Chapter 4 of the podcast Designing the Revolution was recorded in two parts. Below you can find the two videos, as well as a written transcript and summary.

Videos #

Summary #

Part 1 #

I. Introduction and Meteorite Scenario #

Roger Hallam uses a hypothetical situation where a meteorite is heading towards New York and explains how it's not possible to separate this physical event from its social consequences. He uses this scenario to introduce the concept of an inevitable revolution, where physical and social events are intertwined and can't be looked at separately.

II. The Reality in Complex Social Situations #

Hallam argues that not all social situations are complex and hard to predict. Sometimes, like in the case of the meteorite scenario, they are simple and straightforward. He emphasizes the inevitability of certain happenings and the need to accept this reality.

III. The Certainty of Inevitable Revolution #

Hallam insists that when he mentions "inevitable revolution," he isn't using it as a figure of speech. He believes that because of the impending physical events like climate catastrophes, social disruption and revolution are inevitable in the near future.

IV. Looking Back at Historic Revolutions #

Hallam discusses "States and Social Revolution" - a book that states that the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions were inevitable due to deep financial crises. Such crisis leads to the collapse of the state, eventually leading to a social revolution.

V. Slow Deterioration Leading to Significant Breakdown #

Hallam discusses how situations may gradually deteriorate, like the frog boiling scenario, leading to a sudden critical breakdown. He uses examples like the worsening situation of the UK's health service and other similar situations across the globe.

VI. Linking Breakdown of States to Revolution #

Hallam talks about states borrowing heavily, pandemics, and other extreme events that can lead to the collapse of systems, eventually leading to social revolution. He highlights that once systems reach a certain level of degradation, a social revolution becomes inevitable.

VII. Predicting Large-Scale Socio-Economic Disruptions #

Hallam provides multiple possibilities - from disease breakouts, massive crop failures, refugee crisis, and large-scale forest fires, where each one happening simultaneously could bring about a social revolution.

VIII. Conclusion: Inevitability of Revolution #

Hallam concludes that a revolution, caused by a combination of various crises, is inevitable and unavoidable. He suggests that the physical and social realities should be viewed as a single entity for a clear understanding of this complex situation.

Part 2 #

Part 1: Introduction #

In this episode of "Designing the Revolution", Roger Hallam discusses the unavoidable trajectory towards revolutionary episodes due to the impending climate and ecological crisis.

Part 2: The Two Options #

Hallam critiques the two options that have been popularly presented to address the crisis: ongoing activism and efforts to create change, and accepting a "doom" scenario where we are assumed to have reached the point of no return. He proposes a third route: the inevitable revolution.

Part 3: Exploring Revolution #

Hallam shifts the talk to examining what revolution is all about. He discusses the different types of revolutions and their outcomes, from progressive changes to the establishment of totalitarian regimes.

Part 4: The Role of Geography #

Hallam acknowledges the role of geographical determinants in shaping the course of revolutions. He suggests regions like southern United States, southern Europe, and southern China could potentially see fascistic responses due to mass migrations and disruptions.

Part 5: The Duration and Depth of Revolutions #

Hallam touches upon the varying lengths of revolutions, with some lasting only a week and others spanning years. He explains that while the government or the ruling body can change, the state, meaning the established system of governance, often remains intact.

Part 6: The Agency in Revolutions #

Hallam stresses the importance of strategic planning and organization in determining the success or failure of a revolution. He refers to the bitter results of the unplanned Egyptian revolution and contrasts it with the success of the Extinction Rebellion, which was a planned endeavor.

Part 7: Conclusion #

In conclusion, Hallam emphasizes that while revolutionary episodes are inevitable, their outcomes are still variable and rely on strategic planning. He calls upon his audience to understand the responsibility that comes with such a change and prepare to seize the opportunity to make a difference in the face of climate catastrophe.

Full transcript #

The following transcript was automatically generated using AI.

Part 1 #

Download subtitles with timestamp (SRT)

This is Roger Hallam, and you're listening to Designing the Revolution. This is Talk 4, Part 1, The Inevitable Revolution. There's a meteorite heading towards New York. It's not so big that it's going to destroy the whole world, but it's not a little thing either. It's going to destroy the whole of the city of New York. It's inevitably coming through space. It's going to land. It's going to cause mass death. It's definitely going to happen. So the physical event is going to happen. The meteorite's going to land. And the social event is inevitable as well. The mass death of people in New York, the destruction of millions of buildings, social disruption, political disruption, fiscal consequences, and all the rest of it. So I'm starting with that scenario to show that in certain circumstances, the idea of having a category of physical activity and then a separate category of social activity makes no sense. Often it does. But in this particular circumstance, the meteorite is the physical event. The destruction of New York is the social event. And they're inseparable. It's just one thing. So it makes sense to talk about it like it's one thing. It's inevitable, and it's inevitable. The second thing about this example is it's a simple situation. So again, most situations, most social situations are complex. They're difficult to predict. There's lots of different things, lots of different moving parts. But not every social situation is complex. Some social situations are simple. In other words, in this case, there's a meteorite heading to New York, and it's going to cause massive social disruption. That's a simple system. It's going to happen. It's inevitable. There's no argument about it. So I've introduced this pivotal podcast with this example because I'm going to try and persuade you of the reality that there is going to be this inevitable revolution. So when I say inevitable revolution, I want to emphasize I am not being rhetorical. It's not that I'm against rhetoric. It's just that that's not what we're talking about in this podcast. What we're talking about is something that's actually going to happen. I'm not saying inevitable revolution to try and empower everyone and get everyone on the go or anything. It's because it is inevitable. And I also don't mean it's inevitable in the sense of some sort of theory of history, you know, like Marxist view of revolution, that history is moving in a particular direction, and that makes revolution inevitable. Like it might make it inevitable. Probably doesn't. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a third scenario, which is where an inevitable physical event, namely a whole series of 9-11-esque climate catastrophes, impact upon the social sphere to such an extent that they make social disruption and therefore revolutionary episodes inevitable because of the extent of their force, just like the situation with the meteorite. Okay, so that's what we're looking at. So let's look in more detail at all this. So there's an important book which you might want to check out called States and Social Revolution, published in 1979, and it's like a seminal text in the sociology of revolution. And its basic argument is that the French Revolution, the Russian and the Chinese Revolution, were arguably inevitable. They were socially determined, as the phrase goes. And the reason for that is at a certain point, each of those states entered into a fiscal crisis at such depth that it made the collapse of the state and the social revolution inevitable. So the fiscal crisis of the state basically means the state, the regime, the government, runs out of money and it can no longer serve its basic responsibilities, such as feeding people, and therefore it's locked in. Now, here I'm making arguments for and against this, but the basic situation is at some point it's a done deal, whether that's two weeks before the social revolution or two months or two years. But you can see where the offer's going. So let's look at this in a little bit more detail. What are the dynamics that are going on here? So the first one I want to talk about, which you're probably familiar with, is the frog in the boiling pot scenario. So as you probably know, this is a situation where something gets worse and worse, but it gets worse sort of gradually. People don't realize it. And then at a certain point, the frog dies, like the social collapse. So the classic example of this is the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. It started off with the Jews being treated badly in the street, and then the windows of their properties were smashed, and then they had to be put into camps, and then they were taken off to the death camps. And this happened over 10, 15 years. And so at each stage, it wasn't obvious what was going on, so the argument goes that people just didn't bother. And to a certain extent, there's an echo of that, and maybe it'll become more of an echo in what's happening in the U.K. at the moment. So on the news this week, it says 500 people a week are dying due to queues and ambulance delays in the NHS. Now, if that had been said 5, 10 years ago, there'd be thousands of people on the street, but it's sort of caught up on us gradually, and it's just like, yeah, it's terrible, but nothing's really happening. And when it gets to 1,000 or 2,000, there's a good bet that it'll just carry on. And similarly with people going hungry because they can't afford to eat or eat, like 10, 20 years ago, that would be a cause of big social disruption. Now it's like people have got used to it. So an example that actually happened was Katrina in 2005 when there was a massive storm in New Orleans. The Army engineers had been saying for years and years that the levee wasn't going to hold, and each storm, it got higher up, but nothing happened. There were crops in the pots, as it were, and then suddenly, bang, it went over the top of the levees. 2,000 people died, I think, a million refugees. And it was like everyone was in shock, even though it was obvious. And a fourth example, which hasn't really happened yet, but you might want to note it down, is the situation in Phoenix, Arizona. So I heard a year or two ago a frontline engineer-type guy going, it's just a matter of time before, you know, it's 50, 55 degrees in Phoenix. It's right in the middle of the desert. And because of that, or coincidentally with it, the electricity fails and the air conditioning goes off, and 50,000 people die of heat. And that comes out of nowhere. Everyone sort of knows we're going to be heading towards that. And as the engineer said, it's a matter of when, not if. So you can see how these things happen, and everyone tries to be smart, of course, afterwards, but in the run-up to it, it's really difficult. People get into this denial syndrome. So related to this is what could be called the exponential function, or not understanding the exponential function. So I think some famous scientist said, you know, the biggest problem with the human race is they don't understand the exponential function. So what this means is, you know, things get worse, but they don't get worse in a nice, linear, gradual way. They get worse, and then they get loads, loads worse, and then they get so much worse you couldn't even imagine it. So it's like it's curved going up towards vertical. So one of the most standard routines here in history is state borrowing, or debt more generally. And this has been going on for thousands of years, and it's boringly predictable, you might say. But basically a state borrows money, and then it borrows more money, and because it's all powerful, no one's holding it to account. So it becomes deluded, and the officers of the state, you know, lie to the monarch or whatever, and they start having to get loans to pay interest, and then loans to pay the interest of the interest, and before you know it, the whole thing crashes. So for instance, in the French Revolution, I think, finally the courtier, the economics minister came to see the king and said, the French state's going to run out of money in six weeks, and it was like wham-bam, out of nowhere. But it wasn't really, it was because of some toxic mixture of, you know, denial and lying and pushing things under the carpet and all the rest of it. So as I think I've mentioned already, a similar, you know, identical social dynamic happened with 2008. And in the big short, the guys go to Florida, and they see that people with hardly any money have got five mortgages, and they're going to get more loans to pay the interest on the mortgages, and blah, blah, blah. And they know it's going to collapse. I mean, they know totally it's going to collapse, you know, within a month, two months, because the exponential curve is just going to shoot upwards, and it's just not sustainable, and the whole system's going to crash, which of course is what it did. So I don't think this isn't, you know, this isn't just in terms of Wall Street or big states. It happens right across human society. So, for instance, you may have this experience of looking at a sibling's business or your son and daughter's business or whatever it is, and, you know, most of the time you look at a friend's business or someone's business in your family, and it's trending along, it's quite complex, and things are going quite well, and other things aren't going so well. But then sometimes it's just really bad, and you know with absolute certainty it's done. You know, this business is going to crash. It's going to go bankrupt. So your brother might say to you, oh, I've got, you know, £10,000 coming in each week in the business. But you say, look, you owe £50,000 in two weeks. You're just not going to be able to pay it. And then you look through his papers, you know, after the chat, and you find there's another £50,000 coming in to be paid back within two months. That's it. It's done. You just need to tell the guy it's done because it's done. So that's the exponential function. So let's look at the process of this inevitable collapse of states into social revolution in a little bit more detail then. So we've established that the standard routine here is debt, and that debt can be created by obviously borrowing loads of money, but it also can be exacerbated, as we will no doubt find out in the next decade, through natural disasters or not so natural disasters as you might call them nowadays, which creates an even bigger fiscal crisis. So these two things kind of bind together. But it's useful to look at the other end of the equation, as it were, is to look at the people on the ground. So you've got the state in this downward spiral, and that connects with the reality of people's living conditions. So what's interesting here is this interaction between the physical and the social, a bit like the meteorite. So what I mean by that is often people are quite poor, but they have some surplus to spend on social events and creativity and whatnot. So let's say they've got £100 a week spare, so they're doing pretty much okay. They're not dead rich, but they're okay. And then it goes down to £50. Well, they're going to have to cut back, but again, it's not so bad. And then they have nothing, no surplus. So they're really miserable, but they've got enough to eat, they can still heat the house. And then they go into minus £50 a week. In other words, they can't afford to eat, or there simply isn't food available, or both. Now what happens then is a phase transition, as you might call it, from the social to the physical. In other words, once you're being forced to cut down on general social spending, how you feel about it is determined by your social conditioning, your culture, your personality, and such like. You might be really mad, or you might be going, yeah, it's not so bad. But when you're hungry, you sort of hit a completely different reality, particularly if you're hungry and your children are hungry. And what I'm saying, of course, is you rebel. You go to government, you go out onto the streets, and ugly things happen. People kill each other. And this is the standard sort of trajectory towards revolution. It's this massive fiscal crisis combined with the physical intruding into the social, as you might say. It's non-negotiable. It's what economists call inelastic demand. You are going to do whatever it takes to get food to eat. So the complex system turns into a simple system to use that sort of language. So another dynamic that goes on, which in some ways might not sound as significant, but certainly is, is the collapse of social credibility of the regime. So this is often very difficult to identify, particularly in authoritarian regimes. So the great example here is the USSR before 1989. So here the general idea was everyone was assuming the USSR was going to carry on forever. You know, it's an authoritarian regime. Communist Party controlled all the media. Everyone was forced to say great things about what was going on. And there was this sense of what has been called hyper-normality. Which means on the surface, everything looks fine. But underneath, everything is rubbish. You know, everyone knows it's fucked. And I mean everyone. But no one can say. So one way you can find out is, for instance, just loads of anti-regime jokes going around. You have these little Freudian expressions of discontent, which give a hint. But of course, you know, 99% of commentators weren't using that methodology, that method of trying to work out what was happening. They were just looking at the headlines and the press releases. Anyway, the upshot of it is, as I'm sure you know, in 1989, the whole thing collapsed out of nowhere in Vertigo. Well, this is because in terms of private commitment to the regime, it had evaporated. So it didn't take that much to get your head around the idea this is exactly what has now happened with the neoliberal regime in the Western world. So 30, 40 years ago, you had what was called the social fat, as it were, coming out of World War II. People who were definitely committed to the society, you know, the regime in the Western world. They trusted the government. They had confidence in society. All of that has now evaporated to such an extent that when they do the surveys, you know, something like 10 to 20% of people trust the government, you know, down from 60, 70, 80% a generation ago. So something profound is happening. And of course, the Western elites will find out to their horror when the system does collapse because they'll realize no one's actually that bothered. And that's the point here. So the third example is obviously the COP conferences. The COP conferences, they've been going on 30 years. So you might say for the first 10 years, you know, they weren't getting anywhere, but everyone gave them the benefits. Now, you know, it's difficult to get everyone together to make these decisions. They're trying really hard, blah, blah, blah. And then maybe from years 10 to 20, people are going, you know what? This is really not working. Something else needs to be tried. It's just dire. And then from years 20 to 30, everyone's just thinking it's a total joke. You know, like everyone knows it's going to fail. The people who are involved in it know it's going to fail. It's just like a zombie social entity. So one of the sort of morbidly hilarious things about all this, of course, is that the powers that be say you have to reduce carbon emissions by 50% in the next eight years. And, you know, the paradox of all paradoxes is that there's no chance of that happening at all, unless, of course, there's a social revolution, which, of course, they can't imagine. And so they're in this sort of double bind of absolute stupidity. Let's put it like that. All right. So what I want to do here is, you know, I'm not just making some general social argument on the basis of, you know, past experience. What I want to do is actually suggest that we can predict the inevitability of revolution, revolutionary episodes with quite a lot of precision. And I'm going to go through the math, as you might say, over the next 15, 20 minutes. All right. So one way of starting with this is to identify a phenomenon that's quite counterintuitive. So I'm going to go through it quite slowly because even I sort of doubt it. And then I do the math and go, no, no, no, it's right. So let's take something like terrorism, terrorism. Right. So let's say that terrorism, you know, increases due to various tensions. So it goes from five terrorist attacks to 10 within a particular continent or the U.S. So there was five incidents a year of, say, up to 10 deaths. And now it's gone up to 10. So it's doubled. But the reality is that the likelihood of a massive terrorist attack, let's say of over 1,000 deaths, goes from, say, 2% chance a year to 20%, i.e., the likelihood of a super outlier extreme event goes up by 10 times, whereas average events go up, say, by two times. So this is a robust empirical phenomenon, right? It's not making this up. This happens. And I'll show mathematically how it works more in a minute. But you can see this happening all the time. Obviously, with the terrorism situation, you can see that with the terror attacks before 9-11, which were significant but mainly ignored. And then you had 9-11, which completely changed the political and military landscape. So a massive outlier creating a massive transformation. So on a more mundane level, coming back to my leaks on my farm, you can get gradually worse and worse winters, and 10% or 20% of the leaks die. And then one winter, it's minus 15%, and 100% of the leaks die. It's suddenly, wham, bam, everything's gone. So a third sort of scenario here, along with terrorism and leaks, as you might say, is forest fires. So you think about forest fires, you know, 1% of California burns down, 2%. As the temperature increases, it stands to reason that you're just going to have a massive increase in the amount of fires that are going to start. So you think about starting a fire yourself. You know, if you throw a little match in it, not much happens. If you throw 10 matches in it, you're probably going to light, but maybe only 20% of the time. If you throw a whole bunch of petrol in it or something, suddenly, you're 95% certain for the fire to start. So the same thing happens with temperature. As the temperature goes up, you know, 40 degrees, 45, 50, you get to a situation where you're suddenly jumping from 2% to 3% of the area burning to 20%, which is what happened in Australia. And also happened in the village where it was 49 degrees in British Columbia. You know, it was 49 degrees. Surprise, surprise, three days later, the whole place burned down. So it's what's called an S-curve. You know, it starts off gradually, the curve's going up, and suddenly it goes up almost vertically because you've got that tipping point. So let's look at this in a more sort of mathematical way. So one of the main scenarios in which there's going to be a catastrophic ecological 9-11 event is the coincidental crash of crop failures in the U.S., in Europe, and in Russia all on the same year. So you can see how that works is, you know, one country has a massive loss of food production, but it can import, you know, from the other two areas. But if all three happen together, then you have this 9-11 sort of food crisis, people literally starving in these global north countries. The situation would be in the U.S. and in Europe and in Russia, there's a massive crop failure. So you can see how this works. If there's a massive crop failure in one of those areas, then you'd be able to import from the other two areas. But obviously, if it happened in all three areas, there'd be a total nonlinear disaster, people literally starving to death in global north countries. So let's say for the sake of argument, the likelihood of it happening in any one region in any one year is one chance in six. So the simple math says the likelihood of it happening in all three regions in the same year is six times six times six, which I think is 198. In other words, one chance in 200 years. But we know that this situation is becoming exponentially worse. So let's say the situation gets doubled in how bad it is. So instead of something like this happening one in six years, it happens in one in three years. This is arguably where we might be at the moment in as much as everybody here, there's some dramatic development in terms of crop failure in most of these countries. So let's say this is going to happen one in three years in US, Europe and Russia. So the chances of it happening in all three regions, obviously, is three times three times three, which is one in 27 years. So just take that in. Once the chances of something happening singly doubles, right, from one in six to one in three, the chance of it all happening together goes from one chance in 200 to one chance in 25. In other words, eight times more likely. It's eight times more likely to happen. One in 200 years, don't need to worry about it. One in 25 years, that's going to happen, right? So let's say as we enter the 2030s, this is happening, say, one in every two years. So that's two times two times two, isn't it? So one in eight years, you're going to have this catastrophic 9-11 ecological event. So how we can work this out is, let's say we want to work out the likelihood between 2030 and 2035. So in any year, we shake a dice on one in eight. So if you do the math, that means the likelihood of this massive event, this 9-11 ecological event, is 60%. It's a 60% likelihood over those five years. So you're shaking the dice once every year for five years. So you might say, well, yeah, there's a significant 60% chance of such a massive social disruption that it triggers revolutionary episodes. But here's the point, right? What we're saying is that that's totally unrealistic because we're only looking at one particular scenario of massive physical disruption. That is crop failure in US, Europe, and Russia. But as we enter into 2030s, we can make an argument, because we're backed up by the data, that there's six and maybe more possibilities, any one of which will create revolutionary episodes of social disruption. So I'm going to go through them and give you one or two numbers. So the first one is COVID stroke disease. So scientists have predicted this could happen again within 10 years. So let's say, for the sake of argument, during the 2030s, there's a one in 10 chance each year of having a massive COVID or even worse sort of pandemic. Secondly, it's predicted that India will lose 30% of its wheat production by 2030, with the possibility of massive famines. And in China, you're looking at wetball temperatures where it's impossible to attend to crops. With millions of people getting heatstroke or even dying, it's the hottest summer ever in China this year. So we put those two together, there's a one in 10 chance of a class of agriculture in the two biggest countries in the world. So the third scenario is the massive level of refugees coming out the tropics during the 2030s. So a peer reviewed paper predicts at 2 degrees centigrade, there will be 1000 million refugees. So that's what around 2035, maybe earlier, maybe later. So it's a fair bet that one in 10 chance each year of hundreds of millions of refugees coming out of Africa, Central America, destroying the world economy, massive social disruption. So the fourth scenario is forest fires, as we've just discussed. Peer reviewed paper says within 20 years, the massive fires that Australia had will be happening on an average year. So that's 20% of the forest burning down an average year. So again, once you get to 2030, as you can say, there's a one in 10 chance of 30, 40, 50%. And then the second sort of transition into what you might call complexity. And this is what makes the game so popular, is you think you might win, you know, it depends whether he lands on you or you land on him. And you're building new hotels, it's looking pretty good. And, you know, you just need one more success as it were, and you're on the go. And that sort of transitions into a new phase transition, which is not complex. It's what's called simple. And the brutality of that phase transition is what sort of keeps people's heads in. Because suddenly you're doing quite well. And then you land on Mayfair, you know, and they've got a hotel on it. I'm sure some people know what that feels like. And it's like suddenly you're doing pretty well. And suddenly, there's not a chance in hell you're going to win. The other guy is going to win. And, you know, there's one chance in 10 billion that you're going to win. Because you just do not have, you know, you don't have the houses anymore. And the other guy's got loads. And you're a zombie, a dead man walking. So you can see this analogy here. It's not an analogy. It's the same type of transition that goes from, you know, time is pretty bad to, my God, we're going to have these big episodes. Oh, no, we're going to have these big episodes in conjunction with each other. In other words, there's a whole load of hotels that I could, you know, land on one after another. And you're a dead duck, as they say. So, in conclusion, the first thing we need to understand is we are not talking here about climate change. We're not even talking about putting carbon into the atmosphere. We're talking about an interrelated complex of elements that always go together from this point onwards. Extreme weather, disease, war, social disruption, revolutionary episodes. It's the same phenomenon. You can't separate them out. The social and the physical are intermeshed. It's one thing. So we need a category, which is this complex. The second thing is it's going to happen. It is inevitable. You know, a few people listening to this might say, well, you never know. You might reduce carbon emissions. They're not going to. You know, the predictions are carbon emissions will go up by 14% during the 2030s. Even if they did, all the delayed effects of carbon, you know, the carbon lag, global dimming and such like. So nothing's going to change the trajectory for the next 10, 15 years. So when the U.N. says, you know, 1.5 degrees is no longer credible, what you know they're really saying, and I'll finish this, finish up with this, is what they're really saying is revolution, avoiding revolution is no longer credible. Avoiding revolutionary episodes in the next 10 to 15 years is no longer credible. And that's the deal. And apologies, by the way, I've just been moved to a new cell. So there's a bit of background noise then. Yeah, there's a bit of background noise. OK, I'll speak to you next time. Bye.

Part 2 #

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This is Roger Hallam, and you're listening to Designing the Revolution. This is talk four, part two, The Inevitable Revolution. So part one was the big moment, really, in this series of podcasts, where I've hopefully persuaded you of what I consider to be the bleeding obvious, as it were, which is it's too late to stop like major effects of the climate and ecological crisis, and it's inevitable that it's going to be revolutionary episodes. So it takes a little while, obviously, for that to sink in. And I think one of the reasons why it takes a long time, or it's going to take a little while for some people listening to this, is because for the last 30 years, we've been sold the idea that there's really just two options out there. One option is the ever-increasing sort of mental madness of thinking that we can just go to cops and support Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the climate movement and go on marches and all the rest of it, and by some rapidly increasing, well, decreasing probability of a miracle, the powers that be are going to come around the idea of doing something. Well, evidently, they tried that for 30 years, and it's now too late. And then the other option we're presented with is the sort of doom option, which is there's nothing we can do. It's past the point of no return. And that's it. We're just given a seat, as it were, to watch the inevitable demise of humankind. So as I think I might have indicated, those two positions are very similar in so much as they're both displacement activities, which enable us to do very little and to avoid the act of resistance. So the exciting thing in a verticomedy, if that's the right word, is actually what's inevitable is the revolutionary episode. We don't jump from everything fine to human extinction in a moment. All right. So where are we up to? That's the state of play. And what I want to do in this second section of the inevitable revolution talk is just take a bit of a break from all the drama and have a little look at what this revolution thing is all about from a historical point of view or a sociological point of view. So I'm going to be fairly descriptive here and look at what revolution is and is not and how people look upon it and what have you. All right. So let's just plough into some basic ideas here. So the first thing to say is that revolutionary episodes, as I'm going to call them, can be pro-social, i.e. they can lead to progressive change to varying degrees. And historically, they can lead to forms of fascism, social breakdown, totalitarian regimes and all the rest of it. So the main point here is it's open, right? Don't let anyone persuade you that revolution is always going to be great or it's always going to be terrible, like the jury's out, as you might say. And obviously, this is related to various dogmas around whether they're violent or non-violent or they end up being violent or non-violent. Again, the jury's out, like some of them are violent and some of them are non-violent. Some of them are non-violent and then turn violent. There's a whole range. So again, nothing set in terms of this notion of a revolutionary episode. Now, the other thing which presumably is at the back of your mind is, OK, so it's going to be a revolutionary episode, but the climate's still going to collapse and we're still going to have to create extinction. So it just doesn't make any difference. You can be all doomsters or whatever the right word is. OK, so what I want to say in this one is, and I'm not going to talk about this in great detail, but just for the record, right, there's still quite possibly the option that repair mechanisms and geoengineering, whether you like them or not, are not going to be able to be used, which will ensure the continuation of the human race. In other words, it's not over until it's over. And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to slightly cheer you up. I'm saying it because it's true. And if it wasn't true, then it wouldn't be true. And I'd say it. So that's my understanding of the situation. Again, there's no guarantees, of course, could have a revolutionary episode that doesn't get it back together or it's too late. But the point is, we don't actually know. What we do know is it's going to be massive, massive climatic and ecological disruption. And we do know that that will inevitably lead to revolutionary episodes. But we don't know for certain whether that will lead to human extinction at this point in time, 2023. So there's that opening, as you might say. Now, the next thing to just think about a little bit, and this is a bit of a controversial topic, is what will happen to a certain extent will be determined by geography. Now, I want to be clear this is not like totally deterministic. It's not like if you live in a really hot country, you know, you're going to be totally fucked. And if you live in Norway, everything's going to be hunky dory. Having said that, there is what you might call a tendency for geographical influence on whether a country is going to completely fall into social collapse or maybe in the middle and have a certain amount of social collapse and then fall into fascism or have some revolutionary episode and move towards some sort of deliberative democratic model, which is broadly the direction in which we're going to be traveling. So the point is, is if in various tropical countries where the state is not that well established and societies are already on the edge, it's definitely a high probability these countries will fall into classical social collapse, i.e. warlordism, civil war, mass migration, what have you. In the sort of middling countries, you know, southern United States, southern Europe, southern China, India, these sort of countries, you could see a more likely possibility of the outbreak of fascistic responses due to mass migration and the disruption that causes. And yes, there is the Norway scenario that in far north or far south countries, then particularly where the state's strong and there's a long democratic tradition, then we're more likely to see democratic transitions as a result of social disruption. So this is something to bear in mind, right? And as I said, I'm not saying like it's a done deal, there's plenty of exceptions. You know, a famous one is Costa Rica, where it's got, you know, a highly functioning democracy and it's stuck right in the tropics. So, you know, but it's something to think about in terms of surveying the territory. All right, so another aspect is how long is this thing going to go on for, this revolutionary episode? So again, historical records, you know, a bit all over the place, to be honest, depends how you interpret what a revolution is, of course. But for the sake of argument, it can be really short, like the revolution in France in 1830. You know, one day, the King of France was, you know, fine. And seven days later, he was on a ship to England and being deposed. So revolutions can be seven days. But the other extreme, you've got Mexico in 1909, I think it is, or 1911 or thereabouts, you know, just debate on when it started and a debate on when it finished. But for the sake of argument, it was still going strong 10 years later in 2019. So it can be a long thing. All right, so how deep does a revolution have to be in terms of social change? So I've already suggested, or if I haven't, I'll make a suggestion, that our run of the mill basic, this definition of a revolutionary episode, is an episode of social disruption that changes the regime, or at least attempts to change the regime. So I want to make a separation here between a government, a regime, and the state. So government is, you know, the thing that rules the country. The regime is the constitutional arrangement, you know, whether it's an aristocracy, a democracy, autocratic regime. So that's the one that's going to change. And then the state, state is not going to change in so much as it's still going to be there. Now, you know, I'm not saying that there's other ways to describe that, but I'm choosing that just as a marker. So have a certain idea of what this is going to envisage. Of course, revolutionary episodes also involve big ruptures in social and cultural life as well. So we can stick that down on a piece of paper, that's going to be in the ballpark. And deeper still, there's philosophical and existential spiritual change, particularly, you know, when you've got some major metahistorical changes, you might say, which arguably is what we're going to face. So I'm going to put little sort of question marks around those two latter things, the social and cultural stuff, and the philosophical stuff, and we're going to be looking at them. But our sort of ballpark sort of assumption here is, is what we're working towards, and what's most likely to happen is this change in the regime, the way in which society makes decisions at the macro level, i.e. governmental level. And, you know, I don't want to go on about all the little ideas we're going to be throwing around, but yet there is going to be some major change in how people relate to each other and make decisions on various levels. So, so there we are, that's, you know, that's just surveying the landscape. And the main thing I want to say next, and this is the main point of this talk, I suppose, is this issue of agency. And this is really critical to get your head around. So let's start, I know this sounds a bit academic, but let's start with the idea about history having agency or being determined, right? So this is a big debate, so rather old-fashioned debate in many ways, but it's, you know, is history influenced by the great man sort of situation, someone comes along like Stalin or Napoleon and changes history, or is it a deterministic process, you know, to do with the economy and culture, and the poor individual doesn't really have much say in any of these big teutonic sort of plates that move around, and every now and again, there's some big change and there's nothing much we can do about it. Okay, so I'm not going to sort of start talking about which one of those is right, because I think it's a bit abstract. What I am going to say is something a little bit more pragmatic, which is it depends on what's going on in society at a particular time. So just to choose two examples, if you're in, you know, 1200 AD in China, you've got a landlord who controls everything, you've got a culture based around Confucius, which is, you know, obey your superiors, don't cause a fuss and what have you, you don't have any weapons, and you're forced 12, 14 hours a day to do manual labor. You don't need to be a genius to work out that the level of agency you have in that particular social context is not that great. So we can say, for the sake of argument, that's pretty deterministic, not much is going to happen. So compare that with, let's say 2023, mobilizing people to take climate action, so something that many of you are familiar with, and I think it's fair to say that you don't, it's not like you can click your fingers and get thousands of people on the street, but you're not in Chinese peasant territory in 11, 1200 AD. In other words, we know, and we'll be discussing this, you know, if you get yourself organized and go and do 100 talks and you recruit two people per talk, and you can do some civil disobedience, and you can influence the political process to a certain extent. In other words, you have some degree of agency. The upshot of all this is that it depends on the particular context, how much agency, how much you're going to be able to change the course of history. And this is the main point, okay? This is the main point. During a revolutionary episode, there's plenty of evidence, and plenty of historians will support this, but there's a high level, it's like the super high moments in history when there's maximum agency, or what's called fluidity. And the reason for this is not hard to understand, of course, because most of the time, people will go to work, have pretty normal lives, you know, they're pretty crap, or they're pretty good, but there's not much going on. In a revolutionary context, when everything's changing, it's a good bet that people have lost their jobs, they've lost their security. So there's a whole load of economic distress going on. So people are looking for some new economic system. And psychologically, there's a loss of faith in their religion, or their culture. And people are looking for a new way of looking at life, looking at themselves, looking at their society. So there's a sort of ideological rupture, as you might say. So the both of those things combined together mean that there's a high probability that something new is going to happen. No guarantees, of course, but you can see where we're coming from. So some academic research on this is Chenyuef and Stefan, why civil resistance works. So again, some of you are probably familiar with this book, probably the most important book on social change over the last 10 or 15 years from an academic point of view. And there's lots of things we can say about it. But for me, the most important thing about the study of 300 revolutions and, you know, major uprisings and what have you over the last century or so, is their proposition that during these episodes, there's a massive potential for social change, if the revolutionaries or activists are number one, organized and number two, have some coherent strategy. So surprise, surprise, that's what we're going to be talking about for the next 30 or so episodes, because if we get our shit together, then we have the chance, not just to change history, but changing history in some major pro-social way. All right. So I'll just give you a little example here. So in 2012, there was a very famous episode, you probably remember it, is in Egypt. And I remember some expert on the Middle East saying after the Tunisian uprising, yes, there's no possibility of Egypt doing anything, you know, they've got a dictatorship. It's all deterministic. And as we know, he was wrong. Because a week later, or two weeks later, Egypt exploded. And there's this big thing in Tahrir Square, and it was all very exciting and dramatic. And within a fortnight, the regime went from, you know, fine to collapsing. So it's a little bit of a 1830 situation. So, according to Geneva and Stephan, of course, there was, in that moment, the potential to fundamentally change Egyptian society. And as you probably know, nothing much did change. It was one of those revolutions where there was a big flash in the pan, and then the powers that be, you know, re-established control, and nothing changed. And the reason, of course, is as those scholars say, there was no strategic plan. There was no organized activist or social formation that had experience of dealing with mass uprisings and how to translate them into political power. So that's an example of how not to do it, as you might say. So I want to juxtapose that to a certain extent with the beginnings of exile. So as some of you might know, when myself and about 10 or 15 other people set up Extinction Rebellion in 2018, it didn't come out of nowhere like the Egyptian Revolution. It was planned. In fact, arguably, it was about a year and a half of fairly self-conscious planning that went in by various people, including myself. And the argument, of course, is because we sort of knew what we were doing without sounding too big-headed about it, it was successful. And I certainly had that expectation when the whole thing was in its planning stage that this was going to produce something big. And it shouldn't be any surprise then that after the April Rebellion of 2019, 200,000 people had joined and it became an institution as a way. In other words, it carried on. It wasn't occupied and just existed for a few weeks and collapsed back into sort of nothingness. It had some organizational solidity. That was not created by chance. That was proactively created, as Jenny Riff and Stephan predict. Now, obviously, you can say, and certainly I would say, it wasn't that well-planned. And consequently, after a year or so, it had fallen back into various sort of rituals of conventional environmental action. But you can see the direction of travel. So what we're going to be trying to do over these next 30 episodes is I'm going to be you know, standing on the shoulders of various giants and saying, OK, so what we want to do over the next two or three years is collectively design not just an XXR, but how the health societies are going to be organized in a humane and pro-social way when these inevitable openings start to happen. So in conclusion, revolutionary episodes are coming down the line. And just as a little aside, they do happen on a fairly regular basis. Please don't delude yourself that this is just totally a weird proposition. You know, for the sake of argument, every 25, 50 years, definitely every 7,500 years, most societies either get into massive wars or massive periods of social disruption or massive revolutionary episodes. So it happens. Human nature hasn't changed. Society hasn't changed. So it's inevitable that these are going to come along anyway. And with the additional reality of the climate catastrophe, then we know they're on their way. So it's going to happen. And secondly, without being too flippant about it, there's all to play for. There's no guarantees. OK, this is not, you know, the inevitable revolution results in X, Y and Z. It's more there's going to be an inevitable revolution and it could be X or it could be Z. So my last final thought on this before I finish is, yes, yes, it does involve a lot of responsibility. That's probably the elephant in the room that you're probably thinking at the back of your mind, you know, oh, fuck, you know, this is going to be a big deal. And this is what's going to be happening in my lifetime. And I'm not going to be able to let myself off the hook or hopefully you're not. You're not going to be able to delude yourself that NGOs are going to sort it out. You're not going to be able to delude yourself. It's all going to go up in a puff of smoke and there's nothing you can do about it. Right. There's going to be this period of various lengths where you and your generation and us as a movement are going to have this massive opportunity. In fact, it's not totally unbelievable that the power of the existing regime will more or less hand us on the plate control of societies. I know that sounds really weird, but you can check it out. It's not the first time that sort of thing's happened. So this is going to be our life's work, has to be our life's work, because billions of people's lives are in the balance. And that's just the way it is. So there you are. I don't think I'm going to make any more comments on that. You can think about that for the next day or two. And then, yeah, I think I'm going to put in some one more sort of introductory session about all of this and then we'll be on to the practicalities of what the plan is and what we're going to do. All right. Hopefully that's clear. Thanks so much. See you in a bit. Bye.