Interviews

THESE INTERVIEWS were all conducted during my research for the CBC radio series “Climate Wars”, broadcast in January, 2009, and excepts from them appear in my book of the same name.  There was a problem with the sound in a number of them which was rectified for the broadcasts, but remains on these unedited recordings, some of which will therefore sound “hot”.  My apologies.

JOHN HOLDREN    

John P. Holdren is Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University and the director of the Woods Hole Research Center. He recently served a year as chairman of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the highest honours in the American scientific community, and he is certainly one of the cleverest men I have met in a long time.

President Barack Obama has chosen Holdren to be Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  This is very good news.

I interviewed Holdren at Woods Hole, MA on 8 February, 2008.

DENNIS BUSHNELL  

Dennis M. Bushnell is Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia. He is also one of the most fertile thinkers about technological near futures and their political and social implications that I have ever met.  I interviewed him in Fredericksburg, VA on 22 January, 2008

AUBREY MEYER       

Aubrey Meyer is a South African-born musician and composer who largely abandoned his career in the late 1980s to address what he saw as the linked issues of climate change and global equity. He founded the Global Commons Institute to promote the strategy of “Contraction and Convergence,” which is now central to much of the thinking about how to solve the North-South deadlock in how to cut emissions. I interviewed him in his home in North London on .

DONALD BRAMAN  

Donald Braman is a professor at George Washington University Law School, but he was originally trained as an anthropologist, and it shows in his research style.  He did some revealing research on how people ended up on different sides on the issue of climate change. I interviewed him in Washington on 5 February, 2008.

LESTER BROWN  

Lester Brown has been referred to as “the guru of the modern green movement,” but he grew up on a farm and holds several degrees in agricultural science. He founded Worldwatch, the first major public policy institute to concentrate on the environment and later on climate change, in 1974.  He now heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC.  His most recent book is “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”  I interviewed him in Washington on 30 January, 2008.

WILLIAM CHANDLER      

Bill Chandler is a respected expert on energy and security with 32 years experience in a variety of institutes and in government service. He also lectures at Johns Hopkins University.  He was working at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace when I interviewed him in Washington on 29 January, 2008.

ARTUR CHILINGAROV

Artur Chilingarov is a celebrated polar explorer who is Vladimir Putin’s personal adviser on Arctic affairs. He also a politician, and served as deputy chairman of the last Duma. He led the expedition that planted the Russian flag on the Arctic seabed at the North Pole in 2007.  I interviewed him in Moscow on 23 April, 2008.

CHRIS ABBOTT  

Chris Abbott is the deputy director of the Oxford Research Group  and director of its Moving Towards Sustainable Security programme. His most recent publications include “Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World” (2007), and “An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change” (2008), both from ORG. I interviewed him in London on 26 March, 2008.

WILLIAM CLINE  

Bill Cline is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He is an expert in agricultural economics in developing countries, and wrote “Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country” in 2007. I interviewed him in Washington on 4 February, 2008.

GEOFF DABELKO  

Geoff Dabelko is the director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. I interviewed him on 3 February, 2008.

ALEXANDER DUBIN  

Alexander Dubin was an adviser to Vladimir Putin and to the head of the Duma.  He currently presents a television current affairs show.  I interviewed him in Moscow on 21 April, 2008.

ALEX EVANS  

Alex Evans is a London-based associate of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. He’s working on food security now, but he’s also good on the history of public opinion about climate change.  I interviewed him in London on 20 January, 2008.

LEON FUERTH  

Leon Fuerth is a research professor at the Elliott School of  International Affairs at George Washington University. He is a former diplomat and was national security adviser to former Vice-President Al Gore.  He wrote the 30-year bad outcome chapter for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s groundbreaking study on the political and strategic implications of climate change, “The Age of Consequences.”  I interviewed him in Washington on 5 February, 2008.

SHERRI GOODMAN  

Sherri Goodman is General Counsel at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA Corporation) in Alexandria, VA.  She was deputy under-secretary of defense for environmental security in the Clinton administration.  As executive director of CNA’s Defense Advisory Board, she supervised the production of the 2007 report by eleven retired American generals and admirals, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.” I interviewed her in Alexandria on 4 February, 2008.

JAY GULLEDGE    

Jay Gulledge is the Senior Scientist and Program Manager for Science and Impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, VA.  He provided the climate change scenarios that were the point of departure for the major report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “The Age of Consequences.”  I interviewed him in Arlington on 31 January, 2008.

JAMES HANSEN   

Jim Hansen is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He was one of the first scientists to go public about the danger of climate change, in a famous speech to the US Congress in 1988, and remains one of the leading voices in the field. He recently published research which suggests that the maximum allowable concentration of carbon dioxide that we can allow to remain in the atmosphere over the long term, if we don’t want all the ice on the planet to melt, may be as low as 350 ppm.  We are now nearing 390 ppm. I interviewed him in Tallberg, Sweden.

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON  

Tad Homer-Dixon holds the Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and is a Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, both at the University of Waterloo. He has led several research projects studying the links between environmental stress and violence in developing countries, now focuses on how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change. His latest book is “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization” (2006).  I interviewed him in Toronto on 4 April 2008.

DAVID KEITH   

David Keith is the director of the ISEEE Energy and Environmental Systems Group and holds the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary. He has been working “near the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy for twenty years.”  He is an outspoken advocate of research in geo-engineering techniques and an active experimenter on technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere directly.  I interviewed him in Calgary on 2 May 2008.

MICHAEL KLARE    

Michael Klare is the defence correspondent for “The Nation” and Five Colleges Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.  He is well connected in military circles in Washington despite the rather left-wing leanings (within the American spectrum) of “The Nation.” I interviewed him in Amherst on 10 February.

ALEXEI KOKORIN  

Alexei Kokorin is the director of the World Wildlife Fund’s branch in Russia. Although environmental activism in Russia has taken a beating in Russia in recent years because people were busy just surviving, it still survives and the traditional environmental causes (like those of the WWF) still command broad support. However, awareness of and concern about climate change is at a very low level. I interviewed him in Moscow on 22 April.

NICK MABEY    

Nick Mabey is the founding director and chief executive of E3G, a consultancy based in London, Berlin and Brussels that concentrates on energy and climate security issues.  Until 2005 he was a senior advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and before that he was Head of Sustainable Development in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  I interviewed him in London on 14 April 2008.

GERRY PROTTI    

Gerry Protti is Executive VP Corporate Relations and President, Offshore and International, of the EnCana Corporation, a large Western Canadian oil and gas company. Encana runs one of only three carbon dioxide sequestration operations in the world at its oil-field in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.  Mark Demchuk, the team leader of the Weyburn operation, also took part in the interview. I interviewed them in Calgary on 1 May, 2008.

PAUL ROGERS        

Paul Rogers is the head of the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University, and one of my favourite analysts on security issues ranging from terrorism to climate change. I interviewed him in London on 10 April, 2008.

HANS-JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER    

Hans Schnellhuber is the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and a leading climate scientist in his own right.  He is the climate change adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel, and is heavily involved in the international negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto accord. I interviewed him in Potsdam on 28 March, 2008.

BRITTON STEVENS     

Britton Stevens is a young climate scientist who works at the Research Aviation Facility of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.  This is one of the hands-on researchers who flies “campaigns” in various parts of the world sampling the atmosphere. I interviewed him at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, CO on 7 May, 2008.

ROBERT WATSON       

Bob Watson was trained as a chemist, and has been studying atmospheric pollution since the 1980s. He was Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, but he was not re-elected after the Bush administration effectively vetoed him.  He has worked as Director of the Science Division at NASA, Associate Director for Environment in the Clinton administration, and as Director of the Environment Department at the World Bank.  He is currently Chief Scientific Adviser at the British Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and holds the Chair of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia.  I interviewed him in London on 20 May, 2008.

JAMES MASLANIK    

Jim Maslanik is a research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who specialises in polar climatology. He is heavily involved in studying the retreat of the summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. I interviewed him in Boulder, CO on 8 May, 2008.

PATY ROMERO-LANKAO    

Paty Romero-Lankao is a Mexican sociologist who is deputy director of the Institute for the Study of Society and Environment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.  She has co-written reports on the human impacts of climate change for the IPCC. I interviewed her in Boulder on 7 May, 2008.

VANDANA SHIVA    

Vandana Shiva is one of India’s leading environmentalists, and makes a particularly strong argument for the virtues of using traditional farming methods rather than the techniques of industrial agriculture, especially if food production is going to be stressed by climate change.  She has a PhD in physics from the University of Western Ontario and has done interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, but her main focus now is on sustainable agriculture.  I interviewed her in London on 18 March, 2008.

SIR CRISPIN TICKELL    

Crispin Tickell is a former British diplomat who began to take an interest in the security implications of climate change in the 1970s, and published one of the first book on the subject, “Climate Change and World Affairs,” in 1977. He was a key player in the conspiracy of scientists who persuaded Margaret Thatcher to take climate change seriously in the 1980s (which led directly to the creation of the Hadley Centre in 1990, and indirectly to the signature of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992).  He ended his diplomatic career as British Ambassador to the United Nations, and is now the director of the director of the Policy Foresight Programme of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University.  I interviewed him in London on 3 July, 2008.

AMORY LOVINS    

Amory Lovins is the great American apostle of energy conservation, and his Rocky Mountain Institute has been a font of innovation in energy-saving techniques for several decades. He has been making the “long march through the institutions” for most of his life, and he is as welcome in the Pentagon and in the automobile and aviation industries as he is in green circles. I interviewed him in Denver on 7 May, 2008.

ADMIRAL DENNY McGINN    

Denny McGinn ended his naval career as a vice-admiral and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Requirements and Programs. He subsequently led the energy, transportation and environment division at the Battelle Memorial Institute, the world’s largest nonprofit independent research and development organization, and now heads the RemoteReality Corp.  He is also a senior policy advisor to the American Council on Renewable Energy and a senior fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute. I interviewed him in Washington on 31 January, 2008.

STEFAN RAHMSTORF    

Stefan Rahmstorf is an oceanographer and climatologist who heads the Earth System Analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact. He is also Professor of the Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University.  He is also a very clear thinker.  I interviewed him in Potsdam on 25 April.

MANIK ROY    

Manik Roy is Director of Congressional Affairs at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington. He is immensely knowledgeable about the workings of the US Congress and its deeply ambivalent attitude. I interviewed him in Washington on 31 January, 2008.

ANATOLII TSYGANOK    

Anatolii Tsyganok is a colonel recently retired from the Russian army whose interest and ability in strategic matters has brought him a position at the Centre for Military Forecasting and membership of the General Council of the Russian Defence Ministry. I interviewed him in Moscow on 23 April, 2008.

.. more added soon