Petra Tschakert: Geologist, Anthropologist, IPCC Scientist
Release Date: 12/03/2022
Petra Tschakert: Geologist, Anthropologist, IPCC Scientist
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"Overshoot means we consciously and willingly allow to go above 1.5 while waiting for the right technology...to then rapidly bring down the overshoot. It would fulfill the goal laid out in the Paris Agreement however the damage done on the way is tremendous. The obligation of scientists is to lay out different ( plausible) scenarios. Its governments and industries who then take these plausible scenarios and insist that we have the luxury to wait because technical solutions will save us in the end. The reason why this interpretation is so flawed (and I think this is when I cracked...
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Peter Newman: Environmental Scientist and Sustainable Transport expert
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"We changed the world to start to see that automobile dependence was not a good thing...we were much hated by the automobile associations, the vehicle companies, the oil companies. They used to run people who would follow us everywhere. And they were given money to write papers attacking us." Professor Peter Newman reflecting on his work in the US with colleague Professor Jeff Kenworthy _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WA Scientist of the Year in 2018, Peter Newman AO...
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Saul Griffith: Australia's Electric Future
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
If you follow thought leaders on the energy transition, you’ll be familiar with the hashtag Electrify Everything. The argument is that a huge proportion of ‘global energy needs’ can be met with electricity sourced from renewables – and to use it we simply need to – electrify everything. This is the message of Australian inventor and engineer Saul Griffith – recently returned from two decades in the US where he’s advised, among others, NASA and the Biden Administration. Saul Griffith's book, “The Big Switch – Australia’s Electric Future” details some very clear thinking...
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Paul Cleary: Yindjibarndi Native Title Fight
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"I think it’s a scandal in this country that so much wealth is being extracted and Aboriginal people are no better off."
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Matthew Evans: Soil
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The people who can sweep us along in their enthusiasm and can-do attitude offer solid foundations for optimism as we witness the earth struggling …and the solutions seem too much for us as individuals to contemplate.
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David Carter + Jeff Hansen: An Unlikely Alliance
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
It began with a deep sea cod. David Carter and Jeff Hansen
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Andrew Wear: Solved
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
Andrew Wear is a very experienced public policy expert from Melbourne. He’s worked across a vast array of different policy areas from Planning and Community, Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources and that came in handy when he decided to write a book that just generally looked at how some of the world’s biggest problems were being solved. The book is called SOLVED and it details how ten countries solved ten big problems from climate change to multiculturalism.
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Tom Cronin: The Portal
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The idea of “saving the world” is one tossed out in a glib way in conversation, a grandiose statement few believe can manifest
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Matthew Kemp: Inventing the Artificial Womb
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The idea of an artificial womb – a place where a prematurely born baby could continue to safely gestate closer to full term, is one scientists have worked on intermittently since the late 1950’s. Until recently it’s been considered a wild card, a fairly unorthodox angle on dealing with pre-term birth. In this conversation, Assoc Professor Matthew Kemp discusses the determination, dedication and serendipity that has gained the artificial womb project significant recognition.
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Dominic Smith: Writing The Electric Hotel
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
Dominic Smith's fifth novel The Electric Hotel is set around the birth of cinema, the three decades across which most silent film was made.
info_outline"Overshoot means we consciously and willingly allow to go above 1.5 while waiting for the right technology...to then rapidly bring down the overshoot. It would fulfill the goal laid out in the Paris Agreement however the damage done on the way is tremendous.
The obligation of scientists is to lay out different ( plausible) scenarios. Its governments and industries who then take these plausible scenarios and insist that we have the luxury to wait because technical solutions will save us in the end. The reason why this interpretation is so flawed (and I think this is when I cracked on the IPCC 1.5 Special Report) was the realisation that an overshoot...could mean an eight degree warming for the Arctic."
Petra Tschakert is Professor of Geography and Global Futures at Curtin University where she has recently begun her tenure.
She is a human-environment geographer, motivated to use her research to strengthen resilience in communities experiencing disadvantage. She does this working at the intersection of a number of elements: climate change adaptation, sustainability, livelihood security, and climate, mobility, energy, and multispecies justice.
And the inter-disciplinary approach Petra has taken to her education will give you a good idea of how she can function in all these spaces. Geography and French in Austria led to working in community development in Senegal and then to a dissertation on soil carbon sequestration, also in Senegal, a PhD in arid lands resource sciences and applied anthropology in Arizona …the list goes on.
Petra was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group 2 of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), and contributed to its Summary for Policy Makers and the Synthesis Report, all of which fed into COP21 and the Paris Agreement. Then she worked on the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees global warming post-Paris.
Petra now co-chairs the National Strategy on Just Adaptation, led by the Australian Academy of Science and Future Earth Australia, and leads the Energy Humanities Initiative at Curtin.