Sustainababble

It's the most successful website in the world, but many of us feel icky about using it. Is Amazon terrible for the planet or is it just, y'know, big? And if it is bad, is it any worse than thousands of little shops selling crap we don't need?Amazon's climate pledges and earnest sustainability marketing notwithstanding, we put our "we don't trust Jeff Bezos as far as we can propel him moon-wards" cards on the table... and then immediately get confused, given we're both customers.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].

Boris "Gordon Gekko" Johnson aside, no-one likes greed. But growth - mmmmm, warm, cuddly, economic growth - well, that's another matter.Lesson one in MP school is that our collective prosperity increases as the economy swells. More GDP = more hospitals and schools. It's one of the few things upon which mainstream political parties everywhere agree: growth is unquestionably good.Which makes the life-work of this week's guest, the absurdly big-brained Professor Tim Jackson, all the more notable.Tim, one of the world's foremost experts on ecological economics, set political tongues wagging with his epochal 2009 book Prosperity Without Growth. Infinite growth on a finite planet, he argued, is impossible, anathema to human happiness and ecologically ruinous.More than a decade on, his new book Post-Growth: Life After Capitalism is a poetic and philosophical call to arms, daring us to imagine "a world beyond capitalism—a place where relationship and meaning take precedence over profits and power".Sign us up, is what we say.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].

Pity our tiny little brains. For some reason that escapes us now we thought it would be jolly interesting and not at all SODDING BEWILDERING to attempt to understand Bitcoin. That sobbing noise you can hear? That's us. Why? Well it may *look* like a harmless bunch of nerds sending each other made up money over the Internet, but it's also playing a not inconsiderable role in knackering the planet. With 1% of the world's electricity - and rising - being spaffed on cryptocurrencies, we thought we should at least ask: right, what the bloody hell's going on? Is Bitcoin contributing anything useful at all to humanity, particularly given - y'know - there's a climate crisis going on? And whatever would Dr Emmet Brown make of it? 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].

Pulp, the greatest band of all time, once sang that grass is "something you smoke". Perhaps that was true in 1995, but in the cool light of 2021 we sure as hell wouldn't advise smoking what's appearing in a depressing number of British back gardens.For fake grass is all the rage, despite it being FAKE SODDING GRASS. So this week, sounding like the pair of old codgers they are, Dave and Ol get all worked up and confused about a thing other people apparently like but is very obviously abominable.NB you can vent your spleen in the direction of the UK parliament by signing this petition.Also this week, oyster-related emails from drunk babble listeners, and the best eco video you will see all year, courtesy of the wizards at Greenpeace (check it out).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.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].

Remember the past? A simpler time. A time before doxing and pile-ons and Katie Hopkins. A time when wholesome telly presenters on wholesome telly programmes told us that in the future we'd all be running our cars on chip fat and everything would be fine.Well we're in that future and EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE, PHILIPPA FORRESTER.Chip fat in cars is now a thing.* So much so that Yerp insist a certain percentage of motor fuel is chip fat. Which would be super (and previously supper) if it didn't indirectly mean rainforests getting walloped. Which, it transpires, it does.Also this week, a quick canter through the impressively apocalyptic goings on since Babble #211 (a thinning stratosphere, LOL) and a look at some premium economy eco-guff from Etihad. *Don't believe us? Try it for yourself. 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.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].

Jo, a babble listener from Letchworth in the UK, sent in a question that kinda stumped us. What the hell, she asked, does one say to people who can't see the point in doing anything for the planet?Sweary and shouty retorts aside, the answer isn't immediately obvious. So we asked you, the wise, generous-hearted, and magnanimous babble army what *you* would say. And you didn't let us down.So, herewith a rather splendid and dangerously uplifting 47 mins of "What's the point?! I'll TELL you what the point is, you little... " featuring superlative contributions from Amelie Edwards*, Sam Longman, Isabella Fisk, and Krystal York, only one of whom uses the word "nobhead".*Do also check out Amelie's excellent climate-y audio drama 5 Years from Now available from Spotify and elsewhere. More info on Amelie's website.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.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].

Alleluia! One of the great plot twists - perhaps only rivalled by Harold Bishop returning to Neighbours with amnesia (look it up) - is celebrated the world over today by people smashing umpteen chocolate eggs down their gullets.We briefly consider the obvious question (what the hell have chocolate eggs got to do with Jesus?) before moving onto safer territory to explore what looks like - but turns out not to be - a nailed-on babblefest of ludicrous luxury eco eggs and supermarket packaging claims.Also this week, the cringe-gasm that is corporate April Fools day gags. Volkswagen - a company already known for its complicated relationship with the truth - should perhaps have steered clear of attempted PR lolz. 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.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].

Push is beginning to come to shove, climate action-wise, particularly when politicians ponder the fat piles of cash made doing things that are Very Bad Indeed for mother Earth.Here in Britain, peak pondering occurs re the North Sea, a large grey puddle used by continental Europe to buffer itself against certain Tories, and also home to vast reserves of crude oil. Crude oil (and just as crude gas) that for decades has buttressed the UK economy, but will for millennia buttress a ballsed-up biosphere if continually drilled and burned. You see the dilemma.This week some fancy words were published detailing a 'sector deal' between government and oil industry, supposedly charting a path forwards. But when you read those fancy words - and Dave has, god bless him - you discover just how pushy and shovey those pushes and shoves really are. Spoiler: lacking in oomph.Also in this episode, and in yet more shoving news, we report on the lack of plastic being shoved back into vending machines from whence it came, three years after we were promised this would happen.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.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 UK Government sometimes surpasses even itself. The 'Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill' is a new bit of legislation so universally hated that even Brexiteers and Remainers are united in its opposition.At its heart is a transparent attempt to outlaw all protest beyond a tut and a roll of the eyes, following highly inconvenient Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter demos in recent years. Not content at stopping there though, the Bill also takes aim at Gypsy and Roma communities, essentially criminalising their way of life.We can't quite believe it's as bad as it all sounds, but Rosemary Harris, a political campaigner at Friends of the Earth, joins us to explain that it most definitely is; to assess the likelihood of it becoming law; and to chew over the implications for anyone wishing to protest the state of things if it does.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.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].

Cos capitalism, cos inhofes, cos LIFE, it's all but impossible to be the planet's BFF most of the time. Having kids arguably makes that task even harder.BUT, despite the onslaught of baby marketing, and despite grandparents-to-be going all in for conspicuous consumption, there are loads of practical things parents - new ones, not very new ones, and expectant ones - can do to lessen kids' impact on poor ol' Mother Earth.* It is Mothers' Day, after all.To hear how it's done, we're joined by Jen Gale, host of the Sustainable(ish) podcast and author of 'The Sustainable(ish) Guide To Green Parenting', a new book which does precisely what it says on the tin. Pleasingly, neither the tin, the book, nor Jen pretends this stuff is easy, or always possible, or that any parent should feel bad for sometimes falling short. Amen to that.The book is out on 18 March. You can pre-order here or in all the usual places. *Obviously, not having kids, or having fewer kids, will reduce one's footprint. We purposely don't cover that here, because a) that's not what Jen's book is about, and b) we've done so previously in episodes #139 ('Birthstrike') and #65 ('Babies'). Check 'em out.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.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].