Join the Dots jointhedots

Time, process and perspectives - being artists in a complex world
We want our listeners to share our wonder and curiosity about nature, embrace the complexity, take the time to enjoy the process of finding out more about our relationship with nature.
Taking the time is, also, what Harriet and Rob Fraser of Somewhere Nowhere encourage us to do: take time, develop a deeper connection with nature and a more mindful, respectful study of it.
They do this through the art of poetry, stories, photography and film to show the emotional element required to change hearts and minds, in addition to the facts and figures.
Art, they say, is not just about an object you can see and touch. It is about what happens between people, when they take the time to understand each other, and nature. It is this kind of art that transforms people, encourages new thinking, and, hopefully we add, positive action.
This bumper episode is the last in our second series, thank you for sharing this journey with us.
*** The views we and our guests express in this podcast are our own. ***
reference list
Ann Stevenson - The opening line of one of her poems was "Somewhere Nowhere" -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Stevenson
Rebecca Solnit - Hope in the Dark

We are in the middle of an energy and cost of living crises, and widening gap between the very rich and the rest of the people, while our increasing energy demand is fuelling strife and wars around the world, not least the war in Ukraine.
We recorded this episode in late April, before the announcement of windfall tax and help with energy bills by the Chancellor in the UK. But these are short term solutions, we wanted to cover longer term ones. Besides how effective measures like those in the UK really are remains to be seen and we’ll get back to this topic again.
We talk about comparative advantages of different energy sources, like how to deal with fluctuations in renewable energy, developments in battery technologies, tidal-, nuclear- and geothermal power. Our Jill Duggan stresses that we need investment in research, for example to find out more about hydrogen. On a positive note, we can see that building renewable energy capacity is now cheaper than fossil fuels. We can hope for better prices in the future and a fairer supply of energy.
We also talk about what individuals can do like:
- turn down our thermostats
- insulation of our buildings
- heat pumps, photo voltaic
- install a smart meter and look at it – be aware of how much energy you use when
- use consumer power to push for better policies and products
When we talk about these actions, it’s not because we ignore those who live in fuel poverty and cannot even afford to put the heating on in the first place.
It’s because we want to recognise our social responsibility to lower demand even if we can afford the increasing bills and campaign for cleaner and fairer sources of energy.
For more tips on how to save energy - https://energy-trust.co.uk/
For trusted tradespeople - https://mcscertified.com/
For community solar power projects in the UK - https://solartogether.co.uk/landing

Ece caught up with Alla Ljungman with whom we first spoke back in February at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. We talked about birds, agriculture, energy technologies, what the Ukrainian Environment Ministry and others are doing, and a whale in the Pacific
It is clear that the impact of war on the environment is not just on the battlefield or the immediately affected countries but the whole world - from migrating birds to global movement of goods and cost of such movement. European Union's decision to minimise oil and gas imports from Russia will mean more tanker movement from elsewhere; decline in fertilizer / raw material provision from Russia will affect food production costs. To understand and want to reduce such impacts and costs of how we deal with war is not about not dealing with war. But perhaps solutions that will reduce costs lie elsewhere - like consume less in the first place through insulation, reduced meat consumption, eating locally and seasonally. These are all acts of defiance! 
The whale - shipping lane visualisation Ece mentions is here: https://www.livescience.com/whale-stress-animation.html - of course this is not conclusive, timing is not clear for example. and maybe whales like chasing / being chased by tankers. There were a lot of comments on the Linked In post Ece saw. But she still feels sad about it. 

Did you know corals call out for the new spoors to land on them? Did you know ecologists predicted pandemics like COVID19 before most of us even heard of the word pandemic?
Policy makers talk about the dual crises of climate change and nature – its loss, degradation and pollution.
We talked about climate change quite a bit on this podcast in terms of how we heat our homes, how / what we drive and daily updates from the Conference of Parties for the Climate Change Convention that took place in November 2021 in Glasgow.
We also talked about nature – how we produce our food, how we can reduce polluting our air and water.
But as we said in the last episode when talking about adapting to climate change – it is really silly to think about climate change and nature as if they are different issues.
In this episode we are joined by Kate Jones, who is a Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College London. We talk about well ecology and biodiversity and the intricate links between the state of nature, the state of climate and human health and wellbeing, and the new centre she will be leading at UCL called People & Nature - creating a promising opportunity for many to work together for the benefit of all, bats and all.

In this episode, we speak to Tamar Hagopian Schlekat, MSPH, the Executive of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), North America.
She talks to us about her journey, from being an environmental consultant, helping clients use science to solve environmental and regulatory challenges, to becoming a manager and enabler of cross-disciplinary science to facilitate problem-solving, in the not-for-profit sector.
She tells us about her passion for bringing together experts in different disciplines, creating synergy, to promote science-based decision-making. She also talks about her successes in the past, vision for the future, and her strategy for breaking down projects and proposals into their costs and potential impacts, in order to choose those that will effect the greatest change.

Did you know the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet? That depletion makes nature (and hence us humans) vulnerable to climate change. Any investment in nature is investment in adaptation but where do we start?
On 28th February 2022, IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published its report on impacts of climate change, our vulnerabilities to it and how we can adapt.
They issued a stark warning that climate change is already happening and humans have already caused irreversible changes to nature. They also made unflinchingly clear that we are running out of time to avert catastrophic change, and to ensure that our planet remains liveable. These are stark and dramatic words, by mostly scientists, who are not given to dramatic statements.
In this episode we want to talk about what this means for our planet, our health and our wallets, as the strap line of our podcast says. Also, supported by this information, how can we make better decisions for our households, businesses and policies?
Perhaps most importantly, can we adapt to climate change in a way that creates a greener, cleaner and kinder world?
Evidence so far that adaptation works so we have every reason to talk about risks and actions to address them.
We are joined today by Kathryn Brown OBE, who is the Director of Climate Change and Evidence for the Wildlife Trusts in the UK. She has been working in this area for almost 20 years - the last 10 with the UK Climate Change Committee and before then on international negotiations and carbon budgets as well as adaptation for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
- know your carbon, Kathryn says
- don't buy peat compost
- write to your MP, visit their surgery, talk to them / ask them about climate change...are they asking questions against the Net Zero strategy? Why?! 
- join your local Wildlife Trusts and other NGOs and campaigns!