Anson Nash and Kevin Hester continue their extinction dialogues discussing strategies for managing grief and doing meaningful work at the edge of extinction, including installing Penguin breeding nests on Rakino Island .
“Researching and writing about the impacts of runaway climate change, as I’ve been doing now for too many years, I’ve watched several patterns recur.”
“One of these is evident in a recent warning from the UN. Biodiversity chief of the UN Cristiana Pașca Palmer warned that if governments around the globe don’t work to bring a halt to the loss of biodiversity and succeed in implementing a plan to do so within two years, humans could face our own extinction.”
What on earth does anyone expect these opportunists to achieve in two years when in reality the situation deteriorates by the hour?
Dahr Jamail’s latest article which we discussed is embedded here; In the Face of Extinction, We Have a Moral Obligation.
Dahr will be publishing his latest book “The End of Ice” on January 15th 2019.
In July next year he will be coming to Australia and Aotearoa NZ on a book launch tour.
I’ll be co-ordinating the NZ leg with speaking engagements already planned at Mangarara Eco Lodge and I’ll be looking for venues and organisers in Wellington, Auckland and on the mainland, please contact me if you wish to be involved in any capacity. I will be interviewing Dahr Jamail on Nature Bats Last on The Progressive Radio Network on February 6th just after the book has been launched.
The show and the previous 121 episodes can be found in the NBL archives at PRN.FM
The issue of a nuclear winter being used to cool the overheating planet was discussed and has been covered previously on this blog here; The Inevitability of Nuclear War and Subsequent Nuclear Winter
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
Thank you Kevin. I have enjoyed listening to your interviews with Anson. It’s been a journey researching and listening right along with Anson. Look forward to more dialogue. Much love and all the best to you. Janet Nash.
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Another dynamic young person who wants to be treated with respect and the truth.
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Hi Kevin, Great interview as always. I think he finally gets it. Can you give me the urls for the first 3 parts? Jacks
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Another morning wishing I could afford a better internet connection than dial-up! Unfortunately I’m guessing there isn’t anyone putting out written transcripts of the interviews?
Another blue sky day (now that the freezing fog has burned off) here by the Canadian Border in the PacNW. Temps this morning were hovering around -13’C with zero snow on the ground and none in the forecast. Not good for the end of the first week in December. The ground has re-frozen from the thaw it went through in November when the wild grasses started to green up and grow again, and the ski industry is busily sucking groundwater to ‘blow snow’ trying to lure people up to their hills since there is little natural snow cover on the mountains around here yet. And the Northern Jet Stream continues to do its crazy huge loops…
Finished Wadham’s ‘Farewell to Ice’ and found myself a bit uncomfortable with his ideas that only nuclear power can replace fossil fuel. Though he may be correct in terms of energy ratios, looking at Fukushima’s multiple melted-down reactors spewing enormous amounts of radioactivity (and will essentially forever) is rather horrifying all the while Chernobyl’s single reactor continues to be permanently poisonous as an ‘exclusion zone,’ one that the Japanese neoliberal government refuses to even think about for their much larger disaster because it would essentially clear off the entire island and evacuate Tokyo. And the radioactive poisons spread all around this country in different sites continue to be ignored by the general public (who unfortunately the majority only watch the corporate MSM news) but the Susanna Fire in SoCal seems to have spread radioactivity in the smoke clouds from that reactor site the fire started on.
As Vonnegut used to say; so it goes.
I’m now many chapters into Daniel Ellsberg’s ‘Doomsday Machine; Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.’ No, you don’t want to read this book, Kevin! Oh my. How we have managed to avoid full-scale war is a wonder since the absolute stupidity, ignorance, and belligerent behavior of the so-called ‘leaders’ has always literally begged for war…just like now. After nearly 75 years how the hell has it been avoided is mind boggling.
And the El Nino is warming the Siberian seafloor according to arcticblogspot… What can one say to that?
Nothing else to say at this point. Do as well as you can with the time we have left.
sealintheSelkirks
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Yeah it’s sad to see James Lovelock, James Hansen and now Peter Wadhams supporting nuclear. The cognitive dissonance is amazing, it’s civilisation and especially Industrial civilisation that got us into this predicament.
So far the El Nino if it does eventuate looks like being a ‘mild’ one but who knows anymore as there is no normal anymore!
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Hi Seal,
I just wanted to say I really appreciate your comments here on this blog and that no length to them will deter me from reading them 🙂
Again, very much appreciated..
Keep ‘m coming
-G.
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Thanks for the compliment. Don’t hear those much around these mountains since I’m rather…not optimistic in the longevity of the current civilization (and I use that term loosely). Telling young people who ask about climate they should really think about not having kids anytime soon until they see a major change in how this civilization lives doesn’t get many smiles. Questions, yes, and it is good that I get asked to explain but…it really isn’t easy…
My longest like-a-brother surf partner calls me the “Surfing Cassandra” because over the over 40 years we’ve been friends I’ve never underestimated the greed and deliberate stupidity of my species and have always read, talked, and written about it. He used to get 20 page letters in the early 80s (cursive-in-pen written) and said that unfortunately my guesses about what was coming next (since Reagan was put in office) have pretty much come true. I read Limits to Growth in the 70s, Schneider’s Genesis Strategy about climate, and my stepmom gave me Silent Spring in the late 60s as a young teen… The readings knocked a few chunks out of the myths and most people desperately want to continue to live in them. Makes one a bit of an outsider as I was the only one of my peers to have done so. Surfers are rather focused on just the waves.
I’ve been rather, ummmm, bluntly realistic in my observations and outlook since then. Never had kids, raised three as a stepdad, and I’m sorry to see so many babies being born around here the last few years. Each one makes me sad though I try not to show it.
Funny that I’ve been getting published the last three years but not just in comment sections like here. But then the short stories of the last couple of years, the article this year, and the three part book-novella published in 2015 & 16 were not about climate. They were fun to write except for the warning comment/rant about Short Term Vacation Rentals taking over the beach areas where I grew up that the local beach newspaper publisher asked to turn it into an article and did.
Again, thank you for the pat on the back even though they get kind of long rather easily. My stepkids used to call me their “noisy stepdad’ back in the early 90s…
sealintheSelkirks
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Hi Kevin,
Totally on board with the assessment of nuclear not being up to the task of replacing fossil fuels, a miraculous breakthrough in fusion 30 years ago notwithstanding.
But cognitive dissonance is the psychological effect one experiences being exposed to mutually exclusive ‘truths’. It’s not a poor form of assessment of reality or something in that vain.
😉
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Professor Guy McPherson had a long and interesting conversation with another young man aware of the severity of the crises we face.
Kick back, find a beautiful view, play this podcast.
I listened to it whilst on Dolphin Watch on Rakino Island gazing out on an acidifying, dying ocean.
https://guymcpherson.com/2018/12/a-casual-conversation-with-luke-canada/?fbclid=IwAR2KVEZSW1jSIPovsifLMIFOY1jedXwbY755go6F7NleUymbJRw00bdiBLU
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Anson and Guy having the conversation that few are courageous enough to have.
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Here’s the Roger Hallam intervew I mentioned;
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