Climate Change: The New Apocalypse

226,300. Friends of the Earth is now a hefty 1974 teaching at St Clement Dane's Grammar Hello. Welcome back to Conversations with Stephen Kamugasa. This is the first of three podcasts on climate change. Today's guest is Sir Jonathon Porritt, CBE, a distinguished British environmentalist, broadcaster and

writer. He was born on the 5th of July 1950 in London, to a distinguished father, the first baronet, Lord Porrit, who was the 11th and officially the first homegrown governor general of New Zealand, and his mother, English mother, Catherine Mary Peck. Lord Porrit

served in the Second World War as a brigadier in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was also a bronze medalist in the 1924 Olympics, famously and most vividly portrayed in a film, Chariots of Fire in the 100 metres race. Jonathon was educated at Eton College from whence he went to Oxford to read modern languages. Graduating with a first class degree, Jonathon qualified as a teacher in

School in Shepherd's Bush, West London. He remained at the school for 10 years, including serving as Head of English from 1980 to 1984. As much as Jonathon loved teaching, it was his childhood appreciation of wildlife that seduced him into trying his hand and politics.

He joined and became a prominent member of the Ecology Party, now the Green Party of England and Wales, becoming its co-chair in 1980. He subsequently became a full-time chair of the party, carrying out many changes in the process, thus making the party more prominent in national elections. Jonathon stood for Parliament in the general elections of 1979 and 1983. He did not win, but received attention from national media. He was instrumental in growing the party membership from just

a few hundred members to around 3,000. However, in 1984, Jonathon gave up both teaching and the chair of the Ecology Party to become a director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, a position he held until 1990, a decision

which in his own words, and I quote, was probably the best decision of my life. For he transformed the Friends of the Earth into the face of radical respectability by encouraging the organization to promote practical solutions locally, as well as thinking globally. His tenure at the Friends of the Earth saw the charity's membership grow from 12,700 to international powerhouse of ideas and solutions.

Jonathon's accomplishments in the course of climate change and the environment are too many to mention here, but one may be cited. In 1996, Jonathon, along with Sarah

Parkin, OBE, and Professor Paul Ekins, OBE, co-founded Forum for the Future. Forum for the Future is a sustainable development charity working in partnership with businesses, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future. The charity specialises in addressing critical global challenges by catalysing in key systems from food to apparel, energy to shipping. Jonathon is the author of many books, on environmental issues, including presenting television series

on them. He has chaired the United Nations Environmental and Development Committee for the UK. His greatest work by far, however, is his book, Hop in Hell. In this episode,

we discuss the topic, climate change, the new apocalypse, Sir Jonathon Porritt, welcome. Thank you Stephen, very good to be joining you for this conversation.

In a foreword to your book, Hop in Hell, Sir Rob Fenwick writes, and I quote, upon reaching an age where many of us are contemplating a gentle retirement, Jonathon is planning a return to more radical campaigning in solidarity with young people all around the world."

End of quotations. So Jonathon, please tell us something about your childhood that has had such a profound influence upon your person, so much so that you should now, as you are coming into your seer and yellow leaf, aspire to a more radical form of campaigning. I had a very happy, fortunate childhood, Stephen, and two wonderful role models in

my parents. My father was a very dedicated surgeon throughout his life, driven by deep humanitarian concern, and my mother was also a nurse, and brought with her a kind of absolute sense of determination to get on and make things work, come what may. So I was fortunate in that regard, and we lived in North London, so I spent an awful lot of my childhood wandering around on Hampstead Heath learning a little bit about how nature works on that patch of urban greenery, but it wasn't really that.

I mean, neither of my parents were particularly interested in the environment. They didn't have any thoughts that I would end up spending most of my working life in the environment movement, but they were very keen to encourage me to take on what I felt to be important in my life. So, As you may know, Steven, very quickly after university, I decided that I definitely wasn't going to be a lawyer. To begin with, I thought that I might be. Others have gone down that path very successfully,

but not me. So I just decided that I would do what I really wanted to do, which was to get into teaching. And I spent 10 years then teaching in London schools, working with young people, beginning to understand the critical importance of education for all young people in terms of shaping their future, working in parts of London that were pretty deprived with kids that were facing enormous difficulty. And that was the time when I also got involved in the Green Party,

as you mentioned in your introduction. So those two things came together. So I've had a love of young people and education right from the earliest times from 1973 onwards. And right now, when I think about the prospects that young people face in the world today after 30, 40 years of staggering indifference on the part of today's generation, I feel that we need to do everything we possibly can to work with and help young people. And for some of those young people, that means

taking direct action. It means becoming full-on climate justice activists. fighting their corner in terms of their protests, their attempts to close down the big oil facilities in the UK, and I feel they need support. It may irritate a lot of people that that's going to be part of the climate movement, direct action of that kind, but I'm sorry to say it works on them. It's not young people who are doing this because they think it's

the best way of spending their lives. They're doing it because they want some kind of viable future for them and generations that come after Them.

In your introduction of Hope in Hell, you write, and I quote, the climate emergency poses an infinitely graver risk to humankind than COVID-19, but has warranted very little political engagement over the years. That's the tragedy of the horizon. Today always trumps tomorrow, end of quotations. Some might say, Sir Jonathon, of course today

will always trump tomorrow. But with a Russo-Ukrainian war raging in Europe, a global energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, plus a worldwide recession, Why should anyone care about the climate emergency? And suppose I were a reasonable man riding on the Clapham Omnibus, how would you define the climate emergency to me? $120 billion as a direct consequence of climate-induced The climate emergency is exactly what it

says on the tin. It's a whole set of climate related impacts, things going wrong with the climate. extremes of one kind or another, whether we're talking about storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, increases in sea level, climate refugees, the whole host of emergency-related phenomena that have been caused by the increase in temperature since we began to put billions and billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from the start of the Industrial Revolution onwards. So we've been

doing this for a long time. We haven't been mindful of the consequences of fueling our economy in this way via fossil fuels and the consequences of that and are playing out. So the emergency bit of it is pretty clear. There are no countries in the world that haven't already felt the sting of some kind of climate induced disaster. Globally, the financial costs of this are increasing every year. Last year, there was a sum to be paid by the insurance companies of around

disasters. And we have to bear in mind that that's the insured disasters. Most people don't have proper levels of insurance, and some people don't have insurance at all. So the economic damage of that was probably closer to $500 billion last year. So I think it's right to say that the present will always trump the future. The future will always, for politicians, play second fiddle to what they have to do in the short term. But you can no longer say that climate change is

just about the future. Climate change is in our midst right now, damaging the lives of hundreds of millions of people, killing millions of people every year, causing huge impacts to climate and the ecosystems on which we depend. And that is now right now, every year, and it'll go on getting worse and worse. So the tragedy, the horizon was one that we we could have dealt with 1020 years ago, even longer for that matter. But

now it's in our faces. So politicians don't have to pretend that this is are nice to do things for future generations. This is a thing they have to do for people today.

At page 17 of your book and following you write, and I quote, it has long been a bad bear of mine that so many environmentalists remain blind to the grotesque inequality that scars our world and that so many campaigners for social justice remain blind to the collapse of our mutual world. Social justice and climate justice are two sides of the same coin, always have been and always will be, end of quotations. So Jonathon, what exactly do you mean by social justice and climate justice are two

sides of the same coin? And what can we do to change this reality? It's a really important part of the failure of the last 30 years, Stephen. So as a Green Party activist and director of Friends of the Earth, it was pretty clear to us that what we needed to do to address grotesque inequality in our society and across the world was pretty much the same set of issues that we needed to address for climate emergency

and biodiversity collapse reasons. But in those days, environmentalists didn't really care very much about social justice. They were concerned about protecting ecosystems and threatened species. And social justice campaigners, development workers, they thought that worrying about the environment was a nice middle class fad that people like me

could get stuck into. and those two stereotypes were massively damaging and that's many of your listeners may be astonished to know that that's the way it looked when I was at Friends of the Earth. These were two communities and they hardly worked together at all. That's

not the case now. Now we've got a clear understanding that every time there's a worsening of climate-related phenomena, a worsening of the impacts on people's lives, that is having a massive damage a massively damaging effect on social justice, because obviously it's the most vulnerable in the world today, the poorest, the least able to protect themselves, who are on the receiving end of the most damaging impacts of these changes in the climate or

the collapse in different ecosystems. It's that vulnerability now that speaks very powerfully to people. We can see how the poorest nations in the world are suffering the worst. Everybody is astonished by what happened recently in Pakistan with some absolutely terrible stories of the damage done to millions of people when something like 30% of the total landmass

of Pakistan was flooded. And that came hot on the heels, of course, of huge increases in average temperatures and some really unbelievable temperature extremes in that country. So Pakistan is right there in the front line, but it's not just countries like Pakistan.

I mean, closer to home for many people in East Africa, Kenya was quick to point out to all the delegates at the conference of the climate conference at the end of last year in Sharm el-Sheikh, that they're already suffering huge economic damage as a consequence of climate change. The figure that they quote is that two years ago, so 2021, something like six percent of their GDP had to be set aside to deal with climate-induced damage.

The lives of people tragically disrupted and their livelihoods put at risk as a consequence of climate change. Well, just imagine, Stephen, in a rich country like ours, if 6% of GDP was having to be devoted to dealing with damage caused by climate change, well, then our politicians would be talking a very different story indeed. So social justice, making sure that we share this massive, unbelievable wealth of the world more fairly than we do

today. And climate justice, which means that we have to think about the interests of future generations as well as people today. They're two sides of the same coin.

51 the following, and I quote, a hard-hitting Speaking of social justice and climate justice being two sides of the same coin, you write in your book rather persuasively at page report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Center in September 2019 revealed the full extent of human rights violations and destructive environmental practices from mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Chile, China, India, and

Brazil." End of quotations. Now, in October of 2022, I published an open letter to the president of Uganda, calling on him to cancel the controversial Uganda oil and gas project, following an intervention from the European Parliament. on the ground of the environment and human rights abuses. So Jonathon, how can we get the balance between social justice

and climate justice right? And how can we ensure that global supply chains are completely transparent and free from human rights abuses, that all mining operations are based on best environmental practices? We all have some responsibility in that area, Stephen. The beneficiaries of development projects of one kind or another need to be mindful of the often negative impact of those developments on people in developing and

emerging countries. You mentioned that particular fossil fuel project in Uganda in particular. but linking right through across to the coast of Kenya, that East Africa pipeline is a massive new investment in fossil fuels. But it's not just citizens who need to address this. It's the people who provide the money for this. It's the banks. It's the insurance

companies. And as you know, Stephen, as someone involved in that campaign, There's been a real drive to stop the finance for that coming through so that the damage can be avoided. Now that's an old world type investment, a lethal, unnecessary investment in fossil fuels. But if you think of the citizens of those countries in Uganda and Kenya and surrounding countries, they're going to say, well, look, we need energy. We need the wealth that comes

from the use of our assets. And if we've got hydrocarbon assets, why can't we use them in the same way that other countries have done elsewhere in the world? So as we campaign to stop some of these fossil fuel investments, we've got to campaign to accelerate investments in alternative energy sources,

particularly renewable energy. Now, in the last few years, study after study from consultancies, academics, bodies have all demonstrated that the employment benefits of investments in renewables are much, much greater than the

employment benefits in fossil fuels. So we're already in a really good situation where if governments and the private sector invest in renewable energy, in efficiency, in storage, which is a very important technology for the future, Not only will it be so much better for the environment and for the climate, but it will also be better for communities and for poor communities. So you probably know, Stephen, that by far the most important technology for poor people all around the

world is solar energy. Solar energy is bringing more benefits to people today already in different countries around the world than any other single source of electricity generation. And that's because Solar power can be connected to the grids, which is obviously important, but solar power also brings economic and social benefits to people who are not connected to grids. And throughout large parts of Africa and, of course, in India and Pakistan and elsewhere, millions of people aren't connected

to the grid. And even if they are connected to the grid, very often the electricity doesn't get down the grid because of shortages, outages, and all the rest of it. So, Renewable solar power is already the single most important beneficiary or the single most important deliverer of economic benefits for poor people across the world today. I just don't think people think about this stuff. Forget fossil fuels. If you're worried about poverty in emerging and developing countries, forget

fossil fuels. The benefits for that go to largely rich countries or dictators and their elites in those poor countries. you want to help poor people in poor countries, forget the fossil fuel story, forget oil, forget gas, forget all that, and get involved in the efforts to create renewable electricity options for all of those countries.

In chapter 17 of Hop in Hell, at page 238, you write thus, and I quote, Food and Agriculture Organization is more and more aware of this and has shown that one of the reasons for Asia's very high rate of soil degradation has been continuing deforestation, particularly in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and now Myanmar. But this is a global phenomenon. How many more times will we have to read of devastating landslides or mudslips caused by deforestation in the surrounding

hills? Much of that deforestation is caused by people desperate to find enough land for themselves and their families on the edge of existing towns and cities, end of quotations. Sir Jonathon, In light of the just concluded COP15 in Montreal, Canada, please talk to us about the significance of biodiversity in relation to the overarching issue of the climate emergency.

20, 30 years is all that research that shows I think one of the most important areas of research that has been going on for the last just how dependent we are on the natural foundations for life on Earth. And by the natural foundations, I mean the soil on which we depend, the forests on which we depend, the flora, the fauna, the biodiversity as it's often called. I mean the oceans and rivers and the groundwater, the aquifers

on which we depend. People who've been brought up in largely industrialized or consumer-driven economies, just forget that none of this consumption-driven economic growth would be possible without nature providing the underpinning source of wealth for those economies.

So I was talking there about the phenomenon that is now very well understood, which is if you cut down trees on wooded, on very steep slopes around big cities in South America, in Africa, in the Far East, whatever it might be, then the soils from those slopes are made unstable. When the rains come, they hammer the soil. You get these terrible floods, which often then come crashing down into the favelas, the shanty towns, the settlements

on the edge of these big cities. And it happens time after time after time with the loss of thousands of lives all the time. So it's a very simple story. If you want to protect people in those urban contexts, you have to protect the forest. You have to keep the forest intact. You have to make sure that they provide a stabilizing effect on the surrounding ecosystem to avoid the damage

being done to those communities. And everywhere you look, whether it's water or soil or forests, whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. It's all about stability. It's all about providing the kind of conditions in which the human economy can continue to thrive. So people talk a lot more about soil now

than they used to do 10 years ago. And that's because we have depleted our soils so badly that the productivity that we used to get from those soils, particularly with major cropped areas for wheat, corn, rice, soy, et cetera, the productivity has reduced. And it's only by virtue of continuing to use massive amounts of fertilizers that we can actually sustain the volumes of production

that we need to feed the work. So at long last, people have woken up to the fact that mining the soil, depleting the soil structures, is a really, really stupid way of undermining the security of humankind. If we want to feed 8 billion people, which is where the population of the world is today, and then eventually to feed 10 billion people, which is probably the point at which the human population will peak, stabilize, and hopefully

from that point on start to decline. then we have to protect these natural foundations. We have to make sure that our water, that our soils, that our forests, that our biodiversity are protected as a critical part of protecting opportunities to create wealth sustainably for people today and tomorrow.

The title of our podcast is Climate Change, the New Apocalypse. So Jonathon, in the context of our podcast theme, does history show that we as a society only ever react to real environmental harms and never make law or policy which looks forward to control the effects of growth and technology?

Yeah, that's a pretty worrying inquiry that you set in train there, Stephen. For what it's worth, I think we can avoid a new apocalypse. I don't think we've gone beyond the point of no return when it comes to the climate emergency or the collapse in natural systems. I believe we can still put in place the legal and policy mechanisms which would allow us to meet the needs of people in the world today without continuing to undermine the physical foundations on which those people's

lives depend. I believe we can still do that but you're quite right to point out that that means we need the legal framework and the policy framework to ensure that that happens in a timely way because it's no good trying to do this retrospectively. If we go past these points of no return, then we won't be able to pull things back. It will then at that point be too late for the lives

of hundreds of millions of people. So for me, the real failure of politicians today is that they will not confront that reality. They're not prepared to pass into law the kind of protections and safeguards and standards which would make it possible for our super technological industrial economies to deliver the goods and services that people want, but without the damage being done to the natural world and the damage being done to

the climate which we see today. And I'm sorry to say the reason for those politicians not doing that is because they are often trapped by in the pockets of very powerful incumbent

industries today. I'm sorry to say anybody who thinks that the big fossil fuel companies today and the whole raft of industries that come with the oil and gas and coal and everything else, the idea that they're just going to politely step aside and let the new energy world of renewables and storage and efficiency and new grids, et cetera, let that new world flourish. They are not going to do that. As someone said to me the other day, dinosaurs

didn't die politely. And the truth of it is that the fossil fuel industries are dinosaurs. They are the past. That past is dying in front of our eyes. But as it dies, it's doing a great deal of damage at the same time. So we need laws to ensure that that doesn't happen and that the damage they cause will

be limited. And one law in particular, Stephen, that I'm very interested in and a big supporter of is something called ecocide, a law to stop the destruction, continuing destruction to the natural world, to be brought in in such a way that it would be the equivalent of a human rights law, legal binding on business and governments not to carry on with the irreversible damage that they're inflicting on nature at the moment. And the Stop Ecoside campaign is gathering strength all the time.

The Rome Statute can be amended to allow for this very important understanding of ecocide. Ecoside simply means killing nature, eco is nature and side means killing it as in suicide and homicide and so on. We need laws of that kind now if we're going to stop the worst damage continuing as it does today.

So Jonathon, what three things would you encourage ordinary people to do which, if followed, would have the maximum impact on reducing carbon emissions? and would a more multicultural environmental movement be more effective against climate change? You've wrapped two questions in one there Stephen, which is an old trick but a good

one. On the second part of that, would a more multicultural environment movement be more effective in changing the way we live and thinking about what we owe each other and other people in the world today and what we owe future generations, I've always believed that to be absolutely critical. If I look at Europe and I look at America and I think about the ways in which the environment movement in those countries has fought their campaigns, it's been a predominantly middle class white

social movement. Now that is changing and it's changing fast. In America it's changing because more and more people in America have linked a lot of the issues to do with poverty and oppression and racism, particularly in southern United States, states of USA. They've linked that story about justice for black communities to environmental injustice We've got a generation of brilliant campaigners

now across the whole of South America. We've got incredibly brave, committed campaigners, as you will know, throughout Africa, from North Africa to West Africa to sub-Saharan Africa. I look now at the way those campaigners are changing the whole nations, every nation's approach to campaigning. And I have to say that globally now, the environment movement looks very, very different. from the way it looked 20 or 30 years ago. And that's good because we know that we can't do this.

No nation can do it on its own. We've got to do this together. But whatever country we come from, whatever our own background might be, we've all got personal responsibilities. We've all got to do what we can to help accelerate this transition to a much more sustainable way of living. And you asked there about the things that we can really do. It depends slightly, which country you're living in and what your opportunities are, the degree to which you've actually got agency to make

a real difference in your own life. So I'm going to say one thing here for rich world countries, which is massively to reduce the consumption of meat. Meat production today, meat production and consumption is a hugely damaging part of the overall global economy, causing massive damage to the environment, water, to biodiversity, emitting millions and millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, causing terrible cruelty to the billions of farmed animals in the world today.

And one of the biggest things we can do to make a difference is to reduce average meat consumption in rich world countries. And that's not as impossible as it sounds. As you probably know, Steve, large numbers of young people are already deciding to eat less meat for themselves. They can see it's better for them, better for their health, far better for farmed animals in the world today, and better for the environment and

the climate. But even as you say, eat less meat, you have to look around the world and you say, well, for an awful lot of people in the world today, an opportunity to eat meat is still a really important part. of improving their own standard of living. So one needs to be culturally sensitive when you put forward these ideas. So that matters.

That's the first one I'd mentioned. The second, of course, is being consciously aware of what we can do to reduce our impact through energy, through transport, through how we live ourselves, our lifestyles. One can often achieve the same quality of life with a massively reduced environmental footprint. And the third area, and this applies whether we're talking about rich world or poor world countries, it doesn't really matter. The third area is this crucial thing about working through

communities. People do talk about individual responsibility, and they mean by that that what do we do ourselves to try and reduce the impact that we have on the natural world and on other people. And that's crucial. But we are all members of communities. We have all got connections and bonds that tie

us into local places. And one of the most important things that I discovered when I was director of Friends of the Earth back in the 1980s is that one can achieve a huge amount by mobilizing people's collective endeavor at the community level. So for me, when somebody says, what do you think we can do to make a difference here? I say, well, do you know what's going on in your

own community? Do you know what organizations you've got, community groups, volunteer groups, whatever it might be, probably working really hard on your behalf to protect the local environment, to help raise awareness, to educate others, to support groups, whatever it might be. Do you know that? And if you do, then why don't you find ways of supporting them and helping Them? So, Jonathon, what was the most significant turning point in your life?

30 years therefore that's sort of been the 1992, realizing that we needed to put as 1992, which I attended and spent three weeks I am going to cheat here Stephen and give you two significant turning points because they both turned out to be really crucial for me. The first I touched on quickly which is when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher

rather than a lawyer. My parents thought I was mad obviously because the law provided a much more steady and respectable route to the kind of life they hoped I'd have. Joining the Green Party and teaching in a or turned out to be a comprehensive school, eventually wasn't exactly what they had in mind for me. But it was through that education role as a teacher that I learned at first hand how crucially important access to the natural world and a quality environment is

for all young people. The part of London I was working in, in White City, west of London, was a pretty deprived community. Most kids there hadn't had any access to nature at all. So that got me into the reality of what the environment needs to meet in their lives for them. And through that, I got involved then, of course, in the Green Party, became director of Friends of the Earth in 1984, and then have based the rest of my life on that kind of experience. So

that was an absolute turning point. Without that, I, God knows, I'd be some stuck-up lawyer somewhere in some big city telling people how to live their lives, which would be very unfortunate. But the second turning point was equally crucial, although I didn't know it at the time, was at the Earth Summit in 1992. And this, as you know, was an enormous gathering of world leaders and other stakeholder groups from around the world, whether they were businesses or farmer groups, young people's

groups, women's groups. It was just an incredible turnout of civil society as well as of official government delegations and world leaders. And it all took place in Rio de Janeiro in there. Just, I suppose, understanding the power of solutions to make things happen. In Friends of the Earth and the Green Party, I spent most of my time trying to stop bad

things happening. And although we all have to go on doing that, and unfortunately I will have to go on doing that until the day that I die, There's the other half to that, which is trying to make good things happen. And I came away from the Earth Summit in much energy into making good things happen as stopping bad things happening. And that's what led to Forum for the Future, launched in 1996. A number of other initiatives came

out of that. I was the co-founder of the Prince of Wales' Business and Sustainability Programme, set up in 1994. And a whole host of new things began to emerge in my life as a consequence of that and for the last driving force in my life is empowering people through solutions at the same time as reminding people of what happens if we don't stop many of these bad things happening. The two things have to get hand in hand and always will.

And finally Sir Jonathon, Please advise our listeners where they may find your book, Hope in Hell.

2022 was a dreadful year for climate impacts The best place to find Hope in Hell is from my publishers. That's a company called Simon& Schuster. And if you go on their website, you can order it directly from there. The book was written now more than three years ago. So it's been out and about for a long time now. I actually had to launch Hope in

Hell. during the first year of Covid, so I had to do an online launch, which wasn't much fun, in 2020, and since then I've revised the book a couple of times, so the latest paperback version of Hope in Hell has all the latest revisions that I introduced to it last year. It is unbelievable, though, Stephen, just how much things have changed

in the last three years. I look now at some of the Some of the context in which I was writing Hope in Hell four years ago, started writing it four years ago, and things have changed dramatically since then. I just want to end by reminding your listeners that things have changed for good as well as changed for bad. So the things that have changed for good has been a massive acceleration in the take up of renewable electricity and

technologies of one kind or another. Last year, a trillion dollars was invested in renewable energy technologies around the world first time ever that that son has exceeded the trillion dollar mark and that's in china and india as much as in the usa and europe and so on so we're seeing this accelerated acceptance of the need now to decarbonize our economies as fast as possible and there are many many other really good strong upsides to the transition that people are not talking

about but of course you can't Help but acknowledge that there's been an acceleration in the bad side of things as well. Climate disasters have become more intense, more frequent. on people, and I fear that 2023 will be much the same. Things just move faster all the time, both the good things and the bad things. We're in a race against time here. if we can make these solutions deliver the goods to people in a more timely and cost-effective way, then we still have a chance of avoiding

the new apocalypse as you describe it. And that's essentially the biggest challenge that all of us face in our lives today.

Sir Jonathon Porritt, you cannot begin to imagine what an honour and privilege it is to hear you speak on such a huge subject. Your clarity of thought and purpose is an inspiration. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Thank you, Stephen. I have much enjoyed the conversation as I thought we would. I'm glad that this is just one of three of these conversations that you are having now about the new apocalypse,

about climate change. Very important that people get their heads around all of this and begin to think for themselves what they can help do to address the challenges. So congratulations to you. Thank you. 5 Barristers Chambers UK, He specializes This podcast was brought to you by The Kamugasa Challenge. A special thank you goes to three extraordinary individuals for their kind contribution to this podcast, and they are Dr Richard Kimblin, a King's Council at No.

in planning and environmental law. Dr. Julian Agyeman, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning. Dr. Agyeman is also a Fletcher professor of rhetoric and debate at Tufts University in the USA. And finally, Mr. Mark Bolton, an associate of Eco Church Birmingham in the UK. Clearly, age has not diminished his passion for the environment. Their kind contributions have made this podcast

possible. Thank you. The second instalment in our climate change series is entitled How to Love Endangered and Misunderstood Animals, an interview with Ms. Maria Diekmann, a scientist and a conservationist. It will go live on the 10th of April 2023. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, please follow and subscribe to us. Until next time, goodbye.