Nature's Last Dance: Natalie Kyriacou on Ecocide, Oiled Penguins, and Why We Need to Watch the Birds
Keen On America
Tales of Wonder: The Oiled Penguins Rescue
Natalie recounts the 2000 South African oil spill and the global volunteer effort that saved 90,000 penguins.
“We do not exist without nature — unless Silicon Valley figures something out in their bunkers.” — Natalie Kyriacou
Forget the Middle East for a moment. Or rather, don’t — because today’s petroleum war is an environmental catastrophe, perhaps even an ecocide. Militaries are the largest source of emissions on the planet. Trump uses Iran’s oil fields as a bargaining chip while assassinating its leaders, as if the price of petroleum is more important than human life (which it clearly is to him). Natalie Kyriacou, an Australian environmentalist and author of Nature’s Last Dance, isn’t surprised. Trump, she says, is the symptom rather than the disease. His rotten system of prioritising oil over human lives has been ruining the planet now for over a century. He’s just less polite about it.
Nature’s Last Dance is made up of what Kyriacou calls “tales of wonder” in our age of extinction. It tells the story, for example, of a 2000 oil spill off South Africa that threatened 90,000 African penguins and triggered the largest volunteer workforce ever assembled. Zoos, NGOs, school kids on bikes, Australians knitting sweaters all conspired to save the oiled penguins. It worked. At least in terms of those 90,000 penguins.
But did it change anything structurally? Perhaps not. But she’s arguing that the impulse to show up matters, that community is the unit of change, and that falling in love with the wonder of nature is the precondition for fighting for it. She presents forgiving Australian surfers who’ve been attacked by sharks now fighting to protect them. And she imagines birdwatching as a form of quiet rebellion.
But what does the world look like if this does, indeed, turn out to be nature’s last dance? Kyriacou’s answer is a kind of natural horror movie. A Hitchcockian David Attenborough movie: more pigeons, more rats and more “bin chickens” — Australia’s ibis, a bird that thrives in urban garbage. Nature’s revenge. So if we all don’t take up birdwatching, Kyriacou warns, we will all end up in The Birds.
Five Takeaways
• Trump Is a Symptom, Not the Disease: Countries have prioritised oil over lives for centuries. Trump is just more abrasive about it. The US negotiated Kyoto and didn’t join it, designed Paris around its own preferences, then pulled out twice. Kyriacou argues we’ve been relying on a broken system long before Trump accelerated its collapse.
• 90,000 Oiled Penguins and the Largest Volunteer Workforce Ever Assembled: In 2000, an oil spill off South Africa threatened the largest colony of African penguins. What followed was extraordinary: zoos and NGOs from a dozen countries mobilised overnight, tens of thousands of volunteers arrived, Australians knitted sweaters. It didn’t stop oil. But it showed that the impulse to show up still exists, and that community is the unit of change.
• AI Puts Our Destructive Relationship with the World on Steroids: Kyriacou’s sharpest point: the problem with AI isn’t water usage or compute power. It’s that AI amplifies every facet of humanity’s existing relationship with the planet. If we’re already this destructive, this divided, this extractive — AI makes all of it a million times more extreme. The same system that destroys nature destroys communities. It’s a systems failure.
• No Country on Earth Is on Track: Not one country in the world is currently meeting its climate or nature targets. Not one. The UN has been stretched too thin, too bureaucratic, too afraid of self-criticism. World leaders set targets, shake hands, and go home to fail. Kyriacou wants to revive the UN, not destroy it — but she’s blunt about its limits.
• The World in Grayscale: What happens if nature’s last dance is truly the last? More pigeons. More rats. More of Australia’s “bin chicken” — the ibis that thrives in urban garbage. A sanitised, diminished version of nature, and our own diminishment with it. Zuckerberg might say we can watch birds in virtual reality. Kyriacou would prefer not to. So would I.
About the Guest
Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award-winning Australian environmentalist, Forbes 30 Under 30, UNESCO Green Citizens Pathfinder, and founder of My Green World. Her book Nature’s Last Dance: Tales of Wonder in an Age of Extinction was a bestseller in Australia and is out now in the US and UK.
References:
• Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou — the book under discussion, out now in the US and UK.
• Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed Silicon Valley’s relationship with nature and humanity.
• Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — this week’s TWTW, covering AI’s relationship to leadership and society.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Chapters:
- (00:00) - Introduction: it might be nature’s last dance
- (01:18) - Ecocide: countries don’t count military emissions
- (03:05) - Trump as symptom: oil over lives for centuries
- (04:16) - Neither optimist nor pessimist — or both
- (06:54) - The oiled penguins of South Africa
- (09:11) - Did it change anything structurally?
- (11:26) - America’s broken climate leadership
- (13:37) - UNESCO and the limits of the United Nations
- (16:46) - Making nature impossible to ignore
- (18:46) - Solar, nuclear, and the biodiversity blind spot
- (20:58) - Wisdom from Australia: nationalism for wildlife
- (24:14) - Birdwatching as quiet rebellion
- (26:44) - AI puts our destructive relationship on steroids
- (29:48) - Systems failure: tech billionaires and ecocide
- (33:48) - What if there are no birds left? The world in grayscale
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