WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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In this episode of Interchange we welcome back Holly Buck whose new book is Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough, published by Verso.
And as we did in our previous show with Buck, which was called “Capturing the Carbon Imaginary,” we’ll feature music from Polish jazz pianist and composer Krzysztof Komeda. Komeda was born in 1931, the same year that E.O. Hulburt, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory published a paper in the journal Physical Review titled “The Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere of the Earth” where he stated that “the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages… is a possible theory,” supporting the theory of the greenhouse effect and global warming first proposed by Swedish chemist and physicist Svante Arrhenius in 1896.
Our opening song is “Svantetic” – a composition from Komeda’s classic album Astigmatic, recorded in 1965. “Svantetic” is not dedicated to Svante Arrhenius but rather to Svante Foerster, a Swedish poet who was a friend of Komeda.
1965 is the same year that Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Science Advisory Committee stated that “pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air”, with effects that “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”
Fifty-six years later, this year, on October 28th, the House Oversight Committee convened a hearing entitled, “Fueling the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil’s Disinformation Campaign to Prevent Climate Action” which included several Oil & Gas company executives. They were asked under oath by Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney if they would pledge to no longer spend money to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change. None of them would, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Since 1965 no country has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States. The 278 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the U.S. has emitted to the atmosphere over the past half-century represents over one-fifth of global emissions during that time. It seems revealing that this coincides with the rise of the U.S. prison population.
Holly Buck’s first book, After Geoengineering, addressed questions about the technological solutionism of climate intervention, while her new book, Ending Fossil Fuels, makes plain that to stop the extraction and burning of fossil fuels means putting an end to an industry with massive wealth and political power, and with existential entanglements in so many of the ways we even imagine what life is supposed to look like.
Buck exposes what she calls the “cruel optimism of Net Zero” – an idea fully supported by Big Oil and Gas. But she also offers a “A Phaseout Toolbox for the 2020s” which lays out five demands to pursue, including the nationalization of fossil fuel companies.
GUEST
Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying rural futures, the politics of platforms, and how emerging technologies can address environmental challenges. She works as an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, and has a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She is the author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration and Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.
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MUSIC – Krzysztof Komeda
“Svantetic”
“Repetition”
“Innocent Sorcerers”
“Three Little Words”
“Fair Weather”
ID insert: “Soon”
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young
