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Over the last century, economic growth, as measured by increases in countries' Gross Domestic Product, has been the key indicator of success. And while GDP has skyrocketed in many countries, so has fossil fuel use, deforestation, and the destruction of natural ecosystems. On top of that, inequality has actually gotten worse in many countries and incomes, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated for many parts of these "growing" economies. It seems this relentless focus on growth has not created the kind of world that most people want to live in.

Professor Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in Barcelona. He's also the author of several books about degrowth economics - the field of economics that questions the insatiable need for growth and seeks an alternative societal structure that supports everyone, regardless of a country's ability to grow GDP. Professor Kallis joins the show to talk about degrowth economics and why it is critical to achieve the degrowth goals if we want to reduce the negative impacts of the climate crisis.

We also discuss the role that 18th century philosopher and theologian Thomas Malthus had on modern economics, why he was so wrong about inequality and limits, and some of the ideas that get attributed to him that weren't actually his.

Check out these two books by Professor Kallis:

"The Case for Degrowth"

"Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

It's incredible how dramatic climate science can be. That was my first thought after I watched the new documentary, Canary, which chronicles the life and career of Dr. Lonnie Thompson. This week, the subject behind the film, Dr. Thompson, and the co-directors of the documentary, Danny O'Malley and Dr. Alex Rivest, explain how the film came together and the thrilling story behind its development. We discuss how to tell compelling climate stories, what motivates their work, and what decades of glacier science can teach us about the climate crisis.  

Lonnie G. Thompson, a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University, and senior research scientist, specializes in paleoclimatology, ice cores, and climate change. 

Alex Rivest is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained PhD Neuroscientist. Having worked alongside Nobel Prize winner Dr. Susumu Tonegawa, his research has been published in two of the most highly renowned scientific journals, Science and Nature Neuroscience. 

Danny O'Malley is a Grammy nominated and James Beard nominated film director. Best known for his work on Netflix's Chef's Table, where he serves as co-executive producer and a director.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Rent Canary

Who can the climate movement turn to for real change? Politicians? Business leaders? International negotiators? The reality, as Professor Dana Fisher argues, is that despite major gains for climate action in recent years, none of our leaders are adequately advancing solutions at the speed and scale neccessary to meet the actual crisis we face. And because we need change to happen much faster, the climate movement needs to build its own power in order to help solve the biggest problems in ever sector of society. So how do we actually do that?

We explore that on today's show and discuss Professor Fisher's new book Saving Ourselves - From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. We discuss what the climate movement can learn from international efforts like the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocal, how the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and other social movements can guide climate activists, and how climate activism is changing as we approach major elections in 2024. 

Dana R. Fisher is the director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a professor at the School of International Service at American University.

Read Saving Ourselves - From Climate Shocks to Climate Action

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

The International Energy Agency, among other prominent modelers of our energy future, projects that nuclear energy's current global capacity must double by 2050 in order for the world to hit its decarbonization goals. The annual investments needed to reach this doubling far exceed anything that's being invested today in new nuclear facilities. Just one new nuclear reactor has been successfully built in the United States in the last 30 years, and the United States hasn't financed new reactors in other countries for decades.

If the United States is truly committed to reducing emissions, why aren't we seeing more investment in nuclear energy, a base fuel that could replace coal and natural gas? How do other countries compare to the United States when it comes to investments in new nuclear energy, the costs and project timelines of new nuclear construction, and the regulations and incentives? Dr. Matt Bowen from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA joins the podcast today to answer these questions and to provide a detailed look at the current nuclear energy landscape around the world.

Further Reading:

The Uncertain Costs of New Nuclear Reactors

A Critical Disconnect

Improving the Efficiency of NRC Power Reactor Licensing

Comparing Government Financing of Reactor Exports

And check out the upcoming Columbia webinar: https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/events/reactor-costs-and-decarbonization-efforts/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

"It is vital that those advocating for action to avert climate disaster take note of this substantial shift from denial of anthropogenic climate change to undermining trust in both solutions and science itself, and shift our focus, our resources and our counternarratives accordingly." 

In the introduction to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate US/UK, founder and CEO Imran Ahmed makes the case that it's a new kind of climate denialism that is spreading so quickly on social platforms. Why? Not only is it due to the lack of content moderation from Big Tech companies and a willingness of cynical media personalities on these platforms to take up the denier mantle, but also an economic incentive structure for content creators that supports misinformation. Imran Ahmed joins the show this week to discuss The New Climate Denial: How social media platforms and content producers profit by spreading new forms of climate denial? and how social media platforms and legislators can help stop the dominance of misinformation online and what could happen if we don't.

Read The New Climate Denial

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

In 2015, representatives from all countries attending COP21 agreed to limit global average temperature rise to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels and to aim for a 1.5 degree rise. Flash forward less than a decade, and the United Kingdom Meteorological Office is forecasting the average annual temperature for 2024 to likely be more than 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-Industrial levels. As the world continues to break annual, monthly, and daily temperature records, what does it mean that we're now exceeding the 1.5 degree threshold so soon after the Paris Agreement?

To help us understand the importance of this forecast, Dr. Nick Dunstone, leader of the Climate Dynamics Group at the Met Office and one of the scientists that conducted the forecast, joins the show to discuss what it means that 2024 may exceed the 1.5 degree threshold, the factors causing the record-breaking temperature, and what people and policymakers should take away from this historic milestone. Dr. Richard Betts, Head of the Climate Impacts Strategic Area at the Met Office, is also on today's episode to discuss his team's recent forecast of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. As CO2 emissions continue to rise, it's no surprise that temperatures continue to rise as well. Dr. Betts helps explain the factors that contribute to 2024's record increase in CO2 concentration and provide context to this year's forecast.

Read The Met's 2024 Temperature Forecast

Read The Met's 2024 CO2 Concentration Forecast

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

We witness the climate crisis every day. Unfolding on our news feeds, impacting our communities, and undeniably causing unfathomable, inequitable harm across the planet. We lament the lack of urgency in our political leaders and even find ourselves frustrated by complacency in the public's push for climate action. But we truly are in a transformative moment - though how we meet this moment remains uncertain. 

The changing politics of our time is the focus of Ajay Singh Chaudhary's new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics In A Burning World. He joins the show to discuss some of the big philosophical and social considerations as the climate crisis continues to change everything. 

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory.  

Read The Exhausted of the Earth

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

The negative impacts of climate change are almost always depicted on a global scale and decades-long timeframe. However, the positive impacts of reducing the use of fossil fuels are realized at the local level and almost immediately. The co-authors of the recently published paper, "Reductions in Premature Deaths from Heat and Particulate Matter Air Pollution in South Asia, China, and the United States Under Decarbonization", found that the near term health benefits of moving to a clean energy-fueled society far outweigh the costs of the clean energy transition, because death rates from air pollution and excessive heat are reduced drastically. How much and when those death rates depend on region-specific variables, but across the board, any country that decarbonizes will see both near term and long term benefits to the health of their citizens.

Dr. Drew Shindell, the Nicholas Professor of Earth Science at Duke University, joined The Climate Pod this week to discuss the paper that he co-wrote and other research he has done on methane and the co-benefits of transitioning our world beyond its current reliance on fossil fuels.

Follow Dr. Shindell's work here: https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/shindell

Read the paper here:  https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2312832120

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

"From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. But we are not living in a world that is more just and democratic as a result." In Vincent Bevins' new book, If We Burn, with this argument comes a central question: Can mass protests and uprisings actually lead to progressive change?

The answer is complicated and certainly varies greatly from situation, cause, and nation-state depending on an array of existing realities. However, in the mass protest decade of Bevins's focus, 2010-2020, we saw the enormous impact climate protests could have on raising global awareness. Recent uprisings across the globe have often resulted in more interest in progressive solutions, but not always in results. But there are critical examples that show it is possible to harness the power of protest to deliver justice. So how do we do it?

Bevins joins the show to discuss what he learned about the last decade and how the climate movement should use recent history to power greater change. He is an award-winning journalist and correspondent, having covered Southeast Asia for the Washington Post. He also served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and before that he worked for the Financial Times in London. He is the author The Jakarta Method and his most recent book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.

Read If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Other episodes referenced:

An Optimistic Case for a Sustainable Future (w/ Dr. Hannah Ritchie)

How Are Progressives Transforming US Climate Policy? (w/ Ryan Grim)

Brazil's Election, Deforestation, and Violence in the Amazon (w/ Terrence McCoy)

How The Pandemic Is Reshaping Our World (w/ Felix Salmon) 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

As global temperatures continue to rise, fossil fuel production continues to increase, forests continue to be cut down, and species are becoming extinct at rates faster than previous mass extinctions, it's hard to find any hope for a sustainable, or even habitable, future. But giving up is not an option. There are billions of people now and in the near future whose lives depend on solving the multitude of human-caused environmental and health crises plaguing the planet today.  The good news is, even though things are not good right now, they've been much worse. And they're better today because we finally know how to power our lives, feed our families, and grow our economies without destroying our environment.

Dr. Hannah Ritchie, the Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, joins the show today to talk about her new book "Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet". Dr. Ritchie has studied the data and believes that for the first time in human history, there is no longer a tradeoff between human and environmental wellbeing. After researching the climate crisis, air pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, world hunger, and plastic pollution, Dr. Ritchie has come away with the understanding that things are bad now, but they're better than they were, and we have the real possibility of making them much better in the future.

Read "Not the End of the World"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.