Sustainababble

A car-free future is hurtling our way faster than even the most ardent greenies dared dream, pre-Covid. Backed into a corner by a pandemic that simply refuses to stop being a dick, mayors throughout Europe are rapidly closing major roads to cars and building cycling infrastructure quicker than you can say “Eddy Merckz ate my chamois cream”. So momentous is this development that Dave even went out on his bike to see the transformation taking place in the city formerly known as Stinky London, and got all emosh in the process. Bless. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Emai

What the world needs in these troubled times is someone to blame. A scapegoat or, in this instance, a scapepangolin.For it turns out everyone's favourite curly, scaley, insect-snuffling-y, heavily trafficked nature weirdos are very much in the dock for unleashing Covid-19 on the world. But is all as it seems? Dave has read some SCIENCE, and reveals all. Also this week, an absolute thug of a plant. If you encounter Giant Hogweed, for pete's sake just give it whatever it wants and back away quietly.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Central to British cultural life, if not quite as dominant as it once was, the Beeb still solicits widespread affection, a refuge of familiarity in these strange times. But many a spleen is vented over Auntie's perceived leftyness or rightyness, and its impartial, 'balanced' editorial stance in news reporting is frequently the subject of attack or riducule, not least in coverage of climageddon. So what really goes on when an angry man in a shed complains, and how exactly does celebrity climate denier Nigel Lawson get a platform on the Today programme? To find out, we speak to Richard Black, 25 years a BBC journalist and long-time environment correspondent. Richard currently runs the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit and is the author of Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the

If the global pandemic is leaving you wanting more on the existential angst front, try dipping into chapter 6 of journalist and former activist Mark Lynas' new book, 'Our Final Warning', where you'll read that at six degrees of global heating "a wave of mass extinctions threatens life on earth". Theeeeeeere we go, that's the good stuff.The book, to an extent an updated version of 2007's groundbreaking 'Six Degrees', describes the most recent scientific understanding of what we can expect if carbon emissions don’t fall rapidly and temperatures continue to rise. Or, in other words, the civilisation-ending shitstorm that's in the post if humanity doesn't get its act together PDQ.We chat to Mark about what's changed - good and bad - in the twelve years between the two books, what Covid-19 might mean for global emissions, and why, despite it all, he retains a sense of optimism.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo

Look, we were supposed to be on a break, but then the world broke. So we're back for a remotely-recorded Covid special. Fair to say this virus lark presents a few challenges on the chuckle front. But despite all the mayhem there are as always Inhofes to be fingered and green shoots of optimism to be nurtured. We roll up our sleeves. Should we truck any sympathy with polluters trying to capitalise on it all? Are you a git if you're happy about the cleaner air and the rampaging goats? And how many pairs of lockdown pants does a chap need? All this, and Dave updates us on his career break plans. Suffice it to say, they've changed. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those ty

Shriek! One of us no longer works for an environmental charity. Is this the end? A more reflective / fewer-knob-jokes episode than usual. What happens when trying to change stuff gets all a bit bloody exhausting? How do we know whether anything we're doing is making the tiniest bit of difference? And - look, we KNOW it's a mid-life crisis, all right? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

It's all very well wanting to plant trees everywhere and stuff like that but you need to own the land first. And we don't. Not only that, we don't even really know who does. But one man knows more than most. Superstar activist Guy Shrubsole spent a very long time digging into who actually holds the deeds to England's green and pleasant land and what he found was proper scandalising. In 2019 his book, Who Owns England, took the papers by storm - both left- and right-wing ones, for different reasons - and is just about to come out in paperback. Remember all the stuff about half the country being owned by a very small number of posh people? That was Guy. Guy tells us all about his adventures hopping over fences and trawling over maps, and makes us gawp and shriek at the sheer secrecy about who holds the real power over England itself. You'll be sharpening your pitchforks by tea-time. A fascinating chat with a campaigner and author whose work has been called "brave and important" by Robert Macfarlane.

Children's author and illustrator Kate Pankhurst often finds herself addressing classrooms of kids, so she was completely at home chatting to Dave and Ol about her new book, Fantastically Great Women Who Saved The Planet.As the names suggests, the book bigs up a host of incredible women from around the world who have done more than most to stand up for mother Earth. Some are household names, but many aren't, despite their planet-saving (s)heroics.We ask Kate whether that's kinda the point of the book; that were our society and its cultural history somewhat less unequal, the legends of Wangari Maathai, Ingeborg Beling or the Chipko movement would be every bit as well known in classrooms as their male counterparts.Fantastically Great Women Who Saved The Planet is out now, published by Bloomsbury, and is the Booksellers Association children's indie book of the month for February.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble l

Now that we've Br-ucked Off, Blighty can look forward to supermarkets chock full of chlorine-drenched poultry. Lucky us (lucky chickens).Why? Because that's how chickens are made in America, goddammit, and Donald Trump smells a finger-lickin' opportunity to sell stinky US chooks to a market newly liberated from Yerp's pesky animal welfare standards.Obviously that's about as far as our understanding of trade goes, so we got someone in to tell us more. Returning guest Sam Lowe (see babble #42), from the Centre for European Reform, joins us to defend his fascination with one of the nerdiest subjects in the world and patiently explain why it's actually quite important.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all tho

Australia's terrifying bushfires have made the climate emergency seem very real and very immediate. They've forced people everywhere to join the dots in ways previous 'yes obviously it's climate change' disasters haven't. Why? Does it really take a billion animals going up in smoke for people to give global apocalypse more than a passing thought? And is anything going to be different now, politically?Also this week, some truly biblical insect news from East Africa and a newspaper proving that, just occasionally, the least trusted profession can be a force for good.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustain

In a hotel room in Birmingham, one hundred ordinary people are doing something rather extraordinary. For four weekends, members of the UK's Climate Assembly are discussing - in a polite, constructive, and very un-2020 way - how on earth we achieve what the UK government has decided we will achieve, i.e. naff all climate pollution in 30 years time.What's really special is that these people are not yoghurt weavers like Dave and Ol. They represent a cross-section of society, including climate sceptics, so should arrive at solutions likely to meet with broad public and political approval. In theory.To find out what it's like in that hotel room, and what David Attenborough is really like, we speak to the person running the whole shebang. Sarah Allan is Head of Engagement at the participation charity 'Involve', who are running Climate Assembly UK for six committees of the UK Parliament.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababb

Chess Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson won the British Championship three times and has been the no.1 player in Scotland for basically ever. He's so clever, he's got a PhD in 'Wisdom'. That sounds like a joke but it isn't.Jonathan has written extensively about what it is in our heads and our societies that stops us being wiser, and is director of Perspectiva, an organisation that inspires Important People to examine real world problems with a deeper appreciation of the influence of our inner worlds. Problems like climate change, which is a principal theme in his new book, The Moves That Matter.So, fresh from an election all-nighter (this was recorded on 13 December), Dave and Ol try to conduct a conversation with a stupendously clever human all about philosophy, psychology and climate change. In addition - and why the hell not - Dave decides to **play** Jonathan at chess while conducting the interview. You can see how that went, move by move, here: https://tinyurl.com/babblechessSustainababble is your friendly env

We don't want a lot for Christmas - there is just one thing we need: piles of festive eco-guff underneath our (potted, reusable) Christmas tree. Make our dreams come true! Let us share this year's Sustainabauble with you. Happy Babblemas. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Election 2019, then: Tories. LOTS of Tories. Boris is as delighted as pig in a massive pile of poo, and has carte blanche to sodding well do whatevs - including to the planet. Crikey, and indeed, Moses. What on Earth does all this mean for, well, Earth? Will the good green stuff the Tories promised ever actually happen? Is this the end for the climate movement? And if you're feeling a bit soggy and limp about it all, what's to do next? Dave and Ol haven't really been to bed, but the Babble never sleeps. Join us, and several cups of exceptionally strong coffee, for a post-electoral cuddle. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Vi

It's possible that a terrifyingly high proportion of babble listeners haven't seen Free Willy, which, if the case, is truly appalling. Not being alive in 1993 is NO EXCUSE.Anyway, it's a film about an orca, and orcas - killer whales - are extraordinary beings, but beings we know bugger all about. So we decided to interview someone who knows rather more.Enter Shilpa Shah, strategist and blogger for the wonderful Orca Guardians organisation in West Iceland. Shilpa is, by her own admission, completely obsessed with these animals, not only because of their remarkable social structures and astonishing intelligence, but because of what they might be trying to tell us about... us.To find out more about Orca Guardians and their work, please visit https://orcaguardians.org/. You can even adopt an orca! https://orcaguardians.org/adoption-packages/ Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. E

"The gentle art of persuading the public to believe that they want something they don’t need", so a 1905 definition goes. Selling in 2019 is basically the same, except now there's the added by-product - yay! - of hastening planetary self-combustion.But what's it actually like selling stuff you know is bad news? Can the ad industry - increasingly staffed by the eco-anxious, after all - use its dark arts to save the planet? And is Mad Men basically a documentary?We natter to recovering ad man, and co-founder of The Comms Lab, Jonathan Wise, to find out.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email

Bits of northern England have been inundated by floodwater in recent weeks. Even the perpetually soggy Venice has managed to get somehow more underwater.It's grim as hell, flooding, made worse by the politicians stopping by with a mop and hi-vis. Grim, but not unpredictable. So why is everyone still reporting these events as if they're out of the blue? Shouldn't we start assuming they're going to happen more regualrly, and get our preparative shit together accordingly?Also this week, manifestos for the babble's THIRD general election make for surprisingly uplifting reading, and Coldplay kick blighty when it's down. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Vis

Chances are, if you listen to this podcast you're a bit of a lefty. And that's fine. And we are too.But lefties surely can't claim a monopoly on environmentalism, can they? There are plenty of non-lefties who say they care just as much about the planet, after all.So, in a demonstration of BBC-standard impartiality, we decided to interview an Actual Tory. It's only been 157 episodes, after all.Step forward Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network and former aide to Michael Gove, to give a passionate defense of Tory environmentalism. Crikey moses.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainab

Whizz! Bang! No, not BoJo's pillow talk, but the sound of millions of home explosives polluting the sky and making pets' insides go gooey. With the annual Guy Fawkes celebration now behind us, we ask if it might be time to ban yet another thing that's fun.Also this week, seismic news in fracking world: it's actually been banned in England! We pause to celebrate this epic win, and thank the people who made it happen.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

In this special episode, Dave and Ol leave stinky London behind and head off to rainy, muddy Cornwall to try to meet some actual beavers. Without wellies. It's been 400 years since the humble but sodding impressive beaver was wiped out in the UK due to having nice-smelling undercarriages. Now, a handful of rewilders are starting to reintroduce them - including organic farmer, sausage chaser and beaver fancier, Chris Jones. With the help of Babble listener extraordinaire Abi, we visited Chris's farm to see these fabby rodents up close. Thanks massively to Chris Jones (@kernowbeaver) and Abi Beath for all the help. Abi's alter ego is singer/songwriter Abi Sofia, and two of her tracks are used in this episode - listen at https://soundcloud.com/abisofiamusic. Find out more about the Cornwall Beaver Project at @cornwallbeaver (Twitter) or @cornwallbeaverproject on Facebook. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustain