Speaker 1good morning good afternoon good evening sexy people how are you feeling what have you been up to this week anything cool anything more exciting to me i've had i've gone i've gone straight back to my natural habitat this past week after uh my incident with the police i've gone back straight into my natural habitat of being indoors trying to stay warm and just hacking away on the computer in my pajamas in true rock and roll style i mean don't believe what you see in those instagram posts if anyone that follows me on instagram or facebook would genuinely believe that i spent all my time walking around in a leather jacket and boots it's not true man it's not true i spent probably 99 of my time in the house in the same hoodie with a beard just like like a fucking hermit you know pale like a vampire you know i mean just scared of the daylight and doing everything i can to avoid other human beings that that's my general policy i think if the roads were empty and the streets were empty you probably see a lot more of me outdoors but you know there are several contributing factors as to why i spend most of my time indoors and my recent experience with the police you know jumping me in my car um kind of proves why i'm better off staying inside but i get a lot of shit done in these four walls man it's been a very productive week in terms of making plans for next year for the band you know after such a long hiatus that we've had now with the two-year pandemic and also my family situation i had for most of this year has given us three years kind of in the pit stop you know so um yeah i've been chatting to some awesome third parties who are going to hopefully be a part of us um launch relaunching ourselves back out there into what is hopefully going to be a much better year in 2023 after what has been an absolutely fucking challenging and awful 2022 so first i'm going to get this christmas thing out of the way i'm going to do lots of relaxing i'm going to do lots of trying to stay warm if i can um maybe i have to remortgage the house you know so that i can afford to pay that gas bill to heat the fucking thing but january i'll be coming out of those gates swinging you watch me but first we've got another awesome guest and i'm so glad we managed to make this happen before the year is out because i think it's a perfect time to have an end of year reminder and summary of where we're at currently with some global issues that are of utmost importance to all of our lives moving forward and also so that we can be armed with the knowledge that we need to collectively come out of the gates swinging in 2023 in order to take action on these pressing urgent issues and because i'm so good to you ungrateful bastards i've managed to get the one and only mr charlie chronic to come and speak with us if you don't know charlie chronic is a senior program advisor at greenpeace uk he has worked in the fields of environment and development as an activist campaigner and writer for nearly 30 years so he knows what he's talking about and we're super lucky to have him with us today to share his knowledge and time with us charlie we appreciate you being here thanks so much for doing this man how you doing this fine and cold morning
Speaker 2well it's a pleasure to be here and yeah i'm doing fine i guess in the context of the general shit show in which we are all inhabiting right now whenever anybody asks me how i'm doing i think should i should we ever tell people how we're really doing nah let's not do that anyway so i'm good and i'm happy to be
Speaker 1here so so that's the fake answer so that leads me perfectly into the what i think is probably going to hint towards the real answer which is i wanted to kick off with where are we at currently with the climate emergency i know that's a massive question but what's the general
Speaker 2status i think to be really absolutely blunt we are hanging on by our fingernails right i think that they're the technical possibility of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change are still available to us that means you know rapid decarbonization of you know our power system of our transport systems the way we heat our homes changes in diet which are going to be both necessary and probably necessarily good for us as well less processed food more local food less meat and dairy all of those things are possible to do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change the real question is will people do them and will the institutions that set the framework for our behavior do them and i think it's really important this is you know what you do what i do what we do as communities is really crucial but even if you total up all the individual decisions that people particularly in the global north in the minority world make those individual decisions are going to be really important and i think that's the real question and i think it's really important and i think it's really important and i think that's the real question and i think it's really important and i think that's the real question those that no matter how great your personal commitment is to doing the right thing it won't be enough we actually have to change the structure of the country we live in now we do that all the time you know we have you know we've changed the way we use telecommunications we've changed the way we use it we've changed the way we we transport ourselves around and we move so much more all of those changes are possible but they're not down to single individual choices and i think it's really important to get that on the table because very it's it's very easy for you know whether you're an oil company to say well our customers want to buy this stuff or if your government's saying well this is what you know citizens want it's what they're offered and if you're offered a choice between something that's you know okay and something that's going to definitely make you miserable you're not going to go for miserable are you so i think you know there is there is an absolute political necessity that we make this central to the way we look at the way the world's going to be and that's a little bit uncomfortable because it's it's much easier to say well if i you know if i do my best it's going to be fine because it probably won't be well that
Speaker 1leads pretty much straight into the next thing that i wanted to ask you i mean i want to come on to um what differences we can make on an individual basis on our daily lives but i think we should save that right until the end before we sort of establish the the terrain here because it seems to me from previous conversations that i've had on the podcast is that yeah this comes down essentially to systemic change you know unless we have systemic structural change from which needs to be you know signed off and sanctioned by unfortunately by the boys upstairs yeah you know they're nothing they are mostly boys
Speaker 2unfortunately still exactly yes yeah um then very
Speaker 1little is going to happen which is which is just the sad fact of it and as you said we are clinging on by our fingernails right now um i mean i don't think anybody needs this spelling out for them at this stage but what are the main factors that drive what are the priority number ones that are driving this i'm talking i'm thinking about obviously you know fossil fuels agriculture i think is a big one um which ties into the the way we consume food and other things what are the what are the biggies that we really have to tackle
Speaker 2well so the way you're absolutely right the combustion the burning of fossil fuels coal oil and gas is the principal driver of climate change it is the biggest it is the biggest single contributor so that means the way we generate electricity uh the way we heat our homes and offices buildings generally but also the kind of heat um that we use for industrial things like making steel making glass um and so i think that's a big part of it and i think that's a big part of making concrete so energy and the use of energy and unfortunately the use of fossil fuels is embedded right into literally every single thing we do uh and we need to and we need to get the carbon out of it or we need to get those activities out of our lives and it is possible to do that with renewable electricity uh renewable heat but the reality is we not only have to have better energy we just have to use less energy so some of that's technical and some of that's lifestyle but basically that's at the heart of it then we need to get the carbon out of it and we need to get the carbon out of it and we need to get the carbon out of it and we need to get the carbon out of it and uh what's in the business called land use change but what everybody realizes is deforestation uh you know the cutting down not just of tropical rainforest but also of the temperate rainforest in the far north of europe across russia uh across russia the scandinavian countries canada uh parts of north america where i'm from uh you know we have to stop deforestation and and and uh the the dieback of forests in those places and the thing that binds all of that together you know both fossil fuel use and energy and the other thing that binds all of that together you know both use and deforestation is of course agriculture because agriculture is energy intensive in the sense that it uses um fertilizers which are made from fossil fuels uh there is a lot of mechanization and a lot of transport of global commodities around but the biggest problem is of course the intensification uh the terrible jargon word isn't it that the you know the way we create industrial meat the way we create industrial dairy it's on a huge scale um it it clears enormous amounts of land first of all which is negative for the climate in and of itself yeah then grows crops which are then fed to um animals either for meat production or dairy which is both inefficient in terms of the way we use the land it uses a lot of energy to produce a lot less calories for us um but also dairy and animals uh produce methane they burp they fart they emit a methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas uh like carbon dioxide and we don't have to make this a science like this but it's a very powerful greenhouse gas and we don't have to make this a but the reality is that the two big gases driving uh global warming global heating or carbon dioxide which lives for a very long time in the atmosphere and has a pretty powerful effect and methane the stuff that comes from both natural gas but also from burping and farting animals uh is a very powerful greenhouse gas doesn't last as long in the atmosphere but its impact is huge so if we are looking at this in terms of priorities actually reducing the impact of industrial agriculture in the environment and reducing the impact of the climate on the environment we have really big benefits uh as well as for not just for the climate but for our diet as well yeah i imagine um so there are you know there are lots of things we can do but those are the big those are the big things so just to recap combustion of fossil fuels for electricity heat and transport deforestation in other words just removing the forest lands which house and sequester huge amounts of carbon and then finally reforming our agriculture system which means that we are not so dependent on intensively re-enhancing our agriculture system which means that we are not so dependent on intensively weird stuff, which adds a huge amount extra uh warming to the atmosphere that's
Speaker 1brilliantly put my nose that was a perfect encapsulation of the main issues we've got to deal with there um and as you said as well you know all of these things you know will affect us on a personal health basis as well and quality of life basis not that that should be the motive but i mean a small change in in someone's diet for example like i'm not suggesting we've all got to go like you know hardcore vegan overnight but but just going vegetarian two days a week for example yeah would have a massive impact on the environment and the world's dependence on industrial agriculture you know which which in itself drives deforestation and pollution and you know of course the cruelty to the animals as well but i'm just using that as an example to highlight the fact that i think small changes done collectively and en masse you know can make a big difference and do have big knock-on effects you
Speaker 2know i think a small change and i i think it's important to talk about what we do as individuals in the context of big in bigger change and i think that you know the that's an important point making the right choice within a system in which there are right choices to be made you know is is it you know it's a it's a it's definitely a win-win and that doesn't just apply to your diet i mean um you know human power transport walking riding a bike uh you know there are plenty of people and i think it's really important to note this there are lots of people in this you know in this country and all around the world who can't depend only on human power transport but there are lots who can you know walking to school you know walking to local shops you know riding a bicycle that that is again good for your health as well as as good for local air quality um and good for the climate so there are definite you know win-win situations here i think it's just we have to be really careful about not flipping it around so all the responsibility is on a single parent trying to get their kids to school while then getting to work yeah you know of course that would you know that that's not good for anybody
Speaker 1100 yeah and i think for me that that's a big source of guilt is waste i mean you know we're in a household you know we recycle everything you know our bin bag goes out like you know once a fortnight and it's hardly anything in it you know i mean because we're so diligent with the recycling and all that sort of stuff and um but it's the food waste man it's like because we are so dependent now on supermarkets i mean you know don't get me wrong you know if i if i genuinely had the choice where i live to to hand pick all of my fruit and veg you know from a local trader then god damn i would do it but unfortunately and given you know our lifestyles these days as well you know we have become dependent on supermarket chains especially if you're on a budget you know but the problem is is that you can't just buy what you need you know if you're going to buy meat for example it comes in a massive giant box you know for a family of eight and you're for a household like ours you know we're just throwing most of it out as much as we hate to do it you know it feels quite unavoidable and it's a major source of guilt and waste and frustration because you know if you contact a food bank you know most of the time you know they they can't store food that needs refrigeration they can only store you know tinned and dried foods so we're just throwing tons of fruit and veg out every week you know and it's because we're we're forced to have to buy 10 times as much as we want yeah so you know what's the solution there because i think i feel like that taps into quite a few different problems doesn't it taps into the hegemony of the the major supermarket chains squashing and forcing out of the market you know the smaller independent local traders and also it taps into the waste issue and the nature of how we get our food and and the whole supply chain of of destruction that uh that feeds that
Speaker 2well now you're asking um i mean i think that there is a there's a school of thought that you have to fix everything if you're going to fix anything right and you know what's the answer to the question you just asked the answer probably is you know corporate capitalism depends and i'm using capitalism in quotes here right you know corporate capitalism depends on economies of scale it depends on huge long supply chains and it really really benefits from um a mass produced mass consumption approach and mass the clues in the title there is going to be waste in mass consumption and definitely in mass production and we don't just lose you know it's not just material waste we lose our humanity everything becomes a transaction yes uh every becomes transactional and i think that that not to go all meta on you here is an underlying problem when you're when we're trying to challenge this because you know what it is i think the the idea that economies can endlessly grow exponentially as opposed to people's well-being growing which is i think a very different thing than the economy growing is is a tension that lies right at the heart of whether we're talking about food waste energy waste um economies of scale and and the global economy and there's you know the easy answers to these questions if they're if they ever existed that ship sailed a long time ago and and i think we're going to be facing now a series of questions that you know i'm a campaigner what we do here at greenpeace is we try to make change happen so what you do as a campaigner i'm going to give away a few trade secrets here is you set an objective you know what's the thing we want to happen and then you work back from it so well we want to you know overarching we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change the catastrophic impacts of climate change we also want to make sure that the impacts that we can't avoid aren't heaped totally unfairly on the least powerful and that includes people who are facing economic health and other challenges not just here in the uk but globally and right now that is a disproportionately landing on people in the global south so what used to be called developing countries so people who've done the absolute least to create the problems we have around climate change around biodiversity loss you name it are suffering the worst impacts of it and part of our response to climate change is going to be how do we bake genuine justice you know or fairness if you want to use a language that's a bit more personal into the settlement and you know and that is going to be hard and it's going to mean that people in rich countries even people who aren't rich in rich countries are going to have to i hate to use this expression we're all going to have to suck it up yeah and that if we're going to do if we're going to if this is going to be fair and i think we all want this to be a fair solution to to this problem it's we're going to have to make some changes that we didn't expect my parents i'm an old guy so my parents my dad served in the second world war my parents grew up in the depression their assumption was that the world was going to get better and better and their children's lives were going to get easier and easier and everything was oh that rising tide would float all boats and i know they genuinely believed that and they wanted that to be true and that was the legacy they wanted to hand on and i want to hand that on to my kids too but you know what i think that that that window got a lot smaller that opportunity for a better life for everybody is the definition that that has changed and we really really need to as you know this is a process there's not going to be a single switch we flip that means hey this is all going to be grand it means that we're going to have to keep evaluating the changes we make the faster we make them the less awful they're going to be the slower we make them the harder it's going to get so that's kind of that i that's a very long answer to the question what do you do about supermarkets but i i think it does you know it that's what that's what it comes where it comes down that's where the rubber hits the road for all of us here particularly in a country like the uk which for all the hardship that everybody's currently facing right now for a whole bunch of reasons if you think it's bad here it's a whole lot worse in places like sub-saharan africa you know rural chile or argentina and i think you know we just can't solve this problem without acknowledging that it's a global one not just a local one
Speaker 1yeah 100 and as you say that is an answer to the question of what can we do about supermarkets because everything is connected isn't it you know what i mean on a global scale everything has ramifications from the small to the large and one thing that um really confuses me and i'm not sure what your thoughts might be but i think it's a really big question and i think it's a really big question and i think it's a really big question and i think it's a really big question why is there given the everything you just said then about you know you want the best for your children and your grandchildren as everybody does why is there so much resistance to this from the elites who are who are for the most part highly educated highly intelligent you know a lot of them are not you know i suppose that's that's debatable how you define intelligence
Speaker 2well educated if not intelligent yes but they're aware
Speaker 1of this and they know the part surely they know the part they play in this and and surely they feel the same way about their children their grandchildren so why do they continue to force all of us um down the path of guaranteed mutual self-destruction
Speaker 2that's a really important question and i think there's a number of different answers i think the first one is if you're uh so i spend a lot of my working life is dealing with financial um institutions you know banks and the people who look after pension funds asset managers big insurance companies people like that and you know you meet a lot i meet a lot of these people you know some of them are probably not going to be able to do it they're not going to be able to do it they're probably you know lords of darkness but a lot of the people i meet are you know they are perfectly lovely people frankly you know they're absolutely nice and as you say they care about their kids and they care about their kids future but everything about the rules that frame their day-to-day decision making at work are based on three month periods of time so their incentives their remuneration their bonuses are based on how well they do every three months right you know so what they would consider a long-term decision-making might be three to five years um you combine that with and they all say oh yes we're in this for the long haul yeah they are but in terms of the things that make them drive their decision making they have to make decisions based on very short time frames which for better or worse oddly corresponds with what's called the electoral cycle you know two years four years five years in a in a democracy and uh yeah democracy in quotes you know uh however you choose to define that um and it just means that the rules of the game and particularly the financial incentives do not favor uh making decisions that are tough in the short term but way better in the longer term so that's a generous way of looking at it a less generous way of looking at why do elites you know hold on to the status quo as it's currently constituted is that people you know and again as a as a very privileged you know late middle-aged white dude i am aware of the fact that people who have power don't want to give it up right even if you're not aware that you've got it you know it feels like oh but this is isn't this the way things are you know what what we experience and i think sometimes sometimes it's malicious sometimes it's unconscious sometimes it's driven by the rules and the structures in which we operate but it's a kind of perfect storm of inactivity and then layered on top of that there has been some absolutely without question malevolent you know bad intention mal intent lobbying from particularly from the fossil fuel industries and from some governments uh that are totally to petro states that are totally dependent on fossils they don't want to speed this process up because the longer it they can you know squeeze the last drop financially and literally of oil or gas out of the ground the better off they are and that's that's the that's the reality and you know this year it was interesting that we just finished the climate conference it was in sharm el-sheikh in egypt and this year there were 630 i believe registered representatives of the fossil fuel industry there they know which way the wind is blowing they are not there to say how can we help you speed up this transition they are there to say how can we make sure that our interests remain at the heart of this decision-making process for as long as possible it's it's simply the a good future for the fossil fuel industry is not a good future for anybody else and we've got and that's true for that's true if you're a banker that's true if you're a member of parliament or congressman in the united states or if you're a prime minister or president but until decision makers because i think a lot of people real people have realized that if oil and gas do well the rest of us do very badly we're really we're noticing that this winter right um and and i think that that reality is becoming you know very very easy to grasp for everybody who isn't in the fossil fuel business
Speaker 1i think it's insanity and i think it might actually be a form of sociopathy i mean if you look at it on a global scale it certainly would look like a manifestation of the one percent of sociopaths in society yeah uh have hoodwinked the the good folks that constitute the rest of us into um give it giving them all the gold you know i mean it looks as if the sociopaths are running are running the the train off the edge of the cliff yeah you know i mean if you look at it on a global scale with with outside eyes it's
Speaker 2madness yeah if you look at this any way but from a very particular point of view it's like this is going to make our lives a whole lot less comfortable it's going to make our lives a whole lot more expensive that's if you have the choices about you know being able to spend or not spend um it's going to i mean it's going to impoverish the natural world in terms of you know the number of species the kind of you know the damage that climate change will do to the world we live in and the world we live in and the world we live in in physical terms is almost incomprehensible and you know it's tragic it is genuinely tragic no matter how you look at it so you know when you look at it in those terms you frame it up in those terms you think why would anybody why would anybody or any institution vote for you know maintaining this incredibly destructive pathway and trajectory on and you know i think you laid it out it is you know it is sociopathic behavior uh that's a generous way of putting it you know ungenerous but you know you know spins back to where we started is it possible to avoid the worst the worst impacts of the the mess we're in yeah absolutely 100 it just won't be easy and we've left it unbelievably late uh and that's again that's you know but we as they say on the cop shows we are where we are um you know no there's no magic time machine to go back oh if we'd only done this 10 years ago or 15 years ago you know i've been doing this work for uh um gosh i've been doing it for over 30 years now and you know you do think oh if only if only that had happened then you know we wouldn't be facing these challenges now but you know you know could it would have should it doesn't get you anywhere you have to deal with the reality we face now
Speaker 1so what are we looking at in terms of a timeline then i mean if we don't change anything at all if we stay on the trajectory that we're currently on exactly as we are what are we looking at in terms of a timeline
Speaker 2well so if there's a there are a lot of really smart people much smarter than me who've been looking at this and if you look at the models uh that you know that the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is that big um un convened body of scientists um as looked at that based on a huge i mean there are thousands certainly hundreds of range of different possible outcomes in these scenarios but putting all that to one side if nothing changed after today we're on track for about two and a half to three degrees warming by the end of this century wow now just let's put that into context the the the we have experienced already just over one degree of global average temperature rise since about 1860 and um i think we can say with with confidence not certainty but with confidence that that one degree temperature rise has driven you know the the kind of flooding we're seeing around the world the kind of uh heat waves we're seeing around the world some of the weird cold snaps sometimes you see where you get a sort of polar incursion because of weakening of the jet stream um you know there is no question that the warming we are already experiencing is is creating pretty extreme outcomes and if particularly again if you're in a vulnerable community you know coastal city you know whether it's miami new york or you know somewhere in bangladesh uh you know you are really and we are really vulnerable to those things that is a third of the way of where we could be within the next 50 to 70 years so it is sobering it's scary and we should take it very very seriously in terms of getting on track to avoid the worst impacts basically we need to reduce global emissions and end deforestation nothing to it right by 2030 end deforestation and have emissions okay cut emissions in half and end deforestation ending deforestation is a possibility that's a political decision and and a commercial instead of financial decisions it's not easy but it's definitely possible i think we're getting very very close where is it possible to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 50 or 45 in the next seven years technically yeah but it is really really tight and it's you know i think what we're looking at now is and again i'm going to use some jargon here but hopefully can unpack this which is the idea of overshoot so in other words global average temperature goes up beyond 1.5 degrees of that you know pre-industrial average and then over time we bring it back down and the question is how much time do we allow it to overshoot i think avoiding any overshoot is going to be tough not impossible but very very difficult but let me just and i think the other thing i would say before trying to answer another really depressing question uh is that every tenth of a degree is worth fighting for you know every tenth of a degree beyond one degree where we already are is going to make the world worse for somebody for sure and probably for everybody and so i'm not saying that and greenpeace is definitely not saying that 1.5 isn't possible i'm just saying because it's hard and because getting harder doesn't mean you have to give up and you have to give up and you have to give up and you have to give up now i know i sound like a football coach or something this isn't about a pep this isn't about a pep talk i am relentlessly realistic and i don't think you could do this work without being relentlessly realistic but i think that you know we just have to if we want to avoid the worst impacts you never ever give up on the toughest target it just means that every day that goes by gets a little harder
Speaker 1well we don't have a choice do we you know no no we're not being hopeful and giving up and sit on our hands and hoping for the best is not a choice you know we have to we have in any any way that we can to you know to keep it moving um yeah what role does uh population rise play in this does it does it make a difference or does it matter on the lifestyles that those populations are living under oh well
Speaker 2now there you've got you've answered the question right there i mean the numbers uh they're gonna take a step back from that because i think you have highlighted the fact it's not how many people you've got is what the people we have how they live um i think back at way back in the day sort of late 60s early 70s there was a guy called paul ehrlich who um he he wrote a book called the population bomb and i remember hearing him speak when i was in school and it was scary as hell and you're thinking oh my god you know and you kind of it leads you to this sort of you know kind of uh people's republic of china you know one child policy kind of approach and it's all about the numbers and the reason that happened was that you know and he was not a you know not a bad man but he carried over uh this idea of carrying capacity from sort of population biology looking at a square meter or a hectare you know acre of land and say this is how much life you can sustain on this right but that's a natural closed system we are making decisions all the time about the way we generate our energy about the way we grow our food about the way we move around the planet about the things we eat all of those variables determine and you know let's be absolutely honest about this that the impact of uh you know me when i was growing up i was born in minnesota you know he's probably eight nine times more than me and he's probably eight nine times more than me and he's probably eight nine times more than me and he's probably eight nine times ten times what a child born in south syria and africa and the same year 1955 as i was born so no it's not about the numbers it's about the lives that those populations lead uh the the way what we consume the way we consume the amount we consume so um yeah it i i find it sad and not just you know it's more than a little bit xenophobic and you know verging on racist when people say but it's all about numbers because they're talking about numbers is is is places in the global south where people are brown or black and that's uncomfortable and they may not mean that and it's worth digging into it and you have to have i think patient and respectful conversations not just say that's bollocks um but it is bollocks but there are reasons there are reasons why it's box and they need to be unpacked
Speaker 1brilliant answer brilliant answer the second myth that i wanted to unpack before we uh rapidly move on to some solutions because i could i could throw all these questions at you all day but we need to get onto the happy news but one thing obviously speaking about you know western lifestyles again and the guilt that we all feel on a daily basis is recycling i mean yeah what's the deal with recycling are we wasting our time because as far as i can tell it's either ending up you know in the sea or in hong kong you know is any of
Speaker 2this stuff getting recycled turkey actually is where most of our the uk waste goes um recycling it's a great concept isn't it um recycling is and i'm gonna put my hand up here i am not an expert on plastics okay the simple answer is recycling doesn't do anything to solve the problems of climate change so yeah you can if you if you recycle everything in your house fine if it's genuinely recycled that's a good thing it's not going to be the thing that that um means that you're moving your own individual lives and i know we are moving towards decision making in that space uh towards it and i think the biggest problem is that recycling has become a huge scam and the difference between is between recycling and recyclable and you know we make very very complex products usually of uh very very uh complicated sets of materials i mean just take a modern car you know i i know that um for example particularly i think it was volkswagen and and volvo but this is not neither an endorsement nor criticism made commitments to make the you know the components of their cars recyclable but you know i don't know if if you drive a car but have you ever tried to recycle a car it would be you know you can't do it and and i think that you know uh you you get a you get a tray a plastic tray from the supermarket that's got one of those triangles and a number on the bottom and you assume that means oh well that says it's recyclable well first of all if it's black the optical sensors won't pick it up so it just flows right through the recycling and into the landfill second of all if it's um a doesn't have a contract with a recycling company to recycle that particular plastic compound it ends up in landfill there are just so many variables uh and and i think that as a concept and as a solution it's been massively oversold and of course then you just end up with the problem of it all ending up in a container and going to turkey or vietnam or or a country where people are willing to deal with our crap and i i think that you know last week the world's first plastic association said it unfortunately it looks just like exactly like every other kind of global treaty industry shows up in force and explains why they can't do the thing that we need to do um you know what we just need to have less shit yeah i think that that that's what it comes down
Speaker 1to 100 yeah exactly i think underpinning a lot of what i'm hearing today i think is a shift in values you know what are our values essentially as a society you mentioned on the sense of transactional uh relationships earlier i think that is a lot to do with the capitalistic materialistic that's become pervasive now and how we interact with ourselves and each other i think underpinning a lot of this is a change in values but they're quite lofty ideals for the time frame that we're talking about so i want to move quickly on them because i'm look i'm staring sideways at the clock here because i know i've got to leave you soon we're good we're good okay cool this is this is great stuff but i want to try to like um move towards the solutions and alternatives if possible um so in terms of uh moving moving away from uh necessarily like abstract notions like value what what are the actual tangible alternatives to some of the big major problems that we've got
Speaker 2well okay so you know we were talking earlier about what are the biggest contributors to to global climate change and and disruption of the climate and the way we generate power and electricity uh and heat is you know it's the biggest still the biggest single one on you know there are different ways to count it up but it's still the biggest one there are right now um without question the technical the widgets around there to turn our electricity system into a zero carbon system and the uk actually you know has a recommendation that the uk should be totally zero carbon in our electricity production by 2030 and there's no reason we can't do it that exists now that that's our that is the recommendation of the committee on climate change to the government i think the government's plan is 2035 but the recommendation is that we so yeah it's absolutely not only is it possible it's written in law and we should you know we absolutely should be doing it look at what's going on in the in you know obviously that in we're in the middle of a catastrophic and absolutely tragic and totally avoidable war on mainland europe for the first time in you know since the 40s um that's even older than me um and what that has done besides drive the price of gas through the roof um is that it's made i think decision makers realize that if you're dependent on gas it doesn't matter where you get your gas you're always going to be dependent on that commodity market and i think there is every likelihood uh for all the worst reasons you could possibly imagine that the move away from the use of gas both for generating electricity and uh for heating homes and industrial use of gas is going to be massively accelerated by the totally unjustifiable war in the ukraine um that's not to say that that's not a silver lining that's not making the you know that's not a crisis it's absolutely tragic but it's it it has sharpened the minds of decision makers so decarbonizing our our sorry that's such a terrible word decarbonizing getting the fossil fuels out of our electricity system out of our heating systems out of industry is something we can do that we can do almost particularly in europe we can do almost entirely by the by the end of this decade and what is that solar wind or a combination solar wind tidal and using less energy you know so the first thing you have to do is stop you know heating the great outdoors through absolutely the worst building you know standards that exist in europe the uk uh you know and so that's the that's the first thing is you stop wasting energy and then use solar wind um which are the cheapest ways the cheapest not compared to you know um a brand new power station you could shut down a gas by power station replace it with solar wind and it would be cheaper than keeping the gas going particularly now so you know that's that's it's absolutely doable um it means electrifying our vehicle system in the future and we're going to have to do that in other words you know there are going to be more electric cars out there uh which isn't to say electric cars solve all the problems you get killed just as dead by being run over by an electric car uh as you do by petrol car and if a community is carved up by roads and dependence on cars you know electric cars don't make that any better they do improve the local air quality but let's you know we have to be honest about this also attached to the reality of electric cars and renewable energies are batteries and that means things like lithium and rare earths which are right now being mined and mostly in places like chile or in the congo and i think what we absolutely have to be super mindful of is that we cannot replace an economy that was based on on screwing uh the global south taking the oil out of the ground by screwing the global south and taking rare earths out of the ground and it's you know things are going to cost more things are going to get harder but it's possible to do and i i don't want to keep coming back to how hard it is all of these things are doable now um it's just that we we've gotten very used to being told the easiest way to do it is the way we're doing it right now
Speaker 1so if there's no dispute that the solutions and the alternatives are there they're ready to go that's that's done we've done
Speaker 2that bit yeah that technically 100 again another situation offshore wind we can generate so much wind you know we're an island surrounded by windy seas you know people say oh but what happens if the wind doesn't blow the sun doesn't shine the wind always blows somewhere in the uk so what you need and the sun shines somewhere in the uk more stays so what you need then uh and again this is it's technical but it's it's reality is you need a we need a grid that moves electricity from where it's generated to where it's used that you know that if for example if you've got an electric car you plug it in overnight and it stores a huge amount of electricity that would be used when the wind's blowing overnight so you know again this is this is about being intentional it's about being smart and it's and it's about allocating resources but it also means change and uh grid connection very very boring subject is the thing that is slowing down big banks and big pension funds so i'm going to put a ton of money into offshore wind for example because if you can't connect those wind farms to the ground if you can't use that electricity in the grid that's not an investment it's just a mechano set out in the sea so you know i think that this is where it comes to politics and i you you know often people say to me to us well what can you do you can vote for people who will make the who will change the rules in the right way now we are not party political i work for greenpeace we're not a party political shop but right now the cheapest way to generate electricity in the uk is to build onshore wind farms right there the government the party in power has for reasons best known to themselves a de facto ban on onshore wind what a surprise yeah you know judge however you know draw whatever conclusion you like from that whatever their motivation is you've got to vote for people who are not going to ban the things that solve the problem simple as that madness and that is the first step in in in making a difference personally it seems to me is that we acknowledge that our responsibility in this regard you know it doesn't lie just on what we eat or how we get around but the choices we make politically can't get away from it small p politics but everything's political the personal
Speaker 1is political well to hear you saying that as somebody that's been in the game for 30 years you know if that's your analysis after being deep in this for for as long as you have then then we know what we've got
Speaker 2to do yeah um yeah it's tough and there are you know and politics means trade-off you know i think that one of the things that again i haven't been doing this for a long time for me are we making are we making the perfect the enemy the good i'm not talking about compromise here i'm talking about better i don't want the best thing in the world i want the best thing in the world for my family you know if i'm honest for myself for my kids my community but you know what i'd take better i'd take better before i would wait for best and and i think that as long as you're not as long as we're not shutting down options by making you know decisions that are going to make the world a better place now then that is a huge part of our personal responsibility then when you come to things like diet when you come to things like personal transport choices you know you know here's here's a tough one for everybody right that aviation uh is a relatively small part you know flying it's a relatively small part of the global economy it's the fastest growing contributor fossil fuels to um to climate change and the reality is if you want to go visit your family i'm american and i've lived in the uk for over 30 years if i want to go visit my family you know i can paddle i can get on the container ship it's hard not impossible or i fly but the reality is if you fly you know the people who fly the most are people who fly three four or five times a year it's not one it's not the same thing it's not the same thing it's not the same thing it's not the family taking one holiday a year it's multiple buyers so how do you respond to that frequent flyer level you tax the people who fly the most and you recycle that income it's a you know that is again it's a political decision now is it going to you know will that make your flight my flight for one holiday every three years more expensive probably but will it really extract value from the people who fly four or five six times a year absolutely and it definitely should so i i think that again these are kind of you know we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference and we're making a difference okay absolutely maybe not fly at all okay that's your choice but for the people who are gonna um you know who are not making those choices you know make sure they pay and that that that the benefits that they're getting are distributed much more fairly so there are ways to address these issues um you know and i think that you'll net we're not we're unlikely i can't say never we're unlikely to reduce love miles you know that the miles that people travel to uh uh you know visit their family and and relatives that that's that's a reality that i live with and i'm prepared to live with but you know what i think the people who fly six seven eight times a year you know i think they're gonna have to pay for it
Speaker 1we have to remember that the uh the elite that we mentioned earlier the one percent is they're flying in their private planes all the time well they're not using the bus you know i
Speaker 2think that you know again i don't think this is a radical suggestion uh private aviation uh certainly private jets are uh in it you know it's a very very uh use of resources let's put it that way to be the most generous and you know these are decisions that um you know if you're a diehard libertarian i mean i i don't agree with people who are diehard libertarians but you know they're entitled to their opinion um but if you're you know and they would say i don't want you to restrict my freedom and i guess my response to that would be or our response to that would be well your freedom is your freedom is definitely impinging uh on other people's freedoms like freedom to you know to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and you know the reality is uh um you know you're getting this it's a free ride yeah you know the the that one percent as you described them are getting a huge free ride from the you know the 99 who are shouldering the worst impacts so these things have to be evened out um and that's you know and if we don't do that why would a country like india and i'm now taking this to the national and away from the personal you know why would a country like india or china which still even though there are huge global economies and with per capita emissions much lower than the west why would they change because they'd say we don't see any you know we don't see goodwill now goodwill is in short supply globally at the minute but you know without at least an intention we're not going to get there well
Speaker 1the message i'm getting here is is that yeah it's all very well you know cleaning our yogurt pots and recycling our cans and all that sort of stuff which we should be doing anyway because you know it's the right thing to do yeah but the real change that we need is going to come through politics it's going to come from policy change and regulation and that's only going to happen when we elect a party into power that is actually going to enact the changes that we need which we are far from that at the moment
Speaker 2absolutely and i think that it is it sounds very distant from our from our personal lives and i think you know the end and obviously politics has been i don't even know where to start you know the last few years politics in the in in the uk and in the us you know the two places i know the best but you know lots of europe as well are they are toxic and they are full of they're full of hate and they're full of uh and and they're full of selfishness and they are based on division not on unity they're based on you know beggar thy neighbor not you know love thy neighbor to you know maybe be a little too gushy about it and it has been a you know it's really difficult to get people to feel 100 positive about politics right now i guess the thing again the thing i would say is that personal behavior is not the only thing that's going to change and i think it's going to be the only thing that's going to change and i think it's going to be the only thing that's going to change and i think it's going to be the only thing that's going to change and i think it's going to personal choices personal sacrifice it's motivated it's motivational but it also it informs the context in which we make all of our decisions so you know i i think that what's really important is to emphasize we're not i'm certainly not advocating that we wait for those people upstairs the boys upstairs to sort this shit out i think is that we show you know that that individual and community-based behavior shows what we're willing to do and what we're willing to accept and then we have to exercise the leverage that we still have in terms of our you know voting and and and institutional politics to make to show that that goodwill can be turned into something real and it's a you know it's it's an it's going to say it's a it's a it's a repetitive ongoing process you know this doesn't it's not it's not a binary thing where we're going to flip a switch and the world's going to be grand or we fail to flip a switch and the world's going to be buggered it's you know it's every day every way we're going to we've got it you know this is an iterative process and it seems so boring and it makes life so hard you know because it's like no problem is ever fixed but if you don't start you're never you're not on the way to fixing it so it's a you know it's it's challenging and i and i think that there was you know the the idea of you know the old badge that people you know that people used to wear in the 70s you know uh you know think global and act local it's true you know i mean there is cliches and and and aphorisms because there is an element of truth for a reason yeah and and i think that's you know it's just it's just as real now unfortunately you know the change that we want to see the change we want to be it's it's tougher there's no there's no getting around it right but i guess the thing that encourages me and i was i usually hold up my you know mobile phone at this point but i left it at my desk so nobody would ring us while we were having this conversation is that you know the transformation in people's habits and expectations around technology they would be unrecognizable i mean i went iphone was first iphones 2003 i think i got my first mobile i got a mobile you know after my kids were born you know i was i'm quite glad about that actually um that's another podcast probably um but i you know the transformation that has come from telecommunications and handheld technology is absolutely astonishing and it's happened in the rest of the generation it is possible to make social and technical I think one of the things that we realized is you can make technical and social change very fast. and it's not necessarily good so we've got an opportunity to you know to deliver some better outcomes you know using technology knowingly intelligently and also acknowledging that it doesn't solve the problem it's how you use it that solves the problem whether it's solar wind electric cars energy efficiency heat pumps you know you can pick your bit of kit that will save the world the way we use it is the thing that is going to determine whether the world gets saved and when i first started doing this about whenever 30 years ago i think there was a belief that you know that the green future was you know it's going to be amazing it was all going to be community-based wind farms and food co-ops and you know yogurt weaving you know sandal wearing hippies you know there is a you know now some people say that wouldn't be a good outcome so let's put that out there but there is a very you know there's it's just as possible that a very small number of people and institutions can control a you know zero carbon zero deforestation uh you know food supply and energy system wouldn't necessarily make the world a better place it wouldn't mean that we don't fry the climate but there could be a lot of you know you know anti-democratic repressive right you know anti-human rights you know repercussions of of a technologically acceptable future so i guess that you know you know is that thinking never said this was going to be easy but we've got to balance up how do you how do we keep this human and humane at the same time as running the worst impacts so i'm never going to run out of work
Speaker 1well i hope one day you do you know and i hope you know it's in the next few decades because otherwise we're toast yeah in terms of then of um influencing our representatives i've had a few on the the podcast i have a lot of activists in the podcast and they all say you know at the end of it they say the most important thing you could do in that area is to lobby your mp write to your mp find out where they stand this issue let them know how you feel about it and and you know obviously you know hit them with your vote but where do you stand on civil disobedience and direct action and activist groups specifically groups such as extinction rebellion and just stop oil it seems to me that there's a kind of um an alignment there with the cause that greenpeace has been a champion of for
Speaker 2so long well we we've been advocates and doing non-violent direct action for you know decades that's how i started doing this work as a as a physical activist as a as a as a greenpeace boat driver and member of our actions team and i still go out uh old fool that i am i i think direct action in and of itself won't solve the problem i think that direct action you know and i i say that not because i don't believe in it i 100 believe in it i but i think it has to be in the context of that we're after change right and um you know i i listened like everybody else to the you know to the interviews with you know the the young particularly the young woman who was you know blocked the m25 few uh motorway here in the uk if anybody's listening internationally uh you know a few weeks ago and she without question inconvenienced people you know somebody didn't make it to their father's funeral somebody probably didn't make it to a wedding and that is terrible from her point of view the loss of 30 percent of the world's biodiversity the loss of her sense of a you know a viable future for herself and her children as a i think that's pretty tragic as well and i think that the what direct action does is it creates space for change to happen and you know if ever we needed to be clear that this is urgent and that we have to clear huge amounts of space for um for you know for change faster than anybody wants it that's that's reality we're going to have to live with and i know that people will i think the main thing i would say about particularly you know what you're sitting in your car stuck in a motorway uh traffic jam as a result of direct action you're you know it's like this isn't about you as that person you're that reality of you being inconvenienced is it's definitely your reality but the person on the gantry the person blocking that road they're not they're not doing it because they don't want you to get where you need to go yeah they are doing it because they believe that we need a fundamental overwhelming and very very big change in a very very short period of time and they're not blaming you for that but they and but we are all part of the if we're going to all be part of the solution unfortunately right now we're all part of the problem and um i i think it's you know we are it comes back to the fact that we are going to be facing really difficult challenges this isn't going to be comfortable for anybody uh and that that's you know that we're you know we're all involved in this and that's why the politics matters the direct action makes the people uncomfortable um and it will make people uncomfortable uh but and will lead to some very uncomfortable decisions and discussions but i without it i think that you know the world isn't
Speaker 1going to change 100 so as we wrap up then what can we leave people with that they can actually go and
Speaker 2do okay let's just you know in a simple list is you vote for the people who are going to make change happen you let your whether it's your local council your mp or you know the people from whom you know that you want the change to happen and that you're willing to play your part in it of course you make personal decisions about uh personal transport or you know the food you eat um but ultimately it's about and in the uk i'm going to give a very specific example because we're based in the uk it's a small country you know 60 nearly 70 million people now um but we're one of the biggest economies in the world we're still in the you know the top seven or eight economies in the world if we can change anybody can change so don't let anybody say oh but what about china what about india what about us you know uh and and you know we have to take responsibility for what we can change and not blame other people for what they may or may not be doing amen
Speaker 1charlie chronic i'm gonna let you go thank you so much for this man this has been a brilliant chat and i really do appreciate you taking time out to uh to come and speak with us today thanks for everything you've done as well over the past 30 years on this issue and i know you'll continue to do so we appreciate you man and hopefully we can do this again sometime
Speaker 2soon yeah no i you know we don't get the chance to talk to people for an hour very often and you know the world gets cut down into 30 second soundbites so if there is uh if and that's a long one uh so you know if we i'd love to do it again and it would what would really be interesting is to reflect on is change happening yet if it isn't what do we need to do now if it is how do we speed it up so yeah looking forward to it maybe we'll do it
Speaker 1this time again next year and see what we've been getting on it's a good time all right thank you again it's great to meet you man i appreciate it you too great pleasure charlie chronic ladies and gentlemen cool name cool guy what do you think of that charlie dropped some really good points and some great knowledge in that conversation man from some angles that i hadn't really considered before and it is difficult when you're talking about this issue because you know i've had several episodes now on the podcast where we're talking about this issue with whether it's with extinction rebellion or the green party i try not to ask the same questions and share the same information but it is difficult because you know the case is kind of closed on this issue now you know we know that we're going to have to do something about this the science we know the truth we know the impending disaster and we know the road ahead to action and change so it's a case of urgently getting on with it now but that said you know charlie still gave some perspectives on some things which i hadn't considered which i found really refreshing and interesting and i just like his whole vibe as well you know the way he explained things made it very easy to understand and digest and he made a lot of good points about the relationship between the first world and the third you know recycling activism and clearly laying out what the alternative is and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point alternatives are that already exist so i think if you're looking for a one-hour snapshot of the climate change issue and some surrounding issues that feed into it i think that little hour there with with charlie covers the whole range so if you're new to this issue or you want to kind of introduce your friends or your family to this issue you know please share that conversation with him because i think charlie lays out the case there he puts all the science and the timelines and everything in explains what's causing this and what the solutions are and how we get those solutions so i think you know you could either go and read an 800 page book on it or you could just listen to that one hour chat with the awesomely named mr charlie chronic and give yourself a full debriefing on the climate change issue and the road to recovery i really hope you enjoyed it i hope you found it interesting and informative if you did subscribe to the goddamn channel i'm going to ask you again give me a follow give me a star rating give me a review give me a thumbs up give me something god damn it and spread the word because man we have got some beasts coming up in the new year so as long as you guys are interested i'll keep having these conversations and feeding them into your earlobes so show me some love let me know you know that you're interested let me know that you care and appreciate it and i'll uh i'll reciprocate in kind got a special one for you guys next week so stick around for that one for what will more than likely be the last one for 2022 and in the meantime look after yourselves be awesome and do awesome and i shall catch you next week love you loads bye
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