Episode 22

Your Undivided Attention - How Science Fiction Can Shape Our Reality with Kim Stanley Robinson

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Carbon Connection, we learn about solutions.

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, hosts of Your Undivided Attention, a podcast in the TED Audio Collective, speak to science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson about his latest novel, Ministry of the Future. They discuss the relatable realities of the book’s dramatic opening scene to Stanley’s optimistic message about people working together to reduce the impacts of our changing climate. They also discuss how the science fiction genre can help us imagine a new reality.

Your Undivided Attention

The Carbon Almanac

CONTRIBUTORS

Special Acknowledgment: 

Co-hosts, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin and the team at Your Undivided Attention. This show is produced by the Center for Humane Technology and is part of the TED Audio Collective.

Episode Producer: Tania Marien

Production Team: Richard Bliss Brooke

Senior Producer: Tania Marien

Supervising Producer: Jennifer Myers Chua

Music: Cool Carbon Instrumental, Paul Russell, Musicbed

Episode Art: Jennifer Myers Chua

Network Voiceover: Olabanji Stephen

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Carbon Almanac

When it comes to the climate, we don’t need more marketing or anxiety. We need established facts and a plan for collective action.

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem.

The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers, and illustrators that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next. Drawing on over 1,000 data points, the book uses cartoons, quotes, illustrations, tables, histories, and articles to lay out carbon’s impact on our food system, ocean acidity, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, extreme weather events, the economy, human health, and best and worst-case scenarios. Visually engaging and built to share, The Carbon Almanac is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.

This isn’t what the oil companies, marketers, activists, or politicians want you to believe. This is what’s really happening, right now. Our planet is in trouble, and no one concerned group, corporation, country, or hemisphere can address this on its own. Self-interest only increases the problem. We are in this together. And it’s not too late to for concerted, collective action for change.