The Planetary Podcast

Interview Transcript

Transcribed by Otter AI

Kimberly White

Hello and welcome to The Planetary Podcast. Today we are joined by Dr. John Hewson, former leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, Professor at the Australian National University, and Chair of the Council for the Human Future. Thank you for joining us today!

John Hewson

It's an absolute pleasure, Kimberly.

Kimberly White

Now, the council has identified ten megarisks to civilization. Can you please tell us what these risks are?

John Hewson

Yes, well, we've recently established the council, and we declared our mission really is to alert the global society to the significance and urgency of a series of what we've identified as catastrophic human-made risks, sort of been a victim of our own success in many ways from about the middle of the last century. And these risks together comprise an existential emergency facing all humanity. So our aim is to promote a coherent strategy that will set human civilization on a path to surviving and thriving these risks.

Kimberly White

Now, the council has identified ten “megarisks” to civilization. Can you please tell us what these risks are?

John Hewson

So the ones we've focused on are: the decline of key natural resources, the collapse of ecosystems that support life and the mass extinction of species; human population growth and demand beyond the earth's carrying capacity; global warming, sea-level rise, and change in the climate that's affecting all human activity; widespread pollution of the earth systems by chemicals; rising food insecurity and failing nutritional quality; nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction; pandemics of new and untreatable diseases; the advent of powerful and uncontrolled new technologies; and finally, what we've described as really as a universal human failure to understand and act preventively on these risks.

One of my personal frustrations is the way governments, we would say loosely, ignore the science. They ignore warnings, even specific warnings, as we saw in terms of COVID, pushing these issues down the road as if they're not going to happen. And then, you know, getting caught by surprise or getting caught short. And if you anticipate the risks, and you properly assess the significance of the risks, and you look at the alternative ways in which they can be dealt with effectively, then you can have a very bright future. I mean, most governments got caught short. Their responses have been variable, but within a global collaborative framework that we had to deal with this and as a matter of urgency. And I've been impressed about how quickly people in our country, for example, have responded. Changing the way they live, the way they work, the way they travel, what they say, how they spend, accepting completely different roles, expanded roles for government, and so on, which is sort of been to me a bit of a dress rehearsal for what's possible if we all sign off on the significance of the challenge, and we all pitch in to do our bit at whatever level of society around the globe actually to deal with these serious, very serious risks and threats to our future.

Kimberly White

Now, which of these risks do you find the most pressing at this time?

John Hewson

Well, we don't prioritize. In fact, we argue that it's important to consider them collectively. You don't want to pursue one risk to the detriment of others. You might be able to stimulate more economic activity in a recovery phase by doing more with fossil fuels, but you do a lot of additional damage to the objective in relation to climate. So our focus is really not to prioritize, although, the public debate clearly does focus on some more than others. And then, of course, the intensity of concern varies a lot with the way that some of these issues unfold.

Kimberly White

Absolutely, and, you know, one of the main criticisms when it comes to sustainable development is that a lot of times when we're dealing with some of these issues, we work on them in silo, and we come up with these solutions, they might be solutions to the one issue we're facing, but can exacerbate the others.

John Hewson

That's right, and we've got to be very careful not to do that. And that's been our principal motivating focus, really, and getting people to understand that and accept that. I mean, I recognize the magnitude of that challenge, but you've got to start somewhere, and you've got to push hard, and that's really what we see our role is in this council.

Kimberly White

That's great. And, you know, again, with the governments' responses and COVID. In recent years, we've seen a growing call for governments to step up and take concrete action on the climate emergency. And I think especially so, recently, with the pandemic, we've seen an increase in calls for green recovery. However, there have been few countries that have actually raised their level of ambition enough to meet our climate goals, as seen in the recent NDC synthesis report. How can we increase political will to the levels necessary to tackle these existential threats facing our global community?

John Hewson

Well, it is a frustration. You know that there is no question that these threats are real. There's no question that they are happening now. There's no question that they're extremely grave, yet governments don't seem to want to listen. And I agree with you. I mean, I thought that, you know, everyone's talking about how we recover from the worst or most disruptive economic and social circumstances since the Great Depression. And you look at the pathways to the transition that you need to make, say to a low carbon world by the middle part of this century. And all of those transition pathways, sector by sector, offer very realistic growth potential in terms of investment, in terms of measured growth, in terms of jobs.

So politically, you would think our governments will embrace it. Yet, as you say, they've been very hesitant to actually do that. I think it's a terrible lost opportunity. One of the problems we have had in Australia is going back over the last couple of decades, we have had a very, sort of surreal political debate. Two major parties scoring points on each other and trying to shift blame rather than solving problems, and they just kick this task down the road. And the difficulty is that it's all been done in the context of them asserting, then government, for example, asserting that any response to climate, for example, must be not just disruptive, it must be negative in terms of its impact on growth and jobs, which is completely wrong.

You know, an effective response to climate would give you new industries, new businesses, new jobs, new directions, great potential for accelerating momentum, and so on. Yet, the debate has been really distorted by this simplistic notion that we shouldn't have more disruption, or we should risk losing things in the context of recovering from this pandemic, yet, ironically, it is one of the most effective ways out. And as you say, we haven't seen too many genuine green deals from one government to the next. And, you know, you are seeing Biden push this now in the United States; it's going to put a lot of pressure on Australia, where we are a designated laggard in terms of our recognition of the seriousness of the climate challenge and the magnitude of our response. And I do think there'll be a global competition this year led b...