A psychologist’s guide to avoiding moral superiority - Per Espen Stoknes

0:00I've heard it said that if it feels like someone's attacking your autonomy or your own individual choice, then you're much more resistant. Totally. This is another of the barriers that climate psychologists have identified, and we tend to call that identity. So my identity is like the place I live. So I am an Oslo dude or somebody, maybe a Londoner, so it's a geographic identity, and I have a professional identity. So I'm a psychologist and maybe you're a bus driver or whatever you have you. And then there are values typically often connected to political values. So, for instance, the major dimension is whether I prefer free trade, individual freedom, kind of focusing on value creation and industry and entrepreneurship and building something. But that's the kind of individualized value system. And then you have the more collective, which is that we are all a part of a shared community and we have responsibility for each other.

1:04and we need shared solutions and the government should make sure nobody falls ill and we have a shared health system. So this distinction between them, individual and collective, tends to trickle over into our individual behavior. So if I'm identified then, let's say I come from the west coast of Norway, where there are lots of entrepreneurs and industry builders, and then... Suddenly comes another dude, maybe here from central Oslo, and he says, Hey, dude, your products suck. You destroy the climate or you fly too much.

1:41Then this value system, my identity of being a person who supports entrepreneurship and individual freedom kicks in. And because you now are speaking for more regulation or moral restraints or higher taxes or what have you, I don't really like that because it conflicts with my value. So I'll feel this personally attack. You're in a way saying that you're better than me. And that's the psychological problem, because now it's no longer about the climate or efficient travel or science or earth systems or whatever. It is all about me or you. And you kind of, you know, hey, we used to be buddies, Rob, you know.

2:24What is this? Now you're trying to tell me, are you, are you think you're better than me? These are kind of unconscious responses when people feel their self threatened, when their self esteem is put into into question by another person, then I would want to push you back. This is where a lot of climate discussions go pretty bad. So the answer is a big yes, telling people exactly what they should do. Yeah. often backfires. Just try that, as I mentioned, with your partner. If you tell, no, you shouldn't drive so much, you shouldn't eat that stuff, you get it back pretty much in the face. And And trying to change the other identity, particularly those things that are core to who I am, is always a recipe for increasing conflict. The other point is taking the other perspectives. So how do you feel about flying to Iceland? I feel a little bit, you know, I'm ambivalent about it. What do you think? That's, you know, switches the equations.

3:31go into an empathic exploration of the perspective of the other. How does it feel to be him? How does it feel when you're, maybe my wife, she wants to go for a vacation in Thailand, and she's fed up with me always, you know, trying to stick around in rainy Scotland. All her girlfriends go to Thailand, so why can't we? And then if I don't listen to that, I would never know the perspective they're coming from. And that's why I always encourage people to have not the focus on your values and your choice, but explore the values of the others before you try to come up with a solution.

4:09Yeah, I find this particular point extremely fascinating. And something I find myself thinking about a lot is the diversity of voices from across different spectrums who are talking about climate. And the thing that comes, have you heard of Jeremy Clarkson? I think so. Have you heard of Top Gear? Top Gear. Oh, yeah. That's why I haven't heard of it, because I don't watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's a car show. Or it was a car show. And anyway, there's this, the lead presenter from, or one of the three presenters from Top Gear is called Jeremy Clarkson. He now has a farm called Clarkson's Farm. It's an Amazon Prime special. And he is...

5:01I would say on the conservative individual freedoms, don't tell me what to do, end of the spectrum. There was a clip that came out of him talking to a radio station last week where he was talking about support for different political parties and the host of the radio station asked him, don't you think it would make more sense to support the Green Party, which is on the more liberal end of the spectrum? rather than reform, which is on more of the conservative end of the spectrum, because they will actually help kind of protect the things that you as a farmer care about. And it was quite this interesting dissonance that I think he was maybe feeling of like, I don't identify with the Greens, but maybe it would be helpful. This is a very long-winded way of saying sorry. Is it more helpful...

5:55Is it therefore extremely helpful to have people who represent your own identity speaking about climate? And if so, I presume so, which areas or which types of identities are underrepresented in the climate? Excellent. I would say it's not just essential, but it is inevitable. I mean, you don't get anywhere without having somebody who you can identify with if you really want to take it to heart. So that's why it's critical to have, as you say, spokespeople from across the different segments. Yeah.

6:40scientists have a tendency to believe that because we've done experiments and field studies and modeling of this, this is the truth. Everybody should hear it. Everybody should believe it because the statistical significance level is down at the P0.0.1 level. And that makes it extremely unlikely that this is random or uncertain. Never mind. So People always seek out someone they perceive to be like them and listen more to those people than they do to somebody who comes across from another identity. We call this very often for the confirmation bias. I like to read more of the news that I already agree on, and I like to click posts that I agree on, and I like to hate posts that I hate from people I hate. So that's how the social media works.

7:37co-create this polarization, building on the identity that underlies the confirmation bias. And then the last pint of your question. Yeah, we are at loss. It's too few, let's say, from the center right that speak about climate from frames such as opportunity, smart solutions, risk management, and also Healthcare. So we would need to expand a range of both messengers, but also the context of conversations. So not just who, but also where do we do this conversation? So in boardrooms and conferences on logistics or conferences.

8:31AI or whatever is the vogue of the day. There should be core people who are famous or well-known for being experts in their field. And they should put that in the context of climate as a matter, of course, so that would normalize it. So meteorologists, for instance, should always mention the climate as a background when there's an extraordinary rainfall. And if you will, in top gear, pointing out the end of life of the combustion engine as a function of a change in climate would be a very natural way of integrating that as a new type of messenger. My dream messenger would be Joe Rogan.

9:19That's hilarious. Please elaborate. Because I think a kind of a liberal maybe listening to that, or not less liberal, he's quite liberal in some ways, but he's a bit like Marmite. We have this phrase in this country, there's this spread that either people love or really hate. And I think Joe Rogan's a bit like Marmite. And actually my last guest was a comedian and he said, we need the Joe Rogan of climate. But why from your perspective do we need that?

9:49Well, he's managed to get a large kind of identity following, particularly what we call the manosphere. I think I haven't seen the data, but there's a lot of like 80 percent male something. And we see from polls that typically the highest climate engagement is in women from 15 to 35. And the lowest engagement is more or less 20. males on the same age and then white males above 50. So those are the two segments that have had the least exposure and conversation. And if the people they admire and like do not speak about it, then they will not either. But of course, there are so many cool things, cool ways in which Joe Rogan could speak about climate if he wanted to.

10:39all the savvy solutions that we have. So we need more solutions journalism, all kinds of sectors, all kinds of audiences. I've heard you say that for every negative or kind of doom climate information or fact, you should have three times as much positive. I find that really interesting also because I've heard you say that the news disproportionately or almost solely focuses on the negative. But why is it that the positive helps so much? And what effect does it have on maybe the individual and the collective when you hear a positive? Because one could wonder whether it makes you go, oh, well, it's being solved, so I don't need to worry. Yeah. Yeah.

11:31So first, the news typically doesn't report on climate. So I think it's like less than 1% of the media touches the biggest threat we're up against, all the news. And then of that 1%, typically 80% to 60%, that range, large majority, has a headline or a focus on the negative aspects, such as catastrophe, extreme events, losses, threats. And that makes it tightly coupled with a sense of guilt, a sense of failure, a sense of we're doomed in essence.

12:26And that's a scientific, well-positioned fact that the data is looking gloomy. And sometimes people ask me, well, if you say three positive things, then people think, well, it's not a problem. That's why I always point out, yes, we should mention the risk. It's real. It's existential. And there are so many things we can do about it. So the point isn't to hide the risk. we should be very clear on the risk. But to escape the doom barrier, we need a feeling and also facts that there are so much fantastic thing we can do and are also actually doing. So risk framing establishes the why, but only opportunity framing sustains the how we can achieve this over decades of effort. So the ratio matters because If it's three threats and one solution, if it's one threat and three solutions, wow, actually we might have a chance. So the point is to stop the avoidance of the issue and then see if we can support efficacy, both self-efficacy, self-efficacy is something I can do, and then collective efficacy, that we can do something together.

13:49And then pairing all those solutions with an honest risk that can create a sense of engaged urgency. Yeah. Is it something that people, because I guess people are very aware of, like if you say to someone climate change or climate crisis, a lot of people who I speak to, you know, they'll kind of go, oh, are we actually doomed? You know, they're kind of like asking me to kind of quell their fears. is it that there's almost like this three to one ratio because there has been so much of this negative doom if you were to obviously you need to you need to state the the risk but kind of going even harder than than the than the three to one for the positive could actually be even better because people are so like almost weighed down by all the negative that positive is that there's a lot of uplifting that needs to be done.

14:49Yeah, I think so too. Maybe 9 to 1. So 3 to 1 is a minimum. Because as you said, we have been now conditioned by 40 years of bloom and threats. And if we don't do something, we're boiling the earth and so on. So here's a little take. The UK shut down the coal plants last year, finally. Same with Ireland. It's fantastic. And now the Chinese are spearheading and rolling out the largest electrotech revolution in the history of humanity. Their current production capacity of solar panels is big enough to, if you roll out that over...

15:3810, 20 years installing 5, 1500 gigawatts of solar panel, the current production capacity, then everybody on Earth would have enough power from solar alone by 2050. So we're actually on the track to that. And then by adding a little bit battery and intelligent demand so you can take up your electric heater or heat pump when there is a lot of sun and then reduce it when the clouds come dynamic demand side combined with storage and batteries and then abundance of solar, we're actually on our way to having a net zero energy system by 2050. And that's what scientists recommend.

16:24The problem is that it's been very long for a long time. So it hasn't looked like it's growing, but it's actually growing rapid like this. And right now we are on our way. So we doubled the amount of solar now about six or seven times, starting from three gigawatts. We go three, six, 12, 24, 48, 100, 200, 400. Now we're about at 800. And one more doubling, we're at 1600 gigawatts per year. And that's what we need. So I think this energy system transformation is well on its way. And you can stand back like some Trumpian idiot and not want to be part of the game. And you're totally irrelevant in a few years.

17:07Or you can join it and surf the wave and then being part of the electrification of everything which is coming anywhere. You can either be a laggard or you can join and surf it and earn money on it. That's the essence of the problem that businesses really have today. It's no longer a question if the combustion engine will survive. It's doomed. It's dead. But it's still like a ghost walking thing. But for a few more years, it will. And then we've transitioned. And the next challenge is the food system. Happily, we have about 400 or 500 cool companies that are doing regenerative farming and regenerative proteins and restoration projects. So it's all a matter of moving more and more of the finance that way. And happily, there's no lack of finance. It's a barrier up here. We have more than enough money to create a sustainable economic system. The only thing that needs to do is more investors shift their funds towards the regenerative type of food systems. And that's my job. And it makes me a lot of fun to be part of it.

18:11Yeah, it makes you feel a lot more optimistic to be working on the solution. People have asked me, like, do you feel like it makes you more pessimistic? And I say, actually, no, it's more fun when you're kind of pushing in the direction because then you feel like something's happening. I've heard you say in the absence of systems thinking, you get more populism and polarization. And I think everyone could agree that we feel like we have a lot of that at the moment. But why do you link those two things?

18:42So, from our Western tradition, we have a tendency to fall into us and them. So right now, the war in Iran and the Hormuz Strait, for instance, is that the Iranians fault or is it the Americans fault? There is no peace agreement. And then, of course, America tries to blame Iran and Iran tries to blame America. And that's a typical polarization situation. And the answer is, of course, that we have a system where once you start the one way, then the relationship pushes back the other way. So the harder you push, the more resistance you get. So reductionist and separation thinking means everything is understood as a separate part. System thinking looks at the relationships between those.

19:34not the parts, and then the parts are defined by the system. So what you experience every day is, for instance, traffic congestion. Everybody wants to stop the traffic jam to have it more flowing easily, and each car by itself could do that. But the traffic as such is a systems problem. If everybody wants to go at the same time on the same road, there you go. and you could always try to blame each of the different drivers but it is each not each part this is a problem but is when all the parts push on the same narrow boundary at the same time so understand the relations first how are you dependent on me and how is what you're doing a response to what i'm doing and that interaction part defines the parts rather than understanding that the parts define the other or the system as such. The traffic analogy is very helpful. I feel like I understand it more. Yeah.

20:37Good. So if you want to stop the traffic jam, you have to consider working hours. What are the alternatives? Are there trains? Could we go by bike? Could I walk? And all those things together become the system. A number of different relations. The ticket prices of the train could determine how much traffic jam there is, even if those things seem to be different. Particularly if it's quicker to go by train, then more people will drop to use the cars. So those two things are very much interrelated.

21:13And climate is like that. Everybody's waiting for somebody else to do something. And if there's something cheaper over there that you don't want to do it here. And also, as the example with politics, blaming the other and then hoping that's enough, rather than looking at how I, what I am doing is shaping the relationship. That's a system thinking. And of course, the most ultimate of all is your relationships. So you could even look at your family or your partner, the one you're married to or living with, as a system. So what happens if that, you know, brushing the teeth, they put it on the wrong place or making the wrong way of doing the dishes. If you try to correct them, you should do it like this because I know what is right. Then the resistance goes back. So suddenly it blows up in your face.

22:07And that is, how am I contributing to that conflict? How am I co-creating that conflict? That's a systems approach. And the reductionist approach is that you're the blame because you're doing it the wrong way. You shouldn't do it like that or shouldn't think like that. You shouldn't say like that. That's a non-systemic approach. So your example of one country blaming another country, I think, is very common. And in the UK, you know, it's like we're only one or we're only 2% of emissions. Why do we need to do something?

22:41So, given the way that you're advocating people think about it, it's not necessarily thinking about it in terms of how much of the proportion of the emissions you're responsible for, but also the influence that you have within the system. Yeah. So, if you imagine that as a big pizza, 2% of the pizza is UK. So you could say, wow, if I took away that 2%, it didn't matter much. But if you see it, it's no longer a whole pizza. If you take away one piece, something is missing. If you came from the bakery, the pizza baker with the pizza, the Liberty House, and then there's a slice missing. What's that? Who took that? So it shows immediately how the whole is more important than, and is constituted by what each part is contributing.

23:33So what does that mean in terms of, like, carrying on with the example of the UK and our emissions? Does that mean that maybe the reasoning, even though this might be not public-facing reasoning, but the reasoning of, like, we should reduce our emissions isn't just about our direct emissions, but, like, how do you quantify or... It's very hard to argue to someone that you could change the system by acting as an individual, because it's quite hard to wrap your head around. How do you encourage someone to do that without kind of being able to quantify it like you can 2%? Yeah, good. So imagine now since I'm Norwegian, I'm sitting in Norway and you're in the UK, we could use a Norwegian example.

24:22So back in 2008, Norway decided that they wanted to take away the import tariffs on fossil cars and then also give some VAT tax reduction on electric cars. And that was in order to stimulate the demand side for electric vehicles. Very little came out of the emissions of each electric car you sold compared to the whole. And it's very expensive per tonne of CO2 saved. But nevertheless, Norway went ahead. And then we got a growing demand curve for electric vehicles, not just because of the tax, but also because of individual people choosing to look at the neighbor. Oh, that dude, he got an electric car. That looks kind of cool. And particularly when the Tesla came, it was no longer just this cheap box.

25:20So here comes my answer to your question. Gradually, we saw a growing market share of electric cars that brought more electric cars in and contributed to the declining price. So the combination of individual action with government regulations and then suppliers who were learning, because every time you double the amount of green products, the cost typically comes down by 25%. So it was insanely expensive batteries back in 2011, 2012, but some people still bought it.

25:54With that, we saw that declining production cost. And now we're impacting UK also. And if you're buying one and your neighbor gets curious, so we have social dynamics inside the city levels. Then we have national dynamics. So because Norway was early, we triggered the first very expensive, from very expensive to cheaper and cheaper. And now UK is benefiting and jumping on and more and more electric vehicles are sold. And that helps, let's say, for Italy or for Spain or even now Kenya and Ethiopia and Nepal and India, because now there is an increasing demand. So we are all...

26:40contributing to the systems change by both individual actions and then national policies. So if UK now does this and reduces to 2%, it helps other countries, both in terms of technical development, knowledge and experience, business trade, and finally also maybe policy encouragement. So for instance, I would love Norway to have the same kind of... Climate Change Commission and the climate budget that the UK has, which we don't really have in Norway. It's just part of our Department of the Ministry of Climate.

27:22to do that, and it's not binding in any way. So we're trying to learn from UK in the same way that maybe you're learning from us in terms of the benefits of electrification of the private sector. Is this point around electrification is quite like I mean, I'm just trying to think about the role of individuals. Like, can an individual, you know, say me as a concrete example, I have a friendship group, we are five in total, we try to meet up every year, we're friends from school, and I am 20% of that.

27:57So, like, how can someone apply this thinking maybe in a much smaller personal individual context to think about the system that they are in? Because I guess that kind of ripples out. Do you just, like, apply the same thing or is there adaptations? Excellent point. One major barrier that climate psychologists have found to engage people in solving climate change is that it seems so far away. We call this the distance barrier. And it clicks in immediately. And it has to do with the 2% too. Climate is a big global problem. 2% is just nothing. With that big problem. And me as an individual. I'm a little ant. In a big colony. I'm one millionth of the Oslo. Air city area. And of course if you live in London. Each person is like next to nothing. If you think that way.

28:55But that's a way of doing what we call psychological distancing. You make the system feel further away and by making the scope closer to you. I love your example with five buddies. If you meet in the pub and you talk, looking at that system of which you're 20%, now you have a much larger scope of influence. If you go electric or you get solar panels on your roof or you go biking, electric bike or if you change your food to less red meat, All those things have a big effect on your buddies, even if they are protesting as a Rob, come on, not that. Oh, I can't stand you becoming that. Why do we have to go to this restaurant? Yeah. Yeah. All constantly. And then if you just laugh and don't take it personally and don't pontificate them, etc., Next time they buy something, they will think about what you just did because they like you, Rob. They like you, your friends, and they're like you. So that subconscious social norm dynamic ripples out whether they want to agree with you or not. And in fact, the less you argue, but just tell and explain, have a smile on your face and stay that cool Rob that they like, the bigger the effect of your behavioral changes.

30:10You mentioned, I liked the sense of like, you know, optimism and we can do this. But do you think, like part of me wonders, you know, I feel like politics across the Western world, you know, Europe, UK, America, and a lot of other countries is becoming more conservative, which is we kind of previously covered is is maybe not very conducive with the progress that we need to make on climate. Do you worry that there could be regressions in what you were talking about if we don't carry on marching in the right direction? Clearly, there are two reasons.

31:03two very disturbing trends to add to. I mean, any academic can always tell you with the facts why the world is going to hell. So the major problem is inequality. So when the super rich and the rich pull apart from the bottom 50% of income, and you have the bottom 50% of income fighting for crumbs amongst them, then the polarization and the willingness to find some scapegoat, so it's the immigrants or it's whoever you want to blame at the moment, then that inequality, economic inequality increase, worsens and undermines the social trust.

31:58And the less social trust, the more pissed off people are, the less stable government structures come in place that could help reduce the inequality. So you may have some more taxes on the rich, but then the next government reduces it and takes it away or makes the whole politics more open for lobbyists and corruption and the rich people buying politics, buying votes. So that's a very dangerous dynamic, which is driving the polarization. So even if we can solve the climate crisis with the technology, if our societies are having increasing inequality, they become less stable. And that means less long term solutions and also less sharing of the commons. And the other major issue connected is that the longer we wait, the worse possible.

32:58becomes the pressures from the climate system and the soil and the nature on the remaining food capacity and fresh water and living costs, etc. So insurance costs go up, particularly difficult for the poor. Food prices go up, also difficult for the poor. And then even... houses, housing, and becomes more like a speculation object. So the cost of living goes through the roof as a function of external pressures. The rich are okay, but the poor get double hit, and then they would blame each other, and maybe the government, which then becomes more fragile or less robust, So we have those very difficult combination of worsening inequality with worsening extremes and ruptures of the global food chain, supply chains, etc. And those two are mutually reinforcing, like a system. And these are, of course, very good reasons to be skeptical and negative about why this is not working as it should.

34:09so that is another story yeah yeah the negative feedback loop i yeah i i find worrying um do you do you find it worrying it is it is it very concerning to you and uh what do you think is the first domino or do you see dominoes falling that could turn it around um We did a lot of work in a project called Earth for All. So when you come to what should be done, I think we've outlined five interdependent turnarounds that need to happen. One is the energy system I mentioned. The other is poverty, global poverty in particular.

34:50So the low-income countries, they need to grow, but they don't have capacity to grow in a green way. Then the food system needs to be stabilized and regenerative. Women need to be empowered and included in leadership. And what did I leave out? The food, energy, women, yeah, and inequality, of course. Of those, the five, and the most important is, I think, the inequality. And one way of solving that is, to introduce more universal basic income or a people universal basic dividend. So by taxing all wealth and all, shall we say, patents and all uses of social media and all the kind of contributions like we create together. So why, for instance, there's a high urban price on a state is because of the collective use of that area. Everybody wants to be in the center.

35:49And to take a cut of that and then recycle it back to everybody. So we look at the country's broad national wealth. And then every year as a citizen, I deserve a little part of the wealth that is co-create of the dividends that are generated by that national wealth. That would reduce inequality in a country and would help stabilize politics. We're very sure about that. It would be able to reverse the trend towards polarization and policy whiplash that we're currently seeing, particularly in the US, UK and also European parliament.

36:31That is a necessary step to create more stable societies that would then agree on rules that could accelerate the transition. And we have two main scenarios. One is too little, too late, because we are doing a lot of good things. But it's just too little and it's too late. In a way, it should have been happening quicker. And then we have a giant leap, which is when we make a jump on all those five at the same time. Just fixing the energy system is a great opportunity, and doing that alone will not solve our, shall we say, sustainability problems. Yeah.

37:09I've been interested kind of following in the US, in New York, you've got Zoram Mamdani. In California, you have this proposition of a wealth tax. In the UK, you have the Greens and Gary Stevenson who are very like, inequality is this huge issue. This is what we should be paying attention to. And a year ago even, I think those, or five years ago, they would have been a bit unimaginable. A year ago, they didn't really exist, at least not as big as they are now. Do those things, are they trending in the right direction under your kind of definition or understanding? And so do they give you hope? Well, if you're looking at the position of reform and the US politics right now, it seems absolutely wrong way but um one of my heroes from psychology is carl gustav jung and he observed that uh it's usually not a case of people pulling themselves by the hair and becoming better step by step and the way you go through life often goes through pendulum swings uh so things get really shit and then you decide to turn it around yeah um I would prefer to have a more rational, you know, let's do things step by step better. But it seems that this trend of extreme pendulum swings have been going through history typically. So it was only after the Great Depression, for instance, that the U.S. instituted more, so we say, social regulations and working wages on the same thing.

38:58In Norway, we had a big build-out of labor unions after the excesses of capitalism during the First World War and the speculation and the real estate bubbles. And also in terms of the view on money, there's been this, shall we say, pendulum swings in terms of capitalism allocating more to the owners. So the inequality goes up to extreme levels and the capital owners, they want high interest rates and high dividends and they push for that way. And then that system crumbles and it falls back into a system where the interest rates go down and there is some redistribution of the money. And so – I put some hope in this idea of the pendulum swings that after this second round of Trump, everyone will be so pissed of Trumpism that it won't happen again in another 40 years. So maybe it's a huge opportunity. And I'll just swing back to supporting nature, understanding that we're inside a vulnerable, living, beautiful, bountiful earth, but not endlessly bountiful. I like the Gaia story in terms of this is a big thing.

40:15living organism and if we push her too far it's not good for us so having that respect coming back from the area where more you can mine and burn and extract and build and take the better if you have the right to take you should take so might make right type of dynamic to actually understanding I'm better off has at least a fair share because we're interdependent and we're no longer just individuals fighting each other, but actually we're part of a larger organism. So this worldview swing, we're ripe for that now, to put it that way.

41:00Is there, because what you said about scientists love this idea of incremental change, and we change step by step. Do you know how much informational research, or is there like, I mean, it would be great to imagine it as a pendulum, right? And notching up, up, up, up, up, and then it swings the other way. Do you know how that would even be measured, and if it can be, you know, like, at what point it will start to swing because I feel like for myself at least you know I've I thought that Trump's second term and especially what like what we're seeing now um would would be that point it would be the high point but it would seem like who knows in the elections in 2028 uh in the UK where the reform will get in but At the moment, it's looking like they will. And so it seems like the pendulum's just continuing to go up. Do you have any, you know, how can we understand when it might go the other way? I wish I knew, Rob. Can you look into your crystal ball, please?

42:10Well, I was floored. I was depressed. I fell through the floor when the Americans elected Trump a second time. I just could not believe my eyes. I really expected that there would be enough people to recognize from four years of watching the dude, and then they managed to vote for him again. I was, yeah. So I was surprised. And I'm not like, of course I had this scenario. Of course I read the market polls, et cetera, you know, what you call it when they bet, the betting markets, they pointed towards Trump. So it was not that I didn't, you know, see it as a scenario that they could reelect Trump. But I thought that it would have been already far out. But then now we're doing another four years, we're taking it even further.

43:04I wish I knew. But that's part of, shall we say, I have a very deep fascination for possibilism as a philosophical position. I haven't heard of that. What is it? Oh, yeah. It is the fundamental idea that we're living an open and possible world where even if things haven't happened before, they can still happen tomorrow. So ultimately, even if all the swans you've ever seen have been white, that doesn't exclude the possibility of having one black swan. And with one black swan, you have changed the rule that all swans are white.

43:46That's a classic kind of philosophical position. So in essence, it says nothing is impossible. That's the possibilities of my approach. Even if our current knowledge is very certain about this, then we still may have a surprise in for us tomorrow because then we have new knowledge. And this openness, so for instance, I mean, tomorrow, there may be a blood clot in Trump's heart that does a job and suddenly we're in another world. who knows what the future brings. I'm fundamentally open to imagination that things turn out differently than I thought. So making scenarios, making radical ideas about the future is something we should be totally open to. And at the same time, we should, of course, do the mathematics and the modeling. So you know what, if we continue as today, this is what will happen. But why should things continue as today? The position of possibilism is that we always keep uh opportunities open for a radical different tomorrow without something i can predict yeah yeah i i spoke to kevin anderson who's a climate scientist and he he articulated he didn't call it positive possibilism but he articulated something similar um and i i can see how that that that kind of gives one quite a lot of hope um

45:15I'm interested, you touched very briefly earlier on Earth for All, but it would be interesting. I think this link between inequality and climate change or problems within the biosphere, biodiversity loss, pollution, I think that maybe someone has maybe heard of the connection between those two, but it would be interesting to understand the different ways that they connect because I think if there's more polarization and the kind of scapegoating of, oh, it's the immigrants or it's this issue, can get in the way of climate progress. But are there other reasons why increasing inequality is very harmful to the progress that we need to make?

46:05yeah so the key variable here is social trust so how much do i trust people in general around me how much do i trust the institution so like the police the government the politicians the yeah the justice system the court and The thing is, when I watch how the very rich never get punished in courts because they manage to have good lawyers, they slip out of the system, they do whatever they want, they whitewash money, and then they pay good lawyers to get free. But when I'm getting a speeding ticket for just a little bit, I'm thrown into jail if I don't have the money to pay it. So inequality over time translates to a loss of social trust.

47:02We can measure social trust. For instance, if I ask people, if I ask you, what is your opinion? Do you feel people in general can be trusted? Then I could also, on a scale from one to 10, I could also be a qualitative discussion. And the same thing with the government. What is your trust in the UK government on a scale from one to 10? And then you can split it down also on parties. So if you are a Tory, you have this, and there you are very low when the labor is there, but you have a little bit higher when you're on this there. And then the labor parties a bit higher when labor has the government, but super low. That's the average over time. Does that go up or go down? And then we see that as social trust goes down, the capacity of government to find effective solutions that both are put in law, but then become part of the government bodies and followed up as effective policies around the country.

48:13that goes down. So the government's capacity to coordinate policies and implement them becomes vulnerable. They propose and then it's one step ahead and two back. Two steps forward, one back. And that makes the capacity of government to reduce inequality by, for instance, having effective health care, kindergarten support to vulnerable people, unemployment benefits, all those things that is needed to reduce inequality get cut. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And then maybe Labour comes back and improves it a little bit, but then it's cut even there. Because it's impossible to have a stable coalition and an effective rollout over time. So when the government's capacity to coordinate and implement policies against inequality, for instance, goes down, then inequality over time gets worse, and that person is the social trust. And when the social trust goes down, they don't want to re-elect the same government.

49:17So you have always this flip-flop of the government. Like we've had. Yeah, which then always seems to somehow fall back on the same policies. So in reality, it's the bureaucrats who just implement the bare minimum of what used to be back in the past. So you have less and less capacity for the government to do an effective implementation of the policies they promised in the elections because of the decline in social trust. And then when that happens, then also their capacity to change the energy system goes down. So the emissions keep rising and there is less investment in climate adaptation. So when there is an extreme event flooding, it hits the poorest, the hardest, and that reduces the social trust. So this is the vicious cycle.

50:07from inequality, declining social trust, declining government capacity to coordinate worsening energy policies, which hits the worst for the poor, so that you cannot afford an electric car. And then that decreases social trust because they see other people benefiting, but not them. It's only for the elite in the city and what have you. And then that goes. We've modelled that, and it's quantifiable. It is possible to do scientific studies on those relationships, and that's the main dynamic of what we call the too little, too late scenario, and we'll see it happening in the US and the UK particularly, but also other rich countries such as Germany. As in you were able to model social trust? Is that from the EU climate barometer? EU barometer, sorry.

51:01research tradition from Inghart on the world's social value survey, which gives a lot of data. And then right now, my brain is living some years since I was into that field. So if you want, I could send you the best sources. But we also have the world inequality database with Piccadilly and then the world value survey. That's what I was thinking about. And also different happiness surveys. and a few private providers. Then in the U.S. it is, oh, sorry. There's the big polling agency, Pew Research Center. Oh, yeah. And Ipsos Mori and others also have this. So it's a number of those that do regular surveys and social trust.

51:53but the use of that is not very consistent because it hasn't been part of the economic tradition so it leaves there a little bit on the media side but what's needed is to integrate it into economic policy making and that's where we're seeing a kind of revolution so even though we cd you know a classic economic policy club um They have been over the last 10-15 years doing lots of research on how inequality increases are translating also into lower average rates of economic growth.

52:26not just as increasing inequality translate to more inequality and more social loss of trust, but also to worsening markets because as more and more of the money ends up with the super rich, they tend to speculate with their money rather than consume it. So the total consumption goes down, which also breaks the development or the growth of economic demand. And that breaks down the supply side. So you have the whole worsening economy. So on average, people get less income increase. Their median income grows more slowly. And super rich, the 1% to 10% top rich, take even more. That's the dynamic we're seeing as inequality goes up.

53:16It would seem that if you wanted to create something that would decrease social trust, you would create something which could make anything that is fake look real. And that is, in a way, what we've made with AI. um and and oh you know people talk about the environmental aspects of ai which are huge energy water usage you know rare rare earth minerals but i'd be interested what your like how how has this changed since since kind of ai came into society and and is this making it like i would guess it's just making it dramatically harder to increase social trust Yeah, so the basic psychological dynamic is that if there is something I don't know, there's an area where I lack knowledge, then the unconscious psyche tends to produce and project fantasies and fears. So the less I know about something, the more I would rely on salient and emotionally laden, is that the word you use? Yeah, emotionally laden. Yeah. Stereotypes and undifferentiated imagery. So typically cliches and the Muslims are all, destroying the country. Yeah, and they're all having eight children each, so coupling like rabbits. All those kind of unconscious breeding like rabbits, that's the English phrase.

55:17All those unconscious, undifferentiated, emotionally laden stereotypes. Oh, okay. Yeah. Would be then put into that area where I don't know. And then the AI has this dynamic that it comes across as a psychophant. It wants you to continue the conversation. Yeah. Every time you ask something, it would tend to give you an answer you like. So it tends to reinforce the confirmation bias. When I ask for something, it will find information that is connected to the type of imagery that I already have. You see that when you use generative AI, it typically blows up cliches that it found on the web.

56:05It rarely challenges you unless you explicitly ask for it. That's one fear that I have, that the AI becomes like a self-serving confirmation bias machine. You can use that to give people a feeling that I now have objective knowledge that confirms my worst fears that I already expected to have. One other part of the AI is that you see that now with the extreme stock exchange and financial investments, is that most of us don't own an AI company. It's only the richest that either have their own or the super billionaires, or you can now buy shares, a little bit of shares in a big AI company.

57:01And when, as the AI value creation in the economy, particularly in the finance system, goes up, it disproportionately increases inequality. And it also disproportionately gives the most AI power to those who have the most to pay. And that dynamic can even further increase the inequality that we're, and the power, what do you call that, the power? asymmetry that exists around this. And we see that right now with, if you noticed, that they wanted to keep the, was that, Fable and, yeah, Anthropic, their newest model, Fable and Morpheus for only a certain enterprise customers. Yeah. So AI can make a lot of things worse.

58:01By the way, it reallocates resources and capacity and value speculation more than value creation. Now, I am quite positive to the opportunities that AI provide. So it all depends on how we design and use them. I think AI is an excellent tool for, let's say, having a decentralized smart grid where millions of prosumers. can share their power and share demand flexibility, may have trading locally between automatic trading, including the EV charges. We can balance the grid, for instance, in an incredible way. Also, the European Parliament was very much against CSRD regulations, and they made this so-called omnibus bill to take down the requirements that company has to report on environmental and social performance.

59:03because they said it was too expensive and it would take too much time for people to do it. But now AI solutions makes it possible for a company to have a proper reporting on environmental issues with maybe 90% reduced costs. So in many ways it enables both sustainability solutions And it can take away the drudgery and the boring bureaucratic work of having to report or doing a routine performance. And you could focus your attention on providing solutions instead. Two examples. One Swedish startup that I.

59:41was looking at and working a bit with, they are using now AI imagery to analyze the waste collection cars. So as the cars go around and the empty bins and put things in, then it registers everything coming in, and so prepares the recipient for what is coming in, so they can automatically know that this car has such and such composition of the different waste fractions. But also, if there is poor sorting, let's say there's a neighborhood where people don't care to sort their household waste from their plastics or glasses, then you can give feedback to the community there. Look, guys, you are not doing your sorting as well as these guys are doing. So you can have all kinds of smart interactions that otherwise would be impossible. So that's an idea on making smart material systems. And then another smart use of AI is, for instance, in maintenance.

1:00:34So a lot of maintenance on buildings and bridges and machines and air conditioning systems, etc., is done on a routine basis because you have a maintenance schedule. And to avoid downtime, they typically do maintenance whether you need it or not. But if you have a little acoustic sensor which senses the sound of the car or the bridge or the railway system or the engine or the heat system, exchanger and then it notices that the sound of suddenly the what you call it um the thing the motor or the fan yeah yeah or the fan yeah has a a bad sound to it then it can immediately and before it breaks send a signal to the maintenance system that you now have to change this before it breaks so and and that doesn't cost hardly anything just a little little acoustic sensor So suddenly we can have huge improvements on maintenance of more or less everything we have to reduce the excess waste of materials. So I'm just mentioning two or three examples of how I think AI can bring immense benefits.

1:01:46And also the AI itself is now currently designed with old Python algorithms and libraries, where you typically use, let's say, variables with eight digits behind the comma, which you don't really need. So a lot of the crunching that goes into AI is just a waste of power and computing capacity. So AIs haven't really been designed yet to optimize for energy productivity. So anything from optimizing solar panel materials to waste handling to maintenance can be rethought with the aim of AI, but then we need to invest in that rather than insane cat videos where they fly in. Where you have the Hulk flying in on the helicopter, dropping onto a cow and riding on top of a mountain. I mean, it's just insane what people are using it for. I don't mind necessarily, but I'm just pointing out that spending a billion kilowatt hours on making...

1:02:49I don't know how to deal with that. It's a waste of resources. Yeah, but the potential, I mean, AI, a lot of people are complaining about the power consumption. And of course, locally, it has a big effect on the grid. But remember that its growth starts from a very low basis. The growth was like 0.5 to 1% of power consumption or emissions in the world. And if that doubles or triples, 2 or 3%, which it may do, is still less than aviation. So the potential to improve energy efficiency in buildings, which uses 30 to 40% of all the power, is huge compared to what is actually used in AI. And also when we electrify industry away from coal and steel and concrete, et cetera, the electrification of that will also use at least an order of magnitude and more power than the need to run AI centers.

1:03:49We need a lot more power, but China can provide that or we can build our own solar panel productions. The amount of sun we're getting from the sun every day is so huge that we can easily run the world economy, even if it uses two or three or four times as much power as it does electric power than it does currently. So when we do that, we can bring the burning of hydrocarbons down to zero and AI can accelerate that transition. And it can also accelerate the transition towards a smart circular material economy. But only if we invest in it. If we invest in whatever else, then of course, AI goes the wrong way. And Americans tend to say, we just need more, more data centers, more computing power, more, more, more, rather than like the Chinese are doing with DeepSeek and others. They have to operate under constraints. So they take energy efficiency into account when they're designing their AI.

1:04:52Sorry if I'm digressing, but maybe I'm far away from your questions now. No, no. It makes me think of where we started with the traffic analogy. You know, each person isn't necessarily wanting these outcomes, but by using it, you're kind of contributing to it. And it makes me think about... my own or people around me who I know, like, how is there any way, because this feels like the epitome of a problem that I don't know if I can do anything about, because I just like, I want, I want a good AI model that's going to help me with researching a guest or that's going to help me to, um, I don't know, categorize the, the items in my cupboard. Um, and look at your power bill.

1:05:37Yeah, and lower my power bill. Exactly. So there's like, but is there anything that an individual can do in this situation with AI? Or is it really, it needs to be a systemic kind of government-enforced thing? Yeah, that's an excellent question. Because it really stumps me. But I guess if you're an employee, you could have a good influence on the team and your business unit and maybe your company. We ask questions like this. What kind of AI do we want? How do we want to use AI in a way that is...

1:06:26regenerative and socially beneficial and not just simply to cut costs as quickly as possible. So how can we use it to improve our impact and our quality rather than just cutting employees and then having, let's say, a call center of AIs that pisses all our customers off rather than rethinking how salespeople can contribute to selling higher quality productors that have a more durable, that have a circular profile and a clear impact, transparent impact, rather than just maximizing the amount of shit we put through the sales channel.

1:07:11So these are questions that we have within our power as citizens and workers to do. So we have, as I mentioned in another book I wrote, Tomorrow's Economy. We have four different roles as individuals. Yes, we are consumers. Also, I could use AI to help me figure out the best, most durable, most beneficial products to buy compared to other shit. I don't have to succumb to some Teemu algorithm. I could actually ask it questions that makes it learn real important questions.

1:07:56Second is my role as an employee or a worker, as an owner maybe. So yeah, let's stay with a professional role. So many things I can do. I'm at the business school. I can influence my colleagues, my professors. I could influence my students. I can maybe challenge the school administration as to how their user funds and how we prioritize the course content. So do we have ethical AI on our curriculum, I could ask, for instance. And then I am an owner, I have some shares, I have a house, I have a car. I also make sure that my house is energy efficient and maybe have some biodiversity enhancing things on the roof or in my veranda. And then finally, I'm a citizen, so I can ask my politicians questions. I can be part of an NGO, I can vote. So with all those four roles as consumer, worker, owner and citizen, I can influence AI adoption too. But of course, I cannot reprogram the models, but I can change how the social networks of which I'm part, whether it's a customer, owner, or a citizen, and how we come up with demands and design requirements so that AI can be used for the good rather than to destroy the earth as quickly as possible. Yeah.

1:09:21Yeah, I love those categorization of the four different roles that each person has, because I think that's, it's very concrete that someone can go, can I do something in my worker role, in my citizen role? You said before we started recording that AI and privacy loss are in many psychological ways similar to the climate crisis. um is and i would guess that like you just outlined those four ways that you could think about how you could influence ai the same is true for climate or take any other issue that you care about is there other ways that they are similar psychologically that one understanding one may help with understanding the other and vice versa Yeah, so in my book, what we think about when we try not to think about global warming, I did this research on psychology studies of how people respond to climate science. And I've been approached by a number of researchers looking at other major issues, such as nuclear proliferation, and now privacy and AI. Because unlike COVID, COVID-19, Did we speak about COVID earlier in this talk? We haven't, no. No, it was the previous today. So when COVID arrived, it was this new threat

1:10:43And it was visualized by like this red mine with spikes that could go off in your face and you would cough your lungs out and you would even contaminate, what do you call it? You would contaminate or contagious. Is that the word? Yes. bring it on to my old mother and she would die too. And who knows how bad everything would get. So when somebody was coughing behind my back on the bus and I saw they didn't have a mask on, I would go, oh, fuck, I want out of her. Oh, it's my own mask. So the point is, it was a threat that was near. It felt personal and was urgent the moment I heard somebody cough or something.

1:11:27You probably remember that. Yes, definitely. That gave the opportunity of the government because COVID triggered all our evolutionary risks in terms of what counts as dangerous, being near, personal and immediate, while climate change is abstract, slow moving and very impersonal. Opposite of all of them. Opposite of all of it. It doesn't trigger any of our risk responses. And some of the same thing happens with privacy. So only when Trump started to question, like, Norwegians or French or UK people about their social media, now you have to come up with your five social media channel, and they could actually go through the CBP, the Customs and Border Police, can even search your phone about what you said about Trump. And your digital data is available everywhere, and Palantir is collecting it.

1:12:26So it's slow moving, it's abstract, you don't really notice it until it becomes personal and you're actually going to the US, maybe you're going to see the soccer World Cup. Then it suddenly becomes personal, near and real. But up to now, it's been abstract, distant, slow moving, and suddenly it's too late, they say. And the five barriers, first the psychological distancing, and then the doomed people screaming, actually, we're now giving away all our private information, so we have a perfect tyranny coming our way. Once you can tap into that data, they'll know all about you.

1:13:07And third, there's dissonance because I mean, I'm still on Facebook. So are you? So my friend. So yeah, maybe I shouldn't share so much, but still I'm part of doing it. So there's this dissonance between what I do and what I know. And then I prefer not to think about it. So it's denial. Yeah, it's probably okay. And then identity barrier would also go that well, you know, I need that to reach out to my friends. And actually it's part of who I am now to be part of that group on that web, that social media. And I'm a Tik Toker or I'm a etc. So it's been become gradually a very personal, very emotional issue. And people can imagine existing without being having their Instagram feed or the Instagram influencer or all.

1:13:51So all of those five barriers, the distance, the doom, the dissonance, the denial, and identity come up also in terms of digital privacy and also AI, I think. Definitely. It feels far away, and I'm still using it. I'm using Claw. I've stopped ChatGPT now because they're bad. But maybe Claw is even worse, and so is Anthropik. What do I know? So I have dissonance about using AI, but I still do it. And hopefully, if I don't think about it, maybe all things will go well. But that's not my advice at all. We need to bring it up. And then how can we become part of a policy movement that demands ethical and effective, efficient AI use, rather than just letting Trump suck it out of our pockets and a few other AI billionaires that will soon be around.

1:14:52Yeah, I think it's something that's increasing in kind of public consciousness. And I'm sure we'll have a lot more kind of spotlights put on it. It makes me think of what you said. Go on. Yeah, because AI is inherently intransparent. Nobody knows the kind of logic that is hidden inside the AI. And if somebody wants to make it a certain way, like Musk has done with Grok, it's nearly impossible to tease out the ways that the AI has been biased. Hmm. Yeah. Um, it makes me think of, you said something earlier in the conversation where we were talking about earth for all, where you said that's, that's a few years ago. It's not, it's not what I'm thinking about right now. And I'm interested, what, what are you, what's top of mind for you right now? And where do you think that might be in five years, given the way that things are going, the world is, is heading where, where would you expect your, your highest priority I have a vision and a desire to help align financial flows with nature and bioregional ecosystems. So for instance, I'm currently working with indigenous peoples in Ecuador to issue

1:16:26biodiversity credits or jaguar credits, as we call them, for the stewardship services that these indigenous people are providing for all of us. So we in Norway have extracted a huge wealth from oil and that's a kind of natural inheritance wealth that we've had from our continental self. They are living inside a 50-year-old evolutionary genius with incredible creatures all around them. And if they don't protect their land, we're going to lose it, all of us.

1:17:02There's a huge wealth, but it's currently set to zero unless they mine or log it. So how do we at this point reroute some of that extractive finance towards regenerative finance? How can we help? some of our money going to restoring and regenerating areas, not just extracting value from it. And then we need other types of units of account. So we need to understand how each hectare on Earth is doing, irrespective of its monetary value. And that's something I'm working on. So in five years' time, I hope to see in the order of, I'd say, $10 to $100 billion flowing to land stewards, who will then become incentivized to provide certificates that they have been providing biodiversity uplift. So restoring rivers to...

1:18:02restoring streams, each hectare, they get a certain compensation, and then it's verified by ground truthing and remote sensing that they've actually provided these services. So we're not selling nature as such, not like property, but those people who are stewarding nature get incentivized for doing certificated, objectively recorded work that restore nature's capacity to deal with climate change and the pollutants and whatever we're throwing at it. That's my current vision. Wow, that's really exciting. Yeah, it's working with climate, but making it more concrete in terms of it's about nature's biocapacity. How can we become a species on Earth that helps to...

1:18:51to restore the nature we've taken away, and then having a deep respect coupled with the incredible technological capacity we have to provide services to help lift these beautiful beings that we are in kinship with. Yeah, that's really exciting. Last couple of questions. What do you get fed up of being asked? Yeah, I have asked. You might have a long list. Maybe that one is there hope? That's one of them. Um, and another one is, um, um, does it help to be positive about the climate? Something like that. Um.

1:19:40There's a specific question that I used to get a lot, but right now it sips away my brain. So yeah, something about that. Why should we be positive when it's all really bad? And then the other one is this, is there some hope after all? Those are two questions that I have a lot of times, but as long as they're, you know, I'm a psychologist, so I'm not the kind of scientist dude who's fed up with saying things. So when people are concerned about something, I try to become, my instinct is to be empathic and then respond to that person's, if it's genuinely asked and not just like a cliche coming from a journalist, then I'm fine with answering those questions one more time.

1:20:25Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the inverse, what do you wish more people asked you or would question? That's a lovely one. I would love to have more questions like, are we going deep enough? Are we thinking enough about how we think? Maybe what's the basic assumptions that underlies the way we talk about climate or economy or inequality? those would be very stimulating questions for me to get. I really want to ask it you now. But it's probably not a short answer. Yeah, I'll leave it because we're already at time and I don't want to take any more of your time. Maybe, Rob, I'm writing a book about these things. How are you? The philosophical and psychological foundations of regenerative finance. Okay. It's called Rewilding Within.

1:21:23Yeah, it's a little bit related to the example I gave you with the Jaguar credits and the incentives. And in it, we have to ask, why is it that we've failed in what I call sustainability 1.0, which is the age from 1990 to, let's say, 2025? 35 years of sustainability attempts, and most of them are futile, even if a lot of people have given it a lot of effort. And the other similar question or related question is why is it that the people having the solutions, those who have stewarded the land for 10,000 years, indigenous folks and the indigenous cultures, why do we keep colonizing and running over them? And.

1:22:05eradicating and appropriating the very culture that has the answers that we need to learn to solve our own problems. So we are unable to listen to the people who have the answers, the indigenous folks, and we're failing with our main sustainability solutions. And for me, there are deep, basic assumptions in our culture that make both of those things happen at the same time. And those three are a deep separation of objects from subjects, nature from humans. The other is reductionism, that we tend to reduce everything to either, let's say, tons of matter, or values are reduced to money. So we have suddenly then a monodimensional value system. So everything has to be translated into that to have a value.

1:23:00And the third is mechanistic approach that we tend that we have. We know best how to manipulate cause and effect to get where we want to go in a linear way for linear time. So a combination of separation, reductionism and mechanistic approach makes our sustainability efforts fail and also run roughshod over indigenous traditions that have some of the key answers to what we need to learn. And then what's the answers to those three? How can we shift into a regenerative way of being in the world? And that's what we could come back to in one year, if you want, because the manuscript isn't done yet. But I have some fairly interesting avenues to explore, and the first draft is ready.

1:23:44Okay, I would love to discuss it and read it when it comes out. I've enjoyed this immensely. Thank you so much, Per. Thanks a lot. And where would you point someone if they're interested to learn about what we've talked about, what you're working on? If someone's got their phone and they want to look at something after this related to this conversation, where would you point them? Yeah, so for the large economic and systems change stuff, I think the earthforall.life with the number four, earthforall.life. And the other is, of course, my homepage, which is just stockness.com. No C, stookness. Okie dokie. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck.