As we lurch towards irreversible climate chaos, how can we begin to pull back from the edge?  This week, we look specifically at the area of transport: how can we be mobile and yet reach the 3 Zeroes of Death, Emissions and Carbon?  What would it mean to live in an area with fair, free, extensive public transport? And how can we make this happen. Our lively, inspiring conversation with Dr John Whitelegg has answers.  Dr John Whitelegg, BA PhD LLB, is visiting professor, School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University and was formerly professor of geography and head of department at Lancaster University and a staff member of the global science policy organisation, the Stockholm Environment Institute. He has worked with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and the Environment (Germany) and is an associate of the Kassel Centre for Mobility Culture (Germany) and a board member of the Californian organisation “Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities”.John has edited the journal “World Transport Policy and Practice for 25 years and has written 10 books. In the most recent book Mobility, he presents an evidence-based case for a transformation of the totality of transport and mobility policy to achieve three zeroes (zero carbon, zero deaths and injuries and zero air pollution). He has also worked extensively on practical measures to achieve 100% decarbonisation of land transport.In this episode, we talk at length about what needs to happen in our transport systems to bring about the three zeroes of death, emissions and carbon.  John has travelled widely and worked in Germany, Sweden, and the outer Hebrides as well as many locations in the UK.  He has a coherent set of ideas of what needs to be done - and we considered some of the ways ordinary people can begin to make these happen.  Foundation for Integrated Transport: https://integratedtransport.co.uk/Center for Research into Energy Demand Solutions: https://www.creds.ac.uk/West Oxfordshire Community Transport: https://www.woct.org.uk/South Shropshire Climate Action Group: https://southshropshireclimateaction.org/Trust the People: https://www.trustthepeople.earth/the-courseArticle on Car free cities UK - 1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/26/city-entres-end-of-road-for-cars-brighton-bristol-yorkArticle on Car free cities UK - 2: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/31/york-to-ban-private-cars-from-city-centre-within-three-years

If the stories of our culture are of separation, scarcity and powerlessness, how can we build new stories, new myths, new ideas of how we can be different?  Alina Siegfried has explored the deep concepts of the stories of our world, and how we can reshape them.  We are the stories we tell ourselves - about who we are and where we're going. In our small day to day decisions, we think how our stories of ourselves will be enhanced by the things we do. So when all our stories have been about scarcity, separation and powerlessness, and how we can fight to gain more than those with whom we are in competition - how can we build healing, whole, healthy stories that will bring us forward to a flourishing future? Alina Siegfried is a performance poet, storyteller, and advocate for systems change. She has worked at Enspiral, in the New Zealand Government, and for the Edmund Hillary Foundation.  Her book, 'A Future Untold' brings our stories to the heart of our systemic change. Alina's website: https://www.alinasiegfried.com/Aina's TEDx Talk: https://youtu.be/PM_xnvTVyEsIntroduction to Johan Rockstrom: https://youtu.be/yBjB-w5HD_M?list=PLxTt2Nm5dTv3awnK1ren4BtHNctW_v7zYCommon Cause Foundation: https://commoncausefoundation.org/about/The Long Now Foundation: https://longnow.org/Don't Think of an Elephant: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-All-New-Dont-Think-of-an-Elephant-by-George-Lakoff/9781603585941

Anthea Lawson is a campaigner who’s interested in the connections between our inner lives and the world we create together.  In a world of such astonishing inequity, where ever fewer people hold ever more power, how do those of us whose lives are given to change, meet the reality that we are embedded in the system? If we are an integral part of the problem, how can we live the solution into being? Is that even what we're here for?  Anthea Lawson has thought about this in immense depth and with huge courage.  Over two decades, she has campaigned to shut down tax havens and stop banks fuelling corruption and ecological destruction. She launched an award-winning campaign for transparency over who owns companies, which was taken up by many other organisations and has resulted in changes to the law in dozens of countries. She worked on the successful campaigns for an Arms Trade Treaty, and for the international ban on cluster bombs. She has worked for Global Witness, Amnesty International, and many other campaign groups. She's dug up Parliament Square in guerilla gardening efforts, and was arrested with Extinction Rebellion. In her writing she explores what we can learn from how we do campaigning: how our inner lives are entangled in our work to change the world. I’ve been exploring this as an associate at Perspectiva, and in her book The Entangled Activist: Learning to recognise the master's tools, to be published in spring 2021.She is interested, too, in the limits of campaigning in a time of breakdown, which I’ve been exploring through editing at the Dark Mountain Project.​Her book is a deep exploration of personal process that then expands so that it becomes relevant to us all - if we're activists (and frankly, if you're listening to this podcast, I imagine you're an activist at some point in your life even if you don't identify as such), then we are also an integral part of the system that is the problem - disentangling ourselves from this is not going to happen. So the question arises of how we can be the change we need to see in the world. Anthea has explored this in depth  and it was such a pleasure to engage with her on this question.  Anthea's website: https://www.anthealawson.uk/Perspectiva Press: https://systems-souls-society.com/insight/perspectiva-press/Dark Mountain Press: https://dark-mountain.net/

What is the bare minimum we need world leaders to agree at COP26 and what can we do if they fail?  Rupert Read, academic philosopher, author and climate activist discusses the urgency of the moment - and how a 'moderate flank' of climate activists can grow out of the COP.  Dr Rupert Read is a long term climate activist.  On the day after this podcast goes out, he'll be in court on charges of Criminal Damage for pouring water soluble paint on the steps of a hard-core climate denying think tank.  No stranger to action as well as thought, he is one of he nation's foremost climate philosophers and in today's episode, we explore together the nature of our current crisis, the hope (or otherwise) for international agreement at COP26 and action at an appropriate scale afterwards - and then look at how we as individuals can help foment a worldwide move towards a coherent, adaptive future, including ideas such as employee strikes mirroring the 'Fridays for Future' school strikes, the employers who are actively supporting climate action, and the ways we can begin to become more resilient and less dependent on 'business as usual'.  We end by discussing the Thrutopia Masterclass, starting May 1st on which Rupert will be the inaugural speaker. Rupert Read web site: https://rupertread.net/Rupert's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/GreenRupertRead10 Tests for COP:  https://greenworld.org.uk/article/10-tests-cop26Ocean Tipping Point Paper: https://tinyurl.com/2e25nm8sPerspective Article on Moderate Flank: https://systems-souls-society.com/what-next-on-climate-the-need-for-a-moderate-flank/New Statesman Article on employers allowing climate action: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2019/09/can-your-employer-stop-you-joining-climate-strikeSimilar article on Employers from Ian McGregor: https://theconversation.com/everyones-business-why-companies-should-let-their-workers-join-the-climate-strike-122976Tech workers global climate strike: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-workers-global-climate-change-strike/Companies who are participating in the climate strike: https://www.fastcompany.com/90403903/these-are-all-the-companies-participating-in-the-climate-strike

If we are going to meet the challenges of the climate, ecological and cultural crisis, we're going to have to change the systems that surround us: Education systems, health care systems, food systems, economic systems... ultimately systems of government.  How can we do so peacefully and kindly without leaving vast numbers of people in freefall?  The systems around us have grown up in a world that assumed them impervious to change. But - as Greta has said - change is coming. So how do we navigate it, and shape it to a flourishing future?  How can we be part of the bigger change the world needs to see?  Dr Anna Birney is Director of the School for System Change at the Forum for the Future. She is author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner's companion, and she is 'passionate about designing and facilitating systems change programmes that support people, communities and organisations to transform their practice'.Anna started facilitating multi-stakeholder processes around the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. At WWF-UK she ran a six-year education programme on system change which included setting up 56 communities of practice to knit together innovative practices. This experience supported her to develop practical system change frameworks for WWF-UK and Forum for the Future as well as organisations including Unilever, Nike, Shell Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Innovate UK and the NHS, through the System Innovation Lab - experimenting and learning how to develop different practices. This led onto setting up the School of System Change where as well as overseeing the learning and curriculum, Anna now coaches on a wide number of projects and initiatives including the Marine CoLab, the #Oneless project and Oxfam’s System Innovation in Woman’s Economic Empowerment. She is the author of Cultivating System Change: A practitioner’s companion which is based on her PhD.“Having cultivated the School since 2016 it gives me great pleasure to continue to engage and learn from participants, contributors and partners to evolve what we offer.  I am most excited about how we can grow the number and diversity of facilitators and the diversity of learning, exploring what systems change practice might look like in different contexts and geographies.”Links: Forum for the Future: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/School for System Change: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/school-of-system-changeYouTube Video for the BaseCamp Course: https://youtu.be/B-oqDQkQ54UAnna's Medium page: https://annasquestions.medium.com/Anna's Book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/cultivating-system-change/anna-birney/9781910174098Cultivating the Future: Medium blog: https://medium.com/school-of-system-change/cultivating-system-change-a-practitioners-companion-e05e541c1726The Presencing Institute: https://www.presencing.org/

As we understand more of the climate and ecological emergency, it becomes increasingly clear that Regenerative Agriculture needs to be one of the mainstays of our plans for systemic change.  Part 2 of 2 with Ffinlo Costain of Farmwel and the Farm Gate podcast.We live in an era of empty food, vast food miles and a burgeoning ecosystem emergency that is largely pushed by a chemical-based agriculture system that is poisoning waterways, oceans, and soil, destroying the biodiversity of our land and waters and harming the health of humanity.  A regenerative farming system that works, in Ffinlo's words 'with nature rather than in spite of nature' can do so much to improve our health, bring us back into relationship with the living earth, restore our devastated ecosystems, restore the water cycle  - and draw down CO2 into the earth so that as we build soil, we heal our climate.  With so much to go right, why are we not doing this everywhere? That's one of the questions I ask Ffinlo Costain, host of the FarmGate podcast and Founder and CEO of Farmwel, a company dedicated to helping generate momentum towards sustainable mainstream agriculture and aquaculture, focussing on the environment, people's livelihoods, and farm animal health and welfare.Ffinlo is in the almost-unique position of understanding the problems, having solutions and having the ear of people in power.  So if anyone's going to help us change, it's him.  Join us for a fascinating, detailed, inspiring pair of podcasts. Farmwel: https://www.farmwel.org.uk/FarmGate podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788UNFCCC NDC calculations: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_08_adv_1.pdfSoil Health Report will be released Oct 20th 2021 - available here: www.foodandsecurity.net 

How can we reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, build living soil from the chaos of industrial farming, while growing healthy nutritious food and restoring our devastated ecosystems?  Regenerative farming has so many of the answers and this week we speak to the host of the FarmGate podcast, Ffinlo Costain. Two parts - this is Part One.We live in an era of empty food, vast food miles and a burgeoning ecosystem emergency that is largely pushed by a chemical-based agriculture system that is poisoning waterways, oceans, and soil, destroying the biodiversity of our land and waters and harming the health of humanity.  A regenerative farming system that works, in Ffinlo's words 'with nature rather than in spite of nature' can do so much to improve our health, bring us back into relationship with the living earth, restore our devastated ecosystems, restore the water cycle  - and draw down CO2 into the earth so that as we build soil, we heal our climate.  With so much to go right, why are we not doing this everywhere? That's one of the questions I ask Ffinlo Costain, host of the FarmGate podcast and Founder and CEO of Farmwel, a company dedicated to helping generate momentum towards sustainable mainstream agriculture and aquaculture, focussing on the environment, people's livelihoods, and farm animal health and welfare.Ffinlo is in the almost-unique position of understanding the problems, having solutions and having the ear of people in power.  So if anyone's going to help us change, it's him.  Join us for a fascinating, detailed, inspiring pair of podcasts. Farmwel: https://www.farmwel.org.uk/FarmGate podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788UNFCCC NDC calculations: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_08_adv_1.pdfSoil Health Report will be released Oct 20th 2021 - available here: www.foodandsecurity.net 

How can we build a progressive political movement that spans the world and that will take us to where we need to be: a future we can be proud of and towards which all of us will want to work?  Taking politics, activism, progressive ideals with Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London. This is one of our most nakedly political conversations - because politics is the language of power and those who rule over us do so with at least the vestige of a democratic mandate.   To understand how to affect change, we need to understand how to shift the levers of power on a worldwide scale. But change always begins at home, so in this week's episode, we're talking about political activism in the UK and where it might go in the near term.  Our guest is someone really well placed to discuss this: Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London. His most recent publications include  Twenty-First-Century Socialism (Polity 2020) the translation of Maurizio Lazzarato's Experimental Politics and the book Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism. His next book, Hegemony Now : How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World , co-authored with Alex Williams,  will be published in 2022. He writes regularly for the British press (including the Guardian, the New Statesman, open Democracy and Red Pepper) and for think tanks such as IPPR and Compass, is routinely engaged in debates and discussion on Labour Party policy and strategy, and has appeared on national television as a spokesperson for  Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.He has been involved with both mainstream party politics and extra-parliamentary activism throughout his adult life, having been an active participant in the social forum movement of the early 2000s,  a member of the founding national committee of Momentum (the controversial organisation established to support Corbyn's leadership of Labour),  and being a former elected member management committee of Compass, a pluralist left-wing think tank and lobby group.Jeremy  is an an advisor to and participant in a range of ongoing projects such as The World Transformed and the New Economy Organisers Network. He has also participated in many cultural projects, particularly connected with music and sonic culture, and is a founder member of Lucky Cloud Sound System and Beauty and the Beat, two successful and respected collectives that have been organising regular dance parties in East London since the early 2000s, at many of which he still regularly DJs.Jeremy also maintains a lifelong commitment to public education outside the academy, currently hosting Culture, Power, Politics, a  regular series of free open seminars and lectures.Links: Jeremy's website: https://www.jeremygilbert.orgJeremy's blog: https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2021/06/04/2020-analysis/Jeremy's papers on Open Democracy: https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2021/06/04/2020-analysis/Guardian review of Jeremy's book 'Twenty First Century Socialism': https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/06/twenty-first-century-socialism-by-jeremy-gilbert-reviewJeremy at Novara Media: https://novaramedia.com/tag/jeremy-gilbert/Compass: https://www.compassonline.org.uk/The World Transformed: https://www.theworldtransformed.org/Momentum: https://www.theworldtransformed.org/

How can we embrace our humanity and use it in service to the earth and all that lives?  How can we bring the best of ourselves to the best of the Web of Life in full understanding of the chaos of the moment, with full and open hearts?  Deena Metzger has given her life to finding answers - and shares them here.From her experience at three years old when she saw the spirit of her grandmother at the foot of her crib, Deena Metzger's life has been devoted to the exploration of the worlds of spirit and of humanity, combined, in search of an answer to the question: What is your Calling? Working as a poet, novelist, therapist, healer and visionary, she has brought together Nineteen Ways to a Viable Future - a route by which all of humanity can become the best of ourselves and thus be what the web of life needs of us.  In this conversation, we explore some of those Ways and the routes by which Deena reached them, together with her thoughts of the present and future as we move into the time of crisis. In her own works, Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over fifty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.Deena has spent a lifetime investigating Story as a form of knowing and healing. As a writer, she asks: Who do we have to become to find the forms and sacred language with which to meet these times?She conducts training groups on the spiritual, creative, political and ethical aspects of healing and peacemaking, individual, community and global, drawing deeply on alliance with spirit, indigenous teachings and the many wisdom traditions. One focus is on uniting Western medical ways with indigenous medicine traditions.Deena's website: https://deenametzger.net/

In a world of uncertainty, transformation and potential catastrophe, how can we find our own truth and, from there, speak with authenticity to the children and young people in our lives about the world that is coming?  Louis Weinstock is a celebrated psychotherapist who finds ways to help people of all ages connect with their own truth and share it.  In this episode, we explore our attitudes to death, loss - and the climate emergency - and how we can hold the conversations that need to happen. Louis Weinstock is a remarkable man - a deeply committed therapist who does his best to make his skills available to as many children and young people as need them - and so many do.  He focuses on grief and loss, initially around death and diagnoses of fatal illness, but increasingly the existential grief of our dying ecosystem and the despair, rage and frustration at a world that is not acting as it could or should.  In this profoundly moving podcast, we talk in depth about how all of us can exist with our grief and despair, how we can hold them tenderly, and how, from these places of resilience and strength, we can hold the conversations that need to happen in our widening circles. About Louis: Louis works with children, and the child inside us all, the one that wants to be loved, the one that wants to cry, the one that knows what it wants, the one that really does dance like no-one’s watching, the one that spends timeless hours looking at bugs under a piece of bark, the one that keeps getting back up no matter how many times they fall down.He helps people find a light in the darkness, especially in grief, in the shadow, in the things that are unseen, unheard, unspoken. Her sees death as our greatest teacher, and avoidance of it our biggest mistake. He made an audio course all about death and life here: it will help you become more fully alive in your everyday existence. He runs Magic Power of Grief circles at festivals, and in other spaces and places.He believes the body is deeply intelligent, and our ‘symptoms’ are just fragments of our soul seeking wholeness. Rumi once said “What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe”.He loves using design, collaboration and creativity to solve big, meaningful problems. One way he does this is by helping to run a charity – Apart of Me – that helps kids transform their grief into compassion. This project also has two side projects which are focused on helping younger children grow into emotionally empowered leaders: Earthlings and Bounce Works.Making a home for experience in words is his favourite spiritual craft. You can check out some of his writing here. His book about How The World Is Making Our Children Mad And What To Do About It - is available now. See also Episode 131 of the podcast where we talk to Louis about it.Louis Weinstock: https://louisweinstock.com/A Part of Me https://www.apartofme.app/Wider Horizons Summer Festival: https://widerhorizons.events/