Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including ‘toxic positivity’, the life-shortening effects of cooking on gas stoves and the Global Biodiversity summit
Brilliant Bernard and Catherine. I have always offset emissions while knowing it is shonky greenwashing in most cases. REAL ZERO is the only way! Reality instead of positivity is best. Have removed gas hobs and gone to induction at considerable expense( old house, new cable required) and we only have to clean extractor very occasionally now ? Anecdote is not evidence?
Yay for hope!!! Roman Krznariac in this podcast calls for radical hope - in the face of our probable self-termination: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/142-roman-krznaric Hope in the literature is about a sense of agency and seeing pathways for action. I despair at the cynical use of the term "hopium".
So a study determines that people take action when they are concerned about something. What is possibly more surprising is that people are remunerated for such research. A greater concern is for those who seek to repress concern about the meta-crisis hoping it will go away and BAU will continue.
I'll get in my v8 range Rover and drive 2km to get a paper newspaper and a steak and cheese pie for breakfast. Off to Sydney for the weekend to celebrate a birthday. Back late Sunday night and Monday I start 26 weeks of carnivore diet while reviewing plans of my new 900m2 concrete and schist stone 2 bed room granny flat! Lucky I can self certify that one!
Happy 1 November everyone. Get used to the warmer and wetter climate. No Hopium left in me, until politicians stop building more roads, public transport is well funded and free and drilling for oil and gas stops.
Exceptionally important conversation Catherine and Bernard, around responding to and processing our pain and fear by participating in collective action. Our emotional responses are legitimate and should not be ignored, they are a warning to be acted on. At the same time general wellbeing measures can help us continue our climate work - like eating healthily, regular sleep routines, physical activity , connection to nature and people, seeking learning opportunities, mindfulness and giving something of ourselves to others (see CLANG 5-a-day for mental wellbeing). Plus taking breaks from the work some of the time. I can also recommend this podcast for an approach to the crucial emotional processing required. https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/tara-brach/id265264862
And - the things that most make me despair and likely to feel like giving up, is when prominent leaders in government or industry deny their role or take actions which will actually make the future worse. Whereas I get most motivation from hearing results of big policy changes or activism successes. And from awesome people like you both informing and talking sense to the world! Kia kaha
This all makes for depressing and despairing reading. Even when leaders do speak the truth, they are politely, even somewhat embarrassingly, reported on and reacted to. And then nothing. How many different ways can the UN Sec Gen keep saying, "really everyone, we need to STOP. NOW"? How many times can a Pacific Island PM stand up and say "Do something World. Do anything"?
Our NZ media (and others around the world) by and large refer to climate change in passing - almost as if it is an unremarkable thing. They have moved from not talking about it at all - to talking about it as if it was a contested idea (it hasn't been since the early 1980s) - straight to talking about it as an unavoidable fact of life.
"Oh dear! Your town is on fire or under-water? Wow, hey, bad luck! Really feel for you. Well, that's climate change you know. Anyway, how about those All Blacks! "
When Don't Look Up came out, it was attacked as a histrionic response to our collective, deliberate, wilful unknowing. It strikes me that it was actually very, very accurate about our self-distraction and not really that much of a heightened satire.
What is missing - with some honourable exceptions - is any sense, that to work, hope needs a vision of what will be different in order to navigate towards it. In other words, hope cannot just be motivated by an absence of something. It cannot be merely, "we won't destroy the continuum of human civilization and the genetic inheritance of the rest of the biomass on Earth, the only place in the universe we know for certain has evolved complex life". Incredibly, this is seemingly not enough to move people to change.
The details don't all need to be nailed down. The Victorian social reformers didn't always have the "workers' paradise" sorted out in their heads. But along the way, they had clear, sign-posted improvements. An 8-hour day; a 6-day week, then a 5-day week; annual leave; sick leave; safe workplaces; workers compensation; unemployment and old age social insurance; universal suffrage; no child labour; fair pay for work; the right to organise; maternity leave; public health provision etc. etc. (That this is all being systematically unpicked is, hey-ho, a different topic).
Once the direction can be set, even if it is contestable, then the real change can happen. With this, politicians can lead; can have difficult conversations about the necessary adjustments to "normality" for most of us here in Aotearoa-NZ. Businesses can evolve different forms to adapt to the new commercial and regulatory environments.
Right now, no polly wants to do what is required because it would be a one-way ticket to electoral oblivion. And that is because we, the voters, will not willingly give up our king-cab Utes and Double-beef, double-cheese, double bacon everything burgers. We won't give up (not so) cheap flights overseas because we are not shown a credible alternative that is attractive enough to hope and strive for.
And that is why the Kaka, its dedicated reporting; its focus of the facts of the world and its formulation of a project that offers an alternative is so very valuable. Thanks Bernard & Co.
Brilliant Bernard and Catherine. I have always offset emissions while knowing it is shonky greenwashing in most cases. REAL ZERO is the only way! Reality instead of positivity is best. Have removed gas hobs and gone to induction at considerable expense( old house, new cable required) and we only have to clean extractor very occasionally now ? Anecdote is not evidence?
Keep up excellent work and please release
Patrick Medlicott
Yay for hope!!! Roman Krznariac in this podcast calls for radical hope - in the face of our probable self-termination: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/142-roman-krznaric Hope in the literature is about a sense of agency and seeing pathways for action. I despair at the cynical use of the term "hopium".
So a study determines that people take action when they are concerned about something. What is possibly more surprising is that people are remunerated for such research. A greater concern is for those who seek to repress concern about the meta-crisis hoping it will go away and BAU will continue.
That's all good news then!
I'll get in my v8 range Rover and drive 2km to get a paper newspaper and a steak and cheese pie for breakfast. Off to Sydney for the weekend to celebrate a birthday. Back late Sunday night and Monday I start 26 weeks of carnivore diet while reviewing plans of my new 900m2 concrete and schist stone 2 bed room granny flat! Lucky I can self certify that one!
Happy 1 November everyone. Get used to the warmer and wetter climate. No Hopium left in me, until politicians stop building more roads, public transport is well funded and free and drilling for oil and gas stops.
Exceptionally important conversation Catherine and Bernard, around responding to and processing our pain and fear by participating in collective action. Our emotional responses are legitimate and should not be ignored, they are a warning to be acted on. At the same time general wellbeing measures can help us continue our climate work - like eating healthily, regular sleep routines, physical activity , connection to nature and people, seeking learning opportunities, mindfulness and giving something of ourselves to others (see CLANG 5-a-day for mental wellbeing). Plus taking breaks from the work some of the time. I can also recommend this podcast for an approach to the crucial emotional processing required. https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/tara-brach/id265264862
And - the things that most make me despair and likely to feel like giving up, is when prominent leaders in government or industry deny their role or take actions which will actually make the future worse. Whereas I get most motivation from hearing results of big policy changes or activism successes. And from awesome people like you both informing and talking sense to the world! Kia kaha
This all makes for depressing and despairing reading. Even when leaders do speak the truth, they are politely, even somewhat embarrassingly, reported on and reacted to. And then nothing. How many different ways can the UN Sec Gen keep saying, "really everyone, we need to STOP. NOW"? How many times can a Pacific Island PM stand up and say "Do something World. Do anything"?
Our NZ media (and others around the world) by and large refer to climate change in passing - almost as if it is an unremarkable thing. They have moved from not talking about it at all - to talking about it as if it was a contested idea (it hasn't been since the early 1980s) - straight to talking about it as an unavoidable fact of life.
"Oh dear! Your town is on fire or under-water? Wow, hey, bad luck! Really feel for you. Well, that's climate change you know. Anyway, how about those All Blacks! "
When Don't Look Up came out, it was attacked as a histrionic response to our collective, deliberate, wilful unknowing. It strikes me that it was actually very, very accurate about our self-distraction and not really that much of a heightened satire.
What is missing - with some honourable exceptions - is any sense, that to work, hope needs a vision of what will be different in order to navigate towards it. In other words, hope cannot just be motivated by an absence of something. It cannot be merely, "we won't destroy the continuum of human civilization and the genetic inheritance of the rest of the biomass on Earth, the only place in the universe we know for certain has evolved complex life". Incredibly, this is seemingly not enough to move people to change.
The details don't all need to be nailed down. The Victorian social reformers didn't always have the "workers' paradise" sorted out in their heads. But along the way, they had clear, sign-posted improvements. An 8-hour day; a 6-day week, then a 5-day week; annual leave; sick leave; safe workplaces; workers compensation; unemployment and old age social insurance; universal suffrage; no child labour; fair pay for work; the right to organise; maternity leave; public health provision etc. etc. (That this is all being systematically unpicked is, hey-ho, a different topic).
Once the direction can be set, even if it is contestable, then the real change can happen. With this, politicians can lead; can have difficult conversations about the necessary adjustments to "normality" for most of us here in Aotearoa-NZ. Businesses can evolve different forms to adapt to the new commercial and regulatory environments.
Right now, no polly wants to do what is required because it would be a one-way ticket to electoral oblivion. And that is because we, the voters, will not willingly give up our king-cab Utes and Double-beef, double-cheese, double bacon everything burgers. We won't give up (not so) cheap flights overseas because we are not shown a credible alternative that is attractive enough to hope and strive for.
And that is why the Kaka, its dedicated reporting; its focus of the facts of the world and its formulation of a project that offers an alternative is so very valuable. Thanks Bernard & Co.