Occupation:
Educator, social philosopher
Interviewer:
Berry Liberman
Location:
Wisconsin, USA
Date:
December 2022
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. That is what keeps coming to mind during my many conversations with Nate Hagens. Nate is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future: an organisation focused on preparing society for the coming cultural transition to when fossil fuels no longer power our world. Nate researches how we might live a vastly different existence and he predicts a long period of adjustment. He expects that the world we experience now in developed parts of the world – a world constantly on – will no longer be possible as we conserve energy for essential services and operations.
Nate is doing some serious heavy lifting globally. He shares important conversations through his popular podcast The Great Simplification, teaches an Honours course at the University of Minnesota titled Reality 101 – A Survey of the Human Predicament, and counsels governments and world leaders on what this possible transition will entail and how we might prepare for it. Nate’s presentations address the opportunities and constraints we face after the coming peak of global economic growth.
Nate is entirely, deeply human. His empathy and understanding of human behaviour moves me as we talk about a future for humanity where we are grounded in a simpler life, embedded in community, with less power at our fingertips. Maybe, just maybe, that life will also feature a heightened sense of meaning and purpose as we confront a warming world.
A former VP of Lehman Brothers bank, Nate once sat in the heart of the engine of the economy. He realised quickly that it was enabling the destruction of our world, educated himself about how energy resource and financial markets were driving us collectively off the cliff we can’t see ahead and walked away from Wall Street to live a life in service of what he calls a pro-social future. The future Nate describes is one in which we understand enough of our own motivations and psychology to pause and pivot before it’s too late.
BERRY LIBERMAN: I want to learn about you and your work.
NATE HAGENS: With almost all questions in this field there are two aspects: what could humans as individuals and as a global or national culture be like, how might we thrive and live up to our potential while respecting the limits of the natural world? And then, how
