MEER Podcast - 19. Deep Adaptation, Climate Risk, and What Comes Next with Jem Bendell
Description In this episode of The MEER Podcast, we are joined by Professor Jem Bendell, author, researcher, and originator of the influential Deep Adaptation framework, for a wide-ranging conversation about climate risk, societal disruption, and how our understanding of the climate crisis has evolved. Jem reflects on the ideas behind his consequential 2018 Deep Adaptation paper and revisits some of its most disputed arguments in light of what has happened since. We discuss what Deep Adaptation got right, why its conclusions generated such intense controversy, and what the response to the paper can teach us about the way academia, institutions, and the wider climate movement engage with uncomfortable evidence and possibilities. The conversation explores the growing evidence of accelerating climate disruption, the lessons that can be learned from those who anticipated these risks earlier, and why acknowledging severe climate threats does not have to mean giving up on meaningful action. We also discuss Jem's wider work on the "metacrisis" — the interconnected ecological, economic, social, and political pressures facing societies — and the need to think beyond conventional approaches to climate change as the consequences become increasingly difficult to ignore. Rather than reducing the climate conversation to optimism versus pessimism, this episode asks a more important question: what can we learn from the warnings of the past, and how should that knowledge shape what we do next? Relevant Links: A Dozen Disputed but Now Demonstrable Facts About Climate Change from the Consequential Deep Adaptation Paper of 2018 – Prof Jem Bendell https://jembendell.com/ Jem Bendell – Website https://jembendell.com/ Deep Adaptation Forum https://www.deepadaptation.info/ The Metacrisis Initiative https://jembendell.com/metacrisis-initiative/ Learn More at meer.org
