Sustainababble

Despite what Assorted Inhofes say, climate change is a) real b) here already c) going to get worse. We'd better get ready. So how come we're - er - not? We chat all things climate adaptation with the eminent Dr Morgan Phillips, director of The Glacier Trust and, even more pertinently, author of a righteous new book about the subject, Great Adaptations. We talk about why despite human resilience, Morgan thinks that without shunting adaptation properly up the policy wazoo it's going to be Very Bad News Indeed for a very large number of people. And animals too. Turns out he's rather irked at big charities - and the Babble - for not banging on about it enough, a charge out from which we don't even attempt to weasel. All this, and why getting ready for climate change is very much like Tottenham's preparation for Harry Kane's off-sodding. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

A 'wellbeing economy' sounds like the sort of economy that might not ruin everything, and in that sense we are very much behind it. But it also sounds like the sort of thing that we don't really know what it is.HOWEVER, this week's guest - writer, researcher, and advocate for economic system change Dr Katherine Trebeck - very much *does* know what it is, and is spearheading efforts to get Governments to actually prioritise wellbeing.We sit down with Katherine to find out where this all sits on the scale of Goldman Sachs to Kum Ba Yah, and how people can get involved in making it a reality.SPEAKING OF WHICH, please sign this splendid petition asking the UK govt to put the health of people and planet first https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/580646 Find out more about the Wellbeing Economy Alliance at weall.org and check out Nicola Sturgeon's Ted talk on why governments should prioritise wellbeing, as mentioned by Katherine, here https://www.ted.com/talks/nicola_sturgeon_why_governments_should_prioritize_well_beingSustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

No Babble again this week due to a last minute production cock-up, so it's re-run time again. As the impacts of climate change are very much top of everyone's mind right now, we thought you might appreciate our chat about all things 'how buggered could the climate get anyway', with Mark Lynas (original broadcast: April 2020).

Disclaimer: climate science moves fast, and there's dicussion in here about the potential for the gulf stream to slow down, which the news recently reported scientists are increasingly worried may be happening. Back in early 2020 Mark wasn't that worried about it. Bear in mind that that was then, when you listen to that bit.

If the global pandemic is leaving you wanting more on the existential angst front, try dipping into chapter 6 of journalist and former activist Mark Lynas' new book, 'Our Final Warning', where you'll read that at six degrees of global heating "a wave of mass extinctions threatens life on earth". Theeeeeeere we go, that's the good stuff.The book, to an extent an updated version of 2007's groundbreaking 'Six Degrees', describes the most recent scientific understanding of what we can expect if carbon emissions don’t fall rapidly and temperatures continue to rise. Or, in other words, the civilisation-ending shitstorm that's in the post if humanity doesn't get its act together PDQ.We chat to Mark about what's changed - good and bad - in the twelve years between the two books, what Covid-19 might mean for global emissions, and why, despite it all, he retains a sense of optimism.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

Does it really matter how 'fair' the solutions to climate breakdown are? So long as we stop the worst of it, who cares whether a few people have their noses put out of joint, right?Or is that missing the point, as well as being a bit inhofe-y? Is it *only* possible to achieve the radical changes needed if those changes don't, for instance, make the poor poorer?The rather splended Environmental Justice Commission has been talking to people throughout the UK about all this and more, and its boss, Luke Murphy, joins us to chew it over. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

The list of things that enable life on earth is a pretty short one: a dollop of sunshine, drizzle of water, and a soupçon of air. But for anything fun to happen on land, you're going to need a liberal smattering of soil, too.In fact that 30cm of topsoil is so fundamentally important that it gets a bit scary to think what would happen if it wasn't there. Unfortunately that's less of a thought experiment than it might sound - it's widely quoted that humanity has got only 60 years of decent harvests left before the soil is either so degraded or so not there that we won't be able to feed ourselves. Eek.So, we DIG into the issue, dish the DIRT on some dodgy statmongering, and wonder what on EARTH it all means.Aaaaaand talking of Earth, we also give short shrift to gazillionaire bell-end Bezos and his willy wanging wocket whooshing.* As mentioned in the pod, Our World In Data's in-depth piece re the '60 harvests left' stat is here https://ourworldindata.org/soil-lifespansSustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

No Babble this week due to unavoidable life-getting-in-the-way reasons. We thought we'd give this one another airing as we've had a few requests recently for an episode about (over?)population. Look: we did one, back in 2018. Enjoy.

More and more people on Earth = nailed-on environmental catastrophe. Yes? We talk to Alistair Currie from Population Matters to find out.

Dashedly thorny issue, this. Isn't the real issue how much of a mess rich people are making of the planet, not how many poor people there are? Is talking about population inherently racist? And short of nuclear war, what could anyone nice realistically hope to be done about it anyway?

In our candid chat, Alistair takes all of that - and more - head on.

Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell.

Available on iTunes, Acast, Soundcloud & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

It's more than 160 years since clever science people first worked out that digging up and burning long-dead bugs made Earth sizzly. So why are we still doing it? Why weren't the early warnings heeded? And was it inevitable that humanity would, at some point or other, combust its way into the current planetary pickle?These questions and zillions more are addressed in Dr Alice Bell's fabulous new book 'Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis'. Alice joins us for a natter about how we arrived at now, i.e. arguably the most consequential point in human history.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

A wise person once said that when it comes to buggering up the planet, prison is an underused deterrent. And just why should it be OK to be an Earth-nausing Inhofe with impunity? NO WE AGREE WITH YOU, IT SHOULD NOT. Enter a fearsome bunch of lawyers and campaigners that have been steadily building momentum behind getting 'ecocide' - deliberately harming the environment - adopted as an international crime. And if that's one of those ideas that makes you go 'wow yes, that seems very sensible' and also 'but how the Dickens would it actually work?', then you've come to the right place this week. Joining us to talk about the Ecocide concept and movement is Jojo Mehta, co-Founder of the international Stop Ecocide Foundation. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

Amster-, E-, Jean-Claude Van-. All splendid dams in their own right, but topics for another time. THIS week we set our babble sights on the massive concrete walls wot stall rivers so we can power our trouser presses.On the face of it, hydroelectric dams seem sensible: produce loads of reliable 'leccy from thing that isn't fossil fuels. But the problem about the faces of things is that they often distract from the armpits of things. And, as we discover, dams get awful armpitty when you look into them.Talking of the pits, Ol this week provides the worst and most embarrassing technical hitch of the 218 babbles so far. And apologises to Dave forever more. (Dam right he does, ed.)WATCH: splendid 15 minute video from the Tyndall Centre re the CO2-ness of dams, as mentioned frequently in this episode https://youtu.be/wnTh07WpOKYSustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

Grand narratives of history are woven around pivotal moments, and it's just possible that when the history of this period is written, 26 May 2021 will be one of them.A little under a month ago, Royal Dutch Shell got told in no uncertain terms by a Dutch court to stop Royally Ducking up the Planet. Specifically, it got what in legal parlance is known as a hiding.The oil giant stood accused of endangering the rights to life and to family life by its actions, i.e. by continuing to drill for oil and therefore warming the planet. A three-judge panel upheld that accusation and ordered Shell to slash its emissions PDQ. Like in-half-within-nine-years PDQ.To understand how the (s)hell this happened and help us wrap our minds around the consequences, we're joined by Sjoukje van Oosterhout from Milieudefensie, the campaign group who brought the legal action.Read more about the historic ruling on Milieudefensie's site here: https://en.milieudefensie.nl/Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].