COAL + ICE Podcast - Ep1: Burning Up: The Climate Challenge

Ep1: Burning Up: The Climate Challenge

01/25/22 • 48 min

We're awfully good at burning things up in the name of progress -- coal, oil, gas, Amazon rain forests. We're not as good at factoring in the real cost of those choices, on our health, and on the health of the planet.
In this first episode of the COAL+ICE podcast, top climate journalists talk about what these choices look like where they live -- in China, South Africa and Brazil -- and what's being done, and needs to be done, to bend the curve on climate change.
Joining host Mary Kay Magistad are:
Ma Tianjie, program director in Beijing of China Dialogue, a non-profit online platform that focuses on the environment and climate change, especially as related to China. He was previously with Greenpeace, as program director for Mainland China.
Tunicia Phillips, an award-winning environment, climate and business reporter with South Africa's Mail & Guardian investigative weekly.

Jon Watts is global environment editor for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. He's a former correspondent for The Guardian in China, Brazil and Japan, and author of the book "When a BIllion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind or Destroy It," about the environmental impact of China's rapid development. Jon is now spending a year in Brazil's Amazon, writing another book.

Previous Episode

Introducing COAL+ICE Podcast

We're all living with climate change, but what can we do about it? Join host Mary Kay Magistad, for global conversations on what's happening with climate change around the world, and what's being done to bend the curve. This biweekly Asia Society podcast starts in late January 2022.

Next Episode

Ep2: What Polar Ice Is Telling Us

Polar ice has a story to tell. Trapped in it are clues to the past -- dirt and dust, and air -- going back a million years . From this, climate scientists can figure out what was happening during past ice ages and warm periods. In each case, it all came down to carbon -- how much carbon dioxide was in the air. And we're now at CO2 levels last seen in the Pliocene Epoch -- 2.5 to 5 million years ago, long before modern humans walked the earth. Sure, we call ourselves homo sapiens, but glaciologist Martin Siegert says we're heading toward a 'stupid warm' future, and it's time to get smart. He lays it all out here -- what's happening, what the ice is telling us, and what we need to do now.
Martin Siegert is a glaciologist with three decades of experience, including research in Antarctica., a professor, and co-director of the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and Environment, at Imperial College London (UK).

COAL + ICE Podcast - Ep1: Burning Up: The Climate Challenge

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mary Kay Magistad: Welcome to the COAL+ICE Podcast, an Asia Society podcast that brings you global conversations on how the climate crisis is changing the world and what we can do about it. I'm Mary Kay Magistad. The name of this podcast comes from a photo exhibition the Center's director, Orville Schell, first helped put together a decade ago in Beijing with Magnum photographers Susan Meiselas and Dutch exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries. It was originally of Chin