From Antarctica to Europe, it’s hot, hot, hot. According to NASA, this past July and August are tied for the hottest months since humans could keep such records on planet Earth. The Arctic sea ice is the second lowest ever recorded. Russian fires are intense and Northern Europeans just enjoyed a second summer in the middle of September.

What will humans do in a climate damaged future? In this program we look at the most awful, with science fiction writer Anthony J. Gerst, with a dash of hope, with carbon herder Ariel Greenwood. In between you’ll hear two new climate rap songs from master entertainer Baba Brinkman.

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“CLI-FI” – THE SCIENCE FICTION OF THE NEW CLIMATE FUTURE – ANTHONY J. GERST

We all want to peer into the future, predicting or guessing what life will be like. When it comes to climate change, science offers some convincing predictions. But we don’t know how that climate shift will play out in the complex human world of debt, financing, invention and war.

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Our guest Anthony J. Gerst has been following current affairs for decades. Since the 1980’s, he’s been writing op-eds and letters to editors on many continents. Now Gerst has assembled what he knows into a vision of the new world after a climate catastrophe. The book is “The HAARP Letters: A Climate-Changing Reality” from by Crimson Cloak Publishing. Anthony lives where the Iowa River flows into the mighty Mississippi.

Follow Anthony on Twitter with the hashtag @climatewriter.

THE REAL CARBON SOLUTION, ON THE GROUND WITH ARIEL GREENWOOD

There’s a lot of different job descriptions. One that often often draws a blank for our next guest is “herdess”. Ariel Greenwood isn’t just TALKING about holistic agriculture or putting carbon back into the soil. She’s living it, and right through the long-lasting California drought.

Ariel works for a company called Holistic Ag – but she runs a herd of over 100 cattle through the high grasslands and bush near Santa Rosa California, on Pepperwood Preserve.  It’s science-based cattle management designed to enhance – not damage – the natural lands.  Plus, using the “MOB” grazing techniques developed by Alan Savory (of the Savory Institute) – these cows actually capture carbon and put it into the soil.

I think getting carbon back into the soil really is our last best hope.  It’s the only way to get huge, huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, without wrecking something else.

Learn more at Ariel’s web site here, and you can follow her adventures on her “land blog“.

Ariel’s Facebook page is here.

I also reference my interview with Kip Anderson, director of the movie “Cowspiracy”.  And we discuss an important article “8 forms of capital“.

NEW CLIMATE RAP MUSIC FROM BABA BRINKMAN

We play two climate performance pieces from Baba Brinkman’s new album “The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos”.

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Baba Brinkman has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and at the Sydney Opera House, including a rap version of Shakespeare’s “Cantebury Tales”. In 2014 he brought out the album “Rap Guide to the Wilderness“. Now he’s back with a new one “The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos”. You can get 4 cuts off the coming album cheap at bandcamp.com.  My interview with Baba (2014) can be found in this blog.

Find the new “climate chaos” rap music from Baba Brinkman here.  You don’t have to like rap music to love Baba’s performance.  He’s a true artist.

In the complex piece called “Carbon Bubble”, Brinkman does what we all do: he agonizes over his own role burning fossil fuels just to earn a living.  But the piece is deep, calling out a caricature of what I would call the super-carbon human.  The other song played in the show is titled “IPCC”.  It’s a rocking good song, loaded with climate content.  Who else could make real entertainment out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

I hope you enjoyed this show.  Please think of supporting me in this work, as nobody pays for all this other than the listeners.  Details here.

Alex