The first in a two-part conversation with Chris Martenson of the Martenson Report, who recently spoke about the convergence of economic, environmental, and energy crises at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) Annual Conference. Martenson sees "hockey stick graphs," or exponential graphs that rise slowly and steadily before suddenly shooting upward, increasingly happening in all three of these areas. Martenson has a doctorate in neurotoxicology from Duke, an MBA in finance from Cornell, and is a former vice president at Pfizer. In the early 2000s, Martenson quit his high-status position when he recognized profound instabilities in our economic, environmental, and social structures. He developed the End of Money seminar series, which has evolved into the Crash Course on these instabilities and options for navigating them.