At Risk in the Climate Crisis

In this episode, we dive into how the climate crisis is playing out locally and across the globe, and what that teaches us about our connection to the earth and each other. Our guests take us from the Birrarung River in southern Australia to the Mongolian Steppe, and to visit the shearwaters feasting on plastic on Lord Howe Island in the Pacific Ocean. With so many lives at risk, including our own, what are the navigational tools to not just track our interdependent fates, but to find ways to keep caring in the face of so much loss?

The powerful ‘inhuman’ forces in global heating can be overwhelming, but there are also powerful human forces that can be addressed. In this episode we examine the socio-political influences that support climate denialism and consider how risk itself is understood. This goes far beyond the ‘extremist’ fringe of climate change denialism, to the mainstream: those who accept the science but continue to deny that there is sufficient time or political will to avert runaway climate change. We follow the recent history that led to the current ‘normality’ of Western liberal democracies – the way many of us live, and what we believe – and how global climate institutions can be reformed.

As the prospect of runaway climate change becomes tangible, serious consideration is given to technoscience to lessen the likelihood of triggering this tipping point. What's to gain and what's at risk when technoscience is proposed to manipulate the global climate on such a scale?  From micro and synthetic biology to earth systems and climate engineering, in this episode we consider some of the emerging science that perhaps – just perhaps – might help with the unfolding crisis.

Is Indigenous leadership a pathway of possibility to grapple with what is at risk? In this episode Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars in Australia and North America share how it relates to the environmental crisis and the expert evidence generated by universities. Even though it is often treated as a cultural divergence from the real work at hand, Indigenous leadership offers insight into not just the term ‘environment’, but also how knowledge itself is understood and valued. This is fundamental framing work about what matters and what should be done about it, that is so often missing from responses to the climate crisis.

In this bonus episode, you can listen to Ron Reed's, Carolyn Smith's and Sibyl Diver's full interview

In this bonus episode, you can listen to Nigel Clark's full interview

In this bonus episode, you can listen to Tony Birch's full interview

In this bonus episode, you can listen to Michel Gillings's full interview

In this bonus episode, you can listen to Aaron Tang's full interview

In which we welcome you to the podcast - subscribe now, for a December 3, 2021 launch!