ClimateGenn hosted by Nick Breeze

In this ClimateGenn special episode, I publishing my first interview with Dr Jim Hansen who was at the time Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This was recorded in 2012 at the European Geophysical Union, the annual conference that takes place every year in Vienna.

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In recent weeks I have exchanged emails again with Dr Hansen to discuss his recent work that has a working title of ‘The Big Climate Short’. Hopefully this will be recorded once his latest work is submitted for publication.

What strikes me about this decade old interview is that the language is so clear and the warnings regarding urgent action are in the timeframe of the next 1-1.5years. He even states the danger of waiting a decade to what would be 2022.

Hansen made international news in the late 80’s when he testified to US Congress about the need to change our energy system and reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases. He is straight pragmatic speaker who has consistently issued warnings that have been ignored despite the rising cost inflicted by such ignorance.

Here he gives very clear definitions of what tipping points are and the danger of crossing them. He discusses the challenges that scientists face in communicating these problems.

He also highlights evidenced strategies that could have significantly dealt with them at the time but with each passing year create an ever growing challenge.

We are now where we are. The recent IPCC report talks about the closing window of opportunity to act. Coming at a time of extreme chaos and suffering in Europe, it is hard to see how we will navigate the coming weeks, months and years.

How we deal with our own fear and concern regarding these issues is very important. War is obviously not the answer and neither is any sense of nihilism. Being able to focus on the problems and act with a broader sense of community is far more rewarding.

In the next episode I am speaking to climate and policy analyst, David Spratt, Research Director at the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration in Melbourne, Australia.

We will be discussing a range of subjects including the accelerating rate of impacts, what climate models don’t tell us, as well as the tipping point risks we can’t see or measure and that may already have been crossed.

Thank you for listening to ClimateGenn. I have many more episodes to produce so please do subscribe. Thank you to all who are supporting the channel via Patreon. You can also drop me a note or comment on my website genn.cc and I will always try to respond.

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In this ClimateGenn episode, I am speaking to authors, podcasters, and activists, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts whose recently published book, The Rise Of Ecofascism, explores the characteristics of past, present, and potentially future ‘ecofascism’.

The risks posed to society from extreme politics on the right and the left has been rising in recent years. Even in the last week or so, a cache of information was leaked via the Anonymous hacking group linking Putin’s regime to the financing of far right-wing groups across Europe.

More evidence of the rise in far-right and fascist groups is seen in places like the UK, France, Italy, or Hungary, where political ground can become an objective.

Sam and Alex’s work aims to be a pragmatic guide to identify these tendencies and emerging ideas in order to be able to stop them from rising into dominant movements, which as they evidence in the book, never deliver on the grand promises they make.

They also provide a long history of how the far-right have developed relationships to nature that recur in history and are also echoed today in political narratives around climate denialism and delays in ridding ourselves of the fossil fuel era that is destroying the world as we know it.

Thank you for listening to the ClimateGenn series. In the next episode I am speaking with Dr Paul Behrens on the risks of food system shocks arising from the Ukraine crisis and how this is a signal of how vulnerable our overall food system is in a worsening climate and ecological crisis.

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In this episode of ClimateGenn I am speaking to Dr Paul Behrens about the complexity of population, consumption and climate change.

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In his book, ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times’ Paul addresses population, presenting both a pessimistic potential outcome, and also a more hopeful outcome based on a set of choices that we, especially those of us in wealthier high emitting countries, can make to improve the chances for a better future.

One big barrier to a better future is the growing narrative that stokes fears about migration. The propagating of these myths falls under the title of econativism, a term that Paul both defines and discusses in some detail.

Population and migration are critical and controversial issues and when placed in the context of continually rising emissions and consequent impacts, they stress the need for reflection on how we value our own life and the lives of all those around us.

In the next episode I am speaking to Dr Min Hee Go in South Korea about her recent book ‘Rethinking Community Resilience’ that looks at the politics of disaster recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Minnie’s research highlights the necessity to not just build back from catastrophe but also how we must ensure community resilience, as the frequency and extremity of these events increase.

Thank you for listening to ClimateGenn. You can follow this series on all major podcast channels, on Youtube, on my website at GENN.cc and you can follow and support on Patreon.

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I speak with the author, Allison Cobb, about her new book titled ‘Plastic - An Autobiography’.

With poetic sensitivity, Allison explores the complexity of how plastic has become part of our lives and how this material, that can endure for generations, has been wilfully categorised as a ‘single use’ disposable product becoming as ubiquitous as food with a highly toxic indigestible after-life.

This autobiography is also personal, linking the horrendous WW2 invasion of Poland with her ancestors who also worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the now infamous Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb.

This is a story about complexity, personal journey and the plasticity of all life as we venture forth into the next big existential challenge of preventing climate and ecological collapse.

Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future - there are many more episodes coming so please do subscribe and also consider supporting this work via Patreon.

Timestamps:

1:30 - ‘I wanted to write about the Anthropocene, the geologic scale human impact on the planet, in a way that made it personal’

3:00 Dupont, “See to it that American’s are never satisfied” - consumer capitalism has proliferated across the world.

5:20 - Heidegger’s essay ‘The Thing’ - technology reduces everything to its use-value.

7:30 The baby albatross with ingested plastic is emblematic of the disposable culture.

10:00 Complexity through personal stories that give us hope through empathy.

13:00 How are we doing in terms of the global collective tackling these huge ecological challenges.

15:00 The role of artists and creators along with every human to make the global shift.

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In this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with Dr Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Climate Research Center, in the US. 2023 has already seen record breaking temperatures in the atmosphere, land and oceans, with horrific impacts to human life, communities and ecology.

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Here we focus on three factors in the climate system that drive these extremes and are still set to break more records, creating a great deal more destruction this year. We focus on the forming El Niño climate phenomenon, as well as ocean heatwaves, impacting the Atlantic and the North Pacific.

Finally, we also discuss the role of the thinning sea ice that is accelerating change in the Arctic region. These changes drive up heat in the Arctic faster, impacting ecosystems and altering the jet stream, these latter impacts being the focus of Dr Francis’s research for over a decade.

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