Author: jembendell

I'm a British national living in Indonesia. I am known for my work on societal collapse risk and response. That includes the Deep Adaptation paper and Breaking Together book. I cofounded Scholars’ Warning to help academics communicate about a post-Sustainability agenda for reducing harm in the face of catastrophic ecological change. I cofounded Bekandze Farm School to enable smallholders to switch to organic and resilient farming methods. Last year I quit my full Professorship to focus on deep adaptation to societal disruption and collapse.

Speed matters more than size, when considering impacts of climate change

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“But the world’s climate was as hot as this in the past.”

Do you hear this a lot? I do. The obvious answer is “sure, it was especially hot when our planet was just a chunk of molten rock spun out from the Sun. But back in terra logica, the main issue for ecosystems and agriculture is the SPEED of climate change.”

The problem with this issue of the speed of change is that consensus in climate science moves very slowly. The more funding that went into climate science, the greater was the amount of research and people to find consensus amongst. That meant the key signals, like the 2017 paper predicting 1.5C by 2025, went largely unnoticed by institutional climatology – and was certainly not acted upon.[1] 

In a 2021 chapter with Dr. Rupert Read and a top German climatologist, who chose to remain anonymous, we explained the limitations of mainstream climatology for telling us the real situation. We pointed to how, in fast moving crises with high hazards, there needs to be an ability to identify salient information rapidly. This even has a name: post-normal science.[2] 

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Watch the Blessing Ceremony at Bekandze Farm School

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I made (very) short film about the resilient and regenerative farm school that we recently launched here in Indonesia. The film focuses on the spiritual side to farming in Bali. The script of the voiceover follows below the video. The crowdfund is an essential part of the effort to become a catalyst in the local area. Please consider helping by learning more here.

For most of us, food is the tasty, or tasteless, substance on our plate. Something we need to quell an ache from hunger, or to provide us a moment of pleasure. Some of us buy fresh ingredients and cook. But even then, food is still about consuming. Therefore our food stories aren’t stories that involve a divine living world that is nurturing us within itself. 

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Major life changes become the least risky option

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Last month, I spoke with the participants in a course hosted by the American cultural commentator Daniel Pinchbeck. The course was all about regenerative attitudes and initiatives. Before a Q&A, I was asked to share four key ideas that would be relevant to the lives of the participants. As I’ve talked about it so much already, I decided to skip the evidence basis for taking societal collapse seriously, and spoke about the changes I am seeing in myself and others, and how that might inspire them. The four things can be summarised as:

  • You don’t escape this
  • You have permission to go wild
  • You can’t avoid losing things
  • You can gain what’s most important.
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Stubborn optimism in an era of collapse

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The weak but well-funded arguments for techno-optimism in the face of climate chaos have kept on coming. The latest were a series of articles in mainstream press about a book that claims renewable energy will sustain societies while stabilising the global climate. Brazilian researcher Claudia Gasparovic, offered a rapid debunking of the book’s arguments, in a post on LinkedIn. Similar arguments were put to the book’s author by journalist Rachel Donald for Mongabay. The weakness of techno-optimism on climate change was something I explored in my book Breaking Together. If you read Chapter 3, you will know that the idea modern societies can maintain current consumption patterns by switching to entirely renewable energy is one founded upon blindness to material dimensions of energy generation and storage. If you read Chapter 4, you will know that energy and carbon dioxide are two issues within a far broader problem of the ecological overshoot by modern societies. If you read Chapter 5, you will know that the momentum of change in our oceans and atmosphere, coupled with the dramatic loss of cooling aerosols and cloud-seeding forest cover, means we are already within a scary situation with climate. 

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Clouds of suffering can have silver linings – reflections on childhood.

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I know that when I’m anxious I’m not the wisest or kindest version of myself. Because that is the same for most of us, collapse-anticipators fear how people might make difficult situations a lot worse by delusional or aggressive responses. There are multiple ways of trying to help ourselves think and act more kindly and wisely in future. One way of psychologically preparing ourselves that has stood out for me recently is an examination of our deep stories – about who we are and our role in life. Once we notice such stories, we can choose whether we want to continue living by them or not. One way of discovering such stories is to re-examine our childhoods. I decided to share with you my recent process on that, and what I discovered. That’s partly as an encouragement for you to do the same, and partly for my own benefit of healing through normalising something by sharing it. If such reflection is not new to you, then perhaps this essay will encourage you to try again, as new things can be found depending on our current mind-states and exposure to different philosophies. 

I recently hosted documentary film makers at a meditation retreat in a Buddhist temple, here in Bali. They are exploring what can happen when people perceive it’s too late to avert the collapse of modern societies. So they were asking questions about how I became the person I am. It’s the kind of reflection on formative experiences that I ask the participants in my leadership courses to do. But personally, I’d not reflected for a while. As Buddhism includes an understanding of the role of suffering in life, being at the temple meant that I reflected on that. So I dived into my past suffering and how it might have shaped me.

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Crowdfund – Organic Farming Education for a Resilient Bali

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We have launched our request for financial support for Bekandze Farm School, in Indonesia, to help small holders switch to organic and resilient farming methods.

If you have read my book Breaking Together, or simply seen the recent science and news on the environment, then you know we have entered an era of increasing disruption. Like many people, I want to respond in ways that reduce harm and create possibility. That is the aim of this new farm school in Indonesia. Already, we are helping more local farmers switch to organic and resilient forms of agriculture, as a basis for re-localising and regenerating the rural economy. But to establish ourselves as a viable training centre, with a lasting impact locally, and to communicate that globally, we need your help. 

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Laughing off the apocalypse?

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There was an interesting interview with Gavin Schmidt recently. He is one of the most senior climatologists in the world, heading up NASA’s department on climate science. Refreshingly, unlike the other senior climatologists, he didn’t sidestep how recent weather was not predicted by mainstream climatology. He told the American science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson that climatology significantly underpredicted current warming. He said there was “total failure” to predict what happened in 2023. See for yourself, for 3 minutes from 4 minutes in.

Gavin is one of the more approachable of the senior climatologists. He provided specific written criticisms of my 2018 Deep Adaptation paper. That was in stark contrast to others who misrepresented it, and me, so as to discourage people from considering that the party is over for modern societies.  

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Bali Weather Breaks Records – Why Farmers Know but Instagrammers Don’t

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As I type these words on January 25th 2024, we are breaking another all-time temperature record here in Bali. It is 32C degrees in the Ubud area, above the previous record of 31C for this day in history. The average maximum was once below 30C (see the image above). So when does such unusual weather indicate a new climate regime, rather than just a few unusually hot days? That should be a matter of scientific analysis, not ideological posturing. If we are analytical, the answer depends on the data on long-term trends and the possible reasons for such trends. As I have recently become an organic farmer, this information is even more important to ascertain, because it influences what and when to plant, as well as how much protection from water and temperature stress we should invest in. So I am going to share with you what I found out about Bali’s weather, and what this means for those of us who live in this region. I also think it has implications for people everywhere, so wherever you are, please read on…

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Why I am not on the Epstein list

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On the 11th September 2012, Melanie Walker of the Gates Foundation introduced me, on email, to Jeffrey Epstein. Previously I’d been discussing whether to apply to the Gates Foundation for funding to work on alternative currencies. Bitcoin was just 3 years old and stimulating some interest in a field that had hitherto been marginal. It didn’t seem that their Foundation would fund work on it, and so I received an introduction to a billionaire philanthropist who was prepared to host and fund gatherings of experts, including a group of ‘Young Global Leaders’. That’s the network the World Economic Forum (WEF) established to connect emerging leaders of the world’s largest corporations with emerging leaders in politics and other walks of life. I had engaged with that network for a few years until 2017, as I had been seeking to continue to influence action on environmental problems at scale.

I don’t recall much from the one Skype call I had with Epstein, apart from that he was in the tropics, and at some point, when I was making my best effort to sound intelligent, he interjected to say: “Well Jem, you know, I just want to have fun.” I remember being flummoxed, not knowing how to help billionaires have fun.

After that video call, I Googled him. I vaguely remember reading that he had been found guilty of using underage prostitutes. Now, ten years on, I know that prostitution is the wrong word for what was happening. Instead, paedophilia and, most probably, blackmail, are better descriptions. But back then, when reading about that, did I simply cut off? Unfortunately, not. I decided to send him the proposal that he had requested. But I explained (in a phone call) that due to his notoriety, none of the events he might fund could occur on any of his properties and that he could not be a host, only a guest.

After those exchanges, we never spoke again.* Maybe he was insulted by my stipulations. Or maybe he was having too much ‘fun’. Or maybe his aim had been to get compromising images of leading experts and ‘Young Global Leaders’ for future blackmail. If the latter, then that would indicate a very sophisticated approach, as cryptocurrencies were years away from becoming a major issue in global finance.

Looking back, I wonder what I was doing. I had been prepared for him to fund work I believed in, just so long as I managed the reputational risk. I had rationalised that promoting a different approach to monetary systems was paramount. I thought I was driven by principle, but I wasn’t even thinking about how there might be victims of his actions. And I was also too easily influenced by others, such as the people who introduced us, or the many recipients of his donations in the world’s top Universities. 

I mention this now as an example of how people who believe in themselves and what they are doing can make really bad choices when they are so convinced of their need to make the world a better place. Those people who associated with Jeffrey Epstein, despite his known crimes, provide an extreme example of how the desire to succeed through working with elites is what helps to maintain destructive systems. Many people today seek the attention, favour or finance of people who have been involved in even worse crimes than Epstein. For instance, people who lied to the public to start illegal wars that killed a million people. It is this deference to power, even admiration of it, no matter how destructive or disgusting, that enables it to continue.

If you read my book, Breaking Together, you will know that I don’t believe there is an evil cabal that coordinates everything in the world. Instead, there are powerful systems that maintain ways of living that are destructive to each other and wider nature. We could all do more to resist and replace those systems. So, we can start with ourselves and our own forms of compliance. It means I have far greater respect for the people who have refused to collaborate with elites or officers of the establishment and instead focus entirely on grassroots organising. It’s why I mentioned this strange episode in my life, and criticised my past self, in my speech to launch my new book.

I had this in mind when, last year, I was approached to appear in a documentary series for Netflix about major world crises. During a call with the producer and editor, it became apparent to me that the series would present the ideas of Bill Gates as the answer to every issue they looked at, from combatting diseases to addressing climate change. I explained I didn’t want to be just the guy explaining the threat of doom before ‘SuperGates’ comes to the rescue. Somewhat annoyed, I mentioned when Gates Foundation staff introduced me to Jeffrey Epstein. Immediately the video of the producer’s screen went black. The director kept chatting for a while about some limits on how pro-Gates their show would be. Neither a goodbye nor a follow up email came from the producer.

Once again, that experience reminded me that the power of money to distort humanity’s view of our situation only works because human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations. Whether it’s Epstein, Gates, Musk, Theil or any of the rich American men who like playing with machines and doing maths, it’s the rest of us who are giving them far too much airtime on issues they shouldn’t have any influence on. Unfortunately, they also own platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and suchlike, so can manipulate what we do or don’t see from our peers. But they can only do that because staff in their companies choose to implement policies and procedures that are dangerous to our human rights and democracies. So, if you know anyone who works for the biggest companies of the world in media, finance, and technology, then ask them why aren’t they rebelling inside those companies, to make it less easy for rich white men to fuck up people or planet? That’d be far more powerful than going on a protest or tweeting about someone on Epstein’s list.

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Mainstream media hasn’t been digging into the evidence in the released documents that suggests Jeffrey Epstein was generating material to blackmail world leaders. For a look at that evidence, see: https://public.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ran-sex-blackmail

*Update Feb 12th 2026. I have looked at correspondence more closely, including with the people who introduced us to confirm the timeline. One time when we spoke in 2012, I explained he couldn’t host a project due to his reputation, and then included that in the written proposal (Sept 17th): after that we didn’t communicate again about funding (he didn’t reply to my reminder of Sept 22nd). I also wrote to him once when travelling to New York in March 2014 but we didn’t meet then or since. My lessons from that, including my self-criticism for continuing any dialogue, are in my article from 2024, and my speech in June 2023. I subsequently discovered he was subscribed to my free email newsletter and so received those from me, with automated salutation, every 3 to 6 months (it went to over 3000 people).

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Geopolitics 101 for the 2020s

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The ‘information ecology’ of people living in the English-speaking world is collapsing as fast as, if not faster than, natural ecosystems. On the one hand, mainstream corporate and state media now regularly mislead us about our health, economy, environment and society, whenever that protects the established order. Even ‘progressive’ media institutions muddy the waters about ongoing imperialist exploitation and violence. On the other hand, most non-traditional media in the form of celebrity pundits and independent journalists, don’t have the capacity to do more than react critically to news from the mainstream, and often spin simplistic or sensational narratives to gain attention. For people who have the time to find independent expert voices on various topics, such as war, economy and public health, then there is much available. But most people don’t have the time for that. Therefore, I have noticed a rise in the number of people who have distorted views of what is happening in the world, even if they work on matters of common concern. Combined with the widespread use of moral psychology in modern media, whereby differing opinions are made out to be disgusting or dangerous, this can lead to some awkward interactions in-person and online. That is why I am so relieved that Brave New Europe regularly produce well-informed left-of-centre analysis of European and global affairs. You can read my past essays with them, mainly on climate issues, here. But what caught my eye last week was their summary of geopolitical shifts during 2023, written by Mathew D Rose. It provided a synthesis rarely, if ever, found in Western media, whether mainstream or not. Mathew focuses on the major shift in global power that is underway – something largely hidden from the citizens of the West. I recommend you take time to read it below, and then browse other articles from them.

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