In my opinion (but I’m not alone) Andy Revkin (Wikipedia, his substack) is one of the giants of climate change reporting. His 1988 reporting, putting James Hansen’s pivotal testimony in broader context, and his later Dot Earth blog for the New York Times would be enough, on their own, to cement his status. But there is much more to say. Please read and share this excellent interview he has generously given to All Our Yesterdays. (Also, suggest other people to be interviewed!)
1. A little bit about yourself – where you were born, grew up, how you found yourself doing journalism.
I was born and raised in Rhode Island, a lucky circumstance that came with lots of access to the sea, from snorkeling to sailing to fishing. Some great high school teachers led me to ecology, ocean science and resource management. I headed toward a career in marine biology while at Brown University but after I won a traveling fellowship that took me around the world, I shifted to a focus on writing about the environment and science instead of doing the research. There is a lot more on my journey to, and within, journalism in this Sustain What post: Can There Be Passion and Detachment in Environmental Journalism?
2. Do you remember when and how you first heard about carbon dioxide build-up, and what you thought?
Late in 1984, my second year at Science Digest magazine, I was asked to write an article about nuclear winter – the hypothesis that vast plumes of smoke from cities burned in a nuclear war could reach the stratosphere and dangerously chill Earth. My reporting at the now-threatened National Center for Atmospheric Research introduced me to the supercomputers and models already being used to study global warming from accumulating heat-trapping carbon dioxide. That cover story ran in March 1985 and my first
cover story on global warming, at Discover Magazine, ran three years later. At first in my reporting, climate change felt like a simple pollution problem (like smog, acid rain, etc.) that would respond to regulation. But even in that first big story there were hints this was a vastly harder challenge. I’m glad I included this line, which really nailed a core reality: “[E]ven as the developed nations of the world cut back on fossil fuel use, there will be no justifiable way to prevent the Third World from expanding its use of coal and oil. How can the developed countries expect that China, for example, which has plans to double its coal production in the next 15 years in order to spur development, will be willing or even able to change course?” (Folks can download a pdf of the October 1988 Discover Magazine cover story here.)
3. What happened in 1983 that brought you to the environmental beat?
My youth in Rhode Island and my education all drew me toward environmental science and related challenges. That carried forward into my journalism. My first big prize-winning magazine feature story, in 1983, was on worldwide perils from worker exposure to the weed killer Paraquat. That also led my editors to sustain that focus.
4. That period, 1985-1992, was – it turns out – foundational (in good ways and bad). What are some of your most vivid memories of that period?
After my nuclear winter story was published in 1985, I quit Science Digest to join a sailing friend delivering a sailboat from Dubai to the island Republic of Maldives. Spending time in those low islets reinforced my interest in environmental and social change. I then moved to a reporting job at the Los Angeles Times, writing about regional pollution issues, wildfire risk and the like before returning East to magazines and that global warming cover story. Doing that climate reporting, I’ll never forget meeting a diplomat from the low-lying Maldives wandering halls at a big climate meeting in Toronto in June 1988, musing on how his country, most threatened by warming, was essentially invisible in the discussions. In 1989 I left my magazine job and headed to the Amazon rain forest for three months to do research for my first book, The Burning Season, on the murder of forest defender Chico Mendes. That experience reinforced for me how most environmental issues are symptoms of societal issues (Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time was promoting policies fostering clearing of the Amazon and that threatened the rights of the region’s inhabitants). The biggest insight that emerged for me through those years came in 1991, when when I was writing my second book, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. In that book, published in 1992, I posited that humanity’s planet-changing surge was taking us out of the Holocene and into a “a geological age of our own making” that I proposed calling the “Anthrocene.” This was a decade before Paul Crutzen and other earth-system scientists formalized a proposal for the Anthropocene. (I ended up being a member of the Anthropocene Working Group from 2010 through 2016.)
5. What of your own work are you proudest, and why?
“The Burning Season” is by far the hardest and best thing I ever wrote; my 2,810-post, 100,000-comment Dot Earth blog for The New York Times has been described by others as a ground-breaking model for a learning-journey style of journalism on complex subjects; I think a few of my songs will stand the test of time – among those, “Arlington” and (hopefully) “Life is a Band.”
6. Who else would you like to give a shout out to, in terms of climate reporting/advocacy/activism (go as long as you like)
My shout-out would be to the full community of tens of thousands of people devoting time to bending curves toward progress on climate understanding (from basic research to education) and affordable access to clean energy (from basic research to policy to communication to innovation and commerce). That’s because there’s no single strategy, tactic, focal point, or person that matters most. And it’s because a diversity of responses to this kind of problem is not only essential; it’s also inevitable given human nature. Read my writing on the concept of “response diversity” as a sustainability strategy for lots more (here on climate solutions, here specifically on activism)
7. Complete this sentence “It’s important that we remember the (long) histories behind climate science, policy and activism because…”
…a focus on day-to-day politics and debate can miss vital long-timescale realities that really shape what societies can, and can’t, do addressing grand challenges of all kinds – from global warming to immigration to poverty alleviation to public health.
8. What next? What are you working on at the moment that you’d like to give a shout out to
I’ve had several book ideas simmering for a long while, but one’s life gets shorter every day and it’s also time for me to get more of my music out in the world. Since the mid 1990s, songwriting and performing have been a vital second communication pathway for me. Through this year, I’m working on a couple of albums of original songs, building on my one album, “A Very Fine Line,” released way back in 2013. Readers can learn about my songwriting side and listen to heaps of music in this Sustain What post: When Reporting Gives Way to Singing.
1. Who are you? (where did you grow up, what contact did you have with ‘nature’ – how much unstructured play in natural settings – I ask because this is a common thread among adults who have become “campaigners”) and what was the path to becoming a scientist working on malaria?
I grew up near Manchester, without much connection to the natural world. I liked maths and science and did an undergraduate degree that covered lots of different disciplines. Having previously sworn that biology was ‘boring’, it was there I became really fascinated by microbial life. I saw a research career in infectious disease as a way to pursue that interest whilst also doing something useful, something that I thought had potential to improve people’s lives. So I followed a pretty traditional academic path and ended up working on malaria parasite biology for about a decade.
2. When and how did you first hear about carbon dioxide build-up as a “problem”, and if you remember your initial thoughts?
It still shocks me that I didn’t learn specifically about climate change at any point in my formal education. When I graduated from a Natural Sciences degree in 2010 I wouldn’t have been able to describe the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon that scientists had been trying to raise the alarm about since well before I was born. Climate change was mentioned in passing around me at work and in wider society but there didn’t seem to be much urgency or fear about it. I’d genuinely believed that world leaders were dealing with it. But that changed in October 2018, when IPPC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5℃ completely dispelled the myth that it was all under control, caused a flurry of press attention, and started to activate a much broader range of people.
3. You mention a presentation by Hugh Montgomery in 2018 as pivotal. What was it he did and presented (was this the IPCC 1.5 degrees report)?
The way Hugh laid out the IPPC’s report felt absolutely brutal at the time, but all he did was summarise what was in that report and make abundantly clear what it all meant for people, including for us in that room. It’s rare to see scientists or most other professionals speak like this, with clarity and unequivocal urgency. To me this was as disruptive as the information he actually presented.
4. Do activists expect too much of scientists still working within academia? Do scientists working within academia expect too little of themselves?
It’s far from unreasonable to expect scientists and the academic community to act in line with their own knowledge and warnings, and I think it’s fair to say that (like most other parts of society) academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire. I think my own frustration lies in the missed potential for academia to be part of really catalysing and facilitating a society-wide response. From the inside I know how futile it can feel to push against the inertia and how risky it can be to stick your head above the parapet in such a competitive, precarious working environment… but I also know that the stakes are too high for us not to try. My message to scientists is that we have more power than we often realise, and that there are many different ways to use it effectively – especially when we work together.
5. Best case scenario – what changes does the National Emergency Briefing make by the end of 2026? What needs to have gone right – and what do “we” (define as you wish) need to have done differently to make that best case come to life?
It’s an enticing thought that amongst the Briefing’s audience there could have been hundreds if not thousands of people who had a similarly life-altering experience to my own in 2018, and those now-activated people will share what they’ve learned and activate others, leading to vital social tipping points and cultural shifts. From often-bitter experience, I know it’s not that simple. I do think it’s realistic to believe that NEB and the ongoing work that stems from it can contribute to rejuvenating and focusing the climate movement and may already have broadened the range of people who participate. However, the ‘knowledge component’ that the NEB attempts to address is just one of a combination of factors needed to empower action: we need to make sure courage, community, and practical skills are cultivated in parallel.
6. How can people get involved in NEB?The focus for now is to get the information shared in the Briefing to as many people as possible. This involves building pressure on politicians and broadcasters to engage with its content and fulfil their obligations to inform themselves, their colleagues and the wider public, for instance via a televised National Emergency Briefing. A short film based on the briefing is currently in production, with plans for community screenings around the country this Spring. For more information and to get involved see https://www.nebriefing.org/take-action.
Who are you – where did you grow up, what contact did you have with ‘nature’? (There’s good evidence to suggest that the main determinant of people getting properly switched on to environmental issues is unstructured play with minimal supervision in nature before age 11)
Hello! I’m Marianna Dudley, I’m an environmental historian. I started life in Brazil, spent some early years in Sweden, did most of my growing up in Cornwall, and now live in Bristol. I had a lot of contact with nature as a child: my uncle and aunt had a farm, and I spent a lot of time there watching lambs being born, running around the yard, annoying the sheepdogs, and poking around the pond. If not there, we’d be at the beach. Cornish beaches are unbeatable and I’m definitely happiest bobbing in the Atlantic just offshore of one.
2) A little about your academic background – undergrad what where why, ditto for masters and PhD
Like many History undergraduates, I opted for History because it was infinitely interesting and I didn’t have a career plan. I went to Warwick, because the department had a great reputation and I liked its image as an egalitarian, modern university (unaware at that point that EP Thompson had long ago seen the direction of travel to Warwick University Limited!); in my final year I happened to attend a guest lecture by David Nye, the American historian of energy, technology, and environment. It proved pivotal, introducing me to environmental history, which connected my love of nature and my academic interests. I looked for where I could study it further, which led me to Professor Peter Coates at the University of Bristol. During my Masters, Peter and Tim Cole received funding for a project researching Militarized Landscapes. I joined as PhD student, with Peter and Tim as my supervisors, and Chris Pearson (now at Liverpool) as postdoc showing me the ropes. It was a dream team! I loved the research and writing, and published my PhD thesis as a book shortly after I finished – An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945 to the present.
3) In a nutshell (sorry!) what does your book argue, and where did it “come from” – what gaps in the previous understandings was it filling, what ‘myths’ is it overthrowing, or at the least complicating?
Electric Wind: An Energy History of Britain is the first academic history of British wind power, so it fills a substantial gap. It argues that the history of wind energy goes back much further than the modern wind farm, and is more diverse than you might expect. Wind energy has developed alongside, not counter to, other energy systems such as coal, oil, gas, and nuclear, and this has important implications today as we plan for a decarbonised energy system. It also argues that wind energy’s development has been contingent on national and international politics; and that particular ideas and ideologies shaped state and industry involvement. I want the book to show that attention to energy history can enliven current discussions of eg. net zero, which can be repetitive and fail to explore the potential to rethink energy systems along more equitable lines. I also hope it stands as a contribution to modern British history, as it argues that the rise of wind energy is a history of the nation as understood politically, socially, culturally and environmentally. These elements are just as important as the technology, so I am keen to ‘complicate’ top-down technocratic accounts!
4) What were your favourite and least favourite bits of the process? (Are you, like me, an archive monkey?)
I loved the research process for this book, partly because I thought about it for a long time in terms of an energy journey around Britain. It took me to some fascinating places. Like most historians, I love visiting archives, particularly local/regional archives – which I used a lot for this research. But I’m a true environmental historian in that I love field work too – pairing the document record with the landscape, reading the history and getting to know the place as two dimensions of the same inquiry. These are the two sides of historical research for me – the archive and the field. I loved exploring Orkney and the Outer Hebrides in this way for the book; I have a strong memory of driving around Lewis and Harris in a tiny hire car, stopping for roadside scallop baps (!) and swims at perfect sandy beaches en route to interviews with energy activists.
As for my least favourite bits of the process? It was frustrating at times to realise how little industry interest there seemingly was in the history of wind energy. It is, and has always been, a relentlessly forward-looking sector, and I hope this book will show why wind energy’s past is not only worth exploring, but also incredibly useful for shaking up how we think about energy, how it’s produced and who it is for.
5) Who should read it (well, obviously, everyone should) and why? How would it help us make sense of our current and near future dilemmas/trilemmas/quadlemmas?
I wrote this book for anyone with an interest in nature, climate change, landscape, and infrastructure! I try throughout the book to connect global issues of energy and climate with energy as it is experienced on the ground and in everyday life. There can be debilitating overwhelm when it comes to climate action, so I want the stories of communities who effected real change throughout the book to offer narratives of hope and determination. I’d love to get the book on the radar of politicians and policy-makers as it shows how much sustained, socially-engaged policy can achieve – the achievements of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in the post-Second World War period are a brilliant example of progressive infrastructural planning with social good at its heart. I was excited when Labour announced the GB Energy plans, but so far it hasn’t lived up to the hype. Does anyone have Ed Miliband’s address? I’d like to send him a copy! Apparently it has already been recommended to the Parliamentary Knowledge Foundation library, so that’s a great start.
6) What next for you? What’s the next project?
Electric Wind was the work of many years of research, so I’m wary of jumping straight into the next big project. I’m continuing to think about energy, particularly its cultural dimensions; and am interested in unpicking the different threads which fed into the emergent green political movement in Britain in the 1970s. So we’ll see where that takes me!
7) Anything else you’d like to say?
Thanks for the opportunity to tell you more about the book. As well as writing about energy and environment, I spend a lot of my time teaching it. I direct the MA Environmental Humanities programme at the University of Bristol, and am constantly amazed by the breadth of interests and experience that our students bring to the classroom. Join us! https://www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught/ma-environmental-humanities/
Ro Randall is a retired psychoanalyst with decades of extremely useful contributions to social movements (and latterly the climate movement) under her belt. For more, see links at the foot of this interview.
Sparked by a recent listen to a really good “Bridging the Carbon Gap” podcast interview she did a few years back with some young Americans, I sent her a few questions by email. The full text, unedited, is below.
What do you think is going on with the pretence that climate change isn’t happening – in the United States banning the phrase (along with many others) and in the UK with the Conservative Party saying it would repeal the Climate Change Act. Is this people just denying grim realities that would overwhelm them? What can psychoanalysis tell us about this, and where it might end?
I think there are three things worth bearing in mind here: bad faith actors, failures of leadership and the psychological state which psychoanalysis calls disavowal, a form of denial which is extremely common.
Top of my list is the existence of bad faith actors: very powerful people and organisations who have no interest in doing anything at all about the climate crisis who have been working hard to subvert, slow and prevent action. They have deep pockets and huge influence. I’m talking about fossil fuel interests and their think tanks, bankers and other representatives of big capital for example. These people can see that really tackling the climate crisis means adopting a very different economic model. This is anathema to their short-term planning horizons and their pursuit of profit and growth at any cost. They refuse to imagine that the systems they are part of might come to an end or might change. Some of these people passively obstruct change, but many are more active and are gaining ground as politics in many of the so-called ‘advanced economies’ shifts rightwards, seeking scapegoats for the ills of a disintegrating society.
Second is the way that these destructive influences have increasingly captured the ear of governments and this means that there is a lack of leadership on the climate crisis. When political leaders fail to embrace the definite, difficult actions which the climate crisis demands and fail to produce compelling narratives about why they are essential, people who are themselves in states of disavowal find one side of that conflict – that there is possibly nothing really the matter – comfortably confirmed.
Disavowal is the third factor I think we should consider. Disavowal is the psychoanalytic term for a form of denial where you hold two contradictory positions at the same time, keeping them safely separated in different compartments of the mind. On the one hand you know that the climate is changing, that it is desperately dangerous and that everyone’s lives need to change in order to deal with it. On the other hand, you also wish to carry on with life as usual. You don’t want to have to engage politically, you don’t want to give up the comforts of your accustomed lifestyle and – if you let yourself dwell on the other side of this dilemma – you are justifiably terrified. Conflict between the two parts of the disavowal dilemma means that many people are only too willing to take comfort from leaders who either pay weak lip service to the crisis or worse, deny outright that action is necessary.
In the UK we have seen XR and JSO, avatars of hope to some, basically crash and burn. What went wrong? What could have been done differently to get people participating in – or thinking of participating in these groups – to be more accepting of the idea that this was always going to be a marathon, not a sprint where the problem would be largely “solved” by 2025?
The demise of any political group is painful and demoralising for its members as well as for the wider movement and I’m sure that they themselves have spent a lot of time chewing over how to think about their work and analysing what they might have done differently, as well as feeling bitter or angry about the lack of wider public support and the relentless attacks from the political establishment. The two organisations are also not exactly the same. Although JSO grew out of XR its activities always seemed to be more focused and more cleverly executed. And you can see from the XR website that its viewpoints have evolved somewhat from the first heady days of 2018. The points I make below are purely about a possible psychological dimension to XR’s difficulties and I don’t want to minimise the real political difficulties that all climate action groups face.
From a psychological point of view, one thing stood out to me when XR arrived on the scene and strikes me still. XR had an interesting mix of age groups. As well as young people drawn into politics for the first time, there were many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Some of these had undoubtedly been involved in other strands of the climate movement and some of them in other strands of Non-Violent Direct Action, but many of those I met were completely new to any kind of climate action. Although they had known about climate change for years they had not felt the need to do anything about it, either personally or politically, at work or in their community: the knowledge had been split off, isolated in a separate part of their mind. They had, in other words been in thrall, for decades, to the defence of disavowal that I talk about above. People offered me various reasons for this inaction, most of which I found unconvincing: “I didn’t know,” “They didn’t say it was so serious,” “There wasn’t anything to be involved in,” I would be told. Climate change has been on the political agenda since the 1980s and surveys in the 2005 – 8 period found very high levels of both public awareness and public concern about climate change so it was unlikely that these people hadn’t known. I was reminded of someone with a serious alcohol problem who maintains that knowledge of its dangers was unavailable to them, or that no organisation existed that could help. Although such claims can be easily challenged, amongst a group of people who feel the same way, challenge is unlikely.
Emerging from a state of disavowal is an incredibly painful business. It involves looking back and questioning how you have lived your life, acknowledging the way you have – consciously or unconsciously – parcelled difficult conflicts up for your own convenience and ease of mind. Guilt and shame play a big part: guilt that you didn’t act politically when you could have done, guilt that you continued living a high carbon lifestyle because it suited you, shame at what your complicity says about the kind of person you might be. It’s perhaps not surprising that few people wanted to go down this road but in addition XR itself offered some easy ways of making sure that it was a road that was easy to miss. XR offered a lot of different ways of defending yourself against the pain of emerging from disavowal.
Firstly there was a focus on urgency that led to an atmosphere of manic activity. My impression was that it was hard to find space to question the goals, strategy and tactics that the leadership offered and that reflection, when it came, did not involve questioning the direction of the organisation and the type of actions chosen. Building coalitions and engaging with a wider public both seemed to take a back seat in the face of this urgency. Manic activity is a powerful way of avoiding emotions like guilt and shame but when the manic phase ends the descent into depression and inaction can be fast and overwhelming. I met many people whose initial euphoric engagement with XR tailed off into depression and hopelessness.
Secondly, XR kicked off with a powerful narrative that every previous initiative on climate change had been useless. This went as far as blaming organisations like Greenpeace for lack of progress on climate goals. Blame, shame and guilt were thus projected outwards and did not need to be faced internally. Many of those I met were unaware of the roads protests, climate camp or the anti-fracking groups and seemed not to believe that anyone had ever used NVDA before. Young people often feel like this, finding their elders useless and struggling to believe that they were ever politically active, but most of the people who offered me these views were long past their youth. There was thus a refusal to learn from others’ experience, while at the same time – in their focus on long-ago political groups like the American civil rights movement and the suffragettes – claiming that this was exactly what they were doing. The focus on imprisonment as something which would trigger government action was also curious: most NVDA organisations work hard to keep their members out of prison, if at all possible, in order that they can continue the work. The creation of martyrs has rarely been an overt goal. Psychologically it is hard not to see this as an unconscious desire for punishment for unexpressed guilt and shame about previous inaction.
Finally, in addition to these specifically psychological factors, the few protests that I attended often had an unclear focus and communication to the public seemed poor. Demonstrators were not engaging in conversation with passers-by while the protests themselves, which frequently involved stopping traffic, seemed focused on disruption to the public rather than specifically to fossil fuel interests, government or other powerful players. Alienation from a wider public thus happened rapidly and it was easy for government to get support for vicious crackdowns on all forms of protest. Add to all this the effects of the pandemic and it is perhaps not surprising that the movement struggled. JSO’s protests seemed more carefully targeted and although they were a smaller organisation, they may have been more successful in the long run.
Without wanting to be glib, at a species-level we seem to be in the same state as a previously healthy person who had blotted out that everything dies, and is now beginning to be confronted with signs of their own vulnerability and even mortality. What sorts of symptoms – compensations, magical thinking, denial, projection etc – might we see in the coming years in the UK?
I think it’s important to think about who ‘we’ are in this question. In a society riven by inequality and systems of dominance there is never a universal ‘we’. We are never really all in something together, just as we are never all following the same psychological path. Although there are undoubtedly people who are caught up in the dynamics you suggest it is important to recognise that in extreme situations most people actually respond with empathy, kindness and cooperation, stepping in to help each other and share resources in a common goal of survival. Rather than fix on the negatives of magical thinking, denial and projection we may do better to focus on how to build systems of sharing and kindness and cooperation.
In your magnificent climate change novel “Transgression” [reviewed here] the central character, Clara, is about 19 in 2009. So she’d now be 35. What is she doing now? Did she find a way to reconcile with her friend Ruby, who was much less convinced of the need for – and efficacy of – climate action?
Thanks for calling it magnificent! I’ve just started writing a sequel to “Transgression”, set in 2065 – 70, when Clara is in her late seventies and the world has changed dramatically. I won’t say anything more yet and I’m not even sure if I will manage to complete it – so many other things seem to get in the way of the concentrated space needed to write.
Anything else you want to say? (recommended viewing, reading, whatever)
There’s a film Climate in therapy, directed by Nathan Gross of I am Greta fame, which I hope may get some UK screenings soon. It’s about a group of climate scientists taking part in two days of group therapy to help them cope with the pain of being constantly in contact with the reality of what is happening and you can see a trailer at Climate in Therapy I think it would be particularly useful for climate scientists who often don’t find good spaces to talk about the impact their work has on them personally.
And the book I’m currently enjoying reading is Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, a challenge to the Hobbesian idea of individual self-interest and violence via a fascinating dive into what archaeology and anthropology can tell us about the realities of societal collapse in the past and how this might help us view the future.
This is one of many interviews Ro has kindly done.
Glaciologist who has spent 40+ years doing fieldwork on glaciers. Science advisor to NASA Earth. US Representative to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Author of blog “From a Glaciers Perspective”. Grandparent, avid skier, dog walk/runner.
He kindly agreed to an email interview, and here it is.
A little bit about you – who you are, where you were educated, “why glaciology”? I began working on glaciers in Alaska during the summer of 1981. The initial goal as to cross country ski in the summer to help me qualify for the US Ski Team. This worked, but I chose grad school instead in 1984 enrolling at the University of Maine. I designed the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project as a 50 year field project to monitor glaciers across the range. This was in response to a high priority of the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. At the time the USGS monitored a single glacier in several different ranges, and with the Reagan budget cuts was not going to be able to expand. The glaciers are all in Wilderness areas precluding the use of mechanized equipment and requiring backpacking to access. I chose not to seek federal funding and have financed the project with consulting work.
2. How and when you first heard about the issue of carbon dioxide build-up (presumably in your undergraduate degree?)
Terry Hughes was my advisor, he was very knowledgeable about ice sheets, while all my experience and insights were on alpine glaciers. I had a chance to work on Pine Island and Thwaites Glacier projects in 1985 and Jakobshavn Glacier in 1986. We , the glaciologic community understood these locations were key places where profound change was going to happen and set up projects to begin monitoring.
In ice cave under Sholes Glacier
3. John Mercer wrote a famous (well, it’s all relative) paper for Nature, in January 1978 – do you recall reading it?Had you met him by then? Any recollections? I met John Mercer before meeting Terry Hughes. He had worked in Patagonia and Alaska areas I was more experienced with. I sought his guidance along with William O. Field about where to set up a project. He was not overly helpful.
4. Terry Hughes wrote a paper in 1980 about the “soft underbelly of the West AIS” – again, how did you know Terry, any recollections? I worked with Terry for four-years the first year working most of the time in his office with him. I finished my Masters and then PhD as quickly as possible in 1989. He was a brilliant, iconoclastic person.
On Mount Baker with my daughter Jill who co-directs the project with me now
5. How, from your perspective, has glaciology changed as a discipline over the years you’ve been involved (e.g. fleshing out the bsky comment)
I had a chance to address the glaciology community at the 100th anniversary AGU meeting in Washington DC in 2019. I pointed out that thirty five years prior all the glaciologists in the world could have fit in this room, that now held only as many people ~300 as worked on just the Helheim Glacier for example. This rapid increase in number of glaciologists was due unfortunately to the dire necessity that climate change posed for the cryosphere. That we need everyone of you to focus on what you do well and monitor, observe, develop and model that. That this generation of scientists was embracing collaboration instead of competition. This is why I have for 20 years incorporated artists in our research expeditions. Note below. I continue to work in the field every summer and with NASA on projects like the one published today.
Last week, a post about Carl Borgman’s 1965 commencement address, which informed students at the University of Tennessee about the threat of carbon dioxide build-up leading to climate change, went viral (by AOY standards).
A couple of days later I had a lovely email from someone who had read it and then set up a very comprehensive Wikipedia page for Carl Borgmann. This person suggested I contact his daughter to see if she would be happy to do an interview. I did, and she was! Here it is.
A little bit about who you are.
I did my bachelor’s degree at McGill University (1964-68). My Master’s degree was an applied degree in Speech-Language Pathologist. After I completed it in 1970, I worked on a variety of special projects and was a lecturer in Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University. Later with three children under the age of six, I did a PHD degree in that same department. It concerned language socialization practices with young Inuit children in the homes and schools of Northern Quebec. This was followed by how children learn Inuktitut as well as other language-based studies in other Indigenous communities of Quebec. By the late 1990s I became the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at McGill, followed by becoming a Vice President International at the French language Universite de Montreal and then Vice President Research at Dalhousie University and subsequently the same position at McGill University. I am presently on a reduced load pre-retirement Professor at McGill University working on Indigenous community engagement of a large biomedical grant and teaching a course I taught for 20 years and last taught 20 years ago. I have served on numerous scientific project and government Boards in Canada. I have three children and six grand children that give me much pleasure.
2. Any further light you can shed on the commencement address your dad gave – its motivation, its reception, whether it was the first commencement address he gave.
The wonderful thing about your email was that I had never heard of that commencement address nor any of the other speeches he gave at that time that concerned the environment. I also never knew he had honorary degrees. I was by then not living at home since I was an undergraduate student in Montreal at McGill by 1964. I had only known about the commencement addresses he gave at the University of Vermont when I was a young girl in elementary school. I recently found the script for his inaugural address at UVM in some old papers and read it with interest. It did not have a strong environmental flavor to it.
3. Was carbon dioxide buildup something that was mentioned in your house when you were growing up? If not, when and how did you hear about it, as best you remember.
I never remember overhearing any discussion of carbon dioxide and its effect on the atmosphere in my family’s house. There was discussion of many things but not that or else I was not sufficiently interested to pick up on it at the time. In general, my father expressed concern about the environment and on wasteful ways of living. But he was a quiet person at home and rarely spoke of his accomplishments or his work. Most of what I know about his work life, I read in pieces written about him by his workplaces.
4. Did your father ever point back to his commencement address when “the greenhouse effect” was in the news in the 1980s? What was his “take” on the issue in later years?
Again, I do not remember this being a subject of conversation. I remember speaking to him about university administration and its evolution over time when I was a Dean and he was quite elderly. We also discussed some of what he did at the Ford Foundation. When he moved back to Colorado and lived in the foothills outside of Boulder, he spent time trying to protect trees from a spruce beetle infestation in a kind of solo effort to deal with environmental devastation of a stand of trees near his home.
5. Any thoughts or feelings you had on reading the All Our Yesterdays article and/or the Wikipedia page that has been created.
I loved reading about his prescience about environmental issues. This showed me a whole different side of his interests. Once not long ago, I looked to see if he was on Wikipedia and did not find him. Now I can and so can his grandchildren and great grand children who can now read about him. That is a delight for us all and hopefully an inspiration to others.
One last thing about him – he came from a very poor and uneducated family who moved from place to place. At one point he had a high school schoolteacher who realized he had a very spotty knowledge of math. He willingly accepted to stay after school hours so she could give him extra teaching. She discovered he was a very bright boy and taught him, according to the story that he told us, “Everything she knew and more” since she borrowed a book from a library on more advanced math just to be able to teach it to him. She also told him that he should attend a university. He had never heard of such a place. When he told me this story he always said, “I owe my career to that woman.”
6. Anything else you’d like to say
I would just like to thank you a great deal for contacting me and providing me with this wonderful information about a man I emulated and loved.
1. What is the “origin story” of Parents for Climate – when did you begin, why? Parents for Climate began in 2019, sparked by a simple but powerful idea: parents are a force like no other when it comes to protecting the future. A group of six rural and regional mums got together online—frustrated by government inaction and alarmed by worsening climate impacts—to create a home for parent-led climate action. Our tiny organisation wants to empower everyday families to take meaningful steps, speak up, and shift the story about who climate action is for.
2. (How) has the work of Parents for Climate shifted since it began – for what reasons? We’ve grown from a grassroots network into a national movement that’s deeply strategic. At first, we were a small mostly-online community focused on awareness raising and community-building—now, we’re focused on influencing decision-makers and policy, supporting local leadership, and amplifying the voices of parents in public debate. That shift reflects the urgency of the climate crisis, the growing political relevance of parents, and what we’ve learned about where we can make the most impact.
3. What are the things you’ve done that you’re proudest of?
We’re proud to have helped shape public policy—like federal investments in clean energy storage and better school infrastructure. We’ve mobilized thousands of parents in electorates across the country, built powerful coalitions, and held Australia’s biggest energy companies to account for greenwashing. But just as importantly, we’ve helped countless parents move from climate anxiety to climate agency—finding purpose, connection, and hope together.
4. What, besides more money and time, is the main constraint on you being able to do more things (skills gaps, access to other resources etc) and what help are you looking for?
Like many grassroots groups, we’re stretched. We could do more with support in digital campaigning, media and design, and easy to use tools that help us scale. We’d also love more support building bridges into multicultural communities and regional networks. We’re looking for people who want to offer skills, networks, or mentoring—or who can help unlock funding or strategic partnerships.
5. What resources need to be available to concerned parents for when they talk to their kids – of different ages – about what the future holds? Parents need age-appropriate, emotionally intelligent tools that are honest but hopeful. That might be a storybook about nature and courage for young kids, a school project toolkit for tweens, or conversation guides for teens that acknowledge fear but focus on action. Most of all, parents need to feel they’re not alone—and that there’s a community of people out there who are acting for their kids too.
6. Anything else you want to say – shout outs about upcoming events, other groups etc. We’ve just wrapped our biggest ever campaign, Vote Like a Parent. We just forced energy giant EnergyAustralia to admit to the truth behind its marketing claims through legal action. And we’re gearing up for new work focused on clean energy and protecting kids from the impacts of extreme heat and air pollution. A huge shout out to the parent volunteers around the country making this movement what it is. If you’re reading this and want to be part of it—come join us at parentsforclimate.org!
The great Australian cartoonist Jon Kudelka kindly agreed to an interview.
1. Who are you and how did you come to be a cartoonist (where grew up etc).
I grew up in Hobart and after completing an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and chemistry in the early 90s realised that opportunities to do actual research were mostly in the area of weapons research or mining or forestry and decided that it wasn’t for me. I had supported myself through uni illustrating for various clients and decided to give that a go as if it failed I could probably get into teaching.
2. When and how did you first hear about climate change?
I heard about climate change in grade ten which would have been the mid eighties, so only 90 years after Arrhenius published his first paper on the topic, establishing my ability to be right on the ball with important news.
3. Your “scientist tapping the microphone ‘is this thing on'” cartoon from 2013 pops up intermittently in my feed and on sites – any recollection of how it came to be? If you were doing a sequel, what would the scientist be saying now?
The scientist one was done in a tearing hurry as I had taken in far too much work with various papers. I intended to have the sea level rising in each panel but somehow managed to forget it so was kicking myself the next day. If I did a sequel it would probably involve a scientist swearing a great deal.
Also I would probably go with a female scientist because the only people in my uni year who stuck with science turned out to be female. Probably should have done that with the first one but like I said, I was right on deadline and details weren’t a priority.
4. Your Rusted On Bingo is pure genius – what was the motiviation/straw that broke the camel’s back? Presumably you do encounter these responses from people in real life, where the block function is not possible. What do you do then?
I always got a lot more snark from Labor for the mildest criticism whereas the (slightly more) conservative parties were cranky in a more buffoonish manner. I think the trouble was that Labor types wanted to be Tories but didn’t want to be seen as Tories and didn’t react at all well to it. The prevailing attitude was to promise something centrist then roll over at the slightest pushback. I picked this rank cowardice during the run-up to Bill Shorten’s failed campaign against [then Prime Minister Scott] Morrison in 2019 where there were some good ideas that didn’t go far enough and the whole campaign was handed over to risk averse spin doctors. More effort seemed to be put into making excuses (mostly blaming the Greens for not passing Rudd’s CPRS in 2009) rather than actually following through with a consistent platform.
This is not to say that the Coalition weren’t people you’d touch with a barge pole (unless you were trying to push them off a boat) and a lot of the groundwork in ruining the country was done during the John Howard era. In fact I even published a book to that effect. It all got to the point where despite the succession of absolute clowns put forward by the Liberals starting with Tony Abbott, it became clear that Labor’s cowardice from opposition was clearly enabling the Coalition and the two party system was the entire problem. Pointing this out unleashed a deluge of spitefulness from the party faithful to the point where I just made a bingo card based entirely on their excuses for failure.
I was going to leave it at that but they just kept at it to the point where I rejigged the card into a teatowel and put the profits into sponsoring the endangered red handfish which I named “Rusty” which I quite enjoyed. I get a few requests to do another teatowel but have retired from cartooning due to a terminal brain tumour and don’t really have to time, inclination or funds to do another print run. Also the original seems to have held up pretty well.
These days people are generally too scared to make these comments to me in person but back in the day I would be increasingly polite to the point where they became quite cross. This may or may not have been deliberate. Anyway, I probably rambled on a bit there but I am somewhat bewildered as to why anyone would cling to any of the major parties these days but I haven’t really been paying attention since I retired late last year.
5. Who are your favourite cartoonists, living or dead?
6. Anything else you want to say – shout outs to activists, outlets, news of upcoming projects etc etc.
I’ve moved to being a more non-political artist because politics makes me a bit cranky these days as you’ve probably noticed. I recently attended the Takayna artist residency run by the Bob Brown Foundation and they do great work attempting to look after the place because they generally do what they say which would these days seems to be frowned upon by the media and the time-serving careerists who infest the major political parties.
Our only hope for getting the urgent changes needed to give the next generation half a chance after the long period of making the environment much worse in the case of the coalition or arguably slightly less worse under Labor is a minority government with sizeable crossbenches of people who are willing to actually work to make things better in both Houses of Parliament though it’s pretty much at the stage where if this occurred the Liberals and Labor will stop pretending they’re not defending their duopoly and band together to defend their donors.
Dave Vetter writes extremely well about climate change and the messiness of it all. He has a very much worth-your-time set of essays about climate disinformation, a judiciously active social media presence (first on the site that Shall Not Be Named) and latterly on Bluesky. He kindly agreed to an interview…
Who are you – i.e. roughly when were you born, where did you grow up, what did you do after leaving school?
I was born in Edinburgh at some point in the (cough) 1970s, but grew up in Cardiff, where it rained so hard for so long that I ran away to East Asia. I spent a few years as a teacher in Hong Kong, until I realised I couldn’t have a job that didn’t revolve around writing. At that point I returned to the UK and took up an MA in international journalism. Since then I’ve had just about every print media role you can think of, and the entire time print media has been in its death throes. That’s quite a concerning correlation, when I think about it.
When and how did you first hear about climate change – do you remember what you thought?
I first heard about climate change in the 1980s, when I was in primary school. Our teachers did a good job of scaring us into being little activists. That’s never really gone away. I also understood from a young age that climate change is indivisible from human injustice, probably thanks to my dad [the epidemiologist Norman J. Vetter]. I get annoyed when people talk about “saving the planet”. We’re saving ourselves! Shoutout to Dana Fisher, there.
You write for Forbes – how did that gig come about?
I began writing for Forbes when I returned to the UK in 2019. I’d been in media and publishing for about 12 years by that point, but wanted to focus solely on climate. At that point I had the means, motive and opportunity to completely reconfigure my career in a media industry that I felt was becoming increasingly frivolous – so I went for it.
You’re pretty prolific on social media – what do you get out of it (positive and negative) and what would you like to see “climate people” doing more of – or less of – on Bluesky etc?
Yes, I post too much. It’s probably a net harm to me in all sorts of ways, but I generally try to highlight issues that I feel need attention, and I try to do so in a responsible way without being boring about it. I’m perpetually conflicted about how useful any of this is; I, like many of us, am just figuring it out as we go along.
What other projects are you involved in?
I’m trying to juggle a dozen projects while treading water. My approach is far too headless chicken. And to pay the bills I ghostwrite and do copyediting.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is everything is gonna be peachy keen through to 10 is “Mad Max scenarios look like The Sound of Music before the Nazis turn up”, where do you think we will be in 2050? From a self-centred, short-termist, northern European perspective, I’m hopeful that European agriculture doesn’t collapse. There are indications that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation might be more robust than we thought, which might be a reprieve, though we absolutely shouldn’t be banking on this.
The one thing we can be sure of is we’re heading into a less safe, less stable future. I’m sorry to say that that means most of us are going to be struggling a lot more, while a few very wealthy fraudsters will continue to grab what they can. To sustain ourselves I think we’re going to need to rediscover the meaning of community, and what’s actually important, rather than what we’ve been inculcated to believe is important.
Bonus – anything else you’d like to say.
Something I really appreciate about All Our Yesterdays is that, via history, it emphasises aspects of the climate crisis that are overlooked – namely the cultural and the social aspects, which is where I believe all the most important fights are being fought. People always claim the biggest hurdle to climate action is politics, but they’re wrong: it’s culture. Andrew Breitbart, the most appalling figure, was right when he said politics is downstream from culture. Liberal politicians almost universally do not understand this, which is a big reason why we’re facing the crises we’re facing.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday the Royal Courts of Justice heard an appeal in a case about whether the Government broke the law in approving a power-station-with-carbon-capture-and-storage project. The heart of the matter is the amount of emissions that will still be released. The appeal has been brought by environmental consultant Dr Andrew Boswell. Here he talks to AOY. The transcript has been very lightly edited for clarity. Next week, a detailed account of the numbers behind the appeal.
And so first question is, for people who are not familiar with yourself, your life in a couple of 100 words
Andrew Boswell 0:49
My life in a couple of hundred words? Well, currently, what I’ve been doing the last few years is challenging government decisions on projects which have an impact on the climate change, basically when they have a significant impact. Whether, basically whether the government is making a decision to approve these projects in a lawful way. So it’s largely looking at things like Environmental Impact Assessments and whether they are actually working out right, secondly, then whether they they [the government of the day] make a decision which is right with the law,
marc hudson 1:34
And why did you decide that this was a good use of your time and expertise, as opposed to other forms of environmental activism that in theory, you could be doing?
Andrew Boswell 1:47
Yeah, well, I saw a particular niche for myself, both as a scientist, so I could sort of review environmental impact assessments on the technical side, but also a realisation that the legal system wasn’t actually securing the Climate Change Act [of 2008] and our climate targets. I mean, I personally think we need much more radical carbon budgets and targets along the lines of Kevin Anderson might say; reductions of several percent a year, lots of percent a year, to meet the temperature targets. But we’re stuck with what we have under the Climate Change Act. And what we have is that not even those targets are being secured in planning decisions and by the planning system and by the legal system. So I set out to really sort of highlight that,
marc hudson 2:46
And we’ll talk briefly in general terms about the case that was being heard yesterday and today. But could you give us an example of a case where you forced the government to obey the laws, which, ironically, you know, it should be doing under the 2008 Climate Act.
Andrew Boswell 3:07
Well, the case today is a case in point. We don’t know the outcome of it, But my work is not just going into the courts, it’s actually going through the whole planning examination. And what did happen in that case is that initially the upstream emissions from the natural gas, which is largely methane emissions, were not initially put into the environmental impact assessment. So they [BP and Equinor] weren’t even trying to declare them. Then what happened was they did declare them, because I called that out in the planning examination. But then they actually went and miscalculated the whole thing. And what they did was they double-counted the carbon capture emissions. So effectively, they sort of said, “Oh, the carbon capture emissions, 180% of the carbon which would be going up the smoke stack” rather than 90% which is what they’re saying they capture. They effectively calculated 180% which then they were able to hide the methane emissions under.
So there’s a lot of deception going on. And over the course of six months, exchange of letters with the department and the government, eventually the government agreed with me that they had double counted. It’s notable to say that BP and Equinor when they had the facts laid out very simply before then, still denied that’s what they were doing.
Just to elaborate on that, do you understand that it actually took me three days to find the double-counting error because it was distributed around about half a dozen documents. And I actually had to create spreadsheets to understand what all the spreadsheets and the documents were doing; how the numbers interrelated. When I found the double-counting error, I thought, “no, they can’t really be doing that.” But eventually I convinced myself they were. And then I managed to lay it out in one half page spreadsheet, which actually went into the decision letter with the Secretary of State. And the Secretary of State, saying yes, they agreed with me that there was a double- counting error, but there was a long road to get to that simple explanation.
But even when I laid that out in front of BP and Equinor they still went on denying to the government that they ever made a double-counting error
marc hudson 5:51
On a recent Zoom call… I saw you lay out some of the details of this case. And you also said something that I think was very interesting and important that I would like you to expand on, which is that… you saw a case for CCS, for some purposes, eg, some industrial processes, cement, as opposed to what we’re getting, which is the energy production.
And I suppose my question is, how are we going to get or how could we get the CCS infrastructure and the CCS expertise and the CCS business models for the capture of emissions from, say, cement and ceramics and some chemical processes without the big oil companies having been able to develop it for power generation. Is that even possible, do you think that?
Andrew Boswell 7:12
Yeah, this is why I said that there is a case that it could be used for cement. But I didn’t say it was a proven case. And I think this is what needs to happen. And part of the problem in the UK is that they tried to do various what you might call stand-alone CCS projects, and those all failed. And one of the reasons they failed was we can’t get to all infrastructure to join up for one project – you can’t justify a storage site. And I get that, and that is a real issue. But then the response to that was, “well, okay, we’ll build this cluster model.” And each cluster basically starts off by having something driven by natural gas. It’s either blue hydrogen or it’s gas fired power, as in the Net Zero Teesside. So what you get is to start the thing up, and that’s the thing which is then going to sort of pump the CO2 down under the sea. You lock into natural gas.
But not only do you lock in, you front load all the emissions in this cluster model, because the big emissions come from the gas-fired power station, the natural gas supply and the methane in supply chain. You lock all those in; your cement plant might come along 10 years later, by which time you’ve done huge damage with the methane emissions in the first place.
So the question – and I think what your question is – is given that, can you now go back to actually a model where you could develop CCS for things like cement and lime, but you don’t rely on this cluster model, and you don’t rely on having a gas-fired power station to pump the stuff under the sea. And that’s why I think the case is not proven. We need to understand whether that can be done or not. And I don’t have a view on that, but I think what I think does need to be solved is the power to pump the stuff under the sea is one thing, and that could be done by renewables. The power for the Net Zero Teesside of it was about 50 megawatts to sort of power the pump pipeline.
But there’s also issues about whether you need a constant sea of supply to the storage site. And there’s a lot of issues about developing that particular storage site actually off Net Zero Teesside, where they’re sort of saying it needs to have a constant supply at a certain rate. I think that’s when you start to hit problems, which have tried to overcome with the cluster model. But by trying to do that, they then really hit the greenhouse gas problem. So,
marc hudson 10:06
Sorry, when you said the greenhouse gas problem, you mean the volume?,
Andrew Boswell 10:10
Well, the greenhouse gas volume meaning that the emissions, which they can’t capture. Because all the methane emissions in the supply chain are uncatchable. And also the diesel from the shipping, if it’s LNG, and all the rest of it emissions from all that stuff is uncatchable. So it’s not carbon capture at all. There’s lots of emissions going out in the process which are not capturable at all.
marc hudson 10:36
I’m conscious of you wanting to have your meal and so forth. So two more questions. One is, if someone’s listening to this, if the transcript is suitably audible, or they’re reading it, and they think “I want to support Andrew Boswell’s work,” what do they do?
Andrew Boswell 10:54
Well, my work is sort of pro bono as such. I work basically pro bono, a sort of retired person with an interest. There have been times where when the case is coming up, we’ve needed to have financial support or something for the case, through crowd funders. So basically, it’s sort of “look out for things like that” at the moment. But to support my work more widely, in some non-financial way, I would say, just look out for what I’m doing. Because, you know, the campaign against CCS has really taken off.
At this moment, because I just finished a big legal case, I’m not quite sure what happens next. But we’re continuing the campaign to try to stop the government investing in all this.
And on the back of the [February 2025] Public Accounts Committee report, which is worth talking about because it’s highlighted several things. It highlighted that CCS is a very high-risk in trying to achieve net zero. The government it’s saying it’s harder to transition to net zero [without CCS]. The Public Accounts Committee have said that it’s very high risk in doing that. And they’re also saying it’s very high cost. We know the subsidies are now up to 60 billion pounds, the subsidies they’ve allocated to this
marc hudson 12:28
Sorry six billion or sixty billion?
Andrew Boswell 12:32
Sixty, Six zero, yeah, yeah. I can send you over a web page.
It’s all on one page, the DESNZ subsidies. And if you add up the ones which have got CCS in them, they’re already 60 billion, and you haven’t got blue hydrogen in there yet.
So it’s very costly. And the third point was they said, basically, the science isn’t fully determined yet, and there’s new science on the methane and so on. And the government need to take note of that. So we’re sort of coming in on the back of that, whether you know, in the budget or whatever the CCS could be cut in the budget.
marc hudson 13:14
In the seventh carbon budget?
Andrew Boswell 13:16
No, the national Treasury budget – so Rachel Reeve’s spending review in June, and her statement on March 26th leading up to it. There’s talk that she may cut CCS. The talk is that she may put it into the defence budget. I personally think it should be redirected to insulation and genuine green energy, because climate change is our biggest security risk.
And that’s not to underrate what’s happening. We’re going through a sort of process of the whole world order is changing. America is switching sides, and all the rest of it. And I understand we, you know, we have to consider our defence very seriously as well. But I don’t think we should just simply take green budgets and cut them. But where they’re bad, green budgets going for CCS – which isn’t going to help all the reasons in the Public Accounts Committee – we should redirect them to the stuff which will help insulation and genuinely green energy… So renewables and storage solutions…
marc hudson 14:25
Large scale batteries, etc, etc. Final question, anything else you’d like to say? Anything you thought, “Oh, he’s going to ask me this, and here’s my answer,”
Andrew Boswell 14:33
No, I think that’s that’s probably really good. Thank you.
