Embracing Collapse

Jem Bendell on the value of accepting what is happening to our world

Here’s a short excerpt from this week’s episode of Team Human, a conversation with ecolibertarian and regenerative agriculture school founder Jem Bendell.

Unlike his former peers in the “scale of impact” community, Bendell offers no amazing science fiction fantasy technosolutionist fix for the climate crisis. Instead, he offers a set of strategies for how to adapt to the inevitable.

Jem Bendell was a Professor of Sustainability Leadership at University of Cumbria, who came to realize that climate change was inevitable, and the collapse of modern industrial consumer societies was already underway. However, by fully experiencing the sadness and despair, he realized he wanted to “live to the max“ in this new context, and wrote a controversial paper in 2018 called Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. He followed that up with a book called Deep Adaptation, and the brand new book I read for this conversation, Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse.