Greening the Apocalypse

Can we help reverse climate change while creating more productive, profitable, ecologically functional and beautiful rural landscapes? Connor Stedman joins us to argue the case that yes, we can. Connor is a field ecologist, environmental planner, and farm planner at Appleseed Permaculture in New York state, USA, and runs an internationally recognised course on 'carbon farming'.

Books mentioned: The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier and Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken.

Sometimes it feels like billionaire Elon Musk - the Paypal co-founder and and main force behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors - is single handedly revitalising that mid-20th Century spirit of can-do capitalism, upgraded with a eco-green racing stripe. He's a company owner that's captured the public imagination in a way that makes Apple's Steve Jobs seem so pedestrian. Elon also says he can bring a human telepathy device to market in four years, and that he's planning to build a city on Mars. His company Tesla Motors is worth 125 times more per car it produces than General Motors. How much of his empire is based on reality? How much is based on his cult of personality? And what does it tell us about a world tired of cynicism and searching for a hero?

To discuss we're joined by our friend, ecologist and computer geek, Rafael Schouten.

What exciting crops can we grow in the backyard that you can't readily get in the supermarket, and what crops are adapted to a warming climate?

We're joined by Dr Chris Williams who researches and teaches about the social, cultural and technical aspects of urban agriculture at the Burnley Campus of Melbourne University. Amongst his many interests he runs the Novel Crops Project which identifies less widely grown food plants for cultivation in Melbourne gardens, for example, sweet potato and taro. The Project is trying to keep people excited about the idea of 'edible landscapes', gardens that look great and inviting but also provide food. Check out Chris's blog: People, Plants, Landscape.

We need to rapidly draw down carbon from the atmosphere, and radically reduce the amount we are pumping out at the same time. If that were achievable, what might the world look like? What would our lives be like in 2040? To explore this, we welcome back Seona Candy, research fellow with the Victorian Eco-innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne. VEIL and Seona are a part of the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) and their Visions and Pathways 2040 (VP2040) project. VP2040 is a research and engagement project to develop, analyse and communicate visions and pathways for transforming Australian cities to achieve rapid decarbonisation and increased resilience in the face of climate change. And their latest and final report -- the result of their multidisciplinary four year study just came out. It explore two very different scenarios for achieving a low carbon world.

Bushy, Kate and Jed (all parents) and Adam (who's childless) take some time to consider the reasons or not for bringing kids into the world, a world threatened by resource depletion, climate change and other ecological crises.

Charles Massy gained a Bachelor of Science in the 70s before returning to the family farm near Cooma and the Snowy Mountains. He has been farming since, and in 2009 Charles Massy returned to ANU to complete a PhD in Human Ecology. In his latest book Call of the Reed Warbler he explores regenerative agriculture; an approach to farming that rebuilds topsoil, increases biodiversity, and importantly for Australia, resurrects eroded land and combats climate change. Charles joins us in the studio. Here's Sarah's review of the book.

On 11 November, Arts House will transform the North Melbourne Town Hall into an Emergency Relief Centre. The project is called Refuge, and we're joined by Arts House producer Tara Prowse to discuss this collaboration between artists, emergency services and the public. The theme of Refuge this year is heat waves, and to tell us how Melbourne and Australia will be effected by heat and other extreme weather events in the future we're joined by storm chaser and Melbourne University climate scientist Andrew King.

(Photo by MusikAnimal licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)

We speak with Daryl Taylor, a survivor of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Kinglake. In 2009 when that enormous tragedy hit, Daryl already had over a decade's experience in community and organisational development roles. And since that day in February he has been involved on many informal and formal community based recovery and advocacy projects. His work has been acknowledged with 13 state and national awards and best practice commendations. And his experiences in the aftermath of the fires deeply inform his work now - and have lead him to reflect on the creative chaos of bottom up community-led responses, compared to what he saw as poorly fitting and disempowering government responses. In 2015 he completed with his colleague Helen Goodman a two year report Place-Based and Community-Led: Specific Disaster Preparedness and Generalisable Community Resilience which he hopes can help communities learn from Kinglake's experiences.

Later in the show we talk with small farmer Tammi Jonas about her battle with regulators that consider her and other free-range farmer operations legally the same as huge battery operations. She mentions this petition.

Steve Keen is professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He's credited with being one of the few economists who warned of the Global Financial Crisis and his books include 2001's Debunking Economics and his just published Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? He joins us from Amsterdam to discuss the incredible blindspot at the heart of mainstream economics, why Australia looks vulnerable to a financial crisis, and what individuals and policy makers might do about it.

Follow Steve's work at:www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen

We chat with Katherine Wilson, author of Tinkering: Australians Reinvent DIY Culture. She says "home-based tinkering - the everyday commitment to material problem-solving - is emerging as a legitimate vocation, in ways we haven't seen since pre-industrial times." We talk about the joys of pulling things apart and putting things together.