Could We Build A World That Works For All?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]But you don't have to give up on industrialized [clears throat] economy. You don't have to give up on technology. But you can find ways to actually harmonize it with the the living Earth.

[00:00:12]>> On the line with us is the founder and host of the deep transformation network, Jeremy Lent. This is an online global community where members explore explore pathways toward a life-affirming future on a regenerated Earth. He's written extensively about that vision, about the specifics of an ecological civilization. And is a founding member of Eco Civilization Coalition. Uh ecociv.org is the website. And most consequentially, he has a new book that'll be out shortly called Eco Civilization, making a work a world, excuse me, that works for all. Jeremy, welcome to the program.

[00:00:53]>> Yeah, well, I'm very glad to be here, Tom. Thank you.

[00:00:55]>> Thank you for joining us. So, Eco Civilization, let's define terms here.

[00:01:01]>> Well, [clears throat] yeah, quite simply, it's the vision of a civilization built on a fundamentally different basis than the one that we're experiencing right now. Really one that would set the conditions for all beings to thrive on a regenerating Earth. Like, it's an idea that most people would say, "Well, of course we need a system like that." But it's fundamentally different from the one that you chronicle so well every day is the one we're living in right now.

[00:01:30]>> So, and and by the way, I Sean just noted to me that your book came out 2 days ago, so it is available now.

[00:01:39]Our civilization is built on you know, thousands of years of uh religious and cultural norms that have been established throughout time by warlord kings and theocrats by and large. And then and then the reaction to that, of course, in the this relatively recent experiment in democracy, which is more grounded in in regulated capitalism as the as the foundation. In other words, the the principal thing that drives our society seems to be seems to me I feel free to challenge this, but it seems to be you know, how do we make profit? How do we how do we how do we make a living? How do we produce goods and services that everybody wants? How do we shift that being the central focus of a civilization away from that and toward being as as apparently, you know, many native societies have done successfully over hundreds of thousands of years.

[00:02:39]In such shift that to how do we all live together in harmony with each other and with nature?

[00:02:46]>> Yeah.

[00:02:47]So that's essentially the key question I explore in the book. And it starts from really the basis of what you just described that you know, there's so many people around with good intentions trying to like [clears throat] sort of fix the system saying you know, it needs it's got a problem here. It's flawed there.

[00:03:05]But the key one of the key messages of the book is just like you were saying the system isn't broken. The system is doing exactly what it was intended to do. It was built on extraction, exploitation, and what's called the wealth pump. And like you said, it's been for thousands of years like that, but the last 500 years of the limited [clears throat] liability corporation of capitalism and then the deep history of colonialism is really the system we live in right now.

[00:03:33]So [clears throat] what we need is to actually transform it to really setting the setting the incentives to incent the kind of collaborative behavior that humans actually evolved to want to to want to enjoy. That's how how lived for 95% of our lives as nomadic hunter-gatherers. And the [clears throat] key message coming out of this book is this is not some utopia. Like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if this happened in some distant future or whatever. There are groups right now that are actually creating what what do you can think of them as islands of coherence. These prefiguring that eco-civilization future right now all around us. One example that um some of you viewers probably know well is um and we think that the corporations are the only way to enable the kind of sophisticated flows from from digging metals out of the earth to processing them to turn them into consumer goods. And you got an example like in the Basque Country in Spain like Mondragon Cooperative.

[00:04:41]An 80,000 [clears throat] person huge worker-owned co-op with whole different companies engaged in sophisticated um operational [clears throat] stuff, uh manufacturing, health care, all this kind of stuff. Basically a conglomerate, but no one owned by shareholders, but owned by the actual people doing the work.

[00:05:02]>> Yeah, Louisa and I traveled to Mondragon, Spain and I in fact I I wrote a book Rebooting the American Dream and the last cha- or no, it wasn't that book. It was uh uh I forget the title of the book. But anyway, it's the last chapter was all about Mondragon. We met with the CEO. He he earns four times what his janitors earn.

[00:05:21]>> Yeah.

[00:05:21]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:22]>> Yeah. And and there's you know, the housing in town is much of it is owned by the company. Um but does that I mean, the company is still producing goods and services. In fact, the major thing that we the factory that we toured was making washing machines.

[00:05:37]>> Right.

[00:05:38]>> Uh you know, this is still an industrialized civilization. They still you know, they're still producing fossil you know, they're still using fossil fuels and producing CO2. and I mean, it's a it's a it's a it's a much better, you know, the whole co-op idea seems like a nice alternative to capitalism.

[00:05:55]But is that enough to shift an entire civilization away from >> No.

[00:06:00]>> Okay.

[00:06:01]>> It's definitely not enough, but it's one of the and that by the way is another kind of message of this book. Like if we think of all the the way our entire civilization works right now is this complex interweaving of all kinds of complex stuff, whether it's money issuance, or the way corporations are structured, or law, or governance. All these things tie together to make this system stable as it has been, even though it's now unraveling. And so what this book shows is that things like the cooperation cooperatives or about eight, 10, 15 other examples. By themselves, they wouldn't work because within this current system, they would be overwhelmed and end up having to subsume what they're trying to do within that.

[00:06:44]But you can look at these as almost like a different threads of a weave, which if you woven them together, you'd have an absolutely different alternative kind of system. But you don't have to give up on industrialized economy. You don't have to give up on technology. But you can find ways to actually harmonize it with the the living earth. Um and it does involve some significant shifts. For example, you'd have to, you know, in impose some kind of sense of what's called limits curanism, of a cap on wealth of the centibillionaires and the centi yeah, the even the centimillionaires. And all those people who've accumulated so many trillions of wealth that as long as they sucking all that up, you're never going to be able to allow people ordinary people to live a decent material life of sufficiency.

[00:07:38]And so those are some of the drastic changes that are required for this kind of different kind of future.

[00:07:44]>> So, let's let's walk through this. Um you know, to By the way, the the book I wrote that included Mondragon is called Threshold: The Crisis of Western Civilization.

[00:07:55]And your book, which is out now, is called Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All. So, if we wanted to create more Mondragons, we can we sort of already doing that here in the United States. We've got B Corporations, Beneficiary Corporations. We've got some states that allow these sorts of things.

[00:08:11]Um So, that that incentive is there, that opportunity is there, and there's a few very small number of companies that actually do this.

[00:08:19]Um my publishing company Berrett-Koehler is a B Corporation. Um but what I This is, you know, this is how you change laws to allow for positive productive behavior like this.

[00:08:32]What What's the next step in in American society? And is this at the state or federal level? What What are the next two or three pieces of legislation that you think should be enacted that might recalibrate the way that we're interacting with our world?

[00:08:47]>> Yeah, I hear you. Well, one one way to think about it is and I I kind of use this concept really throughout the book is this notion of backcasting. Like, first off, let's figure out what would be that world that works for all. And once we see that, then look at how far we are obviously from there right now.

[00:09:03]But then what are the steps to take us?

[00:09:06]So, to take your example, like with the B Corps. So, the those are a great idea, but as long as they're voluntary, that's never going to happen, right? Because um you know, even if you have a a well-meaning CEO, somebody in the corporate suite who wants to do good, they themselves are bound by optimizing for that shareholder returns. And if they actually try to do good, like sort of Paul like Polman did, for example, with Unilever or whatever, and then the system ends up throwing them out because they're trying to trying to not just maximize at the expense of everything else. But so this kind of backcasting idea says, what would it look like if for example for big corporations there was a triple bottom line, right? People, planet, and profit requirement in order for them to just maintain that charter. And those charters just like you've described in many of your books and past time which I found so edifying myself. Those charters used to be temporary charters. They could only be issued if it was for the public good. We need to simply go back to those original rules about about corporate charters that we did have until the 19th century. So imagine if these big corporations had to get their charters renewed every 5 years. And it wasn't like a bunch of regulators who were just part of the revolving door and became executives 2 years later who made those determinations, but panels chosen by sortition of ordinary people. Actually the people affected by the company.

[00:10:37]People who live in the areas where their plants are, with the workers, the people who buy their products. And they're the ones who determine did this company actually meet these triple bottom lines?

[00:10:48]If not, either they lose their charter or they maybe have to pay an equity fines which basically would dilute the equity to ordinary people. All of a sudden the stock analysts rather than just looking at how how much profit that company is going to be earning in the next 5 to 10 years. Will start looking at are they doing good? Are they actually are they really doing what they need to do to prevent the pollution for their minds? If not, that might be a real issue on the stock price. So suddenly you change the DNA of the corporation. Now that's that's not going to happen next year. Not going to happen 5 10 years from now. But it does show the the pathway to that.

[00:11:26]>> Mondragon came about because Spain Um, you know changed their laws in a way that allowed it if I'm remembering correctly.

[00:11:34]>> Mhm.

[00:11:34]>> Um, and, you know, the the B corporations in the United States, the few that exist, have come about because of these changes. You're suggesting making these more or less mandatory.

[00:11:46]Are there any American or or frankly anywhere in the industrialized world political movements, politicians, or political parties that are embracing these kinds of ideas?

[00:11:56]>> Mhm.

[00:11:57]>> Well, the [clears throat] this particular one of corporations requiring that triple bottom line, that's more of a reach compared to what people feel is doable. Now, you see in Europe, there's some there are some movements actually, you know, talking with the EU about putting some of these regulations in place. We've seen like Elizabeth Warren just you know a few years ago talk about first steps toward that. But I think what's important um and in the book I there's a model of change that we that's called the three horizons model um where the the third horizon is like this totally transform society like this eco-civilization.

[00:12:32]The first horizon is like what happens tomorrow, or what we're pushing for. And second horizon is kind of a disruptive shift that doesn't get us to the third horizon but really begins to really change things. So, this is an example of how we can think about that as an as an example. So, really the the people like Bernie, people like Mamdani, people who are really pushing not not getting scared by actually asking for radical stuff. This is like first horizon moving to second horizon. But I think a lot of what we need to put back into our daily politics is thinking big. I think one of the reasons why so many people have ended up actually voting for these extremist authoritarians both in the US and elsewhere is because they know in their gut the system isn't working and hasn't been working. And they look at like parties like the mainstream Democrats or other similar kind of sort of quote-unquote progressive parties in Europe and elsewhere. And they realize that they're just in hawk to those big corporations themselves. And they don't believe it. And then somebody comes along and says, "Knock the whole thing down." And in their gut they go, "Yeah."

[00:13:42]Even if it's a lie, as as you point out only too well. What I feel we need to do is actually instill into the thinking of of Bernie um and M. M. Danny and all these people who are actually trying to push out like a sense of there is a different moral foundation to be calling for. Like another example, if we move from corporations, is this notion of universal basic income. Um so this is this this idea like right now people we might be saying, you know, the the Uber wealthy are paying not enough taxes, they need to pay more taxes. A few really far-sighted people are saying we actually need some kind of wealth tax rather than just income tax. Um good stuff, good like first horizon kind of steps. But when you look at the amount of wealth that's in the world right now, most 99% of that has been created not by some entrepreneur who ends up being a centibillionaire or whatever, like a Mark Zuckerberg, but is created by the accumulation of human knowledge um and understanding over millennia, centuries, and the last few decades over the high-tech stuff. That belongs to everybody. Now, imagine if we instituted a universal basic income. It basically change the whole relationship between capital and labor, saying that uh basically enough income should be paid to every person to satisfy their basic needs, not as some kind of welfare, but as their shared common dividend of the wealth that's available.

[00:15:10]>> Uh Jeremy, we we've just in a in our conversation just a moment ago we just briefly touched on universal basic income. The hit on universal basic income from the right by and large is that, you know this is essentially communism from each according to his needs to each according to or to each according to his needs from each according to his abilities.

[00:15:30]And that that didn't work you know in the Soviet Union. In fact what it did was it created uh you know the the people who controlled the money that was going to everybody and who made the decisions about you know who got free housing and where and who what jobs they got uh those people basically created a dictatorship. How do you get around that?

[00:15:48]>> Yeah and thanks for asking that. That's a key question and one that I basically start talking about right in the very beginning of this book. This is not a book that sort of um goes along with this polarization between right and left and says yeah we're on the left and maybe socialism communism didn't work but what if dot dot dot. It basically looks at both of those those polarized systems as really part of an a kind of an dead 20th century battle.

[00:16:19]And they were both had problems with them because both of them ignored the sense of true human dignity. You know one gave power to the corporations which is what we're living in right now. The other gave power to basically a centralized state um which then inevitably got corrupted and turned into exactly what you're describing.

[00:16:38]What the kind of world that I paint in the eco in this eco civilization book that so many people working towards puts power down to local communities. Gives power to the individual um and the individual within community above all and trusts that humans working collaboratively when you set the right conditions there actually do what is good for them as part of a bigger whole.

[00:17:03]So that is why it's it's very very different from either of those two structures. So in the case of a universal basic income for example rather than give all that saying like [clears throat] everyone needs to be taxed the state that needs to control that and then sort of give the money to people, you can create trusts that are actually answerable to the people rather than to the government.

[00:17:27]And it's the trust that maintains those kind of processes. So big government doesn't necessarily have it has a role in this kind of future I lay out, but it's not like some role where government versus free markets is the only place to look at.

[00:17:45]>> Right.

[00:17:45]>> Um there's a there's a a great way of framing this that Kate Raworth writes about in Doughnut Economics, where she really looks at the economy as kind of four segments, where you have the government, you have markets, you have households, and you have the commons, which is basically people working together that might be outside the monetary economy.

[00:18:05]So something like a universal basic income puts power back >> like we've we've largely Yeah, we've largely abandoned the commons. Jeremy Lent is the author. The book [music] is Eco-Civilization, Making a World That Works for All. The website Eco-Civ, e c o c i v dot org.

[00:18:20]>> [music] >> Jeremy, thanks for dropping by today.

[00:18:22]It's been a fascinating conversation.

[00:18:23]>> Yeah, it's been great to talk to you.

[00:18:25]Thank you so much.

[00:18:25]>> I wish you the very best [music] with the book.