Climate and security analyst Genevieve Guenther and her new book “Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It“. Canadian climate scientist Paul Beckwith: very serious new studies, like turbocharged extreme weather on every continent, planetary insolvency by 2070, and “jaw-dropping” increases in hurricanes. Plus my new song “Rotten at the Top”.
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SONG: “ROTTEN AT THE TOP”
Here is a new song from Radio Ecoshock. As usual, my lyrics are set to music by AI, and anyone can use this song, or parts of it, for any non-commercial purpose. Pass it on: “Rotten at the Top”.
END CLIMATE SILENCE
GENEVIEVE GUENTHER
These are times of harsh record weather, stunning heat, fires and storms. Governments, big oil and gas says they are working on solutions. New technology will clean carbon and we can all keep burning down the road. Dr. Genevieve Guenther calls out the myths and lies running around, even in Leftie conversation. Genevieve is founding Director of the group “End Climate Silence” and affiliate faculty at the Tishman Environment & Design Center at the New School. Guenther’s latest book is “The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It” from Oxford University Press. Genevieve has a Doctorate in Renaissance literature – but now speaks at scientific and public events about climate change.
Listen to or download my 28 minute interview with Genevieve Guenther in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
A lot of people are distracted by serious problems, right now. Will I keep my job? Will government aid that I need continue? Will America try to conquer Canada? Can I afford orange juice and should I buy it from Florida? It is pretty hard to get climate talk in there – even as emissions keep going up and danger strikes all over the world. How can we keep the climate conversation and real action going?
In the USA, street protests and activism are beginning to take off – but not for climate action. Americans and friends around the world are fighting off a more immediate threat: losing Democracy. Is there any room left for climate activism, and what happens if we let climate action slide for a while during “the troubles” in America?
In a July 2024 YouTube interview for The Majority Report with Emma Vigeland, Emma said we should nationalize coal, gas, and oil production for a government-prepared phase-out of fossil fuels. Norway and Saudi Arabia are among several nations with nationalized production and they are not cutting back. Even if we owned it all, somebody will claim schools and hospitals will close without that revenue. What do you think – is nationalization a viable answer for the climate threat?
A key problem: our minds are filled with a lot of misleading language about climate. Some ideas in our listeners were planted or defined by fossil fuel corporations and their well-funded think-tanks, lobby groups and media flacks. It Is not merely academic to check out language. Language itself becomes a kind of feed-back mechanism delaying real action.
CARBON PIPE DREAMS
Guenter’s book “Language of Climate Politics” has a Chapter on the myths oil, gas, and coal companies sell us every day. One biggie: don’t worry about those emissions – new technology to clean out the carbon is just around the corner. For example, in Australia, Exxon/Mobil said we don’t have to build new pipelines and burial pits for carbon. We can just repurpose old fossil infrastructure. In the Gippsland basin off South East Australia, they called it the Carbon Capture Hub project. After a lot of fanfare and greed advertising, in March 2025, Exxon Mobil suddenly killed that project, without saying why. Big fossil fuel companies spend a few million here and there to convince us they are trying to find climate solutions. Meanwhile they invest trillions of profits into more and more fossil fuel production.
If we keep going with this fossil-powered civilization, even Mar-a-Lago will go under rising seas, or get demolished in the next super-storm. The rich don’t win, when nobody wins. I ask Genevieve: Why do investor Titans and Executives in big oil and gas keep searching for more poisons for Nature and the atmosphere?
Follow Genevieve Guenther here on Bluesky.
Genevieve is an expert in Renaissance times. Lately, I’ve been going back to the Catholic rebel priest Savanarola. In late 1400’s boom time of Florence, Savanarola warned of Hell. He originated the “Bonfire of the Vanities”. Wealthy Florentines brought out treasures like art and musical instruments to be burned as sinful distractions from God. I hear echoes from those very early days of Capitalism to the present disruptions in the United States, and so many other countries. Now in America, respected scientists and doctors are tossed away, along with hard-won data about the state of our world.
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CLIMATE HEADLINES THAT NEVER MADE THE NEWS
PAUL BECKWITH
Media spins leaked war plans and secret signals. Our lives are on edge. Will we be canceled? All the while, scientists send snap shots of a planet changing too fast. That is the biggest news that will never be news. World food will crash. Hurricanes get way more powerful. Plants are giving up. Nobody can keep up, but Canadian climate scientist Paul Beckwith keeps going. With a background in physics and climate, Beckwith is the largest pipeline of important new climate science on YouTube.
Listen to or download my 30 minute interview with Paul Beckwith in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
Paul and I rip through at seven major climate studies out recently, starting with his latest video (at the time of our interview):
1. Climate Change Turbocharged Extreme Weather Hits Every Continent: Here’s What Went Down in 2024…
2. On March 24, Paul’s YouTube headline is: “We are heading to planetary Insolvency: Climate Disruption Can Wipe Out Half of Global GDP by 2070”. Our recent guest Genevieve Guenther picked up on this one too – UK actuaries project the economy will crash due to climate damage.
3. Also posted on March 24th: “Major Coastal City Risks (Alexandria, Los Angeles, San Francisco) from Sea Level Rise and Subsidence”. That is based on two papers – one about building lost to the sea in Alexandria Egypt, and another about damaging sea level rise in San Francisco.
This first paper is “Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts: Hydroclimatic Drivers & Adaptive Landscape Mitigations” published 12 February 2025. The second is based on a LiveScience article “Parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles are sinking into the sea – meaning sea-level rise will be even worse” by Patrick Pester February 13, 2025. That is based on the paper “Variable vertical land motion and its impacts on sea level rise projections”.
[4] “Plants Reveal New Details of 10C Temperature Increase in “The Big Daddy” Global Mass Extinction Event 252 Million Years Ago”. Find the original paper here.
[5] Global Food Quantity and Diversity to Drop by More than Half with Our Accelerated Climate Warming (March 18th) – based on this paper.
[6] Tropical Cyclone(Hurricanes) Strength & Energy to Undergo Jaw-Dropping Increases over Next Few Years. My interview with the Lead Author of that Cyclone paper Paul-Arthur Monerie is in the works for Ecoshock.
[7] Here is another paper where Paul and I intersect. Last week I interviewed Australian super-scientist Pep Canadell about plants losing their ability to capture our carbon. Paul Beckwith covered an earlier paper and posted the video “Simple CO2 Keeling Curve Math Show Earth’s Carbon Sinks Peaking Already in 2008 and Now Declining”. This is such a frightening development for all of us.
This is the paper by the Currans that I linked to in last week’s show with Pep Canadell.
We are ran out of time well before we ran out of breaking science. We left out scientists finding very large pools of frozen methane in the seas around Antarctica. The January 2024 science behind this story is here. Or read a popular article about it here.
Paul also makes videos about the Climate Emergency with Dr. Peter Carter. Carter says so far that Antarctic methane is dissolving in the sea. So it’s not affecting climate – yet! And the Arctic sea ice maximum has passed – again at a record low.
Arctic sea ice winter peak in 2025 is smallest in 47-year record
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Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.
Alex
Alex, Ms Guenther surely believes the messages she presents. But you simply allow her to state some lofty lefty propaganda of her own. You do a great job of giving your guests a forum and no doubt you would have fewer interview possibilities if you pushed back more but this is getting to be an old story. Humans are generally delusional if they think there is a way out of a predicament. Pushing back is not an easy plan for your show but what choice do you ultimately have?