emPower4Climate Janine O'Keeffe & Stefan Gsänger

As the climate crisis is more and more escalating without appropriate reactions from governments, climate activists have started new forms of protest, including civil disobedience. Many of those cases have landed at courts and some public prosecutors have recently started action against climate groups which aim at criminalising whole organisations. Consequently, even the United Nations warned against one-sided, undemocratic action against climate groups. 

Janine O’Keeffe is not only co-host of this podcast empower4climate, but also one of the founders of the new climate movement, starting in Sweden in 2018 and spreading across the globe. She has been involved in civil disobedience protest, by stopping traffic on a freeway in May 2022, and she will soon face her case to be processed at a Swedish court. 

Stefan talks with Janine about why she sees the need to use such forms of protest, how she will justify her activities and how she expects the courts to decide. Which ways of action and protest promise to bring the necessary results, the effective mitigation of the climate crisis?

Already in the 1970s and 1980s, triggered by the oil crises, growing environmental concerns and nuclear accidents with devastating consequences, there was a growing movement of people who saw renewable energy - wind power, solar energy, bioenergy, geothermal energy and hydropower - as the perfect answer.

The movement started from the bottom up in many countries, and Denmark in particular played an important role. One of the most important organisations was the Nordic Folkecenter for Renewable Energy, which was founded 40 years ago. The centre disseminated information about how renewable energy worked in practice, using the technologies on the ground and educating and training hundreds and thousands of people from Denmark, all over Europe and the world.

We talk to Jane Kruse, co-founder and director of the Folkecenter, about the historical developments, but also about the importance of such bottom-up movements today. Jane has not only led the work of the Folkecenter together with her late husband Preben Maegaard, but has also been involved in various renewable energy cooperatives that have become a mainstream model in Denmark and spread throughout Europe. How can our societies be mobilised for the great energy transformation and what role does the climate movement play in this process?

The 6th Assessment Report AR6 published recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC has conveyed a very clear message: The climate crisis is already a reality, many of the predictions climate scientists made in the past are coming decades before predicted. And AR6 has become even more precise as it focuses for the first time not only on global, but also on regional changes, thus giving an even more precise outlook to what the world expects if mankind doesnt act fast enough.

One reason why there is now a stronger focus on regional aspects is that the IPCC has become more inclusive, with more and more experts contributing also the perspective of the so-called developing world. A very prominent example is our guest Muhammad Irfan Tariq who joined the Government of Pakistan in 1991 and has been involved in the climate negotiations since the Rio Summit in 1992. Subsequently, he served in important positions, including as Director General at the Ministry for Climate Change. In that role, he was also the National Focal Point for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Vice Chair of the IPCC Working Group-II.

Stefan and Janine will discuss the AR6 report with Muhammaed Tariq aiming at getting a better understanding of the IPCC’s work and how it has evolved in the light of the escalating climate crisis. What does AR6 tell us with regard to how different parts of the earth are affected in very different ways and what does this mean for the need not only to combat climate change effectively but also to show international solidarity with the most vulnerable countries?

In light of the climate crisis, legal action has become an important pathway to act, next to political action, practical action and civil disobedience. Courts in several countries have already taken groundbreaking decisions and forced governments to take more effective action.

However, legal experts have realised that the current legal definitions of public goods, goals and of criminal offences are not sufficient to act against the climate crisis. Therefore there is a growing movement which aims at defining ecocide as a separate criminal offence, which means the destruction of the ecological basis of life on earth.

We talk with the Swedish lawyer Pia Björstrand who is a founder of #lawyersforfuture and holds positions in several environmental and climate groups. Pia has been instrumental in bringing the discussion about ecocide to the public and to provide the legal basis for the definition. Which steps are necessary to define ecocide, will it be implemented on the national or international level and what would be the concrete impact on the fight against climate change?

Energy is a key sector for effective climate change mitigation, and 100% renewable energy globally is a mandatory pre-condition in order to stop and reverse the climate crisis.

Wind power, together with solar energy, has seen a tremendous boom over the last 25 years, becoming a pillar of the energy supply in many countries across the globe.

In spite of the climate crisis and the energy crisis induced by the Russian war against Ukraine, new installations in wind power dropped in the year 2022, compared with 2021.

Janine and Stefan discuss the role of wind power, its success stories, special challenges and also the causes for the most recent slowdown in most of the leading wind power nations. Eventually they talk about how wind energy can be an essential part of a climate friendly, decentralised and more democratic energy supply and what the main barriers are to realise this vision.

The energy sector is the main source of greenhouse gases, particularly in the form of CO2 produced by the burning of coal, oil and gas – the most recent IPCC report has once again underlined the urgency to act here. Accordingly, personal energy footprints are related to certain consumption patterns and wealth.

This raises questions of liability, but also whether and how the unequal distribution of wealth is in itself a major cause of climate catastrophe. On the one hand, the concept of the "ecological footprint" is suitable to show individual responsibility and personal contribution to climate change. At the same time, it carries the risk of shifting the focus from the main polluters to the average or even low-income sections of society, by blaming individuals.

We talk to our guest Dr Marta Baltruszewicz about the the link between energy consumption patterns and well-being. Marta Baltruszewicz has conducted research at the University of Leeds focusing on these areas. What are the links between consumption, shopping, travel, food, housing, heating and climate change on the one hand and the distribution of wealth on the other? We will also discuss with her whether people with more money would be able to invest in climate-friendly technologies such as renewable energies - why is this not happening faster? Do we need new paradigms like sufficiency for climate justice?