Forking the Future: building routes to viable change with Tim Frenneaux of Pivot

How do we build the local futures we all know we need?  What does it actually take to become a good enough ancestor? Or even the best ancestor we can be?  Our guest this week, Helena Norberg-Hodge, has given her life to exploring the answers, and helping birth them into being. Helena Norberg-Hodge is one of the Elders of our culture. She's a linguist, author and filmmaker, and the founder and director of the international non-profit group Local Futures, in which role, she has initiated localization movements on every continent, and has launched both the International Alliance for Localization (IAL) and World Localization Day (WLD). She's a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, and Local is Our Future (2019), and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Almost fifty years since her journey began in Ladakh, Helena is still collaborating with thought-leaders, activists and community groups across the globe which gives her a uniquely rounded insight into howour local futures could look and feel - and the routes to getting there. I've known Helena since I was at Schumacher college - I rented a room in her house for a while, so we know each other well and I was able to press her in ways I wouldn't normally feel able to do with a podcast guest, so we could drill down into the details of her ideas for a different way of being. At heart, we need to get rid of global trade and move back to a localist economy based in sufficiency. The devil is in the detail, obviously, but if we have an idea of where we're going, we stand more chance of getting there. So I hope this inspires you to action.  Please do follow up some of the links  - and definitely watch this new film: Closer to Home - the vision it offers of a generative, working local future is beautiful.  Helena's website https://www.helenanorberghodge.com/Local Futures https://localfutures.orgWorld Localisation Day https://worldlocalisationday.orgFilm: Closer to Home: Voices of Hope in a Time of Crisis (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJBWvUEZ-50Helena's book Ancient Futures https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ancient-futures-learning-from-ladakh-helena-norberg-hodge-hodge/2771495?ean=9780712606561Book Local is our Future: Stepping into an Economics of Happiness https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/local-is-our-future-steps-to-an-economics-of-happiness-helena-norberg-hodge/7409197?ean=9781732980402

Here is an Autumn Equinox Meditation to help set you up for the shift from the long days to the long nights. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, there's a Spring Equinox Meditation here.

This is our regular September bonus episode - a brief look at where we're at - how I (Manda) see things just now as we head deeper into the moment of transformation. 

My first guest after the summer break is Tim Frenneaux, whom I first met in his role as Source for the Piʌot project which is a thoroughly engaging and inspiring new concept, that he describes as a people-powered movement for regenerative transformation.  As you'll hear, Tim really understands what it is to live - to dance  - at the inter-becoming edge of emergence.  He's a multi-talented, multi-hatted entrepreneur, who once established England’s only carbon negative Local Industrial Strategy whilst working as Head of Economic Policy, and now specialises in regenerative businesses transformation. Tim is a bookseller, regenerative business designer and rebel economist on a journey to understand his role in the great system of life. Through his practice, he cultivates an emotional connection with this pivotal moment for life on Earth to create change and transformation that comes from the heart not just the head. Because of this work, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab have, called him a thought leader, though he prefers to think of himself as a thought weaver.He also works as a consultant, facilitator and public speaker on regenerative design, and runs a monthly book subscription, Adventurous Ink, which helps people reconnect with themselves and the wider world.In this wide-ranging conversation, we move from ideas of how to bring the UK's water companies back into genuine public ownership, to how we could build political consensus around bio-regions, to what it is to walk the doughnut of Doughnut Economics.  This was a really encouraging, enlivening conversation to start our new season and I hope you find it takes you further in your own journey - it certainly helped me.  Adventurous Ink http://www.adventurousink.co.uk/Tim's Website https://timfrenneaux.co/Tim on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timfrenneaux/Links to organisations and books mentioned in the podcastDoughnut Economics Action Lab https://doughnuteconomics.org/Climate Action Leeds https://www.climateactionleeds.org.uk/Kate Raworth 'Doughnut Economics' https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/doughnut-economics-seven-ways-to-think-like-a-21st-century-economist-kate-raworth/2694262?ean=9781847941398Miles Richardson 'Reconnection' https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/reconnection-fixing-our-broken-relationship-with-nature-miles-richardson/7335558?ean=9781784274856Jenny Odell 'How to Do Nothing' https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-do-nothing-resisting-the-attention-economy-jenny-odell/3185527?ean=9781612198552James A Pearson 'The Wilderness that Bears your Name' https://www.everand.com/book/725658458/The-Wilderness-That-Bears-Your-NameManda Scott 'Any Human Power' https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/any-human-power-manda-scott/7637805?ean=9781914613562Dan O'Neill et all 'Provisioning Systems' paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378020307184

Can our national and international legal systems be harnessed in service of life, to put the brakes on the worst excesses of capitalism and slow the annihilation of our eco-sphere?  Stop Ecocide International exists explicitly to make this happen and this week, we talk to Jojo Mehta, co-founder and Executive Director of the movement. If we're going to stop capitalism's harms to the planet, we have to build road blocks into the current system that will be recognised by those who make the harms happen and one of the key ways to do this is to criminalise activities that are wiping out the future in real time - if we're using Joanna Macy's concept of the Three Pillars of the Great Turning, this is one of the most effective Holding Actions imaginable (the other two pillars are 'Systems Change' and 'Shifting in Consciousness', which we explore in many other episodes. Today, though, we're exploring this ultimate Holding Action and our guest is right at the forefront of this. Jojo Mehta is co-founder and Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International (SEI)  which she and the late pioneering barrister Polly Higgins (1968-2019) set up in 2017.  SEI is the driving force at the heart of the growing global movement to make ecocide an international crime. Their core work is supporting diplomatic progress and fostering global cross-sector support for this. To this end, they collaborate with diplomats, politicians, lawyers, corporate leaders, NGOs, indigenous and faith groups, influencers, academic experts, grassroots campaigns and individuals, positioning themselves with great clarity at the meeting point of legal evolution, political traction and public narrative. As a result, they are uniquely placed to track, support and amplify the global conversation. This conversation took us in many directions, exploring the legal implications of the law, but beyond it to the potential it has to counter the iniquities of the States Investor Dispute Settlements and how it could bolster Indigenous groups seeking protections for their ancestral lands.  We looked at the ways the law is being framed and where it and laws like it have already been enacted, how it's progressing in the International Criminal Court and what the ultimate aims are in using it as a deterrent, but also as a cover for those in the extractive, destructive industries - which, let's face it, is pretty much every industry - who want to act, but are constrained by their requirement to push always for profit regardless of the impact on people and planet.  Those who drive them may not care about the little people - you and me - but they care about themselves and if they face actual gaol terms, then their incentive structures become quite different. As Daniel Schmachtenberger so often says, 'Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome' - Stop Ecocide International exists radically to shift the incentive structure and it's making real headway.  If you despair about the ways we can change the trajectory of the system, if you think our chances of veering the bus away from the cliff's edge are small, then this is the spark of light you need in the gloom - it's genuinely encouraging. Stop Ecocide International Ltd https://www.stopecocide.earth/stop-ecocide-international-ltdStop Ecocide Foundation https://www.stopecocide.earth/sefIndependent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide https://bell-harmonica-g83z.squarespace.com/legal-definitionSEI on Twitter  https://x.com/EcocideLawJJo on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jojo-mehta/Stop Ecocide Film on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw0HWM9n8IGuardian Article showing real progress - yay!  https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/sep/09/pacific-islands-ecocide-crime-icc-proposal

The climate emergency is impacting our entire eco-sphere.  Plants are at the core of every food chain but we have no idea how fast they can adapt to changes that are taking place in decades where once they took Millenia.  Which is where human ingenuity and intervention could be game-changing.  If we put our minds to it, could we help plants to evolve in ways that serve the entire web of life? In this regard, Dr Shane Simonsen is someone who has oriented his entire life to making sure that we have the right seeds to grow the food we'll need as industrial agriculture grinds to a halt.In this regard, Dr Shane Simonsen is someone who has oriented his entire life to making sure that we have the right seeds to grow the food we'll need as industrial agriculture grinds to a halt.  Shane has a prodigious output.  When he's not writing his substack on Zero Input Agriculture  - this means no water, fertiliser or pesticides, and the former of these is seriously impressive when you know he lives in subtropical Australia - or recording his Going to Seed podcast with Joseph Lofthouse, or writing Taming the Apocalypse as a non-fiction view of how the world could be if we got it right, or converting this into fiction in Our Vitreous Womb… when he's not doing all of this, Shane is farming in the aforesaid sub-tropical zone of Australia, exploring the means of production in their most grounded sense; creating parrot-resistant maize or hybrids from Bunya Nuts and Parana Pines - species that haven't been on the same continent together since the tectonic plates last shifted and Australia became separate from South America.  Shane is a polymath's polymath: he has a PhD in biochemistry which means he can trace down ideas to their roots and then extrapolate back up and join them with other ideas to create something new.  He celebrates the old gentleman scientists of Victorian times who may have been innately colonial products of the trauma culture, but they played at science, they did things that weren't obviously oriented to producing the next paper or winning the race to the next patent: they had fun, they followed their intuition and most of the really big advances in our technologies arise from them.  Shane is also aware that most of the big advances in human evolution came when we were under serious pressure as a species.... kind of like we are now.  So he's made it his life's task to find ways we can feed ourselves with low technology in a changing world. What species will survive and how might they grow? What hybrids can we intentionally create that will open up new spaces of possibility? How can we - how will we - transform ourselves in this changing world? Zero Input Agriculture Substack https://zeroinputagriculture.substack.com/The Going to Seed Podcast with Joseph Lofthouse and Shane Simonsen https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-going-to-seed-podcast/id1713240427Shane's speculative fiction 'Our Vitreous Womb' https://haldanebdoyle.com/Taming the Apocalypse - Shane's non-fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212297242-taming-the-apocalypseAll Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1955162/Gail Tverberg Our Finite World https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/Going to Seed Online Community https://goingtoseed.org/pages/communityAny Human Power Book Club Sunday 15th September 6-8pm UK time (BST) https://accidentalgods.life/any-human-power-discussion/

'Are we [in our WEIRD culture] intelligent enough to be more generous than we have ever been throughout history?'  So writes Jenny Grettve, in her new book, 'Mothering Economy'.  Jenny is an author, philospher, systems thinker and designer who joined us in Episode #228, talking about the principles and practice of her generative, systems-led design agency, 'When!When!'At the time, she said she was writing a new book - and now, ‘Mothering Economy’ is coming out at the end of this month (August), so we’re back in a wide, deep, provocative, generative conversation about what it might takes for us to have the courage to care deeply for ourselves, each other and the more than human world. She writes, ‘The profound mothering among humans that I envision is not a burdensome technological revolution, but rather a simple way of being together. We have a vast number of examples: what we lack is the intention and commitment to raise awareness…’And so let's do all we can to raise awareness by exploring the ideas deep in Jenny’s book and searching our own beings for ways to show up with stronger, clearer, more open hearts. In the meantime, please enjoy this wide, deep, thoughtful, caring, connecting conversation with Jenny Grettve, author of Mothering Economy. Jenny's book https://andthekiosk.com/products/mothering-economyJenny's Website https://www.jennygrettve.com/When!When! https://www.whenwhen.agency/I, Pencil http://files.libertyfund.org/files/112/Read_0202_EBk_v6.0.pdf

We live in a burning world. As we record, there are record wildfires across the Americas, record temperatures around the world, falling oxygen levels in the oceans and however much supposedly renewable energy we produce, Jevons' Paradox means we keep on burning fossil fuels.  This is not a great combination, but even the so called renewables have more under the hood than appears on the surface.  Burning wood - or grasses - for 'Green' Energy is both a massive accounting scam and one of the ways that the predatory industrial complex sucks in eye-watering quantities of public money - while selling us the lie that this is somehow net zero.  It isn't, but sometimes we need someone who really knows what they're talking about to spell out the details for us and this week, our guest is one of those people. Dr. Mary Booth is the founder and director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a Massachusetts-based think tank that uses science, communications, and strategic advocacy to protect forests and our climate future. Mary worked as Senior Scientist in the Environmental Working Group in the US, working on water quality. Now, she directs the PFPI’s science and advocacy work on greenhouse gas, air pollutant, and forest impacts of biomass energy and has provided science and policy support to hundreds of activists, researchers, and policy makers across the US and EU - and now that the UK is no longer in the EU (sigh) in the UK as well.  I heard Mary on the Economics for Rebels podcast back in February and was blown away by her grasp of the essential science, and also by the sheer mendacity of the companies involved: the lies they tell, the false accounting they use and the extent to which they are destroying the biosphere to give us - or at least, those who set our policies and spend public money - an illusion of somehow being more 'green', more sustainable, more ethical.  I wanted to give listeners to Accidental Gods the chance to hear Mary in action, so here we are: people of the podcast, please welcome Dr Mary Booth of the Partnership for Policy Integrity. Partnership for Policy Integrity  https://www.pfpi.net/PFPI international work https://www.pfpi.net/international-work/Guardian article by Greta Thunberg https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2022/sep/05/burning-forests-energy-renewable-eu-wood-climateLand Climate Blog https://www.landclimate.org/the-problem-of-bioenergy-in-the-eu/Forest Defenders Alliance (EU) https://forestdefenders.eu/Forest Litigation Collaborative https://forestlitigation.org/BBC Panorama: Green Energy Scandal Exposed https://vimeo.com/795555785/c6e9420ff6

We know that being kind to our gut biome is crucial to our health, but what about the trillion happy helpers (or not) on our skin, in our lungs, our ears, our mouths… the things we slaughter daily with the ‘cleaning products’ we splash around our homes that not only impact our biomes directly, but leach out into our waterways, soil and the air that we breathe so we end up adding to ecosphere annihilation. Human health and the health of our planet are intimately interwoven and while we're all getting to grips with the need to keep our gut biomes (and those of the animals who share our lives) healthy, we're woefully behind on the need to look after the rest of our biome: skin, lungs, teeth, eyes, ears.. I listened to Joe Flanagan months ago on Viki French’s brilliant ‘PupTalk’ podcast and knew we needed to talk here, too.Joe is a font of information and this was a unique opportunity to explore ideas with someone right at the cutting edge of transformation. We talked everything from canine aural surgery to human behaviour and the corruption endemic in our health systems. Above all, we got to grips with the fact that if each of us changes our behaviour – if we actively choose to stop poisoning the planet that is our home – and stop poisoning ourselves and those we care most about at the same time – we can make radical improvements in the way our system works.Joe is the Owner of Ingenious Pet Probiotics https://ingenious-probiotics.com/Joe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-flanagan/Ingenious Probiotic products are not a medicine or medical device - if in any doubt, always consult your vet.Any Human Power Book Club Sunday 15th September 6-8pm UK time (BST) https://accidentalgods.life/any-human-power-discussion/Pup Talk Podcast with Vicky French https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pup-talk-the-podcast/id1525563393

The Western world is in a crisis of democracy - but we learn a lot of our principles from the ways we interact online and the internet is essentially a feudal space that gives absolute power to a few and robs the many of agency.  Nathan Schneidersuggests that if we were able to shape a more liquid democracy online, our experience of generative interactions would spill over into the outer world. Has to be worth a try, right?  So how do we do it? As we spend increasing amounts of our time, energy and emotional bandwidth online, so we are increasingly exposed to what passes for democracy online.  And then we internalise the inherent autocracy and are at risk of exporting this to the real world.  So what can we do to change things? What's democracy for in the first place and how can we experiment with increasing the scope and scale of agency and accountability so that we can build trust in the processes that define our lives.   Nathan Schneider is a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he directs the Media Economies Design Lab and the Masters program in Media and Public Engagement. The book that drew me here is 'Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for online life',  - which you can buy as a paper copy, but you can also download for free.  He has also written 'Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy', 'Thank you Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Movement' and God in Proof, the Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet.  He's edited other books about crypto and co-ops, writes numerous articles and his blog posts are essential reading. He serves on the boards of Metagov, Start.coop, and Waging Nonviolence. Follow his work on social media at @ntnsndr or at his websiteIn essence, discovering Nathan has been like discovering the well of life... He's deeply enmeshed in that liminal space where the best of human technologies meet the leading edge of digital technologies and he brings to it the sense of deep wonder, humility and humour that I've only otherwise met in meditators or contemplative mystics.   I feel I only scratched the surface of his thinking in this conversation and would dearly like to go back for a second round, but only after I've re-read everything he's written - and dived into some of the online spaces.   In the meantime, as a taste of what's possible, please do enjoy this podcast. Nathan's website https://nathanschneider.info/Governable Spaces https://nathanschneider.info/books/governable-spaces/Everything for Everyone https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/Thank you, Anarchy https://nathanschneider.info/books/thank-you-anarchy/University of Colorado Media Economies Design Lab https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/MetaGov https://metagov.org/