What’s Warmer, Wetter, and Greener? (Spoiler Alert: The Arctic—and It Shouldn’t Be!)
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
12/21/23
•33m
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The Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. All the vital signs—sea and land surface temperatures, terrestrial snow cover, the melting rate of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the extent and timing of sea ice—are all flashing red. The Arctic is Ground Zero of a rapidly warming, changing planet.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA for short, recently issued its annual Arctic Report Card, which mostly makes for grim reading. At the same time, one of the storylines is that it’s not too late, that there is still time to slow and even to reverse the most pernicious changes that otherwise threaten all of us.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” says Tero Mustonen, one of the authors of the report. He knows the Arctic as a scientist, as a fisherman, as a leader of the innovative Snowchange Cooperative, as the head of the village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland. And, as worried as he is by what he sees happening around him, he and his colleagues have developed a solution: rewild spoiled lands in the Far North to turn them back into the massive carbon sinks badly needed by Earth.
Listen as he explains the problem as well as the solution, with some geopolitics thrown into the mix to make matters worse. Then tell us: do you think climate change can be slowed in your lifetime?
Previous Episode
Cry for Argentina?
December 7, 2023
•32m
Why not? The country's inflation rate is approaching 150%. 40% of its people live in poverty. The currency is practically worthless. And Argentina is the IMF’s largest debtor because practically no one else will lend it money.
By any definition, the country is an economic basket case. However, unlike the rest of the world’s failed economies, Argentina has a well-educated population, innovative world-class tech sector, robust natural resources, and world-leading wheat, soybeans, and meat exports.
Arguably, Argentina isn’t a failed state, but it has mostly been run by failed politicians.
So it is not surprising that voters just opted to try something radically different, electing a president who describes himself as an "anarcho-capitalist" and promised to use a chainsaw (one of his favorite campaign props) to slash government spending. Can Javier Milei fix what’s broken? Will Argentina’s entrenched politicians get out of the way of his promised shock therapy?
Eduardo Amadeo is optimistic, as you will hear in this episode of New Thinking for a New World. That’s a good sign since Amadeo--economist, businessman, social entrepreneur, and politician—has spent much of his career trying to get his fellow countrymen headed in the right direction. Maybe a radical libertarian economist will finally get the job done.
Listen and tell us whether you think Argentina can finally escape the mess it has made for itself HERE.
Next Episode
Best New Thinking: Should We Tolerate the Intolerant?
December 28, 2023
•29m
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies Financial Times.
Popper, an Austrian philosopher who had fled the Nazis, wrote those words as he came to grips with how the Nazis had infiltrated and overrun liberal European societies. Fast forward to today. Elisabeth Braw, writing in the Financial Times, cited Popper’s thinking about the risks of tolerating the intolerant as she explained the recent explosion of terror threats on Sweden following incidents of Koran burnings. Although the Swedish government condemned the burnings, it could not prevent them essentially because of freedom of speech protections in Swedish law.
So Sweden finds itself in a double bind: it badly wants to stop Koran burnings, but to do so it would have to undermine a key aspect of its liberal democracy. Of course, that dilemma is not unique to Sweden in this era of violent hyper-partisanship.
Braw is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Listen as she explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.
What do you think? If Sweden could find a way to outlaw desecration of the Koran (and other holy books), would the terror threat disappear? And would that justify limiting freedom of expression?
Link to article in the Financial Times that is referred to in the podcast (the article is behind a paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/0ac9e1a9-2aad-47d9-83fb-4839e9b31b33
This episode was originally published on Aug 24, 2023
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