Recent Episodes

Developing nations are particularly vulnerable to impacts of global heating, including widespread destruction and death from storms, droughts, and floods. This is not just bad luck, it’s a tragic injustice. Wealthy countries have run up a vast planetary and ecological bill with a century of resource extraction and greenhouse gas emissions. The bill has come due, but whenever possible we leave the bill at the door of developing countries – countries which are least able to pay, and which have done almost nothing, relatively speaking, to contribute to the climate and ecological crisis. Central to humanity’s attempt to save itself must be a massive effort by wealthy nations to take responsibility for paying the cost of the comforts they now enjoy.

I think it’s important we Bear Witness to the fact that we are losing the luxury of depending on nature, and that this is deeply traumatic – although the trauma is happening to us relatively slowly, and we’re not yet sure exactly how it is going to manifest for each of us, or in our wider societies.

I discuss why it’s important for us to know the history of our understanding that burning fossil fuels and the way our governments have responded – or failed to respond to – that understanding. Then I illustrate that climate timeline with direct, published quotes from people and reports from the last 60-plus years – letting the people of each decade tell the story of their relationship to climate in their own words.