Sustainababble

Well, this is it. Yer last ever Babble. Thank you – seriously, thank you – if you’ve lent us your attention over the years. It’s been a pleasure.

Herewith a valedictory episode in which we reveal the real reason we’re binning the babble, Ol serenades Dave with an original tune, and we humbly compare ourselves to one of the finest sitcoms this or any country has ever produced.

Mostly though we consume far too much of the Christmas spirit and get bitter about the British Podcast Awards, so it probably is time to call it a day.<...

For our final interview, we’re joined for a second time by the majestic Chris Packham, our first ‘proper’ guest all the way back in 2015.

We discuss all that has changed in those seven and a half years, not least some pretty hardcore stuff for Chris personally, and we chew over what the world of activism and protest might look like seven years hence, given things continue to go so spectacularly to shit.

Talking of shit, we discover that Chris Packham is full of it – so much so that he’s put his favourite wildlife poo pics i...

If there wasn’t twitter, would we have solved climate change by now? Might we at least have got round to thinking about solving climate change? Would Ol have had more sleep?

Sure, loads of important eco connections and organising and other useful stuff have happened via the site, but so too has a prodigious amount of titting about (trust us, we know of what we speak) let alone all the hate and bile and BS and conspiracy that sustains it.

Do climate-y people need to ‘win’ twitter to make progress? Or is fighting online the pr...

Bat-chomping bird-slicing eco-crucifixes* are making a comeback! A mere eight years after some Tories effectively banned anyone from erecting wind turbines in England, some other Tories now look poised to overturn that ban. Which sort of tells you everything you need to know about Westminster politics.

So this week we transport ourselves to a time when David Cameron was both a thing and someone who professed to like the planet, to understand why it is that these obviously useful, relentlessly popular, and appropriately sized (Grant Shapps, take note) steel and fibreglass daffodils are such Conservative kryptonite.

Look, we’re quitting, so if there ever was a leash we are now firmly off it. Problem is, while unleashed Dave might follow his nose into the bushes of podcasting misadventure, unleashed Ol… well, he’s not that interesting is he? So having cast aside any editorial imperative to stay vaguely relevant or entertaining, herewith 45 minutes of a sad old man wanging on about hot water cylinders and heat pumps.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the...

Now then, we have Some News about the babble. Listen to the show to find out precisely what (don’t worry, we haven’t been bad), but suffice to say this year’s Sustainabauble will be particularly valedictory.

But before we get too festive and emotional, there’s work to be done. Like trying to gather our thoughts on there being 8 billion humans alive.

Or indeed what we make of the increasingly ballsy climate protests sweeping the land. Are Just Stop Oil really “damaging their cause“, as so many armchair critics would have us believe?

And fi...

Chances are you’ll have read David Roberts’ superlative writing on climate – at Vox or more recently Volts – and thought ‘coo, that’s sensible and right and interesting’. We certainly have, so we’re delighted to finally have him on the show.

David natters with us about US politics (are things potentially *not* totally naused?), progressives’ inability to be happy, the usefulness of COPs and the role of protest. We also goad him to adopt pointlessly binary positions on various controversial topics but, darn it, he sees us coming.

As mentioned in the show, here’s David’s sterling a...

If we said “name the weirdest, most mystical & inexplicable creature on earth” you would rightly say “80s English footballer Peter Beardsley”. But pause for a moment to consider instead the ‘umble eel, a fish(ish) so unknown and unknowable that no human has observed one shagging in the wild. In fact no-one’s totally sure that they even DO shag in the wild. A bit like Peter Beardsley.

It’s an astonishing tale, the eel’s, at the heart of which is a simple question that’s confounded thinkers big and small for centuries: where do eels come from? Mad cap...

Loathe though we are to be scatological, it’s time to face faecal facts: the astonishing amount of human excrement on the planet presents a honking environmental challenge.

When you think about it, with nearly eight billion of us crimping one out most days, the fact that humans aren’t all swimming in the stuff is an impressive log-istical achievement, especially when flush toilets have only existed for 150 years.

And despite it being the most normal thing in the world, poos and pooing remains a curious taboo. Unless, that is, you’re professor and film-maker Troy H...

Britain has lost a lot of things lately: international standing; economic credibility; its collective shit. But we’ve also mislaid something more fragile, dank and extraordinary than even Liz Truss’s premiership: our precious and hitherto largely unknown temperate rainforests.

In his new book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain, author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole sets out to right that wrong. He’s mapped every last rainforesty remnant, uncovered centuries old cultural ties to them, and outlined a compelling case for reversing their decline.

Now listen, before you get excited, don’t go expecting pumas and parrots...

Who knew climate conferences had corporate sponsors? 183,295 people, that's who, for they have signed a petition telling the UN suits to ditch the sponsor of this year's jamboree in Egypt which is... Coca-Cola. That's Coca "oh hi! we're the biggest plastic polluter in the world!" Cola. Producers of 200,000 plastic bottles EVERY MINUTE coca-cola. Corporate lobbyists supreme, Coca-Cola. Everyone's favourite pilferer of scarce fresh water supplies and flogger of brown sugary fizz, Coca-Cola. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. We speak to Georgia Elliott-Smith, legal activist and originator of said petition, to find out what on earth is going on, and discover the astonishing...

Mistakes have been made, lessons learned. Yet again, us being away for a few weeks coincided with the ass falling out of everything that is good. In fact Blighty's new "Government" has done so many dastardly things that even usually mild-mannered bird watchers are losing their shit. Worse still, Dave & Ol's reputation is in tatters after we (*cough* Dave *cough*) said the Trussticular era probably wouldn't be much worse than what came before. Whoops. So this episode is our heartfelt apology to the babble army. We're sorry for going away, and we're sorry for being wrong. We get it, and...

What, or who, is a Liz Truss and why does anyone care? Well buckle up because approximately 17 old white men from the rich bits of England have just made her boss of Blighty and there are, we fear, going to be some changes around here. Or, er, are there? Because while Liz Truss is an MP with as many environmentalist bones in her body as a jellyfish, and as much as it's very, VERY tempting to get all shouty about her un-banning fracking etc., might we be getting too obsessed with individual politicians? Is one person - admittedly quite an...

'Intersectional environmentalism' is a) a lot of syllables, b) a brilliant concept explained simply and powerfully by writer and environmentalist Leah Thomas, and c) coincidentally also the title of Leah's new book. Part activist toolkit, part theory, and part history of environmental (in)justice, The Intersectional Environmentalist acknowledges and explores the overlap between systemic harm against Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) communities and the Earth. It also does a superb job of disentangling numerous knotty issues, like what privilege is and what it's got to do with the planet, with care and patience. And, talking of patience, Leah...

Rupert Read is an author, philosopher, and activist, perhaps best known for his prominent role in Extinction Rebellion. He's written more than a dozen books and his most recent - Why Climate Breakdown Matters - is, well, full on. Full on in that it argues that unless we confront the full horror of the situation we're in, and the very high likelihood that that situation will unravel towards some sort of societal collapse, then we can't possibly hope to plot a course towards a liveable future. So yeah, it's not for the faint hearted, but Rupert's argument also goes that...

If you ever encounter a Sloane's Viperfish, you're in for a treat. The charming creature has a bite so ferocious that its first vertebra has to act as a shock absorber. When it chomps, it unhinges its skull, opens its jaw 90 degrees, and expands its stomach to eat things up to 50% bigger than itself. Its absurd fangs act as a cage, trapping anything trying to escape. Luckily for us, Viperfish are found in the high seas, which is a very good reason to never go there. But unfortunately lots of people ARE going there, or planning to, mainly to nause...

"WHY HAVEN'T YOU BABBLED ABOUT EVIL EVIL POO-BUM ROADS?!?!" yells twitter. Well, your bellowed word is our grudging command. But while we're delighted to go truffling for babble in tarmac territory, there is no way on god's earth we are picking sides in the internecine war that is anti-roads campaigners vs anti-HS2 campaigners. But still. It is true, is it not, that comparatively little fuss is made about comparatively bollocks-loads of big new roads planned or under construction in England. Which is odd, because big new roads are quite literally a highway to climate hell, aren't they? And not altogether...

Fans of our feathered friends, look away now...If you've been to the coast recently there's every chance you'll have seen, how can we put this delicately, an exceptionally dead bird washed up on the shore. Or, more likely, dozens of the bastards. Bird flu has been around for ever, but evidently got the hump while Covid hogged the viral limelight. Now it's back with a vengeance, ensuring everyone and H5N-y-1 knows its name. Predictably enough, concern is largely reserved for the economic impact of farmed chickens getting the deadly snuffle. But what about skewered skuas or puff-less puffins...

Famously soggy, predictably chilly. Well, not any more, cos Blighty has joined the global combustability club after turning in a world-beating and very much oven-ready 40.3 degrees C of scorchiosity in its latest heatwave. So how freaked out should we feel? Cos like, this was always going to happen wasn't it? And, as sure as tropical night follows sweltering day, it's only going to get hotter from here. But does extreme weather's inevitability in anyway dent its horror? Will the fact that much of London ACTUALLY CAUGHT ON FIRE change inhofe-ish minds about the need for climate action? What, in other...

How much, precisely, is one whale worth? Half an elephant? Three dozen gibbons? "Don't be silly, Ol and Dave, you can't put a price on nature" we hear you cry. Well tell it to the IMF, because they say our blubbery friends retail for $2m, a big figure which, in the world of excel spreadsheets and cost benefit analyses, means whales are worth saving. Unlike, say, earwigs, who aren't priced up and therefore can extinctify themselves without wider consequences. Bonkers, no? Well that's what Adrienne Buller, author of fab new book The Value of a Whale: On the illusions of...

Epping Forest, or "Effing Forest" as it's known to the locals, is at the heart of Luke Turner's wonderful 2019 book about sexuality, trauma, god and personal recovery. The forest, Luke says, hums with an energy of people both enjoying the place but also getting up to things they can't do, and being people they can't be, in their normal lives. It's a human landscape, and kinda always has been - in contrast to the hippified, somewhat problematic idea of 'untouched' woodland. And despite all its undeniable loveliness, it's not necessarily a place which magically 'cures' your ills, no matter what...

The babble, it must be said, has a problem with authority. Probably cos of our upbringing or something. But this week, The Authority – specifically the Advertising Standards Authority – shot up in our estimation after it said NO, PURVEYORS OF SH*T LAWNS, YOU CANNOT CALL SH*T LAWNS ECO-FRIENDLY. Huzzah! BUT, they simultaneously stamped on vegan ads, so The Authority is firmly back in the bastards column again. We think. Also this week, Joe ‘Hey! I’m still alive!’ Biden gets all militaristic about heat pumps and Dave gets all heat pumped about Rishi Sunak. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, o...

If you were until recently, say, sustainability overlord at IKEA, should you be viewed as a suit who slapped green respectability onto a company that flooded living rooms with unnecessary tat? Or, perhaps, as a radical, transforming one of the word's biggest businesses into among the greenest while bringing veggie balls to the masses? Well, Steve Howard is said person - currently boss of sustainability at Singaporean investment fund Temasek - and as luck would have it he agreed to come on the babble and be asked about all things 'business' and the planet. And he doesn't even have a...

Bring out the bunting, close the streets, give everyone an extra holiday! No, not for the Queen's platinum wotsit, for the fact that the Aussies have voted out another massive inhofe! Yep, believe it or not, this week we say cheery bye-bye to former PM Scott Morrison, purveyor of weapons grade bullshit and world-leading climate inaction. And, it must be said, Olympic standard inhofery towards anyone who isn't Scott Morrison. To understand how and why ScoMo got the heave-ho, and to avoid an entire episode of Dave and Ol yelling HA HA HA HA and doing a silly dance, we...

The night sky, it seems, is getting brighter. At least according to some not-science we got sent by some not-scientists. But whether it's true or not (it almost certainly isn't) the question of light pollution got us thinking. So this week we rattle off all the ways in which the simple act of making sure we can see where we're all going is in fact abysmally bad for life on earth. Here's to another 250 episodes eh. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at De...

We live in a desperately cynical world - christ, the Babble should know - but a few public figures remain untarnished, standing tall as beacons of trustworthiness while our shared consensus collapses around us. The O.G. Big Dave is perhaps the most trusted of them all, the mere idea of him lying too horrible to comprehend. Which is perhaps why, when *he* tells us the planet is on fire and it's all our fault - unlike, say, every climate activist - the message is heard, listened to, and believed. It's also why he must never be allowed to retire...

You might think being dead is when you can finally stop worrying about your impact on the planet. You'd be wrong. Be it burrying, burning, or buggering off to space, there are myriad options for dealing with one's remains, and not all of them particularly courteous to the living organisms you leave behind. So, inspired by an email from the intriguing sounding www.earthfuneral.com, this week Dave quizes Ol on the different ways people (or at least, Americans) have come up with to dispose of the recently departed. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by...

In a rare bit of good news for the nation's youth, a new natural history GCSE means 16 year olds might one day appreciate fauna as much as they do Fortnite. Author & conservation goddess Mary Colwell is the driving force behind the 10 yr + campaign to persuade the UK government to introduce this new qualification, no mean feat given the introductions they prefer to make are between plutocrat A and party fundraiser B. ALLEGEDLY.We natter to Mary about how on earth she got this campaign over the line - featuring Bond-style train chases, among other things - as well as the...

Kelp. That's what's gonna save the world. Not trees, kelp. Or seagrass. Or some other form of wibbly algae that lives in the sea and isn't a plant. Bingeing carbon; hoovering up chemical nasties in the water; being home for the ickle fishies; being turned into non-plastic plastic - seaweed does myriad very important jobs without so much as a sniff of inhofery. And, lest we forget, it can be damn tasty, especially if you're the Welsh. So why don't western countries pay attention to the stuff? Why aren't we farming it at any meaningful scale? Is it really the...

Keep Out. Two little words that carry such unquestioned authority. But why are we so well behaved when what we're kept out of is often the thing we're all lacking - green space, the beguiling attraction of the natural world, things that aren't manicured and sanitised? How did England's green and pleasant lands come to be so hostile to most of us plebs? We quiz author and illustrator Nick Hayes, who has literally written the book on trespass. Two in fact - the latest, The Trespasser's Companion, being the follow up to his mind-expanding 2020 effort The Book of Trespass. Head...

Babble listeners are definitionally a wise and discerning bunch, so just occasionally we permit the besplurgification of our inbox with probing questions that we absolutely promise to answer on air - unless they're shit. This week, then, it's Dave and Ol doing the shutting up and listening, minus the shutting up bit, as we subject ourselves to interrogation by you, our loyal enablers. Lines of enquiry include:- why haven't you covered the most controversial enviro topic in UK politics over the last few years, you cowards?- what *wouldn't* you do to save the planet, you cowards?- why...

"No please, tell me MORE about your cavity walls!" said absolutely no-one, ever. And that's kinda the problem for poor ol' insulation: it's dull. Yawningly, achingly, Michael-Owen-in-that-weird-Dubai-helicopter-video dull. And as such, few people so much as shrug when Governments comprehensively fail to insulate Britain. BUT any muppet can see it's a spectacularly good idea not to waste heat. Especially when there's a war on, fuelled in part by people paying for that wasted heat. So why do politicians lag (geddit? GEDDIT??) so far behind the curve when it comes to making homes less leaky? Will the newly gruesome geopolitical context...

Suing national Governments for gross Inhofery, whilst simultaneously laying the smackdown on oil and gas companies, sounds daunting and, frankly, a lot of work. Thank bejeezus then that international environmental & human rights lawyer Tessa Khan is busy doing all this and more, with no little success. We natter to Tessa, who founded and directs Uplift, about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its connection to all things fossil fuelled; the merits and pitfalls of trying to save the planet via the courts; and what to do with all the shit white men in positions of power. As mentioned in the show...

They're not birds, and approximately half aren't ladies. But ladybirds very much ARE beetles, and that alone is reason to celebrate them. Even if they do puke from their knee-joints. However, not everyone coos over these perfect shiny wonders. SOME PEOPLE (*cough* Dave *cough*) seem to think they're inhofes, especially the foreign ones coming over 'ere ruining aphid-munching for our natives species. So we delve into the mysterious world of Coccinellidae, from STDs to tooth powder, all in the name of helping Dave answer the entirely unnecessary question: Ladybirds - are they good or not? Sustainababble is your friendly environment...

What is a culture war? Are greenies like us now fighting one? Are we... the baddies? All questions we must, regrettably, now grapple with, because a phalanx of Tory MPs - ably assisted by their outriders in the shite-wing media - are labelling 'net zero' advocates as woke-ist elites, determined to heap misery on the poor. So who are these finger-jabbing inhofes, and how much support do they have? Why do they hate climate action so much? Do they... have a point? Show notes:* Excellent Guardian piece on Net Zero Watch* 538 Podcast - 'Americans aren't as polarized as the news...

If you thought Bitcoin was confusing, wait 'til you hear about 'non-fungible tokens'. In fact you've probably already heard about them, after a major conservation charity decided to flog NFTs of pictures of tigers and the like, only to be met with the mother and father of all backlashes. NFTs are modern and confusing, for sure. But are they really environmental kryptonite? Was the backlash deserved? Also this week, two wonderful and separate examples of creative activism from the good folks at Greenpeace and Insulate Britain. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky...

Very, VERY excitingly, this week we natter with one of the best climate communicators around, who also happens to be one of the planet's foremost climate scientists. Professor Katharine Hayhoe is a United Nations 'Champion of the Earth', chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. Her new book, Saving Us, makes the case that the most important thing we can do about climate change is the one thing we're terrible at - talking about it. But by talking, Katharine doesn't mean passive aggressively quoting IPCC reports and hurling Keeling curves at each other...

It is bonkers that so much effort, land, water & energy is used to make so much food that never goes in anyone's gob. Bonkers and, as babble listener Alysia points out, VERY planety-imperilly. Alysia also notes that we've gone 236 episodes without focussing our babblenoculars on the matter, so this week we pinch our noses, gingerly approach the kitchen caddy and gag on the maloderous stench of the global food waste scandal. Question one, of course, is who are the inhofes? Supermakets and their BOGOFs? Governments and their "meh"s? Or is it Ol, Dave, and the rest of us? Should...

SPOILER ALERT! This week we natter about the Netflix film 'Don't Look Up', so EFFIN' WELL WATCH IT it before listening. The second most viewed Netflix film ever, Don't Look Up tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an approaching - and, more to the point, LARGE - comet that will go bang on planet earth. The writer, Adam McKay, says the crashy comet is an allegory for climate change, and the film is a satire of various inhofes' indifference to the climate crisis even when it's literally falling from the sky. But what *we* can't...

A statement from Dave and Ol: "All Sustainabaubles complied with the rules at the time of recording. Not that there have been any Sustainabaubles. But should there have been, they would have been babble-secure. And, just to be sure, we've instructed Arabella to investigate a Sustainabauble that definitely didn't happen, in case it in fact did." RIGHT, ON WITH IT. **You can still watch Dave and Ol in a livestream event, together with access to watch the wonderful film The Atom: A Love Affair, until New Year's Eve. Find out more here.** Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly...

The blood diamonds of Mexico. A hipster's fever dream. Compressed mushy peas disguised as a gonad. Is there *anything* to commend the avocado? A fruit, we'll remind you, that CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO TASTE SWEET. And that's before we consider 'avolattes', an invention every bit as infuriating as the people who drink them. Well hang on just a vegan-bashing minute. Why does the humble alligator pear cop so much flack? Sure, the practice of growing billions of the blighters is, in many ways, absolutely catastrophic. But so is growing billions of anything. Perhaps the h8ers could leave off...

It's here! Black Friday-mas is finally here! Thank the lord. Thank Jeff Bezos. Thank f*ck.Sigh. It's probably not OK to go warm and fuzzy in our special areas at the thought of being hoodwinked into buying sh*t we don't need just a month before we all lose our minds over the next orgy of mindless consumerism. And it's probably right and proper to get het up and misanthropic about it.BUT hang on. Is Black Friday actually that bad? And don't all the people who hate Black Friday also hate shopping in general, and probably humanity too...

Is it OK to feel sorry for teary Alok Sharma? Which country's delegation parties the hardest? Who put China in the shed? And was anyone at all standing up for the dormouses (dormice?)? Not a single one of the 15,276 hot takes already published about COP26 has addressed these serious and urgent questions, but my god the babble is not in the business of hot takes. So sit back and allow yourself to be taken on a retrospective, warts 'n' all, aural tour of Glasgow's shed of sheds by Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, veteran of COPs passim, and...

"So Dave, Ol, what IS your favourite tetrahedral molecule?" is not the most F of AQs we get, but the answer - since you asked - is of course CH4, or methane to its mates. It may lack the celebrity cachet of CO2, but boy does methane pack a punch in the warming stakes. In fact it packs 84 times as much of a punch, which is one reason sleepy men in suits have started announcing plans to gaffa tape some of the places from whence it guffs. So this week we don our lab technicians' coats to mansplain the sources...

There are few childhood rules that continue into grownupness, but 'don't shit in the sea' is definitely one of them. Which is why it's such a shame that all Brits' shits diligently done not in the sea seem to end up there regardless. Perhaps even more dispiritingly, politicians have proven themselves disinclined to do anything, actively voting *against* a thing that would have forced water companies to stop flooding the oceans with our motions. We role up our sleeves and plunge shoulder deep into the parliamentary u-bend to find out what the blockage seems to be. Also this week, some...

Bugs in all their freaky forms do a staggering range of critical jobs that keep the planet from, among other things, quickly becoming a massive pile of corpses and poo. But humanity is nausing 'em, and we really, really need to stop nausing 'em. Yes, because bugs make it possible for almost all other animal species - including humans - to survive, but also because they are mesmerically wonderful in their own right. At least that's the view of this week's guest, author and head of sustainable farming at the charity Sustain, Vicki Hird, whose new book "Rebugging the Planet"...

A year late, for obvious reasons, but the imminent Glasgow climate shindig is still seismically important. But will this cauldron of egos be any more productive than the previous 25? Yes. No. Possibly. Probably not. Oh Jesus we don't know do we. But what we DO know is that countries were set homework at 2015's Paris get-together, homework that's very much overdue. So we canter through who's the class swot, who's too cool to comply with artificial constructs like 'deadlines', and who's been feeding their assignments to the dog. Oh, and we also chat to Bamber Hawes, the man on pilgrimage...

What shape best represents the absolute lunacy that is humans and their economic activity? Something Jackson Pollock-esque? Mr Messy off of the Mr Men series, perhaps? Either way, probably not a nice, clean circle. But when you think about it, it really really should be. Cos unless we start (re)learning how to work with what we've got - i.e. sending things round and round in virtuous circles - rather than what we're about to drill / dig / blow up, we're gonna be in an awful pickle. To tell us what a circular economy actually is, why it's not babble...

Everything's running out in Blighty. Gas (as in gas), gas (as in petrol) and everyone's patience. As far as we can tell, the two crises are unrelated, other than their shared connection to the climate. But crikey moses they are getting people in a tiz, not least because - and brace yourself for some advance economics here - when things run out, things get more expensive. So in a daredevil move, and with one eye on the oh-christ-this-could-be-dull-ometer, Ol and Dave simultaneously attempt to explain the gas market, geopolitics (please Mr Putin we didn't mean it), and the psychology of...

Four wheels good, two legs bad. For a hundred years, the gas-guzzling car has been king. But its days are numbered - no-one seriously disputes that - and what comes next will determine the scale of biospheric butchery in the post. But what if The Car 2.0 turns out not to be flying cars, autonomous cars, or Richard Branson Cars, but instead a happy mishmash of whizzy things and old-fashioned things that you don't own? Y'know, bikes, e-bikes, scooters & hire cars all available at the swipe of an iphone, and all beautifully integrated with public transport that arrives punctually and isn't...

Despite what Assorted Inhofes say, climate change is a) real b) here already c) going to get worse. We'd better get ready. So how come we're - er - not? We chat all things climate adaptation with the eminent Dr Morgan Phillips, director of The Glacier Trust and, even more pertinently, author of a righteous new book about the subject, Great Adaptations. We talk about why despite human resilience, Morgan thinks that without shunting adaptation properly up the policy wazoo it's going to be Very Bad News Indeed for a very large number of people. And animals too. Turns out...

A 'wellbeing economy' sounds like the sort of economy that might not ruin everything, and in that sense we are very much behind it. But it also sounds like the sort of thing that we don't really know what it is. HOWEVER, this week's guest - writer, researcher, and advocate for economic system change Dr Katherine Trebeck - very much *does* know what it is, and is spearheading efforts to get Governments to actually prioritise wellbeing.We sit down with Katherine to find out where this all sits on the scale of Goldman Sachs to Kum Ba Yah, and how...

No Babble again this week due to a last minute production cock-up, so it's re-run time again. As the impacts of climate change are very much top of everyone's mind right now, we thought you might appreciate our chat about all things 'how buggered could the climate get anyway', with Mark Lynas (original broadcast: April 2020). Disclaimer: climate science moves fast, and there's dicussion in here about the potential for the gulf stream to slow down, which the news recently reported scientists are increasingly worried may be happening. Back in early 2020 Mark wasn't that worried about it. Bear in mind that...

Does it really matter how 'fair' the solutions to climate breakdown are? So long as we stop the worst of it, who cares whether a few people have their noses put out of joint, right? Or is that missing the point, as well as being a bit inhofe-y? Is it *only* possible to achieve the radical changes needed if those changes don't, for instance, make the poor poorer? The rather splended Environmental Justice Commission has been talking to people throughout the UK about all this and more, and its boss, Luke Murphy, joins us to chew it over. Sustainababble is...

The list of things that enable life on earth is a pretty short one: a dollop of sunshine, drizzle of water, and a soupçon of air. But for anything fun to happen on land, you're going to need a liberal smattering of soil, too. In fact that 30cm of topsoil is so fundamentally important that it gets a bit scary to think what would happen if it wasn't there. Unfortunately that's less of a thought experiment than it might sound - it's widely quoted that humanity has got only 60 years of decent harvests left before the soil is either s...

No Babble this week due to unavoidable life-getting-in-the-way reasons. We thought we'd give this one another airing as we've had a few requests recently for an episode about (over?)population. Look: we did one, back in 2018. Enjoy. More and more people on Earth = nailed-on environmental catastrophe. Yes? We talk to Alistair Currie from Population Matters to find out. Dashedly thorny issue, this. Isn't the real issue how much of a mess rich people are making of the planet, not how many poor people there are? Is talking about population inherently racist? And short of nuclear war, what could anyone nice re...

It's more than 160 years since clever science people first worked out that digging up and burning long-dead bugs made Earth sizzly. So why are we still doing it? Why weren't the early warnings heeded? And was it inevitable that humanity would, at some point or other, combust its way into the current planetary pickle? These questions and zillions more are addressed in Dr Alice Bell's fabulous new book 'Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis'. Alice joins us for a natter about how we arrived at now, i.e. arguably the most consequential point in human history. Sustainababble...

A wise person once said that when it comes to buggering up the planet, prison is an underused deterrent. And just why should it be OK to be an Earth-nausing Inhofe with impunity? NO WE AGREE WITH YOU, IT SHOULD NOT. Enter a fearsome bunch of lawyers and campaigners that have been steadily building momentum behind getting 'ecocide' - deliberately harming the environment - adopted as an international crime. And if that's one of those ideas that makes you go 'wow yes, that seems very sensible' and also 'but how the Dickens would it actually work?', then you've come...

Amster-, E-, Jean-Claude Van-. All splendid dams in their own right, but topics for another time. THIS week we set our babble sights on the massive concrete walls wot stall rivers so we can power our trouser presses. On the face of it, hydroelectric dams seem sensible: produce loads of reliable 'leccy from thing that isn't fossil fuels. But the problem about the faces of things is that they often distract from the armpits of things. And, as we discover, dams get awful armpitty when you look into them. Talking of the pits, Ol this week provides the worst and...

Grand narratives of history are woven around pivotal moments, and it's just possible that when the history of this period is written, 26 May 2021 will be one of them. A little under a month ago, Royal Dutch Shell got told in no uncertain terms by a Dutch court to stop Royally Ducking up the Planet. Specifically, it got what in legal parlance is known as a hiding. The oil giant stood accused of endangering the rights to life and to family life by its actions, i.e. by continuing to drill for oil and therefore warming the planet. A three-judge panel...

It's the most successful website in the world, but many of us feel icky about using it. Is Amazon terrible for the planet or is it just, y'know, big? And if it is bad, is it any worse than thousands of little shops selling crap we don't need? Amazon's climate pledges and earnest sustainability marketing notwithstanding, we put our "we don't trust Jeff Bezos as far as we can propel him moon-wards" cards on the table... and then immediately get confused, given we're both customers. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @di...

Boris "Gordon Gekko" Johnson aside, no-one likes greed. But growth - mmmmm, warm, cuddly, economic growth - well, that's another matter. Lesson one in MP school is that our collective prosperity increases as the economy swells. More GDP = more hospitals and schools. It's one of the few things upon which mainstream political parties everywhere agree: growth is unquestionably good. Which makes the life-work of this week's guest, the absurdly big-brained Professor Tim Jackson, all the more notable. Tim, one of the world's foremost experts on ecological economics, set political tongues wagging with his epochal 2009 book Prosperity Without Growth. Infinite growth...

Pity our tiny little brains. For some reason that escapes us now we thought it would be jolly interesting and not at all SODDING BEWILDERING to attempt to understand Bitcoin. That sobbing noise you can hear? That's us. Why? Well it may *look* like a harmless bunch of nerds sending each other made up money over the Internet, but it's also playing a not inconsiderable role in knackering the planet. With 1% of the world's electricity - and rising - being spaffed on cryptocurrencies, we thought we should at least ask: right, what the bloody hell's going on? Is Bitcoin contributing...

Pulp, the greatest band of all time, once sang that grass is "something you smoke". Perhaps that was true in 1995, but in the cool light of 2021 we sure as hell wouldn't advise smoking what's appearing in a depressing number of British back gardens. For fake grass is all the rage, despite it being FAKE SODDING GRASS. So this week, sounding like the pair of old codgers they are, Dave and Ol get all worked up and confused about a thing other people apparently like but is very obviously abominable. NB you can vent your spleen in the direction of the...

Remember the past? A simpler time. A time before doxing and pile-ons and Katie Hopkins. A time when wholesome telly presenters on wholesome telly programmes told us that in the future we'd all be running our cars on chip fat and everything would be fine. Well we're in that future and EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE, PHILIPPA FORRESTER. Chip fat in cars is now a thing.* So much so that Yerp insist a certain percentage of motor fuel is chip fat. Which would be super (and previously supper) if it didn't indirectly mean rainforests getting walloped. Which, it transpires, it does. ...

Jo, a babble listener from Letchworth in the UK, sent in a question that kinda stumped us. What the hell, she asked, does one say to people who can't see the point in doing anything for the planet? Sweary and shouty retorts aside, the answer isn't immediately obvious. So we asked you, the wise, generous-hearted, and magnanimous babble army what *you* would say. And you didn't let us down. So, herewith a rather splendid and dangerously uplifting 47 mins of "What's the point?! I'll TELL you what the point is, you little... " featuring superlative contributions from Amelie Edwards*, Sam Longman, Isabella...

Alleluia! One of the great plot twists - perhaps only rivalled by Harold Bishop returning to Neighbours with amnesia (look it up) - is celebrated the world over today by people smashing umpteen chocolate eggs down their gullets. We briefly consider the obvious question (what the hell have chocolate eggs got to do with Jesus?) before moving onto safer territory to explore what looks like - but turns out not to be - a nailed-on babblefest of ludicrous luxury eco eggs and supermarket packaging claims. Also this week, the cringe-gasm that is corporate April Fools day gags. Volkswagen - a...

Push is beginning to come to shove, climate action-wise, particularly when politicians ponder the fat piles of cash made doing things that are Very Bad Indeed for mother Earth. Here in Britain, peak pondering occurs re the North Sea, a large grey puddle used by continental Europe to buffer itself against certain Tories, and also home to vast reserves of crude oil. Crude oil (and just as crude gas) that for decades has buttressed the UK economy, but will for millennia buttress a ballsed-up biosphere if continually drilled and burned. You see the dilemma. This week some fancy words were...

The UK Government sometimes surpasses even itself. The 'Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill' is a new bit of legislation so universally hated that even Brexiteers and Remainers are united in its opposition.At its heart is a transparent attempt to outlaw all protest beyond a tut and a roll of the eyes, following highly inconvenient Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter demos in recent years. Not content at stopping there though, the Bill also takes aim at Gypsy and Roma communities, essentially criminalising their way of life. We can't quite believe it's as bad as it all sounds, but...

Cos capitalism, cos inhofes, cos LIFE, it's all but impossible to be the planet's BFF most of the time. Having kids arguably makes that task even harder. BUT, despite the onslaught of baby marketing, and despite grandparents-to-be going all in for conspicuous consumption, there are loads of practical things parents - new ones, not very new ones, and expectant ones - can do to lessen kids' impact on poor ol' Mother Earth.* It is Mothers' Day, after all. To hear how it's done, we're joined by Jen Gale, host of the Sustainable(ish) podcast and author of 'The Sustainable(ish...

Saving the planet isn't really about the planet at all, it's about people. People who, for instance, currently have jobs in industries that aren't compatible with a 1.5 degree world. Or people who don't have jobs at all but need them. Which is why green campaigners are desperate for governments to invest in green jobs. These are jobs that will do some of the things that urgently need doing to curb emissions, but also jobs that do what jobs are supposed to do - give people meaningful employment and a career with prospects. Young people, particularly. So a new report from...

"Where'd ya read that then, Wikipedia?!?@!" used to be the refrain of bell-ends everywhere who couldn't be bothered to engage with an argument. But like most insults, it carried a grain of truth because the internet's crowdsourced encyclopaedia was, well, ropey.Not any more. In fact, in a world eating itself alive with fake news and misinformation, Wikipedia is one of the few shining lights of humans doing Admirable Things online in the name of public interest. Not least on climate change, where the wealth and - more importantly - accessibility of information is exemplary. But who are the unseen...

It's awful confusing when those who've spent decades saying climate change is a hoax suddenly ask us to join their 'Green Revolution', but that's what's happened at one of the UK's least reputable tabloids, the Daily Express. More famous for its obsession with the Royals, the weather, Brexit, and unsubstantiated 'miracle' health breakthroughs, the paper appears to have had a damascene conversion and now touts its 'Green Britain' campaign loudly from the front page. So. Many. Questions. Not least: why?do we believe them?how the hell are we supposed to feel about it? Also this week, season ticket holders...

Stop it. STOP IT! This is a terribly Serious and Important thing, all to do with industrial fishing and delicate marine ecosystems and we could do without any sniggering at the back. Or the bottom. So then, fishing. A political lightning rod of an industry, but an absolute minnow, economically speaking. Largely out of sight and unknown, modern industrial practices make an 'orrible mess of the ocean floor as super-trawlers dredge, scrape and otherwise embugger delicate aquatic ecology. Which is why this week's news that bottom trawling (STOP IT!) is to be banned in certain so-called Marine Protected Areas is...

Eek! There's no Babble this week because Covid-19 has come to Babble Towers (Ol: he's OK, don't worry). So by popular request, here's one of our favourite earlier episodes to tide you over. In this special episode, Dave and Ol leave stinky London behind and head off to rainy, muddy Cornwall 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...

Many of us are reluctant activists, perhaps so reluctant we barely consider ourselves 'activist' at all. So how do we become less reluctant? How can we expand our comfort zone so trying to save the planet doesn't seem so freakin' terrifying? The answer is almost certainly in a new book, The Trembling Warrior,by author and coach Gill Coombs, who's written what she says is a 'guide for reluctant activists'. Gill natters to us about finding one's true voice; why some people (*ahem* Ol *ahem*) are so scared of what other people think; the perils of social media; and ukippers...

Where once this small island in the mid-atlantic was famous for exporting cricket, heavy industry, global oppression and the rule of law, we're now known for the contents of our bins. For, despite a promise by Boris Johnson (we know, we know) that the UK would stop sending our crap abroad, it turns out we're still doing just that. This barefaced porkie has provoked a child to start a petition, now signed by hundreds of thousands of irked humans. So this week we jump aboard the irk express and ask why TF we can't sort out our own rubbish in...

The last few weeks stateside make earlier Trumpgasms appear almost normal by comparison. Armed insurrection, an attempted coup, social media bans, a manatee having 'TRUMP' carved into its back. Srsly. Perhaps worst of all, though, is the uneasy feeling that Americans may be at the beginning of a very unpleasant period in their history, not the culmination of it. Still, the bellicose bell-end IS on his way out, to be replaced by someone who would like to stop the planet frying. Woop and yay! To celebrate, and to commiserate about the ongoing descent of his country into civil war, we...

Among today's intractable divisions, few are more bitter, more incendiary than that between the washing-up-by-hand loyalists and the using-the-dishwasher hardliners. So which *is* better for the planet? And while we're at it, what about vegan leather vs real leather, or soy bean tears compared to almond sweat? Thankfully for prospects of world peace, Georgina Wilson-Powell has written a thoroughly well researched book - 'Is It Really Green? Everyday Eco Dilemmas Answered' - that resolves the hitherto unresolveable. Georgina, a journalist and founder of Pebble magazine, joins us to natter about what she discovered along the way. Sustainababble is your friendly...

Ever wound up in the ocean with human faeces on your head, or a used sanitary product bobbing by? Us neither, thankfully, but many UK surfers have, which is why a bunch of them campaign for cleaner seas with Surfers Against Sewage, a national marine conservation charity headed up by Hugo Tagholm. For this opening episode of 2021, Hugo joins us to explain why Dave should try surfing (he really shouldn't, ed.), why lobbying MPs in wetsuits is effective, and to shed light on the, well, shitty practices of water companies.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music...

Well here we are, a festive season distinctly lacking in bantz. BUT THAT'S WHAT YER BABBLE IS FOR! So strap in for an unashamedly lol-centric and straw-clutchingly positive look back at 2020.As we learned in Sustainabaubles 1-5, there are few things more Christmassy than a shameless Coca-Cola ad. So we dig out their 2020 Christmas offering, in which - astonishingly - not a single piece of their whale rectum-clogging plastic is featured. Though given what a miscreant known to this podcast recently emailed Coca-Cola after one too many single malts, the less said about rectums the better.AND for the first...

These days energy companies fall over themselves to tell us how good for the planet they are, with varying degrees of chutzpah. When it comes to actual goodness though, Good Energy is unquestionably, well, good: buy leccy from them and you can be confident it comes from the sun or the wind or Jeremy Clarkson's backside, no funny business. More to the point, your money will directly lead to *more* wind and solar power getting built, thereby negating the need for JC's derriere altogether. Juliet Davenport has been the firm's boss for two decades, and joins us to explain what...

Had 2020 been a bit less pandemic-y, we'd be celebrating / commiserating the conclusion of another mahoosive climate shindig about now. A shindig in Glasgow no less, hosted by the UK Government. Deep-fried pizza canapés all round, etc. etc..Offensive cultural stereotypes aside, there's LOTS at stake at COP 26, not least countries announcing how they'll do the thing they all agreed was a good idea five long years ago in Paris, i.e. stop the planet burning.Good hosts that they are, Bojo and co have just revealed what the UK will be bringing to the table, planet-saving wise, so we f...

Luddites, us greenies. People think it's an insult to say we all want to go back to living in caves, but - lack of wifi aside - lots of biosphere-botherers wouldn't say no.But innovation - thinking up whizzy new stuff to fix shitty old problems - really *has* to be part of the weaponry for the ecologically-concerned, doesn't it? Cycle lanes can't fix all the planet's problems, after all.We speak to two exceptionally whizzy innovators - Ayca Dundar and Francis Field - who've invented a new material, made from seaweed, that stops food rotting and prevents turtles getting...

Hydrogen - one of those words that prompts people in environment world to nod sagely before quickly steering the conversation onto safer territory. Because honestly, no-one really understands what it is, what it's for, or whether it's terrible or brilliant or somewhere in between.Which is unfortunate, because Boris 'World King' Johnson has just come over all hydrogen-y in his headline-grabbing 10 point plan for a 'Green Industrial Recovery'.Hmm, what to do? Listen to yer Babble, that's what! Because, fearless truth-seekers and public servants that we are, we've trawled wikipedia on your behalf to find out what the hell a...

The climate catastrophe isn't exactly hanging about, so do we really have time for fiddling around with democracy? Sure, giving people a say is nice, but what about when their say is, well, wrong? 70-million-people-voting-for-a-climate-denier wrong, for instance... We pose this connundrum to Becky Willis, Professor in Practice at Lancaster Environment Centre, and holder of a Fellowship in energy and climate governance. During our natter, Becky reveals herself to be luke-warm on the merits of a future Dave and Ol autocracy. Well, SOMEONE won't be offered a cushy job in our administration, is all we'll say to THAT.Sustainababble is...

HE'S GONE! HE'S ACTUALLY GONE! THE TANGERINE TOSSPOT, THE BELLICOSE BELL-END, THE CLIMATE-DENYING CRACKPOT HAS ACTUALLY BEEN BOOTED OUT!Obviously he's not actually *gone* yet - presumably the next few months will be messy to say the least - but as of January next year Donald Trump will no longer be POTUS. Which is rather delicious.We celebrate by reminding ourselves of all the terrible, terrible things the Donald has done for the planet in the last four years, and by cracking open the single malt.Props to James Kelleher for his stupendous Scooby-Doo / Trump deepfake.Sustainababble is your friendly...

1 November is World Vegan Day, so what better time to meet the boss of vegan campaign group Viva!, the magnificent Juliet Gellatley.Juliet has been advocating veganism for decades. She's also been breaking into factory farms to film the horrific goings on there and share them with the world (though not the Guardian). We chat about some of the ridiculous questions Juliet's faced over the years (adding to the ouvre in the process, no doubt), why being vegan makes you good in bed, and whether Dale Vince (see episode #46) is going to win his bet that half the UK population...

Winter is coming. You'd think we'd have been let off in 2020 of all years, but no. This most cyanide-y of bitter pills is sugared by an extra hour in bed this weekend (in Blighty at least) due to the clocks going back, which reminded us of an issue that periodically gets climate types all worked up: the fact that changing the clocks is, not to put too fine a point on it, batshit crazy.As in, why the HELL do we deliberately deny ourselves afternoon daylight and necessitate putting the lights on 60 minutes earlier than we otherwise would? Wouldn't it...

Who fancies dodging a wolf on the way to work? Or perhaps a lynx barging through your catflap while pelicans pinch the fish in your pond?If rewilders get their way, these animals - all once common in Blighty - will be familiar sights once more.But rewilding isn't just about reintroducing showstopping species, even if Boris 'Beavers' Johnson recently got in on the act. As much as anything, it's giving the land a break and letting whatever wants to grow just... grow. All very lovely, but can it be done while everyone stays fed? Will farmers let it happen...

We're back! And there's been a touch of news since we were last a-babblin'. Some of it actually not shit, too! So, this week Dave dons his Chris Tarrant mask to host the inaugral 'What The Hell Has Been Happening?' quiz. The only rule? Answers must not be gloomy. 2020 doesn't need any more gloomy Ol, after all. Topics include China's anti-inhofery, David Attenborough smashing capitalism, and confusing news about rice puddings and pumpkins. So strap in and enjoy a blitzkrieg of upbeat babbling. With absolutely no mention of the unprecedented ecological kneecapping unfolding all over the planet. Sustainababble is...

Continuing our tour of the Babble's favourite old episodes, here's one of the finest: so, this thing 'neoliberalism' that everyone gets very upset about - er, what is it again, exactly? 'Neoliberalism', then. What the hell is it? Is it wrecking the planet? Is it responsible for Ol's hair? And what's it all got to do with the price of bees? Strap yourself in as mega-brain Christine Berry explains all. With the patience of a saint, Christine takes Dave and Ol through the basics. Yes, it's a real thing. No, it isn't the same thing as capitalism. And could they s...

It is just possible that yelling about wet-bulb temperature and the certain heat death of everything isn't as effective a climate communications strategy as some may think. So what is? Is there A Right Way to discuss ecological destruction? And can it really be true that conversations are opportunities to learn from each other, not just "win" someone round?We put all these questions and more to climate communications expert and friend of the babble Robin Webster, whose job as Senior Programme Lead: Advocacy Communications at the climate communications organisation Climate Outreach is to help people bang on about climate...

What if a problem even greater than climate change or ecological collapse is our sense of powerlessness in the face of these crises? Is it our inability to believe we can do anything about the planet frying that is, above anything else, stopping us collectively sorting this shit out?That's the hypothesis of Clover Hogan, climate activist, founder of Force of Nature, and researcher on eco-anxiety, who joins us to get under the skin of the psychological responses to planetary nausing.For younger people, eco-anxiety is becoming particularly widespread and acute - with darn good reason, one might argue. So...

Kryten is on the Babble! SMEGGIN' HELL!Robert Llewellyn is an actor and comedian who since 1989 has played angular faced mechanoid Kryten in cult sci-fi classic Red Dwarf. But he's equally well known for presenting the legendary Scrapheap Challenge and, for the last ten years, phenomenally popular YouTube electric car review show Fully Charged. It's like Top Gear, but without bellends or CO2.Once Dave and Ol get over the fanboy thing, Robert talks to us about all things whizzy tech and clean cars, based on 10 years' experience driving and reviewing the things. We learn how EVs might put all...

The BBC's Springwatch is a cultural institution in the UK, showcasing the extraordinary but often overlooked wildlife of these crumbling isles with warts 'n all realism (i.e. lots of baby Blue Tits getting munched). Biologist Gillian Burke has for three years been at the heart of the show's presenting team, earning the nation's affection for her passion and powers of communication as much as for her unblinking resolve in the face of uncooperative protagonists and innuendo-tastic co-presenters.Gillian is also a Black woman in an industry - conservation, nature TV and the environment movement as a whole - notable...

Are you being a good ancestor? Are WE being good ancestors? What the hell is a good ancestor and do I have to buy them a present? Public philosopher Roman Krznaric thinks these are the most important questions we should ask ourselves (well, certainly the first two) if we're to escape the 'tyranny of the now', the hideous short-termism dominating our lives and knackering the planet in the process.His new book ('The Good Ancestor: How to think long term in a short term world') explains how our brains are perfectly capable of serious long-term thinking, despite our apparent crapness...

The instant we were allowed out again we covered everything in rubbish: plastic and cans and humous packets and, er, cool boxes and chairs. Why? Has four months of lockdown made us all beserkers, or is this just what it's always like and we'd forgotten? Who's doing the littering anyway? And what even IS litter? We investigate. Also, the Government's promising to give us cash to insulate our homes, which sounds like a good thing. And governments doing good things make us very suspicious indeed. Links to some of the things we talked about: Kirsty McNeil's piece talking about activism...

"Smash capitalism" is among the least helpful answers people like Dave and Ol give when asked "So what should *I* do to help the planet?". But for most campaignery types, individual lifestyle change plays second or third fiddle to political action and corporate restraint. And - if we're completely honest - we're also luke-warm about personal behaviour change because so many of its proponents are such... hard work. You know, people who tilt their heads to one side and pity the poor soul yet to discover the wonders of £50 biodynamic toothpaste made from upcycled cow shit.HOWEVER, two things are a...

Modern footballers eh? Spoilt, obscenely rich, carbon-guzzling narcissists who couldn't spell planet, let alone save it. They're an open goal for moralising and high-handery, or at least must have seemed so to the UK Health Secretary when he pooh-poohed players' high pay at the pandemic's outset (omitting, accidentally no doubt, to pass comment on the wages of hedge fund managers or the like).Well, we in Babble towers don't buy that. We're unapologetic disciples of the beautiful game, for all its flaws, and we can't help noticing that, far from conforming to (stereo)type, high profile stars of both the...