Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast

"I think the environment is such a challenging problem. Two of the major reasons for that are that it's a commons problem. Basically, there's a greater good, and we all have to sacrifice a little bit individually to achieve that greater good. People tend to be self interested, so those kinds of problems are really challenging because, I'm sitting here going, 'Should I cut back on my consumption? Or should I stop flying?'That's a cost to me in order to accrue a benefit to the group. And some people are willing to do that, but a lot of people aren't. The other real challenge with climate is that the effects of climate are diffuse. They occur slowly and over time. They're becoming more observable now, but they haven't been particularly observable to people. It's like, 'Oh, the world temperature's gonna go up by a certain number of degrees over the next 50 to a hundred years.' And a lot of people look at that and they go, 'Okay, but I've got to pay my car bill this week.' So it's hard for people to feel it viscerally as a real threat, I think. And both of those things combined are a real challenge. And then you layer in other things like incentives of oil companies or other kinds of legacy industries which actually are incentivized in the opposite direction. And then that ends up entering into the political process in various ways."Philip Fernbach is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leeds School of Business. He’s published widely in the top journals in cognitive science, consumer research and marketing, and received the ACR Early Career Award for Contributions to Consumer Research. He’s co-author with Steve Sloman of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, which was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s Pick. He’s also written for NYTimes, Harvard Business Review, and his research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washinton Post, National Public Radio, and the BBC. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown and his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Williams College. He teaches data analytics and behavioral science to undergraduate and Masters students.www.colorado.edu/business/www.philipfernbach.comThe Knowledge Illusionwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Philip Fernbach is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leeds School of Business. He’s published widely in the top journals in cognitive science, consumer research and marketing, and received the ACR Early Career Award for Contributions to Consumer Research. He’s co-author with Steve Sloman of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, which was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s Pick. He’s also written for NYTimes, Harvard Business Review, and his research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washinton Post, National Public Radio, and the BBC. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown and his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Williams College. He teaches data analytics and behavioral science to undergraduate and Masters students."I think the environment is such a challenging problem. Two of the major reasons for that are that it's a commons problem. Basically, there's a greater good, and we all have to sacrifice a little bit individually to achieve that greater good. People tend to be self interested, so those kinds of problems are really challenging because, I'm sitting here going, 'Should I cut back on my consumption? Or should I stop flying?'That's a cost to me in order to accrue a benefit to the group. And some people are willing to do that, but a lot of people aren't. The other real challenge with climate is that the effects of climate are diffuse. They occur slowly and over time. They're becoming more observable now, but they haven't been particularly observable to people. It's like, 'Oh, the world temperature's gonna go up by a certain number of degrees over the next 50 to a hundred years.' And a lot of people look at that and they go, 'Okay, but I've got to pay my car bill this week.' So it's hard for people to feel it viscerally as a real threat, I think. And both of those things combined are a real challenge. And then you layer in other things like incentives of oil companies or other kinds of legacy industries which actually are incentivized in the opposite direction. And then that ends up entering into the political process in various ways."www.colorado.edu/business/www.philipfernbach.comThe Knowledge Illusionwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

"At the Safina Center, we're trying to work on values. Values I think are the fundamental thing. If you resonate with the values we're expressing, you would feel differently about the prices of things, just, for instance, oil and coal are really very cheap. They are priced cheaply. The price, the value, and the cost of things are three really different things.So the price of oil and coal is very cheap, but the cost of those things involves, well, let's just say coal for one example, it involves blowing the tops off of mountains throughout Appalachia, occasionally burying a few people, giving lots of workers lung disease, changing the heat balance of the entire planet, and acidifying the ocean. That's the cost of it. It's nowhere in the price."Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, CNN.com, National Geographic News, and other publications. He is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.www.safinacenter.orgwww.carlsafina.orgwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, CNN.com, National Geographic News, and other publications. He is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace."At the Safina Center, we're trying to work on values. Values I think are the fundamental thing. If you resonate with the values we're expressing, you would feel differently about the prices of things, just, for instance, oil and coal are really very cheap. They are priced cheaply. The price, the value, and the cost of things are three really different things.So the price of oil and coal is very cheap, but the cost of those things involves, well, let's just say coal for one example, it involves blowing the tops off of mountains throughout Appalachia, occasionally burying a few people, giving lots of workers lung disease, changing the heat balance of the entire planet, and acidifying the ocean. That's the cost of it. It's nowhere in the price."www.safinacenter.orgwww.carlsafina.orgwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto: Carl Safina in Uganda

"The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology.https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology."The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

"Many of us are now aware that bees are in trouble due to manmade changes to the environment. Large-scale industrial agriculture, of course, means that often there are no floral resources over very large areas of farmland, and bees' flexibility in locating food sources of course can cope with that to some extent because they're very good at locating patches, but this ability only goes so far. Of course, if there are literally no flowers left or very few, then their learning ability won't help them very much.In addition, of course, there is very heavy usage of pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture. And these substances in many cases have been designed to be lethal or at least harmful to insects because they are meant to keep herbivores at bay. And of course often, even if insects don't eat the leaves, flower-visiting insects still get exposed to them in the contents of floral nectar or pollen. So they carry these poisons back to their hives, their nests, albeit perhaps in lower concentrations that  they're available in the leaves, but they're still present at a level that's harmful to bees so that affects their navigation, that affects the health of their young. So these manmade changes have a huge impact on bees and this is typically measured in those bees that are least affected - that is honeybees.”Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology.http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto credit: Markus Scholz / Leopoldina

Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology."Many of us are now aware that bees are in trouble due to manmade changes to the environment. Large-scale industrial agriculture, of course, means that often there are no floral resources over very large areas of farmland, and bees' flexibility in locating food sources of course can cope with that to some extent because they're very good at locating patches, but this ability only goes so far. Of course, if there are literally no flowers left or very few, then their learning ability won't help them very much.In addition, of course, there is very heavy usage of pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture. And these substances in many cases have been designed to be lethal or at least harmful to insects because they are meant to keep herbivores at bay. And of course often, even if insects don't eat the leaves, flower-visiting insects still get exposed to them in the contents of floral nectar or pollen. So they carry these poisons back to their hives, their nests, albeit perhaps in lower concentrations that  they're available in the leaves, but they're still present at a level that's harmful to bees so that affects their navigation, that affects the health of their young. So these manmade changes have a huge impact on bees and this is typically measured in those bees that are least affected - that is honeybees.”http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto credit: Markus Scholz / Leopoldina

"I think maybe the critical issue here is the governance aspect which I think is one of the core sources of many of the greatest threats to human civilization on the planet. The difficulties we have in effectively tackling these global governance challenges. So global warming, I think, at its core is really a problem of the global commons. So we all share the same atmosphere and the same global climate, ultimately. And we have a certain reservoir, the environment can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide without damage, but if we put out too much, then we together face a negative consequence."Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots.https://nickbostrom.comhttps://www.fhi.ox.ac.ukwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots."I think maybe the critical issue here is the governance aspect which I think is one of the core sources of many of the greatest threats to human civilization on the planet. The difficulties we have in effectively tackling these global governance challenges. So global warming, I think, at its core is really a problem of the global commons. So we all share the same atmosphere and the same global climate, ultimately. And we have a certain reservoir, the environment can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide without damage, but if we put out too much, then we together face a negative consequence."https://nickbostrom.comhttps://www.fhi.ox.ac.ukwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org