Electrify Everything!
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
11/04/21
•39m
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Politicians from around the world are in Glasgow for the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change. That the disastrous impacts of climate change are increasingly evident is testimony to many things, not least the practical shortcomings of the first 25 UN meetings. Why are we where we are? The science is clear; politics, much less so.
But do we know what to do? Do we have the technologies in hand to decarbonize economies in ways that are compatible with how people want to live? Can we do this?
Saul Griffith, Australian inventor and engineer—and a past winner of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—insists that the answer is emphatically yes. We don’t need technological miracles, he says; we have all the technology we need to transform the United States from laggard to leader in the effort to change the arc of the warming climate. And, if the United States can do it, everyone can.
Previous Episode
Greta’s Right: Less Talk, More Action
October 28, 2021
•31m
Searching for "Climate change" on Google produces 1.1 billion results in less than a second. It seems almost everyone everywhere is talking about it, including the great and the good who are gathered in Glasgow at the UN's 26th Climate Change Conference. But what is actually being done?
The gap between rhetoric and action is critical. Action comes in two flavors: top-down policies that aim to decarbonize and bottom-up behaviors of ordinary people, communities, and companies. In many ways, it’s the latter where real change occurs.
Santiago Gowland, CEO of the Rainforest Alliance has spent years working with businesses, NGOs and citizens around the world to mitigate some of the biggest impacts of climate change. Listen as he discusses urgent efforts to reverse the degradation of rainforests and to create truly sustainable supply chains that are good for people as well as for the planet.
Next Episode
China: On the Road to Perdition?
November 11, 2021
•37m
Under President Xi Jinping, China has shown a growing willingness to act outside the accepted geopolitical, economic and even diplomatic global framework and practices. Indeed, Beijing’s actions suggest a rejection of the post war system in favor of one that is not just rejiggered to accommodate China’s growing superpowers, but that is dominated by it.
The latest data points? President Xi did not show up at COP 26; reports from Glasgow suggest the Chinese have been playing a spoiling role in the climate talks; tensions over Taiwan continue to rise; Chinese rhetoric aimed at the United States, Australia, and Europe is increasingly harsh. Not a day goes by without new reports of China asserting what it sees as its prerogatives as the soon-to-be largest economy in the world.
What’s going on? Is China’s leadership acting out of strength or weakness? Is Xi merely probing the West’s weaknesses or has he decided the time is ripe to push hard? Is war possible? Is war avoidable?
Australian Kevin Rudd has spent a considerable part of his life thinking about, working on, and negotiating with China — as a diplomat, twice as his country's prime minister, and currently as president of the Asia Society. Arguably no other western leader knows China better. Listen as he assesses where China is today, and where it wants to be tomorrow.
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