Fuzzy Logic Science Show

It seems every day, we hear yet more news about the declining world environment. It's not only climate change, and if when we add other threats including loss of biodiversity and depleting resources, it becomes a dangerous brew.

These are having impacts on people - and the economy - which are largely ignored by neoclassical economics and neoliberalism

Dr Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor discuss their new book The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation (Palgrave Macmillan) out now in eBook and soon as paperback. This book tackles the fundamental drivers of this crisis, and what we can do about it.

Pre-order copies are now on special.

Standing, walking or running is something most of us take for granted. And yet it is a remarkably sophisticated thing we do without even thinking about it.

Professor Gordon Waddington and PhD student Ashleigh Marchant walk us through the beautifully synchronised dance that coordinates parts of your body to make this happen. Muscles, tendons, joints, bones and, of course, your nervous system.

We highly recommend being part of Ashleigh's research project at the University of Canberra, where she tests your proprioception skills and be part of a real lab experiment. [email protected]

Interview by Rod. And sorry about the puns.

If you were to visit a river, it might look beautiful, but is it healthy? Looks may be a good start, but properly assessing a water body takes a bit more and, yes, how it smells is another indicator.

And then, why should we care whether a river or stream is in good condition?

Leon Metzling was a Victorian EPA senior water ecologist for 30 years. Here he's talking to Rod.

What happened to the plants and animals when Africa crashed into Eurasia and when Australia broke apart from Pangea?  Find out with Biogeographer Octavio Jimenez Robles. 

Octavio is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Action postdoctoral fellow who has been based at the  Australian National University in Canberra for the last few years and is just about to head to Paris to continue his work there.

You can find him on twitter at https://twitter.com/OJimenez_Robles

They knew it then, they know it now, and yet they still do it.

Fossil fuel companies are driving the planet - and us along with it - towards climate induced oblivion. While the anti-science tactics of the tobacco industry inflicts death and illness among a huge number of people, climate change is doing that on a global scale. In the process, they have co-opted the levers of government and public institutions that should be steering us towards a safer future.

The question is why? Why drives industry and captive governments towards disaster? In this, the true meaning of 'sustainability' has been ignored.

With his history inside the coal industry, Ian Dunlop has a unique insight into this story and today is an ardent voice for action on climate change.

Ian Dunlop is a contributing author of Sustainability and the New Economics, edited by Stephen Williams and Rod Taylor.

This interview by Rod is one of a series with authors from that book. You'll find more interviews at https://sustainabilityandtheneweconomics.blogspot.com/2022/12/sustainability-and-new-economics.html

On this episode Broderick is joined by Jay Ridgewell from Held Outside as they discuss the scientific value behind nature therapy. Also known as "forest bathing" from its origins in Japan, this episode promises to explore what genuine benefits there are to connecting in a deeper way with nature.

To find our more about Jay's work in forest therapy, head to https://heldoutside.mailchimpsites.com/

This episode originally aired on 13 November 2022. 

For many thousands of years the first humans burned wood to keep ourselves warm and cook food. Then we discovered coal and later, gas. For a while whale oil became an important source of energy - until they they were driven close to extinction and whaling didn't end until the 1960s. By that time, whale oil had already been replaced by cheap, abundent mineral oil.

Over the course of human history there have been several major energy transitions and we are in one right now. This time it's urgent because the products of burning are the major driver of climate change.

It's doubly difficult because our growing civilisation is consuming energy at a prodigious rate, increasing by the day.

Dr Bjorn Sturmberg is Senior Research Fellow at the ANU Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program and author of Amy's Balancing Act.

Interview by Rod.

The word "community" has a slightly soft appeal to it, as if it's something nice to have, something we do for a bit of socialising. But that undervalues the vast importance of community and there's no doubt humans would not be remotely as successful without it. Our ability to cooperate is central to our existence.

Now the world is facing threats from multiple directions and, if we don't solve them soon, the future will be bleak. That makes community is a critical part of the solution.

On Australia Day, the Federation of Chinese Community of Canberra held a forum invited Rod who spoke about this question.

Business-as-usual will result in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.

That's the stark warning issued by Graham Turner in 2008 when he reviewed modelling by the Club of Rome in the early 1970s. Can we avoid that in the short time we have left?

Professor Ian Lowe and Rod discuss how we might avert a looming crisis.

Ian Lowe is a contributing author of Sustainability and the New Economics (Springer, 2022), edited by Stephen Williams and Rod Taylor.

In this interview Dr Haydn Washington muses on what denial means.

We're sad to hear that Haydn died this week and, in his honour, we post this recording from 2013.

It's interesting and sobering to reflect on how the world looks now, nearly ten years later.

Dr Jane O'Sullivan provides a few eloquent words for Haydn:

"Haydn was a prolific and passionate writer and speaker on sustainability, degrowth, the need for population stabilisation and denialism against both climate and population realities. He wrote or edited many books. He was active in CASSE and the Ecological Economics community.

And he was a generous, humble colleague who supported others to raise their voices. I worked with him over the past couple of months to get a paper published on population denialism.

Thankfully it was published a week before he died. Here is the link to the paper (it is open access): https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/3/4/57

Interview by Rod