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PODCAST

Decouple

Dr. Chris Keefer

There are technologies that decouple human well-being from its ecological impacts. There are politics that enable these technologies. Join me as I interview world experts to uncover hope in this time of planetary crisis.

science

All Episodes

00:44:44

Keeping the Northern Lights On

Decouple ·

2022/01/31

Madeleine Redfern is an Inuit businesswoman and former two-term mayor of Iqaluit in the far northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. Redfern describes the harsh energy situation in Canada’s remote, indigenous communities, which face extreme darkness and cold, a reliance on diesel generators, limited ability to fundraise for new projects, and high costs. She assesses the merits of different energy technologies for these communities, making clear the challenge of choosing an energy path in a situation

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01:08:40

A Hard Landing for Soft Energy

Decouple ·

2022/01/24

Mark Nelson joins me to discuss Amory Lovins, the man behind the “soft energy path” and the intellectual godfather of Germany’s Energiewende. Amory Lovins shot to relevance in the 1970s for advising against the prevailing model for electric utilities, which was to build as much generation capacity as possible. Lovins charted an alternate path, which focused on efficiency and distributed energy sources. Mark offers his critique of Lovins, based on what he identifies as the two main faults that

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00:45:58

The Children of Chernobyl

Decouple ·

2022/01/20

Dr. Geraldine Thomas, Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank and leading global expert on the impacts of radiation, joins me to discuss the phenomenon of “radiation vacations” for children believed to have been affected by the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl Children International (CCI) has organized close to 1 million such trips for children from Ukraine and Belarus with the claim that these vacations extend these children's lives by on average 2 years. It also supports a number of orphanages and

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00:58:38

An Indigenous Woman in Nuclear

Decouple ·

2022/01/17

Tracy Primeau is a retired Shift Manager at Bruce Power who is now on the Board of Directors at Ontario Power Generation (OPG). She is a member of the Nipissing First Nation, and was the first woman to make her way to Shift Manager from the shop floor. She discusses her first hand perspective as an energy worker while Ontario transitioned from coal to nuclear, and the life quality benefits it brought to both workers and the province broadly. Primeau shares her experience of what it is like working

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01:22:31

Doomberg Lays Out the Global Pecking Order

Decouple ·

2022/01/10

Is the sky falling on the west? I am joined by the green chicken avatar representing the anonymous Substack: Doomberg. Doomberg is home to entertaining and insightful essays on all things energy, industry, finance, politics, and more. We touch on each of these topics in our wide-ranging discussion of the consequences of bad energy and industrial policy, the West's hopefully reversible decline, and how we understand and feel about the future. Subscribe to the Doomberg Substack:

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00:46:46

Goodbye, Grohnde

Decouple ·

2021/12/31

Dr. Anna Veronika Wendland is a scientist at the Herder Institute and a historian of science and technology. She calls in from Germany's Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in its final 24 hours of operation. Germany has forced the political closure of its remaining six nuclear plants, three of which—Grohnde, Brokdorf, and Gunndremingen—are being lost this New Year's Eve, 2021. Dr. Wendland conducts her research at Grohnde and has dealt heavily with the human factors of nuclear energy and nuclear safety. As

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00:34:42

The Wicked Problem With "Don't Look Up"

Decouple ·

2021/12/31

In this short episode, I am joined by Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute, to discuss Adam McKay's film "Don't Look Up," an overt commentary on climate change. We comment on the importance of climate communication through media and art, though critique the film's use of the common "asteroid metaphor" for climate change. To Trembath, McKay portrayed climate change as a "simple problem" as opposed to the "wicked problem" that it is. Beyond the movie, we take a moment to

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01:08:06

The Grim Fairy Tale of German Electricity

Decouple ·

2021/12/28

With the closure of three of Germany’s remaining six nuclear reactors coming offline within the week, I am joined by Noah Jakob Rettberg, a young physics lab technician in training from Germany. He shares his perspective growing up embroiled in the anti-nuclear culture of Germany, as well as his impressive knowledge of the technical and political history of nuclear energy in the country.

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01:05:54

Into the Wild: Dr. Keefer Before the MD

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2021/12/24

Many years ago, before Dr. Keefer was a nuclear power-loving, techno-optimist physician, he was a self-described neo-luddite. He made his beliefs a reality by going back to the land in a big way. Finding the agricultural revolution too modern for his tastes, he took on the hunter gatherer life as a horse-wrangling hunter and dog mushing trapper in Canada’s far northern Yukon Territory. Just in time for the holidays, Dylan Moon guides Dr. Keefer on a trip down memory lane to tell some entertaining

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01:09:26

Are Nuclear Plants Immortal?

Decouple ·

2021/12/22

Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group, and I dig into his claims about the functional "immortality" of nuclear power plants. We explore the physics of the limitations of reactor life and whether keeping existing nuclear online as long as possible is an intelligent investment. We take a look at the peculiarities of different reactor designs and their impacts on longevity including the unfortunate decision of the UK to go it alone with its gas reactor fleet whose internals cannot be

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00:59:11

Precision Agriculture and Angry Optimism

Decouple ·

2021/12/19

Dr. Kenneth Cassman joins to explore the state of innovation in agriculture. Where are the knowledge gaps? And what changes must take place if we hope to feed a growing and increasingly wealthy world population? Dr. Cassman stresses the need for open-access, high-quality climate data to accelerate not only farming technologies, but the knowledge base behind their design and implementation. Dr. Cassman is the Emeritus Robert B. Daugherty Professor of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,

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01:06:48

One Billion Tons

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2021/12/14

Rauli Partanen, an award-winning science communicator and energy analyst from Finland, comes on to discuss his new report, “One Billion Tons" on the wide-ranging consequences of Germany’s nuclear phaseout, and the benefits that would result from keeping the country’s last 6 reactors online. The title references the huge amount of added carbon dioxide emissions that will result from Germany’s nuclear phaseout between now and 2045. Rauli also provides a backgrounder on the German Energiewende and it’s

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00:36:14

What's A Wind Drought? Europe's Lust for the Gust

Decouple ·

2021/12/11

Dr. Hannah Bloomfield, a Climate Risk Analytics research associate at the University of Bristol, describes an extreme weather event that affected European energy output significantly this year: a wind drought. We discuss how unequal warming between the poles and the equator is potentially leading to a pattern of decreasing mid latitude wind speeds, a phenomenon known as global stilling and the consequences this will have for electric systems that are becoming increasingly reliant on the

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01:46:56

The James Hansen Interview

Decouple ·

2021/12/06

In this very special episode, I am joined live in Berlin by the "Godfather of Climate Science," Dr. James Hansen. Dr. James Hansen is the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is now the Director of the "Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program" at Columbia University's Earth Institute. He was one of the first to bring climate change to the public eye with his famous testimony before the U.S. congress in the 1980s. Since then, he has continued to be at the

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00:46:52

Colonialism in Green

Decouple ·

2021/12/03

Dr. Vijaya Ramachandran is tracking the lastest in eco-colonialism. Numerous countries and investment banks have blocked the financing of fossil fuels and even hydroelectric projects in Africa, the continent most afflicted by serious energy poverty and the related problem of vulnerability to climate change. From an environmental perspective, it is counter-intuitive that an increased use of fossil fuels should be allowed anywhere. But with Africa accounting for just 1% of global carbon emissions, Dr

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00:52:08

Let The Market Decide? A History of Government...

Decouple ·

2021/11/28

In this episode, Dr. Keefer and economist Edgardo Sepulveda cover a lot of ground: • Edgardo’s new website that includes the electricity profiles of 24 OECD countries and whether, using which tech and at what price they have lowered emissions over the last 60 years is at (https://edecarb.org/) • Edgardo noted the increasing recognition by many expert economists that "restructured" energy-only generation markets probably cannot facilitate the massive, long-term investment necessary for

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00:16:55

Darth Vader On Geoengineering

Decouple ·

2021/11/25

The Dark Lord takes a break from singing 80s parodies outside the gates of COP26 to talk to us about his love for geoengineering. For an argument against Marine Cloud Brightening, here's a briefing from Geoengineering Monitor: www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2021/04/marine_cloud_brightening/ Watch the video on Decouple's YouTube channel.

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01:29:48

Can You Dig It? Should You Dig It? All About Mining

Decouple ·

2021/11/22

Mining underpins nearly everything in our modern lives. Essentially, if we didn't grow it, we mined it. Dr. Richard Herrington, an academic geologist and Head of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, digs deep on the topic of mining. Yet in terms of public visibility, mining is perhaps even more hidden from view than agriculture in rich nations. Dr. Herrington offers a brief history of materials use, from a time when we used only a few minerals to the present, where we regularly

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01:04:53

Indigenous Climate Action

Decouple ·

2021/11/18

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action. Eriel critiques pointing out that wealthy countries engaging in "climate action" tend to do so from a co-optive or colonial framework rather than one of "decolonizing." She argues this tendency has pervaded environmentalism from the outset, as a philosophy originating from the upper and middle classes that views nature as something external that must be protected from

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00:10:50

Is African Poverty a Climate Solution?

Decouple ·

2021/11/15

Special Decouple Studios mini-doc from inside the walls of COP26. Decouple's Jesse Freeston follows two young nuclear energy advocates, Shirly Rodriguez and Princess Mbthobeni, as they roam the conference searching for evidence of a meaningful plan to reduce emissions AND raise living standards in Africa and beyond. Shirly Rodriguez is a nuclear engineer, and Princess Mbthoneni is the Nuclear Stakeholder Management Advisor for South Africa's Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, as well as the

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318 results

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