The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

• Will Coral Reefs Be Gone by 2050? How Bleaching, Acidification, and Ocean Heating are Killing Coral Reefs with Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

  Twenty-five years ago, a landmark paper warned that the world’s coral reefs could vanish by 2050. Now, halfway to that projected date (and amid ever more frequent coral bleaching events), that grim prediction feels increasingly close to reality. What is the current state of Earth’s coral reefs, and what would happen to our planetary home without them?  In this episode, Nate is joined by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the marine biologist who made this landmark prediction, for an update on the health of coral reefs and the primary ecological stressors driving their decline. Drawing on decades of research, he explains the mechanisms of coral bleaching, the critical biodiversity hotspots that reefs create, and the implications for human populations that depend on these ecosystems. Ove also touches on the emotional impact of witnessing the loss of reefs for the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying them. How are human actions increasingly putting pressure on the very ecosystems that support more than one billion people? What would happen to the broader health of the oceans if reefs were to disappear entirely? And most of all, what changes can both individuals and institutions make today to support the health of these vital ecosystems – and in-turn, the well-being of the entire Earth? (Conversation recorded on August 6th, 2025)     About Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is Professor of Marine Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia,  as well as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies. Over the past 10 years, he was also the Founding Director of the Global Change Institute. In addition to this work, Ove conceived and led the scientific XL-Catlin Seaview Survey which has surveyed over 1000 km of coral reefs across 25 countries and captured and analysed over 1 million survey images of coral reefs.  Ove’s research focuses on the impacts of global change on marine ecosystems, and he is one of the most cited authors on climate change. He has also been a dedicated communicator of the threat posed by ocean warming and acidification to marine ecosystems, being one of the first scientists to identify the serious threat posed by climate change for coral reefs in a landmark paper published in 1999, which predicted the loss of coral reefs by 2050.    Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners  

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• Is the U.S. Electric Grid Stable? Policy, Renewables, and Who Is Responsible If The Grid Fails with Meredith Angwin

  For many people in the modern world, electricity powers everything we do. Yet we take for granted how power flows in the background, seemingly always accessible to us just by flipping a switch. In fact, most of us are completely unaware of what it takes to generate and transmit the power we so deeply rely on, let alone the policy decisions shaping our electrical grids – or how they might affect reliable access to power. How do today’s electrical grids actually work, and do they align with our long-term goals for human and planetary well-being? In this episode, Nate is joined by Meredith Angwin for an in-depth overview of the U.S. electrical grid system, its history, and the need for accountability in energy governance. Meredith discusses the infrastructure of the grid, the complexities of grid management, and the implications of shifting to market-based systems. Additionally, she emphasizes the critical importance of resource adequacy and reliability – and the barriers to that in our current policy landscape.   How has the increased use of renewables and natural gas affected the broader dynamics of the grid? If the electrical grid were to fail, who is responsible for the problem, and who should fix it? Ultimately, what variables do we need to consider as we attempt to provide dependable electricity for everyone without jeopardizing the stability of the Earth?    About Meredith Angwin: Meredith Angwin studies and takes part in grid over-sight and governance. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO-NE, her local grid operator. She also teaches courses and workshops on the electric grid, and wrote a book titled, Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid, analyzing the electrical grid from a physical science and policy perspective. As a working chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines, and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems. Further, she is an inventor on several patents and was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute where she led projects in renewable and nuclear energy. (Conversation recorded on September 17th, 2025)    Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future   Join our Substack newsletter   Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners  

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• Peak Oil, Ponzi Pyramids, and Planetary Boundaries

  To view the graphs Nate is referring to in this episode, please click here. --- In this week’s Frankly, Nate returns from New York City Climate Week with fresh reflections on the disconnect between our economic narratives and biophysical realities. Using his background in finance, Nate observes that while the prioritization of financial abstractions and claims continue to accelerate, with gold and silver prices reaching record-setting highs, the ledger is being balanced with parallel declines in our planetary health and social resilience. This tradeoff is harder and harder to ignore as newly crossed planetary boundaries continue alerting us to the fact that we are operating outside of our Earth’s ability to maintain biospheric stability. Nate also gives an update on Peak Oil, drawing on the International Energy Agency’s recent report regarding the implications of oil and gas field decline rates. He emphasizes that the question at hand is not if these energetic supply constraints will affect the trajectory of human systems – rather, the question is when it will come into effect, and how we will respond as a human species. Given the increasing number of reports on declining oil forecasts, how much longer can our society remain energy-blind? Where might our priorities shift if we truly understood the biophysical limits shaping our future? Lastly, if we were to zoom out towards a wider boundary lens, what types of societal responses become possible that could steer us towards better human and planetary futures?  (Recorded September 30, 2025)   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future   Join our Substack newsletter   Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners

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• Moral Ambition: Redefining Success for the Global Good with Rutger Bregman

  The overarching definition of success today often looks like the accumulation of stuff – money, cars, property, clothing – anything that signals wealth. This means that success is also synonymous with overshoot, extraction, and consumption – none of which lead to healthy outcomes for the planet or the global good. But what might be possible if we were to redefine success to prioritize collective well-being instead of personal gain? In today’s episode, Nate sits down with Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman to discuss the concept of moral ambition, which he defines as the desire to be one of the best, measured by different standards of success: not by big payouts or fancy honorifics, but by the ability to tackle the world’s biggest problems. Bregman highlights the importance of entrepreneurs in driving social change and the necessity of cultural shifts to foster a more altruistic society, as well as the challenges faced in pursuing these ideals. What possibilities might arise if we combined the idealism of an activist with the ambition of an entrepreneur? How can we apply the principles of entrepreneurship to better address global challenges? And how could a radical redefinition of success motivate the world’s top talent to make major contributions to our most pressing issues, leaving a legacy that actually makes a difference? (Conversation recorded on July 8th, 2025)   About Rutger Bregman: Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian and author. Initially considering a career as an academic historian, Rutger instead ventured into journalism. He began his career at the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant before moving to the independent journalism platform De Correspondent, for which he wrote for ten years. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) and Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There (2017) were both Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers and have been translated into 46 languages. In 2024, Rutger co-founded The School for Moral Ambition, a non-profit organization inspired by his latest book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. The initiative helps people to take the step toward an impactful career. Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners

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• The Influence of Psychopaths: Why Humanity Is Better Than We Think

  In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on intraspecies predation (ours) and the impact psychopathic actors have on the mean and median of human behavior – in the past all the way up to our modern society. Human evolution was shaped by both cooperative, pro-social behavior and a competitive, predatory approach for survival – resulting in a balanced distribution for most of humanity’s existence.   But, as agriculture, surplus, and other factors propelled more hierarchical social structure, aggregate human behavior and culture has slowly shifted over time to express more psychopathic traits. This thread of behavior continues to run through our modern society, where a relatively small (but disproportionately powerful) segment of the human population can pull societal behavior towards anti-social and individualistic values – even if the majority of people still inherently operate from a place of reciprocity. Why might our modern society provide a more fruitful breeding ground for psychopathy than past societies did? What do chickens and eggs have to do with psychopathy and the economic superorganism? And ultimately, what strategies could we begin to think about in order to shift mean and median human behavior back towards a more cooperative, prosocial middle? (Recorded September 22nd, 2025)   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners

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