Join Darragh Wynne and Ellen Hegarty over the course of 7 episodes as they ask how our experience of COVID can help better prepare us for climate change.

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In the opening episode, hosts Darragh Wynne and Ellen Hegarty explain the basic premise of the series: we can learn a lot from our experience of COVID to better understand and deal with the climate crisis.

Episode 1 focuses on the concept of a timelag; the delay between actions occurring and seeing the consequences of those actions.

With COVID, it takes a few weeks between transmission of the virus and a peak in deaths. With climate change, it will be decades and centuries before we see the impacts of the emissions we have already pumped into the atmosphere. All the more reason to act now!

Join Darragh and Ellen as they chat about science. It's been central in understanding and tackling COVID and lots of us are more scientifically literate as a result. So this episode looks at how our understanding of COVID science can help us to better understand climate science.

Ellen and Darragh make a few recommendations of where else to go to if you want to learn more about climate science:

BBC Christmas Lectures 2020

https://www.rigb.org//christmas-lectures/watch?video-type=videos&video-year=2020

NASA website:

https://climate.nasa.gov/

NASA for kids:

https://climatekids.nasa.gov/

Climate Allies Podcast Ep 1 with John Gibbons https://open.spotify.com/episode/7e8mj4kQJBy064wYPmIzGW?si=LuknJ0ofRb6kLKxqguGttQ

Leo Varadkar's speech on the steps of the Irish Embassy in Washington DC in March 2020 was one of those seminal moments, the day our lives changed. Ellen and Darragh use that speech as the focal point for their chat about the parallels between COVID and climate politics.

If we are going to take meaningful action on climate change we need to approach it with the same seriousness, the same crisis footing.

The episode ends with suggestions for getting more politically active and these websites/organisations are mentioned:

whoismytd.com

onefuture.ie

stopclimatechaos.ie

The speech which the episode is based around can be found here:

https://amp.rte.ie/amp/1121849/

Darragh and Ellen are back for episode 4 to talk about power, who's got it, and the parallels between how those with power have used it to tackle (or not tackle) the COVID and climate crises.

The pair delve into the power of the individual vs. system and how they are inextricably linked and of course, there's some great advice on taking climate action.

In the episode they mention this speech from Greta Thunberg

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/10/greta-thunberg-we-are-speeding-in-the-wrong-direction-on-climate-crisis

Darragh and Ellen turn their attention towards the media in the latest instalment of The COVID Alarm Clock. The media's coverage of the pandemic has been comprehensive and helped people to make sense of what was going on in those early months. Is climate coverage as good as their COVID coverage? Tune in to find out!

At the end of the episode Darragh and Ellen suggest some good environmental news sources:

The Guardian

The Sunday Times monthly climate supplement

Greennews.ie

They recommend following these journalists on Twitter:

John Gibbons @think_or_swim

George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot

Kevin O Sullivan @KOSullivanIT

Caroline O Doherty @codohertynews

Kayle Crossan @CrossonKayle

Philip Boucher Hayes @boucherhayes

Fintan O' Toole @fotoole

Daniel Murray @DanielTMurray

And get it straight from the horses mouth by following these climate scientists:

Peter Kalmus @climatehuman

Prof. Katharine Hayhoe @KHayhoe

Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy

Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate

Barry McMullan @autofac

Michael Mann @MichaelEMann

Eric Holthaus @EricHolthaus

Darragh and Ellen chat about the economy in relation to the COVID and climate crisis, though not before Ellen talks about sea swimming and Darragh talks about birdwatching. The economy hasn't been able to function very well throughout the pandemic. With the impacts of climate change on the horizon, what needs to change to crisis proof our economy? Tune in to find out.

In this episode Doughnut Economics is mentioned. You can find out more here: https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

And more about the birds study here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201204110246.htm

For the last episode in the series, Darragh and Ellen look at ecology and the interconnectedness of many of the challenges facing society. They ask if the COVID and climate crises are actually symptoms of a broader problem, namely our broken relationship with nature.