SHOW-NOTES

For the first time in recorded history, human intelligence is declining. IQ scores that rose steadily for a century have reversed course across the developed world. Pattern recognition, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving abilities are dropping fastest among young adults. This isn't about genetics - it's about environment. We've built a world that no longer demands we think hard, and our brains are responding accordingly.

The timing couldn't be worse. Climate change requires exactly the cognitive abilities we're losing - understanding complex systems, thinking abstractly, planning long-term, and making difficult trade-offs. Meanwhile, rising temperatures, air pollution, and elevated CO2 levels are themselves damaging our brains, creating a vicious cycle. We need to be smarter to solve the climate crisis, but the crisis is making us dumber. This episode exposes the stakes and asks: do we still have enough mental capacity left to choose a different path?

Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides:

A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions. The most effective climate action happens in communities. A Call to Act helps you find local environmental groups, climate action meetups, and volunteer opportunities that create real change in your backyard and beyond.

Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

SHOW NOTES

The word apocalypse doesn't mean ending - it means revelation, transformation. History shows that human apocalypses don't destroy everything, they fundamentally change society.

The Black Death killed half of Europe but broke the feudal system when labor scarcity gave peasants bargaining power for the first time. Mexico City earthquake survivors didn't scatter in panic - they ran toward collapsed buildings to help, forming rescue groups that still exist today. Research shows you only need 25 percent of any community committed to change to flip entire social norms, and this tipping point explains sudden shifts like smoking bans and marriage equality.

We're already past several positive tipping points. Solar and wind energy are now the cheapest electricity in most places, not from subsidies but simple economics. Each success makes the next easier, creating momentum. But colonial history warns us that recovery requires agency - when Spanish colonizers destroyed Aztec water systems and imposed their own approach, they created problems Mexico City still faces 500 years later. Unlike every previous generation facing apocalypse, we can see climate change coming. We have time, knowledge, and choice. The question isn't whether systems will transform, but whether we choose adaptation while we still have agency or wait for collapse to force it on us.

Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides:

A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions. Hundreds of Eco-Organizations, Eco-Activities, and Eco-Actions you can take today.

Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

SHOW NOTES

Earth has nearly died five times. Not from asteroids - Earth did it to itself. Over the past 445 million years, massive volcanic eruptions pumped catastrophic amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering cascading disasters: superheated oceans, toxic atmospheres, and the extinction of up to 95% of all species. These weren't slow declines. Some happened faster than the span of recorded human history.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: we're running the same experiment again. By burning hundreds of millions of years' worth of buried carbon in just a few centuries, we're replicating the conditions that caused Earth's worst mass extinctions. The geochemistry is simple and uncontested – rapid increases in atmospheric CO2 have never ended well.

But there's a crucial difference: ancient organisms couldn't stop volcanic eruptions. We can stop digging up and burning fossil fuels. We have something they didn't - knowledge of the pattern, and the power to change our trajectory. The question isn't whether Earth will survive. It will. The question is whether we'll use what we know to ensure humanity is part of the planet's future, or just another thin layer in the rocks.

Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides:

A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions. Hundreds of Eco-Organizations, Eco-Activities, and Eco-Actions you can take today.

Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.