Why an Eco-warrior Left the Movement—and Became a Christian Bari Weiss

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Free Press

A conversation with Paul Kingsnorth on living freely in “the age of the machine,” and the meaning of Easter.

If the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam to fundamentally change the nature of work, this industrial revolution—the disruption of automation, information, the internet, and now AI—is transforming everything about the way we work, connect, and interact with the natural world. 

These changes have largely been regarded as a net good. After all, poverty across the world has fallen precipitously in the last 100 years. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. Literacy is four times higher. Hunger, malnutrition, war—all down. All good things.

But today’s Honestly guest, writer Paul Kingsnorth, thinks that the way in which this progress has been achieved is detrimental not only to the environment but to our own mental and physical well-being—and that underneath the extreme wealth built by human society is a massive sense of human and spiritual loss.

Paul is someone who has gone through a profound transformation over the past decade, and in a very public way. He was once considered one of the West’s most radical and prominent environmentalists—even chaining himself to a bridge in protest of road construction and leading The Ecologist, a left-wing environmental magazine. But he became disillusioned with an environmental movement that he says is now obsessed with cutting carbon emissions by any means, and getting captured by commercial interests in the process.

Paul and his family eventually left urban England to live off the land in rural Ireland, where they currently grow their own food; the children are homeschooled. 

One more thing of note on this Easter Sunday: Paul converted from a practicing Buddhist and Wiccan to an Orthodox Christian—which is about as traditional as it gets.

As you’ll hear in this conversation, Paul explains why he intentionally “regressed.” In short: in our modern, hyper-connected, tech-obsessed world—what he calls “the age of the machine”—Paul and his family are trying to live wildly. We talk about what that looks like for him, and for any of us trying to be free; we talk about how the left has strayed from its original principles; why the West has abandoned God; and how to fight everyday to live. . . simply.