This podcast episode is all about energy and features an extract from our longer interview with the celebrated writer and activist Margaret Atwood 

While Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are holding up tankers and stopping oil refineries, the government is sitting on the energy policy it promised after the Ukraine invasion. With rising poverty, rising fuel prices, and rising fears about the future, the question of how quickly and effectively we can transition to clean energy has become urgent.  

We begin with Oil Music, a short pointed poem by Gboyega A Odubanjo and then hear Margaret Atwood in London last week connecting the dots between the Ukraine and the fossil fuel crisis and expressing her worries about the future. 

The main interview is with energy expert and former BBC environment correspondent Richard Black. Richard is no stranger to the podcast and  wore a slightly different hat for our recent very well received episode about climate denial. 

This episode is co-presented by Nuala Lam a veteran of the Media and Messaging team who discusses the strategy behind the planning of this April’s rebellion, the form the rebellion will take and the Writers Festival which will take place on the 15th April. 

In a wide ranging interview that is a centre of the programme Richard Black discusses fracking, how the energy crisis is partly a result of the COVID shut downs and how Putin used that crisis. He then goes on to discuss  blue and green carbon, his recent viral  tweet about how UK gas exports are at a record high this year.

Finally we end with a a reminder of UN secretary generals speech after launching the most renent IPCC report in February in which he brands political inaction as ‘criminal’.  

CREDITS

Producer and co-presenter Jessica Townsend

Margaret Atwood interview by Toby Litt, Tobias Withers, and Kelly Hill
Interview edit by David McKeever

Co-presenter resenter Nuala Lam

Sound editor in chief Tim Rabjohns

Extra sound editing by Stuart J Wilson aka bigfix

Social Media from Bloody Vegans Productions

In this podcast we're glad to feature the eminent writer Amitav Ghosh who is an influential Indian environmental thinker who has won many honours for his fiction. He's also an academic and author of several substantial works of non-fiction, including The Great Derangement, an exploration of literature’s failure to address the climate and ecological emergency. His new work, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, is the subject of this interview. 

What is striking about Amitav’s work is that he is just as at home with the big picture of an unstable Earth, as he is talking about the personal agonies brought on by Covid, or the beautiful constellations found within a nutmeg and the myths it has inspired. He gives fresh and humane insights into the world today and writes with wisdom and compassion about the core issues of colonialism, racism and systemic genocide that are fundamental to the crisis we’re now in. Perhaps a career of crafting ten novels has put him in a good position to try to see everyone’s point of view, even the bad guys. 

In person, Amitav Ghosh speaks modestly. In our times of swagger, shouting and bravado, it would be easy to underestimate that voice. But listen, and you’ll encounter a fierce intelligence, fed by insight and research. And in this interview, he speaks briefly of his grief in the face of what he sees as inevitable societal collapse. 

Producer and presenter: Jessica Townsend
Producer and sound editor: Aidan Lewis Knox

Did you catch the BBC drama The Trick? If not, it is still on BBC iPlayer (apologies for non-UK friends). It shows the birth of the arch denialist group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in 2009 from the point of view of a scientist who was unlucky enough to get enmeshed in their campaign to discredit the science of global warming. It’s a great watch with elements of thriller, drama and even love story.

Today it’s clear the GWPF is still very active in the run up to COP26 in its attempts to make sure the UK Net Zero plans come to nothing and to ensure the international talks are a failure, putting all our lives at risk.

The group never declare their funders but it’s clear they are acting covertly on behalf of big oil and other vested interests. 

Their focus now is on delaying domestic and international transformation to meet net zero targets. And their tactics are no longer denial of the science.

In this podcast, the first for many months, presenter Jessica Townsend and Tom Hardy from the Media Tell The Truth group look at the launch of the GWPF back in 2009 and find that their tactics were there from the beginning: bending the truth, using connections in right wing media, and raising doubts on every aspect of moving forward with the race to decarbonise.

We talk to Richard Black a long-time BBC environment correspondent, and the author of Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism. 

Show credits:

Producer and presenter: Jessica Townsend

Editor and presenter: Tom Hardy