Reversing Climate Change

Ted Nordhaus is the Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, the world’s first ecomodernist think tank promoting technological solutions to environmental problems. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Ted joins Ross and Christophe to discuss the fundamentals of ecomodernism, explaining the movement’s idea of decoupling and offering his response to the degrowther argument against it.

Nathanael Johnson is a Senior Writer at Grist and the author of All Natural: A Skeptic’s Quest to Discover If the Natural Approach to Diet, Childbirth, Healing and the Environment Really Keeps Us Healthier and Happier and Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Nathanael joins Ross and Christophe to discuss how his writing challenges the status quo, asking the questions that inspire real results

Bill McKibben is the author and environmentalist credited with penning the first book on climate change written for a general audience, The End of Nature. He is also a founder of 350.org, the first global, grassroots climate change movement. Bill was awarded the 2014 Right Livelihood Prize, the 2013 Gandhi Prize and the 2013 Thomas Merton Prize, and he was named to Foreign Policy magazine’s inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.

Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist with expertise in ocean science, deep time, astrobiology, and the carbon cycle. Peter walks Ross and Christophe through the five major mass extinctions in Earth’s history, discussing what events triggered each extinction and how plant and animal life changed each time.

Thaddeus Russell joins Ross, Christophe and Paul to explain why he takes issue with the environmental movement. He challenges the moralist approach to political problems, describing how environmentalists leverage guilt and shame individual choices—while ignoring big emitters like the US military. Thaddeus also offers an overview of the Progressive Era, discussing the historical efforts to eliminate cultural diversity in the US and sharing his take on the parallels between progressives and environmentalist

Today, Albert Bates joins Christophe and Alexsandra to share his unique path from the courtroom to the ecovillage, describing how he came to study terra preta soils and get involved in the biochar movement. Listen in for Albert’s insight around the waste streams that could serve as biochar source material and learn about the ecovillages and cities that serve as proof of concept for using biochar to draw carbon out of our atmosphere and oceans!

A significant amount of carbon has been stored in Arctic permafrost for tens of thousands of years. And unless we take radical steps to restore the ecosystem that we destroyed there, the permafrost will melt and release 1400 GT of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This dwarfs the amount humans generate annually and would accelerate climate change on an exponential scale. So, what can we do to reestablish the grasslands and reintroduce the animals that used to dominate the region?

Today, Joel joins Ross and Christophe to share his practice of duplicating nature’s patterns on the farmscape. He offers his take on the flaws in the environmentalist approach to climate change and where the Christian faith community, libertarians, and economists fall short. Joel also describes how the regulatory environment is prejudiced against small-scale operations, exploring the way oversight stifles innovation.

Today, Andrea joins Ross and Christophe to explain why Juliana v. US qualifies as a constitutional law case, sharing the progress of the case to date and discussing how it provides a framework for decarbonization. She describes the nuances of the government’s duty to protect its citizens and counters the argument that the government didn’t know its energy policy contributed to climate change.

Like it or not, humans have become the dominant agent of change on the planet, and as we proceed further into the Anthropocene period, we have a responsibility to accept responsibility and find a way to gracefully integrate our presence. But what if we are not the only ones who have experienced this phenomenon? What if the process of inadvertent planetary change is universal? What if the climate challenges we face are a natural part of planetary evolution?