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_outlineComposer Cat Hope has been described as “a superstar of Australian new music” best known for her graphic scores and new score-reading technologies.
It’s fascinating to wonder how the daughter of a military family with no especial leaning towards the arts has ended up being an internationally recognised authority on experimental music.
Despite the bass guitar being her first love (instrumentally speaking), Cat Hope began as a flautist - it was the main instrument through which she achieved her undergraduate degree at the University of Western Australia. She has always been a political animal, and described herself in her university days as being, to all intents and purposes - “a punk” - studying classical music by day and attending thrash gigs and engaging in active anarchic action by night.
Yet it was at UWA that Cat's ears were first tuned to new (experimental) music, where she realised that classical and new music are not completely separate…that new classical music is often an outcome of new political happenings and that some of it sounded a lot like the punk music she was already listening to.
A long time spent in Europe, particularly in the heady days of post Wall Berlin, Cat refined her bass playing, learned how to write a solid pop tune and finally settled back in Perth in 1997, continuing to play and compose in her groundbreaking style here despite the creative brain drain and cultural cringe of the time, forming bands including Gata Negra, Lux Mammoth and Decibel.
Two decades later, as an established member of the local, national and international arts community, one (as she says) with “the privilege of a full time job”, Cat Hope has visibly returned to her political roots, taking a stand against the Federal Government’s severe funding cuts to the arts and actively promoting women in the new music arena.
In 2017 Cat takes up a brilliant new appointment as Head of the Sir Zelman Cowan School of Music at Monash University in Melbourne.
Find examples of Cat Hope's music here on her BandCamp page. Three Gates Media thanks Cat immensely for this conversation.
This episode of Rare Air was recorded in 2016 at the studios of RTRFM 92.1 in Mount Lawley, WA
Mixed by Adrian Sardi of Sugarland Studios
Music "The Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions from freemusicarchive.org