David Spratt | Cascading Tipping Points & Existential Risk Management

03/19/22 • 23 min

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In this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with Research Director of the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration in Melbourne, David Spratt, about assessing climate risk and why incremental tweaks to reduce emissions are failing us.

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We also discuss IPCC forecasts, political failure, and how change is possible but it requires a huge mobilisation of resources, coupled with public and political participation and leadership of the Zelensky variety.

The clock is ticking, parts of the system are tipping, whether you call it: code-red, an emergency, or blah blah blah, no one is immune from the cascade of climate impacts that we will face if we continue to do nothing to avert the growing threat of climate change this decade and into the future.

Thanks for listening to ClimateGenn, especially at a time when there is so much violence and the threat of escalation of war.

The pain that this is causing so many is inextricably linked to corruption and fossil fuels that extend well beyond Putin’s regime. I would very much like to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people, as well as with Russians who are standing up to the regime.

https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/

http://www.climatecodered.org/

[Please support httpss://genn.cc via https://patreon.com/genncc

Thanks for listening to ClimateGenn, especially at a time when there is so much violence and the threat of escalation of war.

https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/

http://www.climatecodered.org/

Previous Episode

Dr James Hansen | A decade old and fresh as hell

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.

Thank you.

Next Episode

Stemming The Rise Of Ecofascism with Sam Moore & Alex Roberts

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.

Please do subscribe on any podcast channel or back ClimateGenn via Patreon to get episodes early.