List of Talk Shows
Michael Lynk is a law professor and the current Special Rapporteur on the situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. For almost six years he has observed the plight of that community, but without visiting the Occupied Territories at all; the government of Israel refuses to allow a representative of the United Nations to enter Israel or the Occupied Territories. Only a few other countries maintain such a rigid control over a community (such as the Rohingya or the Uyghurs). Lynk maintains that the government of Israel will never relent in its oppression of the Palestinians unless the international community intervenes with strong demands, but he reports that almost all countries maintain a willful blindness about the illegality of the Israeli occupation.
D. Transcribed Video
Tom Green is the leader of Vesta, an organization that is planning to grind olivine down to sand-size, then sprinkle it in the oceans just off the beaches, where water is not deep. The waves will roll the grains of olivine around and hasten its dissolution into the water. This will change the (now excessive) carbonic acid into bicarbonate, an alkali. By doing this on a large scale, the overall acidity of the oceans will be slightly reduced, allowing the water to accept more CO2 from the atmosphere.
D. Transcribed Video
Doug Saunders is back from Europe, well recovered from Omicron, and talking about his research on neighborhoods. Brennain Lloyd is busy in North Bay, Ontario, defending us from the Canadian government team that is looking for a place to bury nuclear waste. Dr.Richard Denton is perturbed by the failings of our political system to protect human security, which would certainly not involve the purchase of fighter planes. Doug opens the biggest controversy at the end of the show before leaving: his endorsement of the use of reprocessing as a source of material for nuclear power in the future. This issue will be addressed another time!
D. Transcribed Video
Vandana Shiva holds a Ph.D in particle physics, but is best known for her work as an advocate for the protection of nature against commercial exploitation. She joined the Chipko movement to protect forests in India, gradually earning what she calls her “second Ph.D.” from those brave women, who know so much about the diversity of planets and animals in their region. She runs a farm that develops organic methods and participates in regenerative agriculture movements worldwide.
D. Transcribed Video
Oleg Kozlovsky works for Amnesty International in Moscow, researching the cases of individuals in his country whose human rights may under attack by the. state. He explains how the vague laws are used to suppress dissent among citizens. And these repressive and unjust measures have taken their toll; it is harder now to organize a street demonstration, for example, when people know that they may be jailed or fined for showing up.
D. Transcribed Video
Davidson Akhonya in Kenya described the plight of the desperate displaced persons he is trying to assist, and requests help from us in the West. His email address: elgon.peace@gmail.com. Andre Kamenshikov, who lives in Kyiv, was visiting his sister in Russia. He theorizes about Putin’s motives for massing troops on the Ukraine border. Because Elizabeth Renzetti was experiencing Omicron, we talked about Covid, but Metta consulted Dr. Ronald St. John to clarify some of the issues we did not fully understand; his remarks are available at the end of the show.
D. Transcribed Video
John Delmar is a retired lawyer and still-active painter in New York City. Here Metta asks him about his father, the actor Kenny Delmar, whom she recalls as the preposterous character Senator Claghorn. Then John shows some of the paintings he loves, and several of his own, telling a little story about each one. They are all abstract and generally colorful.
D. Transcribed Video
Hugo Benedetti is a professor of economics at the business school of the University of the Andes in Santiago, Chile. He describes himself as a “centre-rightist,” and expresses some apprehension about the economic policies of the new government, which will take office in March. Although he says that life has improved by all metrics in Chile over the past 30 years, except for the rising levels of inequality, that factor alone is responsible for the unrest that has grown there. Two years ago the country experienced serious riots, yet there was no agreement as to the nature of the grievances. The right and left parties became more polarized, so he is satisfied that this particular electoral victory was best for the country (apart from its likely economic changes) because it forestalls further riots. He discusses the nature of the constitutional changes that are expected.
D. Transcribed Video
Erika Simpson and Marianne Larson are both professors as Western University, Leon Kosals at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and Kekhashan Basu is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, and the founder of an organization for youthful activists around the world. We discuss their efforts to promote global citizenship as a value among students, and the constraints that instructors encounter when innovating with such topics, when they are not on the prescribed curriculum.
D. Transcribed Video
On the last Sunday of every month activists working against six global threats get together by Zoom to discuss their current concerns. Here we talk about a bill in Quebec that bans the wearing of religious symbols in classrooms; the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Poland and Belarus; the desirability of re-designing the United Nations and abolishing the Security Council (not everyone agreed on that!), and our general satisfaction with the outcome of an election in Chile.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams, the sea ice expert, and Paul Beckwith, the Ottawa climatologist, both attended the COP26 meeting in Glasgow. They report on the continuing heating of the Arctic and the other global perturbations of climate resulting from that. “You cannot negotiate the melting point of ice,” insists Wadhams, who describes the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. Even lagging scientists admit now that the Arctic is warming 3 times as fast as the rest of the world, but Beckwith claims that this is a great underestimate; he put it at 4 to 5 times as fast. The politicians are clueless, uninformed, and continuing to subsidize fossil fuels.
D. Transcribed Video
Maria Puerta Riera is a Venezuelan-American political scientist in Florida; Thomas Ponniah teaches social science at George Brown College and Harvard. Both share Metta’s anxiety about the spread of authoritarian regimes and the obvious threats to democracies, even in such countries as the US. Is this because of some deficiency in the education levels of the current voters? Ponniah argues that the left has paid too little attention to material, financial inequality during the past several decades, focusing more on cultural differences within a given society, and that it is highly desirable now to re-prioritize.
D. Transcribed Video
John Feffer is editor of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, and now edits our own policy sector on economics for Project Save the World’s website and talk shows. Here he discusses the Russian ideas about the Green New Deal proposals with Vasily Yablokov of the Russian Greenpeace organization, Tatiana Lanshina, a Russian economist, and Arshak Makichyan, a youthful protester for Fridays for Future.
D. Transcribed Video
Drea Klein Bergman loves the UN and also thinks it needs lots of improvement. She is executive director of Progressive World Federalists, and she works with young people putting on model United Nations meetings. We talk about various proposals for making the UN more democratic, including of course by abolishing the veto power of the “permanent five” members of the Security Council. An even bolder plan would create a parliamentary assembly, but it is not clear how to make it elected by individuals, not nation states. Metta proposes using cell phones and having voters everywhere on earth choose a delegate to represent everyone according to their birthday. A virtual UN would have some real advantages over the current one, where delegates have to travel to meetings. The big disadvantage is that fact that time zones are incompatible. Drea is enthusiastic about forming a post-UN Model organization for youths who have gone through the experiment in university or high school.
D. Transcribed Video
Maria Puerta Riera is a Venezuelan-American political scientist in Florida; Thomas Ponniah teaches social science at George Brown College and Harvard. Both share Metta’s anxiety about the spread of authoritarian regimes and the obvious threats to democracies, even in such countries as the US. Is this because of some deficiency in the education levels of the current voters? Ponniah argues that the left has paid too little attention to material, financial inequality during the past several decades, focusing more on cultural differences within a given society, and that it is highly desirable now to re-prioritize.
D. Transcribed Video
John Feffer is editor of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, and now edits our own policy sector on economics for Project Save the World’s website and talk shows. Here he discusses the Russian ideas about the Green New Deal proposals with Vasily Yablokov of the Russian Greenpeace organization, Tatiana Lanshina, a Russian economist, and Arshak Makichyan, a youthful protester for Fridays for Future.
D. Transcribed Video
Drea Klein Bergman loves the UN and also thinks it needs lots of improvement. She is executive director of Progressive World Federalists, and she works with young people putting on model United Nations meetings. We talk about various proposals for making the UN more democratic, including of course by abolishing the veto power of the “permanent five” members of the Security Council. An even bolder plan would create a parliamentary assembly, but it is not clear how to make it elected by individuals, not nation states. Metta proposes using cell phones and having voters everywhere on earth choose a delegate to represent everyone according to their birthday. A virtual UN would have some real advantages over the current one, where delegates have to travel to meetings. The big disadvantage is that fact that time zones are incompatible. Drea is enthusiastic about forming a post-UN Model organization for youths who have gone through the experiment in university or high school.
D. Transcribed Video
Adele Buckley, Elizabeth Riddell Dixon, and Ernie Regehr are all experts on the Arctic and its geopolitical and military issues. Elizabeth describes the international legal disputes among the states surrounding the ocean. She is perturbed over common “fear-mongering“ about Russia’s intentions, and argues that their claims to an extended portion of the ocean are not unusual, but have been preceded by Denmark’s similar assertions, which were mainly overlooked, and even by unusual claims by Canada. The region has many reasons for cooperative relations and she expects that these claims will be adjudicated and solved peaceably. Ernie describes the numerous bases that the Russians maintain along their lengthy Arctic coast, but agrees that the purpose of these military installations is primarily to support the local municipalities. Siberia is warmer than Canada’s Arctic, and the northern population is many times larger. Adele points out that the public there (as indeed in Canada) is not well-informed about the looming threats that climate change poses. However, scientists and academics do continue to have productive intellectual exchanges.
D. Transcribed Video
Alexey Prokorenko is an interpreter in Moscow; Pauline Rosenau is a retired political scientist in Houston; Peter Jones is a professor of design at OCAD, and Peter Phillips is a retired professor of sociology, Sonoma State University, who has a book about the people who control global capital. We discuss much of the world’s leading bad news stories – the dominance of capital in determining international relations; recent revelations about US teams paid by the Pentagon to kill ISIS without regard to the rules of war; the prospect of a major war between Russia and Ukraine; and how to reorganize voting so as to create the possibility of overpowering the “bad guys.
D. Transcribed Video
Brent Constantz is CEO of Blue Planet, a company that makes limestone aggregate for concrete from demolished pieces of concrete plus carbon dioxide, which he captures from nearby plants that would otherwise emit it into the atmosphere. This means that the aggregate pebbles that he produces are very carbon-negative — absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Although the cement component of concrete is the largest contributor of CO 2 in the whole concrete-making process, with Constantz’s technology, the amount of CO2 mitigated by his aggregates is so great as to strongly offset the sources from manufacturing the cement. He is planning to establish 400 plants in China to capture and sequester carbon in concrete. There is an enormous global potential for mitigating carbon by locking it up in building materials.
D. Transcribed Video
Dr. Claire Nelson is a geochemist who studies the cycle whereby volcanoes spew CO2, which falls as acidic rain, dissolving rock and carrying minerals to the sea, where the carbon falls to the ocean floor for millions of years until the tectonic process folds it in and a volcano spews it out again. The point of this research is to find ways of speeding up the transfer of excess CO2 from the air to the seabed. She intends to inject it into basalt, where it will stay in solid form a very long time. The use of negative emissions is going to be an essential factor in solving the climate crisis, and this is one promising technology.
D. Transcribed Video
John Foster knows lots about pipelines; Mary Ellen Francoeur is a Sister of Service; and David Harries worked as a peacekeeper in many countries. We talk about how to relate to undemocratic states, and then about a webinar that Harries admired – between Jane Goodall and Jonathan Granoff. Evidently they expressed differences in their conception of human security, for Goodall wanted to include not only the human population but animals, plants, and even the non-living parts of our planet. Metta was irritable throughout the show, demanding that rhetorical differences be put aside to work on my concrete challenges to humankind’s future, but Mary Ellen continues to express hope.
D. Transcribed Video
Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford professor, has developed a model showing how it is feasible for the world to shift to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. His model takes account of the emissions from fossil fuels, of course, but also other pollutants that affect public health. When you combine these effects, it is apparent that the transition to clean energy will be a lifesaver and a great saver of energy too. Jacobson opposes the investment in nuclear power, which is far from lacking its own carbon emissions, when you count the work involved in mining, transporting, processing, and hiding and guarding the ingredients. Moreover, nuclear is far more expensive and will take far too long to create additional plants. Jacobson criticizes the US new infrastructure bill as containing many flaws, most of the “pork barrel” features. The question that Metta raises is whether public opinion and political structures can change quickly enough to meet the timeline for restraining the world’s temperature in the time frame that has been accepted in COP meetings. Jacobson says that is is possible, and that 60 countries are on track to meet their pledges, but Metta continues to regard this as overly optimistic, and to argue that other methods are needed to give us additional time; these include cloud brightening and iron salt aerosols. This debate will. continue.
D. Transcribed Video
Anastasia Karimova, formerly a journalist in Russia but now a democracy activist in the US, explains why most Russians do not worry about climate change: they simply don’t trust any authorities anymore, after being “poisoned” with misinformation so long. We talk about the peat fires in Siberia and even a mountain burning inside in Canada. Then we turn to our various opinions about climate change, agreeing only on this: that the Glasgow COP26 meeting did not fulfill its responsibilities. Zachary Jacobson believes that nuclear power is going to be necessary. Both he and Art Hunter are extremely pessimistic about human survival, given the difficulties in mobilizing adequate responses. Metta challenges them all to choose among the various methods for removing carbon from the atmosphere and otherwise buying time for the necessary energy transformation. Hunter insists that the solutions have to involve austerity of living standards and a reduction in the size of the human population. Metta concludes by expressing disappointment that the group had spent time in fatalistic predictions of disasters and little in discussion potential alternatives.
D. Transcribed Video
The monthly town hall has a long discussion of “atmospheric rivers,” then about foxes and beaver, especially urban ones. Metta gets into an argument with Robert Read about his plan for how to hold a conference among the nuclear powers and plan for their nuclear disarmament; Robert thinks that if the plan includes provisions for verification that the nuclear states would do so, but Metta thinks otherwise — that they don’t intend to give them up, period. Robert German describes Rotary’s peace fellowships and how to apply for one. He is recruiting candidates.
D. Transcribed Video
Olivier Rubin is a political scientist who studies “slow beginning” disasters, which are harder to get politicians to address than are such sudden shocks as earthquakes. He was already studying epidemics before Covid and now also studies anti-microbial resistance — a crisis that claims some 700,000 lives each year but is little recognized. We discuss other risks, such as cyber threats between countries, against which it is difficult to mobilize opposition by civil society.
D. Transcribed Video
Matthew Gillett has been involved with war crime for many years. He spent time in Afghanistan intervening to protect victims of human rights abuse, some of which were related to cases that the International Criminal Court would consider. Later he became a trial lawyer in The Hague for the ICC. Here we talk about the changing international laws about war crime and crime against humanity. He is pleased that the law has recently changed so that the deliberate instigation of famine to civilians as an act of war now applies to civil wars, whereas it had formerly applied to international conflicts
D. Transcribed Video
Monika Wohlfeld teaches at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta, and Father Bob Holmes is the peace and justice director of Basilian Fathers. He often leads tours to Israel and Palestine and works with the Christian Peacemakers Team in Hebron. Today both guests discuss the ways in which many democratic governments are doing a bad job of defending the rights of minority or indigenous populations that they should instead be protecting: the refugees seeking admission to Europe at the Polish border and in the Mediterranean, the Palestinian children trying to go to school in Hebron, and the Wetsuweten people whose land is to become the site of a pipeline, against their wishes. We discuss ways of improving the institutions that are serving us so poorly, and Bob reminds us of the people he knows who are bravely standing up against these cruelties.
D. Transcribed Video
Can clouds save the Great Barrier Reef? Daniel Harrison may find out. He is a scientist ad Southern Cross University in Australia and he leads a project that will spray nano-particles of sea water into the air, where he hopes they will rise into the stratocumulus clouds and evaporate. The remainder, a tiny bit of salt, will attract other water vapor to form tiny droplets that, because they are so small, will be whiter than the other droplets in the cloud. This extra little bit of brightness will make the cloud reflect somewhat more of the sun’s rays back into space, thereby cooling the water below – and the corals that live there. Since a large part of the huge reef has already bleached from previous heat waves, the point is to prevent the whole heat from destroying that whole ecosystem. Right now, Harrison’s team is focused on developing a nozzle that can produce such a fine mist of seawater, for the size of the droplets is crucial.
D. Transcribed Video
Both Stephen Salter and Alan Gadian are British scientists who know, more than anyone else, how to solve the climate change crisis.They are working on cloud brightening–producing whiter clouds over the oceans to reflect sunlight back into space. This would involve spraying salt water through fine nozzles. The water would evaporate and leave tiny salt crystals. Tiny new droplets will form around these crystals – small and therefore white – and move around, shading the surface below from the heat. Done on a large scale, this can actually re-freeze the Arctic ice and cool the subtropical regions, where hot air starts moving toward the Arctic. We discuss other ways of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Both men agree that it is a big mistake to believe that climate change can be solved by reaching “net zero emissions.” The carbon already in the atmosphere would remain there; it has to be actually removed, which may be possible with this innovation. But there is little public awareness of the possibility, and even COP26 did not consider it.
D. Transcribed Video
Dave Grossman is concerned about the increasing rates of suicide and opioid deaths, which science is now linked to sleep deficiency. Apparently people are sleeping less now than in previous periods, and this can be blamed largely on the popularity of video games, which are immensely profitable to the producers. Grossman has previously published books about the strong relationship between video games and mass killings. Here he list many suggestions for wakeful people. These include the use of melatonin, eye masks. and the bedroom thermostat
D. Transcribed Video
Real Lavergne works with Fair Vote Canada to change Canada’s voting system to one of proportional representation. Reiner Braun, the Executive Director of the International Peace Bureau, shares Frank Kroncke’s deep worry about the continuing dangers of the nuclear weapons. While Metta agrees that proportional representation is a more democratic system, she worries about whether voters today are “too dumb for democracy” — i.e. whether the average voter is well-enough informed and objective enough to make rational decisions about the issues that face us all. She asks Frank, who had served time in prison during the Vietnam War for sabotaging US draft records, whether a prison run democratically would work, whether the prisoners could make rational decisions. Reiner, Frank, and Metta share stories about the militaristic political beliefs that prevailed during their youth in World War II and afterward
D. Transcribed Video
Ayad Al Qazzaz is an Iraq-born sociology professor in California; Mustafa Bahran is a Yemen-born physicist at Carleton University and formerly the Minister of Energy in Yemen. They share a common conviction that the current crisis in Lebanon is just the latest in a series of disasters resulting from the country’s sectarian constitution, which specifies that each of the main governmental offices be held by a member of a particular religious community. As a result, politicians in Lebanon are corrupt and all loyal to their religious community, as opposed to the Al Qazzaz notes that the French imposed this system on a reluctant population, but that it cannot easily be reversed. Moreover, the U.S. imposed a similar sectarian constitution on Iraq after the recent war there, and similar effects can be seen there today.
D. Transcribed Video
Corey Levine and Olivia Ward have both worked in Afghanistan during wartime. Pakistan-born Tariq Rauf, who is familiar with the country, works in Vienna, tracking the development of nuclear weapons technology in various countries. Tariq cites figures from a report on “The Cost of War,” which leads to a discussion of drone killings. Are they less ethical than other possible means of fighting? What are the psychological effects on the remote drone-launcher? This brings us to questioning the rationale for the west’s fight against the Taliban and whether alternative means may be effective in curbing their war against women.
D. Transcribed Video
Edward Struzik mainly studies the Arctic, but his new book, Swamplands, covers bogs, marshes, swamps, and fens — squishy places that can be found all over the planet, though not much in temperate or tropical areas. These wetlands are stinky (from sulfur dioxide) and buggy, so people have often drained them in order to get farmland and more agreeable places to live. However, they produce peat – a substance that sequesters vastly more carbon than even tropical rainforests. Today peat is still being used as a fuel, but probably the cheapest and most effective way of keeping carbon in the soil is to preserve all existing peatlands.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 367. Claudia Wagner-Riddle is an agrometeorologist; she studies how agriculture affects climate change — both the production of plants and animals. The quality of soil is a key factor. Various essential bacteria in the soil produce nitrous oxide and other compounds of nitrogen, which plants require, but which affect air and water negatively in several respects. By recycling animal manure, farmers can adequately replenish the nutrients in their soil, but about half of the people on the planet today are alive because they eat food produced by synthetic fertilizers, which have been seriously mis-used and are causing climate problems as well as other environmental stresses. And the ruminant animals (notably cattle and dairy cows) also emit methane in the process of digesting grass.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 366 Tony McQuail is an Ontario organic farmer; Jill Carr-Harris is an activist working for landless peasants in India. Both of them are critical of large, high-tech, monoculture agriculture. Organic farmers do not use chemical fertilizers, but since 50% of the food on the earth today is there because of fertilizer, we have to ask whether it is possible to feed the current and future human populations without using chemicals. This is an urgent question because fertilizers also harm the environment in multiple ways. Jill says that all over India she sees small and medium-sized farms that are adopting “natural” agricultural technologies, and there is a two-year-long strike by farmers in the northern areas of India against the Modi government’s new laws, which favor the consolidation of land holdings into large farms.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 365 Robert Read, Rose Dyson, Dale Dewar, Ayah, Richard Denton, and Alan Haber are among the many people who attended our monthly global town hall. We discussed Anti-vax ideas, plastic waste (including a new method of disposal by bacteria), the change of Ryerson University’s name, and the new attempt to reduce fossil fuel investments.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 367. Claudia Wagner-Riddle is an agrometeorologist; she studies how agriculture affects climate change — both the production of plants and animals. The quality of soil is a key factor. Various essential bacteria in the soil produce nitrous oxide and other compounds of nitrogen, which plants require, but which affect air and water negatively in several respects. By recycling animal manure, farmers can adequately replenish the nutrients in their soil, but about half of the people on the planet today are alive because they eat food produced by synthetic fertilizers, which have been seriously mis-used and are causing climate problems as well as other environmental stresses. And the ruminant animals (notably cattle and dairy cows) also emit methane in the process of digesting grass.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 366 Tony McQuail is an Ontario organic farmer; Jill Carr-Harris is an activist working for landless peasants in India. Both of them are critical of large, high-tech, monoculture agriculture. Organic farmers do not use chemical fertilizers, but since 50% of the food on the earth today is there because of fertilizer, we have to ask whether it is possible to feed the current and future human populations without using chemicals. This is an urgent question because fertilizers also harm the environment in multiple ways. Jill says that all over India she sees small and medium-sized farms that are adopting “natural” agricultural technologies, and there is a two-year-long strike by farmers in the northern areas of India against the Modi government’s new laws, which favor the consolidation of land holdings into large farms.
D. Transcribed Video
Episode 365 Robert Read, Rose Dyson, Dale Dewar, Ayah, Richard Denton, and Alan Haber are among the many people who attended our monthly global town hall. We discussed Anti-vax ideas, plastic waste (including a new method of disposal by bacteria), the change of Ryerson University’s name, and the new attempt to reduce fossil fuel investments.
D. Transcribed Video
Barbara Wien is a professor of peace studies at American University. She has long been engaged in creating similar programs at other universities, and explains here the content of the programs and the importance of assigning the students to work in NGOs as part of their training. During the past twenty years, many peace curricula have expanded to include environmental issues. Also, the US Institute of Peace, where Barbara once taught, has adopted more progressive values, whereas it was formerly constrained by a leadership that did not like to move ahead of the State Department. Barbara and Metta expressed different assumptions about the proposal by the International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict to replace the Responsibility to Protect doctrine with a different approach, Right to Assist, which would legitimize the actions of outside organizations to assist protesters and dissident in opposing the abuses of their own government.
D. Transcribed Video
Bruce Schneier teaches cyber security policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. He points out that in cyber crime, offence is far easier than defence. Too often, victims of phishing are blamed, whereas legal reforms are needed that will hold manufacturers responsible for defects in their software. The public’s vulnerability is increasing, especially with the rise of the Internet of Things, for many of the computer-controlled gadgets we own cannot even be repaired. Before we can use a new product, we generally have to click (without reading) a long statement that exempts the producer for any liability for its failings. Countries differ in their regulations, and it is unlikely that Russia, China, or even the US will agree to any international norms that restrict the advantages they may possess seek to acquire. It is legal for Facebook or any other privately-owned platform to refuse to advertise, even if this seriously limits freedom of speech about political and social issues. No one can predict how serious the threats may be for the future development of Artificial Intelligence, but Schneier takes the matter seriously and respects those who are working to limit the potential damage.
D. Transcribed Video
Tim Brodhead, Roy Culpeper, Richard Harmston, and Peter Meincke are all long-time members of a progressive Ottawa organization, The Group of 78. Now celebrating the group’s 40th anniversary, they reminisce about its founding: a period during Pierre Trudeau’s second term when domestic concerns loomed so large that other matters were hardly considered. King Gordon and the parliamentarian Andrew Brewin wrote an open letter to the prime minister complaining that the threat of nuclear war needed a more vigorous action by Canada. They collected endorsements from a diversity of prominent Canadians, received a good response from Trudeau, and formed an organization that continues today. There is an annual two-day meeting, plus frequent luncheons with guest lecturers, mainly on international issues. However, there is less response from the present government than preceding ones. Though the Group of 78 partners with other like-minded organizations in addressing certain important progressive issues, there are also controversies within the group. Among these are the desirability of nuclear power, Middle Eastern politics, and whether economic growth is compatible with sustainability. Yet the Group has successfully held amiable conferences dealing with these Issues. The next annual conference in 2022 will deal with the question of economic growth.
D. Transcribed Video
Often the question arises whether China will adhere forever to its expressed policy of never being first to use nuclear weapons. Ellen Judd sees no reason why it would change, and Aaron Tovish agrees. Both of them also agree that China’s unlikely to go to war against Taiwan so long as there is no real change in Taiwan’s claims. There have long been extensive trade relations between the two regimes. Tovish is part of a group that has written an open letter to the heads of several nuclear weapons states calling for a common declaration of No First Use policy. They want to gather thousands of endorsements over the next month. That letter will be accessible on the comments column of this show. Geimer suggests that the NATO states could also declare that they want to remain part of NATO for most purposes, but do not want to be included in any “extended deterrence” promise from the U.S. Geimer is creating a peace school in Victoria, B.C. and his email address is visible on the screen while he is speaking about the school.
D. Transcribed Video
Alain Denault is an expert on Simmel’s theories about money, but this conversation was mainly about the probable global catastrophes, which he attributes to capitalism. He and Metta share pessimistic views, but she sees benefits as well as dangers in globalization. She also presses him to propose a workable alternative to capitalism. He complains that her arguments were popular decades ago, after the USSR dissolved, but that they are pointless now. But he foresees a collapse of the global corporate system, which he thinks will lead people to look to their regional or local authorities for aid to simply survive. Metta claims that only organizing people at the transnational level offers as prospect of success. Alain believes that the regional solution will not work, but that it is the only thing that can realistically be expected. He predicts that the survivors may later try to form some relationship linking these local or regional polities. Panelist:
Alain Denault is an expert on Simmel’s theories about money, but this conversation was mainly about the probable global catastrophes, which he attributes to capitalism. He and Metta share pessimistic views, but she sees benefits as well as dangers in globalization. She also presses him to propose a workable alternative to capitalism. He complains that her arguments were popular decades ago, after the USSR dissolved, but that they are pointless now. But he foresees a collapse of the global corporate system, which he thinks will lead people to look to their regional or local authorities for aid to simply survive. Metta claims that only organizing people at the transnational level offers as prospect of success. Alain believes that the regional solution will not work, but that it is the only thing that can realistically be expected. He predicts that the survivors may later try to form some relationship linking these local or regional polities. Panelist:
D. Transcribed Video
Kelsey Gallagher is a researcher at Project Ploughshares. He focuses on Canada’s participation in the global arms trade. In 2014, Canada began a contractual sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. Since then, evidence has accumulated showing some of those weapons being used in war zones. This contravenes the condition attached to the sales. However, the Canadian government has declined to cancel the contract. Project Ploughshares is pushing for them to do so. In addition to these sales, Canada supplies components of weapons as well as LAVs to the US and several other countries, including Turkey. The Turks have been supplying other countries with these weapons including Azerbaijan for its war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Canadian sniper rifles have been seen in other wars though Canadian law specifies that no sale can authorized to any country where there is substantial risk of armed conflict. That would also rule out Libya, where Canadian weapons have been seen. The Arms Trade Treaty to which Canada is a signatory specifies that no country is allowed to sell weapons to any country that has been officially put under sanctions by the United Nations itself. There are reasons to emphasize the importance of converting arms manufacturers to peaceful uses both as a way of preserving jobs and as a way of protecting the investments of shareholders.
D. Transcribed Video
Johannes Lehmann studies biochar and its Brazilian precursor, Terra Preta, which the Indians created thousands of years ago by charring household waste and burying it. This creates extremely fertile black soil, which does not degrade for many centuries, but sequesters carbon in the soil indefinitely. Today’s farmers can benefit from biochar as an “amendment” to their soil. This is useful both as a way of inproving the productivity of farming (so as to feed the extra billions of humans who will be born in this century), and a way of removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it permanently. Biochar has been found to be the most cost-effective and beneficial agricultural method for combatting climate change. However, it can be mis-used, so the user must follow the instruction on the labels. Unfortunately, there is almost no market for biochar yet, since the general public has not become familiar with its benefits. One proposal is to require fertilizer manufacturers to include a certain percentage of biochar to their product, since this will enable the farmer to use less fertilizer, though biochar itself is not a fertilizer. it simply enables more of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to be retained in the soil.
The interdependent effects of wars and weapons (especially nuclear ones) and the climate emergency need to be emphasized.
Ryerson will give a short talk by Zoom about the effect on the climate of educating women and girls, thereby giving them more opportunity to achieve their desired family size (which is generally reduced thereby). He makes series dramas on television and radio to provide role models that change public norms about gender and reproduction.
Doug Saunders explained why he believes it is unnecessary and even undesirable to reduce consumption levels in order to reduce carbon emissions. Rural people are the world’s poor, and by raising their standard of living and enabling them to move to cities, it does indeed increase their carbon footprint, but it also reduces their family size, and this change means that they will be responsible for less global warming.
The panelists worry that the IPCC has under-estimated the warming effect of methane, which is more of a threat than generally recognized, especially since methane is being reduced in large quantities in the shallow areas of the Arctic Ocean. Only today the Washington Post carried an article about recent catastrophic emissions of methane in Russia, caused by a pipeline leak.
D. Transcribed Video
Claire Adamson, Barbara Birkett, William Ryerson, and Doug Saunders share their worries about climate issues that they think should (but may not) be addressed in Glasgow at COP26. We all wish that the whole meeting were held on zoom to eliminate the huge amount of carbon being emitted by the participants’ travel.
The interdependent effects of wars and weapons (especially nuclear ones) and the climate emergency need to be emphasized.
Ryerson will give a short talk by Zoom about the effect on the climate of educating women and girls, thereby giving them more opportunity to achieve their desired family size (which is generally reduced thereby). He makes series dramas on television and radio to provide role models that change public norms about gender and reproduction.
Doug Saunders explained why he believes it is unnecessary and even undesirable to reduce consumption levels in order to reduce carbon emissions. Rural people are the world’s poor, and by raising their standard of living and enabling them to move to cities, it does indeed increase their carbon footprint, but it also reduces their family size, and this change means that they will be responsible for less global warming.
The panelists worry that the IPCC has under-estimated the warming effect of methane, which is more of a threat than generally recognized, especially since methane is being reduced in large quantities in the shallow areas of the Arctic Ocean. Only today the Washington Post carried an article about recent catastrophic emissions of methane in Russia, caused by a pipeline leak.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith and Williamj Fletcher, authors of a book about global warming, discuss the 48-page summary of the IPCC’s new report on the ongoing changes.
D. Transcribed Video
Bob Douglas, a retired Australian professor of epidemiology, is a founder of the Council for the Human Future. Their goals are the same as Project Save the World.
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Beckwith, Peter Ward, Peter Wadhams, and Paul Werbos are climatologists who worry about the effects of changing ocean currents for humanity’s future.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Eddy Perez, who worked in the IPCC in Geneva and now in Climate Action Network, discusses the need for more accountability of states and oil companies.
D. Transcribed Video
Jack Matlock was US Ambassador to the USSR during its final years. He argues that progress in negotiating requires confining contentious issues to private talks
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Kehkashan Basu, Andrew Kim, and Rebecca Wolf Gage are young activists working to save the world from catastrophe. They discuss their generation’s views.
D. Transcribed Video
Tony Jenkins, Doug Saunders, Olivia Ward, and Adam Wynne are all concerned to find possible alternatives to the probable future of continuing war in Afghanistan.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Mitloehner studies the emissions of methane from cows. There are now food additives that can reduce it up to 50%. Efficiency of meat production is crucial.
D. Transcribed Video
Metta Spencer and Adam Wynne bring viewers up to date about changes going on in Project Save the World and invite you to a birthday party!
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Jill Carr-Harris, Ellen Judd, and David Webster all are scholars familiar with Asian societies. Jill and David, more than Ellen, see China as a risk to peace.
D. Transcribed Video
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, but this chat is about the various tribal and political groups involved in Pakistan’s dealings with Afghanistan.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Timothy Donais describes the difficulty of the UN’s protecting of civilians in enclaves in African conflict zones, such as Mali, Congo, and South Sudan.
D. Transcribed Video
Maria Puerta, James Ranney, Doug Saunders, and Robert Schaeffer discuss the conflicts in Latin America, with China, and whether arbitration can work.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Town Hall meeting talks about extreme weather, Covid, food waste, eating insects, Zuma’s arrest, No First Use campaign, and when Canada will hold next election.
D. Transcribed Video
Nigel Young and Lawrence Wittner disagree as to whether nationalism is diminishing around the world and, if so, why.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams and Paul Beckwith say that thermohaline currents distribute heat around the world, starting from “chimneys” cold water down the oceans.
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
M.V. Ramana and Susan O’Donnell work on nuclear risks. Both seriously dispute statements Doug Saunders made in a column about Fukushima.
D. Transcribed Video
William Ryerson and Richard Stratton both produce TV serial dramas. Ryerson’s shows are designed to influence the public opinion and behaviour of cultures.
D. Transcribed Video
Edward Manning’s job is to help localities negotiate with travel agencies to develop into destinations where tourists will protect the culture and environs. You can watch this (or listen to it as an audio podcast)
D. Transcribed Video
D. Transcribed Video
Gregory Jaczko headed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Obama. He found that lobbyists’ political pressures make it impossible to keep nukes safe.
D. Transcribed Video
The Afghanistan war has changed quickly since the US and Nato troops wirhdrew. Corey Levine, Tariq Rauf, Erika Simpson and Richard Denton expect a Taliban win.
D. Transcribed Video
Richa Kumar explains the dilemmas facing farmers and the government alike today; constraints in the market for their products make needed changes difficult.
D. Transcribed Video
David Burman,indigenous people, and Drawdown work on climate change and cultural awareness. He leads us through meditative reflections.
D. Transcribed Video
Michel Duguay studies the human genome, and is impressed with the rarity of errors or mutations, yet he worries that we may destroy it with nuclear weapons.
D. Transcribed Video
Roald Sagdeev led scientists in Gorbachev’s USSR; Frank von Hippel was his counterpart in the US. They worked together to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
Jerome Glenn co-founded and runs The Millennum Project and Paul Werbos is a member, addressing existential threats, wanting UN agency to coordinate work.
D. Transcribed Video
Jim Laurie and Phil Bogdonoff work to restore the ecosystems. Mixing all kinds of biological organisms in a single pool will enable that pool to purify itself.
D. Transcribed Video
Jackie Milne is a farmer living among First Nations people in the NW Territories of Canada and teaching regenerative agriculture. She blends her new technological insights with ancient practices and beliefs.
D. Transcribed Video
Derek Paul worries about the Permian extinction; Mary-Wynn Ashford enthuses about a book she’s read, and Trudy Govier worries about finding successors.
D. Transcribed Video
“Laura Kahn is an epidemiologist who specializes in zoonotic diseases. She says that some types of viral research should not – but are – being done.”
D. Transcribed Video
Andre Sheldon, Robert Read, Erika Simpson, and Mike McNamee talk about small modular reactors, argue about whether pumped water storage is too expensive.
D. Transcribed Video
Alexander Likhotal, formerly Gorbachev’s press secretary, and now a professor in Geneva, remains in close touch with democratic and peace-oriented political figures in Moscow. He calls the current tensions an “imaginary war” and foresees no new nuclear arms reductions.
D. Transcribed Video
Robert Pollin has co-authored a book with Noam Chomsky about the economics of the climate crisis. He believes that economic growth can continue while green.
D. Transcribed Video
Wiliam Fletcher’s book was published a year ago, so Metta asks him what he would change if he were writing it now. He sounds more optimistic than she does.
D. Transcribed Video
Richard Denton, Gordon Edwards, Doug Saunders, and Adam Wynne worry about other people don’t worry enough about nuclear weapons. Is it about emotions?
D. Transcribed Video
Michael Beer has updated Gene Sharp’s 1973 book, now listing 350 tactics for nonviolent action. There are ethics issues in choosing methods of resisting.
D. Transcribed Video
Stephen Salter would slow the melting of sea ice, by increasing the bright clouds that reflect light away. Paaul Beckwith and Peter Wadhams discuss the evidence.
D. Transcribed Video
Rene Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens. His loyalty is to the whole of humankind, as opposed to particular subgroups such as nationalities.
D. Transcribed Video
“Paul Martin and Michael Barnard work on major energy projects. They are convinced that the cost effects mean that few SMRs will ever be built.
“
D. Transcribed Video
Robin Collins tells us that the G7 discussed corporate taxation. Bruna Nota, Joy Kogawa, and Adam Wynne recount the history of Indigenous education in Canada.
D. Transcribed Video
Lawrence Rosenthal runs the Center for Right Wing Studies in Berkeley. He says right-wing populism is a resentment of cultural and status differentials.
D. Transcribed Video
“Lois Wilson has been the Moderator of the United Church of Canada and a Canadian senator. Now she is promoting guaranteed annual income.”
D. Transcribed Video
Bill Robinson has been watching CSE, Canada’s agency for gathering intelligence about foreign spooks. Anew review agency will monitor its activities.
D. Transcribed Video
“Marianne Larsen has been a lifelong activist. She has retired as a professor of education, but continues to run a charitable foundation. She likes trees, animals.”
D. Transcribed Video
Robert Hackett, Doug Saunders, and Paul Werbos worry about the difficulty of publicizing warnings about climate change. Hackett says to post solutions too.
D. Transcribed Video
Saleh Abu Izza is a Palestinian who was wrongly jailed at age 17 and held for years in terrible conditions, without being charged, as were thousands of other children.
D. Transcribed Video
Phyllis Bennis, Kai Brand-Jacobsen, and John Feffer all travel a lot and know people in many countries. More often now we hold discussions by Zoom, and here we discuss the future prospects for this kind of socializing.
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Rogers began as a biologist, became a development expert, and a professor of peace at Bradford University. He is revising a book called Losing Control.
D. Transcribed Video
When a guest speaker forgot to show up, Metta spent that time telling everyone about Project Save the World, which addresses six global threats to humanity.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams, Oswald Petersen, Charles Tauber, and Rose Dyson discuss removing methane from the air, migrants’ needs; and small modular reactors.
D. Transcribed Video
John Foster discusses the ebate about where new pipelines should be placed and opened. They largely determine the alliances that countries must make.
D. Transcribed Video
Tony Jenkins teaches at Georgetown University and runs two international peace education organizations. He calls the current generation of students brilliant.
D. Transcribed Video
Michael Barnard says we don’t need to worry about developing energy storage systems to stop global warming; we already know how to use pumped water.
D. Transcribed Video
Jefferson Tester is going to pull heat from the earth to provide all of Cornell University’s needs – a project to make that campus self-sufficient in energy.
D. Transcribed Video
Marius Grinius has been Canada’s ambassador to the Koreas, Vietnam, the United Nations, and the Conference on Disarmament. Diplomatic correctness has a place.
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Werbos’s dissertation 50 years ago is the basis for the “New AI.” He wavers between believing in Einstein and in David Deutsch’s formulas for the universe.
D. Transcribed Video
Pere Brunet and Quique Sanchez work to reduce military spending globally. Five to 6 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are military in origin.
D. Transcribed Video
De Richter and Petersen plan. to spray iron salt aerosols into the air, where it will oxidize excess methane. Paul Beckwith calls this process “methane scrubbing.”
D. Transcribed Video
Michael Barnard and Paul Martin discuss how hydrogen should not be used in a sustainable world. But there is “green hydrogen” too – made from renewables.
D. Transcribed Video
Karen Hamilton describes smart innovations on vaccine delivery. Phil Bogdonoff expect a grave lack of energy. Nadine Bloch urges us all to work harder!
D. Transcribed Video
Frank Cunningham sees the global upsurge in populism as a serious crisis, for it brings incompetent leaders to power just when urgent problems face us.
D. Transcribed Video
Mustafa Bahran, Abdulla Nasher, and Qais Ghanem discuss the origins and current dynamics of the war in Yemen. Bahran links it to the US conflict with Iran.
D. Transcribed Video
Real Lavergne, Antony Hodgson and Gisela Ruckert work for Fair Vote Canada, which aims to shift Canada from “first-past-the post” to Proportional Rep.
D. Transcribed Video
The goal of sustainable architecture is not energy efficiency but the reduction of carbon emissions. say Michael Barnard. Paul Dowsett. They like heat pumps.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams, Paul Beckwith, Franklyn Griffiths, and . Doug Saunders discuss possible technical interventions that might save us from Arctic methane releases.
D. Transcribed Video
Lloyd Helferty promotes biochar as a means of drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and burying it permanently in the soil, but there are downsides too.
D. Transcribed Video
Julia Malysheva, Anasstasia Karimova, and Michael Roskin mmigrated from their homeland Russia to the US because of the difficult working conditions there.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams, Paul Beckwith, Franklyn Griffiths, and . Doug Saunders discuss possible technical interventions that might save us from Arctic methane releases.
D. Transcribed Video
Bill Fletcher admires Germany for its remarkable progress with renewable, sus-tainable energy, despite having a poor natural endowment for such approaches.
D. Transcribed Video
Jill Carr-Harris, Kolavennu Chand, Nancy Netting, and Doug Saunders blame the current wave Covid in India on inadequate preparation by the Modi government.
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Wadhams, Paul Beckwith, Franklyn Griffiths, and . Doug Saunders discuss possible technical interventions that might save us from Arctic methane releases.
D. Transcribed Video
Ward Wilson talks to the public about “realistic” (as opposed to ethical, humanitarian) concerns about the practical utility of nukes. Is this approach best?
D. Transcribed Video
Ward Wilson, Martha Goodings, and Metta discuss whether Hiroshima bombing was reason why Japan surrendered. The USSR joined the war just at that time.
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith and Metta worry about the rapid melting of the Arctic ice and the permafrost, which will release large amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
D. Transcribed Video
Can Canadian farmers find foreign workers to the crop during lockdown? Marianne Larsen, Maria Puerta, Doug Saunders, and Aaron Tovish discuss the problems.
D. Transcribed Video
Dina Zisserman Brodsky, a former Soviet dissident, now professor of political science in Israel, is studying the decreasing number of democratic nations.
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Maillet and Akbar Manoussi discuss the political conflicts among Middle Eastern countries, plus China and the US, yielding famine and disease in Yemen.
D. Transcribed Video
Leon Kosals is a sociology professor in both Russia and Canada, so he can compare the views of students. Russian universities are becoming international.
D. Transcribed Video
Glen Anderson and Joanne Dufour teach a free course on nuclear weapons near Olympia Washington. They tell Metta about their activism.
D. Transcribed Video
Charles Burton, Sen. Marilou McPhedran, James Ranney, Peter Russell, and Doug Saunders discuss measures to compel states to adopt humane norms of conduct.
D. Transcribed Video
Ambassador Enkhsaikhan is a Mongolian who was highly instrumental in the negotiations for his country to become the world’s first NWFZ STATE.
D. Transcribed Video
Zach Ruiter and Adam Wynne are concerned about the extent of radioactive contamination around plants that process uranium in Toronto and Peterborough.
D. Transcribed Video
Abraham Weizfeld’s mother taught him to be a “Bundist” Jewish Canadian, and he retains that anti-Zionist orientation. He usually spends half each year in Palestine.
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher lists interventions to stop global warming. They argue about their relative importance (notably afforestation) and whether these are a single system.
D. Transcribed Video
Zach Ruiter and Adam Wynne are concerned about the extent of radioactive contamination around plants that process uranium in Toronto and Peterborough.
D. Transcribed Video
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan recounts to Metta the way Canada led the creation of the treaty banning landmines and how the process of removing mines works.
D. Transcribed Video
Kate Brown says the reports of Chernobyl underestimated the morbidity and mortality rates but Ukraine estimated that about 100,000 people died there alone.
D. Transcribed Video
Christopher Hrynkow is a professor of peace studies at St. Thomas More College, a Catholic college in the University of Saskatchewan. He and Metta discuss the impact of official Catholic doctrines (especially papal encyclicals) on public opinion. Will Pope Francis’s rejection of the theory of nuclear deterrence have much effect on political decisions around the world? We agree that many academic scholars should be more involved with community issues. You can watch this series (or listen to them as audio podcasts) on our website, then respond on the comments section.
D. Transcribed Video
At this global town hall we talk first about carbon taxation, which the Supreme Court of Canada has just approved, then about regenerative agriculture, including a discussion of the health effects of eating meat and raising animals as food, and finally about the plight of refugees trying to enter Europe, but often held for years in camps with inadequate living conditions and frequent violence. There was a discussion about how to train people to provide therapy by zoom to them and other survivors of violent conflict. You can watch this series on our website, then add your remarks on the comments section.
D. Transcribed Video
The British government has announced higher limits on nuclear weapons, with plans for weapons on the Trident submarines. This news will weaken the already vulnerable next review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
D. Transcribed Video
We need a carbon “fee”- for cleaning up the carbon messes. Craig Smith says it is a better approach than “cap and trade.” The challenge is to educate the public.
D. Transcribed Video
How do developing countries acquire the funds for the SDGs? Roy Culpeper and Stephany Griffith-Jones say” development banks, Tobin taxes, blended financing.
D. Transcribed Video
Professor M. V. Ramana studies the public policies controlling nuclear technology — both energy and weapons, which he sees as inextricably connected.
D. Transcribed Video
The pandemic has thrown millions into bad moods. Dr. Jonathan Down discusses how hormones affect emotions and health, and the epigenetic effects.
D. Transcribed Video
Robert Helvey was a US army colonel who adopted strategic nonviolent resistance after meeting Gene Sharp and taught that approach to ethnic warriors in Burma.
D. Transcribed Video
Derek Paul discusses such possible economic reforms as public banks, the Tobin tax, benefit corporations, universal basic income, taxing wealth.
D. Transcribed Video
Joy Kogawa and Metta disagree about the conditions under which to forgive others for transgressions. As a Christian, Joy believes that in forgiving always.
D. Transcribed Video
Adam Horowitz made a film about US nuclear weapons tests and the Marshallese. The US had deliberately, experimentally exposed them to heavy radiation.
D. Transcribed Video
Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, answers questions about human rights abuses with Charles Burton, Paul Copeland, and Calixto Avila.
D. Transcribed Video
Sister Mary-Ellen Francoeur, Karen Hamilton, and David Millar agree that their work involve a willingness to recognize others as “created in the image of God.”
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher says is technologically feasible to power the world with renewable sources of energy in time to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas in time.
D. Transcribed Video
Jon Cohen, discusses with Dr. Ronald St. John the inequitable access to Covid vaccine and the prospect that there will be a surplus of it for the US soon to share.
D. Transcribed Video
Sister Mary-Ellen Francoeur, Karen Hamilton, and David Millar agree that their work involve a willingness to recognize others as “created in the image of God.”
D. Transcribed Video
Arzu Abdulleyeva and Ahmad Alili in Baku speak with Shorena Lortkipanidze and Mikheil Mirziashvili in Tbilisi about Caucasus vis a vis Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
D. Transcribed Video
Zachary Jacobson knows that reducing emissions is not enough; existing carbon must be removed from the atmosphere. He would add iron to areas of the oceans.
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith says the effects of global warming become visible long after the cause has been finalized. This is the “”sticky accelerator”” problem.
D. Transcribed Video
Ayad Al Qazzaz discusses the stereotypes about ethnic groups from the “Middle East.” Those cultures changing in response to Muslims in the West.
D. Transcribed Video
David Webster says that after the Spanish Flu the League of Nations created a health organization, which was succeeded by the WHO after World War II.
D. Transcribed Video
Jessica West is at Project Ploughshares, following the developing technology and international norms that will make space war possible.
D. Transcribed Video
Bill Fletcher reports that almost all the serious deforestation going on today is in tropical rainforests. Palm oil plantations and cattle ranches are replacing forests.
D. Transcribed Video
Lawrence Wittner recalls the history of the peace movement of the eighties and speculates about the prospects for nuclear disarmament in the future.
D. Transcribed Video
Rose Dyson and Charlene Doak-Gebauer work to reduce the societal harm from exposure to negative entertainment, especially violent videogames.
D. Transcribed Video
Michael Simpson is director of a network of NGOs that are all working for the Sustainable Development Goals. He has a list of 12,600 such groups in Canada.
D. Transcribed Video
Sergey Rogov discusses plans to stop Cold War II with Alyn Ware, Erika Simpson, Alvin Saperstein, and Frederic Pearson. They endorse those recommendations.
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith observed a remote Brazilian village over a period of 50 years. He says energy consumption per person X size of population = amount of global warming.
D. Transcribed Video
Binalakshmi Nepram founded an organization to aid women and children survivors of violence in Manipur, India. Walter Dorn, discusses peacekeeping monitoring.
D. Transcribed Video
James T. Ranney used to be a World Federalist, but he now believes more in mediation and compulsory arbitration.
D. Transcribed Video
Martin Klein, a retired professor of African history, spent years traveling around West Africa and tells stories about villagers, rulers, and former slaves.
D. Transcribed Video
Binalakshmi Nepram founded an organization to aid women and children survivors of violence in Manipur, India. Walter Dorn, discusses peacekeeping monitoring.
D. Transcribed Video
Patrick Boyer says “”Spanish Flu”” arose in China. Brought to Europe by workers. it spread among soldiers and eventually killed as many people as World War I.
D. Transcribed Video
When Kehkashan Basu was seven, she saw a photo of a dead bird full of plastic. That was the start. She has organized youths in a group numbering 140,000.
D. Transcribed Video
Janice Martell’s father was a miner whose employer required him and other miners to inhale aluminum dust before entering the mine. This caused Parkinsonism.
D. Transcribed Video
Neecha Dupuis and her young son Ales Dupuis marched 28 days across northern Ontario with indigenous friends discussing radioactive contamination.
D. Transcribed Video
Irakli Kakabadze, Julie Christensen and Shorena Lortkipanidze are in Georgia, where there is a risk of being dominated again by Russia and Turkey.
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher expect that the fossil fuel industries in the Permian Basin will be overtaken by renewable energy and the basin will provide much of US’s energy.
D. Transcribed Video
Philip Chipman and Mark Tabbert show the interactive model produced at MIT. It shows the likely effect of the important factors determining global temperature.
D. Transcribed Video
Gregory Kulacki, a nuclear weapons expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, talks from Tokyo about the local opposition to disarmament.
D. Transcribed Video
Father Bob Holmes visits Israel/Palestine frequently and almost every year takes a several Canadians. They support local Jewish, Bedouin, and Muslim peacemakers.
D. Transcribed Video
Franklyn Griffiths, Jo Hayward-Haines, Ellen Thomas, and Hannah Hadikin talk of melting clathrates and permafrost in the Arctic; the beauty of Monarch butterflies.
D. Transcribed Video
Ellen Judd, an anthropologist who studies rural life in China, says many rural parents leave their children with the grandparents and move to the cities.
D. Transcribed Video
Bill Skidmore taught courses on torture and human rights at Carleton University. Few torturers are sadists; mostly they are working on behalf of the state.
D. Transcribed Video
Jonathan Granoff, recounts the early history of the anti-nuclear weapons movement (especially the creation of the Pugwash Conferences).
D. Transcribed Video
Engineer/executive Craig Smith explains why great improvements in electric grids will be necessary to accommodate the sustainable sources of energy.
D. Transcribed Video
“Jill Carr-Harris has worked with India farmers demanding land reform. Doug Saunders is a Canadian journalist who studied village and urban slum life in India.
“
D. Transcribed Video
Angel Alvarez is optimistic about the prospects for enabling citizens to know about the inner workings of their governments and keep them accountable.
D. Transcribed Video
“Lorraine Rekmans is a journalist and member of an indigenous band in Ontario. She tells how uranium tailings are dumped into lakes, contaminating the water.
“
D. Transcribed Video
Here are the Project Save the World team members: Ken Simons, Adam Wynne, Dr. Adele Buckley, and Subir Guin, Peace Magazine’s editorial committee.
D. Transcribed Video
“Richard Denton,M.D. is a leader of Rotarians, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and several other peace organizations.
“
D. Transcribed Video
Mark Tabbert and Philip Chipman are active in Citizens Climate Lobby, an NGO working for carbon taxation. Their computer app allows comparisons of methods.
D. Transcribed Video
Robin Collins admire a book called “Cynical Theories” that criticizes progressive thinkers for quitting universalist, “color blind” commitments for tribalism.
D. Transcribed Video
Ernie Regehr s reports that the Russian military presence is expanding greatly in the Arctic. It is already more active there than other states, which still cooperate.
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher discusses China’s energy problems — especially the pollution caused by its reliance on coal. He predicts it will adopt sustainable technology.
D. Transcribed Video
Parag Kadam is comparing the effectiveness of various methods of upholding standards of forest management. He worked on certifying particular companies.
D. Transcribed Video
“Earl Turcotte, chair of CNANW, recounts how the nuclear weapons ban treaty was created. It will enter into effect as international law on January 22.”
D. Transcribed Video
Subha Xavier discusses migrants’ psychological challenges of meeting unfamiliar expectations. She is “curing” ballots that were rejected in Georgia’s run-off.
D. Transcribed Video
Marc Eliot Steinm chats hours after the insurrection at the US Capitol, worrying about the democratic governance of the world, which requires rejecting militarism.
D. Transcribed Video
Maria Puerta Rivera is Venezuelan in Florida studying the voting patterns of immigrants, especially the support of Trump by Cubans and Venezuelans
D. Transcribed Video
“Dr Art Hunter ihas turned his home into a laboratory to experiment with efficient energy use. He shows how to live off the electric grid for 300 days.”
D. Transcribed Video
Ann Swidler, Doug Saunders, and ohn Feffer discuss the rise of right wing populist movements. Ann blames “localism” (as opposed to cosmopolitanism).
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Copeland, Martin Klein, Louis Krieger and Doug Saunders discuss human rights in ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, the Caucasus, Hong Kong, Xinjiang.
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith sees a trend among corporations to become either carbon neutral or negative. He has proposals to make corporations accountable in their governance.
D. Transcribed Video
The Gandhian Jill Carr-Harris stayed in Armenia after her cross-continent peace march was interrupted there by Covid. She wants a revival of the “Minsk Group.”
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher tells Metta about five tipping points — hypothetical moments when a linear rate of change breaks and a grave irreversible climate trend begins.
D. Transcribed Video
In Part 2 of the Global Town Hall Richard Denton, Charles Tauber, Ronny Yaron, and Erika Simpson discuss the challenge of improving democracy.
D. Transcribed Video
“Alan Haber, Art Hunter, Suba Churchill and Derek Paul on the Town Hall, discussing discuss the power of billionaires and more equitable economics. .”
D. Transcribed Video
Clips from Saul Arbess on the anthropology of the Inuit and with Ann Frisch and Asha Asokan. Ann is promoting openness, and Asha on a conflict in South Sudan.
D. Transcribed Video
Irakli Kakabadze has recently co-founded a Gandhian foundation in Tbilisi. He worries about the situation in the Caucasus is alarming since the recent war there.
D. Transcribed Video
“Alan Haber, Art Hunter, Suba Churchill and Derek Paul on the Town Hall, discussing discuss the power of billionaires and more equitable economics. .”
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
“Saul Arbess trained Inuit teachers. He favors reallocating military funds to green projects, and to pay for the research necessary to promote that shift.”
D. Transcribed Video
Irakli Kakabadze has recently co-founded a Gandhian foundation in Tbilisi. He worries about the situation in the Caucasus is alarming since the recent war there.
D. Transcribed Video
Colin Archer was Secretary General of the International Peace Bureau for 27 years. Now in retirement, he and Metta discuss the organization’s history and the challenges of building coalitions that integrate activists across different issues and geographical spaces.
D. Transcribed Video
“Walter Dorn discusses the new addendum to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which specifies that Novichok is a forbidden chemical weapon.”
D. Transcribed Video
Gordon Edwards and Susan O’Donnell say huge risks will result from creating additional nuclear power reactors, including the planned”small” modular ones.
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
Craig Smith discusses the importance of the soil as a carbon sink, and methods of agriculture and forestry that will help sequester soil.
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
Clips: Ann Swidler on NGO success in Africa; Koozma Tarasoff on the Doukhobors; Rev. Joseph Cimpaya on farming in Africa; and Steven Staples on Peace Quest.
D. Transcribed Video
Adele Buckley on China in the Arctic, Kathrin Winkler on peace activism in Halifax, Subir Guin on the India-Pakistan conflict and Andrew Sheldon on his campaign
D. Transcribed Video
Eric Davies, Parag Kadam, and Theri Reichlin are young foresters. Eric thinks corporation can contribute much to urban forestry. They worry about biodiversity.
D. Transcribed Video
“Glen Anderson, Anale Heiges, Odile Hugeunot-Haber, and abraham Weizfeld talk about reviving arbitration and negotiation as means of resolving disputes.”
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
“Tom Newmark runs a farm in Costa Rica teaching regenerative farming. He co-founded The Carbon Underground to improve farming to sequester carbon in soil.”
D. Transcribed Video
Bernard Dreano discusses the history of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh, and prospects for a peaceful solution.
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
Cesar Jaramillo and Kelsey Gallagher study the global trade in conventional arms. They discuss Canada’s failure to obey its own laws about exporting weapons.
D. Transcribed Video
Alexey Prokhorenkko, Joseph Cimpaye, Richard Denton, and Andre Sheldon celebrate Honduras’s ratification of the treaty banning nuclear weapons.
D. Transcribed Video
“Angel Alvarez and Maria Puerta, expatriates from Venezuela, join Alba Purroy, who remains in Caracas as a peacebuilder, discuss the political impasse in that nation.”
D. Transcribed Video
Frank von Hippel worked with Soviet scientists to halt the nuclear arms race that largely succeeded. He now promotes a ban on the reprocessing of nuclear waste.
D. Transcribed Video
“Jill Carr-Harris led a group of Gandhian marchers from India, planning to reach Geneva a year later — but the pandemic struck while they were in Armenia.”
D. Transcribed Video
Philip Bogdonoff, Claire Adamson, Mukti Suvedi, and Kathrin Winkler consider wearing of poppies in remembrance of wars; and the depletion of frogs.
D. Transcribed Video
William Fletcher and Craig Smith’s book argues that it’s feasible to reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent a global catastrophe, using available technologies.
D. Transcribed Video
Seth Klein discusses his new book. It shows how rapidly Canada mobilized for World War II and how to apply the lessons of it now in the climate emergency.
D. Transcribed Video
Jonathan Love and Satya Robinson explain to Metta that “drawdown” refers to the time where the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start lowering. But when?
D. Transcribed Video
Frank Kroncke, David Newman, Paul Werbos, and Mukti Suvedi chat about being jailed for opposing the Vietnam War and whether to build railways on permafrost.
D. Transcribed Video
Alon Ben-Meir and Robert Katz recount the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They largely agree but are pessimistic about the future.
C. Podcast
D. Transcribed Video
“Derek Paul and Sam Lanfranco discuss innovations for improving economies and taming corporations, e.g. [ublic banks, universal basic income, and fair taxation.”
D. Transcribed Video
Three experts on China—Charles Burton, André Laliberté, and Niva Yau — discuss China’s anti-democratic moves in Hong Kong, Central Asia, India, and Taiwan.
D. Transcribed Video
“Louis Kriesberg and Bruce Dayton teach constructive ways of handling conflicts–including combinations of persuasion, reward, and/or coercion.”
D. Transcribed Video
Tom Newmark chairs The Carbon Underground and aims to change the world’s farming methods toward “regenerative agriculture” to retain more carbon in soil.
D. Transcribed Video
“Bob Douglas, Paul Werbos, Richard Denton and David Miller talk in the “”Global Town Hall”” about the creation of an Australian commission on the human future.”
D. Transcribed Video
Tim Wright, an Australian organizer with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) joins Erin Hunt, celebrating their creation of the treaty.
D. Transcribed Video
Ignat Kalinin works for Yabloko, a liberal democratic party in Russia. He discusses Covid and the changing of Russia’s constitution to let Putin rule 36 years.
D. Transcribed Video
“Arthur Kanegis and Melanie Bennett are filmmakers who promote peace by showing stories of people DOING peace work – mainly by become world citizens.”
D. Transcribed Video
“Instead of “”Defund the Police”” Alyn Ware, Tamara Lorincz, Saul Arbess, and Rose Dyson with rather “Defund the Military.”” Is this a realistic possibility?”
D. Transcribed Video
Nadezhda Kutepova was born and raised in a secret Russian city where plutonium was created for nuclear weapons. People were exposed to radiation.
D. Transcribed Video
David Moscrop’s book “Too Dumb for Democracy?” raises a question that liberal political thinkers normally avoid by complaining against “deficits” in democracy. But suppose the problem instead is that normal citizens cannot cognitively
D. Transcribed Video
Rosemary Meier, Paul Maillet, Kathrin Winkler, and Paul Dekar participate in this month’s Global Town Hall.
D. Transcribed Video
The subtitle of Marc Pilisuk’s book was “Who Benefits from Global Violence and War?” and Peter Phillips’s book answered it: “Giants: The Global Power Elite.”
D. Transcribed Video
Palestinian Mubarak Awad founded a center for nonviolence, which the Israeli government did not appreciate — since it created an effective nonviolent intifada.
D. Transcribed Video
“Saul Arbess, William Geimer, Magritte Gordaneer, and Tamara Lorincz aim to revitalize the Canadian peace movement. The same idea is emerging elsewhere.”
D. Transcribed Video
Peter Russell’s book is a history of sovereignty, but Fergus Watt, Robert Schaeffer, and John Feffer look forward to a global federation instead.
D. Transcribed Video
“Rebecca Fannin is an American business journalist who reports on corporations in Asia for financial magazines, plus two books about China and India.”
D. Transcribed Video
“Barbara Birkett, Saul Chernos, Evnur Taran, Jase Tanner, and Adam Wynne participated in Global Town Hall, discussing Covid-19 with Metta.”
D. Transcribed Video
Adam and Margo Koniuszewski’s Bridge Foundation has consultative status with the UN. It has educational programs in Switzerland, Canada and Poland.
D. Transcribed Video
Metta Spencer reviews the proposals most likely to reduce the threat militarism, global warming, famine, pandemics, nuclear contamination, and cyberattacks.
D. Transcribed Video
In this Town Hall, Ann Frish, Paul Maillet, and Charles Tauber discuss the pandemic and the use of therapy to handle trauma. Several callers are Rotarians.
D. Transcribed Video
Luke Griswold-Tergis and Michael Loranty frequently visit Sergey and Nikita Zimov, whose park shows that herds of large herbivores keep the soil cold.
D. Transcribed Video
Rukiye Turdush is a Canadian activist who works for her ethnic community, the Uighurs. Former diplomat Charles Burton calls their plight “cultural genocide.”
D. Transcribed Video
In this Town Hall, Ann Frish, Paul Maillet, and Charles Tauber discuss the pandemic and the use of therapy to handle trauma. Several callers are Rotarians.
D. Transcribed Video
“The Global Town Hall meeting friends discussed the impact of mining on Guinea’s rainforest, the prospect of shifting to 100% renewable energy with storage.”
D. Transcribed Video
Charles David Tauber and Sandra Maric practice psychotherapy without calling it that. In Croatia, the effects of war trauma are evident but usually denied. Therapy is stigmatized, so they call their work “psychological education,” and they train other local people (“barefoot therapists”) to do it too, using Carl Rogers’ approach in small group settings. They even do therapy online by videoconferen
D. Transcribed Video
Heather Alexander is an ecologist who spends her summers in Siberia studying the effect of forest fires on its remarkable carbon-rich permafrost.
D. Transcribed Video
Fergus Watt is executive director of World Federalists in Canada and John Daniele chairs the Toronto branch. They discuss the UN’s 75th anniversary.
D. Transcribed Video
Erin Hunt works at Mines Action Canada, which promotes compliance with the Landmines Treaty, which prohibits bombs that indiscriminately explode by touch.
D. Transcribed Video
Maung Zarni and Paul Copeland discuss the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and the massacres of 2017 that forced most to flee to Bangladesh.
D. Transcribed Video
In the first of our Global Town Halls, Andre Kamenshikov, Charlotte Sheasby-Coleman, Joanna Santa Barbara, Bruna Nota, and Adam Wynne talk policy.
D. Transcribed Video
Libbe HaLevy calls herself a “Survivor of Three Mile Island,” which sounds strange until you learn that not everyone did survive it. Now she runs a weekly podcast.
D. Transcribed Video
Tariq Rauf is an expert on nuclear weapons and the politics of disarmament. He predicts that the upcoming Non-Proliferation Review Conference will fail.
D. Transcribed Video
Alyn Ware heads the Basel Peace Office, where he runs a new campaign, Move the Nuclear Weapons Money. Profit-seeking influences nuclear weapon states.
D. Transcribed Video
Mukti Suvedi and Sharad Neupana are Nepalese peace and development workers. Mukti works in rebuilding a town that had been leveled by an earthquake.
D. Transcribed Video
Canadian climatologist Paul Beckwith attended the COP 25 meeting in Madrid that ended in a stalemate. There is too little progress by elected government officials.
D. Transcribed Video
Homa Hoodfar, a Canadian professor, was imprisoned in Iran for promoting democracy and gender equality. She talks with Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi.
D. Transcribed Video
Dr. Laura Kahn and Dr. Cheryl Stroud are leaders in the “One Health” movement, an approach that brings together medical, veterinary and environmental medicine.
D. Transcribed Video
Tony McQuail, a prominent organic farmer in Ontario considers how to feed the future human population of 11 billion by methods that include “cocktail crops.”
D. Transcribed Video
Trisha Pritikin began being exposed to radiation while in utero. She is still partly incapacitated. But she’s a lawyer whose organization fights for victims’ rights.
D. Transcribed Video
David Price models ecological systems for the Canadian government–mostly forests. He and Robin Collins where to plant a trillion new trees. Prefer the tropics.
D. Transcribed Video
“Michel Duguay, an engineering professor at Laval University, reassures Metta that there’s nothing to worry about regarding electric grids. He does worry using coal.”
D. Transcribed Video
William Ryerson heads the Population Media Centre, which develops serial melodramas with messages that instigate reproductive changes globally.
D. Transcribed Video
Noah Weisbord, a law professor at Queens University, worked on the committee that defined the crime of aggression as now an enforceable international law.
D. Transcribed Video
“Reiner Braun is co-president of the International Peace Bureau. He updates Metta on the dangerous current period, when the US is declining and China is rising.”
D. Transcribed Video
“Paul Beckwith is a Canadian climatologist. Metta wonders where to put a trillion more trees, but he is more interested in using the oceans to sequester carbon.”
D. Transcribed Video
Noah Weisbord, a law professor at Queens University, worked on the committee that defined the crime of aggression as now an enforceable international law.
D. Transcribed Video
“Audrey Hayden, Genevieve Langille, Jasmine McRorie, and Freyja Moser are high school students in London, Ontario who organized a protest march for the climate.”
D. Transcribed Video
Meir Amor, an Israeli-born professor in Montreal, and abraham Weizfeld, who lives in Montreal and Palestine, consider recent elections a significant improvement.
D. Transcribed Video
Noah Weisbord, a law professor at Queens University, worked on the committee that defined the crime of aggression as now an enforceable international law.
D. Transcribed Video
Reva Joshee is a Toronto professor and advisor to Jai Jagat, which will march to Geneva Switzerland, passing through Iran, Georgia, Croatia, among other states.
D. Transcribed Video
Macdonald Scott is an immigration consultant who helps disadvantaged migrants acquire official status as immigrants to Canada. The system is not very generous.
D. Transcribed Video
Ashis Nandy is a political psychologist in Delhi who notes the harms resulting from India’s development programs.He tells Subir Guin about Modi’s motives re Kashmir.
D. Transcribed Video
John Feffer edits Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He and Metta discuss the rise of right-wing populism and decline of transnational NGOs.
D. Transcribed Video
Ann Swidler is a U of C. Berkeley sociologist who believes that Western altruists who want to help Africa should begin by learning about the culture where they go.
D. Transcribed Video
Alison Lucas is a Major in the Canadian Army and Amber Comisso is a Lt. Commander in Canada’s Navy. Both “ladies” have served as peacekeepers abroad.
D. Transcribed Video
“Normand Beaudet runs a nonviolence resource centre in Montreal. His student assistant, Jamie Latvaitis, organizes opposition to a proposed Quebec pipeline.”
D. Transcribed Video
Retired peace studies professors Nigel Young and Metta Spencer discuss their profession, Young’s two new books, and their shared concerns about nationalism.
D. Transcribed Video
Ashrith Doman explains what a fuel cell is and who might choose to use one for what purposes—as well as the pros and cons of electric and hydrogen cars.
D. Transcribed Video
Adele Buckley and Sandra Odendahl are both engineers who are interested in promoting ways of capturing carbon from smokestacks. (Think “clean coal.”)
D. Transcribed Video
David Last is a Canadian who served in Cyprus and the former Yugoslavia who has trained peacekeepers from several countries. He says they need more training.
D. Transcribed Video
Andrew Futter, author of Hacking the Bomb, discusses with Hans-Christian Breede, whether a hacker could initiate nuclear war. The answer is: maybe.
D. Transcribed Video
Erika Simpson and Metta discuss their common concerns as academic Canadian peace researchers — the recent meeting of the Canadian Peace Research Assn.
D. Transcribed Video
Andre Kamenshikov is a Russian peace worker in Ukraine. He and Metta discuss public attitudes about such issues as climate change and the war in Donbas.
D. Transcribed Video
Nadine Bloch, Puppet-maker, peace educator, and author of Beautiful Trouble and SNAP (a guide to nonviolent resistance) tells Metta how to campaign successfully.
D. Transcribed Video
Paul Maillet and Metta agree that wars are not inevitable, with early warning and quick intervention to prevent them. So let’s codify procedures for peace operations.
D. Transcribed Video
Kai Brand-Jacobsen co-founded PATRIR, a peace institute in Romania. He tells Metta about some of their innovations, such as bringing experts out of their “silos.”
D. Transcribed Video
Lisa Schirch has a new book about the trade-offs that are involved in maintaining freedom of speech on social media and preventing hate speech and fake news.
D. Transcribed Video
Daniel Maxwell is in Nairobi on a field trip hunting for factors producing famine in Africa. He looks for underlying vulnerabilities, not just triggering events.
D. Transcribed Video
Carl Kline, Anand Mazgaonkar, and Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan discusses their work with the poor of India and then about the effects of social media in Myanmar.
D. Transcribed Video
Architect Paul Dowsett, and carpenter’s union president Michael Yorke advocate use of wood for buildings to reduce carbon emissions and keep heat inside or out.
D. Transcribed Video
Cesar Jaramillo and Branka Marijan of Project Ploughshares are working to create laws requiring a human to be in charge of any weapon that targets another human.
D. Transcribed Video
Carl Kline, Anand Mazgaonkar, and Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan discusses their work with the poor of India and then about the effects of social media in Myanmar.
D. Transcribed Video
Gaurav Gurjar works with Afforest, a company in India that creates Miyawaki forests, which grow extraordinarily fast and sequester fmore carbon than others.
D. Transcribed Video
Maciej Bartkowski studies how to make nonviolent civil resistance struggles succeed. He urges organizers to set goals that everyone can know when attained.
D. Transcribed Video
Harriet Friedmann is a specialist on the world’s food system. She and Metta talk about the importance of diversity of species for the future of humankind.
D. Transcribed Video
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman reminds Metta Spencer that in previous wars few soldiers actually fired their weapons. Armies now train them successfully with video games.
D. Transcribed Video
Walter Dorn, a professor at the Canadian Forces College, teaches military officers. He also works for the United Nations overseas, mainly on surveillance technology.
D. Transcribed Video
Theodore Postol, Douglas Roche, and Sergey Rogov are all deeply worried because the US and Russia have both declared their intention of ending the INF Treaty.
D. Transcribed Video
Drs. Laura Kahn and Ronald St. John are experts on public health emergencies such as pandemics.She studies the increasing resistance to antibiotics.
D. Transcribed Video
Jill Carr-Harris is a Canadian who, with her husband, Rajagopal, leads a Gandhian movement in India. She and Metta talk about a new Gandhian centre in Georgia.
D. Transcribed Video
Jose Etcheverry does love his car! He sits behind the wheel talking about it to Metta and pointing out the sustainability aides in the parking lot around him.
D. Transcribed Video
Alyn Ware was hosting a meeting in Basel, Switzerland for organizations that intend to get investors to take their money out of the nuclear weapons-producing firms.
D. Transcribed Video
Aaron Tovish used to manage “Mayors for Peace,” an organization to which 7,000 cities now belong. Mayors refuse to allow their cities to be targets of a nuclear war.
D. Transcribed Video
Angela Bischoff, Richard Denton, and Gordon Edwards know what certain types of rays do to the human body and don’t want it to happen to them. You won’t either.
D. Transcribed Video
Adam Koniuszewski attended the COP meeting in Katowice, Poland, only months after the climate experts warned that we have only 12 years left to end the problem.
D. Transcribed Video
Russians hate politics nowadays. Even Putin does, according to Ignat Kalinin, a journalist who himself stopped covering military affairs for Russian newspapers.
D. Transcribed Video
David Swanson and Greta Zerro are organizing people all over the world to prevent wars, and their movement, World Beyond War, is growing fast in Canada too.
D. Transcribed Video
Aden, in southern Yemen, was Dr. Qais Ghanem’s home town. So Metta asked him and his peacenik friend Paul Maillet to explain how today’s war came to that land.
D. Transcribed Video
Matthew Hoffman studies the ways in which cities and other local jurisdictios have means of reducing climate change, even in a country run by deniers like the Donald.
D. Transcribed Video
Jamila Raqib was a 20-year-old refugee from Afghanistan who believed that war was sometimes necessary. Fortunately, her new employer convinced her otherwise.
D. Transcribed Video
Kevin Zeese runs movements in the US to prevent wars and legalize marijuana. He learned much from organizing the Occupy movement and now runs a talk show.
D. Transcribed Video
Matthew Hoffman studies Adele Buckley and Ernie Regehr remind us that, thought ice is melting in the Arctic, the people and even the nations in the Arctic get along together surprisingly well.
D. Transcribed Video
Branka Marijan and John Daniele note the it is possible for certain hackers to get control of a ballistic missile and launch a nuclear war. Or control an electric grid.
D. Transcribed Video
Harry Glasbeek tells Metta about the woman who held a wedding ceremony, marrying a corporation. And why not? After all, a corporation is legally a person.
D. Transcribed Video
Jeremy Littlewood reminds Metta of the treaty prohibiting any country from making or keeping chemical weapons of war. (But that’s not quite the end of the matter.)
D. Transcribed Video
Erin Hunt and Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan attend meetings that are trying to prevent the development of “killer robots” — programmed to pick their own victims.
D. Transcribed Video
Mark Sedra’s research is similar to Project Save the World.in that he and we try to identify the truly serious global threats and how they are causally interdependent.
D. Transcribed Video
Catherine Abreu runs Climate Action Network in Canada; it’s part of a global network, and she informs Metta about the progress seen in its meetings.
D. Transcribed Video
John Foster and Millie Morton discuss the impact on international conflict of finding oil and gas and transporting it by pipelines through countries, notably Afghanistan.
D. Transcribed Video
After Karen Hamilton finished coordinating the Canadian Council of Churches, she organized a “parliament of world religions” for about 10,000 people in Toronto.
D. Transcribed Video
Robert Schaeffer and Thomas Ponniah discuss: Are people in different parts of the world coming closer together or dividing more and more into distinct countries?
D. Transcribed Video
Can you have a famine when there’s plenty of food? Yes, if people can’t get it. Alex de Waal says that now all famines are acts if war and should be deemed war crimes.
D. Transcribed Video
After Karen Hamilton finished coordinating the Canadian Council of Churches, she organized a “parliament of world religions” for about 10,000 people in Toronto.
D. Transcribed Video
Dr Mary-Wynne Ashford and a colleague go to high schools in Victoria, BC to teach students about the risks of nuclear war. They take along a choir and sing together.
D. Transcribed Video
“Dr. Ira Helfand is a double Nobel prize winner! He co-chairs International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won it in 1985, and which sponsors ICAN.”
D. Transcribed Video
David Burman, Liz Couture, and Peter Jones are climate change activists who refer to Drawdown’s calculations of the cost of the measures that can solve our problem.
D. Transcribed Video
Cesar Jaramillo is the executive director of Project Ploughshares. He recalls arriving in Canada as a refugee from his native Colombia, which was at war at the time.
D. Transcribed Video
Engineers Greg Allen, Steve Kemp, and John Straube design low-energy buildings. Why? Because buildings are the source of 30% of greeenhouse gas warming Earth.
D. Transcribed Video
David Burman, Liz Couture, and Peter Jones are climate change activists who refer to Drawdown’s calculations of the cost of the measures that can solve our problem.
D. Transcribed Video
Lester Kurtz is a sociologist in Seoul, John Feffer wrote a book about the country, and Marius Grinius was posted there. They discuss Trump’s meeting with Kim.
D. Transcribed Video
Engineers Greg Allen, Steve Kemp, and John Straube design low-energy buildings. Why? Because buildings are the source of 30% of greeenhouse gas warming Earth.
D. Transcribed Video
Chris Hyrnkow, Peter Venton, and Florence Stratton, discuss the 2018 CPRA conference they’d attended and Susana Barnes recounted peace work in E. Timor.
D. Transcribed Video
Robin Collins, John Trent, and Fergus Watt agree: The UN needs structural changes, such as a democratic parliamentary assembly. They’re working toward it.
D. Transcribed Video
Robin Collins, Timothy Donais, and Peter Langille want a UN peace service ready to go overseas at a moment’s notice to prevent war or protect people at risk of harm.
D. Transcribed Video
Jack Gemmell, Paul Meyer, and Allison Pytlak want such a treaty limiting aggression online. Some countries refuse. What do you think should be done next? Try again?
D. Transcribed Video
Angela Bischoff, Pippa Feinstein, and Brennain Lloyd worry about the nuclear power plant near you. Could it explode? Or could the radioactive waste get in your water?
D. Transcribed Video
Sweta Chakraborty, Ronald St. John, and Bryna Warshawski advise you not to feed the monkeys! If they bite, they can pass along a virus — starting a new pandemic.
D. Transcribed Video
“Do you think food ought to be free? Haroom Akram-Lodhi and Mustafa Koc have just such a goal in mind. Certainly there ought to be access to food for everyone.”
D. Transcribed Video
Joanna Santa Barbara, Jodi Koberinski and Lloyd Helferty say the soil can contain carbon if it is not plowed or eroded by wind or water. It’s a matter of how to farm.
D. Transcribed Video
Malcolm Potts, William Ryerson, and Aysan Sev’er want you to send your daughter to school. She will bear fewer children, and that will help reduce global warming.
D. Transcribed Video
“Do you think food ought to be free? Haroom Akram-Lodhi and Mustafa Koc have just such a goal in mind. Certainly there ought to be access to food for everyone.”
D. Transcribed Video
Erin Hunt, Earl Turcotte, and Douglas Roche agree with the views of (according to polls) 2/3 of the world population who want nuclear abolition. So how to get it?
D. Transcribed Video
Head Office
- Box 248, Station P Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2S7
- 1-416-789-2294
- project@peacemagazine.org