Urgent Futures with Jesse Damiani - Phoebe Barnard: The Human Behavioral Crisis is the Coordination Problem Underlying Overshoot and Climate Crisis | #35

Phoebe Barnard: The Human Behavioral Crisis is the Coordination Problem Underlying Overshoot and Climate Crisis | #35

12/04/24 • 76 min

Humanity is in a state of ecological overshoot—put simply: we use more than the Earth can support. In many ways, this is the primary problem of modern human civilization. But driving this problem is a fundamental 'human behavioral crisis.' Understanding this is critical—and Phoebe Barnard, today's guest, can explain why.

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Internationally awarded global change and biodiversity scientist, filmmaker, public policy and communications strategist, mentor and professor to young professionals across Africa and the world, Phoebe Barnard has a fire in her belly for profoundly transformative sustainability change.

She convenes leaders from cultures around the world to collaborate in establishing a future kinder, wiser, humbler and much more sustainable civilization.

Member of the Club of Rome’s Planetary Emergency Partnership, and author or coauthor of seven of the world scientists’ warnings on the state of the climate, planet and society, Phoebe is also impatient to convert warnings into social change action on the ground.

She is: founding CEO of Stable Planet Alliance, co-founder and convenor of the Global Restoration Collaborative, affiliate full professor of environmental futures and conservation science at the University of Washington, honorary research associate of climate, biodiversity and development at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and co-producer of the forthcoming documentary series The Climate Restorers and other movies on aspects of civilizational shift.

It’s easy to get caught up in the abstractions inherent in talking about systems, but what distinguishes Phoebe’s practice is her commitment to social justice and feminist approaches to change. She doesn’t lose sight of the fact that its people at the center of these issues. As monumental as these challenges may feel, they are ultimately coordination problems—ones we might solve if we can reframe our understanding and responses to them. Her latest work on the documentary series The Climate Restorers is the latest such example, which shares the stories of climate and ecosystem restoration efforts to return the climate to a state in which all life can thrive.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

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She convenes leaders from cultures around the world to collaborate in establishing a future kinder, wiser, humbler and much more sustainable civilization.

Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe

Previous Episode

Rodolfo Dirzo: Understanding Mass Extinctions, The Gift of Biodiversity, Plant-Animal Relationships, and 'Defaunation' | #34

We all know extinctions are bad—but extinctions aren't a yes or no question, they're a spectrum. That's why we need to understand the idea of 'defaunation,' a term coined by today's guest, legendary conservation scientist Rodolfo Dirzo.

A few months ago, I hosted Gerardo Ceballos and Paul R. Ehrlich, two of the authors of Before They Vanish—a book outlining why biodiversity is so critical to life on Earth, how it’s imperiled, and what we can do about it. I had originally hoped to have all 3 authors in the mix, but one of them—Rodolfo Dirzo—was, fittingly, out in the field. Fortunately, we were able to get some time to chat after he’d returned. We spoke extensively about his background in ecology, the tragedy of biodiversity loss, and in particular: defaunation. It’s a term he coined to describe the loss of animals (fauna) across all the various forms that can take: ranging from extinction and extirpation to local population declines. You’re probably familiar with the term “deforestation”—think of defaunation as a sort of counterpart.

As a lover of words, I think having the right word for the concept is critical in communicating necessary ideas. In this case, defaunation gives us a means to understand animal loss on a spectrum. Think of it this way. Even though a species might not have been totally eradicated, a dramatic drop in its numbers might have a whole host of knock-on effects, throwing an ecosystem out of whack. If our only metric for “caring” about animal populations and biodiversity is extinction, we’re missing critical danger signs that an ecosystem has been imperiled. Defaunation, then, allows us to understand the notion of animal loss in a more ecological sense—and measure for it.

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Next Episode

Peter Brannen: What You Need to Know About the Five Mass Extinctions (to Understand the Sixth Extinction) | #36

What are the most extreme extinction events in Earth's history? And what should we learn from them to avoid a similar fate? Today's guest, Peter Brannen, is an expert in these extinctions, having written one of the key books on the topic, The Ends of the World.

It’s an invigorating read, in part because you really confront the raw power and volatility of this planet—and because you can then more thoroughly appreciate the blissful window of relative stability that humanity has evolved within. You then must confront the fact that techno-industrial civilization is undertaking many of the same processes that brought about past mass extinctions...

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My guest this week is Peter Brannen.

Peter Brannen is a science journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Guardian among other publications. His book, The Ends of the World, about the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history, was published in 2017 by Ecco. He was most recently a visiting scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and is an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

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Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe