It was a personal thrill for me to welcome Prof Jem Bendell to last Sunday’s BOOK CHAT. As his Deep Adaptation Paper did literally change my life , giving me a renewed sense of purpose.
Jem came along because we, that is Zahra Sethna , me and our cohort have been talking about Breaking Together, a freedom-loving response to collapse for the last three weeks.
I was a bit star struck and had just returned from a retreat so had that in mind. I would have loved to talked more on the regenerative , emerging aspects of Jem’s work. Why his farm in Indonesia had failed and how he is managing this period of reflection on what he will do next.
We also did not cover all the questions and points raised in our limited time which was disappointing. I know some would have liked to drill down on different areas , like the geo engineering that was raised.
We did still cover a lot from climate science, spiritual ecology, eco-libertarianism, community, and how each of us finds our own way of responding to collapse. I encourage you to listen/watch the conversation and add your own thoughts on the issues raised.
Below are some of the highlights.
Why He Wrote the Book
Jem had resisted for years the calls to flesh out what he meant by societal collapse. “Why would I be spending so many years in front of computers analysing data to better explain myself ?” he said. “It felt like self-justification in a totally unnecessary way.”
What eventually moved him was recognising that he had a particular skill . The ability to do interdisciplinary analysis and make it accessible and that this was genuinely his work to do.
The second half of the book, he said, was “as much for me as the readership.” It was a structured investigation into the philosophical and political implications of living through collapse.
Three years on, he’s proud of it. The first half drew on everything he’d built through his career. The second gave him foundations for how he wants to engage publicly. “It still provides a helpful framework,” he said, “for myself and for other people.”
From the World Economic Forum to Bali
Zahra asked Jem about the arc of his own life, from being a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and full Professor of Sustainability, to where he is now. He spoke candidly about the years he spent working within the system, always with an eye on impact and scale, always assuming there was time for incremental change.
The shift came when the evidence he saw stopped matching the story. The temperatures, the forest fires, the melting permafrost — things that, from his Cambridge climatology training, shouldn’t have been happening until 2080 were happening in 2013. He took unpaid leave, moved to Greece and then Indonesia, and allowed himself, completely outside his old life, to think differently.
“I think it was because I chose to live partly elsewhere. I was completely out of my old story of self, my old way of being. And I could allow myself to think of being someone different to that successful Professor.”
Where He Is Now on the Climate
Eight years on from Deep Adaptation, Jem reflected on what’s changed — and what hasn’t.
Nothing in that 2018 paper has been proven wrong, according to Jem. If anything, he thought the reality has moved faster than his original analysis suggested. Mainstream climatology has largely caught up: “no serious climatologist now claims we’ll stay below 1.5 degrees, and most are privately acknowledging we won’t hold 2 degrees either”.
But his own thinking has evolved. He described himself as having been “a bit too carbon-centric” by assuming CO₂ was essentially the thermometer for global temperature. What he’s come to understand since is the crucial role of healthy oceans and large forests in seeding clouds worldwide. Damage those through plastics, pollution, and deforestation and you remove natural cloud formation processes that help regulate global temperatures. According to Jem this isn’t a replacement for reducing carbon emissions; it’s another dimension of the crisis that the field has been slow to address.
His critique of the climate science community is structural rather than personal: the same pressure to maintain a hopeful, politically palatable narrative that skewed communication in 2018 is still operating today.
“Let’s just focus on being as true as possible to what we can find about the reality, rather than edit ourselves to maintain a false narrative.”
This is why critical thinking is such an important part of the book and in life.
On COVID, Dissent, and the Loss of Curious Conversation
The conversation turned to the parallels between climate science and the suppression of scientific dissent during COVID. Jem was direct about this. As an environmentalist, he chose to speak up against aspects of COVID mainstream policy. He was not opposed to public health, but saw too many environmentalists were joining in with policies that had, in his view, a shaky scientific basis. These were around masking, school closures, or the handling of alternative approaches.
What concerned him most was the cultural effect through the demonisation of dissent, which then eroded trust in institutions more broadly. Including trust in climate science.
I personally can attest to that. I started questioning the Climate Science as much as I questioned the COVID Science.
Jem said “Dissent was cast as racist and far-right when actually the first dissenters were a lot of people from holistic health and the environmental movement.”
He spoke about this as part of a wider unravelling in Breaking Together — what happens when societies lose their capacity for informed, curious dialogue about collective challenges.
Eco-Libertarianism and why we are not a cancer on the earth.
One of the most important threads in the book is Jem’s articulation of eco-libertarianism as a philosophical framework for environmentalists. He explained the distinction between authoritarian leftism (famous for historical horrors but a minor strand) and the much larger tradition of left-libertarianism.
The idea that we are sovereign, dignified beings who voluntarily organise for mutual benefit.
But the deeper reason he developed this framework was to offer an alternative to misanthropy. He’s seen what happens when people wake up to collapse and lose hope in technological fixes. They often slide toward thinking humans are a cancer on the Earth, which then becomes a precursor to believing we must be forced to change.
His counter-argument is rooted in deep time. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans evolved with nature. The Amazon wouldn’t exist as it does today without the people who shaped it over millennia. What’s gone wrong is recent and it’s systemic: money, banking with incentive structures that reward destruction.
“I see ourselves as being manipulated, coerced, and incentivised to behave in ways which damage nature. So if we want to do something about that, don’t just blame humans. Look at the systems.”
Spirituality and Collapse
I asked about the spiritual dimensions of collapse, based on Jem’s eclectic engagement with Buddhism, Taoism, and wisdom traditions more broadly.
His answer was personal rather than prescriptive. When collapse comes into view, it brings mortality with it. And when mortality comes into view, it tends to prompt deeper questions: why am I alive, what is mine to do, what kind of being do I want to be ?
He’s been drawn into those questions himself, more existential, more experiential, more drawn to spiritual practice, since waking up to collapse. But he’s careful not to prescribe it. “That doesn’t mean I prescribe it for everyone. It’s individual choice, isn’t it?”
What Collapse Is Asking of You
Perhaps the most striking thread running through the whole conversation was Jem’s refusal to give anyone a litmus test or a prescribed response. When a solar cooking test as a way of measuring genuine eco commitment was offered, he pushed back gently but clearly:
“I don’t see how condemning people for not responding in a way I prefer is going to help anyone.”
What he returns to instead is the personal question: What is mine to do ?
“What is it asking me to do ? With my skills, my assets, how many years I have left, my responsibilities to loved ones . What is mine to do, and where is my answer coming from?”
He acknowledged that even he finds that question hard to hold right now. His organic farm in Bali isn’t working out. His health isn’t great. He wants more music, less time in front of computers. He said it simply, the recognition that living with collapse is not about achieving a perfect response. It’s about continuing to ask.
This might be frustrating, even unsettling for those seeking hard answers and solutions beyond the personal. Yet there is a recognition on how we are each making decisions and choices in how we live now. That our responses may be for community or to live independently, there are no ideals or single solutions.
Let me know your thoughts and responses to this Courageous Conversation and do share to support others.
Thank you to Jem for his generosity in joining us, and to everyone in our community who brought such thoughtful questions and was there. If you’d like to continue this conversation with Jem directly, he hosts a monthly salon at jembendell.com..
With Love and Solidarity,
What’s coming next :-
With the 4th July and all that entails BOOK CHAT is having a Summer detour to watch a film Idiocracy Film free link
We thought it would be fun to watch a satire of the future, that has insights into the present. Do watch, it’s silly and funny with some very acute observations given it was made over 20 years ago. Do join us Sunday 5th at 17.30 UK
I will be sharing my experiences of the Spiritual Ecology Retreat with Robin Motzer of Wildlands on Wednesday the 8th July 9.am Central and 3pm UK
Margaret Anna Alice in Courageous Conversation about The Climate Change Story on Friday 17th July at 17.30 UK and 09.30 PST
Sarah Wilson is coming on BOOK CHAT 19th July to talk about her stunning new book ‘I Eat The Stars’ We start talking about this book on the 12th July in preparation.
