2026: the year the climate crisis came home

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1:32I hope that what we've been facing with these amazing heat waves will be something that ends the cognitive dissonance because, you know, I never cease to be amazed by that figure in David Wallace-Wells' book, In Unhabitable Earth, which was that more than half of the carbon released in the history of humanity has happened since the science became settled. I absolutely believe racism is central to this story, but I also believe that Jason Arday absolutely deserved the scrutiny that he got. And I believe that Jason Arday made stuff up and that he exaggerated things wildly. And I also think the special level of scrutiny and the glee that he was pursued with was, in some cases, not all, but was grounded in racism.

2:23I absolutely believe that. Hello and happy Wednesday, everybody. Happy Wednesday, one and all. Hope you're all having a great week so far. We're a day early for various reasons, but don't let that distract you, dear listeners. Want to start off, we want to talk about two things, two very important things. One is the continuing story around the tragedy of Jason Arday. and then in the second half we want to talk about the climate crisis but unusually this isn't the Q &A edition but I do want to use a letter we had from Angela to kick off the conversation around Jason Arde and Angela wrote into us to say on reflection can you guys now concede that the way the media went in for Jason Arde was too much and racially motivated if you genuinely think a white academic would have faced the same relentless scrutiny breaking news notifications for god's sake you're being entirely disingenuous or you're blind to your own prejudices this story was blown out of all sense of proportion and rationality the man was hounded by the press in a way that would have been befitting of a murderer or pedophile i've been a long time listener and subscribed to the magazine however i was thoroughly disappointed with your coverage on thursday and your lily-livered answer on Sunday.

3:52You participated in the pylon. Our day was not without fault. There were genuine questions to be answered. But this was not a national news story. Jason was human and deserved to be treated with humanity. I'm not religious, but there but for the grace of God go I. Yours sincerely, Angela. Matt. Okay, well, there's a lot there, so I'll do my best. I can't say everything, but I'll try not to say nothing. So thanks for the question. I'm sure, of course, some of it was racially motivated. And we said so on Thursday and before Jason Arde's tragic death. Point by point, we weren't joining a pylon, actually.

4:39I mean, Matt will have his own views, but speak for myself. I was expressing a view based on first-hand experience of these appointments, which is what journalists are meant to do. And, well, you're richly entitled to attribute prejudice to me if I don't agree with you, Angela. But I'm intrigued to know how you know I have prejudice or where you make that assumption. And indeed, I think part of the problem in all this has been the attribution of prejudice to people claiming to be able to look into others' souls. to sort of unpack it and I'm just going to I'll try to not not take too much time but this is a the the the coverage was much more complex and it is now being presented it wasn't just the right-wing press so the Guardian the New York Times and at the very beginning the Times Higher were all involved in America in particular black writers were at the forefront of the criticism of um our day john mcwhirter tyler austin harper coleman hughes and then we move on to the the question about how white academics would be treated um well the the alternative case study that is being cited a lot and reasonably so is dr limo reilly who was an associate is an associate professor in early modern history at cambridge was found to have done some plagiarism didn't lose his job.

6:05I think he should have lost his job. So that's a fair point. But it's simply not true that white academics have had an easy ride about. So, for example, I'm going to mention some counterexamples because, you know, a lot of people are making some sweeping claims which just don't match the facts. So Martin Stone, who's an Irish philosopher and was a professor at K.E. Leuven. He was kicked out over 40 cases of plagiarism. Ward Churchill, who was a University of Colorado professor, also white, was fired in 2007. Chris Dussault, who was assistant professor of finance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, also fired over plagiarism.

6:47Now, that's just plagiarism, okay? Other white academics. Now, you know, one name that's come up a lot, and understandably is Nathan Kofnus, who's this very strange and unlikable race realist and attacked our day. Matt, let me just put you, when you say race realist, because he's a guy who is a eugenicist, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a proper racist, isn't he? He believes in this science of hereditary intelligence, right? Anyway, he lost his fellowship in Cambridge in 2024 because his work on race and intelligence was judged to be at odds with the college's DEI policies. Fair enough. Right.

7:30That was, you know, he was their employee. That was their policy. Fair enough. But he was kicked out immediately. Kathleen Stock was driven out of Sussex University in 2021 over a gender critical views. Tim Hunt lost his honorary professorship at UCL in 2015 over his famous trouble with girls remarks. And, you know, most conspicuously of all, James Watson, one of the greatest scientists ever lived, the discoverer of DNA, lost all his credentials in 2007 after he, too, identified with some extremely dodgy views on race and intelligence. Now, so it isn't the case that white academics have it easy.

8:08But the crucial difference is that in none of those cases I've cited, none of them, did the university stand by them, as Cambridge did our day and Harvard did with Claudine Gay when she was accused of plagiarism. And they didn't none of them set the police on journalists or employ Carter Ruck. I have one of the things I've thought all along in this is that if the Times Higher had been allowed to report the story and hadn't been strong armed into spiking it because it was terrified of lawsuits. Are they might still be imposed because it would have been written up in a trade magazine in a trade magazine.

8:49I'm sure you would have had to express some contrition, but I very much doubt it would have snowballed into what it became. and also and this is so important because one of the points that's being made again and again and again is you didn't stop after he resigned well no but the reason for that was that none of the examples i cited had a massive big advance big publisher memoir coming out and there were a few copies of that memoir circulating and totally legitimately journalists went through it and found that it was full of further examples of fabulism. So can I have been sure there wasn't racial motivation?

9:30Of course I can't. But unlike all the people now calling for journalists to lose their jobs or be held to account, I do think they should be held to account in a public inquiry. And perhaps I know you're going to say something about that, Matt, which I totally endorse. I can't see into their minds, but I don't think the stats that are being thrown around about the numbers of stories about our day prove conclusively that this is simply or even predominantly the product of racism i just don't right so thank you for that and um i the best article i've read on this was on the from the atlantic magazine by a black academic who's now a staff writer on the atlantic called tyler austin harper yeah i mentioned him you did and sorry i forgot that and um there was a there was a there was a paragraph in there which sort of crystallized the challenge for me which was he said the right would have us believe that the R-Day scandal is a story of affirmative action taken to its most caricaturish conclusion many progressives see it as something else a racist witch hunt in which righteous zealots with suspect motives hounded a man to death and the problem with these narratives and it's a sticky problem is that they are both right and this to me is the complexity of it and from a personal point of view and the thing I wanted to challenge head on is the and I'll probably sound defensive now but the accusation of being lily livid and it's a it's a it's a phrase funnily enough that's cropped up a few times in in response to our Q &A on Sunday a lot of people use this phrase lily livid it was a lily livid response and I I want to defend myself a little bit and defend us on that charge because I mean I absolutely believe racism is central to this story but I also believe that Jason Arday absolutely deserved the scrutiny that he got and I believe that Jason Arday made stuff up and that he exaggerated things wildly and I also think the special level of scrutiny and the glee that he was pursued with was in in some cases not all but was grounded in racism i do i absolutely believe that but i'm absolutely sickened by the aftermath and i i really don't want to to be part of it um in in right now in the way that it's playing out so predictably and maybe that's what people are confusing with being a lily-livered response you know i find it absolutely grotesque seeing commentators monetizing their outrage on TV and social media.

12:13I'm actually much more sympathetic and inclined to listen carefully to people like Miss Anne Harriman, who's gone through exactly this kind of hounding himself recently and continues to go through, you know, what I think is a hounding grounded in racism, which is, you know, he's a black man. The same accusations, He's unqualified and he's unfit to hold this high position. Now, there is a theme and I don't believe that I'm qualified to challenge and comment on it, except to say that I totally get why people like Miss Anne are outraged by what's happened to Jason Arde. And he's totally correct to fight it.

12:57And the question really for me is, is what's the most productive way to get something positive out of all of this mess? And I just think it's a mistake to confuse that position, that not willing to be engaged and to be shouty and angry and to take one polarised far spectrum side on this story as being lily-livered, because I think it's so much more complex, you know, with a few notable exceptions at the far end of things. I think Kothnas and people like Julia Hartley Brewer, you know, if you want an example of somebody who, you know, right at the far end of the spectrum of people who are saying just ghastly, ghastly things purely as far as I can see for the furtherance of their own branding.

13:45There is nothing simple about this story. It's absolutely anything. On the topic of suicide, right? We don't know why. We have no idea about the full story about why Jason Arday killed himself. We have no idea. And the only thing we can say with confidence is that suicide is never a kind of monolithic decision. It's not homicide. It is always complex. Right. And there's multiple factors involved. And anybody in the media saying, you know, this stuff about I hate this word lynching. I just think that's so ill advised. You know, that's just so wrong. I hate this idea that he was hounded to death by the press.

14:31And I don't for a minute think that that wasn't an element of what was a big element of what was going through Jason Arde's head. But to reduce it like that, I think, is a huge mistake, because it is such a complex story with so many threads that I think when you reduce things like this, you miss the opportunity to get something good out of this horrible tragedy. that in other words to make progress not we'll never make complete progress on these issues but to get some progress and that to your point about the public inquiry that's why i think it is a good thing if i i can't actually think of a more useful use of public funds than to uh to instigate a thorough exploration and a quite a broad spectrum one into all of these issues that have collided in this in this story you know the way the press deals with individuals i think there needs to be a restoration and a really a good understanding of the difference between a public interest story and what's interesting the public at any given time due diligence in academia so that merit is a paramount you know i think the culpability of cambridge university that you've outlined is absolutely part of this story and people you know people who who say it's wholly the press are just missing that the whole aspect of that story uh and there is evidence of racism in our institution you know Sunda Kadwala's got this piece in the new world right now pointing out that there's of 795 professors in Cambridge five of them are black you know so where's where's the black privilege in in all of that so what i would say and maybe people can feel the sort of sense of of despair in my voice is that all of these things if you put them together in a public inquiry where we can try and understand and reflect and improve um improve to my mind that would be far preferable to what we're seeing right now, you know, and if people want to be, if they want to hear us yelling one side of the story with outrage, then that's not what I'm about, I'm afraid, and I know it's not what you're about, Matt, and what I'm about is trying to say something constructive, and right now I feel completely unable to do that, because I feel paralysed by this story in a way that I can't remember ever feeling paralyzed by a story before.

17:16And I find the heat in this story both understandable and really unproductive. And in some quarters, I find it utterly grotesque. You know, if people want that, then you've got the Jeremy Vine show. But I'll hold my hands up and say, this story is so complicated, so multifaceted that I can't ever really recall feeling so depressed, being unable to find a sort of a position on it. and that in itself I think is what's what's wrong everybody needing to find a position and of course remembering at the time of it there was a very flawed but a very human person and this is probably what's most depressing is he was a political football in life and he's a political football in death and I really don't want any part of that to be honest yeah I mean the only thing i'd add is um uh one of the things that i have no respect for at all is the way that newspapers and other platforms had quickly deleted all the things they'd written right now now you know one of the things and and but there's a uh flip side to that which maybe listeners won't like as much i don't know but i'm not going to resolve from anything i said before he died right and i I have no time for this argument that tragic as it is, appalling as it is that he's died.

18:52I should shift my position on what he did and the fabulism he carried out. And The Guardian mentions in its editorial on Tuesday that he had been in contact with them over the last year. I mean, this was news to me, but, you know, trying to push his side of the story preemptively. You know, I know that what we're meant to do now is genuflect to, you know, a new approved narrative. And I, you know, I said what I said on Thursday. People might not like it, but that's what I think. And I think that part of being a journalist is not yielding to the pylons come in many forms. Right. You know, and what I'm not going to do is is just shift my position to something I don't actually believe because it's expedient to do so this week.

19:47Not going to happen. Yeah, I thought I thought the deletion of Instagram posts and and tweets that people had made. it it it betrayed it betrayed a lack of confidence about where they were um and it also betrayed to me the thing that i find grotesque which is that those those instagram posts had gone from being commercially valuable to being commercially threatening and and that's what that's that's why they took them down it wasn't because they they didn't believe what they were saying or whatever i mean the suicide of jason arday is an absolute tragedy but it is an absolute tragedy that didn't change any of the facts that led up to it precisely you know those facts and i've i've now seen journalists on social media saying you'll you'll find out everything he said was true you'll find out everything all of the things that he was accused of lying about or exaggerating or conflating that it was all they were all lies and he everything he said was true it'll all come out and i just don't believe that to be the case i think you know any rational assessment of the situation would say that jason are you know i'm really reluctant to sort of even go down here because this is we're now doing what i'm trying to not do which is engaging in the speculation but there are facts in this case and the facts are that he did exaggerate stuff he did i don't i don't i don't think you are i don't think you are engaging in speculation i mean i don't have to put all that to what to put all of that to one side um it does everybody discredit and it frankly it's sort of if there's an opportunity to to to make things a bit better then um i'm sure i'm pretty sure Jason Arday would want that and I kind of feel this either devilification or deification on either side is really missing an opportunity to try and genuinely understand what happened here and to make some progress.

22:10I hope so I mean I'm not optimistic at the moment because the speed with which it has become weaponized is very depressing. And that's one reason why, from the start, really, I thought that an inquiry was called for. I'd like it to include the media. I've got nothing to hide. And if there are mistakes that have been made, and I mean real mistakes, not just I don't like it. Yeah. I mean, look, maybe this is where we differ. I don't know. I definitely believe that there is genuine racism at the heart of a lot of the coverage. I said at the start that there was some racism in it. My question, my point was that the assumption now, which is getting baked into at least one side of the argument, that it was all driven by racism is silly.

22:58You know, and it does Jason Ardeno service and it does the cause of finding out what happened and the truth, which I still think is what we owe our covenant to, right, as journalists, no good at all. And, you know, if that is an unpopular opinion, I can live with that. Yeah, no, that's fine. I mean, being unpopular is part of, well, it's a consequence of having an opinion. And that's, and that's, that isn't the point, is it? That's not why we do this. I mean, I think. yeah but it has because i think one of the problems with with with our job and you know we've been talking about this a lot um and this is not about us personally but just about the job of journalism is that because everything is now algorithmically driven actually part of the job of journalists sort of is to follow yeah the trend is to follow the tribe is to follow the herd and i think that's a that's a a tension yeah which is is existed long before the jason arday story and i'm sure will exist long after yeah and it isn't really addressed and i think there's a the part of the you know people say why are we so polarized well look in look at the phone in your hand for an answer yeah yeah no i think that's absolutely true i mean will self wrote um a sit rep thing which you know i mean as you know we had a we had a discussion he does these things called sit rep and well i mean he's calling for journalists to be prosecuted and stuff like this i mean it seems nuts because well one even if you thought that that was deserving um there's there's there's what would you process there's nothing on the statute books that you could prosecute for them And also, I mean, as you said, Matt, in our conversation, you know, that that is a very authoritarian and very bleak response to, you know, to annihilate the concept of a free press.

25:01But he he did say and he sort of described how this happens. And I think it's worth quoting because I thought it was it was very good. I'd love to know what you hear about feel about it. But he said, you know, the world, this is the ecosystem. It's one in which the newspaper publishes, social media responds, the newspaper measures the response, the measured response becomes an input into the next editorial decision, another article is commissioned, the grid responds again, the response becomes larger because the story becomes larger, the story becomes larger because the response becomes larger.

25:38Throughout all of this, no editor needs to command the process. No conspiracy is necessary. Everybody is simply responding to everybody else. And I thought that was a very good summary of the whirlwind. yes that that that section of his piece which was as ever with will you know rhetorically formidable i mean it was you know all his writing whether you agree with it or not is is super impressive i thought that was brilliant where i parted company with him sharply was basically him saying i don't like your witch hunt here's mine right right yeah you know uh the answer to this is not i mean naming journalists by the way fine you know that's that's that's you know if you if you write for if you do anything in the public space writing wise you know you're fair game you can be you know you can take issue however you like but the idea that the people he lists should be prosecuted is is um i mean it is as you say daft but it also it's part of the intemperate quality to what's happening now which is the art or is that jason arday's death has suddenly made it all so simple yes that's right that's what i'm railing against yes and i think you're absolutely right matt and and therefore the only and the answer to a simple thing is to do something drastic and you know a maoist struggle session right right um how that leads to a better media environment i i don't know how that leads to a better academic environment i don't know but in a way that my my problem with what will wrote was that it seemed to me to be guilty of precisely the dopamine bash hitting that it was criticizing you know he was in himself going for the feels he was he was in his very intellectual way trying to make one side of the argument feel absolutely vindy look i've got will self on my side look at these long words you know I didn't like that aspect of it but you know I'm very open to what people have to say about this and that's why I think that it should be done in a formal way rather than you know by the way people the vigils people are having absolutely right that they should you know the debate fine but I think there should be some sort of formal process you know that's pretty much where I land one of the thing that I thought was extraordinary to note was that in amongst all of this Miss Anne Harriman who you know I think is totally sincere totally sincere and good guy and got plenty to be angry about the Times are still placing paid adverts on social media targeting him as unfit to lead the South Bank Centre they're still doing it and so when you know from that perspective when you see that then i don't know what more evidence you need if you're in that position to say for fuck's sake you know this it's obvious what's happening and but nevertheless you know it's it's do you it's will's response is as you rightly say at the far end of a of a spectrum where he's calling for a remedy that is actually i don't actually believe that he believes that that's a good remedy what he's talking about because he's effectively talking about the prosecution of a free press i don't actually believe that he believes that but i think a lot of people do i'm sorry but i do i think i think that unfortunately one of the things that this reveals and i have and this brings back memories of 2020 is that censorship is okay when it's in in the cause of something you believe in right and of course that is the the the the most basic error that people make yeah it only you know the free press is only worth having if you stand up for it when it's saying things that you don't like maybe that's an old-fashioned view but i'm you know i'm old-fashioned on that yeah no no i i don't think i don't think that is uh i don't think i think that's probably quite a progressive modern view these days i mean i saw i don't know you know i think most most progressives and i mean most progressives i think think that cancellation is fine when it's cancelling things they don't like yeah there's so much hypocrisy around now that i mean that it's it's almost yes you're right it's become the norm you know i mean to take one example there was um uh quite i don't want to get into naming people but there was somebody i'm sure somebody who had previously a few weeks ago gloried in the death of ann widdekombe and says here she is on her way to hell on her way to hell saying about the death of jason our day i hope all the racists who drove him to his death are you know um happy now and all of this business you know i mean you can't you just can't have it both ways um oh yes you can well yeah you shouldn't be able to they do i mean that's that's where we are too you know there are lots of um things here and um people having it both ways is actually now yeah precisely what people do and um yeah again you know there's there's no getting after that is not a straightforward business i'm not pretending it's It's not.

31:08And the whole thing is very difficult and uncomfortable. And so it bloody well should be, you know, because these are difficult, uncomfortable questions that we're wrestling with. But I really did want to just say, and I know you'll support this, you know, we're not trying to be lily livid. We're not trying to evade the conversation. We're just trying to find something constructive to say. and right now um i find that quite a tricky tricky challenge anyway well it was worth saying all that yeah that's good yeah anyway listeners um let's listen thanks for the question and that's angela thank you for the question and totally appreciate it totally appreciate your point of view um and don't don't actually disagree with it you know in in many ways but i want to don't hold back guys let us know what you think oh yeah yeah um we you know one thing i can absolutely guarantee you is that we won't sort of shy away from dealing with with what with criticism and i should also add that there were loads of people who wrote in saying especially your first piece matt on the thursday before jason are they died yeah uh thank you thank you for putting that into context and making me aware of what the issue really is and you know um and others didn't which is fine too Yeah, that's right.

32:30That's right. OK, right. We'll be back with another cheerful conversation about the climate crisis. This is our planetary one, this one. Join us in a moment. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift.

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35:56welcome back dear listeners i hope you're having a good week um so um matt it it rained overnight in london which was the first time it's rained for about 60 days and our cover this week on the so good so good on the magazine it was actually it was sort of inspired or borrowed by um something i saw on instagram which was that astonishing photograph of the people in um sitting on a sort of lakeside in deck chairs with a with a parasol above them with their phones out videoing um this inferno in a pine forest across across the other side of the lake in near bordeaux where there'd been horrific fires and obviously there'd been horrific fires in france and spain and also here in the UK in the Cairngorms and elsewhere although not perhaps as bad as well definitely not as bad as they've been in Spain and France this year but the sense that it's coming you know and this is the so there was that amazing photo but the reason I really wanted to do this on the on the front cover was the amazing quote that was with that accompanied the photograph I saw and it said you know um the climate crisis will manifest itself as a series of events captured on viewed on other people's phones coming closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it and i just thought that was a brilliant quote and i just thought this this is the year that i i think and i might be wrong i think for a lot of people because the weather certainly in england i know it's been pissing down almost non-stop in scotland but certainly in england the weather's been so extreme that this is the year i think people have really gone shit climate this is real now it's and the chickens are coming home to roost i hope so i mean the the first thing to say is that the you know the very powerful cover is uh pegged to a brilliant brilliant piece by paul nason yes uh which is online now so people can go and look and read it it's it's a must read and Paul you know as he always does deals with the absolute sort of heft of the issue and food insecurity threats to water infrastructure the failure after COVID to deal with the resilience all the you know he really I mean it's a very powerful piece but he also gets into the the weeds of what's going wrong and so you know it's a classic piece of Paul Mason journalism really excellent I mean my feeling is I so agree with you I hope that what we've been facing with these amazing heat waves will be something that ends the cognitive dissonance because you know I never cease to be amazed by that that figure in David Wallace Wells's book in Uninhabitable Earth which was that more than half of the carbon released in the history of humanity um has happened since it the science became settled right so we knew that we were what we were doing but we carried on yeah so i think this is why the the quote on the cover of the new world is is right which is how do you actually get to the point where people go actually this is this is not just people in seminars or at cop talking about abstractions this is this is you know bus drivers fainting in their cabins and nurses you know falling down on on duty in hospitals because they can't bear 44 degree heat and you know this is happening now now now um and i think this was a bit controversial actually but i think andy burnham was absolutely right on friday to issue that emergency alert in the evening which caught us all off guard yeah because about the risk of wildfires why do i think that because how do you get into people's heads in 2026 right in reality you know we all talk about education and public promotions and you know demonstrations and all that but how do you know films by al gore but how do you actually get into someone's head and the answer is unfortunately through their phones and there was a moment when that loud siren came out of our mobiles yeah when people were suddenly texting what's this what's this and it's like that is you being tapped on the back by the reality of what we've all created and what we now face and what we if we don't do something right quick we'll bequeathed to our children yeah so i thought it was a very good idea now also well just on that point the first thing everybody said and everybody made the same bloody joke which was oh my god i thought the russians were coming for us yeah well but it's worse than that it's worse you know no no of course you know if it was only the russians we could you can't do diplomacy with climate right that's right um so i think i mean and now we get into the politics of it but i think it is it's been rumbling around the last couple of days and it's important so on on one level burnham has been doing the right thing so he had a cobra about the wildfires he went to stourbridge where there's been a wildfire he's offered support for farmers who've been hit by drought he's been intervening over water company surge pricing all good right there is now a big and i think defining moment for him which is over these two oil fields yeah and the reason i think that i mean don't i don't want to go too deep into the weeds on this because it's perhaps for another day.

41:43But there are two fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw. And they've both been halted. There are different phases of development. There's a lot of investment already. And there are some jobs at stake. And this is, of course, a problem for Burnham because the politics of place involves worrying about the jobs in Aberdeenshire and elsewhere that will undoubtedly be lost. I think there are about, if you actually boil it down, there are about a thousand jobs in play here okay and it was very interesting on monday night on news night very surprising u-turn dale vince who's massive eco campaigner very very impressive so do you know actually i don't mind these or if i was going ahead it what we need to do is is is offer a a price capping system where the company but also with a floor so the the they They can't price the oil and gas they're producing off these fields too much.

42:43But they also know they'll get a certain rate of return if the market is going low. OK, very surprising that he did this. And Faisal Islam, who was presenting, was rightly, you know, what's all this now? Yeah, I get all that and I get the stuff about job losses. And but I think I don't know what you think. But I think this is a moment for a big swing. Right. I get the case for allowing these fields to carry on. And I get the point that the transition to renewables will not be achieved in a day. God knows. And that we are going to have to carry on using fossil fuels. But just like the emergency alert to the phones, symbolism matters.

43:20OK, and I think for Burnham to say, actually, we're not going to carry on with the development. It will make the government exposed to legal suits from the companies that are involved, which are big big big exploration companies but that's a battle to have and i think that it you know i think it was gabby hinsley wrote in a piece um this week in the guardian that you know we've had pragmatism with uh kia starmer and that didn't work right yeah we need we need some big swings now that that would just be symbolic but all i'm saying is that if you want to move the dial on this yeah it's not enough just to talk about incrementalism and no you know that's all i mean i think i think um if there is a big swing that involves a big negative it's got to be accompanied by a big positive and he's got yeah he's got to he's got to say you know i drove up to uh i drove up the m40 the other day on um sunday for my mother's 85th birthday happy birthday mom and was you know pleased and amazed and a bit dazzled by the huge array of solar powered uh fields covered in solar panels you know lining this motorway and i thought and i've said it before you know at some point in the future every major road in this country with fields either side of it will have that they'll be covered in solar panels and we'll get rightly so and rightly so and we'll get um you know a new position on nuclear and all and we but we we must do this now you know there cannot be there cannot be any sense anymore of dithering you know we are we're way past moment zero and i think we've got to just completely commit to in a way that really it still feels to me at a government level that this is a question you know and that and we're we're planning the well we've seen john camp from his book is an excellent testimony to other countries that are way ahead of us yeah in dealing with this and need to crack on and um i just think that that that you're absolutely right andy burnham could take a couple of big swings in in the run-up to this next election one could be social care which is going to be costly one could be energy uh sustainability and that will initially be costly but as any businessman knows you know the investment will soon recoup over a period of time period of social care it's hard to see how you get that to be profitable but certainly energy you know you go back to the uh derek thompson the ezra cline book we bang on about abundance abundance it's the whole premise is that at some point in the future energy actually becomes free for people absolutely it becomes free and then we can start thriving again you know there's there's so much in this and i think you're absolutely right and a book that had a big impact on me was by my friend alex evans called the myth gap which he wrote a while ago and it was it's called the myth gap but it's really about how we failed to develop a narrative on climate change that people believe in right and i think in a way nature has done it for us hasn't it but yeah you know these heat waves are the last but it is last chance doing stuff and i think one one of the things that people don't quite understand or and certainly the i mean the the by the way as a side point to this the role of reform and farage in this is you know people are very well aware of trump and climate hopes and all that but reform but in the whole campaign against net zero and we've written about this in in the new european and now the new world You know, he set up a gender campaign.

47:07I think it was called Britain for Business or something back in 2022 to try and fight net zero and have a referendum in net zero. They have been against this from the start. These are these are the bad guys, folks. Right. Yeah. But but one of the things that is there's a kind of, you know, pseudoscience that it'll go back to normal. No, no. This is what we have now. This is the best it gets. Right. yeah this is your coolest summer from now on guys and we have and the and the winds it's the winters are going to become more and more extreme devastating so even if we take as we should radical fast intergenerational action today yeah we're going to have this for the rest of you know for the rest of our lives okay yeah so if we and the alternative to that is if we don't next summer the summer after that the summer after that will be hotter and hotter and i think that you know i'm not in favor of alarmism normally okay but and it was why i didn't ever come out fully against extinction rebellion and just stop oil because it wasn't virtue signaling it was generational desperation signaling well there's nothing wrong with an alarm if your house is on 100 % and it was the young saying what do we have to do yeah to make you guys realize and I you know I think that point whatever you think about their tactics and their strategy and so on that point was extremely well made I have got no doubt that my grandchildren and their children will look back at our generation specifically contempt as they'll look at us as criminals criminals you know i mean you're right matt i mean this this will be um you know everyone looks back at the appeasers of the 1930s as a wicked cohort right if we're not careful and time is running out generation x will be remembered as the appeasers of you know various interest groups um mainly big corporations you know because treasuries around the world want the revenue from oil and trade unions want the jobs you know we we didn't do what was necessary when it was necessary and now we're in the last chance saloon and i think burnham burnham you know after all burnham when he was campaigning for the job advertised himself as the last chance for labor but now he's prime minister he has to be doing last chance stuff for the country yeah that's right and the world and this is one of them meanwhile we get people in the daily telegraph in the Daily Mail, still saying, there's nothing to worry about.

49:52In fact, isn't it great? It's just like France with village cricket. I mean, it really is. It really is. I mean, it's right at the far end of willful ignorance, I think, you know, to be saying stuff like that. Willful blindness. So dangerous. That, to me, is real wickedness. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. You know, I'm ashamed of that because I worked for 10 years at the Telegraph group. And, you know, it's appalling to me. It really is. Right. OK, well, this was a cheerful podcast. Hey, listen, come here for the laughs, folks. Anyway, I hope you guys found the conversation interesting. We'll be back. Next week, actuarial figures from the two maths.

50:36Yeah. We will be back on Sunday with our Q &A. So fire in your questions. It's going to be a lot of laughs. it's going to be an absolute last going to be fun fantastic great but if you want to subscribe to a place that um that does try to deal with all of these issues with some thought and care and and and without being you know boring and and totally policy driven there's some passion and heat in there too then subscribe to the new world go to the newworld.co.uk forward slash two mats that's the number two m-a-t-t-s and there's a special offer for new subscribers from two mats podcast so do that please send in your questions please to two mats at t-n-e publishing.com that's the number two m-a-t-t-s t-n-e publishing.com and it just remains for me to thank the third Matt.

51:33Thanks Matt. Matt Withers for producing the show. Thank you mate. And yeah until Sunday. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from him. Goodbye.

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