CLIMATE ACTION SHOW

NOVEMBER 13TH 2023

PRODUCED BY Vivien Langford

ARE LEADERS JUST 'ACTING' ON CLIMATE ON THE WAY TO COP?

THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE

Guests:

Mark Spencer - Podcaster and Founder of Climactic Collective(link is external)

Meg Clancy - Actor, Dancer and  Major Contributor to NITV

Lyn Bender - Psychologist and former Manager of Lifeline Melbourne Hope lies beyond latest climate shock therapy (eurekastreet.com.au)(link is external)

Greta Thunberg - Founder of Fridays for Future and Cassandra to the Climate Movement  

(229) Austrian World Summit 2021 - Greta Thunberg Speech - YouTube(link is external)

Kim Stanley Robinson and Naomi Klein at Rutgers University Institute for  Earth, Ocean and Atrmospheric Sciences.Kim Stanley Robinson Special Event - Rutgers EOAS(link is external)

Music "Nada:" a tango from La Tabu.

This is a theatrical and intense episode. We use KS Robinson's novel as a springboard to explore the themes of being overwraught with insufficient leadership. What are the  many ways forward?

It starts with a dramatised reading of the chapter where the head of the ministry, Mary Murphy, is kidnapped by Frank. He is a man traumatised by the great Indian heatwave which left millions dead. As he paces her Zurich apartment she thinks

"His presence in her kitchen was all too much like one of her insomniac whirlpools of thought, as if she had stumbled into one of her nightmares while still awake, so that she couldn't get out of it."

Then the actors and I discuss with psychologist Lyn Bender how leaders must  accept these messengers from the climate frontlines and act with urgency, while remaining confident and resolute that we can repair the damage.

The second item is Greta Thunberg at the 2021 Vienna Climate Summit. She tells leaders that they are pretending to change, pretending to take the science seriously, pretending to wage war on fossil fuels while opening up new oil pipelines, gas fields and coal mines.

She says " The audience has grown wary, the show is over"

Thirdly we go to Rutgers University to hear the author, Kim Stanley Robinson , talking about  the hard things he had to say. The needle in the eye moments. Naomi Klein calls him a "possibilist" and talks about the sort of dystopian and escapist narratives we are  hard wired  for.  Are we fascinated by the billionaires aiming to colonise space because we were brought up on Noah's Ark? (229) Why Jeff Bezos’ Space Dream is Humanity's Nightmare | George Monbiot - YouTube(link is external)

We learn about geo-engineering, how capitalism must change and how modern monetary theory can be used for good.

If  you haven't read the novel yet do try now. It is an easy way to look at the future and all the paths we could follow once we wake up.

Breaks for tango dancing courtesy of La Tabu.