3) IMAGINING STRONGER CITIZEN-LED RESISTANCE TO STATE CAPTURE BY VESTED INTERESTS

Описание: GUEST: DR MARK DIESENDORF

Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Humanities & Languages, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney.

INTERVIEW TALKING POINT SEGMENTS FOR EACH GUEST – with approximate time elapsed in minutes.
• GENERIC INTRO AND GUEST FORESHADOW – 0.00
• EPISODE INTRODUCTION – 3.38
• GUEST SELF-INTRODUCTION – 5.37
• GUEST WORK IN 2025 AND GOING FORWARD – 8.23
• IMAGINATIVE EXERCISE 1 - TIME TRAVEL TO 2040 – 17.39
• IMAGINATIVE EXERCISE 2 - SIGNALS OF THE FUTURE IN 2025 – 30.36
• CLOSING COMMENTS AND AUDIENCE INVITATION– 41.27
END OF EPISODE – 45.1

Dr Diesendorf is an environmental scientist with an academic background in physics and applied mathematics. He consults, teaches and researches in the interdisciplinary fields of ecological economics, sustainable energy, energy policy and sustainability theory. He has a keen interest in exploring how our governments, businesses and other organisations can achieve ecologically sustainable and socially fair development.

In some of his most recent work Dr Diesendorf has identified the interconnected, damaging effects produced by politically powerful vested interests supported by an economic system based on the exploitation of the environment, and most people, for the benefit of a wealthy minority. Along with other researchers in this space such findings point toward a highly probable dystopian future involving the continued loss of nature, massive social disruption and even the ultimate collapse of modern civilisation.

In complete and hopeful contrast, Dr Diesendorf has also mapped out the actions we would need to take to move us onto the path toward a far more preferable, flourishing future. These actions include weakening state capture and pushing for a fairer society through building a mass movement and alliances; and implementing visionary policies, such as transitioning to a steady state economy and providing universal basic services.

The bulk of our conversation in this episode is devoted to considering that positive, life enhancing path in more detail. Dr Diesendorf’s most recent work includes the influential co-authored book The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). His associated and inspiring research paper: A Strategy for Resisting the Vested Interests Driving the Collapse of the Biosphere and Civilisation (2025) is available free online (see Selected Resources section below). Please also refer to the same section for other links to Dr Diesendorf’s work.

SELECTED RESOURCES LINKED TO EPISODE COMMENTS

Dr. MARK DIESENDORF RESOURCES
• His portal WEBSITE has links to a wide range of his research publications, presentations and ideas (see: https://www.markdiesendorf.com/)

• A recent paper covering many of the ideas discussed in the podcast episode. A Strategy for Resisting the Vested Interests Driving the Collapse of the Biosphere and Civilisation (2025). (See: https://www.sciepublish.com/article/p...)

•Some of Mark’s thinking on ecological economics and non-orthodox economic solutions to multiple interconnected challenges we are facing. The steady state economy: why we need it and how it could be progressed, Pearls and Irritations (9th May 2025).

Mark’s landmark book dealing with the impacts of state capture by vested interests – and strategies of resistance The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Selection of other research publications from Mark - listed by UNSW Sydney (see: https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/d...)

INITIATIVES AND ORGANISATIONS

DiEM25
‘Europe will be democratised, once the oligarchy is overthrown! We can defeat them, and we will not stop until our vision of a deep democracy spreads into the corporate system, our economy, our local councils, our parliaments and all our institutions.’ (Taken from the DiEM25 website 06 2025).

Australian Democracy Network
‘We are creating an Australia where civil society is robust and vibrant; public debate is informed, fair and diverse; citizens are engaged, government is clean, open and accountable and the wellbeing of people and the planet comes first.’ (taken from Australian Democracy Network website 06 2025).

BOOKS:

Yanis Varoufakis - Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present (2020). Google book review of an intriguing fictional approach to imagining a preferable more sustainable future.

Geoff Mulgan – Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination (2022) Google books review. A recent book from one of the foremost thinkers on the benefits of reinvigorating public and social imagination - to achieve beneficial societal reforms.

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