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A weekly podcast about the forces shaping politics, power and technology, and how they affect you.
Matt Kendall (00:00)
the maddening thing for me in all of this is, is, you know, I'm seeing online, I'm seeing people saying, Should I even be paying my bills? and then on the other hand, you've got all these well meaning, you know, climate scientists, really smart thinkers saying, No, we've got the solutions. We we can turn this around. But what nobody is talking about is what is required to turn it around. Like the
The wholesale systems change to the way we live, to the way our economy works, to the way we use materials and energy. and nobody seems to actually be talking about.
What is required for us to turn things around in the time we have to turn them around in?
Matt Kendall (00:49)
Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, a weekly podcast about the forces shaping politics, power, technology, and how they affect you. I'm Matt Kendall.
Elliot Costello (00:59)
And I'm Elliot Costello.
Matt Kendall (01:01)
Elliot, this week is I suppose we're continuing a little
bit of a theme from last week. this is environmental in nature. This is the big kahuna, it's climate. It's almost a an emergency podcast, you could say, off the
Elliot Costello (01:15)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Kendall (01:15)
back of last week's news. Wouldn't you agree?
Elliot Costello (01:18)
Yeah, we're certainly a little bit devastated by all the events this week and wanted to expand out from the sort of packaging reform, packaging waste episode last week to to look at the more macro climate problems. So we've just seen the horrific landslide and in ensuing flood in Nepal and Tibet, how it's claimed thirteen hundred lives, the devastations it's
Caused on the most weak, vulnerable, poor, and marginalized. Another example of our climate in crisis. and that's on the back of another I think four European heat waves in a row. So we want to dive into that, obviously, specifically focusing on the UN environment program and their report that came out last week that effectively said we are not.
able
to meet the one point five degree threshold and we're gonna push through that and we have to do a lot of work to even stay under two degrees warming. So pretty horrifying and shocking news.
Matt Kendall (02:28)
yeah, it's o off the back of of that news, there's some pretty devastating figures as well. That there's 5,000 people missing in Nepal. a lot of those will never never be found, but won't be c will be confirmed dead. with off the back of the four European heatways,
There's been thirty five thousand deaths. and that's only accounting for half of Europe. it's not all of it. Some of the some of there'll be deaths that will be, you know, heart attacks off the off the back of that and and complications from the heat. not to mention the the the suffering that goes off off the back of those kind of numbers. So these are real real impacts. And it just reminds me of the quote, the
climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it. I was filming it four years ago in 2022 for the Mullham floods, which I'll get into a little bit later. But I I did find that last week, you know, off off the back of that there's the Super El Nino, the Godzilla El Nino, basically the most powerful one they think
has has ever occurred. already we're feeling the effects of that. you know, over with the the fires in Indonesia. They've yeah, these are these are rainforests, ancient rainforests, and they've run out of water over there. where they're starting to feel the effects of it over with sort of unseasonal storms over in LA. There was a climate scientist fr based in LA the the the same s
climate scientists that warned a whole bunch of people about earlier about the Eton bushfire over there, saying that this this earth is not the earth we modelled. and I think I I suppose what one of the reasons why we really wanted to talk about this.
Elliot Costello (04:24)
Well when he says this earth's
not the earth we model, what do you what do you mean by that? Or what does he mean by that? That it's changed so much? Hm.
Matt Kendall (04:29)
Well, what he's meaning, it's changing so much and and there's
been these feedback loops. and feedback loops and tipping points, you know, these are really unpredictable kind of c almost chaos agents in climate science, where you know, if we lose polar ice caps and ice coverage and glaciers, you know, then the the that snow and ice normally reflects the heat back out of the atmosphere.
Now, when that gets replaced by black and grey rock and and deep blue water instead of white ice, that then basically the the the earth starts to absorb even more heat. And so what a lot of these climate scientists are saying is the it's all happening much quicker than than we expected.
yeah, and I so, you know, off the back of this hellish week, I, you know, it it really sort of triggered something that I thought I'd process, which is this in in intense feeling of climate grief that I experienced back in 2018 when I read the IPCC report. And that grief was triggered off by essentially recognizing that what the IPCC had said that we needed to do to stay under 1.5.
I recognized that we weren't going to do that. and I thought I'd process that grief. As somebody who's gone through extreme grief in other circumstances, I you know, I should have known better because grief c has a way of snapping back. and that's really I suppose what happened to me this week when I I saw that news, when I realized that we're
We've we're if we've hit overshoot, we're gonna overshoot 1.5. And like you said, we're gonna struggle to stay between two. And in that report, they actually say there are no good outcomes over 1.5 degrees. And then so really what we need to do, we have to get so busy and changing our ways so quickly. Because essentially how climate works, it's not like this is this is the be all and end all. It's just they've said that over 1.5 there are no good outcomes.
But the outcomes at one point six are even worse. One point seven, worse again, one point eight. And then, you
Elliot Costello (06:42)
Mm.
Matt Kendall (06:42)
know, t it starts to get hellish around two. And then we're even on track to three if we don't change our ways. And it's almost like dialing up a dial. So the further we dial up the dial, we just get we get more floods, we get more fires, we get more heat waves, we get more, you know, glacial collapses in the pool. and I think that's what
re I found really harrowing. It was not just the announcement of that. It was the way the media and our politicians essentially glossed over it.
Elliot Costello (07:16)
Yeah, well let's let's dive into the politics of it. what you described that any number above one point five, it's a compounding return. I had a coffee with an old colleague of ours, Johnny Schneider, this week. who's talking talking about compounding interest and how, you know, certain right wing groups want to allow Australians to open up their superannuation for property, the impact that has on wealth.
is extraordinary. And the same applies here with climate science. a a 0.1% increase is so significant. It's the compounding effect above 1.5 that I think we're we're very unaware of. So let's dive into the politics. governments seem to claim climate sort of progress and climate wins
while prolonging the problem. and that was evident this week in an Australian context, our Federal Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whilst in the Pacific, standing on an island that's potentially won't exist in the next 100 plus years, effectively told reporters that now was not the right time to talk about to talk about and discuss climate change. If this degree of warning
and confession from at the UN environment programme isn't the right time. What is? On the back of everything we've just seen and the El Nuno effect that we're expected this summer, what is the right time to take an honest look at the impact that our policies and our politics have on climate change?
Matt Kendall (09:03)
Yeah, it was it wasn't just that. that the optics were terrible last week for Labor. they had also approved the Sarajee Coal extension, and then Madeline King and the Northern Territory Minister were opening up the Betaloo Basin, which has essentially been described as a climate bomb. And Labor has a ch bad track record track record for this. New South Wales Labor as well. I think I saw
They've approved fourteen coal mines and extensions.
but it this is this is when they're saying they believe in climate change.
it is negligent to to say that you believe in that and still that the science says that IPCC report said no new coal and gas. and I've seen Albanese be really disingenuous about the messaging around this. The Greens have been pushing for that, and then he comes out and says that, you know, we we can't just, you know, do away with coal and gas overnight. Nobody is saying that.
what the Greens are saying is no new coal and gas. Meanwhile they keep opening up coal and gas. in the face of of of this report this week, it was it was just a a terrible, terrible look that yeah, like I said, really kicked off my climate grief.
Elliot Costello (10:22)
Yeah, I'm sure. And I think there's a lot more you can unpack from a a personal narrative what a climate emergency does look like. having not lived through one, it it may be helpful to to sort of bed down the trauma that it really created for you and and the the Northern Rivers community in twenty twenty two and threatens probably year on year. but I just wanted to sort of feed in the fact that
federal labor's, whilst we're talking about politics, connecting to a a broader global movement that is starting to really realize that they can walk back from some of their sustainability
Matt Kendall (11:08)
Mm.
Elliot Costello (11:09)
commitments. And that's been the trend since 2024. so two years now, obviously the victory that Donald Trump had.
over the Democratic Party in the US presidential election has meant that the Zeitgeist is moving in a different direction, has meant that the broad coalition of environmental support that we had shared for a long time has now been washed away. And it's given rise to political class that can then point to the disunity and the breakdown of that
global movement. So that's the direction of travel beyond just pointing to Labour who have still held on to their targets. you know, and if you hear whether it's Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who's somehow the cop president for COP thirty one in in in Turkey this year,
They will talk to the fact they're still on track, still on track, still on track. But we're now dealing with an opposition that is effectively going to walk back net zero targets. So whether Angus Taylor remains the opposition leader or not, his main challenger, Andrew Hasty, has publicly said that he wants to do away with the net zero targets, the rising other opposition party, one nation
has been very clear with its position on dumping net zero. and that they're just the politics at hand in in Australia. So we're sort of frustrated by Labour, but like looking across the aisle, we're we're dealing with two parties who will very openly ditch Australia's effort to meet its international obligation.
Matt Kendall (13:08)
it's it's it's been incredible to watch. I I've been involved in climate politics activism in in various different ways over the years. I was you know, initially involved in s some of the Extinction Rebellion activism when it started up here. Then in the 2019
election, me and a bunch of friends spun up a a campaign called Vote for the Planet, where in two weeks with zero budget, we set up a essentially a how to vote for the planet card. So it was kind of like a, you know, the the how to vote card with the preferences and everything. And we did that for every single seat. And we got five hundred thousand hits on our site for that. and then but then failed to win that election. You know, the the coalition got in.
We're quite despondent with that. But even though we were d despondent with that, it felt like we're going into we're that the climate movement really was starting to change things. I really do feel like COVID affected that. obviously in just so many different ways. It just sort of cleared the slate. And I think it's allowed for a lot more misinformation and disinformation and I've seen a lot of people, once again, that horseshoe thing up here of people on the left jumping over to the right.
A lot of like far left people have jumped over to the right and they're just super suspicious of net zero. They think it's a government conspiracy. they're anti-win, they're anti solar. And and I think that's just a a real sort of primary concern to me. And and because of that, the because of that social license, you know, companies are walking back their net zero commitments. Governments, you know, are able feeling like they're able to get away with more. and right in the moment.
when this report comes out. And then even the media. I mean, this really should be front page news. And it was reported by some publications, you know, fairly, you know, just literally reporting what the report said. It didn't talk about the ramifications. It didn't talk about what needs to be done. There were no hard questions for our leaders. So I really feel like our institutions that are meant to be turning this around are letting us down.
Elliot Costello (15:18)
Yeah, institutions and individuals right now. and that's the the the feeling of frustration, disappointment, and yeah, growing resentment. as you know, man, I'm a former insufferable accountant, having having worked at one of the big four as a as a graduate. I can't help but think that the
What the overshoot means in terms of the economic consequences. And if you're looking at the price tag and the price tag today of more heat waves, more bushfires, more disasters, more floods, it basically means that the government's up for significant bills now and into the future. if anything we should take from this report, it's the fact that we can't just jam this
insight into the bottom draw and pretend it doesn't exist. The cost of climate emergency, climate d disasters is so significant for individuals, for communities and for governments. And that's part of the frustration. the argument so often from certain sectors of community and definitely for those that sit to the right is we can't afford this transition.
you know, it's expensive, it's heavy in sort of technology that doesn't exist, it's a transition away from existing energy sources. you know, we should be doubling down on the extractive nature that, you know, certainly our country is blessed to have. so many rich minerals that the world craves. when we're not seeing the economic liability steamrolling our way.
so yeah, it'd be good to unpack, you know, the reality of that expense that's gonna hit us all as ratepayers now and into the future.
Matt Kendall (17:18)
Yeah, I mean there was some research literally put out a couple of days ago saying that because we're such a coastal living country or nation, that there's that the bill stands to be eight hundred and fifty-five billion dollars off the back of sea rise and and storms. I mentioned last week that our rates had gone up here in the Byronshire Council by th going up by thirty seven percent over the next few years. I mentioned that obviously packaging wasn't all of that. A lot of it
And I've been to to events where the mayor has spoken about this, is because of so so many extreme weather events and the amount of rain here that they're just constantly having to pitch up patch up infrastructure, roads, floods. Like it's just it's it's never ending. and so these bills are just gonna it this is this is as good as it gets. It just it gets worse. You know, I think you know, Nepal was a bill, El Nino i is is a bill.
the the fires and the and the heat waves in in Europe, their bills. And it's almost like this kind of proverbial, you know, character in the movie that's getting all these bills and they're just putting them in the bottom drawer and they're ignoring it. But the problem doesn't go away. And I feel like this UNEP report is the accountant calling up saying, Bro, what are you doing?
Elliot Costello (18:35)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Kendall (18:35)
Like seriously, like if you we need to act now and we can maybe save the furniture. But if you don't act now like you ruin you're ruined.
And I think this is what is missing. And even on obviously I'm across all the narrative and the discourse on socials. And let's just park the deniers for for one second. Let's put them to a to to one side. but the discourse around this UNEP report and i is there's the doomers. There's and even the people who believe that it's man made or you know, don't believe it's man made, there's a lot of people saying we're doomed.
Like it like it's just like this is it, like there's there's nothing we can do about it. And then on the other side, there's all these like like incredible climate scientists, really smart, empathetic people who are saying, This is wrong, it's incorrect, there's so much we can do, we have all the solutions. But what I am missing and what is missing from the narrative is what has to happen for us to turn this around.
And the I one of the reasons I don't even think the climate scientists and those well-meaning people are talking about that, because then that brings us back to the doom side of things. So right now, we are in a superposition where both futures are possible, where we could live our our solar punk dreams and you know be living off renewables and regenerative agriculture. or we could also be doomed and heading towards eco-fascism where
Basically, you've got authoritarian states just, you know, c claiming and and and controlling resources for themselves and and whoever they want to to access them. So but what we what we actually have to do in order to not have the doom scenario play out is so radical that I don't think anybody is willing to have that conversation.
Elliot Costello (20:33)
Yeah, so let's let's let's hold off for a few minutes to dive into the response. because we we need to end there. we talked about the economic argument. People don't connect with the economic argument. No one sits there and goes, okay, if it's eight hundred and fifty billion dollars divided by the twenty-seven million people who got in Australia, what's my contribution here? the numbers are so big, people
certainly in our country, Australia, not many have any idea of, you know, we've got a trillion dollars of debt. You know, what does that mean? It's a third of our GDP. Numbers discompopulate the argument. what generally connects with people are stories. stories of adversity, but stories of hope. and it'd be just great, Matt, if you're willing to share your story of actually going in a bit of insight into what
Emergencies reveal for you, for the community, the experience that you introduced at the start of the podcast with the the flood.
Matt Kendall (21:42)
Yeah, look, I I guess f for this I will frame it through what what I think I I'm not gonna go into I've got a back of a napkin plan around what I think needs to happen and I'm not gonna go into that here. We we don't have time and it's not it's not the right format for it. But I think there's three things that are key for this, and that is that are going to be needed for for the response that's that's going to, you know, i end up in a in a in a good scenario.
And it's going to be a response built around care, simplification, and defiance. And I'll tell the story about the the Northern River's floods through the lens of care. in 2022, we had what was known as essentially an atmospheric river sit over the top of us. The BOM didn't predict it, nobody could see it coming.
We basically just had this atmospheric river sit over the top of us for a bunch of days. We'd had like months and months of of of nonstop rain so that the ground was already saturated. we'd had a a a 100-year flood five years previous. This was a thousand-year flood. There were areas that f flooded in Mullumbimby that had never ever flooded before. I got a a a message from a friend saying he'd evacuated his family onto his roof.
two blocks back from us. I'd never been through it before. So the idiot I was, I strapped my my kayak to the roof and went to see if I could go and rescue him. I got to the top there and I just basically saw this torrent, this wall, this floor of water moving. Like, you know, Mick Fanning on a what jet ski couldn't have got in there. And this was an area that had never flooded before. Basically one side of the river had broken. It was going over to another, another another sort of arm of the river.
and I just never seen anything like it. I was, you know, filming it and I and it was my first thought was, wow, we've really pissed off our mother. Like this is it was just a a fury that I'd never seen before. cut a long story short, we were cut off for the best part of two weeks. Emergency services did not work. it I I remember sort of contacting you. I remember very kindly said, Look, you got to take
Take, you it wasn't ended up being like two weeks off work because that was what the emergency response required. the basically the emergency services weren't able to respond. the the army didn't get here till day eight. We were cut off. We were cut off from power, we were cut off from food, we were cut off from water. but what I witnessed was the most incredible experience, and it was a a it was a
A bunch of different community organizations came together, one of which I'd been involved with, which was Resilient Byron, which is now Plan C, which is essentially got a program which it's sending out to different communities around the world. I'll share it in the show notes. But it was just this: the whole community came together through this incredible
Elliot Costello (24:43)
Mm.
Matt Kendall (24:44)
combination of courage, compassion, and care. and all of these tropes around
You know, humans that, you know, how terrible we are, just kind of eroded. You know, we're five meals away from anarchy. you know, food and money, everything had shut down. And basically the whole community came together and made sure that everyone was okay. what I witnessed in though in in in those two weeks was almost an alternative way of being. And I I remember I was cleaning out a German woman's house and she was saying,
Why does it take a disaster like this for for us to be like this? and it really just shows that what can be what can be achieved through care.
Elliot Costello (25:31)
Mm.
Matt Kendall (25:31)
And I think that's that sort of first lens I think we're going to have to take into this kind of emergency response. I think we are then going to, in order to scale that, almost kind of like go to an almost a war footing, a non-militarized war footing, which is redirecting resources towards
Making sure that we are able to respond to this accordingly. so that's care. And then I think the next one is simplification. and Nate Hagens has a really good podcast on this. He's done a lot of work on it. Once again, I'll exp I'll I'll share it in the show notes. And this is something that I think it's something I have already started to implement in my life. we moved up here.
or close on ten years ago, to simp vastly simplify our lives. I know Elliot, you and and and and Sophie have been talking about simplifying your lives vastly, but we can't do this. It's not about us all, you know, using reusables and putting solar panels on our roof. That is not enough. There's this kind of global and society wide simplification, which is he talks about the throughput of energy that our current society has
We've had this incredible boom. He calls it the carbon, the carbon pulse, where we've had just really plentiful access to energy, where you know, could just pull a drill down and get oil out or get gas out or get coal. And we've just been able to massively expand industry. and and yeah, and look, we've we've it's been a rising tide. We've been able to pull so many people out of out of the desperate poverty, but that is coming to an end. He was saying that even if we didn't have climate change.
Our accessibility to these resources is getting harder and harder. So that's why we're fracking. You know, that's why we have to go, go down
Elliot Costello (27:22)
Mm. Yep.
Matt Kendall (27:23)
and drill sideways and blow it open in order to get it. So it becomes more expensive. So we are going to have to vastly simplify our lives through the amount of materials we use, the amount of energy we use. He says that yes, we can, as humans, with the amount of humans we have, live quite you know, enjoyable, fruitful, joyful lives.
With just renewables, it's just that we cannot live the kind of life we've been living. So we can't all go to Europe every every summer. You know, billionaires can't have private jets. And I think this is this is the frightening part for a lot of people around what we're going into and about the climate response that's going to be needed. And it's where the right comes in and kind of says, It's communism.
Elliot Costello (28:09)
It's
you're taking away my rights. Yeah, good luck. Mm.
Matt Kendall (28:12)
Yeah,
yeah, exactly. And I think that's that's the really hard part around this. And I think that brings me to the third point, which is defiance. You know, there's so many strong forces out there, whether it's the the the far right tech oligarchs joining forces with the fossil fuel money and all the corporate money that are wanting to protect their they said the reason there's a reason why Peter Thiel has, you know, properties and bunkers in in in New Zealand. There's a reason why,
Zuckerberg has a a fortress on Hawaii. They can see where this is heading. and they're just they're preparing. but then we're not at a community level actually doing what is needed to turn this around. And I think that is what it's going to take some defiance against the status quo. And I think there's and one of the things I want to mention about simplification.
That sounds like austerity. And I think austerity is this awful word where governments essentially say to the p you know the the the the poorest in society, sorry, we can't give you we're gonna have to cut welfare, we're gonna have to f cut these services because we can't afford it anymore. This is kind of the simplification is the opposite of that. You know, it brings in that care component in again, making sure everybody's okay. But because of the simplification, it just means that we can't have this excessive
sort of Western luxurious lifestyle that we've had, where we just have this take, make, waste, you know, linear sort of approach to life anymore. And I think that's where the defiance comes in. We are going to have to be defiant against the status quo, against the power structures that are pulling all the levers possible to stop us from trying to turn this around.
Elliot Costello (30:00)
Yeah.
Look, it's and it almost creates a perfect bridge into another episode around the structural changes that are required in both our economic and political system. I think it's a perfect sort of introduction for that. it's a fantastic framework. I haven't thought of those sort of three requirements in unison. And it might sound radical. I'm sure for a lot of people
that even accept the reality of science, this would sound radical. But in the f state of denial away from these facts in in the the the current trajectory that we're on, we do need radical action. and that's a tragedy. it's a lot less radical to make these changes than to live in a world that does degree that does increase in heat by up to two point six percent, which we're on track for by the end of the twenty first century.
so a alarming sort of message requires a requirement for change. Matt, it's a lot you've been through personally. It's an issue so close to your heart. It's an issue very close to your community's heart. we're hoping it becomes an issue closer to the nation's heart and the global community's heart. There there's a lot of good people.
Pushing for change, pushing for acceptance of science and pushing for a shift towards the radical action you've outlined. I'm hoping this helps. but I know this is a topic we're gonna have to come back to time and time again as we experience devastation after climate emergency after devastation.
Matt Kendall (31:48)
Yeah, look, and I think what the maddening thing for me in all of this is, is, you know, I'm seeing online, I'm seeing people saying, Should I even be paying my bills? and then on the other hand, you know, you've got all these well meaning, you know, climate scientists, really smart thinkers saying, No, we've got the solutions. We we can turn this around. But what nobody is talking about is what is required to turn it around. Like the
The wholesale systems change to the way we live, to the way our economy works, to the way we use materials and energy. It's enormous. And nobody there should be an ABC special on it. We should be holding a global summit. COP hasn't worked. so we need to just be approaching everything differently. This needs to be front pages. This needs to be everywhere, and nobody seems to actually be talking about.
What is required for us to turn things around in the time we have to turn them around in? And look, I this is where I I I don't want people to feel hopeless in all of this. We do have agency, but on the one hand, we just can't sit back. On the one hand, we can't just go, it's all over. we're doomed anyway. That's not the right response. And the other is the other on the other hand.
You know, actually going, good, look, we've got the solutions and you know, somebody's gonna implement them. We can't do that either. especially as a parent, like you can't be hopeless. You gotta hold some kind of optimism, but it has to be an active hope. It has to be we have to get busy, we have to change. and I guess that's what I wanna leave people with.
Matt Kendall (33:40)
We can actually change the way we're we're living. And it's like you said, it's radical change. I will share in our Substack a like I said, it's a back of a napkin plan. It's by no means comprehensive. Pull it to pieces, give me some better ideas. But it's literally, if that's might not be the right plan, but the scope of what I'm talking about.
is needed. And once again, I challenge any climate scientists or anybody to say that we can stay or get back under one point five or stay under two without that kind of change within the next eighteen months, two years, five years, at least getting started on it. So yeah, check out the Substack. We'll definitely be coming back to this issue. because if there's an issue worth knowing it's it's definitely that one.
Elliot Costello (34:30)
Thanks for ending on a position of hope. we we do need to attach ourselves to to values and beliefs that you know, our our children and their children will have a a better future and that's worth all the fight in the world.
Matt Kendall (34:44)
Exactly. Thanks, Elliot, and thanks everyone, and we'll see you next week.