Moral Failure and Deadly Negligence (with Sara Pascoe and Matt Winning)

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Speaker 7 Hello and welcome to Strong Message Here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language.

Speaker 7 It's Armanda Yanucci, or if you're listening to the Spotify transcript of this program, it's Ahmed Uchi. And this week, Moral Failure and Deadly Negligence with Sarah Pascoe.

Speaker 7 Sarah Sarah is with us again.

Speaker 7 That is a phrase used by UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres describing our failure to meet the 1.5 degrees target set by COP some time ago.

Speaker 7 So we will be discussing language around climate, climate change, and COP. And we're also joined for that by the climate scientist and comedian Dr.
Matt Winning. Hello.

Speaker 7 First of all, though, I'm going to start with a new word because, oh, I ought to explain.

Speaker 7 We're recording this for various admin reasons and my lack of availability for the week in which it's going out we're recording this a week in advance of when it's going out so we're really in a cocoon of speculation yeah we're prepping like uh for the apocalypse that's right yeah which may or may not have happened by the time you hear this

Speaker 7 and so we're meeting just as a whole whirling dervish of rumour and counter rumours going around number 10 about people briefing about each other.

Speaker 7 And by the time this goes out, the chief of staff for Keostama, Morgan McSweeney, may well have resigned or may well be the new director general. We have no idea.

Speaker 7 And I've just been trying to unpick it. It seems that somebody in number 10 briefed against Wes Streeting, hoping that it would sound like Wes Streeting was briefing against number 10.

Speaker 7 But it now appears that whoever it was that briefed against Wes Streeting briefing against number 10 was also briefing in the hope that that would actually bolster number 10's position.

Speaker 7 Whereas, in fact, it's now undermined. So I've got to come up with a new word, which is cluster brief.

Speaker 9 Cluster brief.

Speaker 7 It is a cluster brief. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 7 I give that to the world. That's something to...

Speaker 9 You talking about it, because it's even like on the news, you know, this is the driest gossip that's ever existed. Yes.

Speaker 9 It's like someone trying to tell you the plot of a Housewives of Cheshire episode when you've never watched any Housewives of Cheshire.

Speaker 7 Does that exist?

Speaker 7 Really? I believe so. Yes.
You're not as enthusiastically as if you can have.

Speaker 9 I've heard people talk to me about Housewives of Cheshire, and that's what this feels like.

Speaker 9 It's like someone trying to make something interesting when all of the people involved are not yes yeah yes but this is what happens when there's speculation and nothing tangible happens is this what happens now instead of sort of invading a country is this how you do distraction and attention you know kier starmer everyone thinks he's a little bit perhaps not that great at his job not flourishing in his position currently

Speaker 9 suboptimal i think is suboptimal yes

Speaker 9 by seven people god it's damning isn't it

Speaker 9 it's damning imagine going to your three months appraisal

Speaker 9 how do do you think it's been going, Sarah? I'm doing my best. I've been on time.
We've written down sub-optimal.

Speaker 7 Exactly, Sarah.

Speaker 7 You're running counter to requirements. Yes.
Oh, God.

Speaker 9 Harsh, harsh language. But yeah, it feels like trying to sort of, in this sort of landscape of tumbleweed,

Speaker 7 create something interesting. My question is, why is this tumbleweed? Where? And, you know, COP is meeting.

Speaker 7 I think the results of deliberations in Brazil will be out the day after this programme because that's time to bring you in, Matt, in terms of

Speaker 7 do we know already how COP is going to end?

Speaker 10 Probably with some very complicated wording that will make it unclear whether humanity is going to continue beyond its next

Speaker 10 series, essentially.

Speaker 7 So, you know, COP will return. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 It tends to be that sort of, we'll be back next year to sort out this stuff that we did this year that we've added to the list of things to do. I was thinking, Sir,

Speaker 10 just on your point there, should we have probation for prime ministers?

Speaker 9 Oh, that'd be lovely. Let's keep everyone on their toes.

Speaker 7 Oh, right, what do you think? Give the voters more power.

Speaker 9 Voters, you know, it's so difficult to get people engaged. They feel like they're not really listened to.
But if you did have a probation period, I'd love that.

Speaker 7 Isn't that actually what's happening?

Speaker 7 Because, you know, it used to be, you know, when prime ministers, especially with the majority got in, everyone knew they had four or five years.

Speaker 7 And they had the benefit of the doubt for like 18 months to two years in terms of they'll make all the hard decisions now so that they can store stuff up for good news in the election.

Speaker 7 That used to be the understanding. But we've now reached that point where if you haven't turned everything around within 12 months, you should be out.

Speaker 9 Well, if you've promised certain things to get elected, there should be some sort of time on that, especially if it's environmental or it affects things like health service, schools, you know, people's tax bills, the heating.

Speaker 9 There are certain things that I think should be allowed a little bit like contract law, like you've broken one of your warranties or conditions and we have a really easy path out of it, like a slide

Speaker 9 out of the top window of number 10. And the next person who comes in knows, I've got to do this, and I've got to do it quickly, because I said I would.

Speaker 10 In even less time, make it really

Speaker 7 part of the problem was that they got in on saying as little as possible. Well, yeah, and therefore,

Speaker 7 you know, the reality of I came across a quote, well, two quotes actually, uh, over the last week.

Speaker 7 One was they used to describe the campaign as like trying to carry a Ming vase across a kind of busy shop, as in just don't drop the vase and we will win.

Speaker 7 But all the speculation around the budget, I came from someone who described it as it's like wrestling a squirrel across a minefield.

Speaker 9 I prefer that because Ming vase sort of reeks of such privilege. I think most people can't really.

Speaker 7 Whereas a squirrel. Yes.

Speaker 9 We've all seen squirrels. They're really wiggly.
They're up those trees.

Speaker 7 If you had to get one. Yes, we've all carried them, especially across minefields.
Exactly. Yes.

Speaker 10 That's a lovely visual. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 8 I don't know who said it.

Speaker 7 It was just quoted in The Guardian. I think we've analysed that particular simile

Speaker 7 to death.

Speaker 7 So let's get on with Cole. I mean, you mentioned, Sarah, you mentioned the tumbleweed noise.
Yes. And that's something I've always wondered.

Speaker 7 When you read the headlines about what's happening in the climate match, they are like the most alarming nightmarish apocalyptic headlines. Yet they're on no page seven or eight of the newspapers.

Speaker 7 but they are headlines like, you know, cold red for humanity, climate crisis wreaking havoc on Earth's water cycle, average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by four degrees.

Speaker 7 We are damned fools, scientists warns, of worse to come. I mean, those are the headlines which I'm seeing every day.
Culled, by the way, from newspapers all across the political divide.

Speaker 7 And you think, my God, if I woke up one morning to see any one of those headlines, I'd be petrified. But no, they're kind of after the Sudoku in the paper.

Speaker 9 That's interesting, isn't it? I guess people don't pick up a paper that calls them a goddamn idiot, you know, a fool. They're not going to buy it at the till, so they have to put it inside.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think the scientists saying we are damned fool, yeah, does seem like a bit of, I don't know if that's what they would say.

Speaker 7 It's not kind of scientific language, it's not something I would normally yes, it wasn't a laboratory experiment to prove that we would be damned. Yeah,

Speaker 7 but but why has very alarming information like the climate emergency been now seen as an afterthought?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think it's very psychological, isn't it? It's we can't really cope with this ongoing, constant, massive existential crisis every day for the next 35 years. Yeah, right.

Speaker 10 And so you're getting used to it and the language gets ramped up even more and even more until it sort of becomes normalized.

Speaker 7 So is it working then, all this alarmist language then? I don't know. Have we got numbed to it?

Speaker 10 I think we've got numb to it, but I think it's important to kind of balance it out with a bit of good news as well.

Speaker 10 So this year, I believe renewables have now surpassed coal as being the world's largest electricity producer, you know, generation.

Speaker 10 China's emissions this year, in the last 18 months actually, have either stayed the same or fallen slightly.

Speaker 10 There's some sort of good news stories, but again, that doesn't make massive

Speaker 7 headlines.

Speaker 10 So you end up with the kind of, quite rightly,

Speaker 10 apocalyptic sounding headlines.

Speaker 7 Planet's first catastrophic tipping point reached.

Speaker 7 I've got someone from the Telegraph out there. Why we might never see snow again.

Speaker 9 Yeah, but it's interesting, isn't it? Because sometimes it's sort of the microcosm. It will affect you, the average person, you're going to be 40% poorer.

Speaker 9 And then sometimes it is on this massive scale, how it will affect. absolutely everyone.

Speaker 9 I used to do fundraising on the phone for charities and you always had six scripts because when one wasn't working, you would switch to another one.

Speaker 9 And so, you know, you're ringing up, these are people who already donate and you're saying like we love your six pounds a month we're so grateful we're just wondering if we could get a couple of extra pounds per month and then as they say you know you know i've got a very tight budget the seals oh have you ever seen a oh they're so sweet aren't they and actually did you know and if the seals are not going for it you would just flip to this dog has three legs

Speaker 10 that makes complete sense because to be honest the people that will respond to the you know we're damned fools are probably already now going and doing stuff about it.

Speaker 10 They've probably already joined Friends of the Earth or whatever. So how do you reach the other audience?

Speaker 7 We just choose a species to

Speaker 7 die off, to make the point absolutely clear, to make it feel real.

Speaker 9 Yeah, well that does happen in environmentalism, which obviously does come under the same umbrella because it's also affected by climate and pollution and things.

Speaker 9 But there is a theory that if you let giant pandas die, it would have a much bigger effect because

Speaker 9 people would then finally realize what a dire straits we are in.

Speaker 7 We should be channeling resources into killing off the giant pandas.

Speaker 9 Yeah, maybe get an MP for killing off pandas, yeah.

Speaker 7 I mean, it would be a brave policy to put in a manifesto.

Speaker 9 Yeah, and a really good distraction technique. Suddenly we're all talking about knowing.

Speaker 7 It's worth the budget. It's about what?

Speaker 7 What did you say about pandas?

Speaker 9 Yeah, don't worry, he's voluntary. We're not paying him.

Speaker 9 We're not taxing you any extra.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 It's part of MP's duties.

Speaker 10 Do you think there's a specific MP that would be...

Speaker 9 Oh, we could bring someone back, maybe.

Speaker 9 Tony Blair's always knocking around.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 He's got stuff to do. I think he'd stop some pandas breeding.
Yeah. Andrew Montbatten, Windsor.
Give him a gun. Maybe you could kill him in an enclosed environment.
Yeah. Release the pandas.

Speaker 7 Tell him to see who wins.

Speaker 9 Oh, gosh. Yeah, telling the king, his likability can't go down.
We might as well utilise him. We've given him all those big houses over time.

Speaker 7 Oh, you're talking about. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the pandas.
Sorry. Yeah.
Right. How did we get on to the tangent?

Speaker 9 Tangent town.

Speaker 7 We'll be very serious about climate change. Well, this is what we need to do.

Speaker 10 We need to be less serious about it.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 9 Do you think so? And you do comedy of things. I do.

Speaker 10 I do. And I did a show this year about pensions and climate change because I've tried.

Speaker 7 Fool?

Speaker 10 Full would be a suboptimal way of.

Speaker 7 How big was your room then?

Speaker 10 80 people, maybe.

Speaker 9 Lovely sight. Edinburgh, that's pretty big.

Speaker 7 That's a popular show.

Speaker 10 It was good, but I think it was a way in of talking about climate change that most people haven't thought about. And I think that's what we need to do.

Speaker 10 So we need to talk about it in a way that's a bit more,

Speaker 10 you know, health, right? We need to talk about how it's impacting people's health.

Speaker 10 We need to talk about how it's impacting day-to-day lives or your pensions or things that people are already worried about. You know, what is the top of the news? It'll be GDP growth, right?

Speaker 10 So can we actually talk about it within that context a bit better?

Speaker 9 You'll know a lot more about this than I do, but I've always thought the most sensible thing would be the idea that you cost the environmental impact into the price of things.

Speaker 9 So that things like fast fashion, for example, the genes aren't cheap if you consider... the chemicals or how many aren't sold or things going into landfill.

Speaker 9 And if that's included in the price, because we all do pay eventually,

Speaker 9 then suddenly it's still a free market. You can still compete.

Speaker 7 Right, but you're sort of up front acknowledging the impact on the climate. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Well, you're just going to have to pay for it because that's how you

Speaker 7 can do those things.

Speaker 10 I completely agree.

Speaker 10 The difficulty there that we're having is because so I'm technically an economist by training and I've literally just come from a lecture doing that exact thing, which is telling how do you internalize externalities into the cost of stuff.

Speaker 10 And the problem is people really like having cheap stuff.

Speaker 10 So when you actually go, tell you what we're going to do, we're going to make this thing actually cost what it's supposed to cost, which is double the price. People don't tend to go.

Speaker 7 It's also, you know, the argument will be that the transition to being able to hit all these targets will upfront cost some money, but the benefits economically will far outweigh.

Speaker 7 But those benefits aren't going to be experienced for some time. And that's very hard.

Speaker 7 You know, it's very hard to do a drama about climate emergency or any kind of fictionized fashion because it isn't a single event.

Speaker 7 It's a kind of state that gradually and then very suddenly materializes over a number of years through inaction or inability to. So it's

Speaker 7 how do we make it solid and real in front of us? Yeah, no, I completely agree.

Speaker 10 It's also that time thing's really interesting. I always remember, you know, Rishi Sunak, when he was in charge, would always say, we can't burden future taxpayers.

Speaker 10 If we do it, we need to pay for it today, but also we won't bother paying for it today.

Speaker 7 But he also stopped, he also banned onshore wind farms.

Speaker 7 And I thought, well, if if you keep going in that direction, you know, in about 30 years, most of the UK will be offshore because, you know, the tides will rise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 you will have much more room to put your offshore wind farms if you don't do anything about it.

Speaker 9 Or suddenly some of your wind farms are suddenly offshore again.

Speaker 7 We're onshore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 We've come up with a perfect solution.

Speaker 9 We waited them out 20 years.

Speaker 7 You all will be able to get round it.

Speaker 9 So is there like this basic problem in human beings in terms of that we are an ape that has evolved and we have some intelligence, but we can't really comprehend the future, future generations.

Speaker 9 You know like the monkey thing where you give them a grape and you say, I'll give you two grapes in a minute if you don't eat that grape.

Speaker 7 And they eat the grape. Of course you eat the grape.
I would. I got a grape.

Speaker 9 Yes. And with toddlers, there's a point where they start going, oh, I get two sweets if I wait.

Speaker 9 But we aren't at the point of going, I can make sensible choices about how I live and how I pay my taxes so that we can live a world.

Speaker 7 Yes, well, most grown-ups understand human nature being as what people say isn't necessarily true. Whereas kids, yes, if we'd stayed at the kids stage, we could have sorted this out.
Do you think so?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 7 We don't know how we achieve that. No, that's dissembling.
Whether it's less education spending.

Speaker 7 And I think also, is there a sense of people feeling it's so overwhelming? Oh, these apocalyptic headline. I've got a few more.

Speaker 7 Farmers suffer second worst harvest on record. Scotland could become truffle capital of Europe.
What? That's in the telegraph. I'm outraged.
World's rivers dry up fastest rate for 30 years.

Speaker 7 My favourite one, climate crisis on track to destroy world capitalism, warns top insurer. I love it.
So we've got all these nightmares. Is it just like too much to comprehend?

Speaker 10 It's such a vast subject as well. Yeah.
And it's kind of so global and it's so difficult as a problem that you would design for humanity to not be able to solve.

Speaker 10 It's the perfect example of that because it requires everybody working together. It's invisible.
It's like like we don't even see greenhouse gases. It's the time dimension.

Speaker 10 It's the future generations.

Speaker 10 It's just the most difficult problem we could design. And so we've got that.
And then there's what Sarah, you said about the brain.

Speaker 10 Like, I think there's aspects of climate change that we get grasped quite easily, like wildfire, right? People go, okay, a fire. I understand that.

Speaker 10 But getting people sort of afraid of coastal erosion is a very difficult thing to do, even though you're like, well, actually, what that's going to do is displace 150 million people across the world.

Speaker 9 My mum lives in Brightlingsea in Essex, and their houses are getting cheaper and cheaper, which isn't happening anywhere, apart from places where they're probably not going to be there in 25 years.

Speaker 9 I mean, it's getting difficult to get mortgages in certain places that are coastal and very flat. So to some people, it's really real, where they can see it.

Speaker 7 It makes sense.

Speaker 10 Some people, it's massively tangible, and then to everyone else, it still feels like this.

Speaker 7 But it's becoming harder to pool all those individual, separate personal experiences into

Speaker 7 a coherent hive minds

Speaker 9 of like collectively can you see what's happening when you're throwing dots here to to to come up with a picture when you're saying those headlines that's what I can see is the media desperately saying how can I make you interested in this again truffles because I'm intrigued why Scotland what's happening where is the current truffle capital completely and suddenly I'm reading about climate change again rather than going I can't I know I know leave me alone

Speaker 7 again in the telegraph sorry is uh climate change quote could kill off the traditional big world tart Oh, tell me more.

Speaker 9 I need to know.

Speaker 7 I'm worried. I love

Speaker 7 your hoops, yeah. It has to do with almonds.
It is. I did actually.

Speaker 9 California and almonds, isn't it?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Oh, I don't know. That sounds horrific.

Speaker 7 Do a lecture on that one. Yeah.

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Run out the socks he picks. I know, I'm putting them back.
Hey, Dave, here's a tip. Put scratchers on your list.

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Speaker 2 Scratchers from the California lottery. A little play can make your day.

Speaker 5 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Speaker 2 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore.
But not the socks he picks. I know, I'm putting them back.
Hey, Dave, here's a tip. Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 3 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

Speaker 2 It's an easy shopping trip. We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 4 Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 2 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play. Scratchers from the California lottery.
A little play can make your name.

Speaker 5 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Speaker 7 Remember Phil Wang, who was on the show recently?

Speaker 10 He posted up a picture of a bottle of olive oil in Tesco that was in like a glass. So they now have them in those glass cases

Speaker 10 because it's got so expensive because of climate change that people are potentially stealing olive oil. And that's very much to me a harbinger of the apocalypse.

Speaker 9 Well, I used to joke about this, but I have this theory that because the millennium bug, which had very similar apocalyptic headlines,

Speaker 9 went away and wasn't a problem and sorted itself out, that people of my age just think that's going to happen if we just carry on being the same, that we'll wake up on January the 1st and they're like, guess what?

Speaker 7 It's fine.

Speaker 9 Bakewell tarts are fine.

Speaker 9 Truffle centers stay stay where they are. Your house has gone up in value.

Speaker 7 Everything's normal. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And also, you know, the rhetoric from the likes of Trump and so on, calling the whole thing a scam, a hoax and whatever, even though, you know, I don't have to even argue the science is in and it's very clear what's happening.

Speaker 7 If it isn't, then just look out the window in certain parts of the world. But that must, and the fact that other political parties and leaders have picked up on that and said,

Speaker 7 yes, that gives me the excuse now to play it down. Yeah.

Speaker 10 It's,

Speaker 10 It's frustrating because it felt like there was a bit of a head of momentum and then you've seen the success of that sort of messaging and it's sort of being able to permeate into other places.

Speaker 10 Actually, COP this year, I think

Speaker 10 in the first week, came up with something for the first time they've actually talked about disinformation.

Speaker 10 So they've made a declaration on information integrity and climate change. Right.
And a whole 12 countries have signed up to it out of 197 countries.

Speaker 7 But the problem there, of course, is that the bulk of the disinformation is coming from major countries, America particular, who aren't attending and will be pumping out the disinformation.

Speaker 7 If only we could use that energy for good.

Speaker 7 If only we could harness disinformation as an item of

Speaker 7 energy. Yeah.

Speaker 9 So, but you've been to COP, haven't you?

Speaker 7 I have. I have.

Speaker 9 So when I imagine it, I imagine lots of sort of tongue-in-cheek jokes about everything.

Speaker 9 So when you say signed a thing, it's like, do they have that little disclaimer on the bottom saying, don't print this out if you don't need to?

Speaker 9 Is there lots of that, you know, at mealtimes, sort of like, are these locally sourced asparagus?

Speaker 10 There is a bit of that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 There's a bit of everybody kind of checking in on each other, but also it's mostly sort of negotiators and diplomats having not slept for two weeks, just surviving on coffee.

Speaker 7 I always thought that every government and every business, every economy, money talks. And I thought, well, that's what will save us actually

Speaker 7 renewable energy is far cheaper now than fossil fuel. That actually,

Speaker 7 you know, it makes more sense to engage with that.

Speaker 7 But there's so much disinformation going on that actually I've been reading that manufacturers of solar panels have actually had to lay people off because there's less of a demand.

Speaker 7 You know, the wind farm, the construction of wind farms, some of those companies are having less demand. So actually,

Speaker 7 the false narrative is actually hitting that economy.

Speaker 10 I think it probably is a little bit. There's also a bit of a fallout from the Ukraine war in terms of interest rates jumped up.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 10 And basically, renewables are really capital intensive. So you spend lots of money up front and then you've got no costs whatsoever.
Whereas fossil fuel is like less capital intensive.

Speaker 10 So interest rates are less of a problem. But then you're paying for the fossil fuels for the rest of the time.

Speaker 10 And so there was that. And then also there's these narratives beginning to feed in a little bit around renewables.

Speaker 7 But actually,

Speaker 10 I think the economics has won out, but the problem that we have is that there's now a bit of a backlash to the economics.

Speaker 10 So you're essentially going, you know, some of these countries who are heavily dependent on, you know, the petrol states and your US and stuff are going, right, economics is out the window.

Speaker 10 Let's just fight this as dirty as we possibly can.

Speaker 7 Let's just go stupid. Yeah, let's go stupid.

Speaker 10 So that's where we've kind of got to, because it was, you're right, Arnando, it basically was winning out. Yeah.
And it sort of reached that tipping point.

Speaker 10 And then all the people with the vested interests went, well, we're just going to have to take the gloves off here and start throwing money at and that has happened several times in the past.

Speaker 7 I mean, the electric car was always something that had been mooted for like decades and it was only they could have done it a long, long time ago, but the people who make money

Speaker 9 from non-electric cars couldn't allow that to happen.

Speaker 7 You go to cities in America like Los Angeles and Washington, actually, where in the 1920s and 30s, the car manufacturers didn't want public transport and managed to lobby against it.

Speaker 9 Did you ever read any of Ben Elton's novels in the 90s? I've not. I don't know if you did, Amanda, but he had several I remember that solved climate change.
So maybe have a read.

Speaker 9 But one of them was that we made loads of domes that we lived in that sort of just kept us purified air and water. So little biospheres.

Speaker 9 And then when we came out of the biospheres, the planet had healed itself. So I don't know if that's a useful idea for your next conference or bring it up at COP.

Speaker 10 Yeah, big domes.

Speaker 7 Big domes. Or something.

Speaker 10 Big domes.

Speaker 9 Something between the sun and us to sort of

Speaker 7 a massive visor.

Speaker 9 Massive visor, sunglasses, really huge.

Speaker 10 Naturally, suggested that within the last few weeks. Yes, Nelly.

Speaker 7 Nelson suggested it in the 90s, tell him he said it's time to make the mind of a sentient sun.

Speaker 7 That's not going to end well, I don't think. If the sun could actually think, even though it has the capacity to inflame us and burn us.

Speaker 9 Maybe he's been watching the Telly Tubbies.

Speaker 9 Do you know? Because that's got a little fake. That's a live son.

Speaker 7 Yes. But it's a baby.

Speaker 7 Yes. Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 9 I think it's really dangerous trying to work out what Elon Musk is thinking.

Speaker 7 I know.

Speaker 9 It's not good for us.

Speaker 7 I have still to work out why Musk's response to planet Earth is in danger is let's go to a toxic radioactive hellhole.

Speaker 10 And I mean, I've said this on stage a few times. The problem with the messaging that we've had around climate has often been around we only have one home and we need to take care of it.

Speaker 10 But most of these people don't understand the idea of only having one home.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 7 Yes, it's like I don't like Earth. I think we should move.
Yeah, yeah, we should move somewhere else. I don't like this neighborhood that this planet is in.

Speaker 10 I'll buy a second planet.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I literally don't like the atmosphere. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I would like to go somewhere else.

Speaker 7 You know, the list of obligations we have throughout the day, you know, our to-do list is such that at the end of the day, do we just think, oh, I've just noticed save the planet. I haven't done that.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Maybe tomorrow.

Speaker 10 It's like when you've got, like, you just put off that really big task in your house all the time.

Speaker 10 You're like, I'm going to get around to, you know, dealing with the damp on that wall, but I've got some other things that I could do. This evening.

Speaker 7 Just drawer that's just full of old batteries and loose screws. Yeah.

Speaker 10 It's always going to be there. Yeah.
Because it feels like just such a large task. You need a bet.

Speaker 10 I need at least a full weekend to deal with that. Yes.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And the other things, in terms of like having children, I mean, mean, like lots of people, you start off with this really sort of clear idea of wooden toys, you know, just give them a box to play with.

Speaker 9 But actually, when you've got a screaming child in a supermarket, you do go, it's the planet or my sanity. It's getting covered, poor patrol, digger.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 7 And it haunts you.

Speaker 9 You know, Kafka had this idea of hell where everyone had to meet all of the animals that they'd ever killed.

Speaker 9 So everything you've ever eaten, every insect you've stood, and they're all going to haunt you. That would be me and sort of playmobiles and little dogs dressed up as with guns.

Speaker 7 Do you get people sort of admitting to you what they have and haven't done? Oh, all the time.

Speaker 10 And I'm in the exact same position. We tried when my son was born, we did like a toy rental company for a bit.

Speaker 10 And you start out with these things, but then you end up with.

Speaker 7 Oh, right.

Speaker 7 Sorry, I had an image of you and your son setting up a toy rental company.

Speaker 7 But no, no.

Speaker 7 I've got you. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 His cows, his,

Speaker 7 but yes. There's a great way to teach them about economics, though.
Yes. But it did it not work.

Speaker 10 Well, I think the economics of it didn't work for the company because you're not selling a product.

Speaker 10 And basically, our entire system isn't set up for sort of circularity of this thing will get used again. And like, there's tax breaks for you're still paying that on that.

Speaker 10 It shouldn't be on things if you're maybe, you know, renting them a supply.

Speaker 9 And the post is expensive. It's the same with children's rental of clothes.
The idea, the moral, and this is where I think some people really morally overpay for things because it is better.

Speaker 9 But the businesses don't grow to the point that they can make it cheaper. And kids break stuff and they're disgusting.
So no one wants it actually. A lot of the time after your kid's been in on it.

Speaker 7 And we came across this phrase: green, what is it? Not green washing. Hushing.
Green hushing. Green hushing.
So there has been green washing, which is

Speaker 7 companies saying they're doing certain then. They've got really good at it.

Speaker 7 But green hushing is almost like the opposite of that.

Speaker 9 Shut up. Don't mention it.
That's nothing to do with anything. It's just a really nice coffee.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's just sort of being quiet about what you're doing as to not sort of raise any suspicions about anything.

Speaker 7 But that's companies actually doing, investing in renewables environment, but not making a headline out of it.

Speaker 7 It's almost like are they nervous of any kind of attack on them if they're deemed to be too woke by going into that? Yeah. So

Speaker 7 they keep the good stuff they're doing quiet.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think so. I think that's what green hushing is.
It's sort of a new term that I've heard about, but everybody's so sort of quiet about it in general that it's hard to know exactly.

Speaker 9 so it's like it's not trendy but actually to because people want to work for companies that are ethical right so young graduates now it's really competitive to be a great company but maybe yeah if it doesn't sound that cool or you think it's a distracting message because you think then your customers might think they're overpaying for something or

Speaker 10 they're just confused so you just keep that quiet yeah and it's sort of to do with like how much information are you putting out in the world so previously you would noting down all your sort of emissions or your stuff and now it's a bit more like i think we're just going to keep quiet about everything so that we don't

Speaker 10 raise that sort of thing. Yeah, we wouldn't raise any suspicion about anything.

Speaker 9 So, I guess if you had a sort of a way of doing things and then you changed it the next year for profit reasons, you don't want to then have to celebrate just so you know, we're not carbon neutral anymore.

Speaker 7 See you later by, don't ask me questions.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, I mean, that is why we're going to go to hell in a handbasket because you could get sort of woven one, I hope.

Speaker 7 Exactly.

Speaker 9 That's a telegraph headline coming up

Speaker 7 straight after COP.

Speaker 7 I'll tell you the most depressing headline, which was this was in the Times: we have 12 years to limit climate catastrophe. That was from seven years ago.
Oh, yeah, right.

Speaker 10 So, yes, I think I was one of those people.

Speaker 7 Come on.

Speaker 7 Yes, but yeah, the corporate thing of, because there was a tendency for corporations before they got into the green, hey, we're green, to almost subtly place the responsibility back to us.

Speaker 7 Something about the idea of coming up with the idea of litterbug.

Speaker 9 Yeah, so I found this out from a podcast that I really love called Diabolical Lies. It's an American podcast, and they were talking about the term litterbug, and I had no idea.

Speaker 9 And this is so fantastic, and in terms of it's so interesting in terms of language, but and so pernicious. So it's the the KAB, which stands for Keep America Beautiful.

Speaker 9 So in 1953, they came up with the term Coca-Cola were one of the big conglomerate companies behind it to put the pressure on individuals to get rid of these new packages that they were making to sell things for individual use rather than it being their issue because they were going to have to contribute to the cleaning up if children if people were leaving their litter and pieces.

Speaker 9 And then I think Jay Walking is another one.

Speaker 10 That was a good example, yeah, of

Speaker 7 essentially making instead of a car knocking someone down and being like, maybe the car's at fault here, it's like, no, you were walking when you shouldn't have walked in the world.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And so, yeah, we've got a sort of, yeah, that was very much the automotive industry again in America coming up with a term that sort of demonized pedestrians for

Speaker 7 deciding to cross the river. There was an embarrassing moment when Walmart tried to display their

Speaker 7 renewable environmental friendly credentials. And they launched these brands of t-shirts and tops and so on that were all about,

Speaker 7 you know, recycle, reuse, renew, rethink.

Speaker 7 And it would just have the word the prefix re and then vertically down it would have cycle, use, new, think with the capital letters of each of those words, cycle, use,

Speaker 7 new,

Speaker 7 think in bulk.

Speaker 9 It took me too long, Amanda.

Speaker 7 I had to write it down across me.

Speaker 10 I'm definitely going to get one of those, but I'm going to get it on vintage afterwards.

Speaker 9 Yes, there we go. That's how you have your cake cake and eat it nowadays.

Speaker 9 But this has happened so much with environmental issues.

Speaker 9 I think this is why lots of individuals have a lot of guilt and maybe it doesn't feel like a lot of useful tactics that they can daily or weekly do because you feel like this is pathetic.

Speaker 9 Is it really helping? I do my, you know, my composting or whatever the household considers.

Speaker 9 And then you look at you know your jet flights or your household bills, look at people's cars, really huge problems. It then goes, what's the point? And you don't, you do, and you do less, maybe.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. Are you making a difference? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's when you hear all this terrible headphones.

Speaker 10 And the focus has to be, you know, this is how I tend to tell people at the end of when I'm giving talks or whatever, is

Speaker 10 on the one hand, you've got COP, right? You've got this massive existential thing that's happening at a global level. And on the other hand, you've got...

Speaker 10 what you just described, which is you at home washing out some pots, right?

Speaker 10 But the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle between those two things. And we don't talk about those sort of like town level things, community level things.
Those are where

Speaker 7 you don't feel alone you're doing it with other people but also it's not so overwhelming yes that it's like i don't know i mean i think it would make a huge difference to the figures for next year if kiostama just stopped flying Yeah, yeah, all the time.

Speaker 7 That would just

Speaker 7 be a cop, I believe.

Speaker 7 That would take us, that would be a significant difference.

Speaker 9 So Cold Player are this massive band, and they're carbon neutral.

Speaker 9 And they're carbon neutral, not just from the way that they travel, but they take into consideration how everyone else has got to their concert and they neutralize that.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 9 So that should be happening at a government level as well, just as a real basic. To show that they care about it, because those kind of things I think are huge.

Speaker 10 To bring Cold Poi into government.

Speaker 7 Oh, I'm not sure. In an advisory role.

Speaker 9 If also put Chris Martin for president of UK.

Speaker 7 Quangle.

Speaker 7 Certainly for a probationary period and then you'll see how he does.

Speaker 9 He was great with that funny thing with the audience that they were having a snog and they were having an affair.

Speaker 9 Surely the next thing is electing him.

Speaker 10 I feel like Copelay, yeah, weren't very popular for a long time, but probably, you know, they're on the rise again.

Speaker 9 I think it's a greenhushing thing. I think they were popular, but people didn't want to admit to it.

Speaker 7 I think people want to play. Oh, you're right.

Speaker 9 They never went anywhere. They've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of people at their gigs.

Speaker 10 I was just going to say,

Speaker 10 on the language thing, COP is very, because

Speaker 10 having been at it, it is basically two weeks of sitting around watching countries around a table discuss words.

Speaker 10 So it's really much like paragraph three, section two, do we use the word urges or do we use the word suggests?

Speaker 10 And it's literally a day of countries arguing over that and coming to some sort of agreement by the end of it.

Speaker 7 That is fundamentally this programme. Yeah.

Speaker 7 But it's just three of us. Yeah.
Yeah. There is an hour.
It's in a half an hour.

Speaker 9 As an overt, do you leave it feeling inspired and positive? And

Speaker 10 I do, and the reason is not any of the technical UN, very slow processes.

Speaker 10 It's normally from meeting people from somewhere in the world that I've never met, someone before, who's there very much standing up for themselves because their river in their country is the town is drying up and they're worried about.

Speaker 10 So you speak to these people who are there and who normally wouldn't have a voice, right?

Speaker 10 And that's the main reason I think COP should continue going is because if you take it away, then where is the voice for those countries that are literally disappearing?

Speaker 7 Right. Well, we'll see if the planet survives for at least one more week.
We'll be back next week. Now, before we go, I've got a phrase that I've just come across in the last week.
Radical mundanity.

Speaker 7 Have you heard about that? Radical mundanity? I love it.

Speaker 9 Oh, do you? No, as in, I love the phrase.

Speaker 7 That calms me down. Oh, right.
Well, you'll be interested in this. Yes.
A phrase to describe...

Speaker 7 to answer the question, why haven't we been contacted by aliens?

Speaker 7 And the theory is that if they're anything like us, they will have tried to contact us and then after a while just got bored because that's what happens yeah you know when you when you remember that the Apollo mission to land on the moon people got bored of it by Apollo 17 there were plans to do Apollo 18 Apollo 19 but they just stopped because people got bored of watching people go to the moon yeah so um the aliens just got bored yes

Speaker 7 yeah so that is the theory yeah okay radical mundanity I like it what the radical part's interesting of the mundanity. Like, I don't know what the radical part is.

Speaker 9 The scheme itself should be so radical you could never get bored, but even that radical thing becomes mundane.

Speaker 7 After a while, radical is a kind of last-gasp attempt to make it interesting. Yeah.
But like you say, it is just mandana.

Speaker 10 Do you think they sent out some songs into the, you know, for us to pick up?

Speaker 7 Yeah, so signals that we don't have the technology.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and we're just like, we listen to it and I don't want to listen. It'd be ironic if

Speaker 7 the only equipment you could use to decipher the signals and songs that they sent were actually the very, very old versions of the iPhone and iPod.

Speaker 7 I mean, you know, the floppy discs on mini discs that only they used to be such a small amount of time.

Speaker 9 I'm like, why? Just for karaoke singers. And then the aliens are like, guys, we sent you the equipment.

Speaker 7 We've sent you, we watched you, we saw your technology. We put everything on a cassette for you.

Speaker 7 How you can make energy out of tears. It's got all the secrets.

Speaker 10 It's just

Speaker 7 what happened. You haven't got, you've got rid of all your cassette players.

Speaker 9 All of the solutions, your own sadness at the climate's heating will cool down the planet. Just play the tape.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I've got some words for you.

Speaker 9 I think you'll like these. They're Swedish words.
We don't have an equivalent, but they're all climate-related.

Speaker 9 So flag scam, which is the feeling of being ashamed of flying. Flag scam, the Swedish, they have a word for it.

Speaker 9 Tagskrit is a neologism used to brag about eco-travel choices. So when you didn't fly, you can tagskrit about it.

Speaker 7 Ah, right.

Speaker 9 And smigflage is stealthy flying, as in you did fly, but you don't post it on your Instagram.

Speaker 7 It's sort of literally flying under the radar. Absolutely, yeah.
What's that one? Steele.

Speaker 9 Smig Flager.

Speaker 7 Right. That's what Stalman is saying.
Lovely.

Speaker 10 So the word I have put forward is electrostate.

Speaker 10 Which is not a sort of 80s band or anything like that. It is what China are now being described as because they're electrifying at such a rate that they're the world's first global electrostate.

Speaker 10 So it's instead of

Speaker 7 petrol states, they are a country that are.

Speaker 10 And that's kind of the race that we now have over the next kind of 30, 40 years is probably the electro states versus the petrostates and see who wins out.

Speaker 9 Oh, God. Now, that does sound like a horrible film, doesn't it? With lots of explosions.

Speaker 7 What are we? Petro versus

Speaker 7 Spinning Jenny state.

Speaker 7 Thanks for listening to Strong Message Here. I'll be back next week.

Speaker 7 All of our previous episodes are available available in our feed, so please, for the love of God, make sure you're subscribed on BBC Sounds, or this will all end terribly. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Speaker 7 I'm Tom Heap.

Speaker 9 And I'm Helen Cheriski. A journalist and a physicist.

Speaker 7 Ready to tackle the biggest issues on the planet.

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