Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
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My guest this week is Phoebe Barnard.
Internationally awarded global change and biodiversity scientist, filmmaker, public policy and communications strategist, mentor and professor to young professionals across Africa and the world, Phoebe Barnard has a fire in her belly for profoundly transformative sustainability change.
She convenes leaders from cultures around the world to collaborate in establishing a future kinder, wiser, humbler and much more sustainable civilization.
Member of the Club of Rome’s Planetary Emergency Partnership, and author or coauthor of seven of the world scientists’ warnings on the state of the climate, planet and society, Phoebe is also impatient to convert warnings into social change action on the ground.
She is:
founding CEO of Stable Planet Alliance,
co-founder and convenor of the Global Restoration Collaborative,
affiliate full professor of environmental futures and conservation science at the University of Washington,
honorary research associate of climate, biodiversity and development at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and
co-producer of the forthcoming documentary series The Climate Restorers and other movies on aspects of civilizational shift.
Phoebe is a true polymath, somebody whose varied work and efforts all spring from a deep commitment to foster a better, more humane world. She advocates that humanity rethink its relationship to the environment, economic growth, and current systems of governance.
She identifies the “human behavioral crisis” as the problem underlying all of the above—and advocates using media and storytelling to begin to foster a values shift away from living beyond what the Earth can provide, a phenomenon known as ecological overshoot. This is a topic I discussed in greater detail on my episode with William Rees, who happens to be a colleague of Phoebe’s.
It’s easy to get caught up in the abstractions inherent in talking about systems, but what distinguishes Phoebe’s practice is her commitment to social justice and feminist approaches to change. She doesn’t lose sight of the fact that its people at the center of these issues. As monumental as these challenges may feel, they are ultimately coordination problems—ones we might solve if we can reframe our understanding and responses to them. Her latest work on the documentary series The Climate Restorers is the latest such example, which shares the stories of climate and ecosystem restoration efforts to return the climate to a state in which all life can thrive.
I was lucky to steal some time with her while she was on-location, so please enjoy this necessary conversation with Phoebe Barnard.
Some other episodes you might like:
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Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
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CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with conservation scientist Rodolfo Dirzo:
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