183. Alessandro Pelizzon: On the EU adopting ecocide laws, & media to believe in

Earlier this year, Associate Professor in Law, Alessandro Pelizzon, was on the podcast talking about some of the latest global paradigm shifting developments in our legal systems. A couple of weeks ago, there was another such development. The EU is going to criminalise severe environmental harms ‘comparable to ecocide’. And related to that, it’s also broaching post-growth economies. All part of broader shifts in deciding what we value most, and how our systems can best change to reflect that.

With this in mind, we also go on to talk about what Alessandro is observing in our media systems - the emergence of a new phase of ‘climate-denialism’, and from some people who have great appeal to many of us, and in a variety of ways, from Elon Musk to Jordan Peterson. How to make sense of that? And to what extent might this be related to the paradigm shifts above?

That leads us to the broader question, what do we do about media? We compare notes on what’s been brewing on and around the podcast lately. And to close, we get a brief update on the Resonant Earth project that Alessandro has co-founded and talked about last time.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers (also available on the embedded player on the episode web page), and a transcript of this conversation (please note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read).

This was recorded on 24 November 2023.

Title slide: from a media release about the EU agreement (source).

Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, off the soundtrack for the film Regenerating Australia.

Find more:
Hear more from Alessandro, most recently on episode 159 in the northern rivers in April of this year (with further links): on the collapse & renewal of universities, the education we need, & latest on Rights of Nature.

Transcript

Alessandro: 0:00

But for it to be picked up at the European Union level is massive, because obviously the European Union has the capacity to influence the ongoing legislative regimes of all the countries that form part of it, and then of all the countries that engage economically with it. So the introduction of Ecocide at the European level is massive.

Anthony: 0:23

G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration. You might remember the last time I spoke with Associate Professor in Law, Alessandro Pelizzon, earlier this year, where we talked about some of the latest global paradigm-shifting developments in our legal systems. Well, a couple of weeks ago, there was another such development. T he EU is going to criminalise severe environmental harms ' comparable to Ecocide', and in line with that it's also broaching post-growth economies. All part of broader shifts in deciding what we value most, and how our systems can best change to reflect that. Also with this in mind, we go on to talk about what Alessandro is observing in our media systems - the emergence of a new phase of 'climate denialism', and from some people who have great appeal to many of us, and in a variety of ways, from Elon Musk to Jordan Peterson. So how to make sense of that? And to what extent might this be related to the paradigm shifts above? And that led us, you'll see, to the broader question, what do we do about media? So we compare notes on what's been brewing on and around the podcast lately. A nd, to close, we get an update on the Resonant Earth project that Alessandro has co-founded and talked about last time.

Anthony: 1:47

Before we start, though, huge thanks to very generous new subscribers, Elka and Helen. Deep appreciation your way. A nd, by the way, I'm messaging personal thanks to new subscribers in the Patreon app too, exploring more of its new changes, so I hope you're all receiving those. Thanks also to Jeff Pow and Michelle McManus for generously increasing your monthly donation, and to Gillian Sanbrook for increasing your annual subscription. And continuing my thanks to subscribers of over two years duration now, thanks very much to the wonderful Curcio family, Grace Rose- Miller, Caz, Craig Wilson, Jennifer West, Scott, Bronwyn Morgan, Lindsay Sell, and what do you know, my guest today, Alessandro Pelizzon. AP: So nice to see you again. AJ: So good to see you again. So last week I saw this report come out and got straight in touch with you wondering what you made of it. It really picked up from where we left off last time. The headline ran: the EU is to criminalize severe environmental harms comparable to ecocide. What are you seeing in this?

Alessandro: 2:59

So just to contextualize it, the idea of ecocide was the proposal that came out in the 70s, but then it was really. It really got picked up maybe 20 years ago, primarily by Scottish lawyer Paul Higgins, and she said well, we need to introduce a new crime in the Rome Statute, a new crime against humanity, and that's the destruction, the radical destruction of the environment, of different ecosystems, and she called that ecocide, using the term that had been introduced in the 70s. So after that point it was just sort of a suggestion and the suggestion was to introduce it at the international level and in some form or another, at the local, at the domestic level. Now 10 countries did pick that up and 10 countries already have criminalized to a large extent actually 11, the crime or a crime comparable to ecocide, sort of the devastation of the environment. Most of them, interestingly enough, are in the ex-Soviet Union, so Kazakhstan, georgia, russia, so they actually have criminalized the destruction of the ecosystem in the criminal system already.

Alessandro: 4:15

Then in Europe the first to follow suit was Belgium.

Alessandro: 4:19

So Belgium did criminalize to some extent the destruction of the environment.

Alessandro: 4:25

But for it to be picked up at the European Union level is massive because obviously the European Union has the capacity to influence the ongoing legislative regimes of all the countries that form part of it and then of all the countries that engage economically with it. So the introduction of ecocide at the European level is massive, and this is not long after Spain, so a year ago it was the first place in Europe to recognize a natural feature the Mar Menor Lagoon as a legal entity. So you remember, like when we discussed last time, there's this dialogue between rights and duties, and rights are articulated as rights of nature, legal personhood for nature, and duties are generally articulated in the form of ecocides and ways of stopping harmful behavior more directly. And so we can see that Europe is now considering very, very seriously tools that engage with nature, not just as a set of resources in legal terms, but as something more, be it legal persons, be it victims of destruction and so on. So this is definitely a milestone in Europe.

Anthony: 5:35

I wonder if you can give us a brief idea of, for such a big achievement, how the breakthrough was got. And I say that partly because there's so many domains where the impasses seem to remain impenetrable. It's so glaring in so many cases what needs to happen but it's not, and even when public is nominally on board. So what got this through?

Alessandro: 5:59

I'm not really familiar because I'm not connected directly to the group that pushed that through, so I'm not really sure what steps they took. But looking at the bigger picture, this has been brewing in Europe for a decade now. You know the cases in the Netherlands, the successful case in nature in the Netherlands.

Alessandro: 6:20

Yeah, we talked about these last time, yeah all the citizen initiatives about, you know, personhood for nature, rights of nature, whatever, jo Jo Mehta and the Stop Ex-Ecoside Movement, which is massive in Europe, the strict regulatory regimes that have been already in place long before you know this more extreme version or more advanced version of an ecological jurisprudence took place. So I think it's I wouldn't say it as the culmination of something, I would see it as a milestone, in that you know all these things, it's, it emerges from a particular context and that context leads to it, and from this other things will happen. So I'm pretty sure that when we will speak next, we will remember this and we will say see that that's another milestone that has been met. It's an important one because it really it recognizes explicitly that the destruction of an ecosystem of the environment warrants more than a simple administrative fine. It warrants some degree of criminalization.

Alessandro: 7:32

So the behavior then is criminalized, which also means that, of course, individuals can be are criminally liable for conducting those behaviors, obviously, but so are the directors of companies, of large companies, who are personally liable in criminal law for the behavior of the company. Now, that varies depending on from country to country speaking, it becomes part of the director's duties, and so any large manufacturing pharmaceutical, any company, any company that you can think of in Europe, all of a sudden has to rethink its behavior in a way that cannot simply monetize the destruction, because you know, a company might say, yeah, the fine is not as big as the income or the profit that we make by committing that act. Therefore, who cares? The directors, all of a sudden, are personally liable for that. So the company might make a profit, but at the expenses of the ongoing freedom and liberty of the directors. So the directors will start thinking twice before allowing a company to undertake actions or at least in theory undertake actions that are radically destructive.

Anthony: 8:42

That's very interesting because a lot of the talk that is nominally positive around not treating nature as an economic externality, something that we bear the cost for as a whole, but the company scores the profit for A lot of. The problem with that, of course, is that in seeking to not have externalities and essentially put value financial value on nature, you do create dynamics inevitably. That might genuinely have people in those contexts saying it is worth it for me, I'm going to make more of a profit than it still will cost me to pay for cutting down those trees or whatever.

Alessandro: 9:19

So the fact that it's just getting to what's right and wrong, which surely is the whole point of jurisprudence- after all, in fact, actually there's a very famous theory in what's known as the economic analysis of law, which was introduced by Richard Posner in the 70s, and it's known as the Coase theorem. And the Coase theorem suggests that exactly this that when the cost of a criminal or tortures action is inferior to the profit that one makes by committing that action, then the person obviously will undertake that action. Therefore, in law one should actually increase not necessarily the monetary cost but somehow the cost of that action. Negligence it could be sort of tortures negligence or it could be criminal, but so in that way the behavior is discouraged, not exclusively through monetary disincentives but also through very serious criminal or other form of direct penalties.

Anthony: 10:28

I wonder if it's related to this. I wonder what you're picking up around. What the EU's also been doing is sort of making some significant steps towards the post-growth economy as a whole. What are you picking up there?

Alessandro: 10:43

That's something I haven't really. I've heard rumors but I haven't really followed that up that much. I think it's inevitable because obviously once you actually have that, then the question of value comes up. What is it that we value Exactly? I think actually we were mentioning last time.

Alessandro: 10:59

So there's this beautiful book by Mariana Mazzucato, who is an Italian-American economist who wrote the book titled the Value of Everything, and she really articulates the theory of value and how the theory of value has changed over the centuries from the mechanicalists to the physiocrats, through the Adam Smith and all the classical economists to the neoclassical economists and into the neoliberal economists. And she shows actually that there is not one single theory of value like that monetization of value that is espoused by the Montpelerin Society and Milton Friedman etc. It's just one permutation of value. It's not the only value. No marginal value is just one permutation of value.

Alessandro: 11:49

The physiocrats, who actually are the first one who call themselves so the physiocrats, are considered to be proto-economists who've wrote before Adam Smith and they believe that value was located in the land itself. And, what's interesting, they're the first. So people call them the free physiocrats, but they call themselves at the time les économistes, the economists. They're the first people, the first philosophers, who call themselves economists. So the first economists, or self-styled economists, really believe that value was to be located in nature, in the land itself, and so they had a very, very different system of calculating value. Value was not extractivist, because obviously it was connected to nature itself.

Anthony: 12:41

How interesting.

Alessandro: 12:41

What era was that?

Anthony: 12:43

And where.

Alessandro: 12:43

France? I guess, yeah, france, the 1700s, so maybe 40 to 50 years before Adam Smith's.

Anthony: 12:51

Smith in Scotland. I wonder, if you do? I mean, you alluded before briefly to what might emerge next, the context that this emerged out of in the EU, and what might emerge next. Do you have your eye on anything particular at the moment?

Alessandro: 13:06

Well, it's interesting because now I think I was telling you last time that if you just search, you go on Google Scholar and search for rights of nature, you get 18,000 plus hits. So this is now public discourse. It's not something that is niche, it's not something that only a few people that might disagree with it, but it's not something hidden and that most people have never heard of. Now it's common, it's in the public discourse. What I'm picking up, though, is a shift in popular discourse away from a traditional media structure that somewhat maintain and pride itself in maintaining some standards and some rigor in the journalistic practice. So obviously we're shifting away from that into the social media world, and the social media world. There's a reason to that. I'll get to what I'm picking up in a second, but I just wanted to give the context.

Alessandro: 14:06

The social media world, as we all know, is populated by, increasingly populated by, or dominated by, these demagogues. You know, the Jordan Peterson's of the world, the Ben Shapiro's of the world, the ones who actually now have their own people, like Andrew Tate and his private university. And if you look at that like you know, the theory of value that is contained there is contextually limited. It's very much predicated on a Friedmanian idea of value. So the monetization of everything, with a huge degree of externalities, and not just natural externalities, there are also a lot of human externalities. But what's interesting is that there's an echoic chamber for demagogues in social media and on the internet that is now shaping the public discourse. What's interesting is that what I'm picking up in a lot of this sort of and I don't really watch too much, but clearly the algorithms feed this demagogical narrative, because I don't really search for them, but I'm bombarded. Yes, it's interesting, I've been bombarded over the last month or so by this there are people who are very much referencing each other, so there's a network that, although not necessarily an explicit network it might be an accidental network, but it's a network nonetheless because there are people who are speaking to each other extensively or referring to each other, and what's intriguing is that they, apart from the fact that some of them have this very aggressive and somewhat childish way of talking, many of them are now using or allowing to emerge an anti-climate change rhetoric that is of a new form, of a new aspect.

Alessandro: 15:56

So traditionally, you know, the Orescas has done this interesting research. They've shown how, over 30 years, there were very explicit campaign to increase climate change denialism, saying the science is not right or the science is not certain. So first it was the science is not right, then it was the science is not certain, then it was well, yeah, the science, but you see there's disagreement. Well, yes, there is a disagreement, but the effects are unclear. So there was this climate denialism that changed over time, which mirrored also the anti-Tobacco Very much, very much.

Anthony: 16:32

So there was a songbook for this, if you like that this was being played from and it's been exposed to be very much a disinformation by design.

Alessandro: 16:43

Yeah, but what's interesting now is that I think you know you look at comments by odd figures like Elon Musk, who are now pretending to speak as if they have the wisdom, as if they are the Dalai Lama or David Suzuki. They're not. These people are not. They're not the wise people of this age. They have their opinion. That's fine, but their opinion is not the opinion of, is not the wisdom that I would attribute to the, to wise people that are recognized as wise people.

Anthony: 17:13

They're the. I checked myself, even using this word because I had someone say to me had a good retort, I'll say the word. So they're the powerful ones. And I heard that the person said back to me real power is something else and it's more in the people you're describing. But she knew what I meant and you know what I mean. They're the winners of today. So this is what I assume is where they get that sense from.

Alessandro: 17:37

I don't know whether they're winner, but they definitely are the demagogues who who run what Gramsci called the dominant, the hegemonic ideology. They peddle an ideology that seems to to dominate the current discourse, yes, but even just by virtue of being more visible on the internet. If not for no other reason, True, I don't get. I don't get bombarded with clips from the Dalai Lama, I get bombarded with clips from Elon Musk. There's a reason, Like the algorithms, for whatever reason, are doing that. So I don't think they are powerful in that sense of power, but they are hegemonic. The ideological hegemony comes through the fact that they dominate the discourse.

Alessandro: 18:23

And what I'm picking up is that there's the current version of climate denialism that all this network is pushing quite for strongly forward is one that denies the existence of a of any urgency in relation to the the climate predicament and, if you remember, we called it a predicament because it's not a problem that can have a solution. Indeed, it's some. It's a change that is is here to stay. So we can only have responses to this predicament, and the responses have to be both scientifically, theoretically sound and just. The must be a justice for all in in those responses, Cause there's no point in having, you know, 10% of the world population being completely safe and and the other 90% being completely screwed over.

Anthony: 19:11

You know, that's not just it's not just, and it's sort of a nonsensical thing either. If 90% is not happy, then the 10% won't won't hide for long, Not for long.

Alessandro: 19:20

Exactly, you know the pitchfork would come out. That's history, exactly. Fortunately and you know I'm not advocating that I actually don't get exactly the opposite.

Anthony: 19:28

Let's do the responses first.

Alessandro: 19:29

Exactly, but history shows that, that, you know, like a completely detached aristocracy tends to breathe the space for an emergence of the French revolution. You know, when you say let them have cake, well then the response is not going to I go and buy cake. The response is going to be I'm going to take your, your cake, and that's right and so. So that's the so, this argument of denying the urgency, denying the fact that there's a crisis, denying the fact that there's and I don't like the word crisis.

Alessandro: 20:03

I don't like that because I think there's a problem with that.

Anthony: 20:05

It's like problem exactly.

Alessandro: 20:06

Yeah, but. But I think if, but the denying that there's any sense of urgency, and because I've heard, for example, elon Musk saying oh, you know, yeah, we're putting too much carbon in the atmosphere, but you see, the problem is not really there. Well, no, the problem is coming at us rapidly. The change in weather patterns means that there is less yield in certain agricultural places and there's an increase in usage of our current usage of fossil fuels that cannot easily be replaced by by other products, and so we have seen a crossing of, I think, eight, seven or eight of the nine thresholds of the planetary boundaries that Stefan and Rockstrom came up with almost 30 years ago now.

Anthony: 20:50

And I'm just suggesting that it it comes with a whole other form of thinking, doesn't it? But you're? You're sort of putting these things together and suggesting that, because of the, if we want to say, power, or just reach, or bombardment, that is the nature of their success in the world, that this narrative and I guess it's networked nature, that there's sort of a reinforcement happening, that this is is something to really look out for. I find it also really interesting too, because some of the complexities include, of course, that people with a shallow observation of masks still would attach him to. They probably do attach him now to a Twitter debacle, but prior, at least, to renewable energy transformations, right. And and the Tesla, which, of course, again, is on the basis of a shallow understanding that technology will do the job for us, but that being what it is, that it was in the ballpark of of transitions that we do need.

Anthony: 21:45

And also, then you talk about a Jordan Peterson, like there's so much of him that over the years I've enjoyed listening to as well, like I've been sent on to even a relatively recent podcast of his on education and I related to a lot of it. So it's so vexing and complex and, of course plays into easy polarizations or easy risky narratives, which I'm looking out to avoid, right, and because I am relating in one aspect or another with even some of these people. It's like, okay, we've just got to be able to see a bigger picture, hey, around these people and how coalescence may be evolving. That can be dangerous, even though you might think something else over here that they're doing is okay. How are you making sense of that?

Alessandro: 22:38

I think it's interesting because it's it's, it's the curse of social media that have allowed this aspect of demagogical discourse to emerge in that. Jordan Peterson psychology of myth is fascinating, yeah, and he's a master articulating that extremely good, like his, his reading of horrors and the myth of horrors beautiful. He's not a political theorist, though, but alone he's not a climate scientist. So for him to articulate his area of expertise, it's absolutely brilliant and he does that beautifully and he's a very articulate person. But for him to extend his articulate a location to areas that he's not an expert in and pretend to speak us or at the level of the experts, it's very dangerous, because demagogues are not the village fools. Everyone recognize the recognize the village fools. Demagogues are people who say 60, maybe even 80% of things that make sense and are well articulated, but it's in that 20 or 40% of things that they know nothing of and they have just a personal opinion, which may or may not be correct, but they actually present that as part of that expertise. It's the argument at ad autoritas, which is often a logical fallacy, the idea that because you are an authority at something, then you are an authority at everything else. It's a logical fallacy. So you cannot say well, albert Einstein was a great scientist. Therefore his arguments on World War II were correct. No, his arguments are correct in the field of expertise that he was trained in, not in anything else. But the problem is that if in a traditional setting there are checks and balances, you don't have a forum to say whatever you want unless you are within an academic institution or you are within what traditionally was a much more rigorous journalistic or media world, where the media were far more responsible in the treatment of information. Now, through social media, everything is a platform and everyone can say whatever they want, and anyone who is captivating or good at something has the risk of becoming a demagogue. And the fact that these demagogues equate economic success with their capacity to speak, which actually is also like a self-reforcing prophecy, because if you are on a social media platform where the number of views defined the amount of funds that you get from sponsorship, which then allow you to speak more, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So it's not that you create your own echoic chamber, and so this echoic chamber that is emerging is very much pushing forward one way of being in the world and, interestingly enough, it is not purely Christian. We have people like Mohammed Hijab, who are doing the same, exactly the same thing, but from an allegedly scholarly Islamic perspective, and I know a lot of Islamic scholars who argue and articulate the points that are times are similar to the ones that he raises in a completely different way.

Alessandro: 26:11

So it's a way of arguing, a way of speaking, a way of debating that is dominating that narrative, not the content. The content is almost irrelevant, but the content seems to go in a very particular direction, one of them being that of this novel version of climate denialism. So, going back to your initial question, what is it that I'm observing? I'm observing that, now that ecological jurisprudence is emerging as a discourse that is not niche anymore, the novel version of the attempt to silence that. So ecocide, rights of nature, the novel attempt to silence that is this particular economic argument that says there is no urgency in dealing with the climate predicament because technology will deal with it, it will take care of itself, it's slow, we will adapt to it earlier, blah, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, any attempt to do anything at that level is nothing other than a rain or a blockage on the economy itself. So that's the overall argument that is emerging now.

Anthony: 27:17

Yes, and the places you mentioned, a couple, but the places you're hearing that sort of coalesce around, the figures that you're hearing it coalesce with, oh, like you, just go online, like they're the ones that come up to me, but they're the classic ones.

Alessandro: 27:29

You hear, jordan Peterson. I'm not slendering them because they all have their own arguments, but it's interesting because when they actually tend to refer to each other, jordan Peterson will go on Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan will be quoted by Elon Musk, and Elon Musk will be referred to by Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro will have an enmity with Muhammad Hijab, and so you can see that all these people tend to appear on each other's fora and all of them have individual fora. That's an important point. None of them is part of a complex organization that is speaking for the whole. They're all echoic chambers that each one of them creates for themselves. It's the Ben Shapiro channel, the Patrick David channel, the Jordan Peterson channel.

Alessandro: 28:21

It's about the individual, and whenever you have a channel about the individual and not the collective, you should ask how important is it to give all that space to a single individual? Yes, because if you think about in a scientific sense let's look at the IPCC report, for example the reports on climate, the changing climate and the changes in the environment, the related changes in the environment you don't say this is the Will Steffen report, for example. You say this is the IPCC report that thousands of scientists unnamed have contributed to. So it's the collective wisdom of the scientists that will speak up. Now is it to say that just because it's the collective it's correct? Absolutely not. Sometimes a thousand people can be wrong, but it is very unlikely that a thousand people are always wrong and one person is always right. That is very, very unlikely.

Anthony: 29:20

Yes. Well, you've landed right in, I guess, the wheelhouse of where I dwell and why I sort of proudly stand firm on having a podcast insignia that doesn't have my name or my photo on it. And I say that chuckling just because what we observe around the place. But I'm not huge, I'm not of the scale of these people, but a humble podcast, but all the same it felt important and indeed not only important, but my uplift and purpose is that I get to be about other people. I don't have to look at myself all the time. It's a liberation. But then these are the layers to the experience. But, in all seriousness, the question of media, in so many ways having media that we are not limited to in the old form and let's just say old form, like what we grew up with, classifieds based print media had it, that was.

Anthony: 30:19

Murdoch. Murdoch came out of that Like so that that had the rigor that you talk about but had the structural problems that we've disrupted around with that terminology. So I don't despair at that loss so much as the baby that went with the bathwater that you're alluding to, the rigor and some degree of accountability and so forth that then we could invest in as readers of media or listeners of media. So we've lost that, but we've gained this democratic. You know, on this other side, like what I can do, and that some number of people around the country are going to be listening, and the world, for that matter, will be listening to us, like some supporters of this podcast are, from all the different continents of the world Amazing, beautiful, yet also leads to the sort of dynamics you're talking about. So what I think about a lot is what do we need to do with media?

Alessandro: 31:13

It's a great question, because it's good that you don't have the Anthony James experience, but the regeneration, I really like that. And but also I think you're right, like you know, I agree. Like the traditional form of media was controlled by whoever had the money. The control of the printing presses physically, yeah, because when you actually had to print you had to have the money to have the printing presses. So there's sort of an economic element to that, but I think it's.

Alessandro: 31:43

I don't know whether it's a more democratic process or better. It's a democratic process in the sense that Aristotle described democracy as one, as a perversion of political discourse. Democracy, aristotle said, is not, is one of the three negative forms of political engagement. He said that the three positive ones are monarchy, aristocracy. So the highest one is the polytheia than the aristocracy, and then the monarchy, and the worst one are the democracy, oligarchy and dictatorship. And democracy lends itself to the rise of demagogues, and I think that's what we're observing now.

Alessandro: 32:25

And this is different from what he said he called polytheia, where everyone is equally informed and is entering into a different type of discourse. It's a more mature discourse. So what I think it's happening is we are, in a way, we're going through the other lessons of this form of communication, and so you know when we went to high school and then you know you had the bullies there not the smartest guys around, not stupid, but not the smartest guys around, but very loud, somewhat charming and very aggressive. So we're going through the other lessons of this medium, so eventually we'll grow out of it, hopefully, and we'll get to an adulthood where the discourse is a bit more mature, a bit more stable, where the sort of the cult of these individuals will kind of fade out on its own, and we're at least this is an aspiration, of course where instead the space for collective discourse and collective debate raises.

Alessandro: 33:27

So I think it. You know, for example, in Australia there's the hope to get higher education to 40% of the population. Unfortunately it's vocational higher education. We should have a more comprehensive higher education, one that contains liberal arts in as much as in it uses sciences, so both. But once that happens, then the discourse changes. It's a far more nuanced discourse that emerges, and so the various demagogues of the internet, or at the very least the demagogical aspects of these people, will disappear.

Anthony: 34:04

You're not the only person who's talked about this, and I'm partial to it and I think, in keeping with the other things, even the earth-based jurisprudence that we started with, that these are aspirations that are possible to achieve and worthy of going for, and so I'm on board with that, and indeed I have particular thoughts that I'm really talking with everybody I come across these days about it, because it's so central and important around, essentially again in the mold of everything else we learn about, whether it's economics or climate or whatever that it's getting back. It's almost, as one guest in the Kimberley said to me, remembering where the water is.

Anthony: 34:42

It's going back to your basic region, to your area where the water comes from, literally like your water catchment, and basing your governance, your economics, like everything that is central, your community and I'm suggesting your media. That that be, and that we can do this. So we have the mechanisms that are cheap and easy, that don't need to be algorithmic based, which is what I love about podcasts too, by the way, I don't know, not active on so-called on algorithmic media and I love that podcasts aren't like that.

Anthony: 35:17

It is a direct thing for whoever wants to pick it up and whoever has said I want to pick it up, it goes to you and won't? I mean, they have other algorithms, of course, that they feature stuff with, but I ignore all that stuff. That's brought immediate diet control in our own lives, which I've talked about with a guest on the podcast about too, but for people everywhere, like that mature form of politics and governance, for people everywhere to take that up, like we can do this Wherever we are, we can find the right people to connect with, not carry the load ourselves and create these forms of media, which are then also right. They're less abstracted, which again is part of the polemic that I think we've been talking about. Can you be grounded in physical realities? So, whether you are then extrapolating law from that or economies from that that, that is something we can apply to media too, and then, in a way, what I overlap that with is the community independence movement that resulted in a transformation of our parliament our federal parliament 18 months ago.

Anthony: 36:30

Wasn't it that that happened? That that's sort of a movement, community based, and based on caring for others, listening to others. Yes, but that's it. Yes, and that could happen, we could do this.

Alessandro: 36:45

And it's not just a narrative of caring for others is the actual care for others. That, even in public discourse, means just listening to the other person or letting the other person speak.

Anthony: 36:57

And that's the power of what I saw with Kate Cheney here in the campaign. It was like a politician saying tell me about you. And then when I saw the voice campaign and it was, it was back to let me tell you about me. You know, for all the beauty of what that was intended to be, which I'm again I've talked about in the podcast I'm partial to, but it was us about again and I was like, oh no, it's not going to work and it didn't work and it caused pain and it's like but we know what works, yeah, I agree, I think actually I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think it's.

Alessandro: 37:28

it's very thank you, because it's very clear to me that you're definitely on the right track with that. It really resonates with me.

Anthony: 37:36

So it's a segue, in a way, to hey, we will finish up with your project that we talked about last time, resident Earth and the plans. Within that. You got a bit of an update. You've been working your butt off quietly behind the scenes. What can you tell us? You've been like.

Alessandro: 37:52

We now have the support of a lot of stakeholders and entities to to do sort of a pilot project where we design what an exo-sophical neighborhood would or may look like, and what we did is this. So we started from this premise. We've got two boundaries that are intentional with each other. On the one hand we have the planetary boundaries, the idea that if we go over certain thresholds we move out of the whole scene and into a state of deep instability within which both our social structures and many species cannot survive. So that's a limit, that's a hard limit. You can't go beyond that. The other hard limit is the number of needs that humans have Are the very basic, like we can use Maslow hierarchy or needs Are the very basis. You might have physiological, individual needs, water, food, et cetera. But you know there's more than that. Obviously there are all the social and physiological ones as well, and that's the other hard number. So the two are intention. The reconciliation of the two is that model, the Kate Raworth's Donut model, like you know, the one that if you, if you go in overshoot of the planetary boundaries, you're obviously sorry. You can overshoot the planetary boundaries or you can shortfall and go below the social justice threshold, so there's a sort of a safe and just space for humanity to exist? Yes, and there are two ways of achieving that. There are collective responses, project drawdown, the sustainable development goal, the earth charter, the collective tools or collective instruments ecocide, for example and then you've got the individual responses how do I live on a day to day basis? So you have disciplines like eco philosophy, eco psychology, and you have theoretical, ethical and practical responses that each one of us at times tries to put in place, but it's really difficult to do, to do the right thing all the time when you have a system that doesn't allow it. And so just the right collective responses that then are not lived, it's, it's not really useless, but it's, it's not really that effective. So we thought the space in between that reconciles the two is the idea of how we live on a day to day basis, how we actually, what light do we use, how do we, what tools do we use on a day to day basis, and so on. So an ecosophical neighborhood.

Alessandro: 40:17

But then we started thinking okay, so we know that the ecosophical neighborhood must meet these two thresholds to be safe and just All human needs equally and do not exceed the planetary boundaries. They're the two requirements to be in the safe and just space. So what needs to be done? So we looked at nine areas that we're using. Everything is underpinned by environmental integrity. But then we have traditional culture, law and governance, architecture, urban planning, economics and so on, like nine areas, and then we have experts from each of these areas that, with the support of AI, can actually do a complete analysis of the literature and showcase the best solutions that the literature suggests exist at present. Some are place based, some are transferable.

Alessandro: 41:15

Then we reconcile all of that and say well, according to the existing literature and the expertise of all these experts, this is the best design for an ecosophical neighborhood, and our idea is to try and make it so that it's not just sustainable over time but it's sustainable in being created as well.

Alessandro: 41:35

So, in other words, it doesn't depend on philanthropy to exist. It depends, rather, it depends on pulling resources together, so similar to what a lot of migrant families have done over the decades in Australia. So you know Italian communities in the past and now Indian communities, where families say well, we buy things collectively for the family, so we pull all our resources and we have this collective set of resources, which means that we can operate on an economy of scale. So we can do that. In the same way, we can use the same principle without having to depend on necessarily to depend on these family ties, and so that's the idea, so that's what we're developing now. So over the next six to nine months we will have an initial white paper and blueprint and then we'll take it from there.

Anthony: 42:26

Terrific mate. I look forward to it. It'll give us more to talk about, won't it? In that timeframe, if not before, but before we wind up today, of course? What music you're listening to at the moment?

Alessandro: 42:39

I find that it's interesting because now I'm prepared, because I know actually you ask me that question, so actually - AJ: I knew you would be now. AP: There's this Swiss Ecuadorian group called Hermanos Gutierrez. It's ambient guitar, beautifully played, and you can just listen to it in the evening and just relax to that. AJ: Awesome.

Anthony: 43:01

That's on next for me. AP: Beautiful. AJ: Alessandro, can't thank you enough, mate. Thanks again for your perspectives. You know this was sort of - we thought this might be a shorter sort of snapshot update, but it just gets so interesting when we delve, so thanks again.

Alessandro: 43:16

Thank you, it's always a pleasure to un pack and explore ideas together. Always a pleasure.

Anthony: 43:27

That was Associate Professor in Law at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and co-founder of Resonant Earth, Dr Alessandro Pelizzon. For more on Alessandro, including our previous conversations on the podcast and respective links to Resonant Earth and other work, see the links in the show notes. Thanks as always to the generous supporters who made this episode possible. If you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber or other kind of supporter, I'd love you to join us. Subscribers get a bunch of perks, like behind the scenes footage, pics, invitations, tips and new chat room in the Patreon app to engage with other listeners. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com/ support - and thanks again. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.