Sustainababble

Well, this is it. Yer last ever Babble. Thank you - seriously, thank you - if you've lent us your attention over the years. It's been a pleasure. Herewith a valedictory episode in which we reveal the real reason we're binning the babble, Ol serenades Dave with an original tune, and we humbly compare ourselves to one of the finest sitcoms this or any country has ever produced. Mostly though we consume far too much of the Christmas spirit and get bitter about the British Podcast Awards, so it probably is time to call it a day. Some housekeeping - our old email address is now defunct, so if you want to contact us please write to legacybabble at gmail dot com. We love you, babble army. Hopefully see you again one day. Big hugs, Ol & Dave. Xxx Sustainababble was (sob) your friendly environment podcast, out weekly, from 2015-2022. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com All 274 episodes available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Socials won't be checked, but feel free to email us at legacybabble at gmail dot com. Over and out.

For our final interview, we're joined for a second time by the majestic Chris Packham, our first 'proper' guest all the way back in 2015. We discuss all that has changed in those seven and a half years, not least some pretty hardcore stuff for Chris personally, and we chew over what the world of activism and protest might look like seven years hence, given things continue to go so spectacularly to shit. Talking of shit, we discover that Chris Packham is full of it - so much so that he's put his favourite wildlife poo pics in a calendar for 2023 (available to order here, if you're into that sort of thing). The reality of making telly programmes; Pete Waterman's love of steam trains; our genetic predisposition to hate brussel sprouts; Mick Hucknell; photographing dead things; Michaela Strachan's 80s club nights - it's all ticked off in a wide-ranging chat with a man who is evidently more driven than ever to do everything and anything in his power to fight for the living world. Cheers, Chris. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

If there wasn't twitter, would we have solved climate change by now? Might we at least have got round to thinking about solving climate change? Would Ol have had more sleep? Sure, loads of important eco connections and organising and other useful stuff have happened via the site, but so too has a prodigious amount of titting about (trust us, we know of what we speak) let alone all the hate and bile and BS and conspiracy that sustains it. Do climate-y people need to 'win' twitter to make progress? Or is fighting online the problem, regardless of 'side', when we're crying out for a bit of peace, love and understanding? And does Elon's free speech crusade mean climate denial is re-invigorated? What with Musk's Truss-like flair for calm, competent leadership, these questions might be moot pretty soon, so you'd better get on and listen to this, a very macro-length episode about micro-blogging. As mentioned in the show, 'Stand Out of Our Light' by James Williams is a must read on the moral and political imperative of "liberating human attention from the forces of intelligent persuasion". Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Bat-chomping bird-slicing eco-crucifixes* are making a comeback! A mere eight years after some Tories effectively banned anyone from erecting wind turbines in England, some other Tories now look poised to overturn that ban. Which sort of tells you everything you need to know about Westminster politics. So this week we transport ourselves to a time when David Cameron was both a thing and someone who professed to like the planet, to understand why it is that these obviously useful, relentlessly popular, and appropriately sized (Grant Shapps, take note) steel and fibreglass daffodils are such Conservative kryptonite. *This term was coined by an inhofe of such absurdly high self-regard we can't bring ourselves to give him the oxygen of publicity. The one who looks like Gollum, if that helps. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Look, we're quitting, so if there ever was a leash we are now firmly off it. Problem is, while unleashed Dave might follow his nose into the bushes of podcasting misadventure, unleashed Ol... well, he's not that interesting is he? So having cast aside any editorial imperative to stay vaguely relevant or entertaining, herewith 45 minutes of a sad old man wanging on about hot water cylinders and heat pumps. Don't say you weren't warned. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Now then, we have Some News about the babble. Listen to the show to find out precisely what (don't worry, we haven't been bad), but suffice to say this year's Sustainabauble will be particularly valedictory. But before we get too festive and emotional, there's work to be done. Like trying to gather our thoughts on there being 8 billion humans alive. Or indeed what we make of the increasingly ballsy climate protests sweeping the land. Are Just Stop Oil really "damaging their cause", as so many armchair critics would have us believe? And finally whether COP 27 (itself not finalised at the time of recording, we should add) is doing anything meaningfully better than the previous two dozen and two. Busy boys, we are. At least for the next four weeks. Sniff. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Chances are you'll have read David Roberts' superlative writing on climate – at Vox or more recently Volts – and thought ‘coo, that's sensible and right and interesting'. We certainly have, so we're delighted to finally have him on the show. David natters with us about US politics (are things potentially *not* totally naused?), progressives' inability to be happy, the usefulness of COPs and the role of protest. We also goad him to adopt pointlessly binary positions on various controversial topics but, darn it, he sees us coming. As mentioned in the show, here's David's sterling advice for aspiring journalists. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

If we said "name the weirdest, most mystical & inexplicable creature on earth" you would rightly say "80s English footballer Peter Beardsley". But pause for a moment to consider instead the 'umble eel, a fish(ish) so unknown and unknowable that no human has observed one shagging in the wild. In fact no-one's totally sure that they even DO shag in the wild. A bit like Peter Beardsley. It's an astonishing tale, the eel's, at the heart of which is a simple question that's confounded thinkers big and small for centuries: where do eels come from? Mad cap attempts to find out have been almost as wild as the fact that people like eating the poor sods in a 'jelly' of their own skin and sweat. We delve into the deliciously, reassuringly bonkers story of the eel and its origins, a story that in October 2022 partially revealed itself to modern science. Which doesn't strike us as a necessarily good thing. Enjoy Dr Emily Finch's twitter thread that prompted this episode, and then read Brooke Jarvis' superlative New Yorker article from 2021. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Loathe though we are to be scatological, it's time to face faecal facts: the astonishing amount of human excrement on the planet presents a honking environmental challenge. When you think about it, with nearly eight billion of us crimping one out most days, the fact that humans aren't all swimming in the stuff is an impressive log-istical achievement, especially when flush toilets have only existed for 150 years. And despite it being the most normal thing in the world, poos and pooing remains a curious taboo. Unless, that is, you're professor and film-maker Troy Hale, whose latest release (sorry) 'Sh*t Saves the World' is a televisual tribute to all things number two. Ahead of his film being deposited on a UK streaming service near you, we shoot the crap with Troy. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Britain has lost a lot of things lately: international standing; economic credibility; its collective shit. But we've also mislaid something more fragile, dank and extraordinary than even Liz Truss's premiership: our precious and hitherto largely unknown temperate rainforests. In his new book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain, author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole sets out to right that wrong. He's mapped every last rainforesty remnant, uncovered centuries old cultural ties to them, and outlined a compelling case for reversing their decline. Now listen, before you get excited, don't go expecting pumas and parrots and leeches and wotnot, like in 'proper' rainforests. But as Guy patiently explains, Blighty's special areas - cold and wet rather than hot and wet, like all the places you'd actually want to go on holiday - are jam packed with extraordinary flora and fauna none-the-less. Or at least they were, until Dave showed up with his size 9s. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Who knew climate conferences had corporate sponsors? 183,295 people, that's who, for they have signed a petition telling the UN suits to ditch the sponsor of this year's jamboree in Egypt which is... Coca-Cola. That's Coca "oh hi! we're the biggest plastic polluter in the world!" Cola. Producers of 200,000 plastic bottles EVERY MINUTE coca-cola. Corporate lobbyists supreme, Coca-Cola. Everyone's favourite pilferer of scarce fresh water supplies and flogger of brown sugary fizz, Coca-Cola. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. We speak to Georgia Elliott-Smith, legal activist and originator of said petition, to find out what on earth is going on, and discover the astonishing extent to which climate conferences - meetings we naively assumed (SILLY US!) were about halting the destruction life on earth - are massive trade shows for polluters. Sign Georgia's petition here https://www.change.org/p/remove-coca-cola-as-sponsors-of-cop27 Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Mistakes have been made, lessons learned. Yet again, us being away for a few weeks coincided with the ass falling out of everything that is good. In fact Blighty's new "Government" has done so many dastardly things that even usually mild-mannered bird watchers are losing their shit. Worse still, Dave & Ol's reputation is in tatters after we (*cough* Dave *cough*) said the Trussticular era probably wouldn't be much worse than what came before. Whoops. So this episode is our heartfelt apology to the babble army. We're sorry for going away, and we're sorry for being wrong. We get it, and we've listened, and we will never be wrong or away again. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

What, or who, is a Liz Truss and why does anyone care? Well buckle up because approximately 17 old white men from the rich bits of England have just made her boss of Blighty and there are, we fear, going to be some changes around here. Or, er, are there? Because while Liz Truss is an MP with as many environmentalist bones in her body as a jellyfish, and as much as it's very, VERY tempting to get all shouty about her un-banning fracking etc., might we be getting too obsessed with individual politicians? Is one person - admittedly quite an important person - *really* going to irreparably nause things up any more than they were being naused anyway? That's how we're rationalising the situation, at any rate. And it's probably not a million miles from King Charles III's thought process right now either. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

'Intersectional environmentalism' is a) a lot of syllables, b) a brilliant concept explained simply and powerfully by writer and environmentalist Leah Thomas, and c) coincidentally also the title of Leah's new book. Part activist toolkit, part theory, and part history of environmental (in)justice, The Intersectional Environmentalist acknowledges and explores the overlap between systemic harm against Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) communities and the Earth. It also does a superb job of disentangling numerous knotty issues, like what privilege is and what it's got to do with the planet, with care and patience. And, talking of patience, Leah tells us that in a world overflowing with mansplain, her favourite pastime is "gracefully humbling men". The babble can neither confirm nor deny whether it was humbled during the course of this interview. (Yes, yes we were. Ed.) Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Rupert Read is an author, philosopher, and activist, perhaps best known for his prominent role in Extinction Rebellion. He's written more than a dozen books and his most recent - Why Climate Breakdown Matters - is, well, full on. Full on in that it argues that unless we confront the full horror of the situation we're in, and the very high likelihood that that situation will unravel towards some sort of societal collapse, then we can't possibly hope to plot a course towards a liveable future. So yeah, it's not for the faint hearted, but Rupert's argument also goes that it's *only* truth-telling that has had any success in recent years (see e.g. XR and Greta) and that love & compassion has to be at the heart of our response to climate breakdown, which when you think about it, is rather lovely. Apart from the climate breakdown bit. So strap in for a bracing but powerful chat with a very big brain, who - praise the Lord - seems to think that the Babble isn't a massive diversion from the task at hand. Get 20% off when you order Rupert's book from bloomsbury.com and use these discount codes:US orders: BREAK22USUK orders: BREAK22UKCanadian orders: BREAK22CAAustralian/New Zealand orders: BREAK22AU Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

If you ever encounter a Sloane's Viperfish, you're in for a treat. The charming creature has a bite so ferocious that its first vertebra has to act as a shock absorber. When it chomps, it unhinges its skull, opens its jaw 90 degrees, and expands its stomach to eat things up to 50% bigger than itself. Its absurd fangs act as a cage, trapping anything trying to escape. Luckily for us, Viperfish are found in the high seas, which is a very good reason to never go there. But unfortunately lots of people ARE going there, or planning to, mainly to nause them up. But what, or where, is the 'high seas'? Are there pirates there? Does anyone really care about them given they're big, wet and miles away? Do they do anything useful for humanity, other than nurture killer fish? Dr Olive Heffernan, a superstar scientist with a forthcoming book on the High Seas, joins us to answer all these questions and to explain a) just how imperilled this extraordinary bit of planet earth really is, and b) what the good people of the UN are trying to do about it. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Fans of our feathered friends, look away now...If you've been to the coast recently there's every chance you'll have seen, how can we put this delicately, an exceptionally dead bird washed up on the shore. Or, more likely, dozens of the bastards. Bird flu has been around for ever, but evidently got the hump while Covid hogged the viral limelight. Now it's back with a vengeance, ensuring everyone and H5N-y-1 knows its name. Predictably enough, concern is largely reserved for the economic impact of farmed chickens getting the deadly snuffle. But what about skewered skuas or puff-less puffins? Can anything be done to stop them falling from the sky? Might it, I dunno, involve NOT TREATING SENTIENT BEINGS SO GROTESQUELY? Also this week, babble respects are paid to James Lovelock, maverick scientist and father of the Gaia theory, who's dropped off his own perch at the ripe old age of 103. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Famously soggy, predictably chilly. Well, not any more, cos Blighty has joined the global combustability club after turning in a world-beating and very much oven-ready 40.3 degrees C of scorchiosity in its latest heatwave. So how freaked out should we feel? Cos like, this was always going to happen wasn't it? And, as sure as tropical night follows sweltering day, it's only going to get hotter from here. But does extreme weather's inevitability in anyway dent its horror? Will the fact that much of London ACTUALLY CAUGHT ON FIRE change inhofe-ish minds about the need for climate action? What, in other words, The Hell are we supposed to make of all this? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

How much, precisely, is one whale worth? Half an elephant? Three dozen gibbons? "Don't be silly, Ol and Dave, you can't put a price on nature" we hear you cry. Well tell it to the IMF, because they say our blubbery friends retail for $2m, a big figure which, in the world of excel spreadsheets and cost benefit analyses, means whales are worth saving. Unlike, say, earwigs, who aren't priced up and therefore can extinctify themselves without wider consequences. Bonkers, no? Well that's what Adrienne Buller, author of fab new book The Value of a Whale: On the illusions of Green Capitalism wants us to think about. Because there is also an argument that goes 1) everything's dead or dying, 2) the powerful only care about money, 3) give animals a dollar value & men in suits might prefer them alive, 4) NOTHING ELSE SEEMS TO BE WORKING SO LET'S GIVE THIS A SHOT, EH? We discuss. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Epping Forest, or "Effing Forest" as it's known to the locals, is at the heart of Luke Turner's wonderful 2019 book about sexuality, trauma, god and personal recovery. The forest, Luke says, hums with an energy of people both enjoying the place but also getting up to things they can't do, and being people they can't be, in their normal lives. It's a human landscape, and kinda always has been - in contrast to the hippified, somewhat problematic idea of 'untouched' woodland. And despite all its undeniable loveliness, it's not necessarily a place which magically 'cures' your ills, no matter what forest-bathing evangelists might claim. We natter to Luke about all this, covering off grumble mags, Throbbing Gristle, Peter Lilley MP and the soullnessness of St Albans along the way. As you may have gathered, this week's episode features what prudes describe as 'adult themes', so you might want to avoid it if you're listening with kids and don't fancy trying to explain what a jazz mag is. You can find Luke's article about the pandemic and inequality of access to nature here. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

The babble, it must be said, has a problem with authority. Probably cos of our upbringing or something. But this week, The Authority – specifically the Advertising Standards Authority – shot up in our estimation after it said NO, PURVEYORS OF SH*T LAWNS, YOU CANNOT CALL SH*T LAWNS ECO-FRIENDLY. Huzzah! BUT, they simultaneously stamped on vegan ads, so The Authority is firmly back in the bastards column again. We think. Also this week, Joe ‘Hey! I'm still alive!' Biden gets all militaristic about heat pumps and Dave gets all heat pumped about Rishi Sunak. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

If you were until recently, say, sustainability overlord at IKEA, should you be viewed as a suit who slapped green respectability onto a company that flooded living rooms with unnecessary tat? Or, perhaps, as a radical, transforming one of the word's biggest businesses into among the greenest while bringing veggie balls to the masses? Well, Steve Howard is said person - currently boss of sustainability at Singaporean investment fund Temasek - and as luck would have it he agreed to come on the babble and be asked about all things 'business' and the planet. And he doesn't even have a book out. Because if we're totally honest, for so many of us greenies, the 'B' word alone gets our babble antenna pinging. But, y'know, should it? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Bring out the bunting, close the streets, give everyone an extra holiday! No, not for the Queen's platinum wotsit, for the fact that the Aussies have voted out another massive inhofe! Yep, believe it or not, this week we say cheery bye-bye to former PM Scott Morrison, purveyor of weapons grade bullshit and world-leading climate inaction. And, it must be said, Olympic standard inhofery towards anyone who isn't Scott Morrison. To understand how and why ScoMo got the heave-ho, and to avoid an entire episode of Dave and Ol yelling HA HA HA HA and doing a silly dance, we natter to noted Aussie climate guru and politics wizard Ketan Joshi. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

The night sky, it seems, is getting brighter. At least according to some not-science we got sent by some not-scientists. But whether it's true or not (it almost certainly isn't) the question of light pollution got us thinking. So this week we rattle off all the ways in which the simple act of making sure we can see where we're all going is in fact abysmally bad for life on earth. Here's to another 250 episodes eh. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

We live in a desperately cynical world - christ, the Babble should know - but a few public figures remain untarnished, standing tall as beacons of trustworthiness while our shared consensus collapses around us. The O.G. Big Dave is perhaps the most trusted of them all, the mere idea of him lying too horrible to comprehend. Which is perhaps why, when *he* tells us the planet is on fire and it's all our fault - unlike, say, every climate activist - the message is heard, listened to, and believed. It's also why he must never be allowed to retire or, frankly, drop off the perch. So to celebrate his recent 96th birthday, we ask: who really is this nonagenarian newt nuzzler? What did he do before he was climbing mountains of bat shit on telly? And do his dodgy views about birth control mean he should be a permanent resident of Inhofe corner? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

You might think being dead is when you can finally stop worrying about your impact on the planet. You'd be wrong. Be it burrying, burning, or buggering off to space, there are myriad options for dealing with one's remains, and not all of them particularly courteous to the living organisms you leave behind. So, inspired by an email from the intriguing sounding www.earthfuneral.com, this week Dave quizes Ol on the different ways people (or at least, Americans) have come up with to dispose of the recently departed. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

In a rare bit of good news for the nation's youth, a new natural history GCSE means 16 year olds might one day appreciate fauna as much as they do Fortnite. Author & conservation goddess Mary Colwell is the driving force behind the 10 yr + campaign to persuade the UK government to introduce this new qualification, no mean feat given the introductions they prefer to make are between plutocrat A and party fundraiser B. ALLEGEDLY.We natter to Mary about how on earth she got this campaign over the line - featuring Bond-style train chases, among other things - as well as the spell-binding power of the natural world, and why she's cur-razy about curlews [sorry, ed.]. So strap in for an immensely heart-warming chat with someone to whom future generations may owe a significant debt. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Kelp. That's what's gonna save the world. Not trees, kelp. Or seagrass. Or some other form of wibbly algae that lives in the sea and isn't a plant. Bingeing carbon; hoovering up chemical nasties in the water; being home for the ickle fishies; being turned into non-plastic plastic - seaweed does myriad very important jobs without so much as a sniff of inhofery. And, lest we forget, it can be damn tasty, especially if you're the Welsh. So why don't western countries pay attention to the stuff? Why aren't we farming it at any meaningful scale? Is it really the green Jesus some people claim it to be, or is it just... green? And why, WHY, would anyone put something as unattractive as laver bread in their gob? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Keep Out. Two little words that carry such unquestioned authority. But why are we so well behaved when what we're kept out of is often the thing we're all lacking - green space, the beguiling attraction of the natural world, things that aren't manicured and sanitised? How did England's green and pleasant lands come to be so hostile to most of us plebs? We quiz author and illustrator Nick Hayes, who has literally written the book on trespass. Two in fact - the latest, The Trespasser's Companion, being the follow up to his mind-expanding 2020 effort The Book of Trespass. Head to https://www.trespasserscompanion.org/ for more, including the opportunity to contribute to the Trespass Tripadvisor by uploading pictures and notes from your own transgressions. And join the Right to Roam campaign, demanding far better access to the countryside for everyone in England. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Babble listeners are definitionally a wise and discerning bunch, so just occasionally we permit the besplurgification of our inbox with probing questions that we absolutely promise to answer on air - unless they're shit. This week, then, it's Dave and Ol doing the shutting up and listening, minus the shutting up bit, as we subject ourselves to interrogation by you, our loyal enablers. Lines of enquiry include:- why haven't you covered the most controversial enviro topic in UK politics over the last few years, you cowards?- what *wouldn't* you do to save the planet, you cowards?- why don't you put your mics down and do some real activism for once, you cowards? Herewith 50 minutes of us inhofes trying to justify our cowardliness. ** Donate to frontline organisations in Ukraine:* Medical relief – https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/emergency-response/war-in-ukraine/* Aid packages – https://novaukraine.org/* Support for journalists – https://cpj.org/2022/02/cpj-calls-for-protection-of-journalists-in-ukraine/ Volunteer or offer practical help to UK-based organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers:* https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/support-us/volunteers/* https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer-for-us/volunteer-opportunities/* https://www.roomforrefugees.com* https://www.refugeesathome.org/ ** Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

"No please, tell me MORE about your cavity walls!" said absolutely no-one, ever. And that's kinda the problem for poor ol' insulation: it's dull. Yawningly, achingly, Michael-Owen-in-that-weird-Dubai-helicopter-video dull. And as such, few people so much as shrug when Governments comprehensively fail to insulate Britain. BUT any muppet can see it's a spectacularly good idea not to waste heat. Especially when there's a war on, fuelled in part by people paying for that wasted heat. So why do politicians lag (geddit? GEDDIT??) so far behind the curve when it comes to making homes less leaky? Will the newly gruesome geopolitical context finally jolt suits into action? And - AND - is it ever OK to say that yes, actually, some people's homes are too damn hot? ** Please support organisations assisting Ukrainians and victims of war everywhere, if you can: Donate to frontline organisations in Ukraine:* Medical relief – https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/emergency-response/war-in-ukraine/* Aid packages – https://novaukraine.org/* Support for journalists – https://cpj.org/2022/02/cpj-calls-for-protection-of-journalists-in-ukraine/Volunteer or offer practical help to UK-based organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers:* https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/support-us/volunteers/* https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer-for-us/volunteer-opportunities/* https://www.roomforrefugees.com* https://www.refugeesathome.org/ ** Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Suing national Governments for gross Inhofery, whilst simultaneously laying the smackdown on oil and gas companies, sounds daunting and, frankly, a lot of work. Thank bejeezus then that international environmental & human rights lawyer Tessa Khan is busy doing all this and more, with no little success. We natter to Tessa, who founded and directs Uplift, about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its connection to all things fossil fuelled; the merits and pitfalls of trying to save the planet via the courts; and what to do with all the shit white men in positions of power. As mentioned in the show, please support organisations assisting Ukrainians and victims of war everywhere, if you can: Donate to frontline organisations in Ukraine:* Medical relief - https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/emergency-response/war-in-ukraine/* Aid packages - https://novaukraine.org/* Support for journalists - https://cpj.org/2022/02/cpj-calls-for-protection-of-journalists-in-ukraine/Volunteer or offer practical help to UK-based organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers:* https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/support-us/volunteers/* https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer-for-us/volunteer-opportunities/* https://www.roomforrefugees.com* https://www.refugeesathome.org/ Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

They're not birds, and approximately half aren't ladies. But ladybirds very much ARE beetles, and that alone is reason to celebrate them. Even if they do puke from their knee-joints. However, not everyone coos over these perfect shiny wonders. SOME PEOPLE (*cough* Dave *cough*) seem to think they're inhofes, especially the foreign ones coming over 'ere ruining aphid-munching for our natives species. So we delve into the mysterious world of Coccinellidae, from STDs to tooth powder, all in the name of helping Dave answer the entirely unnecessary question: Ladybirds - are they good or not? Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

What is a culture war? Are greenies like us now fighting one? Are we... the baddies? All questions we must, regrettably, now grapple with, because a phalanx of Tory MPs - ably assisted by their outriders in the shite-wing media - are labelling 'net zero' advocates as woke-ist elites, determined to heap misery on the poor. So who are these finger-jabbing inhofes, and how much support do they have? Why do they hate climate action so much? Do they... have a point? Show notes:* Excellent Guardian piece on Net Zero Watch* 538 Podcast - 'Americans aren't as polarized as the news makes it seem' Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

If you thought Bitcoin was confusing, wait 'til you hear about 'non-fungible tokens'. In fact you've probably already heard about them, after a major conservation charity decided to flog NFTs of pictures of tigers and the like, only to be met with the mother and father of all backlashes. NFTs are modern and confusing, for sure. But are they really environmental kryptonite? Was the backlash deserved? Also this week, two wonderful and separate examples of creative activism from the good folks at Greenpeace and Insulate Britain. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Very, VERY excitingly, this week we natter with one of the best climate communicators around, who also happens to be one of the planet's foremost climate scientists. Professor Katharine Hayhoe is a United Nations 'Champion of the Earth', chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. Her new book, Saving Us, makes the case that the most important thing we can do about climate change is the one thing we're terrible at - talking about it. But by talking, Katharine doesn't mean passive aggressively quoting IPCC reports and hurling Keeling curves at each other. Instead, we must 'bond, connect and inspire' if we want to actually change anything. If you, like us, want more Katharine in your brain, you can:- Pick up a copy of her new book- Watch her 2018 TED talk- Read her Time article about hope- Follow her on Twitter- Head to 'Count us in', a Don't Look Up follow-on, advised by Katharine Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

It is bonkers that so much effort, land, water & energy is used to make so much food that never goes in anyone's gob. Bonkers and, as babble listener Alysia points out, VERY planety-imperilly. Alysia also notes that we've gone 236 episodes without focussing our babblenoculars on the matter, so this week we pinch our noses, gingerly approach the kitchen caddy and gag on the maloderous stench of the global food waste scandal. Question one, of course, is who are the inhofes? Supermakets and their BOGOFs? Governments and their "meh"s? Or is it Ol, Dave, and the rest of us? Should we be better at planning our portions? Should we ignore use-by dates?* Should we stop being scared of our children and tell them to EAT WHAT THEY'RE DAMN WELL GIVEN? And how, if at all, can we get the mountain of edible wasted food into the mouths of the hungry? Read Jack Monroe's excellent twitter thread, as mentioned in the episiode, here. *Please under no circumstance actually do this. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

SPOILER ALERT! This week we natter about the Netflix film 'Don't Look Up', so EFFIN' WELL WATCH IT it before listening. The second most viewed Netflix film ever, Don't Look Up tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an approaching - and, more to the point, LARGE - comet that will go bang on planet earth. The writer, Adam McKay, says the crashy comet is an allegory for climate change, and the film is a satire of various inhofes' indifference to the climate crisis even when it's literally falling from the sky. But what *we* can't decide is, is it any good? Should we be pleased that there's a popular film about climaggedon? Should we be cross that the analogy is a bit crude? Are we sure that it even is a climate change film? We dust off the Christmas hangovers to waffle our way towards an answer, aided significantly by some splendid listener reviews. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

A statement from Dave and Ol: "All Sustainabaubles complied with the rules at the time of recording. Not that there have been any Sustainabaubles. But should there have been, they would have been babble-secure. And, just to be sure, we've instructed Arabella to investigate a Sustainabauble that definitely didn't happen, in case it in fact did." RIGHT, ON WITH IT. **You can still watch Dave and Ol in a livestream event, together with access to watch the wonderful film The Atom: A Love Affair, until New Year's Eve. Find out more here.** Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

--**THIS WEEK! Join Dave and Ol for a LIVE Q&A on 9 December! More details below.**-- The blood diamonds of Mexico. A hipster's fever dream. Compressed mushy peas disguised as a gonad. Is there *anything* to commend the avocado? A fruit, we'll remind you, that CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO TASTE SWEET. And that's before we consider 'avolattes', an invention every bit as infuriating as the people who drink them. Well hang on just a vegan-bashing minute. Why does the humble alligator pear cop so much flack? Sure, the practice of growing billions of the blighters is, in many ways, absolutely catastrophic. But so is growing billions of anything. Perhaps the h8ers could leave off the poor old avo, and let the planet-conscious eat a nice thing in peace for once? -- COME AND SEE US LIVE! On 9 December join Dave and Ol* for a Q&A with the writer & director of the Mark Kermode-endorsed The Atom: A love affair documentary. Tickets are £8, and include access to the film for a week. 50% discount for babble patreon supporters. Kick-off 7.30. Sign up here. *(On Zoom) -- Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

**JUST 10 DAYS TO GO! Join Dave and Ol for a LIVE Q&A on 9 December! More details below.**It's here! Black Friday-mas is finally here! Thank the lord. Thank Jeff Bezos. Thank f*ck.Sigh. It's probably not OK to go warm and fuzzy in our special areas at the thought of being hoodwinked into buying sh*t we don't need just a month before we all lose our minds over the next orgy of mindless consumerism. And it's probably right and proper to get het up and misanthropic about it.BUT hang on. Is Black Friday actually that bad? And don't all the people who hate Black Friday also hate shopping in general, and probably humanity too? Might it be conceivable - and stay with us here - that Black Friday is *good* for the planet?--COME AND SEE US LIVE! On 9 December join Dave and Ol* for a Q&A with the writer & director of the Mark Kermode-endorsed The Atom: A love affair documentary. Tickets are £8, and include access to the film for a week. 50% discount for babble patreon supporters. Kick-off 7.30. Sign up here. *(On Zoom)--Shout out to our podcast buddies, the superb 'Life Sentence' team, as mentioned at the end of the show. Check them out here https://life-sentence.simplecast.com/--Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

** Join Dave and Ol for a LIVE Q&A on 9 December! More details below. ** Is it OK to feel sorry for teary Alok Sharma? Which country's delegation parties the hardest? Who put China in the shed? And was anyone at all standing up for the dormouses (dormice?)? Not a single one of the 15,276 hot takes already published about COP26 has addressed these serious and urgent questions, but my god the babble is not in the business of hot takes. So sit back and allow yourself to be taken on a retrospective, warts 'n' all, aural tour of Glasgow's shed of sheds by Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, veteran of COPs passim, and a very tired human indeed. Follow Craig on Twitter @craigbennett3. COME AND SEE US LIVE! On 9 December join Dave and Ol* for a Q&A with the writer & director of the Mark Kermode-endorsed The Atom: A love affair documentary. Tickets are £8, and include access to the film for a week. 50% discount for babble patreon supporters. Kick-off 7.30. Sign up here. *(On Zoom) Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

** Join Dave and Ol for a LIVE Q&A on 9 December! More details below. ** "So Dave, Ol, what IS your favourite tetrahedral molecule?" is not the most F of AQs we get, but the answer - since you asked - is of course CH4, or methane to its mates. It may lack the celebrity cachet of CO2, but boy does methane pack a punch in the warming stakes. In fact it packs 84 times as much of a punch, which is one reason sleepy men in suits have started announcing plans to gaffa tape some of the places from whence it guffs. So this week we don our lab technicians' coats to mansplain the sources of this fleece-like molecule, and point our microscopes at the newly penned international agreements to investigate whether they're worth the vellum they're written on. COME AND SEE US LIVE! On 9 December join Dave and Ol* for a Q&A with the writer & director of the Mark Kermode-endorsed The Atom: A love affair documentary. Tickets are £8, and include access to the film for a week. 50% discount for babble patreon supporters. Kick-off 7.30. Sign up here. *(On Zoom) Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

** Join Dave and Ol for a LIVE Q&A on 9 December! More details below. ** There are few childhood rules that continue into grownupness, but 'don't shit in the sea' is definitely one of them. Which is why it's such a shame that all Brits' shits diligently done not in the sea seem to end up there regardless. Perhaps even more dispiritingly, politicians have proven themselves disinclined to do anything, actively voting *against* a thing that would have forced water companies to stop flooding the oceans with our motions. We role up our sleeves and plunge shoulder deep into the parliamentary u-bend to find out what the blockage seems to be. Also this week, some unexpected integrity from Boris "Boris Johnson" Johnson, and a, er, concrete example of schadenfreude. COME AND SEE US LIVE! On 9 December join Dave and Ol* for a Q&A with the writer & director of the Mark Kermode-endorsed The Atom: A love affair documentary. Tickets are £8, and include access to the film for a week. 50% discount for babble patreon supporters. Kick-off 7.30. Sign up here. *(On Zoom) Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Bugs in all their freaky forms do a staggering range of critical jobs that keep the planet from, among other things, quickly becoming a massive pile of corpses and poo. But humanity is nausing 'em, and we really, really need to stop nausing 'em. Yes, because bugs make it possible for almost all other animal species - including humans - to survive, but also because they are mesmerically wonderful in their own right. At least that's the view of this week's guest, author and head of sustainable farming at the charity Sustain, Vicki Hird, whose new book "Rebugging the Planet" is a joyous celebration of all things creepy crawly and a manifesto for bringing the little critters back from the brink. Discover more about Vicki's book at www.rebuggingtheplanet.org and follow Vicki @vickihird on Twitter and Instagram. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

A year late, for obvious reasons, but the imminent Glasgow climate shindig is still seismically important. But will this cauldron of egos be any more productive than the previous 25? Yes. No. Possibly. Probably not. Oh Jesus we don't know do we. But what we DO know is that countries were set homework at 2015's Paris get-together, homework that's very much overdue. So we canter through who's the class swot, who's too cool to comply with artificial constructs like 'deadlines', and who's been feeding their assignments to the dog. Oh, and we also chat to Bamber Hawes, the man on pilgrimage to the talks from Shropshire with Clarion the polar bear atop his shoulders. For wherever there are gatherings of international suits deciding humanity's fate, there will, as sure as C follows UNFCC-, be wonderfully bonkers acts of protest, theatre, and physical endurance. Follow Bamber & Clarion's progress - and help them out with accommodation, polar bear carrying, and the like - here https://clarionthebear.fish/ Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

What shape best represents the absolute lunacy that is humans and their economic activity? Something Jackson Pollock-esque? Mr Messy off of the Mr Men series, perhaps? Either way, probably not a nice, clean circle. But when you think about it, it really really should be. Cos unless we start (re)learning how to work with what we've got - i.e. sending things round and round in virtuous circles - rather than what we're about to drill / dig / blow up, we're gonna be in an awful pickle. To tell us what a circular economy actually is, why it's not babble, and how Ol buying a tumble dryer may not be inconsistent with it, is author, academic and activist Claire Potter. Claire's book, Welcome to the Circular Economy, is out now. Find it, along with all sorts of excellent resources, at her website https://onecircular.world/ or in any of the usual book-y places.Follow Claire on Twitter @clairepotter and Instagram @clairepotterdesign. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Everything's running out in Blighty. Gas (as in gas), gas (as in petrol) and everyone's patience. As far as we can tell, the two crises are unrelated, other than their shared connection to the climate. But crikey moses they are getting people in a tiz, not least because - and brace yourself for some advance economics here - when things run out, things get more expensive. So in a daredevil move, and with one eye on the oh-christ-this-could-be-dull-ometer, Ol and Dave simultaneously attempt to explain the gas market, geopolitics (please Mr Putin we didn't mean it), and the psychology of humans queuing for hours for petrol that isn't running out. ALSO THIS WEEK, some schadenfreude that we absolutely don't find funny and categorically do not endorse or condone. At all. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Four wheels good, two legs bad. For a hundred years, the gas-guzzling car has been king. But its days are numbered - no-one seriously disputes that - and what comes next will determine the scale of biospheric butchery in the post. But what if The Car 2.0 turns out not to be flying cars, autonomous cars, or Richard Branson Cars, but instead a happy mishmash of whizzy things and old-fashioned things that you don't own? Y'know, bikes, e-bikes, scooters & hire cars all available at the swipe of an iphone, and all beautifully integrated with public transport that arrives punctually and isn't piss-stained. That's the dream of this week's guest, deputy editor of the Economist and author Tom Standage, whose exhaustive new book a) explains how the car came to occupy such economic, political and sociological dominance, and b) devotes a pleasingingly large number of pages to actual horse shit. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

Despite what Assorted Inhofes say, climate change is a) real b) here already c) going to get worse. We'd better get ready. So how come we're - er - not? We chat all things climate adaptation with the eminent Dr Morgan Phillips, director of The Glacier Trust and, even more pertinently, author of a righteous new book about the subject, Great Adaptations. We talk about why despite human resilience, Morgan thinks that without shunting adaptation properly up the policy wazoo it's going to be Very Bad News Indeed for a very large number of people. And animals too. Turns out he's rather irked at big charities - and the Babble - for not banging on about it enough, a charge out from which we don't even attempt to weasel. All this, and why getting ready for climate change is very much like Tottenham's preparation for Harry Kane's off-sodding. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.