LESLEY HUGHES - Lead Author of IPCC 4th & 5th Assessment Reports - Director of Climate Council of Australia

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

In terms of engaging with the public and making those emotional appeals that make people take action and make change possible, what for you is the importance of environmental humanities for making that emotional appeal and offering something that people turn to when they're having climate anxiety.

LESLEY HUGHES

It's certainly not the case that scientists should be the only people communicating. We have to have everybody in this mix because we're all in this together. So we have to have good science that's communicated. We have to have smart engineers who can work on the technological solutions. We have to have lawyers who are undertaking climate litigation. We have to have creative artists who can tell stories and appeal to people's emotions. No one group should have a responsibility to solve the climate crisis. It's got to be all of those groups bringing what they call the time, the talent, and the treasure to work together on this. We are all in this together, and we've all got a suite of different skills that have to be harnessed to solve this problem.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

And it's not just about each of our individual countries doing its fair share. It's also just about our survival. Australia is closer to that 1.5 degrees of change than other countries because a lot of people don't realize that's an average. You specialize in bushfires and Australia experienced Black Summer deaths caused by heat waves.

HUGHES

Australia is generally considered one of the most vulnerable developed countries to the impacts of climate change, and I've been in the climate science space for more than 30 years, but I have to say this last month has been particularly confronting. We're seeing all sorts of tipping points that scientists have been warning about for decades and they are really real right now. I've never had such climate anxiety, and it's sort of new for me to be struggling with that because I think I've been pretty resilient to sort of eco-anxiety. Talking about averages all the time is a real problem in climate science because the temperature on any one day goes up and down a lot more than 1.5 or 2 degrees. So we have to keep working on relating those average global temperatures to the extremes that people experience in their lives on the ground where they live. We have to keep reminding people that that is the sort of thing that we are going to see more and more often. It isn't a one-off event. It's a message about the future.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

It reminds me of what Edmund Burke said: that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for good men to do nothing. I should say good women because I know that you're an advocate for women in science. That's another side of your activism. When you are dealing with politicians, how do you envisage the next 5, 10 years in terms of progress?

HUGHES

We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.

But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Grace Phillips. The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Interviews - FEATURED

THE DIPLOMAT

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DANIEL GOLEMAN

Psychologist
Author of Emotional Intelligence · Optimal · Ecological Intelligence

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DUSTIN O'HALLORAN

Emmy Award-winning · Oscar-nominated Composer · Musician
1 0 0 1 · Silfur · Transparent · Lion

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JEFFREY ROSEN

President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment.

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Explorer & Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder of Solar Impulse Foundation & Climate Impulse

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Academy Award-winning Writer, Director & Producer
Glory · The Last Samurai · Shakespeare in Love · Thirtysomething
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Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director
Tokyo Vice · Six Feet Under · Tales of the City · My So-Called Life

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MICHAEL CRONIN

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Snr. Researcher · Trinity Centre for Literary & Cultural Translation

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House of Sand and Fog · The Garden of Last Days · Ghost Dogs · Townie

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PAOLA SPINOZZI

Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing · University of Ferrara
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SASHA LUCCIONI

Founding Member of Climate Change AI
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DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR

Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition · Sciences Po
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DOUG LARSON

Award-winning Scientist · Ecologist · Professor Emeritus · University of Guelph
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Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

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If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

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KOHEI SAITO

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The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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The Creative Process

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SOCIAL JUSTICE & ACTIVISM

The Creative Process

LESLEY HUGHES - Lead Author of IPCC 4th & 5th Assessment Reports - Director of Climate Council of Australia

Interviewed by Mia Funk

The Creative Process

PODCAST INTERVIEWS

The Creative Process