Friday, September 27, 2019

Finding the Future in the Past



Finding the Future in the Past


Welcome to the Sustainable Futures Report for Friday 28 September. I'm Anthony Day and yes, this is the second edition of the Sustainable Futures Report this week. If you want to hear about the global climate strike I did a special edition on Tuesday and you'll find it where you found this.
Following on from last week’s episode there’s news from Hinkley C, and unsurprisingly it’s bad news.
I spoke to Julia Hartley Brewer on Talk Radio this week. In a minute you can judge for yourself how well I did. This is the week of another United Nations climate conference and I’ll talk briefly about that. Do stay on to the end. I’ll play out with a new track by John Dassieu called “Try the Greens”.
First of all though, let's hear from an archaeologist on how new techniques can help us deal with the climate crisis.

Anthony Day: My guest today is Dr. Chris Fisher, who's professor of anthropology at Colorado State University. He's an archeologist, he's Director of the Center of Archeology & Remote Sensing, and he's Founder and Director of The Earth Archive. Chris, welcome and thanks for joining us.
Chris Fisher: Hey, thank you so much for having me.
Anthony Day: Now, you've been working in the jungles of Central America on archeological surveys, and you've been using a new technique called LIDAR, which I associate with self-driving cars. But there's obviously something else there. You've actually, from that, moved all the way to a link with how we manage climate change. That's not very clear, the way I've explained it, but I'm sure you could do that a lot better.
Chris Fisher: Well, I hope so. I was trained as a traditional archeologist using methodologies that have been around since the 1950s. In 2009, I documented for the first time a very large and complex city that we didn't know was there in Central Mexico. Using those traditional technologies, it would have taken me a couple decades maybe to fully survey, map all the buildings in this place and understand it.

So I got frustrated and I turned to this new technology called LIDAR, which is basically a way... We use airborne LIDAR, which is a little different than the terrestrial kinds of LIDAR that are on self-driving cars or et cetera. In using this kind of LIDAR, you have some sort of aerial platform. It could be a fixed wing aircraft, could be a helicopter. In the future, it will be drones. Although that technology isn't quite sophisticated enough right now for us to use that. From that aircraft, you shoot down a grid of infrared beams, laser pulses. It's like sonar for the ground. When one of those pulses reaches an object on the ground, could be the top of a tree, could be a bird, could be a leaf, could be the surface of the ground, it returns back to the sensor in the aircraft and it gives you a measure of distance. Every second, that instrument shoots out like a million pulses. So it's a very dense grid. No matter how intense the vegetation, some of those pulses will reach the ground surface and return to the aircraft.

So what you end up with is a three-dimensional cloud of points at an incredibly high resolution. So we can, by using computer algorithms, filter away, digitally scrub, or practice what I and other people have been calling digital deforestation. We can remove that vegetation and see the archeology on the ground. I've used that technology.

First we used it in Mexico and it was absolutely groundbreaking. When I saw my first products from that LIDAR, honestly, I teared up because I realized that in 45 minutes of flying, the LIDAR company had accomplished what would have taken decades archeologically. Then we also used it in Honduras to discover some new lost cities that we didn't necessarily know were there.

So was a groundbreaking technology in that sense, just for archeology alone. But what I realized is that all of that vegetation that I spent decades... All that vegetation that I spent days and days, not decades, days and days scrubbing away, are the careers of hundreds of other scientists who are actually studying the trees. Tree size, forest composition, tree age. Geologists, hydrologists. It's that the topology of that place. And many other things that we don't even really know how to use these records yet. But I know that they're critically important.

In that sense, these LIDAR records are the ultimate conservation records because they record the ground surface and everything on it in incredibly high resolution. That led me to this ultimate realization that we can use these records to fight climate change to help-
Anthony Day: Right. How would you do that?
Chris Fisher: Well, for most areas of the world, we don't have high resolution records of the earth surface and everything on it. We're basically kind of shooting in the dark. We have a better idea. We have better maps of the moon than we do have our own planet surface. So to measure change, you need to measure against something. You need baseline data so you can understand how things are changing. We don't have that for most of the world. So we can't begin to evaluate change. We can't begin to measure change, figure out how things are changing. So a rational first step in fighting the climate crisis is having those baseline data so we can begin to measure change.
Anthony Day: How practical is that? Because the earth is a big space. That's partly why we use satellites for surveillance because they can cover such a big area. But you're actually using aircraft as opposed to spacecraft. So you will need an awful lot of them, won't you?
Chris Fisher: It will be expensive and it will be time consuming, but it has to be done. I mean, from our perspective, we don't have a choice. Now, we can start with areas of the world that are most threatened. So one of our immediate goals is to scan the Amazon. We believe that we can scan the Amazon within five years for $15 million. Which sounds like a lot of money, but it's not that much money.
Anthony Day: 15 million?
Chris Fisher: It's half the cost of Jeff Bezos's new yacht. It is three 30-second Super Bowl commercials in the United States. It's a fraction of the cost that Google just spent sending all of those billionaires to whatever Mediterranean island it is that they sent them to. So for you and I, that's an unfathomable amount of money. But it is possible to get that sort of money. That's exactly what we're trying to do.
Anthony Day: Well now, this is very interesting because obviously, you're aware of all the controversy about the fires in the Amazon at the moment.
Chris Fisher: Yes.
Anthony Day: One of the things that I've come across is that the fires which are visible from space are on those areas which have already been deforested and are being cleared and re-cleared for agriculture. But that there may be other fires on the forest floor, but they are not visible to satellites. But from what you're saying, they would be visible to LIDAR, wouldn't they?
Chris Fisher: They absolutely would be visible to LIDAR. But once we scan those areas, they are frozen in time.
Anthony Day: Yes, yes, of course.
Chris Fisher: Those records are indelible. They're not like a photograph. Those three-dimensional records do not degrade. You can actually put on 3D glasses and walk through them like the... I don't know if anybody remembers the movie Tron.
Anthony Day: Yes.
Chris Fisher: I might be the only one that remembers it.
Anthony Day: A long time ago.
Chris Fisher: Yeah. Or the Holodeck on Star Trek. So once we scan those areas, that creates a baseline for them. And we will be able to see some of those areas that have been burned or are deforested, et cetera.

I mean, you're absolutely right. The Amazon fire story is incredibly complicated. We're seeing there is burning in areas that have been cleared already. There is burning associated with areas that are newly being cleared. It's intensely complicated. Within the scientific community, there's a lot of debate about is it... I've heard numbers that range from 6% higher than normal to 60% higher than normal.
Anthony Day: Oh gosh.
Chris Fisher: So whatever scenario you're talking about, it's absolutely horrific because once these areas are destroyed, you can't rebuild this tropical forest. Which is kind of a misconception, I think. We definitely saw that in the Mosquitia area of Honduras where we had used LIDAR to document a couple of unknown cities and possibly, help unravel an unknown culture.

That rainforest in the Mosquitia, which is often called the lungs of Central America or the little Amazon sometimes. Once those areas are deforested, they don't return back into tropical forest. They turn into something else because those forests developed under a different climatic regime. So you can't go back and rebuild those places. So once they're gone, they're gone. You can't reforest these areas. Or you can reforest them, but not with the same kinds of tropical trees that are there now.
Anthony Day: Right. How close are you to being able to actually do a survey of the Amazon? You're still looking for backers?
Chris Fisher: Yes, we're definitely in fundraising mode. We're definitely looking for backers. But we have some funding now. We have some donations now that will allow us to start scanning in the Amazon. I can't tell you where, because we're still seeking the permitting for it. But we hope to start scanning in January of 2020. I'm an academic, so at the end of the semester, we're going to head to South America and hopefully start scanning immediately.
Anthony Day: I see. You're going to record all your data in what you're calling The Earth Archive. What's the purpose behind The Earth Archive?
Chris Fisher: We want to record the entire land mass of the earth. Some of it has already been done, some fraction of it. We want to mirror some of those data, create new data. Then open source it all. Make it all freely, publicly available.

There are a lot of serious technical difficulties that are inherent to that goal. Just storing the data and managing it and distributing it. And the ethics of how to do that are intensely complicated. But also, figuring out who gets access to those data, et cetera in the short term. Our goal is to have it all open sourced within 10 years of scanning it. And-
Anthony Day: Okay. Yeah, you were saying it could be of interest to a whole range of people from dendrologists to climate scientists to geologists. But could it not backfire? Could it not show the people who want to mine the Amazon where the best places are to find the minerals that they're after?
Chris Fisher: Well, this is a very interesting question. We firmly believe that within decades, all of these information will be open sourced already. There really is no place that you can hide from the kinds of remote sensing tools that we're going to have in a few decades' time. So it's up to us to figure out how to distribute these kinds of data and how to use them now.

One common thing that we hear that's often related to that is the question of looting. Aren't we for archeology by scanning these places and open sourcing the data, aren't we just creating a roadmap for looters? The fact of the matter is most archeological sites... I've been to hundreds of archaeological sites, both in Europe and all throughout the Americas. The only place that I've ever been that hadn't already been looted were those sites in Honduras. So the looters already know where the sites are. It's the archeologists who don't know where they are.

So are we creating a roadmap for people to go in and mine these places? Probably not. There's already so much illegal mining going on in the Amazon already that by scanning these places and working with these governments and other agencies, we can actually show them where the mining is happening and help stop it. We can show them where the deforestation is happening and stop it. We can show them where drug activity and stuff is happening and we can help them stop it.

I firmly sort of fall on this side of this issue, you can't protect something if you don't know it's there. You can't protect something that you don't know is there.
Anthony Day: Fair enough, fair enough. Well, looking at other opportunities, have you been in touch at all with the Environmental Protection Agency? Because I would've thought that scanning low-lying coastal areas would be an important exercise. Because as you say, if you set up a baseline, then you are able to do it again and to see how things are changing. And to see how the measures which are being taken to mitigate against or to adapt to the effects of climate change, how effective they've been.
Chris Fisher: We are working a little bit in the United States to scan coastal areas. Some of those coastal areas have already been scanned. Not at a resolution that we think is high enough, but there are some records. We're working to actually begin to mirror those records from The Earth Archive for people, to make them openly accessible.

There are several efforts in the United States to create LIDAR records for some parts of the United States. It's imperfect and there's some problems with it and we kind of want to learn from that. But we are working with some areas to start scanning coastal spots to help do that. So we are doing that, yeah.
Anthony Day: Okay. Are you working with anybody else in other parts of the world? In Europe, Africa, Russia, or anywhere like that?
Chris Fisher: We have reached out to some people. We hope to have one potential model for The Earth Archive as like a digital seed bank. So we hope to have some place within the EU where we have a branch of The Earth Archive. We also hope to have a branch of The Earth Archive in Southeast Asia. We're looking at some potential places perhaps in Japan to help house that, that data to sort of be a satellite center of The Earth Archive. So we are sort of looking at that.
Anthony Day: Would you have teams in those places who are creating the data, the local data to add to the Archive?
Chris Fisher: In an ideal situation, we would indeed have teams to do that.
Anthony Day: So that's a long-term hope then.
Chris Fisher: It's a long-term hope and we need to begin scanning projects in Southeast Asia. We need to begin scanning projects in tropical Africa. There are parts even in the Mediterranean where scanning projects should be going on. So yeah, it's definitely a big project and it's a long-term hope.

But I'm a person that strongly feels that this is the challenge that we're going to face in the 21st century. This is the big challenge for humanity. Everybody has to ask themselves. They have to sort of reach within themselves and ask themselves, what are they doing now to help combat the climate crisis? When people look back at them when their grandchildren's grandchildren think about what these people did, how are they going to justify how their actions now?

So I think everybody has to stand up and do something. This is what we feel that we can do. We can use write these LIDAR records to help combat this challenge that we face. It's a crisis, but it's also this amazing potential opportunity for us to come together as a species and face this common problem. Maybe it's something that could actually bring us closer together and help resolve some of the political differences and other differences that we have moving forward. I know many people would say, "That's so optimistic," whatever. But I'm somebody that has to see some good in what's happening. We have-
Anthony Day: I think what you're talking about has got to be done. You're right. We've got to all work together. Of course, one of the most important things is getting governments on side. Governments are often very timid because they don't want to do anything which makes them unelectable. Which of course gives them a very, very short-term view. But if we can persuade the governments that things like this, that information like this, can be made available and will let them make better decisions, then this has got to be a good thing, hasn't it?
Chris Fisher: I absolutely think so. I think we do have to work to get politicians and governments on board with these problems. But we also have to work from the grassroots because they simply aren't moving quickly enough.

I'm an archeologist. I'm trained to be a time traveler. I'm trained to see the world as it was. I'm trained to see the world as it is today. And I'm training to imagine the world as it will be in the future. Because of that, I see the world in big, long chunks of time. Thousand year chunks of time. I don't see the world in four year slices of a US presidential administration, which is how a lot of politicians see things. That's a problem because they lack that long-term thinking and this is a long-term problem.

We could all start living like the Flintstones this afternoon, and any changes we make today are telegraphed decades in the future. We have to begin this long-term thinking.
Anthony Day: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You may have heard a quote from one of our British Prime Ministers who said, "A week is a long time in politics."
Chris Fisher: Yeah. Well, we need to start thinking longer than that.
Anthony Day: Absolutely.
Chris Fisher: But yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Anthony Day: Yeah. Okay. We all should be doing something. Anything in particular that we should do, do you think? Anything you would like people to take away from this conversation, think more about and actually act on?
Chris Fisher: Well, I think I'd love it if they supported The Earth Archive. And then I think also, I think truly, everybody has to reach within themselves and think of ways in which they can contribute to solutions for the climate crisis. The time for sitting on our hands has passed. It is time for action, and everybody has to do something. There have been points in our history where we have been able to come together for a common good. World War II is one example of that. I think we're facing another one of these tipping points for our species. I think it is possible to come out on the other side of this thing with a more unified, more successful adaptation. But we all have to work together to create that.
Anthony Day: Chris, that's really interesting. Thank you very much. I'll encourage everybody to go and have a look at TheEarthArchive.com. That's TheEarthArchive.com. All one string. There, they will find a link to your TED Talk, which tells us more about your archeological discoveries in Central America. Thanks again and thank you very much for taking the time to talk to The Sustainable Futures Report.
Chris Fisher: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Chris Fisher, professor of anthropology at Colorado State University.
And in other news…
This week saw the United Nations conference on climate change in New York and impassioned speeches by Greta Thunberg. You can find her all over the internet. The outcome of the conference is generally seen as disappointing. Some countries committed to achieving Zero Carbon by 2050 but the major polluters, the United States, China and India, set no time-limited targets.
I’m on Talk Radio Again
Also this week we had the Labour Party conference, brought to an early close by events in the Supreme Court which are of historic importance but outside the scope of this podcast. Nevertheless, they had time to pass a resolution stating that a future Labour government would commit to achieving net Zero Carbon by 2030. This compares with the present government's target of 2050 and the Liberal Democrats’ 2045. Julia Hartley Brewer of Talk Radio wanted to talk to me about it, but clearly not for very long. Asked to be ready for 8.30 I eventually got on for 9.30.

No time for a transcript unfortunately.

No mistake about Julia's agenda there. I'd love to try and change her mind, if only she’d listen.
Well, that's enough for another week. There will be another episode of the Sustainable Futures Report next week, only one, although I have no idea at this point what it will be about. I feel sure there will be something to do with the climate crisis and sustainability to talk about.
Power down?
Before I go, EDF have announced that the nuclear power station under construction at Hinckley C is not expected to commence production before 2025 and will cost at least another £1 billion on top of the existing overruns.
Until next time, thank you for your attention and thanks for getting this far.
And now here is John Dassieu with his song “Try the Greens”. There’s a video version of this. The link is on the blog at www.sustainablefutures.report - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuh1xuH-3es



LINKS

https://www.theeartharchive.com



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Monday, September 23, 2019

Extra! Extra!


Extra! Extra!

Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Futures Report for Tuesday the 24th of September. Yes, Tuesday. Your regular Friday episode will be out on Friday when an archaeologist explains how his techniques can help us tackle climate change. Today, though, this is a special edition to cover the climate strike that took place last Friday. 
This week you're getting two episodes for the price of one. How do I do it? Why do I do it? Well that's another story. When I say price, the Sustainable Futures Report is free and always will be free, but if you'd like to show your appreciation with a small contribution just pop across to www.patreon.com/SFR where you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. One dollar, that's less than a pound. For the moment anyway.
Last week, as you know, saw the global climate strike. Demonstrations took place from Australia to Alaska and points in between. 4,000 demonstrations across six continents. I went down to my local climate strike to talk to people to find out why they were there and to find out what they were trying to achieve. Most people were united in the need to take action to avert the climate crisis. There was one voice of dissent as you’ll hear.
No transcripts of the Vox pop I’m afraid - no time! You can hear the full episode via the link at the top of the page.
There you have it. The battle goes on. 
As the climate meeting started in New York this week the UN secretary general said the world had reached a 'turning point' in addressing the climate crisis. Better a turning point than a tipping point!
I’m Anthony Day. That was the Sustainable Futures Report for Tuesday 24th September and there'll be another one on Friday, 27th September.
That's all for now.



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Friday, September 20, 2019

TICK TOCK



TICK TOCK!



Today is Friday, 20th September, the day of the GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE.
This is the Sustainable Futures Report and I'm Anthony Day.
If you're a patron and getting this in advance of publication day, take this as prior notification of the event. We'll talk about why it's happening, how it might affect you and what you can do.
This Week
Also this week I'm talking about why scientists need to speak up and about those that do. The weather forecast is extreme. I bring you news of nuclear from Normandy, of VW from Australia, of living in a cardboard box and explain why I’m going nuts about packaging.
It’s Global
Yes, this week's climate strike is a global climate strike, led from New York by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg. She’s attending a climate conference over there. She travelled out on a sailing yacht. Of course it was a stunt, but it got everyone's attention didn't it? If she flew out there she’d have been criticised far worse than Prince Harry and if she’d gone on a cruise ship, which has a far larger carbon footprint, she’d never hear the end of that either.

Friday’s global strike has grown out of Greta’s Youth Strike 4 Climate. This one involves everyone. “If not you, then who?” they ask. “If not now, then when?” The Metro newspaper reports that the whole of Oxford will close down on Friday. People all over the world are encouraged to come out and stand with the students in solidarity, even if they can  only take time out of a lunch break. 4,000 events will happen in 120 countries across the world. Activists are demanding action: action from governments to recognise the crisis and to take action to deal with it. 
Seven Days
Although most of the demonstrations will take place on Friday, the event is billed as a week-long happening. It's not clear whether this will involve civil disobedience as practised by Extinction Rebellion or whether students will stay out of school for the whole week. What is clear is that very many people believe now that we have a crisis and that governments must act.
Extinction Rebellion is already planning its next actions from 7 October. This will aim to close off access to Westminster and activists are ready to be arrested as they were at the protest in London back at Easter. In UK there is a risk that these actions will be confused with protests arising out of the current constitutional crisis, where the government and executive appears to be trying to ignore both parliament and the judiciary while forcing through its right-wing agenda. 
Politics
At this point I should say I don't want to get into politics, but the climate crisis is a political issue because the solution can only be achieved by governments. Happily, whether or not the demonstrations in the UK are ignored, they are part of an international action and international pressure is being brought to bear on leaders across the world.
Inevitably this podcast goes to press several days before the start of the Global Climate Strike but I shall be down on the streets with my recorder and my notebook and I'll bring you first-hand reactions and impressions next time.
How will this affect you? In the long term it could improve your survival chances, and those of humanity as well. Possibly. In the short-term it might cause traffic jams and make you late for something. Maybe a price worth paying.
Covering Climate Now
Americans Awake!
A collaboration of more than 250 news outlets around the world to strengthen coverage of the climate story has come together under the banner “Covering Climate Now”. In an article shared on the network by CNN they report that Americans are waking up to the climate crisis and 66% believe climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem, with a majority wanting immediate action. A majority are ready to give up plastic straws, recycle more, drive less, use efficient lightbulbs, give up plastic bags and travel less. However, 69% are not willing to give up eating meat.
The most important thing is to keep the message at the forefront of public attention. 
Scientists Speak Up!
Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Charlie J. Gardner of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, and Claire F. R. Wordley of the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, argue that scientists should join civil disobedience movements to fight the interconnected planetary emergencies threatening our climate and ecosystems.  “Scientists have worked hard,” they say, “to communicate the severity of these crises — not only to each other through peer-reviewed publications, but also to policymakers and the wider public. On two occasions, we have collectively issued stark ‘warnings to humanity’: in 1992 when the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that ‘a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated’, and again in 2017 with over 15,000 signatories.” 
Scientists Act Up!
Urging support for campaigns like School Strike 4 Climate, XR and Ende Gelände they say: “Many of the most profound political and social changes of the past century were brought about in this way, and leading practitioners, such as Rosa Parks, Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi, once reviled as dangerous dissenters, are today revered as heroes.”
Scary Science
Some scientists are speaking out.
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the government, said: “It’s appropriate to be scared. We predicted temperatures would rise, but we didn’t foresee these sorts of extreme events we’re getting so soon.”
He said the world had changed faster than generally predicted in the fifth assessment report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014.
He referred especially to the loss of land ice and sea ice, and to the weather extremes in which he said warming probably played a role.
Several other scientists contacted by the BBC supported his emotive language.
The physicist Prof Jo Haigh from Imperial College London said: “David King is right to be scared – I’m scared too."
“We do the analysis, we think what’s going to happen, then publish in a very scientific way.
"Then we have a human response to that… and it is scary.”
Stormy Weather
The Met office is forecasting more violent weather on the way! Professor Jason Lowe, Head of Climate Services at the Met Office, said: “The projections show that the UK climate is likely to get much hotter. If you look at the frequency of those hot spells exceeding 30 °C for two or more days, the records show they are largely confined to the south east and locally they occur, on average about once every four years.” 
In the future, the model suggests there will be significant increases in hourly rainfall extremes. For example, rainfall associated with an event that occurs typically once every two years, increases by 25% by the 2070s under a high emissions scenario – a level where insufficient global action has been taken to reduce the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.
As I tell people in my workshops, don't just think of global warming as extra heat, think of it as extra energy. It's the energy that drives our weather systems, and the more energy, the more violent the weather can get!
No End to the World?
Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised UN agency, said he fully supported United Nations climate goals, but he criticised radical green campaigners for forecasting the end of the world.
He agrees that polar ice is melting faster than expected, but he’s concerned that public fear could lead to paralysis – and also to mental health problems amongst the young.
Know thine Enemy
Promoting the climate message is always problematical. And while scientists have marched and written letters and changed their own behaviour, lobbyists for fossil fuel corporations benefit from much greater access to political processes than is available to scientists or environmental campaigners. In 2018, the fossil fuel industry spent over US$125 million lobbying politicians in the United States alone
And in these dangerous days of rampant social media, bots and trolls can spew out fake news faster than Twitter and Facebook can filter it out. 
Transport Emissions
Meanwhile, a new report from the UK Office for National Statistics has found that road transport emissions have risen since 1990, despite efforts to reduce it. Cars have become cleaner, but there are more and more and more of them and the UK government remains committed to freezing fuel duty and building more roads. Hardly surprising that only 0.5% of vehicles in the UK in 2018 were ultra-low emission vehicles. 
Australian Justice
I say that cars have become cleaner, but not as clean as they claim to be, and a lot of cars involved in the diesel gate scandal will still be on the roads. This week it was announced that VW/Audi would pay compensation in Australia for "dieselgate". The amount involved at $AU120m looks tiny in comparison with the $42bn the company has already paid out in fines, settlements and recall costs for cars fitted with devices designed to give false readings in emissions tests. No such compensation looks likely in Europe, maybe because VW is a European company.
International Consequences
Money doesn't really make up for this. There are 40,000 premature deaths in the UK caused by air pollution. (The WHO estimates 4.2m worldwide.) Much of this pollution comes from road vehicles. Diesel engines produce less CO2, but CO2 is not harmful to humans. It's the other gases and especially the particulates, the microscopic fragments of soot which lodge deep in the lungs, which not only cause premature death but are increasingly suspected of arresting intellectual development in children. There’s no protection against this. The face masks you sometimes see cyclists wearing are completely ineffective. If a mask could trap these tiny particles you wouldn’t be able to breathe through it. 
Time to put away the cheque books and get polluting vehicles (and that means most of them) off the road.
More Plastic
Extreme Camping
People are becoming more and more concerned about plastic pollution and doing what they can to avoid it. And yet when they go to music festivals they seem to forget all about these principles. It's been calculated that UK festival goers abandon some 24,000 tons of rubbish each year, including tents, sleeping bags, mattresses, clothing and even barbecues, food and drink when they leave the event.
They like to believe that the tents will go to charity and indeed some of them will. Festival Waste Reclamation and Distribution is a charity which collects up tents and equipment for reuse, but many of them are damaged or dirty and volunteers are needed to take them down, fold them and pack them.  The problem is made more difficult by the fact that sites are frequently strewn with rubbish of all types, so most are simply sent to landfill.
Not Cleaning Up
An earnest entrepreneur on the BBC Dragons’ Den programme recently proposed a service to ship people's camping equipment back to their homes so they wouldn't have to carry it after an exhausting festival. The panel pointed out that first of all the tent that he was offering was far more expensive than others available and secondly the users were expected to pack it up; probably the part that most people least enjoy. They didn’t think anyone would buy it.
Another option is Kartent, which is a tent made of cardboard. The company will erect your tent so it’s waiting for you when you arrive at the festival, and yes, you can abandon it with a clear conscience when it’s all over. The tent will be recovered for up-cycling, into litter bins, cigarette bins, chairs, even lamps or office furniture. The cost is about €35 for a two-person tent.
Mindset
The most important solution though, must be changing attitudes. The idea that people can walk away from an event leaving usable equipment but also tons of litter implies an expectation that “somebody else” will clean up after them.
When it comes to the climate crisis this attitude is frightening. It’s true that individuals cannot do enough on their own to solve the crisis: we have to rely on “somebody else” - the government - with enough power to take action that will truly make changes. But the people at the Global Climate Strike on Friday must have a different outlook. Otherwise they would just stay at home and grumble that “somebody else” was falling down on the job.

In other news…
Low Power
There’s bad news from Flamanville where EDF is still trying to finish a new nuclear power station which is years behind schedule and millions over budget. There are once again problems with components and welds and while fuel loading was expected to start later this year with generation following in 2020, commissioning has now been postponed until 2022. The plant was planned to come on line in 2012 at a total cost of €3.3bn. The latest cost estimate is €10.9bn.
This is bad news for the UK’s plant at Hinckley C, also under construction by EDF, to the same design, also late and also over budget. Private Eye magazine reports that there are serious personnel issues on site. They say: “the very large workforces required for new build nukes, always on remote sites, cannot be recruited locally, so workers live away from home on special thousand-bed campuses, 11 days on with three days off. Unions speak of poor mental health among workers: a bullying, macho “construction culture” is depicted with multiple suicide attempts and management trying special measures (including sessions hosted by ex boxer Frank Bruno on his own mental health struggles) to get on top of the problems. The magazine also suggests that similar problems exist at Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing site. At least there are no nuclear materials at Hinckley C for the moment.
And finally,
Nuts about Plastic
Do you like peanuts? I like peanuts. KP Peanuts are on every supermarket shelf and I slip them in the shopping basket when my wife’s not looking. At least I did. They used to come in a foil package, in fact thinking about it, it was probably a plasticised foil package and therefore difficult to recycle. This packet came with a bit of sticky tape and the idea was that you'd seal it up so that you didn't eat all the nuts at one sitting. Because the sticky tape didn't stick I frequently ate more than I should. The people at KP have come up with a solution. Their new packet now has one of these plastic locking strips inside the top which reseals it securely. Trouble is, it must make it impossible to recycle.
There is a shop near us which sells nuts and cereals and flour and all sorts of dry goods from dispensers. You bring your own container. Yes, they sell roasted peanuts but they’re not salted and they still have a sort of flaky skin on them. They're just not the same. I can't bring myself to buy KP's packets any more. Does anyone know where I can get my salted peanuts with minimal or no plastic guilt? Please let me know!
Maybe I should tuck into some Kentucky Fried - no, not chicken. They’ve launched a meat-free meal - a Kentucky Fried Miracle - and when they launched it at a restaurant in Atlanta it sold out within 5 hours. It’s not clear whether this will become a regular offering.
And that’s it
Well, that's another episode. Thanks for listening. Listener numbers are steadily increasing but please tell your friends because I would like them to increase even more steadily. Thanks for being a patron if you are a patron because your dollar per month or more helps me cover the cost of transcriptions, which have been quite heavy recently, and the cost of hosting this podcast. You'll notice there are no advertisements and there's no sponsorship or subsidies either. That does mean of course that I can say what I like because I've got no advertisers who might get upset. But I'll try not to upset you, the listener, because after all you are what this podcast is all about.
Next Round-table discussion
Before I go, a note to patrons. If you'd like to take part in an online discussion which we'll record for a future episode please do get in touch either via the Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sfr - or by mail@anthony-day.com and let me know what you would like to talk about.
That's it for this week. Next week I have an interview with an archaeologist who explains how technologies he uses to find ancient cities hidden the jungle can help with tackling the climate crisis. 
In the meantime enjoy the next seven days including the climate strike and let's see what comes out of it. A week is a long time in politics and a week is a long time in climate activism too. Go out and take action. Remember, every little helps. Remember too that the late David Mackay once said: ‘If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little’

I’m Anthony Day.
That was the Sustainable Futures Report and I’m delighted to have brought this episode to you. When I opened the file this morning to start recording I found it contained none of the 1800 words I wrote yesterday. There was nothing in the cloud and nothing on my local back-up discs either. I did eventually recover the file from within the Apple Pages software, but I can do without shocks like that. 
There will be another Sustainable Futures Report  next week.


Sources
Global Climate Strike
Flamanville nuclear station

Science needs to speak up

VW compensation in Australia

Festival Tents
Americans aware of crisis

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Friday, September 13, 2019

A Matter of Principle

A Matter of Principle


It's Friday, 13th September
I'm Anthony Day 
This is the Sustainable Futures Report.

This week’s episode is devoted to a matter of principle. Would you be arrested for your principles? Would you go to prison for your principles?
I recently met Zoe Cohen who believes that she should go that far to protect herself, her family and indeed the rest of us from the risks of catastrophic climate change. 
She was arrested in London at the Extinction Rebellion protest at Easter. She has appeared in court and goes to trial next month. In the meantime she’s going down to London to take part in XR’s October protest.
We had a wide ranging conversation. Here's what she told me.

Interview

Anthony: Let me start by introducing you. Or perhaps asking you to introduce yourself. Because, you are a highly experienced coach, and in fact your role in businesses has been much broader than that because you've been a board level director in some pretty large organisations.

So although you have got a very strong interest in the environment and the climate crisis, that is not your profession; you are more concerned with the success of business. If that's fair. And I think you agree that if we don't actually solve the climate crisis, nobody's got a future in anything.

Zoe: I would certainly agree with your latter sentence there. Definitely. Yeah, I would say I'm probably in my third career now. My first career was as a director in the NHS -  different types and different sizes of NHS organisations. And I was kind of board level for nine years in organisations of different shapes and sizes and significant turnovers.

And then I set up my own executive coaching practice and have run my coaching practice for a decade. So that's become very much my second career, which I would say I'm still in.

But I, for the last nine months or thereabouts, have been transitioning into what is probably my third career. I always thought I'd have a third career. I must admit, I thought it would be a yoga teacher, but it's not a yoga teacher. [laughs] Might be my fourth career. My third career, which is largely unpaid -- but is as climate activist. So, I'm doing both. I'm wearing both hats very much -- executive coach and director of my own Small Business, and more and more climate activism.

Anthony: Yes. And of course you went to London in at Easter when Extinction Rebellion decided to try and lock down central London. And you demonstrated your commitment to the cause to the extent that you were arrested. And you've already appeared in court once and I believe you have to go back for trial in October.

Now that's quite a step. Because I think anybody would describe you as a highly responsible member of society. And all of a sudden you are getting arrested. And you are standing up to them and saying, no...

Well, tell me what your position is?

Zoe: My position... I was smiling to myself when you were saying I was upstanding - I’m not always standing up. I was actually sitting down on the floor. [laughs] I was actually sitting on the ground in Parliament Square peacefully roadblocking.

But, yes. And I made the decision to go public about my arrest and court plea hearing, which it happened at the beginning of August. I deliberated long and hard about it. But I decided to go public because I really want to normalise people from all walks of life being part of a nonviolent direct action movement like Extinction Rebellion.

And being totally honest with yourself, and any lovely people who are listening to this podcast, Anthony, I'd never been involved in nonviolent direct action before, before I got involved in Extinction Rebellion. I've been passionate about sustainable development, global justice, the environment, nonhuman species as well as human justice, etc., etc., since I was little.

And I've done things outside of my work life in a volunteer and community sense from a very young age in all sorts of ways. And like many people, a substantial number of people, I think, who've become involved in Extinction Rebellion. And I talk to and train a lot of people and a lot of them have similar stories, that they've been trying to tread lightly on the planet most of their lives and trying to do that, not just do their bit, do way more than their bit. Plus do, do you know, community activism or that kind of stuff. And I think in the recent months and years, many of us have realised that that's just not enough.

I don't think it was ever enough, but we believed it was enough or do believe that these small things together could add up. But we have more than enough data to tell us that that's just not the case.

And, thank you for saying I'm an upstanding member of the community, or some of the language you used Anthony. But, I am an educated professional woman. I've got three master's degrees. I know one end of a bit of science from another.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I've got enough training and experience and expertise to believe the science when I see it. And I genuinely believe that the message that Extinction Rebellion and others, whether that’s Greta Thunberg or whether that's a whole bunch of climate scientists like Kevin Anderson and others, say that we are in an absolute emergency situation and if we want to have any chance of averting utter catastrophe, we've got to do an awful lot now. And it involves a level of changing our lives and lifestyles way beyond what governments and politicians that owning up to.

Anthony: Right. Okay. Well, since the protest at Easter, the government has paid lip service, I think, and no more, to the problem because they've changed from an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 to a 100%, and 2050 of course is way, way out. They've also said that they're going to set up a citizen's assembly.

But this is, again, this is talk, nothing's actually been done. And unfortunately, as we well know, the present government is fixated on one single issue to the exclusion of all else.

Zoe: Yes.

Anthony: That’s probably why Extinction Rebellion is going to go ahead and try and lock down London again on the 7th of October. We have a much more right wing home secretary now and the Metropolitan Police was saying it's going to take a very hard line. In fact, it is taking a hard line in that it is charging everybody that it arrested.

So, will you be going down on the 7th of October? And what do you see as the future for all this?

Zoe: I definitely plan to, Anthony, along with thousands of others.

It might sound all highfalutin, or whatever people think. But I genuinely believe that personally, and as a mother and a human, I have a moral obligation. I genuinely believe I have moral obligation. Because lots of people around the earth are suffering already and have died or are having extreme suffering from all sorts of planetary impacts already and ecological impacts.

I've got a 16 year old daughter; she's a big part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And the same sort of motivation goes for many parents, grandparents that I've met along the way. And for the seventy-six-year-old grandma who was arrested when I was arrested in Parliament Square and more besides. And I genuinely feel that as a parent, I have to look my daughter in the eye, knowing what I know.

It's like once you actually really absorb the scientific truth, I cannot not act. So when I stand up and speak for Extinction Rebellion, which I do. I give the Heading for Extinction Talks and I train other people to do those talks around the northwest and beyond. And when I do that, I genuinely introduce myself by saying, I can't not do this. I can't not be involved.

It is a drive to act, which is so strong because a big chunk of that is about being a mum.

Anthony: Okay, okay. But leaving aside whether or not Extinction Rebellion will be successful later this year, do you believe that we are in time to actually be able to change things? Or do you... Have you have you heard what Guy McPherson and Jem Bendell say, which seems to suggest it's all over.

Zoe: Yeah. It's the million, million, million dollar question isn't it? Or whatever the right phrase is nowadays.

I think I've got several answers to that, or versions to that answer, Anthony.

I haven't read Guy McPherson's book, but I have watched a number of his YouTube videos and I've read, obviously Jem Bendell's "Deep Adaptation" and watched some of his stuff as well.

And I think Jem's not quite in the same place as Guy McPherson is he? - not quite in the same place as immediate near term human extinction; he's more in the place of -- actually, we're heading for social collapse, but we don’t know the ending.

So they're not quite in the same place, is my understanding.

I'm probably not far off Jem Bendell's position. But I guess, the position I come from is that the decision for me personally... And I think this is an evolving situation, so I'm not putting a line in the sand saying this is how I'll always feel, because things are evolving and we haven't got time, we've got developing and you know, we haven't got time.

We've got for so little time to start making major, major change before we really, really, won't have time.

All of the very recent evidence with the very scary melting at the Arctic and the Greenland ice sheets and stuff seem to be pointing to what a significant number of people fear -- that the IPCC was far too conservative and behind the curve, and that things are happening much quicker than they said they would. And that was a critique that's been around for a while anyway.

But to actually experience -- not directly experienced, because I'm not on the Greenland ice sheet -- but to actually read with the benefits of global media and social media now, one can see things pretty quickly and you know, there is so much horror going on right now with the rates of melting, the rate of... Only just literally earlier on today I was looking at this news just come out on fires in the Amazon. So not only is the Amazon being cut down at an extraordinary and ever-increasing rate nearing its own tipping point, but there are thousands of fires going on in the Amazon right now, as well as the enormous fires in the boreal forest, in Russia and so on.

The scale of this is just huge. And, I think there's quite a possibility that we've gone past the point of no return. But we don't know it. And it's probably impossible to absolutely prove. And why spend our time trying to research and prove that rather than actually just acting?

Because we don't know for sure where the exact tipping point is. I don't know for sure where it is. There's the hot-house Earth scenario that was published last year, where the writers thought it was about was about two degrees. And that a two-degree warming will hit into a hot-house Earth scenario, where tipping cascades will set off changes that we won't be able to act on.

I know some people believe that we have a number of locked in... It's not, "some people believe," it's -- there is a range of science out there showing that we have a number of locked-in temperature increases.

So, for example, when the particulate matter clears out of the atmosphere from reduction of fossil fuel burning, etc., that that clearing of the air will get a one-off warming hit, because we're actually being slightly masked from the sun's energy by that particulate matter.

So, I personally think we were heading for way beyond 1.5 degrees. I cannot see that we are going to be able to limit that. And I think anyone who feels like we could meet that 1.5degrees must be in some sorts of denial or collusion, because you just have to look at the Keeling curve. You just have to look at the plots on the Keeling curve, and it's going up and up and up.

And last year's emission was May 2018 to May 2019, was the highest emissions ever in a 12-month period.

So, these data points don't show any sign of slowing down.

But at the same time it's easy to think things are good by reading -- people want to read smiley, happy stuff, and yes, there's some joint G7 meeting about to happen in some posh place of the world’s leading fashion houses looking at sustainable fashion. And I just shared it on LinkedIn just earlier today and you know, I just, I'm afraid I must've be come across a little bit cheeky in my LinkedIn material, but I think it needs to be said -- that these people can agree all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, consumption’s got to go down.

Anthony: Yes.

Zoe: So I suppose answering your question. Coming back to your point -- what do I actually believe? -- and part of me thinks we probably have gone past the point, but I'm choosing to not allow that part of me to be in the majority because it would prevent me from acting.

And, attempting to be a moral being with integrity, I have to hold on, not on a sort of blind hope thing, but hold on to it to the sense that we don't actually know for sure, so we better bloody well -- excuse my language -- but bloody well do as much as we possibly can to have a chance.

And also, if we don't know exactly where the tipping point is what I feel is clear when one really thinks about this and connects emotionally and in a pragmatic sense, is the journey from here to there, wherever "there" is, is going to be full of bleeding misery.

We need to try and make whatever that journey is as human and humane as we can, without allowing what's happening in the world to keep on going, which as you know, that was with the rise of the Right and Fascism and all the rest of it, which is just...

And coming originally from a Jewish background with grandparents and grandparents coming and escaping from Nazis in Europe and so on, that chimes a chord with me, big time.

And I don't want society to go in that direction. Let's... But it's already heading in that direction, isn't it, there's so many signs. And as resources get more scarce, it's going to prompt more of that.

I don't want that world. I think all of these things go hand in hand in trying to wake society up to get action before it's genuinely too late. There's very little that comes above that in my priority list, to be honest, Anthony.

Anthony: When I do presentations, people come up to me and say -- well, what can I do?

Zoe: Yeah.

Anthony: That's a very difficult question to answer, I find. The answer I take is basically -- support governments and urge governments to take action. Because it's only governments that can take the action of sufficient magnitude to have any effect.

But what would you say?

Zoe: Oh, that's a good question. And I also got asked that kind of question on a regular basis. And that's one reason why I wrote the article that I did on LinkedIn and about May time when I wrote an article on how to declare your own climate emergency, partly to speak to that question.

And I think like most things in life, it's multi-factorial and it's a "both/and". Because I also find, I think there's... Well, a lot of a lot of conversations I have, what shows up as a kind of triangle, if you don't mind the spacial metaphor, that people talk about in it. There's government, there's business and corporations, and then there's public and consumers, and that those three points of a triangle. And depending on what in it. And they're all humans, they're all people in all of those, and all those people that usually inhabit more than one space, because everyone's a consumer.

But depending on what hat a person's got on, they blame the others. They blame -- we can't do anything; business can't do anything without government setting the framework; governments don't want to change until enough consumers or voters want change -- so they just go around and around the bloody triangle while blaming each other.

But I think actually... As I've gone through lots of reflections in recent months about all of this, it's not actually a triangle, it's a square or a rhombus or whatever, because the fourth point is the media. So I think the media have an enormous role to play. Hence some of the other stuff that I've posted on LinkedIn.

The media have an enormous role to play, an enormous obligation. If I worked in the media, I'd find it pretty hard to look myself in the mirror right now, knowing if I hadn't done my duty. And there's so few media outlets who've done their duty on this stuff.

And they justify doing what's right now.

The short answer is I'm coming back to what do individuals do, is, take action on all of those fronts.

So, of course we need system change. Without system change, we can't decarbonise the energy supply, etc., etc. All of the things that they can't completely change -- the agricultural system and turn linear economy to a circular economy. Of course we need a bigger system change for that.

But from where I sit, I know some people say individual action is pointless. I don't believe individual action is pointless. I think it's both. Because at the end of the day, if we are to get system change, whether that's carbon taxes, meat taxes, reduction on flying, changes in food production, whatever, whatever, whatever -- you can preempt what needs to happen and start doing it. [laughs]

So why wait for government to create taxes and set incentives and disincentives? Why not just start doing it?

So that's how... So I don't fly anymore, etc., etc., etc., because action... It's going to have to stop. So I might as well stop it before someone makes me stop it.

I think there's that piece to it. I think there's also a kind of change maker piece to the individual action that -- if we not only make changes in our life but tell our friends, family, communities, business partners, etc., etc., that we're making these changes, that helps to get the conversations out there. So I've had all sorts of conversations with people about the fact that I'm not flying anymore, for example. Or whatever else I'm just not doing.

But I think we... Personally, I would absolutely stay on top of all of that, that for everyone you feel is that then any way they can support movements like Extinction Rebellion or Christian Climate Action, or whatever climate activism movements they can, school strikes or whatever, that in any way people should support those movements if they feel that they can in any way, whether that's being involved directly in any way, of which there are lots of ways to do without being arrested, or whether it's donating or whether it's just sharing stuff on social media -- as much as possible. Because these movements are not extremist. I mean, we know from history and the social sciences that systemic large scale political changes do not happen through being polite.

They don't even really happen through the ballot box. They happen through nonviolent direct action. And there's plenty of research that shows that over decades and decades that that's how significant system change happens, is through nonviolent direct action.

I hadn't bodily engaged with all of that until the last year. But it just totally makes sense. It's logical, and as well, is emotionally sensible.

Emotionally I'm totally engaged in this stuff as you can probably tell. But actually I'm also pretty logical, rational, geeky kind of person. And it does rationally makes sense.

Anthony: Well, I shall be down in London on the 7th of October. Avoid getting arrested, I'm afraid.

I did hear somebody from Extinction Rebellion who was asked -- well, what should we do? -- to which he said "that's not our role." It's just to stimulate government to do things. I thought that was a bit of a cop out, but perhaps he was in a minority.

Zoe: Okay. Yeah. This kind of question comes up quite often in conversation about XR. So Extinction Rebellion - we don’t see our role to dictate to people specifically what changes need to happen. For many reasons. One is that there are lots of clever people and scientists and researchers and so on who've worked out what needs - the sorts of changes that need to happen, like Project Drawdown, etc. -- they're just not happening.

So it's not the question of what needs to happen. It's the question of -- they need to happen.

A bit like you were saying before in our conversation, it's action we should concentrate on, not the words.

And as a movement, XR doesn't want to dictate, because actually, we need more and better democracy, not less democracy. So that's why the third demand is there in terms of having citizens assemblies to be legally binding to create informed, or informed policy guidance for government that government needs to be actually used to guide its actions, based on the evidence and based on randomly selected representative body of the population, who don't have to make short term decisions. Because of course we know that our current system, not only the first past the post, which doesn't help very much either, but also the short termers, and as well, allow and doesn't encourage any thinking longer than two, three, four years.

And if ever long term thinking was needed, you know, it's this. We need to be thinking not just decades, but generations ahead and longer. Because, just from the sheer fact that CO2 can last hundreds if not thousands of years, we've got to be thinking long term and we've got to think, turn this supertanker around in a way that requires a level of human leadership that we've never seen before.

So it's actually an inspiring opportunity for humans to be their absolute best. But in order to have that, we need the truth to be told, so that people genuinely understand the truth.

And clearly there's a lot more awareness of climate issues now from the media, but there's still an awful lot of lack of understanding and misunderstanding of the actual nature and scale and pace of the urgency.

Anthony: So we need action, not words. And you've got a conference coming up -- the ethical consumption conference, avoiding "greenwash."

Because there is a big temptation in the corporate sector to be seen to be doing something, although it may only be superficial.

Zoe: Yeah. Well, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, it's actually not a conference. It's not that big, but it is an event. So one of the hats that I wear as well as exec coach and XR activist and whatever, is as I'm the lead for the Greater Manchester area through a network called Women in Sustainability. I've been involved in that for a few months now and it's a network which is across the UK and expanding out internationally as well.

It supports women who work in, or wants to work in any aspect of sustainability, to build their resilience, their personal development, their ability to make a difference, as well as their own career and opportunities. But to make the difference that they want to make, really.

So we have events every two or three months in central Manchester, and yes, you're right, this next event coming up in the middle of September is an event specifically around ethical consumption and avoiding greenwash. That's one of the topics that our members highlighted that they'd be interested in.

So we've got a really great speaker, Joanna Long from the Ethical Consumer Organization coming to talk about that. And it'll be a really good event.

I think for me, avoiding greenwash is so important, because it's absolutely bandwagon now, isn't it? It's an absolute bandwagon. And I think there's a lot of disinformation and a lot of consumers who might be influenced by bits of greenwash, when, if you actually knew the reality that it would be far from the truth.

Anthony: Right. So if people contact you via LinkedIn, you can give them the details in this, can you?

Zoe: Yes, absolutely. I've recently re-posted the advert for the event. So yeah, they can contact me on LinkedIn and I'll happily share the details.

It is a Women in Sustainability event, so it's a women's networking event. So any guys, please don't contact me, but please do pass it on to contact email colleagues. And yes, I'd be really pleased to welcome more members. It's a really friendly and confidential space. So yeah, delighted to do that.

Anthony: Zoe, thank you very much for taking the time this afternoon to talk to the Sustainable Futures Report. There's a tremendous amount of information there. I applaud you going to the XR event in October in London. I'll be there. I hope other people who listen to the Sustainable Futures Report will be there, because you've laid out the fact that it is so, so important that we get some very, very significant and fundamental actions taken. Otherwise we have got a very, very bleak future. Thank you.

Zoe: Thank you, Anthony. And, look forward to perhaps having a follow up podcast later on in the year.

Anthony: Right. That'll be great


In Conclusion

I'll certainly keep in touch with Zoe and we'll see how her court case turns out. Unfortunately all this seems so unreal at the moment, at least in the UK where as I commented last week we are going through a constitutional crisis with an obsessive fixation on leaving the EU. 
We need to get the government’s attention on the climate crisis - much more than attention - we need action. 
As Zoe said, “…we know from history and the social sciences that systemic large scale political changes do not happen through being polite.” 
I’m almost lost for words when it comes to ending this episode. It is so difficult to persuade people to examine the detail of their views on Brexit - even without trying to change their minds - that it makes me very pessimistic about persuading them to accept that changes are needed to meet the climate crisis. Still, it won’t stop me presenting the message. It won’t stop a lot of people from coming together in London and all over the world next month to continue to call for action.
Don’t forget, next week, next Friday 20th September there will not only be another Sustainable Futures Report but another School Strike. This looks like a big one. It’s going to cause argument and it’s going to cause debate. At the very least, let’s all work together to keep the conversation going.
That's it for this week.
I’m Anthony Day. 
That was the Sustainable Futures Report. As I said, there will be another episode next week. I'm not sure what it will contain but I have a couple of interviews coming up which should link stand up comedy, self driving cars and archaeology with the climate crisis. All will be revealed once I have finalised the details.
Before I go, thank you for listening. If you're a patron, thank you for being a patron. If you're not, and you’d like to be a patron, then go to the website patreon.com/sfr where you'll find full details.
I'm Anthony Day.
And that's it for another week.


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