Summary: SUMMARY: David Collings, book our "Stolen Future and Broken Present". From Sweden, forest expert Martin Persson says tropical deforestation is still stripping the planet - for us, for consumers in rich countries. Finnish intellectual Olli Tammilehto asks can we can survive a system which rewards the rich with a license to commit ecocide? The Jet Stream gets blown off course again - this time by Nuri, the most powerful storm on the planet. Arctic air spills down into central and eastern North America, in mid-November, while another awful storm track shapes up for Britain and northern Europe. We live through the time of climate disruption, but what does it mean? Our first guest David Collings talks about our "Stolen Future and Broken Present". Then it's a quick tour of bright minds from Scandinavia. From Sweden, forest expert Martin Persson says tropical deforestation is still stripping the planet - for us, for consumers in rich countries. Then Finnish intellectual Olli Tammilehto asks can we can survive a system which rewards the rich with a license to commit ecocide? There is a better way. This is Radio Ecoshock. Listen to or download this program in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen right now on Soundcloud! STOLEN FUTURE What is climate change? It is not an event. It is a complete change of context in which events take place. No wonder we have trouble grasping it... I am once again reminded of that viral video where a man filming a triple rainbow breaks down in tearful wonder, repeating over and over again "what does it mean"? On Radio Ecoshock we go into depth with scientists who explain the funtioning of the atmosphere, soil, and sea, and the creatures who live there. Today we're going into the humanities, to ask scholar David A. Collings "What does it mean?" Collings has written about romanticism, poetry, and "monstrous society". David is a Professor of English at Bowdoin College in Maine. Now he's turned to the largest news of this or any generation: human disruption of the climate. His new book is titled "Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change." David A. Collings We hardly know what we are looking at. Just take this short blip from the editor's introduction to this new book. Quote: "Climate change concerns material agencies that impact on biomass and energy, erased borders and microbial invention, geological and nanographic time, and extinction events." That's almost everything. Is climate change an everything? In his book David writes: "What we face, in short, is perpetual adaptation - the task of making a wholesale adjustment to our reality, then doing it again … then doing it yet again. It would be better if we admitted that if we make the necessary changes too late, we will have to adjust radically, and at uneven and unpredictable intervals, for as long as we can imagine..." It's never going to be over. That's one of many ways the climate threat is different from the threat of nuclear war which hung over several generations. It's still around, but a massive nuclear war would be a short and final event, compared to climate change which will unfold over generations, and hundreds of years. Many of us can only stand the many acts of injustice and violence in this world because we think it might get better. Four hundred years we've believed in "progress". What happens to us if we think progress may be over, and things will get worse? My listeners know climate change is real. They also see emissions going up, and the political system owned by the fossil fuel companies. We're stuck, and what does it mean that we're stuck? That's the kind of question David answers, in this interview, and even more in his book. You should listen to his argument that "for all of us in this society, the market is more real than nature." I was struck by David's passages on the mortality of nature. We humans expect nature to live beyond our mere mortality - but in this case, WE may continue living, whi
