Shaping The Future - From Pandemic To Climate Change Nick Breeze

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In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with the Director of the Centre for Climate Repair in Cambridge, Dr Shaun Fitzgerald about how buildings can be adapted for climate resilience and the potential for flipping them from carbon sources to carbon sinks.

With many of the world's largest future cities yet to be built and much of the existing infrastructure in developed countries being unfit for extreme climate scenarios, it is essential that building development projects and innovation are able to meet and beat the challenges that lay ahead.

Recent extreme climate catastrophes demonstrate that we need to start adapting to climate change right now and at scale. The theme of adaptation planning is one that I will be exploring more in the coming weeks.

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In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with former UK Government Chief Science Advisor, Sir David King. Sir David has recently set up the Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) to respond with agility to the real-time climate crisis.

The first report is linked in the notes and focuses on the Arctic as a key regulator of global climate stability and more recently, chaotic disruption.

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Key points:


Jet Stream Omega Event
Johanne Rockstrum: Arctic tipping point has passed.
Are accelerating impacts at risk of outpacing action?
Scientists have mismanaged the modelling of climate change events.
Greenland ice sheet is sitting in warm air and losing ice rapidly.
We are not prepared for what we are currently seeing!
We need a UN Security Council For Climate Change.
Our future as a civilisation depends on a rapid response to the situation.
UK Policy on China: Timing-wise it could not be worse! The EU, China and US are all talking together.
Greenhouse Gas Removal: Build up oceans to what they used to be and we could absorb 30-40 billion tonnes per annum.
Refreezing the Arctic: If we don’t manage this we are cooked!
The CCAG Report is for Governments, Businesses and Financial operations. The time for action is now!

Sir David discusses the mantra they are trying to get into the mainstream consciousness of climate action: Reduce, Remove and Repair. The message is clear that climate is now the main issue threatening our civilisation across the globe.

We are now crossing tipping points and the time rapid scaled up action is now.

Sir David also suggests the creation of a UN Security Council for Climate Change to deal specifically with the international efforts of nations and regions to tackle arising issues. This connects to my interview next week with NATO and US Government Security Advisor on Climate Change, Chad Briggs.

Next week I will also be talking to Dr Shaun Fitzgerald OBE, Director of the Centre for Climate Repair in Cambridge about how we need to flip our building infrastructure from a massive carbon source to carbon sink. This includes existing buildings and the colossal amount that needs to be built with resilience around the world to weather the tide of climate adversity.

Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future. You can see the full archive of podcast interviews and reporting from the last 5 COP’s at GENN.cc. Please subscribe to the podcast on any of the main channels and please do consider backing my work on Patreon.

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with Adrian Tait, co-founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance about his contribution to the new Deep Adaptation book.

Links to buy Deep Adaption: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Adaptation-Navigating-Realities-Climate/dp/1509546847
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This newly published volume edited by and contributed to by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read includes an updated version of the original Deep Adaptation paper as well input from a total of 20 contributors across a range of fields that deal with issues related to Deep Adaptation and the subject of collapse.

Deep Adaptation, with its subheader of ‘Navigating The Realities of Climate Chaos’ is divided into 3 parts: The Predicament, Shifts In Being and Shifts In Doing.

Adrian’s contribution gives a broad overview of the evolving field of climate psychology, including the symptoms of distress and denial assisting us to recognise and empathise when we detect them in peers and/or colleagues.

Deep Adaptation covers a range of subjects including the future of activism, leadership, the study of collapse itself and related ideas. It is itself a starting point to explore themes around feeling, assimilating and responding to systemic as well as ecological collapse.

This subject of this book contrasts and compliments another book that will be published later this year titled ‘The Fight For Climate After COVID-19’ by Alice Hill. Alice has previously served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff and will be discussing her new book here in late August just ahead of publication.

Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future. You can now see the full archive of episodes at GENN.cc along with the archive of interviews and footage recorded at the last 5 COP’s.

As we prepare for COP26 in Glasgow, it is worth considering that the climate threats anticipated 30 years ago at the Rio Earth Summit are now among us creating suffering and loss on a daily basis, while not one policy fit for purpose has been implemented to prevent them.

Someone might have warned George Bush Senior when he stated that the American way of life is not up for negotiation, that nature cares not for political grandiosity.

You can subscribe to Shaping The Future on all the usual channels and also support my work via Patreon. Thank you.

In this episode, I speak to the philosopher, Martin Bunzl, about his new book, Thinking While Walking, Reflections on the Pacific Crest Trail.

As Martin traverses the 2650 mile trail from the Mexican-US border to the US-Canada border, questions emerge around our own relationship with what we call the natural world.

If humanity has curated the landscape for thousands of years, both for-profit and pleasure, what are the impasses and delusions that we are to face in solving the huge ecological and climate problems that currently block our road to the future?

These ideas have been discussed before in terms of man versus nature but Martin gives concrete examples of where our romantic view of nature has already shaped the world around us.

Thinking While Walking is a fascinating book that considers many of the entrenched positions that many of us hold when we think or speak about action on climate change.

Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future. There are many more episodes on the way, so please consider subscribing via our podcast or Youtube channels. You can also support my work by backing it at patreon.com/genncc.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro by Nick Breeze

01:21 Role of philosophy in responding to climate challenges.

05:00 Tension between stemming energy and stemming population among global poorest.

07:00 Our relationship with nature. “We forget that human beings started changing nature at least ten thousand years before the Christian era.”

11:20 Manmade versus nature-based solutions.

13:50 We need to remove 8 billion tonnes of CO2 for every part per million of carbon dioxide that we want to remove from the atmosphere.

16:15 Does the precautionary principle as a term oversimplify the reality of the climate predicament or is it an apt term given there are so many vulnerable people?

20:30 Manmade interventions that create winners and losers.

25:40: Genetical engineering for greenhouse gas removal that could see 40% of our emissions removed by agriculture. Is the potential risk too unpalatable?

31:02 Are we saving the world or creating an idea of nature that fits our anthropocentric interest?

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In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with Gold Standard CEO, Margaret Kim. Gold Standard sets the standard for climate positive implementation of a wide range of global-scale projects.

The global push to eradicate emissions means that activities and processes must be credible and effective if they are to build trust that we are on target to avert overshoot due to the billions of tonnes of human greenhouse gases emitted annually.

Margaret has enormous expertise in understanding the processes that solve these issues and also the reality of what it means if we fail to deliver.

Recent heatwaves and storm events are causing devastation across the world regardless of where people are located. The need for accelerated transformation of our society to one that absorbs rather than emits carbon has never been greater.

Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future. You can support this channel via my Patreon page or by subscribing to channels and giving feedback. There are many more episodes on the way discussing a wide range of climate issues so please stay tuned.

Time Stamps:

00:00 Intro by Nick Breeze

01:30 Ensuring carbon reduction project manage negative environmental risks

03:30 Establishing public trust in the fight against greenwashing

07:20 Assessing impacts: “If you don’t know, you don’t care!”

14:00 On policy shifts: “We have seen huge movements from civil society groups, youth communities, making more progress than the 198 negotiators and governments supporting that. I really hope that COP26 shows leadership that is badly needed.

16:00 “Scope 3 emissions are key to Net Zero… but there is still a large gap…”

19:00 “We have clear science-based mile stones…. This is not something we can say is nice to have. It is a must.”

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This episode features an interview with former Pakistani Defence Minister General Ghazi. I recorded this at COP25 in Madrid and am replaying here because General Ghazi identifies with great clarity, a stage process that can lead a nation or region into conflict.

General Ghazi also outlines the critical role of the military as first responders, when climate extremes create society-wide suffering. The question is here, what more can we learn from experts in risk that can help us build societal resilience and promote cooperation as opposed to conflict in the face of a challenging future?

General Ghazi is a member of the Global Military Advisory Council On Climate Change (GMACCC).

Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future - I will be posting more in this series on ‘Preventing Human Chaos’ in the coming weeks.

Please subscribe to any of the podcast channels or Youtube. You can also support this work via Patreon and do send feedback or comment on GENN.cc.


Preparing younger officers for climate-related conflicts and perturbations
How water represents a huge risk to societal stability and what can be done
Need for cooperation instead of conflict? Politicians lead by numbers so the military is well placed to translate risk into actionable plans?
Military as first responders in climate chaos and can be prepositioned for disaster management despite the increasingly erratic nature of climate-driven impacts.
The biggest concern is catastrophic conflict over resources that cross geopolitical lines.
Future stresses from overpopulated urban areas to pandemics and conflicts.