Drilling Deep: John Vaillant on the Climate-Fire Nexus

With Australia once again facing a terrifying fire season, we bring you this conversation between Drilled reporter Royce Kurmelovs and Canadian author John Vallaint, who spoke at last year's Byron Writers Festival about his acclaimed book, Fire Weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this bonus episode of The Black Thread, we zoom in on a single case that distills the Norwegian paradox perfectly: the planned electrification of the gas processing plant on Melkøya. It’s a key conflict site where Norway’s net zero transformation collides with its fossil fuel industry, Indigenous rights, the youth climate movement, worker safety, and even criticism from the United Nations.  For more information and references: https://communicatingclimatechange.com/the-black-thread Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite increasing repression worldwide (as we’ve documented in previous seasons), activists have been pretty effective at sticking it to obstructionists too…which is probably why all that repression is happening in the first place. In our final episode, Jennie Stephens from the University of Ireland Maynooth and Sharon Yadin from University of Haifa take us through which tactics are working and why.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve never lied to you on Drilled and we’re not going to start now. It’s bleak out there. But some efforts to fight back against obstruction are working and litigation is one of them. In this episode we talk to London School of Economics' Joana Setzer about how courts around the world are getting involved and what that means for companies that keep reminding us they’re global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than a decade ago—when wind and solar power were far more expensive than they are today—the nation of Uruguay, long plagued by droughts and energy shortages, transitioned its entire economy such that some 98 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable sources. And they did it in just two years. And they used the savings to slash the country’s poverty rate from 40 percent into the single digits. Uruguay’s conventional-wisdom-busting transformation is one of nine inspiring case studies in the journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata’s Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe. In August, Drilled spoke with Hakimi Zapata about what lessons climate advocates and policymakers around the world can learn from Uruguay’s remarkable transition, why the left should not shy away from articulating the economic case for clean energy, and how many of the progressive policies profiled in the book seem to emerge from moments of crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're bringing you episode 5 of Dana R. Fisher's COP Out podcast, from the Center for Environment, Equity and Community at American University, featuring our own Amy Westervelt and legendary climate scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe talking about what happened at this year's COP, whether the process is fixable, and how to get the benefits of global convenings without all the headaches. Check out the rest of Dana's series here: https://cece.american.edu/cece-launches-the-copout-podcast-for-apocalyptically-optimistic-climate-conversations/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Working against regulations on emissions might make a certain amount of sense for those with money to lose, but why would anyone fight against adapting to be able to survive climate disasters? In the negotiating rooms at COP30, adaptation was one of the biggest debate areas. In this episode, experts Laura Kuhl from Northeastern University and Stacy-Ann Robinson from Emory University explain why this area gets so contentious and how obstruction plays out around adaptation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel and I are back after a little hiatus to bring you our long awaited Carbon Bros mailbag episode.  We received so many interesting responses from people around the world. Thanks for sharing your stories, sparking ideas, and raising pivotal questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The COP is in its fourth decade. If it were capable, in its current form, of achieving its stated aim of tackling climate change, it would probably have done so by now. So why isn’t it working? How is it possible that so much fanfare, so many words, and so much work—much of it genuine and good-faith—has amounted to such little progress? University of Toronto political science professor Jessica F. Green has some ideas. In Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, the longtime observer of global climate negotiations and expert on carbon accounting argues that the COP embodies a “win-win” approach to a problem for which someone has to lose. The challenge, then, is to make sure the right people (and planet) do the winning, while the “fossil asset owners,” as Green describes them, do the losing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The UN processes created to deal with climate change have been infiltrated by obstructive forces since jump. In this episode, as COP 30 begins, Kari de Pryck from the University of Geneva and Eduardo  Viola of the Institute of International Relations in Brasil join us to look at how COP and the IPCC get hijacked by those opposed to climate action, and what we can expect to see at this year’s COP in Brazil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices