The perennial fight returns... In one corner, there are the wizards: optimists who are betting that technology and economic growth can solve our problems faster than it can create them? In the other corner, prophets: who believe we have deeply lost in our way in ignoring limits and that we need to get ourselves back to the garden.
How much wizard and how much prophet do you have contained in your own heart?
Today's monologue episode has host Ross Kenyon exploring two recent books: Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson's Abundance, and Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, regarding how they continue the oldest and deepest fight in environmentalism.
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Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth
Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
"S2E53: Paul Kingsnorth on the shared roots of climate crisis, transhumanism, & immortality"
"S2E15: Are you a wizard or a prophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann"
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Joseph Schumpeter & creative destruction
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
"Anyway, Here's Wonderwall" meme
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
A brief interpretation of some of Peter Thiel's Greta Thunberg antichrist comments
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
- John Muir
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
- Albert Einstein (attributed)
With a matchup like that, who would win?
I love this chapter from Moby-Dick. It so perfectly contrasts sublime beauty of the world and the raw horror of life. I was thinking of it often while on my recent sailing trip aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Seattle to San Francisco.
Sit back and let me read the chapter for you, and may it inspire you to crack open some Herman Melville.
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Chapter 58: Brit, from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale
"377: One Week Before the Mast—A Climate Sailing Travelogue from Seattle to San Francisco"
"ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean"
It's that special time of year to put away worldly cares and focus on family, giving, and... carbon removal? Did I read that right?
Come hang with Ross and CDR force of nature Sebastian Manhart to discuss family, parenthood, hope for the future, the quest to expand the moral sphere, and why we should be focusing on trendlines and not headlines.
Happy Holidays, however you choose to spend it!
This Episode's Sponsors
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Leila Conner's video podcast of Gigaten with Sebastian Manhart
Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen e.V. (DVNE): one of the many trade organizations for CDR Sebastian has been a major part of
Is the voluntary carbon market a club for saints? Or is it a hospital for sinners? Are we meant to understand all and then to forgive all? How much time are we meant to devote to idealistic abstinence-esque policies for change, and how much of our professional lives should go to harm reduction?
Today's show deals with some of the biggest questions in carbon removal and carbon markets, and does it in just the kind of literary-philosophical ways that make this shows its own... whatever it is that it is.
Trust me and I'll guide you through the history of the Soviet Union and at least one Warsaw Pact country, David Simon, critical theory, German nuclear policy, the Bill Gates piece that ruffled all feathers one way or another, the Enabled Emissions Campaign, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, I Heart Huckabees, and Bicycle Thieves.
Some days you hit record and you never quite know what you're going to discover...
N.B. The image today is Vaclav Havel's greengrocer from "The Power of the Powerless" as illustrated by his Czech compatriot, Josef Lada, who did the original illustrations for Jaroslav Hašek's incredibly funny,The Good Soldier Švejk, who is a sort of antiwar/pacifistic Amelia Bedelia who messes things up in the Army by being a bit too literal and a bit too eager to follow orders.
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The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek
The Death of Stalin film
"The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Havel; it's abridged here but you can click through to the full thing if you'd like
"The Clash of Aristocratic and Bourgeois Virtues in 'The Wire'" by Dr. Bart Wilson
Holodomor (the Ukrainian Famine)
Katyn Massacre (NSFW: death pit image is first thing on Wikipedia)
"The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord
"Three tough truths about climate" by Bill Gates
Germany closing nuclear power plants
Gentle wind, sail, and ocean sounds with looped video taken during a trip from Seattle to San Francisco aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition.
One could fly to the Bay Area in about ninety minutes, but what if it took a week, enormous amounts of teamwork on a 111-year-old Norwegian sailing barque, and caused a near-universal seasickness in thirty-foot seas?
Today's show is a monologue about my experience sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition. I'm an Executive in Residence at Maritime Blue, which sponsored this leg of the trip to raise awareness of the challenges facing the world ocean, its many inhabitants, and ourselves.
The show is about many of the practicalities of living and working among one hundred other scientists and sailors, but it's also about so much more. It's about anxiety, proximity to nature, and a reminder that humans aren't always in charge. And that also, sometimes you don't have to do the thing you really don't want to do, and why that might just be okay.
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The Essentials Of Living Aboard A Boat: The definitive Guide for Liveaboards by Mark Nicholas
"S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor"
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Annapolis Book of Seamanship by John Rousmaniere
University of Washington School of Oceanography
Long a pariah climate solution, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is having its mainstream moment. As the climate movement ponders the planet's deep overshoot, more conversations about geoengineering, solar radiation management, global cooling, etc. are taking place in the open.
Moreover, for-profit entities are raising venture rounds, with Stardust recently announcing a $60M Series A to commercialize their approach to SAI. This moment is feeling genuinely new, and it feels this way to today's guest Dr. Shuchi Talati of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering too.
While I believe we should do the research and have the governance ready for possible future deployment lest it be done in a much less responsible way (I do not enjoy writing these words one single bit), I am finding it hard to accept its use as anything less than tragedy. Some felt this way about carbon removal, and I have greater sympathy for that feeling now too. The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk...
Is SAI an instance of brave humans deploying life-saving technology? Or Promethean hubris for which we should keep our livers guarded? How much should the profit motive influence SAI deployment, if at all? I don't have all of the answers—nor pretend to–but I can point you to the emotional and spiritual core of it that helps me make sense of being a historical actor with agency at this moment in time.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
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Resources
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The Alliance for a Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering
"I See a Darkness—The Climate Movement Expects Deep Overshoot"
Stratospheric aerosol injection on Wikipedia
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Dwight D. Eisenhower's Chance for Peace speech
"There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Let us first ask ourselves what should be understood by “a tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” … a triad which consists of … (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This … raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? How … can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything,” …presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. … hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism … an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action."
- Viktor Frankl in the postscript to Man's Search for Meaning
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Chance for Peace speech
Wren recently purchased a majority stake in Pacific Biochar, one of carbon removal's most prolific credit deliverers. What led to this deal, and will this model be emulated in a 2026 that might find carbon removal companies interested in (or maybe desperate for) deals that prolong runway and keep their companies alive?
Wren is one of the oldest marketplaces (and so much more) in carbon removal with a record of doing things differently. Sophie Westover is their Head of Climate and is on the show representing their thinking on this deal.
Josiah Hunt is the Founder and CEO of Pacific Biochar. He's been making biochar since before most of us knew it was a thing. He shares a lot of realness about the difficulties of being a project developer—even a successful one—in carbon removal.
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"Wren proudly invests in Pacific Biochar to scale carbon removal"
In case you want to see Pacific Biochar on the cdr.fyi supplier leaderboard.
"313: Can carbon removal be insured?—w/ Racheal Notto & James Kench, Kita"
What if microbes could help us mine responsibly? What if astrobiology—the study of life beyond Earth—held clues for how to fix the way we extract resources on Earth?
Today’s guest is Liz Dennett, CEO and founder of Endolith, a biotech startup using microbes to boost copper recovery from mining waste. With a PhD in astrobiology, experience at NASA, and a career spanning oil, gas, and data science, Dennett is one of the most fascinating polymaths in climate tech.
This episode dives into how microbes mine metals, why copper is civilization’s next constraint, and what it means to clean up an industry everyone loves to hate. Ross and Liz also explore the moral contradictions of “ethical extraction,” the realities of startup life, and how humor—and humility—might be the best renewable resources of all.
This Episode's Sponsors
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Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future by Dr. David Grinspoon
47: David Grinspoon, Astrobiologist
Geology Cage Match: The Sapiezoic vs. the Anthropocene
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
The War BelowLithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder
Deus ex machina
“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
World War I profoundly changed the world. Nation-states replaced empires. Russia went communist. Fascism arrived. The West's claim to being the most civilized peoples on Earth was supremely undermined. And out of so much suffering, we received a holiday prioritizing grief and mercy.
This bonus episode is me speed-running World War I and sharing some reflections on Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, or however you might call it.
If you carry any of this grief with you personally, I hope you are able to forgive yourself and others. The choices of this world are not always easy, and we make mistakes.
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"In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae
There are a lot of references in this show. Normally I'd link, but for now, maybe just look some of them up if you feel so inclined.
Adaptation begins at home. But it doesn't end there. What do you plan on doing with your family as climate change gets worse? Are you already making plans whether to stay or go? How should states respond as people flee disaster? Who should get access to fish stocks as they migrate to new regions? Once one starts asking these questions, they really don't stop...
Today's guest is Susannah Fisher, author of the new book, Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate. It's a wonderful catalogue of questions that asks and frames so many crucial discussions around people, nature, and politics.
Much of the first half of the show is about how it feels to start thinking about adaptation and resilience rather than more optimistic mitigation work, and why adaptation can bring its own solace. We might not need to panic just yet... and I enjoyed getting some emotional centering from Susannah's deep experience in A&R research and policy work.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
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Susannah Fisher's Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate
There are various services where you can enter your address and view statistical flood and fire risk. Unfortunately since I last used it the one I used to use has been taken down..."
Is climate change a fringe and woke distraction in military planning that inhibits lethality? Or is it invaluable strategic context for this century's power projection? What kinds of missions will soldiers be asked to perform in a world that is getting hotter and more complex?
Today's guest is Erin Sikorsky, Director of The Center for Climate and Security and author of the new book, Climate Change on the Battlefield: International Military Responses to the Climate Crisis.
Though this show is not merely about warfighting and lethality. It's about what it means to have an apolitical military (if that term isn't too contestable). It's also about the military increasingly adapting its own facilities to climate change, and being tasked with many more disaster response missions than it has been previously. What does it mean to have an armed force that is spending more time fighting forest fires than preparing for amphibious assaults? Is this even the correct service to be addressing disasters?
I'd like to do many more episodes on this topic in the future. It's one that I find endlessly fascinating.
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Erin Sikorsky's bio at The Center for Climate and Security
Ian W. Toll's Pacific War Trilogy deals with interwar Japan, especially Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. Listen also to the episode of the podcast I did with him here, "S3E34: The Environmental Impact of WW2 in the Pacific Theatre—w/ Ian W. Toll, author of The Pacific War Trilogy".
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode "Supernova in the East 1" deals with this extensively too.
I started reading Pete Hegseth's The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, and would like to keep reading more criticism of the conflict between military preparedness and climate change.
Listen in to the episode I did with Jeff Goodell where we discuss how the military thinks about climate change, "S3E51: The Heat Will Kill You First—w/ Jeff Goodell, author and contributing editor of Rolling Stone"
“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.”
― Voltaire
Much of legacy media is dying. You know what isn't? Live sports. Where the outcome is uncertain, people want to watch.
That means bringing together large numbers of fans and athletes. And what does that all add up to? Emissions. And emissions that could potentially be detached from profitability, leading to budgets large enough to support meaningful carbon removal.
But will sports leagues move in this direction? Or is it better that it stay at the level of individual teams jockeying for brand value from climate action?
Today's guest is Dr. Aidan Preston, Senior Impact Manager of Milkywire and former Advisor to the United States Department of Energy.
Aidan is a sports fanatic and the author of Milkywire's latest report, "The Climate Cost of Growth in Sport: An Opportunity for Sports to Win on Climate".
We discuss the evolving media landscape around sports, the creation and surprising rise of new sports, the omnipresence of sports betting, and how all of this might play out for carbon removal and climate action.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
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350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting World
"Mohammad Ali — Amazing Speed"; watch this video for the out-of-this-world dodges alone
America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; you can see the F1 and golf series on Netflix too
Aidan recommended this Michael Lewis podcast on sports betting
Aidan sent me the link to this study on how talking to strangers brings satisfaction
Acquired episode about Indian Premier League Cricket
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everything-became-television
CUR8
Taylor Swift and the Chiefs/NFL
Jason Isbell on being the subject of the documentary, Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed: "Yet Isbell admits there were times during the filming process when he needed a moment to himself.
“I would leave the room, or unplug my microphone and get away from the camera. Sometimes it was too much,” he says. “But once the footage was all there and edited together, I didn’t use any sort of veto power or take anything out.”"
The Gulf of Aden (sorry, Aidan; I couldn't help it...)
What happens when you build a list of very nearly every carbon dioxide removal company in existence? You get access to intriguing data and the pride of a very laborious job done well. Presumably you also get to take a nap.
Grant Faber is a long-time carbon removal community fixture working on Life Cycle Analysis and Techno-Economic Assessment. Formerly of the Department of Energy, he now works with Absolute Climate (coincidentally, a sponsor of this episode!)
Listen is as Grant shares what he has learned about looking at so many technology and project developers, whether it is better to be one-of-a-kind or in a community of methodological fellow travelers, and where he would go if he were ready to found his own company.
He also avoids the risk of creating an alphabetical list of French cinema only to have it be called "seminal" in a cloak room. (Sorry, obligatory Peep Show reference...)
This Episode's Sponsors
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Grant's blog, Carbon-Based Commentary
Notes from Alkali Earth on Substack
Noya winddown post on LinkedIn
I came back from New York Climate Week energized. I loved seeing everyone. But many of the conversations I had profoundly scared me. We're staring into the abyss of deep overshoot, and it's staring back into us.
What would it mean for us to make peace with a world that doesn't decarbonize fast enough? That doesn't scale carbon removal before tipping points are reached? That is forced into more radical geoengineering approaches that may just be one more layer of intervention that we will likely manage just as badly?
This is an emotional show. It's about war. It's about the Holocaust. It's about what it means to fail, and to fail gracefully, and how imagining how you would feel if you lost everything can potentially offer an unexpected lightness.
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This episode title is a reference to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's excellent song, "I See a Darkness." I enjoy the slow version, but I adore the jauntier one's sense of irony, hope, and despair.
The art is William Blake's work on Job.
The riding the bomb scene from Dr. Strangelove
Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap by Graham Allison
338: Carbon Security and the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
"Ukraine's Zelenskyy issues a stark warning about a global arms race and AI war", NPR
Ken Krimstein's When I Grow Up
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
The unfinished business of ghosts
Dante's Divine Comedy—both Cantos VI & XVI have this feel
"In man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily composition rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.
What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act. Further, accepting all that happens and is allotted to it as coming from that other source which is its own origin: and at all times awaiting death with the glad confidence that it is nothing more than the dissolution of the elements of which every living creature is composed. Now if there is nothing fearful for the elements themselves in their constant changing of each into another, why should one look anxiously in prospect at the change and dissolution of them all? This is in accordance with nature: and nothing harmful is in accordance with nature."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Two, 17
We all want to make sure carbon removal works. But who is working to make it beautiful? And could creating beauty be one of the most important jobs in all of climate?
Leila Conners is a filmmaker who has been making environmental films for decades, including legendary ones like The 11th Hour with Leonardo DiCaprio. Her latest opus is Legion 44, which is a wonderful documentary highlighting so many alumni from this podcast and the CDR industry.
We also discuss why the antihero is such a popular archetype, how you should construct your media diet, and the role of the feature film when long-form and short-form content are polarizing media duration.
Legion 44 is now available for viewing on its own website and several other places, as well as on Tree+: Leila's new tv channel that you can download right to your smart tv. Please support her work spotlighting climate solutions and the delightful world of carbon removers.
"The world will be saved by beauty."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
-- Dorothy Day
--- Michael Scott (jk... unless?)
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
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Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
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Philip Glass's theme from Koyaanisqatsi
Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother is also a lovely book by Kate Hennessy, and also probably what highlighted this beautiful sentiment for me.
Or "project finance", for that matter? Or are these just the current words we say at happy hours?
Today, we attempt to nail down some of these definitions so we might have a chance of achieving either of these concepts.
Ryan Covington is an attorney and partner in the Climate Projects team of Philip Lee (US) LLP, focused on the development and financing of engineered and nature-based carbon projects. Ryan shares his experience in structuring large financial deals in the carbon removal and climate tech space.
Can carbon removal ever achieve scale without sufficient commercial finesse? Likely not, but isn't it pretty to think so?
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
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Ryan Covington's profile at Philip Lee LLP
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The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Are you interested in sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on a sailing vessel older than World War 1?! Well, you can at the end of October 2025. Moreover, you'll be crewing alongside me.
I recently joined the team of Maritime Blue as an Executive in Residence, working with ocean tech startups on commercial strategy, storytelling, and go-to-market. They're putting on a fabulous ocean conference in Seattle October 20th-26th.
Check out the links to Maritime Blue, One Ocean Week, and the One Ocean Expedition below!
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One Ocean Expedition (book your passage here!)
Statsraad Lehmkuhl on Wikipedia
S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor
I found the image on Wikipedia and it is is: By Ronnie Robertson - Statsraad IMG_5206, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56179943
I take no responsibility for the success or failure of the trip. Participation is at your own discretion. I have personally accepted the risk for myself, but every person must choose for themselves.
Raising kids is hard enough. How do we do it now when existential dread is such a major part of youth experience? And how do we keep ourselves mentally healthy enough to be good at both our professional climate work and parenting?
Today's show is with Ariella Cook-Shonkoff, psychotherapist and author of the new book, Raising Anti-Doomers: How to Bring Up Resilient Kids Through Climate Change and Tumultuous Times.
She answers a bunch of questions I have about how much I should actually be staring into the abyss (but not whether it also stares back into me, weird I know...), agency, how to think about individual vs. collective safety, and how to bring children into a world where the grownups are either asking these enormous questions or pretending we don't need to.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
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Ariella Cook-Shonkoff's website
Ariella's Psychology Today blog, "The Anti-Doomer Mindset
Cultivating Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty"
Climate Action Venn Diagrams from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Is that a noble man rejecting modernity and embracing tradition? Or is it a lunatic with a lance trying to disembowel a shepherd?
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) is the much beloved literary classic—and perhaps the world's first true novel—but its reputation goes far beyond the book itself. The character has spawned his own adjective: "quixotic", which gets levied at anyone who dares to dream a bit too big.
But is this a word kind of like "epicurean", whose true meaning is subverted by modern use? I believe the answer is yes.
This episode goes out to all of the climate people who dare to dream of a better, kinder world, and why I don't think your critics know what being "quixotic" means.
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"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
And also Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces
Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition meme
"Golden Helmet of Mambrino" from Man of La Mancha
I didn't explicitly name cases of left-wing nostalgia, but you can look to the Paris Commune (and earlier revolutionary moments in France), primitive communism, republican Spain, the consensus capitalism nostalgia of Michael Moore, etc.