New Thinking for a New World

“For the first time in human history, we face a planetary emergency.” Those words were written by Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Scientists tend to be sober, measured in their assessments and with a preference for others to draw the big picture conclusions. So, when an earth scientist as distinguished and accomplished as Rockström writes that “Human pressures on earth have reached dangerously high levels” which could imperil humanity’s survival, we should listen.

Are you listening? If so, what do you think? And, more importantly, what are you going to do?

This episode was originally published on June 23, 2022

At least one in nine of the almost eight billion people who live on earth are undernourished. As the 18th century economist Robert Malthus forecast, we seem on a path where the planet can’t produce enough food for the projected 10 billion people who will be alive in 2050. Climate change and wars will only make the global food situation more precarious.

Is large scale famine inevitable?

David Kaplan, a global leader in the new field of cellular agriculture, doesn’t think so. He believes the steaks and fish fillets that he and other scientists are literally growing in their labs can eventually feed a hungry world. What do you think?

One of the ironies of the 21st century is that even though, everyone on the planet seems to have a cell phone and to be actively connected to social media, too many people seem voiceless or, at least, don’t think their voices are heard by those whose decisions shape their lives. The result is a huge gap between citizens and their putative leaders almost everywhere that breeds corrosive anger, frustration and distrust.

What’s going on? Who is voiceless, and why? Is the problem that too many are voiceless or that too many are not listening? Is the solution to speak louder, to scream perhaps, or do we need to think differently about how we engage people in the important conversations that define their reality?

Maybe unanswerable, but we asked some people to try. Please listen to the conversation among Baiqu Gonkar, a Tibetan activist working at the intersection of technology, art and social good; Francis Hildebrand, a Colombian environmentalist working to sustain the Amazon; and Mike Niconchuk, an applied neuroscientist working with conflict-affected populations particularly in the Middle East. Diane Osgood, social impact strategist, moderated the discussion, which was hosted by Vamvakou Revival and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

What do you think?

This episode was originally published on June 2, 2022

Our world has become a weird combination of dangerous, existential challenges and of almost magical, potential solutions. On the one hand, we see accelerating, deadly climate change, proliferating famine, pandemics, war, and growing political and social tensions that could threaten life as we know it. On the other hand, we are witnessing amazing advances in robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, neuro-technology, life sciences and beyond that could be pathways to a more robust, resilient, and prosperous future.

Which is it going to be? Are we doomed or can we save ourselves? Can all those fabulous innovations be transformed into practical realities at the necessary speed and scale, and in ways that allow mankind to flourish?

Scott Cohen believes the answer is a resounding, “Yes!!” He co-founded New Lab, an American based initiative to bring together entrepreneurs, engineers, and inventors to solve some of the world's biggest challenges. And “solve” doesn’t mean someday: it means now. Listen as he discusses how he and his colleagues at New Lab are doing exactly that.

What do you think?

We live in the age of the refugee—and the numbers of people fleeing their homes are almost certainly going to continue to increase. Will they be welcomed or will destination countries try to harden borders?

Arguably, no country in the West has been more welcoming to refugees over the years than Sweden has. Progressive, secular, social democratic, Swedes have worked hard to integrate migrants into their society, to help refugees create new lives in their new home country.

How then do you explain what happened last month during Easter when Stockholm, Malmö and other cities were racked by riots and violent clashes between police and mostly Muslim young men? The proximate cause was actual or rumored Quran burnings, but is something more fundamental happening? Many refugees fleeing Middle Eastern wars seem to have decided they don’t want to become Swedes Instead, they want to remain who they are, but to live in a safe, wealthy country. Is there space in Sweden for people who don't want to be Swedish? What if many of those refugees reject Swedish progressive values in favor of Islamic values—whatever that means—in particular? And what does all of this imply for other countries who have not done anywhere near as much as Sweden has to welcome refugees?

Lars Åberg, one of his country's leading journalists and a prolific author, has thought and written about these questions for years. His beat covers social affairs, culture, politics and the media. Listen as he explains what Sweden has done right, but also what it has done wrong.

This episode was originally published on May 5, 2022.

"We may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the noisiest of dictatorships.”

Those words were written by Joel Kotkin in a recently published essay on democracy’s demise. Donald Trump is not the villain of the piece, as most pundits want us to believe, nor other populists outside the United States. Rather, Kotkin argues that the withering of democratic process and institutions reflects the deeper transformation of American and European societies: the emergence of a ruling technocracy; the use of the pandemic and the environmental crisis to constrain individual rights; the new concentration of power in governments, and the growing distance between the governing and the governed. All of it made worse by the mind-boggling concentration of economic wealth, which is as much an issue in China as it is in the United States.

Kotkin’s analysis deserves our attention. What do you think—not about Trump, but about democracy? Who can do what to bend the arc away from the dystopian end game that he and others describe?

Do you care about the future of the oceans? Are you worried that pollution, acidification and warming of the seas could transform the planet as much as, maybe more than, what’s happening to the rainforests?

Seventy percent of the earth is covered by water. If we want a livable planet, we need livable oceans. Can we save the oceans? If failure is not an option—and it should not be—who needs to do what?

In a Tällberg webinar, oceanographers Sylvia Earle from the United States and Asha de Vos from Sri Lanka talked about water, the oceans, threats, and solutions. Both are explorers, educators, and activists and both are winners of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.

At the recent NATO summit in Madrid, US President Joe Biden made a joint appearance with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Speaking of Erdogan’s supposed agreement to accept Sweden and Finland in NATO and to find a solution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Biden said, “I want to particularly thank you for what you did putting together the situation with regard to Finland and Sweden, and all the incredible work you’re doing to try to get the grain out of Ukraine and Russia. I mean, you’re doing a great job….it’s in large part because of your leadership. Thank you. I really mean it.”

Leadership? Really?

Just a few months ago, Erdogan was isolated and largely ignored. He was on Biden's no-call list. He had almost hostile relations with most of his neighbors, was being denied new western weapons systems, seemed close to armed conflict with Greece, and had unilaterally sent troops into Libya and Syria. Moreover, his economic mismanagement has produced domestic inflation of 75%, a currency in free fall, and an economy in tatters. **Along the way, Erdogan has abused his political opposition, suppressed domestic liberties, squeezed migrants, and attacked Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere. **

What Biden calls leadership, Michael Sahlin, former Swedish diplomat with deep experience in Turkey, thinks is more like a cat landing on its feet after falling out a window. What do you think? Listen as Sahlin discusses Erdogan’s amazing resilience—but without resorting to the “L word."

In August, 1968 American anti-war protesters chanted, “The Whole World is Watching.” What might have been hyperbole then, is fact now: the whole world really is watching Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Except for audiences in Russia itself, that is, where there is virtually no reporting of what is happening in Ukraine that doesn’t mesh with the government’s narrative about what it calls its “special operation” to crush Ukrainian “Nazism” in the pursuit of “Christian values.”

**Surreal, perhaps. But, hyper real, in fact.

When the government stopped her from publishing and ended her radio show, she found ways to keep talking to her Russian audiences. And when I asked her to talk to us, she immediately agreed.

At great personal peril, Yevgenia tells it like it is—to the Russians who depend on her and to us, who need her.

Published the first time on March 24, 2022.

“For the first time in human history, we face a planetary emergency.” Those words were written by Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Scientists tend to be sober, measured in their assessments and with a preference for others to draw the big picture conclusions. So, when an earth scientist as distinguished and accomplished as Rockström writes that “Human pressures on earth have reached dangerously high levels” which could imperil humanity’s survival, we should listen.

Are you listening? If so, what do you think? And, more importantly, what are you going to do?