Sustainababble

Saving the planet isn't really about the planet at all, it's about people. People who, for instance, currently have jobs in industries that aren't compatible with a 1.5 degree world. Or people who don't have jobs at all but need them.Which is why green campaigners are desperate for governments to invest in green jobs. These are jobs that will do some of the things that urgently need doing to curb emissions, but also jobs that do what jobs are supposed to do - give people meaningful employment and a career with prospects. Young people, particularly.So a new report from Friends of the Earth, calling for £billions of investment in job guarantees and green apprenticeships, is surely a good thing. Inevitably, it contains an awful lot of numbers to make its case. Which gets us wondering - do numbers ever help win an argument? And how *do* we get people like that nice Mr Sunak to invest in the green jobs of the future that are so patently necessary?Read Friends of the Earth's excellent report here. Also this week - and talking of major investments - we reveal that anyone with a spare £6m Euros can nab themselves a handbag made of dead crocodile, all in the name of saving crocodiles.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].

"Where'd ya read that then, Wikipedia?!?@!" used to be the refrain of bell-ends everywhere who couldn't be bothered to engage with an argument. But like most insults, it carried a grain of truth because the internet's crowdsourced encyclopaedia was, well, ropey.Not any more. In fact, in a world eating itself alive with fake news and misinformation, Wikipedia is one of the few shining lights of humans doing Admirable Things online in the name of public interest. Not least on climate change, where the wealth and - more importantly - accessibility of information is exemplary.But who are the unseen elves keeping climate pages accurate and Inhofery-free, why do they give up their free time to do it, and are they in fact some of the most influential climate-y people on the planet?Alex Stinson, a Senior Program Strategist with the Wikimedia Foundation and a Wikipedia editor with focus on climate change joins us to pull back the curtain and share some really big numbers. Numbers like 319 (different language wikipedias), 50+ million (wikipedia articles) and 1.7 billion (monthly page views). Cue Ol going for a lie down.Follow Alex on twitter @sadads, get involved in the editing community here, and read this great Mashable piece about the guardians of climate wikipedia.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].

It's awful confusing when those who've spent decades saying climate change is a hoax suddenly ask us to join their 'Green Revolution', but that's what's happened at one of the UK's least reputable tabloids, the Daily Express.More famous for its obsession with the Royals, the weather, Brexit, and unsubstantiated 'miracle' health breakthroughs, the paper appears to have had a damascene conversion and now touts its 'Green Britain' campaign loudly from the front page.So. Many. Questions. Not least:why?do we believe them?how the hell are we supposed to feel about it?Also this week, season ticket holders at the stadium of babble, Coca-Cola, are back with their latest greenwashing wheeze, a paper bottle. Yeah, us too. Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRETA THUNBERG!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].

Stop it. STOP IT! This is a terribly Serious and Important thing, all to do with industrial fishing and delicate marine ecosystems and we could do without any sniggering at the back. Or the bottom.So then, fishing. A political lightning rod of an industry, but an absolute minnow, economically speaking.Largely out of sight and unknown, modern industrial practices make an 'orrible mess of the ocean floor as super-trawlers dredge, scrape and otherwise embugger delicate aquatic ecology. Which is why this week's news that bottom trawling (STOP IT!) is to be banned in certain so-called Marine Protected Areas is welcome. Welcome, but also begs the question 'why the HELL were you allowed to trawl the ocean's bottom in Marine Protected Areas in the first plaice'?To answer that and myriad other fishy enquiries, Chris Williams, a marine economist at the New Economics Foundation, joins Dave* for a chinwag. Let's hope he doesn't clam up. Or carp on.*Ol continues to flounder in the face of covid and is therefore AWOL for another week.To follow Chris' work, find him on Twitter @marineeconomics.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].

Eek! There's no Babble this week because Covid-19 has come to Babble Towers (Ol: he's OK, don't worry). So by popular request, here's one of our favourite earlier episodes to tide you over.

In this special episode, Dave and Ol leave stinky London behind and head off to rainy, muddy Cornwall to meet some actual beavers. Without wellies. 

It’s been 400 years since the humble but sodding impressive beaver was wiped out in the UK due to having nice-smelling undercarriages. Now, a handful of rewilders are starting to reintroduce them – including organic farmer, sausage chaser and beaver fancier, Chris Jones. With the help of Babble listener extraordinaire Abi, we visited Chris’s farm to see these fabby rodents up close.  

Thanks massively to Chris Jones (@kernowbeaver) and Abi Beath for all the help. Abi’s alter ego is singer/songwriter Abi Sofia, and two of her tracks are used in this episode – listen at https://soundcloud.com/abisofiamusic. Find out more about the Cornwall Beaver Project at @cornwallbeaver (Twitter) or @cornwallbeaverproject on Facebook. 

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].

Many of us are reluctant activists, perhaps so reluctant we barely consider ourselves 'activist' at all. So how do we become less reluctant? How can we expand our comfort zone so trying to save the planet doesn't seem so freakin' terrifying?The answer is almost certainly in a new book, The Trembling Warrior,by author and coach Gill Coombs, who's written what she says is a 'guide for reluctant activists'.Gill natters to us about finding one's true voice; why some people (*ahem* Ol *ahem*) are so scared of what other people think; the perils of social media; and ukippers whacking songbirds out of the sky with solar panels.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].

Where once this small island in the mid-atlantic was famous for exporting cricket, heavy industry, global oppression and the rule of law, we're now known for the contents of our bins.For, despite a promise by Boris Johnson (we know, we know) that the UK would stop sending our crap abroad, it turns out we're still doing just that. This barefaced porkie has provoked a child to start a petition, now signed by hundreds of thousands of irked humans. So this week we jump aboard the irk express and ask why TF we can't sort out our own rubbish in our own country.PLUS, we celebrate a non-maniac becoming world boss; get all goo-ey about the Guardian doing a green thing; blow gaskets at a Cumbrian coal mine; and expose Ol as the consumerist Inhofe he truly is.Two petitions for you to sign:* Stop the UK exporting its plastic waste https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-stop-the-u-k-from-exporting-its-plastic-waste* Stop Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/568475Love 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 last few weeks stateside make earlier Trumpgasms appear almost normal by comparison. Armed insurrection, an attempted coup, social media bans, a manatee having 'TRUMP' carved into its back. Srsly.Perhaps worst of all, though, is the uneasy feeling that Americans may be at the beginning of a very unpleasant period in their history, not the culmination of it.Still, the bellicose bell-end IS on his way out, to be replaced by someone who would like to stop the planet frying. Woop and yay!To celebrate, and to commiserate about the ongoing descent of his country into civil war, we talk to actual American and recovering Babble veteran (see episode #30) David Turnbull, Strategic Communications Director at Oil Change U.S..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].

Among today's intractable divisions, few are more bitter, more incendiary than that between the washing-up-by-hand loyalists and the using-the-dishwasher hardliners.So which *is* better for the planet? And while we're at it, what about vegan leather vs real leather, or soy bean tears compared to almond sweat? Thankfully for prospects of world peace, Georgina Wilson-Powell has written a thoroughly well researched book - 'Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco Dilemmas Answered' - that resolves the hitherto unresolveable. Georgina, a journalist and founder of Pebble magazine, joins us to natter about what she discovered along the way.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].

Ever wound up in the ocean with human faeces on your head, or a used sanitary product bobbing by? Us neither, thankfully, but many UK surfers have, which is why a bunch of them campaign for cleaner seas with Surfers Against Sewage, a national marine conservation charity headed up by Hugo Tagholm.For this opening episode of 2021, Hugo joins us to explain why Dave should try surfing (he really shouldn't, ed.), why lobbying MPs in wetsuits is effective, and to shed light on the, well, shitty practices of water companies.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].