The Good Dirt with Byron Smith
News:Politics
A conversation with Adam Wood, a secondary school teacher at a large well-known private school in Sydney, teaching Legal and Christian Studies. Adam used to be a corporate lawyer, until he decided to use his powers for good. He is married to Emma and they have two small children.
Episode Outline
I. What's the big idea?
Byron chats with Adam Wood about intergenerational injustice, particularly as it relates to climate disruption. As a complex, global, cumulative crisis with a significant lag time between combustion and climate disruption, it is easy for each generation to enjoy the immediate benefits of burning fossil fuels while passing on to coming generations the full costs of that combustion. This creates a fundamental structural injustice by creating a gap between the beneficiaries of an activity and those who suffer from its consequences. How do we connect empathetically and ethically with those downstream from us, whose future suffering or flourishing is dependent upon our choices today?
Byron reads from the epilogue to Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine (1990).
II. What's going on?
1. NSW laws proposed to prevent scope 3 being considered in mining approvals - National Resources Review
2. This is not normal: what's different about the NSW mega fires - SMH
3. Australians worry about the environment but are wary of electric cars - SMH
4. 'Climate Strike' named official word of the year - Independent
III. What do we do?
i. Immediate: Donate to help people fighting and affected by the bushfires. Also to support wildlife rescue.
ii. Immediate: Consider committing to making your next (new) car purchase an EV. Use an online map to check what range you actually need in your regular life.
iii. Book recommendation: The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann
iv. More ambitious: identify a young person in your life and ask them how they feel about climate disruption, being emotionally available to really hear their answer.
Credits
11. Brooke Prentis: political vs partisan, bushfire smoke, burning rainforests, humpback recovery, cashless welfare cards, civil liberties narrowing, persecution of Uyghurs
9. Mick Pope: Anthropocene, 11,000 scientists, bad climate ancestors, profiting from destruction, and secondary boycotts
8. David Clough: humans and other animals, live export, Australia's extinction crisis, climate emergency, role of faith communities
7. Jason John: identity protective cognition, existential risks, election analysis, Adani update, islander rights
6. Ben Thurley: the Overton window, Coalition budget priorities, climate policies compared, how change happens
5. Miriam Pepper: the Murray-Darling river basin - a case study in ecology, history and politics
4. Josh Dowton: epistemic priority on the oppressed, 26th January, developments in the coal industry, school strike for climate, insect decline
3. Lisa Sharon Harper: Core spiritual lies, colonialism and race, Freedom Road, Pacific climate neighbourliness, nonviolent civil disobedience
2. Brooke Prentis: just world belief, Aboriginal deaths in custody, climate neighbourliness, carbon and nutrition, adulterated honey
1. Scott Sanders: common grace, air pollution, biodiversity loss and loneliness
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