Talk about Saving the World
This is our weekly panel series; a new episode is posted every Monday on YouTube and on Facebook.
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134 Von Hippel vs the Nukes
Physicist Frank von Hippel worked with Soviet scientists to halt the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. Because Gorbachev shared their attitude, they largely succeeded, as he explains to Metta. He continues studying the safety aspects of nuclear power and promotes a ban on the reprocessing of nuclear waste to recover plutonium. Apart from its danger to human health, plutonium is a risk because of its potential effects on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. -
133 Jai Jagat & Armenia
Jill Carr-Harris led a group of Gandhian marchers from India, planning to reach Geneva a year later — but the pandemic struck. She tells Metta about their adventures in India, Pakistan, Nepal, UAE, and (especially) Armenia, where they learned about the tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh. Now that war has broken out again there, she wants Canadians to press for the CSCE to complete its peacemaking task. -
132 The World in Sept 2020
This monthly Global Town Hall meeting considered innovations that may help reduce global warming; COVID in Nepal; the wearing of poppies in remembrance of wars; and the depletion of frogs because mosquitoes are being vanquished. Activists are invited to these events on the last Sunday of every month. See our website, https://tosavetheworld.ca . -
131 Reaching Net Zero
William Fletcher and Craig Smith are co-authors of an optimistic book arguing that it's feasible to reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent a global catastrophe, using known, available technologies. -
130 Climate as War
Seth Klein, formerly director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, discusses his new book. It shows how Canada mobilized for World War II with astonishing rapidity, and how the lessons learned from that experience can be applied now to handle the climate emergency. -
129 Drawdown's Progress
Jonathan Love and Satya Robinson explain to Metta that "drawdown" refers to the point where the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start lowering. With great commitment, the world can reach drawdown by the mid-2040s--and save something like $70 trillion in doing so. Project Drawdown has done the research to demonstrate the effectiveness of 80 different measures. We talk about how to popularize this knowledge. -
128 The World in August 2020
We chat about being jailed for opposing the Vietnam War; whether to build railways on permafrost; why they bombed Nagasaki instead of Kyoto; how to revive networks to solve climate problems cost-effectively; whether genomics undermines bigotry; how Covid is worsening poverty in Nepal by unemployment; and whether hope is a better motivator than a sense of duty. -
127. Israel/Palestine
Alon Ben-Meir and Robert Katz give Metta a short history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They largely agree about potential solutions but are pessimistic about the prospects for achieving them. -
Inventing an Economy
Derek Paul and Sam Lanfranco, two retired professors, discuss with Metta several possible innovations for improving western economies and taming corporations. These include public banks, universal basic income, and fair taxation. -
China in the World
Three experts on China—Charles Burton, André Laliberté, and Niva Yau — discuss China's aggressive and anti-democratic moves in Hong Kong, Central Asia, northern India, and Taiwan, and consider the policy options of Canada and other countries for responding. -
124 Transforming Conflict
Louis Kriesberg and Bruce Dayton are professors specializing in exploring constructive ways of handling conflicts--which may, they explain to Metta, involve combinations of persuasion, reward, and/or coercion. -
The Carbon Underground
Tom Newmark is chairman of The Carbon Underground, an organization devoted to sequestering carbon in soil by changing the world's prevailing farming methods to an approach called "regenerative agriculture." He explains to Metta the potential importance of such changes, which can do more than any other huge revolution to solve the climate crisis and provide sufficient food for the growing human population.