 Can you tell me a little bit about your role and your background and what you're working on at the moment? Sure, so I'm now a part-time full professor at the University of Cumbria in the UK and I'm within the business subject area there and I've been a professor of sustainability leadership there since 2012 but I'm part-time because I spend a lot of my time helping develop what's called the Deep Adaptation Forum which launched a year ago to help bring people together to promote more kind and wise responses to societal breakdown induced by climate change. Okay, and have you always been interested in this topic? I've always been interested since the age of 16 in environmental issues and environmental sustainability and yes it's been working on sustainability has been my career in working at the UN in environmental groups as a business consultant and then in politics and then finally now in academia and then this new approach which is kind of like post-sustainability really. What do you mean by that? Since 1992 when the world's government signed up to the idea of sustainable development there was this I'd hoped that you could integrate economic, social and environmental considerations or balance them out and achieve progress within existing systems and that was my paradigm until about 18 months ago. I mean it didn't really feel right for the last five years because progress was so minimal in fact there was no progress in terms of impact on the environment. We were going backwards things were getting worse but yeah it was about 18 months or so ago July 2018 when I decided to go public on my belief that we were sort of deluded to keep on with this idea that we can sustain this system and society as we know it. What is your belief now? We face inevitable societal breakdown in most parts of the world because of direct or indirect impacts of climate change. I don't know where and when and we're learning more and more information every day because observations of what's changing in our environment are going much faster than the science to analyse them and explain them. I think one of the examples of that is the impact of coronavirus which there's quite a lot of evidence to show is itself related the likelihood of it is related to climate change and habitat loss and biodiversity loss. And what do you then think of a lot of experts you know including Extinction Rebellion including members of the US and coming forward and trying to distance themselves from that narrative from the fear of being linked to eco-fascism what is your response to that? So I do not know many people clearly making the link between climate change and the likelihood of coronavirus outbreaks. There is science for example nine biologists in a paper just released undergoing peer review at the moment have shown how climate change is increasing the likelihood of coronavirus outbreaks they are mainstream biologists and so I don't actually know many people coming out and saying there isn't a connection I mean we've got the UN and Lancet and quite established authorities saying that habitat loss and biodiversity loss is leading to more disease for humans in the world because of coming from wildlife and that's not uncontroversial at all that's established science but the direct connection with climate is not being widely made yet but it's you can go and find it it's there. And so what do you make of then you know I think it was Dr. Mann from Columbia University who was quite a knee-jerk reaction to your response why do you think it is so contentious? So Professor Michael Mann I think from Penn State University he's a climatologist and it's the connection between wildlife disease and outbreaks of human disease is in the realm of biology, epidemiology and such like and so both Michael Mann and myself when we're looking at this topic are doing so purely as generalists who are curious so all I can do is cite sources which is what I do and I join the dots of different studies of different biologists and epidemiologists to show that climate change is making it more likely that bats are ill creating novel coronaviruses and coming in contact with humans more than before and shedding more of those viruses than before and so if another person who is also not an epidemiologist or a biologist wants to question that then I would just invite them to cite their sources or refute the sources that I'm citing. So with the postponement of COP26 in Glasgow and a number of other kind of climate discussions kind of being put on hold while governments currently deal with the short termism of an immediate plan for COVID-19 response, what impact do you think COVID-19 will have on the climate change movement from a governmental perspective? I think the research showing the link between climate change and the likelihood of outbreaks of disease including coronavirus disease, the research on that is so new and it's not really being paid much attention to, there's not been much funding gone into that area and I think because of that the connection has not been made it's not world news yet and so the full implications of making that connection are yet to be seen so environmentalists for example if they make that connection could say that it is a fundamentally unsafe response to bail out companies that are high emitters or to encourage stimulus in the economy if it's a carbon intensive economy our lifestyles are that it's actually unsafe it's counterproductive you're going to make future pandemics more likely by increasing climate change so that connection still needs to be made clearly of course people can argue about the evidence for it and where we need more research but I would invite them not to reject this out of hand it's not an opportunistic response it's a fact-based response and those people who dismiss it need to actually have facts to dismiss it with otherwise it's grossly irresponsible so my first response to you is then the connections need to be made and then we can have the conversation about what effective government response should be but I think you were asking of a little bit more about how the government response to COVID may or may not influence the government response to climate is that right? Well I mean if you look at what Trump's doing with this rollback of environmental friendly policies to support the oil industry and then you have on top of that the postponement of COP26 is this having more of a devastating impact on the climate change movement by halting things or is this an opportunity as you've mentioned to for them to actually piece things together and if in essence not return to steal from Naomi Klein not return to the you know business as usual because the business as usual was Australia burning and Amazon burning and bleaching of the coral reef so how do we actually which way will it tip or are we at a tipping point what does that it's a hard question I appreciate but just trying to understand I understand so I think the first thing to do is to to to recognize that people like the UN Secretary-General have said that climate disruption is happening now and happening everywhere obviously to varying degrees and that means that adaptation to the disruption to our lives from climate change has to be a significant priority it has to be up there with carbon cuts and drawdown lots of environmentalists in the past have not liked that idea because it sounded like giving in but what we see now is that unless we really think about how do we adapt how do we pull together once we realize that business as usual civilization as usual is under threat once we pull together around that then we can actually find new ways of responding and if we don't then working on collective public issues can go out the window people can move into blame and you know whatever is easiest to sort of absolve a leader of their own responsibility which is what we're seeing at the moment so I don't think we're seeing anywhere near enough multilateral cooperation on this pandemic it's a reflection of the fact that multilateralism in general in the world is in decline on including on climate maybe people through this will begin to realize you have to work together on the pandemic it doesn't it doesn't work to to flatten the curve in one country if it's going to be around the world and able to pop up again and spread around the world again so hopefully people will realize that we live in one environment together and we share a destiny in terms of how we look after each other in the planet I hope however we're seeing a lot of more panic and fear driven responses and so we're going to have to we're going to have to struggle for advocate for articulate for that more caring smart collaborative global response that's for sure um I I think for the climate movement I think there's there's actually a there's a big lesson in COVID around the importance of personal vulnerability so the climate movement generally has talked about what might happen in 2100 or 2050 so it didn't really matter for people who are super busy trying to put food on their table for their kids tomorrow and actually climate change as I mentioned has become a disruptive force in everyone's lives everywhere just to varying degrees already and so we are now personally all of us vulnerable to climate change already and we can see what happens what what's invited from the state when we feel personally vulnerable which is incredible changes to our personal freedoms in the name of actually trying to care for each other and so that really goes against what the environmental movement many of the professional environmental people have been saying for decades which is don't worry anyone don't scare anyone um let's sound reasonable let's sound reformist let's sound friendly to business I mean who's who's saying that now about COVID let's sound friendly to business it just when it's a matter of life and death that seems uh it just seems inhuman and yet we seem to tolerate that discourse for the environment when actually people hundreds of millions of people are dying already because of climate change and we all of us are becoming vulnerable now because of climate change and that's not even without seeing COVID as partly a climate induced event which many people are now beginning to see it as great do you think in terms of I've heard a lot of resurgence of the Gaia hypothesis which has been around for ages but the earth is a self-regulating system and this is all been kind of earth responding to that um I think it goes a slightly step further than your your strictly factual based evidence of um and your sources that you cite saying that this is you know climate change is causing this do you think that is a dangerous narrative um and if so why or is that a narrative that can be leveraged to help get more consumers on board and to to seeing the connection between the two so any perspective any theory uh can be shared from a fear-based or a friendly or even love-based intention and so the Gaia theory can be an invitation for people to realize that we live on this planet and what we do to wildlife what we do to ecosystems what we do to our climate ultimately rebounds on us so we do to ourselves and so that can be shared as a philosophy to invite more attention to uh collective well-being of humans of of animals of whole the whole of life but it can also be used as a sort of a a way of avoiding pain a way of avoiding uh full attention to what's going on um so if people say oh this is just the earth rebounding and Gaia having its revenge um then for me um that that sounds like it's coming from a place of of people just not being able to be with the pain and the suffering in the world right now and I would just invite them to um see where they can engage in this from a kind of place um because um otherwise it's just an excuse for trying to like distance yourself from the pain of what's happening in the world do you think it lends itself too easily to a slippery slope of eco-fascism um for me um there is the rise of proto-fascism and the um the antecedents of fascism happening right now we don't have to have theories about it we don't have to have sort of ideas that um there's a slippery slope we've already got it I mean the the the powers that have been given to say Victor Auburn in in in Hungary um you these powers should not be given the EU I thought was more than an economic bloc and it's ridiculous that you can have a country giving such dictatorial powers um to the leader within the European Union it's the disgrace so I think what we need to do now is fight fascism as it's emerging everywhere right now with people with power at the moment environmentalists um don't have any power really um so uh I argue against anyone anywhere uh calling for sort of inhuman unaccountable use of force or disregarding human life whether they say that they're an environmentalist or not but I think we've got far greater threats to our own freedoms and our own well-being our own rights from leaders in power right now okay um and then I guess my my other question is what would your message be to consumers what would your message be to the individuals who do see the connection um what I've realized as a consumer uh who goes shopping and goes to restaurants and such like is that um I had got into a way of thinking where I thought my um my needs my wants my desires were unproblematic it was just the way of living you know you just live and you spend some money and you consume stuff and services so what's happened for me suddenly uh living here uh in Indonesia and suddenly realizing that a whole bunch of things that I depend on through the market economy may not be there and also real realizing well not being able to go out as well um like in Britain suddenly um I'm I'm realizing that um my needs and wants and desires are not um are not what makes me uh and it's actually really been good to be invited out of habitual consumption um I have been learning to cook again uh I have been paying way more attention to my immediate environment the garden for example um uh it's it's it's it's amazing how I've I've just started to look at books on my shelf again uh I've it's just I think somehow loosening the habit of consumption that's what's happening in my life anyway so I'm hearing that from other people and I hope we don't I hope we don't lose that is I hope we don't suddenly when lockdowns are lifted just think ha I want to just go to my favorite restaurant and start binge consuming um I I hope we think I actually uh I didn't need that I didn't need that um I realized I just want more time I want more time with my friends or more time with my family more more time at home more time with books more time with my guitar less less shopping and less running around so I hope that that's what happens the more people it's happening for me anyway COVID-19 has obviously a generational component it affects older people more so than it does younger people uh the climate change is is largely I think associated particularly now with the likes of Greta Thunberg with the younger people is their attention and intergenerational tension uh with the COVID-19 and climate change um context equally having attended a conference really um on the sustainability transition into post COVID-19 and seeing all men on the environmental front uh yep seeing recent ipsos data that we've just produced that says women actually are more likely to care for uh partners and neighbors and others in the COVID-19 crisis is there also a gender component uh to this is there tensions between the two um and how do you see that um I know that sometimes uh people talk about the older generations letting down the younger generations on climate change uh and I think that's an unhelpful framing because it's misleading younger generations we have seen centuries of people struggling to protect their environment and there have been uh so there are people you know in their 80s who've been lifelong environmental campaigners and so if we set this up as an intergenerational schism or struggle what we're doing is inviting people not to look at more important schisms and why environmentalism has failed for decades and it was because we didn't look at power we didn't look at capitalism we thought that we could just persuade people in power whether it's corporations or governments to incorporate concern for environmental issues without changing anything systemically and so our biggest mistake was not to see it as environmentalism as a political project so framing things as somehow a generation letting down a younger generation mean it invites you away from learning from um the history of struggle and where we've gone wrong um and so I think it's a dangerous uh uh alley to go down um and however I do understand that young people can feel resentments um because they're facing a future which older people haven't had to face and those resentments can be compounded when older people are confident in telling younger people about how the world really is and how they should just get on with their exams and just get a good job um I think there's a very healthy whole scale rejection of the dominant values of mainstream culture and all the kind of crap that young people will be hearing from their parents and grandparents about how life really is so I understand the resentments and I and I welcome their rejection of dominant um mainstream culture however setting it up as an intergenerational issue misses out on all the learning we can have from as I said over a century of struggle for people of people trying to protect their environments against power abuse of power against the rampage of capitalism you mentioned gender um um so many of the problems humanity faces so many whether it's um gross inequality um whether it's a pandemic um and how that's made worse through inequality whether it's environmental degradation climate change so many of these problems are the result of an economic and political system which uh has um been designed by and championed by and has served men more than women and uh attributes that we call masculine rather than those we might call feminine uh and we need to look at that um we need to see how um patriarchy in some form may be at fault in all manner of problems in society including even mental health um so when I say patriarchy I don't mean blame men um patriarchy is created and supported by all humans to certain degrees in different ways so it's but it's a looking at how we've privileged um maleness masculinity's certain types um and men over women uh and uh and how that may have injured our culture our thinking our ability to make sensible decisions you know as in not end up leading us into terrible destructive behaviors as a species brilliant thank you so much I think we've covered lots of the different topics that that were planned into uh to distill into a narrative into the film are you is there anything else that you we didn't cover that you would want to say or yeah you asked me um on email or on twitter about why aren't more scientists and environmental activists talking about the evidence for a connection between climate change and the likelihood of outbreaks of disease including coronavirus so I thought about that and I thought well you know I I don't know because I haven't talked to those people who are resistant to making those connections but I do know that in my case there was definitely a fear of being professionally criticized and being publicly ridiculed for um joining the dots of different scientific studies to um offer uh an explanation which is at the moment not a mainstream one and I think it's the kind of fear is is increased when you know that emotions are really running high as they are right now with this pandemic so I think there's there is that but there's also a psychological barrier for scholars experts we work damn hard over many many years to work at being able to have something to say on a very narrow area and so so we're sort of a whole world has been boxing reality into different domains biology economics climate whatever and we've worked so hard in those boxes so then to actually come out and actually sort of peer out to sort of like almost like a wider warehouse of knowing and say something relevant to that is can feel a bit like um we're a bit uncertain about it and it almost can feel a bit like an insult to all the work we've done over the decades to get some kind of uh sense of confidence to speak just about this little one thing um so I think we have that problem as experts and then there's there's people who've done research to say the people who are the most successful uh academically are are the most conservative I don't mean conservative in terms of um voting I just mean in terms of kind of accepting the system as it is and uh being a bit allergic to radical thoughts there's research on that and I guess it's because we've spent so much time working our way up within dominant um hierarchies and how how you know how society values people so I think all those things are happening and holding back scientists and scholars from actually engaging with a fast changing environment which is posing massive challenges to normal life