Finding Nature

Today’s guest is Emily M Bender. She was recently in Sydney from Seattle to talk about her new book that she wrote with her co-author Alex Hanna called The AI Con; How to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want. She’s a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington and received her PhD from Stanford, Time Magazine included her as one of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence globally, has her own fantastic podcast called Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 and has been featured in The Guardian, New York Times, Fast Company, The Atlantic and the Financial Times.

Emily’s work has arrived at a coincidental time for me personally as I feel stuck between the competing interests of faster documenting and faster emailing and faster writing and faster everything with a keyboard - most simply, the alluring optimism of my very own assistant or aid or partner or doer to free me of the banalities of using my brain when that is what my professional career has been entirely about. This set of conveniences hits up against a technology that reminds me in many ways of how fossil fuel companies talk about fossil fuels. Grandiose pretensions that the answer has arrived, that they hold the cure to a life free of burden, inconvenience and effort. Then throw in the gargantuan impacts artificial intelligence has already and will continue to have in terms of carbon emissions - at a time when we have barely zero runway before we cross the 1.5 degree threshold, plus the substantial labour abuse issues and the ways by which AI deployment is super charging the system it learns from and therefore perpetuates bias, discrimination and violence against those already experiencing bias, discrimination and violence. Add in how scams, fraud, deep fake pornography, misinformation and disinformation being accelerated and the big hype machine runs into some legitimate questions of its net benefits and costs.

The AI Con brought into a sharp focus the trade offs that need to be considered between whatever immediate personal benefit I think I may be getting against all of the known harms. And that’s entirely presuming the technology does what it says, doesn’t hallucinate and is built for the context it’s being applied to.

Emily articulates her critiques with a sharp accuracy and examines the adverse impacts to people in great detail, going beyond the noise and hype and wealth generation potential of the latest technology here to save us from the laborious nature of labour. In this chat we discuss all of this, but also the role of meaning and connection as humans, the history of articifical technology as a concept and also how you can go about becoming more informed and asking the right questions in how you navigate a world where the pressure to keep up is relentless and the fear of falling behind is real.

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Today’s show is with Hugh White, one of Australia’s most prominent figures on strategic and defence policy, whose career has spanned government and academia. Hugh was a senior advisor to Kim Beazley and Bob Hawke through the 80s and 90s in what was a period of substantial changes for this nation and the way we saw ourselves in the world, before becoming Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Department of Defence. Hugh has now also spent the best part of two decades in academia, where he is an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at The Australian National University. In that time he’s authored 12 books and four quarterly essays, and has written in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper. Few in this country hold such a breadth and depth of experience and expertise in how the world operates and Australia’s place in it.

Hugh’s the author of the latest Quarterly Essay titled Hard New World; Our Post-American Future. It’s one of the most valuable pieces of writing I’ve read for a long time on how geopolitics, foreign affairs, defence policy and diplomacy are shaping the world today and finding a way to understand the shifts in behaviour from the US, China, Russia, India and Europe. Hugh’s depth of knowledge on history and the clues the past hold to make sense of today was illuminating, and with the seemingly daily chaos and instability of rising conflict right around the world, Hugh’s work cuts through to offer a grander story of deeper forces at play.

We cover tonnes of territory in this chat. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the return of nuclear war as a here and now threat to civilisation, US isolationism, the shifting plates of power in East Asia and Europe, a unipolar world dominated by America’s dominance being replaced by a historically normal multipolar world order, Aukus, Australia’s denial of reality, climate change and what a new era of strategic policy means and needs in an age of climate breakdown. This was mind expanding for me to be able to put the daily goings on be they wars or climate events or political decisions into a larger frame of context and history.

This episode was a remarkable experience for me, I was honoured to spend some time with Hugh and looking forward to more conversations in the future.

This quote from former German chancellor in the post World War Two period rings true today - “A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes they have the biggest piece.”

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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Alex Hillman joins the show today. With the approval of the Woodside North West Shelf approval in recent weeks and the metaphorical fires that’s flamed, Alex’s visit to Sydney was serendipitous to say the least. He’s got 15 years working in the oil and gas sector, including nine in Woodside as their climate change advisor. Now though he the lead oil and gas analyst for the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility having made the jump from insider to outsider. His work now is focussed on helping institutional investors demand better climate performance from their portfolio companies, all from understanding how financial performance converges with carbon.

Alex has a unique and valuable perspective on all things energy transition. Often the work of the sustainability professional is fixated on growing renewables and shifting the electricity system that way. At the other end of the market are the incumbents - oil, gas and coal producers. We chat about how the work of ACCR is focussed on detailed analysis of financial performance, business plans, economic trends and the supply and demand of fossil fuels. It’s easy to get caught up in the desire to protest a fossil fuel expansion or new project approval, to launch legal challenges - they are critical actions. What Alex shares in this chat is how chronic underperformance in a sector most likely with a relatively short future offers a new perspective on reducing emissions and opportunities to speed up the transition.

What originally drew me to chatting with Alex a few years back was when he shared his experience of switching from the internal change maker - the attempting internal change maker may be more appropriate - and how leaving a big corporate and taking his knowledge and skills and being able to combine those with his strengths in a new context released him from a set of professional shackles. Like many, Alex wants to make a difference, and he explains his own rationale for his time at Woodside which was both noble and necessary. His delight and enthusiasm for what he is doing now is clear, and offers a lesson for all of us in our own journeys professionally and personally as we try to seek out where and how to make the difference we hope to see in the world.

I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for Alex, and getting under the hood and exploring the x’s and o’s of a sector in major transition was illuminating. I hope you come away similarly hopeful in how board rooms and the desks of financial analysts offers a new platform of change in radically reducing emissions.

Til next time, thanks for listening. 

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Sam Jones is today’s guest, he’s the President and Co-founder of the Heartland Initiative and was recently in town from Atlanta in the US. His work at Heartland Initiative focuses on helping investors understand and address human rights issues and related risks within their investment portfolios. He develops methods, tools, and guidance to assist investors in preventing and reducing harm to human rights through their investments.

Sam has over 25 years of experience in areas like Conflict-sensitive research, analysis, and program management, International humanitarian and human rights law and Working with multiple groups on these issues. In a world seemingly in perpetual states of skirmish through to outright war, what this means for organisations with globalised supply and financial value chains, this matters and can very quickly become a problem of material consequence. Yet how businesses think about geopolitical risk and conflict has a long way to go in maturation. Sam is one of the world’s foremost experts on how adverse human rights impacts converge with conflict and present risks to businesses.

Before co-founding Heartland Initiative, Sam worked at The Carter Centre where he managed programs in the Middle East and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a focus on corporate responsibility for human rights harms. Earlier, Sam cut his teeth as a regional representative for Asia at Counterpart International, where he managed humanitarian and development programs in Iraq and Jordan and led assessment missions to places like the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.

His career to date and the set of experiences he has accrued are remarkable and rare. This conversation was an eye opener for me and where we explored conflict zones, assessing human rights risks and harms, the role of investors and corporate actors in respecting the human rights of people right around the globe, how heightened conflict, record levels of migration, weakening international institutions, the climate crisis and profoundly powerful technologies are converging to re-shape the lives and safety of billions of people globally. We cover a lot of territory here. This is a masterclass from Sam whose expertise and relatability are a rare combination to learn from. His experiences in conflict zones is unlike anything I’ve heard before, including his five years in Iraq from 2003 to 2008.

Get out your note book or app and get ready for insights and lessons galore. Sam’s work offers a way for all of us to understand the world a little better, to appreciate how megatrends affect real people and what we can do as employees in organisations to protect, respect and remediate human rights right around the world.

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Catherine Fitzpatrick is on the show today, and what an impressive career she’s already had, all while her scope of influence continues to grow and the evidence of what she’s affecting is increasingly visible and demonstrable. Catherine has 30 years of experience as a journalist, corporate executive and now an entrepreneur, she’s an author and researcher and advisor to the NSW and Australian governments plus the World Bank. In 2018 she was awarded an AFR 100 Women of Influence in recognition for how she’d catalysed and then led the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s domestic and family violence strategy, but has since gone on to become the number one international authority on financial safety by design. Her work now as the Founder and CEO of Flequity Ventures has had far reaching impacts on the banking, insurance and essential services sectors, as well as playing a vital role in the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry in 2024 into how financial services regulations and frameworks relate to financial abuse. A series of ground breaking reports under the banner of Designed to Disrupt has gone a long way in piercing a bubble of ignorance for Australian corporates in how their products and services have been and are continuing to be misused for financial abuse - you can learn even more at Respect & Protect.

I first met Catherine about eight years ago when she was stewarding that work on domestic and family violence plus an internal gender equity committee. Immediately I understood that I’d come across an operator of the highest class, and we worked together on a bunch of different initiatives and projects.

The content of the conversation today may be difficult listening for many, while for some it could cause harm or distress. We cover topics like domestic violence, suicide, coercive and controlling relationships and behaviours, and there are many stories on how gender-based violence and discrimination show up in relationships in homes, workplaces and in our society. If any of this is concerning to you you may want to hit stop. If you do feel distressed listening consider contacting 1800 Respect.

Catherine’s working at the tip of the spear for how all organisations in this country and beyond can and need to step up. As bystanders to the behaviours of their customers and the use of their products and services, the obligation to design these with leading practice safety principles and outcomes in mind is paramount in a context where Australia’s issues with deep seated and long held gender bias, discrimination and violence is apparent on a daily basis. We know that the scourge of violence towards women permeates our society, and Catherine’s work is shining a light on how organisations can contribute to enabling perpetrators to enact fear, shame and isolation on women in Australia.

I hope you take from this conversation Catherine’s call to action - play a role, don’t be a bystander. We all - especially men - have an urgent role to play in gender equity and creating a safe, harmonious world for women to live in. 

Til next time, thanks for listening. 

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Marco Lambertini is on the show today, and where to start with describing one of the most iconic and visionary leaders of the environmental movement of the last 50 years. From eight years spent as the Global General Director of WWF, to being a current sitting member on the China Council, he was the CEO of Birdlife International too amid many other appointments. Marco forged a career in local and regional wildlife and landscape conservation campaigns, and with training as an ecologist and an inherent love of the natural world from before the beginning of his memories, having Marco and someone of his stature and credentials on the show is a remarkable honour for me. This was undoubtedly two of the most invigorating and insightful hours of my professional life to date.

Marco was recently in town as part of his work as Convenor of the Nature Positive Initiative - a coalition focused on preserving the integrity of the Nature Positive concept and goal, drive action and provide aligned guidance to deliver it. The proliferation and use of terms by those in our industry can be dizzying - nature positive is one of the later arrivals and Marco takes away the jargon in this chat to help define our terms in plain language.

His experience over 40 plus years is entirely evident in this conversation, and we cover a lot of ground - personal reconnections to the world around us, threats, psychology, magical thinking, a clear recipe to go from a nature negative economy to one that is nature positive, Financial flows, planetary tipping points, social tipping points, the rights of nature, dominance, nature as a security issue, measurement, governance, connectedness, and heaps heaps more.

Spending time with Marco was a gift, and I’ve barely stopped thinking about many of the gems of knowledge and pearls of wisdom he offered up in our chat. He is very easy to find online with a google search. Go check out the Nature Positive Initiative and grab a copy of the new book - Becoming Nature Positive. It’s available for order now and offers a compilation of some of the most experienced and knowledgeable nature positive actors globally sharing their insights, their guidance and their hope for the future. If you’re interested in nature positive at your organisation, get in touch with them too.

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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Ben Rennie is on the show today. A jack of many trades, from life as a prodigious rising star of Australian cricket during one of it most remarkable periods of success, to Dolce and Gabana red carpet events in Milan with Brazilian Ronaldo to starting and re-starting business endeavours to becoming the Chair of Design Declares Australia, attempting to quick describe Ben and his life is no easy feat. From walking away from the national game with everything in front of him to leaving a gig with bank executives and then pulling a professional geographic, Ben has done what I know many aspire to - change. I’m fascinated by the tools and practices that exist that sustainability professionals don’t use - our reports and our frameworks and our LinkedIn posts have resulted in edge-case incremental wins by in large, all while environmental and social indicators of health, justice and security have eroded year on year. As someone from a radically different background, with a different mindset and a different approach to making an impact, I wanted to get Ben on the show to explore how I and all of us can understand creativity, what creative confidence is and the ways all of us can develop a broader set of tools to do the work we attempt valiantly day in day out.

Ben’s just published one of my favourite books in a long time - Lessons in Creativity: Stories and Strategies to Cultivate Your Creative Confidence. You’ll hear how in this chat how the book’s coming into existence is one long story of serendipitous moment after serendipitous moment, but so was my discovery of this book and then how much it affected me. I came across it a few weeks ago having attended a previous guests book launch - James Bradley - and Ben’s book grabbed my attention. I checked out the title at home and realised Ben was described as a cricketer of rare distinction and wondered how someone who came through a system I was familiar with - stifled, conformist, eroding of every positive idea of self and amplifier of every insecurity, could write a book about creativity and live a life of twists and turns where making leaps from context to context was possible. I needed to read this book, and boy did I relate. It’s part memoir, part guidebook part trade book and it’s got something for everyone.

In this conversation Ben and I traverse his experience as a seeker, his views on risk, fear and doubt, and how living for freedom is a transformative perspective to make decisions from. We chat about how he’s upended and re-designed his life four times over, the role of connection, family, friendship and trust, placing faith in one’s own abilities and deciding to pursue what’s in your heart over prioritising what our society and culture expects of us and the way projections can cause us to shrink and retreat. We get into Ben’s own progression to becoming a vocal and strong advocate for real impact and sustainability in his work and career, what Design Declares is and what we can all learn from a protocol of minimum standards deliberately designed to halt and reverse climate calamity.

I absolutely loved this chat with Ben. I can’t wait to spend more time with him, and to see where he goes next. He is extremely easy to find online - his website is benrennie.com while renystudio.com is where to find his design agency. He’s a great follow on instagram too, so check him out and let him know how you found this chat and go and get his book.

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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Bec Blurton is on the show today. A Noonga woman who has built a substantive career at the intersection of First Nations rights, climate action, justice, gender, policy and finance. Speaking with Bec was a pleasure and offered me many lessons. Understanding the experiences and perspectives of those who come from different backgrounds and circumstances, but where I find commonality in experience and belief is always powerful for me. I was humbled several times in this chat with Bec being reminded of my own inherent privilege, and despite the efforts I go to and versions of challenges I face, I’m fortunate to not face structural or situational vulnerabilities like many others who aspire to versions of safe, just and beautiful future just like I do. Bec reminded me again and in new ways that with my privileges comes duties to be of service and to be a proactive proponent for equity in our society.

Bec is a powerful advocate for justice for First Nations communities and peoples, taking her extraordinary work ethic and directing it towards activating and building collectives and communities that find their voice, connect more powerfully to their identity and seek new modes and methods for justice and dignity. She is a Conceptual Foundations Working Group member of the The Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures , Deputy Chair of the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute’s Advisory Committee, she’s worked in large corporates and government, and is now the Managing Director of First Nations Affairs, is a Member of the Ballardong Aboriginal Corporation and is the founder of another climate collective.

This conversation covers a lot of terrain - origins and identity, finding ways to do work without end and the necessity of seeking professional help and being involved with communities of solidarity, the lengths still needed to truly address First Nations inequalities, the green shoots arising in many parts of our society and economy demanding better futures, and the challenges and honest reflections of where being an agent of change is more likely and possible.

We cover a lot of territory, and felt like a conversation with an old friend for me. I took plenty of learnings and looking forward to being more involved with Bec’s work in the future. If you are too, Bec is easily findable online - head to firstnationsaffairs.com and search for another climate collective. Her work is vital, differentiated and shining a very bright light on how power and history combine to obfuscate reality and what’s truly needed for more equitable and just futures.

In the May edition of the Finding Nature substack, I’m exploring perfect imperfection. Maria Montessori said this, which I think represent Bec’s actions for justice and equity “Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.”

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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Today’s guest is Professor Carl Rhodes. It’s new book season at the moment and Carl’s latest offering is titled Stinking Rich - The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire. This is his latest work, coming after previous titles such as Woke Capitalism; How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy and CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life. Carl is also the Dean of the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney, but he’s also held professorships at Swansea University, The University of Leicester and Macquarie University. His career in the private sector involved senior positions at AGL, Lend Lease, Citibank and The Boston Consulting Group. His experience across business and academia allows Carl to have a unique and deeply experienced view on what make companies tick, how economic structures reinforce capitalist priorities to the detriment of a just society, and unpack and be clear on the role of governments and businesses in a western world where those roles are increasingly unclear and uncertain.

Stinking Rich is a brilliant book. I loved reading it in preparation for this conversation and came away informed, hopeful, appalled and fearful. In a context where the rich are getting richer at faster rates, and the billionaire - from Musk to Gates to Rinehart to Cannon-Brooks - their everyday-ness in our culture is overt. Carl’s book pulls back the curtain on the archetypes and drivers of the very very very rich, and how their access, influence and power is distorting democracy for the benefit of the few. It’s easy to malign capitalist structures without deeply appreciating their origins and ontologies, as well as the mechanics and examples of how wealth becomes might. This book was illuminating for me in how it examined and exhibited the runaway authority billionaires have over our everyday lives in everything from medicine and health to climate action to politics and government decision making.

Stinking Rich - The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire - like all of Carl’s work - is a message about the dangerous path our society is on. Co-opted by rich vested interests and often outside the view of the public, this conversation illuminates what we all need to know and actively work to slow, stop and reverse.

Perfect imperfection is about the idea that progress is what matters, that perfectionism is a trap of over thinking and a desire for control. Surrendering to what is better and acknowledging perfection is nothing but a myth is something I try to work on daily. After speaking with Carl and his call for new political imaginations that deliver economic justice and equality, this quote from Marilyn Monroe struck me as a relevant and a call to action for all of us: “Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius. It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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Dean Spaccavento is on the show today. And if there is someone who embodies the mind, body and spirit of the enormity we as attempted change makers more than Dean does, then I haven’t met them. In a week where we’ve seen nuclear energy and the Liberal party totally poleaxed by the electorate - and what a surprise that is - the race to decarbonise the Australian and global energy systems is absolutely on at the moment. For more than 15 years Dean has been on the vanguard of what a new energy system in this country could and needs to be. The distraction and denial that has permeated the energy transition to deliver zero emissions and support justice and equity for as many people as possible is an immense undertaking, and certainly not an undertaking I wish to sound dismissive or cynical about. Re-engineering and re-wiring how we all live and work on a daily basis is a staggering effort, and add into that vested interests who have demonstrated no interest in being part of this transition, the challenges of land access, problems of bad operators and poor practice, plus the necessary changes in our own practices regarding energy plus finding alignment on value propositions for new energy models is all incredibly complex.

Dean has seen it all though, and as the CEO and Co-Founder of Reposit Power, his life’s work since 2008 has been to been to play a central role in elegantly threading a needle that too often has seemed to have no eye. Reposit Power have created a customer proposition that is still unmatched in the market, where alignment between a customer who’s homes acts as renewable energy generator exists with Reposit’s technology and energy market service capabilities, then their ability to be able to work with a solar install sector that one third of the time doesn’t deliver what they’re paid to do, plus navigating complex regulatory conditions all within the largest machine in the world - the National Electricity Market, is extraordinary. And he does it all without being a far right sympathiser, hasn’t sought prosecution for the head of an infectious disease department nor publicly slandered people seeking to help and rescue trapped kids in a cave in Thailand.

Today’s chat is a lesson and primer on the Australian electricity system and the transition we want and need it to go through. It’s full of stories from Dean’s experience - the ups and downs, the illogical and the logical. We chat about the increasingly bifurcated energy system we now have in place, the array of problems this causes, obfuscation by vested interests, the problems of accelerating technology evolution and the downside for the less well off and the crucial, central role of trust and truth in this grand endeavour to change the underlying functioning of our economy and society.

Dean Spaccavento is a role model for me in how to go about making change - with perseverance, integrity and maybe most importantly, a sense of humour. I hope you take as much from this chat as I did.

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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