DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR - Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po

DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR - Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po

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Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition · Sciences Po
Development Clinician focused on Diagnosing Development of Cities & Nation States

How do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth. And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs.

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic: We Learn How

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic: We Learn How

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Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic
Authors of We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport

How can we reverse biodiversity loss and restore our ecosystems? - Highlights - THOMAS 
CROWTHER

How can we reverse biodiversity loss and restore our ecosystems? - Highlights - THOMAS 
CROWTHER

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Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives. 

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

THOMAS CROWTHER - Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

THOMAS CROWTHER - Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

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Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives. 

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

PETER DITLEVSEN - Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

PETER DITLEVSEN - Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

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Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

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.

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? - Highlights - DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? - Highlights - DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

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Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ - Author of The Paradox of Choice & Why We Work

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ - Author of The Paradox of Choice & Why We Work

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Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO on Degrowth Communism & the Need for Radical Democracy

KOHEI SAITO on Degrowth Communism & the Need for Radical Democracy

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Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

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.

SPEAKING OUT OF PLACE: BEN FRANTA on Weaponizing Economics - Big Oil, Economic Consultants & Climate Policy Delay

SPEAKING OUT OF PLACE: BEN FRANTA on Weaponizing Economics - Big Oil, Economic Consultants & Climate Policy Delay

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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.

Genocide and Beyond: A Conversation with OMER BARTOV & PENNY GREEN

Genocide and Beyond: A Conversation with OMER BARTOV & PENNY GREEN

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A Conversation with State Crime Expert PENNY GREEN & Holocaust Historian OMAR BARTOV

They discuss the applicability of the term genocide, the history of its framing, and ways of moving beyond genocidal dynamics. For weeks, hundreds of international law and genocide experts have been warning that the situation in Gaza is approaching or has become an active genocide, a conclusion very vociferously rejected by Israel and its allies.

What’s it like to film a supernatural thriller in darkness at minus 17 degrees? - Highlights - FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER

What’s it like to film a supernatural thriller in darkness at minus 17 degrees? - Highlights - FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER

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Academy Award-nominated Cinematographer
HBO’s True Detective: Night Country starring Jodie Foster · Kali Reis · Fiona Shaw

I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but you want to go further. And I think maybe those themes of going out into the wilderness are motivated by the urge to connect. And I think Issa López has really incorporated it beautifully into the script. And the show tells of this great disconnect between people. So not only are we disconnected from our environment, but we are disconnected from each other.

FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER - Cinematographer - True Detective: Night Country starring Jodie Foster & Kali Reis

FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER - Cinematographer - True Detective: Night Country starring Jodie Foster & Kali Reis

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Academy Award-nominated Cinematographer
HBO’s True Detective: Night Country starring Jodie Foster · Kali Reis · Fiona Shaw

I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but you want to go further. And I think maybe those themes of going out into the wilderness are motivated by the urge to connect. And I think Issa López has really incorporated it beautifully into the script. And the show tells of this great disconnect between people. So not only are we disconnected from our environment, but we are disconnected from each other.

International Law & Mass Violence: Colonial Roots & Practices

International Law & Mass Violence: Colonial Roots & Practices

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Colonial Roots and Practices: A Conversation with FRÉDÉRIC MÉGRET · NEVE GORDON & NICOLA PERUGINI

As the devastation of Gaza is permitted to continue to unfold, and colonial violence also intensifies in the West Bank, we discuss the role and responsibility of international law in enabling and structuring mass violence, the enduring importance of colonial histories in shaping the colonial present of international law.

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth? - Highlights - TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth? - Highlights - TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

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Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio
Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute

We have not adapted to Earth. She needs us to do that. Instead, we've tried to adapt Earth to our needs. Which is always an extraction, take away. Earth doesn't exist because of technology. Earth will always be here. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth. 

TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE - Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Founder of Akantu Intelligence

TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE - Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Founder of Akantu Intelligence

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Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio
Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute

We have not adapted to Earth. She needs us to do that. Instead, we've tried to adapt Earth to our needs. Which is always an extraction, take away. Earth doesn't exist because of technology. Earth will always be here. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth. 

Guernica & Gaza: Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

Guernica & Gaza: Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

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Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

Conversation with LEN and HWEI-RU TSOU, the Taiwanese activists whose main commitment, over a period of decades, has been to discover and disclose the involvement of Asian and South Asian anti-fascists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Today’s conversation is perhaps one of the most unusual and unusually important ones we have had on the podcast. Not only do we discover their longstanding friendship with the celebrated anarchist David Graeber and his father during this journey, but we also hear them linking their anti-fascist work to their pro-Palestine activism, which included their participation in the flotillas of X and Y protesting Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. We hear Len and Nancy (Ruwei’s English name) draw the links between the anti-fascist struggle in Spain and the international movement for Palestinian rights. The conversation inspires and gives one hope about international solidarity in the past, and the present.

21 Voices from Israel & South Africa: Why the Palestine Struggle Matters

21 Voices from Israel & South Africa: Why the Palestine Struggle Matters

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Working for Palestinian Liberation

Marthie Momberg’s interviewees are Israelis and South Africans who have followed different paths to become activists for Palestine. Momberg herself is a South African Jew, who slowly began to see the connections between South African apartheid and Israel’s own form of apartheid. The 21 voices speak about this connection, but about many other things as well, including gender, generational difference, race, human rights, and Zionism. Taped in December during Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, which have brought millions onto the streets in protest across the globe, Marthie’s book serves as a vibrant reminder of the spirit of solidarity. 

What makes a good life? - Highlights - ROBERT WALDINGER, Psychiatrist, Author, Zen Priest

What makes a good life? - Highlights - ROBERT WALDINGER, Psychiatrist, Author, Zen Priest

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Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development
Psychiatrist · Psychoanalyst · Zen Priest

It's a study of adult lifespan development and when it was started in 1938, it was actually radical to study normal development for two reasons. One is that most of what had been studied was about what goes wrong in development, which we still do because we want to try to help people who are having developmental problems.

So that makes a lot of sense, but to study what goes right in development, that was unheard of. The other thing is that for a long time, we certainly thought about children as developing because you can watch children change every day. That change happens so fast, but many people thought that once you got to be in your 20s, you were kind of done with development. You found a partner, you found a line of work, you were set with regard to your personality, and that was it, then you just lived your life.

And of course, now we understand that there's so much that changes and develops through the course of adult life, but my predecessors (I'm the fourth director) were really, insightful in their understanding of how much there was to learn about all the changes that happen across the adult lifespan.

ROBERT WALDINGER - Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

ROBERT WALDINGER - Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

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Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development
Psychiatrist · Psychoanalyst · Zen Priest

It's a study of adult lifespan development and when it was started in 1938, it was actually radical to study normal development for two reasons. One is that most of what had been studied was about what goes wrong in development, which we still do because we want to try to help people who are having developmental problems.

So that makes a lot of sense, but to study what goes right in development, that was unheard of. The other thing is that for a long time, we certainly thought about children as developing because you can watch children change every day. That change happens so fast, but many people thought that once you got to be in your 20s, you were kind of done with development. You found a partner, you found a line of work, you were set with regard to your personality, and that was it, then you just lived your life.

And of course, now we understand that there's so much that changes and develops through the course of adult life, but my predecessors (I'm the fourth director) were really, insightful in their understanding of how much there was to learn about all the changes that happen across the adult lifespan.

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold? - Highlights - WENDY WONG

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold? - Highlights - WENDY WONG

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Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age
Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia

One of the things that we need to remember is that we are data stakeholders and not data subjects. We're often called data subjects if you look at the way legislation is written and tech companies talk about the users of their technology as data subjects. Being a subject casts this sort of '“you can't help but have this happen to you” effect. But we're actually data stakeholders for the reason that data cannot be created without us. If companies were incentivized to follow data minimization for example, where they only collect the data they need, that would change the way we interact with digital technologies.