remind ourselves in our social groups at work, we've got to push this one through it at the local level. So I think some courage and bravery is needed on this one.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (24:54):
Yeah, definitely. I feel like the elephant in the room nowadays here in all discussions is Donald Trump. So I wanted to touch on that too. And the political situation that we're in, I was thinking as I was preparing for this, there's just so many stories that have come out, but even personally, I know people who have felt like the work that they're doing has all this good work, and they feel like speaking of truth, they have to do things like change their job title because they feel like the administration has got this list of words that are no longer acceptable. And so it just seems like a very dark time right now. And I know as you were writing the book that Donald Trump had won the election. How have you seen these first few months of the Trump administration? Have you been surprised by things? Is this definitely something that you saw coming? How have you felt about it?
Mike Berners-Lee (25:53):
It's funny because when I started writing the book, the election hadn't happened. I was quite late through the process when the election happened, and I went through the book systematically making sure we are recalibrating the level of optimism, recalibrating for everything, and being specific and being absolutely clear about what I thought of that election and so on. But I think that I'm not alone in thinking that events since he took office are at the worst end of where they could have been in terms for global stability. I think it's pretty desperate. I don't think you guys have a democracy anymore at all. In four years time, I don't think your elections are going to be meaningful. So what do you do with that? Right? You have Trump said it, vote for me now you'll never have to vote again. And that's where you're at. So what do you do in that context?
(26:44):
It's pretty shocking. If I think of myself, say I visit the states, if you walk down the average street in the average town in the states, most of the people you walk past will have gone, okay, I don't mind that this person grabs women by the genitals. I don't mind that he's convicted criminal, and I don't mind that he lies all the time, including he lies to me all the time. I have to say, I think that's really, really shocking. And there may be lots of reasons why that kind of perspective has grown and been normalized and so on. And I'm not trying to say that American people are worse people than British people or anything like that. I'm not making that claim,
(27:24):
But I am saying there is a need to wake up, do a reality tech and say, whoa, this is absurd. We've voted in somebody who routinely abuses anyone he wants to, including ourselves. We've done this, this is nuts. It's really properly nuts. I'm afraid the people of America are going to pay a price for it. The people of the world may pay a very heavy price for it. It could be a really heavy price, we don't know. But one thing we can do with where we are now is we can wake up and we can say never again. And I don't want to say that we can all dissect how things have happened in different ways. And in a sense, the more I reflect on it, there's a kind of longstanding lie that the Democrats were part of too, that a lot of people in the states, and the same phenomenon is true in the uk, are not treated with respect, with the same respect that we would all want to be treated by the administration.
(28:23):
We put up with hideous levels of inequality. I've written this about this in previous books. 1% of the US population is in prison. I wouldn't even want to spend a whole day in prison. In some states, the time you can expect to spend in prison if you're born male, is something like 90 weeks of your life or something on average. And that's without even being black. That's colossal. And it's not because you've committed crimes, it's because there's a good chance. It's because it's a profitmaking prison system. And so all of these things are wrong. This are fundamentally disrespectful. And I think to have put up with that level of mistreatment is asking for trouble democratically. So that's back to respect, right? We've got to learn to be nice to each other, not just Americans, be nice to Americans. People have got to be nice to people. At the level of 8 billion people, I've got to consider the other 8 billion to be in the same tribe as them. That's a big evolutionary transition for humanity, and we need it now.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (29:24):
Yeah. After you kind of go through the poly crisis in the layers, you do spend some time speaking about truth in certain sectors like in politics, and we touched on the media a little bit, and you spend a good amount of time talking about the media. How do you feel like what we can do as people to consume truthful media, but also what kind of the whole ecosystem of the media needs to do in general?
Mike Berners-Lee (29:49):
So this social media and traditional media maybe, but the same principles apply. So you've got to ask yourself really discerning questions about the media that you are absorbing. So how do you know you can trust them? Who owns them? And what is their track record? Have they, for example, ever done things to manipulate the public into a particular perspective for their own personal interest rather than an interest of a clear view of reality? For example, do you know of things that they've done in the past that have been deliberately deceitful in some way? And I don't just mean lies mean in my book. I have a whole appendix on a taxonomy of deceit, all the different ways in which it's possible to me misleading, and they're all as bad as each other. So if you find yourself in a situation where you ask those really discerning questions and you don't get the answers you're looking for, then the really important thing is to switch.
(30:47):
It's not okay to say, oh, well, I still go online for this paper because I find the journalism nice and I like the funny bits, and I like the TV guide or whatever. That's not a good enough reason. You've got to get out of its influence and you've got to stop supporting it. Do not under any circumstances pay it money. But that's not good enough because even if you just are online, you are absorbing its adverts and you are feeding its advert revenue and you are subjecting yourself to its influence. And by the way, most of us, all of us are much more susceptible to the influence of advertising than we like to think. That's why the advertising industry knows that, but almost everybody thinks that they're a bit smarter than they really are at holding this stuff back. So that's the first thing. So get out of bad media.
(31:35):
Second thing is get your friends and colleagues and family out of bad media. It's not socially acceptable to read bad media or be on bad social media. Make it embarrassing. Make it like, what are you doing reading that stuff or being on that platform? You know that the guy who runs it and is making billions and billions out of it has been abusing us in this way, in this way. Do you really want to be part of that? Do you really want to be suckered by that? Do you want to be misled? Well, if not, get out. And then the third thing is pay money to good media. It costs money to do good media, and that money's got to come from somewhere. And if you don't want it to be that you're being manipulated by nasty algorithms or you're pushing some owner's personal agenda or else you're just funding adverts that might be talking people into doing all sorts of things you included against the best interests of people and planet. If you don't want those things, then go and fund the well-intentioned media. And so for people who've got to spare cash, a bit of disposable, treat it as one of the important things that you push a decent proportion of your disposable income towards because it matters.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (32:50):
Yeah. One thing that you touched on that I want to get into is the last part of the book is about what we can do, what you can do as a person. One is I always find that kind of thing helpful because that when you're reading a book like this that I feel like is in your brain, that's like you want to get to that part, right? Where you're like, what can I do? But before we get to that part, I think another thing that I really like is before you start thinking, okay, what can I do? This is really important work, is that it's also important to sometimes step back and say, yes, this is really important work, but also give yourself the context of humanity being this kind of blip in a extremely huge solar system, universe, ecosystem. And that sometimes for me actually really helps me with my climate anxiety is I can be optimistic. I can try and find the good stories, but sometimes it just helps to say, this planet is going to be okay. It's just the humans that might not be. So talk about that a little bit. And then yeah, just maybe an overview of some of the things you can do. I noticed one of the things you said was maybe start a podcast. So I was like, all
Mike Berners-Lee (34:03):
Right, well done. Yeah. Well, we all need a strategy for staying sane because I think it is an uncomfortable time. And I think the first thing I would say about how to stay sane is don't try and run away from the problem. I think that's just a recipe for a pretty deep unhappiness. You'll just be there on your deathbed knowing that you've spent your life kind of hiding away from stuff that you knew was true. I don't think if I look at the freest, happiest, most spontaneous people I know, they're all people who are brave enough to look at this stuff, even if it's uncomfortable at times. So if you want to be psychologically healthy, stare in the face by staring this stuff in the face, you downgrade it from something that's too difficult to look at, which just bugs you all the time at some level or other to something which is maybe tricky, but it's not so bad we can't look at it.
(35:01):
And then the second thing I'd say is do things that keep yourself in good health. This is good advice for anyone. Do things that switch off. Take good exercise, try and be in good community, try and have in friendship groups. All these things are really important. We can together. Everything's just much better. And I think the third thing I'd say is I think a really big perspective is helpful on this. The universe is a very big place, and we are specs and we have been talking about ourselves and our species as if we are so important and we're so great. And we talk about ourselves as if we're the best species. Arguably, we're the worst species we've got the most to be ashamed of, and all the others will probably breathe this high of relief if we do end up gone. But there's a very big perspective on this.
(35:52):
We all know that at an individual level, we're going to die, and that's a bit uncomfortable, but we live with it. It doesn't bug us so much all day long that we can't get on with enjoying the day. And we need a bit of a perspective here. And it's not even as though our species is necessarily doomed. We might be, but we're not all doomed. We're not necessarily doomed. We might even come through this in quite good shape. It's conceivable. And even if we don't, there's still going to be days that are good and there's still quality of life to be had right now. And we need a perspective on it that says, while we act in good faith and with a responsibility and doing what we can comes enjoy the moment as well.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (36:32):
Yeah, I usually end the interviews with what keeps you optimistic these days? And I feel like that was a very good answer for that. The second part of my question was sort of about give an overview of some of the things that you have a checklist in the book of things that people can do in their lives.
Mike Berners-Lee (36:49):
We're all different, so we all need to ask the same question, but the answers are different. So the question is, given the global systemic nature of the challenge and its urgency, what can I do to help create the conditions under which the global systemic change that we need so urgently can become possible? And that's a pretty big question, but I think a big chunk of it for all of us is to hone in on this thing on truth, to insist on it in our politics, in our media, and in the businesses that serve us, that's what businesses are about. Businesses are about serving us. They don't exist to make profit. They should primarily exist to do things for the health of people and planet. So every time we spend or invest any money, we are pushing for one future or another. So for example, some listeners, let's hope some listeners might decide they want to buy my book, A Climate of Truth.
(37:45):
Well, you've got choices. If you do, that's great. That's probably, I like to think that's a wonderful thing to do however you do it. But if you've got a choice, you might be able to choose how you buy that book. And in doing so, you might be able to better direct your money towards a better future. And I'm not even going to talk in specifics about how you might buy it, but I think smart listeners will know what I'm on about. And the same goes with anytime you buy food or you travel somewhere, or you buy clothes, or you decide not to buy clothes or you go on holiday or you decide to go locally or you get on a flight or you don't get on a flight. All these things are decisions to push for one future or another and whoever you bank with, I mean, that's important.
(38:31):
If you have a pension scheme, if you have any choice over that pension scheme, all these things are big decisions that we should take seriously. So that's the kind of honesty thing. I don't talk all that much in the book about empathy. One of the things that's pretty helpful that anyone can do is just to be really, really kind. And I don't mean that in a fluffy way, and I don't just mean that about being nice to your family and your friends. I mean that about doing things that look after the global community, including oppressed people on the other side of the world. Make a statement about how you value people in Israel, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Mexico, in Russia. All people are of equal value. So if you can be a total exemplar of all that, then that's real leadership. There's campaigning stuff, there's protest stuff.
(39:22):
It's funny thinking about the states at the moment. I don't want to be extreme about where you're at, but it's been reminding me of a book called Alone in Berlin. It's a novel about an elderly couple in Nazi Germany, and they don't like Hitler, but it's very hard to stand up to 'em. You'd be shot. So they end up saying, well, what can we do? And the best thing they can think of is to write postcards, subversive postcards, and leave them in public places like on the stairwells in blocks and flats, because they can think it's what they can do to send out a message that we don't go along with this stuff. Well, you're not in that place in the States yet, but it's about doing what you can in that way.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (40:01):
Yeah, I think this is a really important book for this moment. I think you've hit the timing quite perfectly in terms of maybe how badly we need truth right now. So this book, we're recording right now on March 7th, but this book comes out on April 10th. For my last question, I just wanted to kind of put it back to the personal of what are you looking forward to in the rest of this 2025?
Mike Berners-Lee (40:25):
Well, I'm looking forward to a really interesting year because I've gone to all the trouble of writing this book, right? I'm going to talk about it a lot in all kinds of contexts, and I'm going to talk to loads of interesting people about it, including this podcast now. And there's nothing more rewarding in a way than talking about the things that matter most to you, which is what I wrote this book about. So that for me, that's a great year. And I'm also going to, I talked about those ways in which we keep sane and we have great community, and we go and do things, and we get in the natural environment and we take exercise. I'm going to exercise and all that sort of stuff. I'm going to do all those things and I'm going to enjoy their friends and that kind of stuff. So I'm not going to lie, I'm looking forward to this year.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (41:12):
Yay. Yeah. One of my goals, and I'm going to say it on the podcast so that I stick to it, one of my goals this year is to organize a block party for our neighbors, which is something that we haven't done since we moved to this neighborhood. So I think small community, things like that are just so important right now.
Mike Berners-Lee (41:30):
Yeah. Small, supportive, vibrant, local communities are really, really important. And in tough times, they get more and more important.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (41:39):
Yeah. Well, Mike, thank you so, so much for taking time to speak with me on this Friday evening. And yeah, we look forward to hearing all about the book as more and more people read it and would love to stay in touch. So thank you so much.
Mike Berners-Lee (41:55):
Thank you.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (41:55):
Thanks for listening to We Are Not Doomed. I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld with Puddle Creative. And thank you to Mike Berners-Lee for being on the podcast. To get a climate of truth, go to climate of truth.co.uk. To find more episodes of the podcast, go to We Are Not doomed.com. You can also find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts, or your favorite app. Until next time, have a great week.