Robinhood and the United Nations (512)
/The #ExxonKnew story continues to develop as executives do everything they can to prevent accountability for huge corporations by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to put the entire world in mortal danger with lies to protect their business model. It is now a matter of public record that Exxon has known and admitted to knowing that climate change was a real threat for 30 years… and spent the next 30 years lying to the public through funding fake science and supporting opportunistic political hacks. The result? Well they learned their lesson, this sort of thing works. They are now spending more money to intimidate, delay and attempt to discredit those attempting to seek accountability.
- Exxon Sues MA Attorney General In Retaliatory Attempt To Intimidate ‘Exxon Knew’ Climate Accountability Movement
- Brad Wall finds allies among premiers opposed to forced carbon tax
The CBC gets into our crosshairs again this week with a discussion on the language used to describe anti-science hacks who keep being called ‘contrarians’ by the CBC much less science denialists and how that affects public discourse in Canada, and some final thoughts from hideous theatre macabre of the Republican National Convention.
- Conservative groups push back against Republican party’s climate denialism
- End climate change denial at CBC
Green Majority regular contributor and finance expert Tim Nash the sustainable economist joins us this week for a segment on the concept of a global “Robinhood Tax” and how this idea could address the vast wealth inequality all over the world, climate change and basically all the other big-ticket global problems all in one go. But you know, start small right? This is not a new idea, nor is it crazy… in fact it’s already been proposed on a smaller scale in some countries and policies similar to this are already in place.
In the final main-show section we discuss briefly the technology/carbon connection with Googles data-centres… both how big an impact they have and how they are trying to reign this in with artificial intelligence (AI) software. As well, the ‘scary climate story of the week’ involves a shockingly rapid loss of sea ice and how we’re totally not nearly freaked out enough about sea level rise.
- Climate change: Greenland loses a trillion tonnes of ice in four years as melting rate triples
- Google uses AI to cut data centre energy use by 15%
- Facebook’s solar-powered internet drone takes flight
Bonus Show!
Deirdre and Daryn talk about ferrets and gene editing (part 2 of a discussion from last week) and Pokemon Go (yes really) and it’s very real relevance to modern environmental impacts. If you think this is silly or not relevant, sorry! Your wrongListen in on the podcast to find out why!
This weeks music:
Last Hologram “Culture Class” & “Dreamchaser”
What do you think?
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