At the end of 2023 when I was starting to get this Finding Nature show on the road I was fixated on two questions after 20 years in and around large organisations where I felt both lost in my career but also demoralised by another leadership decision to avoid the harrowing reality of what climate change means for everyday people, their finances, home security, access to insurance and their right to safety. How could they abdicate their agency to help avoid harm to others and their own business? So I wanted to know two things primarily, firstly, how does change happen, and secondly, what do I do with my anger, grief, disillusionment and fear for what a climate changed planet and existence looks like? My name is Nathan Robertson-Ball, and welcome to or welcome back to the Finding Nature podcast where each week I sit with leaders who’ve pursued change and are actively working to make this planet a healthier, safer and more just place.

So to those questions I’ve been privileged to now host 128 of these episodes where I explore and seek to understand the insights and let the wisdom of my guests wash over me, and I know it’s had a significant and positive effect. Today’s guest, Glenn Albrecht, is one of the most meaningful conversations I’ve had, not just on this show, but ever.

Glenn is someone I frankly cannot believe I hadn’t come across until about six weeks ago when my John Elkington newsletter made reference to this man in New South Wales who has developed an entire lexicon for how we can better understand our emotions in a changing world - including the word solastalgia that I’ve seen pop up all over the place. Glenn is an environmental philosopher who for decades has worked to understand deeply and put precise language to the emotions people are having when they experience the loss, destruction, degradation, removal or alienation from a place they love. It’s me! These are the words I’ve been looking for for years, and he’s been up the Blue Mountains this whole time!

I absolutely loved this conversation, and Glenn’s work, especially his book Earth Emotions, is something anyone listening to this episode and working in sustainability would be well advised to seek out and immerse yourself in. The most common conversation I’ve had this whole time in Finding Nature Land centres on the despair and despondency people are having watching the world literally burn, where genocide and killing and corruption and nepotism and white collar crime are moved on from with the swipe of a finger. How to reconcile the desire and immense effort that goes into being a force for positive change, while so much else is making the underlying conditions worse?

In this episode we talk about Glenn’s work in environmental philosophy, the words he has devised and their meaning, the emptiness of language and words like sustainability and ESG that are devoid of a connection to life and relationship, the parasitic nature of the Anthropocene and his hopes, ambitions and motivation to see an era of symbiosis come to life.

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem. 

Life, Climate Volatility, and What Comes After

Our predicament: The fundamental flaws of predominant economic systems - and the cultures scaffolding them

Framing and language for effective climate conversations

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Joy McCann is an environmental and public historian who has worked to understand and share the stories of how the histories of people, places, ideas and the non human world have and do interact to create the cultures, practices and rhythms of life on this planet. Her work and research has taken her across Australia and over the last decade she has explored the oceans, ice, islands and coastlands of the Southern Hemisphere, resulting in her latest book, ‘Heart of Ice; A Journey Into Antarctica’s Frozen Realm’.

I loved reading the book and speaking with Joy as both helped me realise how little I know about the ice continent, as well as its fascinating history. From the commencement of planetary glaciation around 34 million years ago to the fables and myths humans projected onto the great unknown southern land, to her own trip to the ice as well as the human history of exploration and discovery there. Considering its crucial role in creating and maintaining our planet’s homeostasis the threats and perils it faces, and the rapid changes it has already undergone, are alarming to say the least. What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica, and its role in regulating climate and oceanic systems is fundamental for a stable globe.

More than the threats and perils though, Joy’s work is about understanding how we got to here, and by revealing the secrets of the past - the stories human’s have and still do tell ourselves about ecosystems, place, other species and the planet in general - uncover deeply held values, bias, misalignments and emotions. In the Heart of Ice Joy shares myths about hidden monsters and something known as hollow earth theory about how humans accounted for what they didn’t know hundreds of years ago, as well as how the economic invectives of the 18th, 19th and 20th century to plunder and massacre millions of whales, seals and penguins are still entirely present today. A history of separating humanity from the natural world holds strong today, and this book tells the stories of how our species perpetuated that on a continent thousands of kilometres away, across the most gruelling and dangerous ocean crossings on the planet, only to end up carving it up for resources and what could be taken from it for profit.

Joy’s work reveals the depths of our cultures and the strength of story passed on over generations. I hope she inspires you to consider the stories you tell yourself and others. 

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem. 

Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point?

What We Know About Deep-Sea Mining — and What We Don’t

Turning the tide: How to finance a sustainable ocean recovery

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Today’s guest is Simon O’Connor, who for more than two decades has worked at the forefront of responsible investment and sustainable finance. From his training and time as an economist and working with the Australian Conservation Foundation, running the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia for over a decade and helping to established the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative, Simon has been neck deep in everything to do with hardwiring a different financial system. His knack for building alliances has been central to his efforts and successes in trying to pull every available lever to shift the leadership, systems and culture of a system that is both necessary to undertake society-level transitions but also incentivised to reinforce itself to maintain as much of the status quo for as long as possible.

I wanted to speak with Simon because he is the archetype of the person I started this show to speak with - he’s been in the game for years, he’s been in thousands of rooms where the change I hope is possible is either unlocked or vanquished, he cares and he’s lit a path for all of us over the years for everything that I hope is still to come. Being a sustainability professional in the 2000s was different to the 2010s, and is different again in the 2020s, from a nascent outsider in those early days to a capability and mindset that is now inevitably positioned to transform every aspect of our society and economy, Simon has been and remains a leader I wanted to learn from to understand what his insights are and wisdom he has to share.

We chat about plenty in this episode, but it centres on three central questions - how was it, what happened to create change along the way, and how is it now? We get into the pendulum of despondency and optimism, personal resilience, culture and team building, longevity, the trade offs between incremental and transformative change, language and jargon, as well as a final conversation about how pursuing hard things in our non-work lives help to set us up for success in our work lives.

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem. 

What can investors do about climate change?

Driving positive social change through co-operatives and mutual enterprises (CMEs)

Navigating the winds of change Strategic foresight and the power of weak signals

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Hello out there and welcome to or welcome back to the finding nature podcast. My name is Nathan Robertson-Ball and today’s episode is a slightly different format to what is usual here. Today I’m chatting with the show’s most popular guest, and someone I consider a teacher, friend and colleague Cameron Tonkinwise about the eight years I spent in the organisation that will not be named. Sounds a bit like Voldemort from Harry Potter, and perhaps even mentioning their name also risks summoning their followers or drawing dark magic.

This show has been in the works for a little while after Cameron and I chatted about ways to capture and share the misadventures of attempting to do corporate sustainability in one of Australia’s largest organisations for the best part of the last decade. Ever the teacher, Cameron was keen to remind me that the roles I had and unusual spaces I was privileged to exist in is likely valuable for others to appreciate as part of our shared ambition to shift institutional structures and barriers. So this episode is somewhere between Cameron interviewing me, me interviewing him and also two people that spoke on a near daily basis for those eight years surfacing memories and insights and questions for all of us to consider, and hopefully learn from.

To be clear, the eight years of doing social innovation, home electrification and climate risk management were full of valuable insights, progressed me as a professional and allowed me to meet and work with hundreds of terrific and intelligent people. This isn’t my version of a takedown, but a legitimate effort to reflect on my experience, look into a mirror to conduct honest self appraisal and openly question what needs to be different and what I can do differently over the next phase of my career and life. I’m hoping there are stories that resonate and insights that inspire for each of you out there listening. I’m always keen to get feedback and the thoughts of everyone else, so please get in contact through the website or send me something via email ([email protected]).

So the question I haven’t been able to stop asking myself the last few months is whether organisations by and large are just pretending to try with their sustainability ambitions. Cameron helped me explore this further. 

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem. 

Can you be the change you’d like to see? Three US philosophers aim to offer hope

We need to talk about net zero bullsh*t.

The business case for “speaking up”: How internal reporting mechanisms strengthen private-sector organisations

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A category of guest I really enjoy speaking with though are those who are on the way up. People like Holly Ransom or Kal Klanznig or Vanessa Pirotta who are clearly going places - it’s a thrill to spend a little bit of time with them before they accomplish even more. Today’s guest doesn’t have the public or social media profile of those three, but I hope that is to change in next little while. Timothy Neal is a senior scientia fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of New South Wales and also the Institute of Climate Risk and Response. Earlier this year he was named Australia’s leading researcher in probability and statistics with applications and in 2021 was the recipient of the prestigious Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research by the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

What does that mean he’s an expert in then for those less initiated with economics, statistics and social science - it means his work at the intersection of climate change, casual inference and econometrics is resulting in entirely new ways by which to understand how much we already have and will continue to lose as a result of a changing climate and our civilisation’s collective commitment in dismissing and avoiding the reality of the losses, impacts, damages and harms that have arrived and are now locked in for decades to come.

Tim’s work has re-shaped how I think, talk about and worked on physical climate risk - and his work with UNSW colleagues Ben Newell - a former guest on episode 87 - and Andy Pitman - in 2025 dropped a grenade into conventional economic thinking and modelling regarding climate change. How can we know that human activity has fundamentally altered the chemical, biological and physical reality of our atmosphere and still see company after company, regulator after regulator, reserve bank after reserve bank tell us that their numbers are telling us there is nothing to see here? How can a company write that climate change represents a material financial risk to their business then claim their scenario analysis process presents a near-zero loss future due to climate change? It makes no sense. Tim’s work has helped me understand why that is, what needs to change in economics to redress this and how all of us as lay people can better engage with the real but complex reality of attempting to understand what disaster after disaster means for economic performance nationally and across the globe.

In this chat we get into Tim’s recent work on economic losses already able to be quantified and mounting up just in NSW, his seminal work on global macroeconomic loss results as well as what his research into panic buying and hoarding at the onset of Covid may have in stall for us as we face a future certain to be more volatile, dangerous and disaster-prone.

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem. 

Making the case: Macroeconomic risk & portfolio impact: A tool for system-level investors

The macroeconomic impact of climate change: Global vs. local temperature

Discourses of climate delay

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One person who for a decade now has fought against the construction of what would be the largest mine in the South Pacific in Papua New Guinea by an Australian headquartered but Chinese backed mining operation in a pristine landscape in one of the world’s most seismically active locations. Manu Peni is that man and today’s guest, and I was fortunate to meet and spend time with Manu during his recent trip to Sydney for the premier of the documentary Sukundimi Walks Before Me at the Sydney Film Festival, which won the Sustainable Future Award there too.

Captured by the film is the remarkable story of the work Manu has led for ten years in the creation of the Supreme Sukundimi Declaration - a signing by 28 different clans along the Speik River to protect it from the mine and its approval. The Sepik River is over 1,100 kilometres in length and is one of the last unspoiled river systems anywhere in the world, and the plans of the mine would seriously risk its health and that of every person and species living along and relying upon the surrounding ecosystems.

Manu’s story is bigger than words allow to describe. He is diligent, charismatic, intelligent, grounded and ambitious, all things he’s needed to be over the course of this battle which has included threats to him and his family. Beyond just the Save the Sepik campaign though, we talk about the concept of imposed development, how climate change has already affected the lives and livelihoods and Papua New Guineans and the deleterious impacts mining projects like Porgera, Ok Tedi and Bougainville have had when western interests have steamrolled the interests and safety of local people.

Manu represents a vision of living and the future we desperately need. I hope you’re inspired by listening.

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Is artificial intelligence here to solve every wicked and intractable problem our society currently faces? Will it morph into Skynet and become a paperclip maximiser that eradicates humanity to optimise for paperclip manufacturing? Will it just slowly degrade our information, political and economic systems? Will it be a net positive for a very small, very powerful and very rich group of white men and create uncertainty and insecurity for the remainder? AI is one of my favourite topics to get into on this show and this week I have Anna Goldsworthy here to chat about it after the release of her recent Quarterly essay; The God We Made, The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence.

As someone who recently got the redundancy bullet from an organisation that’s gone into a strategic alliance with one of the biggest AI companies in the world, and who before that saw the pernicious and quite strange ways by which it was being espoused as the elixir to all things human, I was really looking forward to reading Anna’s work and spending some time with her. As you’ll hear in the chat, I don’t have the most optimist view on where this is all going and the case outlined is an unsettling one. Anna’s essay though circles one fundamental question - how to live wisely and agreeably and well? Does AI help this or harm our individual and collective aspirations for life on this planet? There’s myriad answers and potential pathways and this is where context matters. When the context is that a very small number of players are in charge of where this technology goes, when the underlying political and economic system is about growth - no matter if it’s harmful or reckless or generating ghost GDP - and when previous and ongoing calamity and crisis has barely touched the side of a western development mindset, I find it hard not to be cynical about how AI has and will continue to shape and affect our lives.

Anna is an unusual voice in this debate which made speaking to her more compelling. A pianist and teacher, her career in academia doesn’t indicate that writing about AI was going to be a feature of her work. It’s entirely relevant though when we step back to see how music, the arts and culture more broadly have been and are transmitted through personal relations, something AI and our compulsive relationship to any and all screens intervenes on. In this conversation we speak a little about some of the darker, more existential perils of the suite of technologies that make up AI, more than that though we talk about what it means to be human and how our humanity has been and is affected by technology. And in AI the threat of losing connection, agency, dignity, meaning and our sense of reality seems possible, if not entirely likely.

In the God we Made, Anna makes the argument that we always seemed to know it was going to happen. Prometheus stole fire, pandora opened the box, Icarus flew too close to the sun, Oppenheimer built the bomb. Is that what we’re about to do?

Check out the Pope's Encyclical Letter On Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time Of Artificial Intelligence. 

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Today’s guest is Katherine Trebeck. Katherine is a political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change and from when I saw her speak at the end of 2024 I knew I wanted to spend some time learning directly from her. She’s the Economic Change Lead at The Next Economy, Strategic Advisor to the Centre for Policy Development and member of the Club of Rome. She teaches at the University of Edinburgh and is a Distinguished Visitor at the Australian National University. Katherine also co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, spent eight years at Oxfam where she developed their Humankind Index plus co-authored the book The Economics of Arrival. If there is anyone anywhere to talk to about changing our current economic paradigm, Katherine is certainty it.

And that’s exactly why I wanted to speak with Katherine - to understand the plausibility and potentiality of economic systems change, and what that would mean for myriad issues our society currently faces. Paradigm shifting is a very long way from being an easy feat, especially when the obstacles to change posed by vested interests and powerful individuals and groups are all on show in our world right now. From blatant billionaire interference in Australia’s media and political systems to the structures that keep locked in regimes that harm people and planet, the time for large-scale change - maybe even whisper it, revolution - seems increasingly palatable for many. Katherine’s work has been at the forefront of understanding how different economic theories and development frameworks offer an opportunity to re-think how we live, how we relate to each other and what we truly value.

This conversation goes all over the place - from transparency in political lobbying to the economic change movement, a potential perception gap in how we think others might react to our desires for change and what better questions for creating the society we want to live in are. Throw in references to Wayne Pearce and the Dark Knight Rises and this is a fun, informative and educative chat.

It’s undisputed that the trajectory of more of the same will only bankrupt more souls and decimate ecosystems further. Katherine has the knowledge and experience to help us chart a path to a whole new regime. 

Katherine has heaps of work online and I’ve linked up her website and link to her book in the show notes. I highly recommend spending some time familiarising yourself with her work, and find a copy of The Economics of Arrival too. 

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Now today’s episode is with Kate Turner. Kate is a recognised leader here and abroad in the world of responsible investment, sustainable finance and ESG data, not to mention an all round great person who hikes, triathlons, meditates, parents and in general is pursuing ways to be helpful and service-oriented. I’ve known Kate a few years now, and having her on the show was a great pleasure. Kate has over twenty years of professional experience across environmental and climate law, developing market renewable energy and carbon product origination, ESG data services and responsible investment. She’s worked across multiple sectors, and is currently serving as the Chair of the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia.

I related to a lot of Kate’s personal stories of what drove her to go into environmental law in the first place and a career of choices seeking to find places to make an impact, as well as how to parent in a world seemingly inundated with horror, destruction and deviance. In this chat we get through plenty - from working across markets to develop real projects generating real impact prior to the ESG data verification dilemma, the difficult balancing act between laborious ESG data processes and the need to make a real difference, the shifting investor landscape of the past few years, the differences between the value drivers for action on climate change compared to modern slavery, and the need to build bridges, cooperate and make possible the future we want by building the relational fabric and institutional capacity to withstand the change we want to bring about.

We end the chat talking about our own experiences of parenthood in this moment. What to share and how to share it with small kids, the importance of a nature loving indoctrination program from a young age, and also how personal practices and professional support are things we all need to do this work and withstand the heartache of pain and suffering in this world.

Kate is one of the most thoughtful sustainability practitioners in Australia, so to spend a little time and enjoy and learn from her perspectives were valuable, and I know you’ll get lots from listening to her.

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Today’s guest is Alexander Horton - or Big Al as he’s seemingly become through his social media alter ego in recent weeks. Alex is in the midst of breaking a Guiness World Record for the biggest BBQ lesson of all time, as part of a larger mission to break and take back for Australia the record for the biggest BBQ ever - somewhere in the vicinity of 45,000 people. But beyond the BBQ record efforts, Alex is someone who works in what is possibly the most substantial next horizon of necessary activity as part of the energy transition, and definitely the most disregarded. Who actually designs, builds, installs and maintains the infrastructure involved in the largest infrastructural transformation in this nation’s history? By every metric Australia is materially distant from the scores of different types of workers and skillsets required to deliver on its decarbonisation aspirations. And beyond the issue of simply not getting this done, the current dynamic of workforce shortages creates perverse and adverse outcomes - like the information about the lack of quality and care involved in the home battery scheme over the last 12 months. Why would I need to take care and do excellent work when firstly the incentive is just to do the minimal amount of work in the shortest amount of time, but when there is a gigantic shortage of who can install hundreds of thousands of batteries?

So I wanted to chat with Alex about the workforce dynamics of Australia’s energy transition, as well as the idea of green jobs and a shift required in the education, story telling and policy landscapes to make headway. From the hundreds of large scale renewable projects and the tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines required, to household electricians, to new types of procurement expertise required in a new energy system and the ways by which finance could structure collective benefit community battery programs, the task ahead of Australia is both gargantuan but also exciting. In all of this though is the reality of who loses and how do you support workers and communities affected by the phasing out and structural decline of coal and gas? In a context where examples of successful workforce transitions are almost non existent, what lessons do exist and who takes on responsibility for those who will lose high paying jobs in the communities they call home?

In this episode we get into all of this, as well as his Big BBQ concept in much more detail. That comes from a desire to speak with whose who aren’t already engaged and believers in the mission of a renewable energy future that powers new economies. Alex is driving new types of conversations in new types of places, and that’s courageous. It’s easy to stay in the echo chamber and express righteous indignation and point the blame at everybody else. But getting out there, and getting out there publicly in a way where the likelihood of success is only as great as the likelihood of failure is brave.

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