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My guest today is Erald Kolasi.
Erald Kolasi is a writer and independent researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His first book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from the Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016.
This conversation emerged after I posted a note about degrowth—basically arguing that effective degrowth in practice will not be a uniform process; we have to account for historical inequities and the building of off-ramps, which themselves will take time, resources, and yes, fossil fuels. If we want the minerals we need for solar infrastructure, for example, we’re still going to need to mine for them (and do so with some amount of fossil fuels). But degrowth proponents argue that this can be down without the extreme inequity that is currently involved, in which wealthy nations force developing nations to extract these at the cheapest possible rates, leading to unacceptable outcomes like dangerous child labor.
Erald saw this and struck up a conversation with me via DM, and I was instantly excited by his vision and clarity of thought. So we agreed to do this live conversation, and it does not disappoint. He maps not only the why of decarbonization, but the how—what are the challenges we face and what are the methods we can adopt in order to ethically surmount them? If this topic matters to you—and I really hope it does, as it’s one of the most urgent global challenges—you’d do worse than to start your learning journey with his insights.
In the course of the conversation, we touch on a few pieces he’s written, which I encourage you to read as key supplements to this conversation. While you’re at it, be sure to subscribe to his channel!
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Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Alyssa Battistoni discussing her latest book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature:
