Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
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My guest this week is Simon Michaux.
Simon Michaux is Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) in KTR, the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. He holds a Bachelors in Applied Sciences in Physics and Geology and a Phd in Mining Engineering from JKMRC at the University of Queensland.
He has 18 years of experience in the Australian mining industry in research and development, 12 months at Ausenco in the private sector, 3 years in Belgium at the University of Liege researching Circular Economy and industrial recycling. Michaux worked in Minerals Intelligence in the MTR unit at GTK before joining the KTR.
Simon’s long-term objectives include the development and transformation of the Circular Economy into a more practical system for the industrial ecosystem to navigate the twin challenges of the scarcity of technology minerals and the transitioning away from fossil fuels.
If you believe in climate change, you probably believe in renewable energy and the so-called green transition, right? My guest today has big claim that may come as a bit of a rude awakening: the Earth literally does not have enough raw materials to service our current projections for the amount of renewable energy infrastructure (solar panels, batteries, etc.) we would need to transition from fossil fuels.
Look, I know it’s not exactly a great time for bad climate news. In addition to the Trump election, which will likely set the world back considerably in any energy transition efforts, new data from the Global Carbon Project found that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are set to reach a record 37.4B metric tons this year—a 0.8% increase over 2023.
Which is why it helps that Simon has a proposal for what a sustainable society might look like, which he calls the ‘Purple Transition.’ It involves not only the obvious changes in energy infrastructure and transportation, but also to the economy and community governance. It’s wildly ambitious, and I won’t pretend to grasp everything he lays out, as I’m not a geometallurgist. Still, the big picture is compelling; it’s a renegade vision of how we might restructure society to live in greater harmony with the Earth, without chucking all forms of technology, knowledge, and innovation in the process. That exercise alone is worthy of our time; these are exactly the types of proposals we need to be making and evaluating from others.
On that note, I want to warn audio listeners that a good chunk of the episode involves slide presentations by Simon. While you can still get the gist of what he’s saying via audio, you’ll obviously be best served by checking out the video version on YouTube, which you can access at youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
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Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
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CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, and more. Here is another recent episode with outdoor educator Bradley Rydholm:
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