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Joining us on A Rational Fear this week are fearmongers:

Vidya Rajan
Gabbi Bolt
Lewis Hobba
Dan Ilic
and Graham Readfearn

We talk about Billboards, Australia being a bad actor on the world stage (again) BlackRock's double standards. Prequels that don't need to exist. And Graham Readfearn from The Guardian Australia talking about their incredible Australia vs The Climate podcast.

PATREON 💸:

If you enjoy our podcast, emails and important climate change conversations, chip in here:  www.patreon.com/arationalfear

Bertha Announcement  0:00  
This podcast is supported in part by the  Bertha Foundation

Dan Ilic  0:04  
Hello Lewis.

Lewis Hobba  0:05  
Hello Daniel. How are you?

Dan Ilic  0:08  
Oh good, but not as good as you look so he looks so tanned. So yeah

Lewis Hobba  0:15  
yeah, me and my people we can very easily. It was. I had a week off. I hope you had a good show last week.

Dan Ilic  0:21  
I was great.

Lewis Hobba  0:22  
I'm sure it was not as good as usual I would imagine.

Dan Ilic  0:26  
No, you're correct it wasn't as good we did miss a certain there was a shouldn't certain genres acquire that was missing from the program.

Lewis Hobba  0:33  
Yeah, I mean, I just say the choir it's me.

Dan Ilic  0:37  
I'm recording my end of irrational feet on Gadigal land in the Eora. Nation. Sovereignty was never seated, waited a treaty. Let's stop the shot.

Unknown Speaker  0:44  
A rational field contains naughty words like bricks, Canberra, fed gum, and section 40 of our rational view recommended listening my immature audience.

Dan Ilic  0:57  
Tonight the federal government commits net zero by 2050. By announcing existing policies Angus Taylor says it shows the government's commitment to recycling and economists say that the chances of hitting net zero by 2050 are about 5050 and Andrew lambing MP withdrawals an apology for the treatment of to Brisbane women, prompting Andrew lemmings dad to apologize for not withdrawing to create Andrew laming. It's the 29th of October and things are about to get spooky. This is a rational fear.

Hello, welcome to rational fee. I'm your host, former president of the walker Walker Gun Club Dan Ilic. And this is a rational fear the podcast that brings a little nihilistic joy to your existential anxiety. Let's meet our fear mongers for tonight. They caught a break at the start of their pandemic and just like COVID-19 Now they're everywhere from the feed vigia Rajon vija. How does it feel to be everywhere?

Vidya Rajan  1:58  
It's good. I always wanted to achieve, like cosmic union,

Dan Ilic  2:03  
and they've booked their first ever solo festival shows so you better go along and say it otherwise I'll give up comedy forever. From the chaser podcast. It's the overstretch. Gabby Bowles.

Gabbi Bolt  2:12  
Hello. Yes. I have no idea if I'm any good at this still. It's been almost a year, and I still don't know.

Dan Ilic  2:19  
Yes, I look. Finally you'll have the opportunity to be rejected by hundreds of people.

Gabbi Bolt  2:23  
I cannot wait. I cannot wait. I have like the T's in a jar ready to go to sprinkle on all of my sorry notes.

Dan Ilic  2:32  
And they fresh from holidays where he saw sunshine for the first time in 120 days. He's tall and tan, just like Barnaby Joyce's riding boots. It's Lewis harbor.

Lewis Hobba  2:42  
That's right. Slip into me. That'd be good to be back. After. After a week off. I had a nice time I went to Greater Sydney. I went an hour and a half away. It's the furthest I've been away since about April, I think and it's nice in Greater Sydney.

Dan Ilic  2:58  
How did you feel about Greater Sydney versus less Greater Sydney? What's what's your favorite? Where's your favorite place to be?

Lewis Hobba  3:03  
Yeah, I mean, I live in Leicester, Sydney. I live in the potter city. There's just all like rats and cockroaches. I went out to to VOCA, which is a little bit north. Heaven up there. Dan. I saw I saw a dolphin and a shark.

Dan Ilic  3:18  
Oh my goodness. That's the future. Coming up a little later on. We speak with Graham Redfin, from The Guardian about a true crime podcast series that highlights in gruesome detail the murdering of climate policy by Australia. But first, a message from this week's sponsor. This episode of irrational fear is brought to you by the camera modeling agency for when you need to put on a show. The Emperor says some wearing no clothes. Our plan

Unknown Speaker  3:43  
for net zero by 2050 is the plan that I believe Australians want. Scott put it away

Dan Ilic  3:51  
the camera modeling agency, the critics contact you if you've got nothing to show. This is our small handful.

Gabbi Bolt  3:57  
Ours is getting boring.

Dan Ilic  3:59  
This week's first fear billboards, folks, we've done it. We've done our billboard campaign has gone off. It's been quite a few busy weeks for me. We've raised $226,000. From your Yes, yeah. Have you I know you've been away, Louis. So you probably haven't actually caught up on what we've been doing on the podcast while you've been away for the last couple of weeks.

Lewis Hobba  4:24  
I mean, I didn't listen, I'm not an idiot. I muted you on Twitter.

Dan Ilic  4:30  
There are a lot of comedians who've unfollowed me on Twitter.

Gabbi Bolt  4:35  
That's how you know you're famous Dan.

Dan Ilic  4:38  
Yeah, yeah. So we've we've we've raised $226,000 from 2580 people who are very annoyed about climate action or the lack of climate action from our government. We've absolutely shattered through our initial campaign of raising $12,000 And now we're paying for three huge billboards in July. One is on the Glasgow expressway between the cop center, the cop Conference Center and the airport. And the other two, one is on shelters and road in in garter share Glasgow and the other is on Rocklin Road in Strathclyde. Glasgow. So we've got we've got three giant billboards coming.

Lewis Hobba  5:21  
Did you get any like hot tips from locals on whether or not those are areas that were densely populated? ago? Or are you just you just hitting and swinging and missing? To be

Dan Ilic  5:30  
honest, the Glasgow tower expressway is the big one. And that was sold into me hard by the out of home company. They said, Yeah, this is a pretty big one, right? Because the one I initially bought books for them was a real shitty one in a in a like a commuter cab.

Lewis Hobba  5:44  
Yeah. I was chatting to my family last night. And now like all the dads billboard campaigns going really well. I'm like, Yeah, it's amazing. And because my parents live in Torquay, in Victoria, and I was like, there's been one in Tokyo for like, a month. And that was like, Oh, we haven't seen it. I'm like, I don't know where he's put it.

Dan Ilic  6:04  
It's only Great Ocean Road. Like it's like, the main strip.

Lewis Hobba  6:08  
Yeah, I guess my parents are getting out much.

Vidya Rajan  6:10  
How long? How long is that one gonna be off? Can I go visit?

Dan Ilic  6:14  
Yeah, you certainly certainly can. I think it's going to be up for the next couple of months. So that one was given to us was a was a gift from the outdoor company gawk. So thank you, GOC for that, so they'll get to see they're gonna run that for a couple months for us for free. They just want to be part of the action. But we've had some we've had some artwork rejected from the out of home company. So let me show you what we're running. Here's what we're running. We're running Net Zero ambitions by 2050. Australia. We're running the other one from from New York, which is cuddle a koala before we make them extinct. And the other one we're running is the apology where we said we're sorry that Australia's bullshitting on our emissions targets. But they rejected the bullshitting with the Asterix in the word because they said it's swearing. So we've had to replace the word bullshitting with a Scottish word could hovering, which is apparently a Scottish word for foolish talk. So it kind of makes sense. How Lovering pavered Hmm.

Lewis Hobba  7:19  
Is this a drop bear situation? Have you been

Unknown Speaker  7:23  
favored?

Dan Ilic  7:27  
I don't know. Maybe we've been Haven. It's a good enough story anyway, I think I think it'll work. So yeah, it's really good. Anyway, look, this is something we don't often talk about on the podcast. Because as our revenue grows, we we have a thing where we pay the rent, we give 5% of our Patreon to seed mob. So this project, it's going to be exciting to give $10,000 to between two groups seed mob and Wang and Jinglu cultural custodians who are defending their ancestral land on, which is where Adani is trying to build a mine. So that's really exciting. So big thank you. To all those folks who've chipped in, we are going to fall asleep spend the rest of your money on making jokes between now and May. And we've also got our billboard today went up in Armadale in Barnaby Joyce is illiterate, there it is their net zero by 2300. And we've also got a billboard that went up in Kooyong. Now, we are not allowed to advertise anything political in that particular billboard. So we ran this one, hey, it's time to buy a standing desk because you're about to lose your seat. And with enough space there for someone to write whenever they want. Ah, you know, so that's that's potentially potentially but we don't want

Lewis Hobba  8:41  
Josh there. That would be an option, wouldn't they should wouldn't that be awful?

Dan Ilic  8:45  
Or if they wrote Louis, I know, Louis, you don't have a standing desk? No,

Lewis Hobba  8:49  
that's true. That's true. I would love one.

Dan Ilic  8:53  
I do have some news on that particular billboard, though. Someone has defected already.

Lewis Hobba  9:00  
Didn't want to happen.

Dan Ilic  9:01  
Did they have royally? Like kind of done a great job? Well, have they done? This is what they've done.

So for people who are listening to the podcast, instead of writing Josh after, hey, you Frydenberg in our writers at the very bottom of the artwork, so it says, hey, it's time to bystanders because you're about to lose your seat. Frydenberg

Vidya Rajan  9:35  
grammatically, yeah, perfect. And it's so frightening. The handwriting is so beautiful.

Dan Ilic  9:43  
Someone sent it to me and they said, We're two geriatric people and we tried to give it a go and we were too nervous to climb the ladder that we brought and I was like, well, that is amazing. The beautiful thing

Gabbi Bolt  9:56  
about them the notebooks over We call it like the notepad.

Lewis Hobba  10:01  
Yeah, but it's down.

Dan Ilic  10:07  
This week's second fee follow the money in 2018, the world's largest fund trader, Blackrock said they'd no longer invest in companies that failed to demonstrate that they also serve a social purpose, as well as generating profits. Now, this is a big deal. They have 8.7 trillion in investment and you can buy a lot for 8.7 trillion. You could get 10 and a half wars in Afghanistan for that kind of money. Or a three bedroom house in Sydney. Look, it is a lot of money. This week at a conference in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, also known as the new castle of the Middle East, the CEO of Blackrock put his words behind green tech as the place where the next 1000 unicorns would be born. That is, private businesses worth over a billion dollars in such industries as green hydrogen, green cement and green steel in his mind, it'll make great money. fear mongers is Larry Fink, correct? The next 1000 unicorns gonna come out of these sectors vigia?

Vidya Rajan  11:02  
Probably, I don't know, like, I think we're looking for so many things to save us. But I think what's really interesting is that he said that and then I think they invest in the Commonwealth Bank, and they are they're like, major shareholders. And then the Commonwealth Bank had a resolution about like, whether they should divest from fossil fuels. And then I think, and then Blackrock voted no. So they're saying they want to invest in climate tech, but then they're letting I mean, maybe maybe that is the scam though, because like, all the climate tech they're investing in is just fixed the problem. And so if it gets worse and worse, the tech becomes more valuable.

Lewis Hobba  11:39  
Are you suggesting that these financial investors are serious about like, they're actually more interested in money? A group called who voluntarily called themselves BlackRock, BlackRock, viously, evil villain organization.

Dan Ilic  11:53  
Yeah. Named after their father Cole.

Vidya Rajan  11:58  
This kind of like, I'm like, Why do all these organizations like call themselves these cartoon villain names? It's like calling yourself like Mordor stone or something like that. And Enron, like, sounded like a robot that wanted to kill you. Like, it's all in the name?

Lewis Hobba  12:13  
Like, yeah, give yourself a nice name like Facebook, and then you never do anything.

Vidya Rajan  12:17  
Then you fool people for longer. And by the time you've done it, you're like, your mom's on there.

Lewis Hobba  12:26  
I'll be buried. Has there been any climate unicorns at all? Has there been one? Surely not, right. I can't think of one.

Dan Ilic  12:35  
And they're all

Lewis Hobba  12:37  
like webs. They're all just websites. It's all just like, yeah, can burn. Like, there are all these people that just like, do it like making apps that kind of exist in like Microsoft Office and then putting them on the internet?

Dan Ilic  12:49  
Yeah, it is totally. It's suddenly be able to scale right across the world, you know, in a matter of months. That's That's

Lewis Hobba  12:57  
correct. KeepCup. They made a billion dollars.

Gabbi Bolt  13:00  
They have a billion dollars. Have you seen how

Dan Ilic  13:03  
Tesla is close? I

Vidya Rajan  13:05  
think there's literally a website. That's like climate tech unicorns.

Lewis Hobba  13:11  
And how many are there?

Vidya Rajan  13:13  
Now? Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. There's quite a few. Too many people have a billion dollars, I guess. You know.

Lewis Hobba  13:22  
Why didn't you ask for a billion dollars for your fundraising campaign? You could have been a unicorn.

Dan Ilic  13:28  
I asked for a million and you got 20% It's very disappointing.

Lewis Hobba  13:32  
The bad boy of Bilbo Chase failed a bad billionaire of Bill Bowles. That's Daniel.

Unknown Speaker  13:40  
Is Treasury ever done any modeling on the economic costs or benefits of net zero? I don't think so. In the period immediately before that we had done cleaning quantum change modeling. I don't know whether it's for us, but we haven't done it. A rational fear.

Dan Ilic  13:55  
This week's third fear Chris Evans is set to start in the prequel of Pixar Toy Story. This proving it's best to never have childhood memories so they can never be destroyed. The mangas is this prequel necessary? Do we really need it? Gabby?

Gabbi Bolt  14:09  
Here's the thing about this prequel. It's called Lightyear. Right. And from that you think it's about the Buzz Lightyear we all know and love. But I think this is actually the first time we see a prequel outlining the reason for a fake merchandise pitch in an alternate universe. It's the story of a fake man who inspires the fake toy company who inspires the fake toy version of the same fake man. So it's not actually the story of the toy. I want to reiterate that it's the story of the actual astronaut Buzz Lightyear who at some point in his life, gets a toy deal. Wow. It's kind of like if we made a movie about I don't know, a Barbie. And then we made a movie about the person who inspired the Barbie, the woman who couldn't stand

Vidya Rajan  14:53  
up straight because

Gabbi Bolt  14:56  
and somebody said there's a doll in this

Lewis Hobba  14:58  
barber Millicent Wallace.

Gabbi Bolt  15:01  
So it was, yeah.

Dan Ilic  15:03  
Good work. Does she have a feature film about her Louis

Lewis Hobba  15:07  
soon? Not to my knowledge, but I'm sure it's on the way you need to pitch that.

Vidya Rajan  15:10  
Quick. I was

Gabbi Bolt  15:12  
thinking based on based on this story coming out this there's tons of prequels we can make now, like, all right, the fact that they need to be continuous with the original plot, irrelevant. Now we can make a prequel to Bug's Life and call it love actually, and all you see for 90 minutes is just like goo and stuff. It's conceptual. You know, you can make an origin story for legendary walking advertisement himself, Duff man, I want a tough man feature film from The Simpsons. That man has tales we don't know about. I also wouldn't mind an origin story specifically for the sleepy dwarf because why is he so sleepy all the time?

Dan Ilic  15:48  
I've got some other pretty close police academy, police after school academy who needs help with maths? Yes. Yeah. Three Men and a zygote? It's Tom Selleck, Tom Selleck, without a mustache and Beverly Hills mop. Eddie Murphy plays a janitor going to do one last cleanup in aisle seven before retiring.

Gabbi Bolt  16:07  
I also wouldn't mind a Furby horror film and I was gonna write that one down, but then I realized that a Furby horror film is literally just gremlins. It's just the plot of glare of Gremlins

Vidya Rajan  16:16  
Disney's just cannibalizing itself like that snake the aura Boris. But, yes,

Lewis Hobba  16:24  
now that's a show. Now it's human centipede, but snake.

Gabbi Bolt  16:27  
That's actually the sequel to A Bug's Life. Yeah, I'm pretty cool all day. Actually. We have the sequel.

Lewis Hobba  16:33  
The other thing was a lot. He has gotten harder. Yeah, in the transition. I weirdly from George Clooney. Well taught us man to Chris Evans. Also hot man. The animation has gotten a little harder.

Gabbi Bolt  16:45  
Yeah, just when you think Tim Allen couldn't be any sexier. Yeah, Jim Allen

Dan Ilic  16:49  
was the original Buzz Lightyear

Lewis Hobba  16:51  
Alan, why don't you Yeah. Well, cuz he

Gabbi Bolt  16:54  
thought he was hot. Easy mistake. Easy.

Lewis Hobba  16:57  
Elon was Buzz Lightyear, I guess. Yeah. I didn't really watch movies growing up. So I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I just assume everything is George Clooney.

Unknown Speaker  17:09  
is one of those people you just spoke about who writes horrible things online? abusing his own constituents taking

Dan Ilic  17:14  
photographs of people women's underwear in public? Can you see that people see a double standard here a rational fear. Graham Redfin is a longtime climate environment reporter and his current employer has put that knowledge to good use. Together with Adam more than the environment editor at The Guardian Graham has made a new podcast series called Australia versus the climate which is a blow by blow reporting of how we got into this mess in the first place. He joins us now welcome Graham Redfern.

Graham Readfearn  17:42  
Hey, Dan, how are ya $226,000 though, you're gonna need some kind of blind trust to money, amount of cash.

Dan Ilic  17:53  
Well, people want me to people want me to continue the thing and I'm like, I don't want to continue. I don't want to keep raising money and asking people for money. But maybe I will start a blind trust when the election gets called. And if people want us to make electric election content, they can pay into the into the blind trust we'll call it porters blind trust, Proprietary Limited. It's good. We're gonna spend the money on good stuff we're going to spend the money on not any billboards, but we're going to pay for more video content. We've got a great stunt idea. And yeah, we will also be able to pay for everyone who comes on the podcast for next year, which is great. So you know except for your grand we're not paying for you

Graham Readfearn  18:28  
know, I love how you took my flippin opening remark as a as a excuse to give me an actual answer to the question.

Gabbi Bolt  18:36  
We don't know anything about that in this country.

Lewis Hobba  18:38  
Just off the top. Every time we speak to someone who works full full time in in climate, either policy or activism in Australia. The first question I always want to know is like how are you?

Graham Readfearn  18:53  
Yeah, I'm very tired. Especially after this week. I'm just generally tired and being honest being on this podcast with all you youthful. I mean, how do you do it? That's what I want to know cuz I'm done. I mean, maybe it's just the years I'm you know, I'm middle aged. Why tired? Uh, yeah. I've been doing this for almost 20 years now almost like on climate. Yeah, it's, I think you got to you got to put the time in. You got to put the time in because it's it's a really it is a really it's it's massively politicized and there's all sorts of misinformation there's a lot of denial. There's a lot of there's a lot of ways that that readers can get misinformed by this sort of stuff. And I think you need to spend a bit of time with the information before you as a journal before you can really feel you're not going to accidentally mislead your, your readers. You know,

Dan Ilic  19:47  
it is really interesting listening to the podcast is so gripping and so intriguing. It is a real great primer for the cop 2016 Coming up, if you want to know everything that went wrong with Australian climate policy, spend four hours listening to this podcast and you will be up to speed. Putting it together. Graham, did you have to? Were you surprised at the kind of research you you found even though you've been kind of in this space for 1520 years?

Graham Readfearn  20:19  
Oh, we find out a lot. And yeah, I mean, we've got four hours of broadcast material and about 35 hours not broadcasted. We we start our started three months ago. And I mean, I know I know some of the stories, but you kind of you got to start somewhere. So we start at the beginning, we're starting, you know, in the mid 90s. What is the Howard Government doing around climate change? We've got the Kyoto meeting coming up, what do the cabinet papers say about what Australia's position is, and then we find the people that were around at the time, and we look at the participant lists of the UN f triple C participant list for the Kyoto meeting, and we kind of got out, let's speak to that guy. Let's speak to that person, and we just start ringing them up. And so we couple of really valuable interviews was a guy called Roger Bill, who was the head of so the environment department in the Howard era, who helped to sort of write this thing called the Australia clause, which, as Clive Hamilton tells us in the podcast, if you don't know about the Australia clause, please don't get me to explain it. If you don't know what the Australia quote is, I will explain it. But if you don't know what it is, and you don't know anything about climate policy, and you can't, because it's it's the thing, that means when you hear Morrison and Angus Taylor, in the last few days, say we meet and be RTL targets, you know, the reason he can say that is because of what Australia did in Kyoto in 1997. So we kind of start there. And we go all the way through from Kyoto to the other big meetings like the failure of Copenhagen.

Dan Ilic  21:54  
How did you get that guy? How did you get bail to talk like, because when he speaks in your podcast, his deed sounds almost proud of the diplomacy he did. And like, he was like, some kind of returning services person coming back from war, like he was kind of proud of the stuff he did, but in effect, it's kind of ruined everything. Well,

Graham Readfearn  22:15  
it's not it's not my it, my job is to find the people that were in the room and ask them the questions that you would want to ask them and let them answer. And when that gets pulled out across four or five hours of a podcast, and it's got context around it, it becomes I think, really, really powerful. He's he was a long serving public servant. And he retired, I think, maybe eight or nine years ago, now, maybe a little bit longer. I'll find out where it was. He's an artist in Canberra and and rang him up.

Dan Ilic  22:48  
That's amazing. That's amazing. And you've also got other folks in there, like head of Greenpeace at the time, and, and you also got Kevin Rudd on, it was really interesting to listen to Kevin Rudd pretend that he was trying to solve climate change. In episode two, when it came to Paris, it's fascinating when Kevin Rudd is talking about sorry, Copenhagen, here and trying to get all the countries to kind of come to a deal in Copenhagen and Kevin Rudd paints himself as this as his Savior to do that. But it's also at the same time when you listen to Ben Rhodes his book, and you listen to Obama's book, Obama and Ben Rhodes also paint Barack Obama as the savior of Yerevan. But ultimately, these two or three big egos kind of going trying to save this world agreement made the whole agreement fall apart.

Graham Readfearn  23:35  
Yeah, the root story is remarkable, if only to hear Kevin Rudd attempt to corral the entire planet Earth in a room, which he said, was not big enough to swing a cat. The thing about the Copenhagen episode was that the this was a period where where Australia was in a position where it was it wanted to do stuff and what whatever you think about Kevin Rudd, and Penny Wong, who was also featured in the podcast, whatever you think about those people, they they did work really hard in Copenhagen, it didn't work. It's ironic really, that at the one time when the Australian government seemed really motivated to get a deal is the time when the rest of the world just can't, can't pull their finger out. We wrote We spoke to a guy called Andrew Higham, who's an Australian guy who went off to Europe and to work for the United Nations to actually write these, these deals, these protocols these agreements, and, and he, he said to us on it. When I got there, the first thing I was working on was Copenhagen, and it was it was six months away, but he said it was never going to be a deal. It was a mirage. He called it a mirage.

Dan Ilic  24:50  
Wow. Oh god,

Lewis Hobba  24:51  
that's nice. Yeah. Any prophecies on on Glasgow then?

Graham Readfearn  24:56  
Any? Well, while we've been talking about We have the the official press release from at this No joke, the official press release from Angus Taylor his office. It says it says Angus Taylor will attend the opening week of cop 26 to promote Australia as a safe and reliable destination for investment in filling the gaps for investment. Gas, hydrogen and new energy technologies. So what Well, the thing about so Morrison's going to Glasgow, and he's not going with a front loaded 2030 target. He's just going with some projections, even even the projections are way below the kind of 2030 targets that the United States have got the Europe's got that the UK has got. So all I guess he can hope for is to come away unscathed. It will not though I don't think it's going to be a meeting that will deliver us anything that will get us close to what the Paris deal says, which is well below two degrees. There's still a massive gap, the UN released a report when it added up all the pledges that the different countries have put in. And he said, Well, you know, they're still way over two degrees. So it's going to be it's going to be very difficult. But you got to you got to you got to put the effort in you down. And I've just remembered by the way, there was a scene in Paris in the in the podcast. Yeah. When it's the only it's the only light comedian. I shouldn't say this, because no one will listen. It's only like, comedic scene in the whole in the whole of the series. But it's when it's when the Paris deal gets struck. And I go out to a nightclub in the evening, where I meet Dan Ilic. But I also I also get to dance with the with Christiana for Guerrero, who was the president of the cop. We exchanged some some shapes that night. But that that episode is sort of that takes us to the high of Paris and then explains what happened in Australia and what happened to these protocols in the years that went that followed.

Dan Ilic  27:13  
Yeah, I love that episode, so much the way you laid that out for that car because it kind of laid out this interesting internal battle amongst Australian politicians, Angus Taylor, and and Bishop Julie Bishop, when they were kind of arguing over whether they should go for a two degree limit or a 1.5 degree limit. And Angus Taylor, of course, is hard right? faction is saying no, no, we're just gonna go for two degree limit. And then Julie Bishop grabbed the microphone and said, We're gonna go for 1.5 degrees and like committed Australia, almost unilaterally. I thought there was a real beautiful moment like, Oh, my God, that's so strange. Wow. We were almost like, you know, it feels like we're part of something usually doing something. Yeah. And then to see us kind of throw that away the weeks after Paris and go, Yeah, we're not gonna actually do anything about about Paris at all. It is it is such a roller coaster ride your podcast is amazing.

Graham Readfearn  28:05  
It's why we hired a true true crime. Audio producer from the ABC to actually fully sounds

Dan Ilic  28:12  
like it sounds like a true crime Podcast. I'm hooked every step of the way.

Graham Readfearn  28:17  
You've got it. It's got this there is drama. It's there. In amongst all the square brackets, and the and the hours and hours of sort of meaningless meetings. There is a there's high drama, these meetings are where the the power base of the world gathers. And I think the moment where we have Penny Wong remembering being in a room in Copenhagen, with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and she says to us, I never thought I'd be in a room like this. And what strikes her about it is that the people in this room could do anything that they wanted. They wanted to solve climate change right now. He could do it. And they didn't.

Dan Ilic  28:54  
And what are they? What are some Tyler? Oh,

Graham Readfearn  28:58  
yeah, yeah, sorry to spoil it for you. Yeah, I'm just catching up with the news from 2009. But yeah. But that those were the moments that we were really looking for, as well in the podcast to kind of get get get the details to prime people. So they know what happens at these meetings, because they are crucial, right? So get them to understand what happens at them, but also to sort of find the anecdotes that keep the drama going and keep the humanity in it. I mean, even even going back to Roger, Bill, Dan, who you mentioned, who was around in the Kyoto period. I mean, you know, he tells us when the meeting had finished, I went back to my hotel, had a bath, drank half a bottle of whiskey. I mean, it's unusual together public servants, sort of giving you that kind of detail. But

Gabbi Bolt  29:43  
yeah, I feel like Scott's approaching cop 26 The same way I approached any and all group projects that university which is just kind of like turn up I guess I'm being made to do whatever the other people tell me to do and then walk away and then fail because I didn't actually do anything. thing. But the difference is when I do that repeatedly, I get kicked out of university. And when he does it, it's fine. He gets

Graham Readfearn  30:10  
it, he gets to do it the Australian what he gets the Australian. And look can see just is, you know, if if I had a conceit AMITA it would have blown it up. Because that that was it's absolutely astonishing

Dan Ilic  30:25  
vigia, I often see your tweets on climate change. Would you ever want to go to a conference of parties? What would you do that?

Vidya Rajan  30:33  
Oh my god, um, I feel like I could only go if I was employed as a professional. I could live tweet the event. Like I think I'd like to do that. And just like subtweet everyone, they're walking around. Is that activism? Yeah. Yeah,

Lewis Hobba  30:51  
yeah,

Dan Ilic  30:52  
that's probably sounds simple. It sounds professional.

Vidya Rajan  30:55  
Yeah, like a large screen of the tweets to just appear after they've said some things that everyone can like, get your take immediately. It's just

Lewis Hobba  31:03  
so like, you'd be almost like doing gogglebox or something.

Vidya Rajan  31:06  
Yeah, or like making them into a moderating their performance. Yeah. What were you saying?

Dan Ilic  31:12  
I was gonna say, you could actually get that job vigia to work a defect, because that is essentially cop copies a giant Google doc screen in, in like, little in meetings, upon meetings upon meetings. And it's this giant Google doc screen that all the countries are trying to add to and subtract to to get to a final resolution. It's like that's why they spent two weeks like rough two weeks basically working in a group document.

Lewis Hobba  31:35  
It's so nice. You're here, Graham, because you're now the you now make to people in the history of the podcast that have been excited about the cop meetings. Yeah, but not the outcomes. But the actual meetings. Yeah, easily. Denzel Dan's eyes light up when he talks about a Google Doc. Yeah. Loves process.

Graham Readfearn  31:50  
Yeah, yeah. Well, if you like process, you'll love a cop. But the fun the fun part of the of the Copenhagen episode with with Rod was was how he basically did not run with the process at all, and was trying to run meetings after like through the middle of the night. And then there was there's this moment that he recalls, there's a there's a moment that he recalls when he when he's trying to run this meeting with like India and China and some other countries, I might have got the country's wrong. And the Danes, the Danish Prime Minister, who was chairing the meeting, sort of walks out in India and China are trying to get this whole process to slow down. So they're like looking at him going, oh, yeah, we can solve this now, because there's no chair. So Kevin Rudd says to us on the podcast, he says, Well, I said, Well, my good friend, the Danish Prime Minister has asked me if I will now chair this meeting on his behalf. And he hadn't asked him to do that at all, it was just really making it up, just to try and keep the thing going. So there's process and then there's making stuff up to try and keep the thing on the rails. It was a pretty that's another sort of really interesting moment.

Dan Ilic  32:58  
Graham, thank you so much for coming on. And telling us about this podcast is truly an incredible bit of work, having listened to all of it now. It's just it is, if you've never if you want to deeply understand the reason why we are where we are, you could definitely listen to this and you can have a good time listening to it, which is great. It's really entertaining. It's

Graham Readfearn  33:21  
it's a five part series. It's on the Guardians full story, podcast feed, each should have its own feed by next week. Please listen and share talk about it's also on Spotify, also on Google podcasts on the house, but it's with Adam Morton, lots of superstars and amazing audio production team.

Dan Ilic  33:38  
Is it going to be on Netflix? It sounds like a good.

Graham Readfearn  33:41  
Let's talk about it down. Let's make it happen.

Lewis Hobba  33:44  
We can Dan can fund it. He's got a lot of money. I mean, yeah,

Graham Readfearn  33:48  
you got 26 grand, you're just flying around.

Dan Ilic  33:52  
Yeah. I've already spent I've already spent $70,000. I'm gonna pay myself back first, because, well, I've got some bills to pay your debt. Before we go. Gabby bolt, you're going to see us out with a song.

Gabbi Bolt  34:08  
Yeah. Now that things are opening back up again, I'd like to just remind us all of the experience that may not be universally shared. In fact, this might be a bit of a nice joke. But I'm back where I'm originally from, which is, you know, the crazy, amazing enriching place of Bathurst. There's restaurants, lots of restaurants that you get dressed up for, and I made I miss restaurants, but more than restaurants. I miss the mysterious figure in the corner of most restaurants, and this is his story.

How many renditions of Matt Colbys brother will make you one To fuck me how many times will I have to say that this next song is for you? Yeah What are the chances that we'd be together in one place that this town employs well dressed Calvin Klein other boys to play

you don't know my name but that's okay to ask. I'll give you a fake. I don't know your name because I don't want to. You're in love lately because I try to be the embodiment of culture. But here is the big Gotcha. If you stripped me of my man bond my stone box in my suede hat on just the same as the next slide. So please don't take away my sixth string about some falsetto.

I will spend half of the evening playin strictly Ed Sheeran repertoire anyone like a bit of time arrives? Because if nothing else, white people request surreally Oh Lenny

I will tell you that I learned guitar purely from my waist to songs and snorting coke. You don't have to know how I went broke paying for a teacher 10 years and I still can't play a fuck barcode. I will see real chill until you get five bucks on my espadrilles you're lucky they weren't my RM Williams I have nailed the art of making easy some sound hard playing Riptide the Lila and a bit somehow I'll still draw the line at break like if you asked me for that song I swear I'll throw up in my mouth I can maybe swing US version of case but from this string come on consoles of course there is

as you guys know I'm self taught

what fucking Bob Dylan up here

what is no one see that I could be the next big since Jeff Buckley. There's a man who appreciated depth. Gonna be fucking famous and then you have to know what my name is. No more restaurant gigs where my art is bad. You will be fucking sorry when I

Lewis Hobba  38:19  
feel the punch line coming in.

Dan Ilic  38:22  
It was well done. Fantastic. That reminds me my favorite Justin Hazelwood joke and he does this thing where you guys quick Jeff Buckley impression and he's like

Gabbi Bolt  38:35  
oh, they're brutal.

Dan Ilic  38:36  
Terrible, terrible. That is that is it for irrational fear. Big thank you to geballe vigia Rajon gray and red fin. Louis Hobart. Do you guys have anything to plug?

Vidya Rajan  38:45  
Yeah, I guess if you're in Sydney, you can now buy tickets for looking for Alibrandi at Belvoir, which I adopted.

Dan Ilic  38:56  
Yes, I would definitely go sit

Vidya Rajan  39:00  
next year and it's also coming to Melbourne but those tickets are on sale at the Sydney tickets are on sale.

Lewis Hobba  39:06  
Yeah, I'm told what can you give us?

Vidya Rajan  39:09  
I'm sure once allowed.

Dan Ilic  39:10  
What was it like to work with Marlena Makita I mean, it was pretty hands

Vidya Rajan  39:14  
off. But she wrote me a really lovely letter like um, yeah, it was great. She liked she liked a good time.

Dan Ilic  39:23  
I had my I had my motion picture debut in Yeah, in in heresay day if you remembered how sad Yes, people doing talks. There's a full shot, a full frame shot of me clapping going in my skull.

Lewis Hobba  39:42  
And occasionally, Danna brandy.

Vidya Rajan  39:46  
Yeah, that was all done. I'll try and put that in. I

Gabbi Bolt  39:52  
enter stage.

Vidya Rajan  39:56  
Yeah, like that. Like that. Like someone walks on like you

Dan Ilic  40:01  
Speaking of sequels we don't need that's great, Vijay. Congratulations, Gabby. Do you want to plug anything?

Gabbi Bolt  40:08  
Yeah, I have a comedy show. Finally, in Sydney from the 16th to the 18th of December. It's called I hope my keyboard doesn't break and I've accidentally Macbeth myself with the title because now that I've called it that I have a feeling everything will break i a microphone today. So yeah, tickets are on sale for that through laugh at a lockdown.com.au. And also, yeah, because of the Moosehead award. I'll be taking that same shirt and Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Dan Ilic  40:32  
Yes. Me picking up. Done.

Gabbi Bolt  40:35  
Thank you, Lewis.

Dan Ilic  40:37  
How about you anything like

Lewis Hobba  40:38  
peace and love? You know that our friendship Graham.

Graham Readfearn  40:42  
I've done this podcast and that's called Australia. It's on the full story podcast feed on the guardian. I also write a weekly column for The Guardian called temperature check where I do fact checks on climate stuff that silly people saying sometimes not silly people say so I do a bit of that. But please, everybody read The Guardian. It's great. It's free to

Dan Ilic  41:02  
big thank you to the birther foundation rode mics Jacob round on the Tepanyaki timeline. Big thanks to everyone in our Discord big, big thank you to everyone who chipped in to Joe keeper. We're going to be having some fun with that over the next six months. So thank you so much. Until next week, there's always something to be scared of. Oh, next week. The next sick episode two of Julie's MIROS asked who cares is coming out. So we'll be kind of grilling me taking a break next week. But Jay Z will take care of you next week. So thank you very much. We'll see you next time. Bye. Oh,

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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