Welcome to the Climate Radio archive!

This is the permanent archive of  programmes made under the Climate Radio umbrella from 2003 to 2015 by independent journalist Phil England.

Click on any Series to get started.

The programmes were made for the award-winning radio station Resonance FM and rebroadcast by a network of community radio stations in the UK, Ireland, Germany and the United States with the help of A-Infos Radio Project and Pacific Network’s Audioport facility. The programmes were also shared with The Ecologist, New Internationalist and Indymedia.

We are grateful to our various funders and collaborators for their help in making this work possible.

We hope you find this archive useful in your work (feedback welcome).

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Alternative audio guide to Tate Modern by Phil England and Jim Whelton. Commissioned by Liberate Tate, Art Not Oil and Platform London as part of the campaign for a cultural boycott of fossil fuel companies. Updated November 2015.

“England and Welton’s Tate Modern piece is a note-perfect subversion of the standard form. What enables this process to be rerun without exhausting the listener is the wealth of information presented, the convincing way it cleaves to the artworks chosen and the use of the building’s own acoustic properties – the Turbine Hall’s echo and ambient gallery chatter – to create a seamless sense of place.” Morgan Quaintance, Art Monthly.

Instructions: Switch on the guide as you go through the doors of the Tate Modern on the side-entrance that slopes downwards into the Turbine Hall.

For more info go to: http://tateatate.org. Read more press reaction here.

If we need a democratic revolution to properly deal with climate change, the small country of Iceland (population one third of a million) has a lot to teach us. Here’s a referenced version of the Big Read I wrote recently for The Independent on the country’s experiments in democracy after the ‘pots and pans revolution’.

“I stood in front of the parliament building every lunch-hour and asked people, ‘Can you tell me what has happened in this country? Do you have any idea what we can do?’”

Singer-songwriter, poet and gay rights activist Hordur Torfason turns 70 this year. He remembers how Iceland’s “pots and pans revolution” started from small beginnings just days after the government stepped in and nationalised the country’s three biggest banks in October 2008. As the stock market plummeted so did peoples’ trust in the government. The country’s banking bubble had burst, unemployment had tripled and Torfason recalls rumours that the supermarkets might run out of food.

What started out as daily conversations with ordinary people quickly turned into weekly demonstrations involving thousands. After five months of escalating demonstrations the protesters demands had been met: the government, the head of the Central Bank and the director of the Financial Supervisory Authority had all resigned.

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The climate movement is coalescing around a powerful campaigning tool which has proved decisive in previous struggles in history: economic divestment. What does this campaign look like on the ground in the UK? What have the wins been so far? What creative direct action tactics are being employed? How does campaign for a cultural boycott fit in? And can the campaign succeed where the UN talks have failed?

Our guests in this fourth and final show in this mini-series are:

• Danielle Paffard UK divestment campaigner with 350.org
• Miriam Wilson Fossil Free campaign coordinator at People and Planet
• Jyotsna Ram Co-founder Community Reinvest
• Mel Evans art-activist with Liberate Tate and author of the forthcoming Artwash – Big Oil and the Arts

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The food system is responsible for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Moving to a system of small-scale climate-friendly farming (“agroecology”) would drastically reduce these emissions and provide numerous co-benefits into the bargain. Recognising the right of local communities to determine how their food is produced (“food sovereignty”) would protect those already farming in this way against the destructive forces of large-scale agriculture. Your guides for this week’s programme are:

• Vicki Hird, acting policy director with Sustain – The Alliance for Better Food and Farming
• Colin Tudge, author of Good Food for Everyone Forever: A people’s takeover of the world’s food supply and co-founder of the Campaign for Real Farming
• Dr Ian Fitzpatrick, author of of Global Justice Now!’s new report From the Roots Up : how agroecology can feed Africa and
• Humphrey Lloyd of Land Workers’ Alliance and Edible Futures.

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Do we need to reform our democracy in order to get serious action on climate change? Is it time to fight for radical reform of our democracy so that it serves people and planet rather than the narrow interests of powerful groups such as the fossil fuel corporations? We look at the fledgling Occupy Democracy movement, the newly emerging campaigns for a 21st Century Great Democratic Reform Act and a citizen-led constitutional convention which could kick the corporate influence out of our government so that it starts to work in the public interest once again. Featuring:

Featuring:

• George Barda, John Sinha, Aisha Dodwell and Julie Timbrell of Occupy Democracy
• Donnachadh McCarthy, former Liberal Democrat vice chair and author of The Prostitute State
• Alexandra Runswick, director of Unlock Democracy
• Dr Alan Renwick, associate professor at Reading University and author of A Citizen’s Guide to Electoral Reform

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We are proud to present the first programme in a new mini-series focusing on Climate Solutions. This is actually the first of a two-parter on democracy. This first show takes a look at fracking as a case study which lifts the lid on the corrupting influence of fossil fuel corporations (and the banks that finance them) on our democracy. The imposition of fracking in the UK threatens our basic human rights, hampers our ability to tackle climate change and makes a mockery of the democratic process.

Featuring:

• John Ashton who served as the Special Representative for Climate Change 2006-2012
• Tina Louise Rothery of Residents’ Action on Fylde Fracking, The Nanas & Frack-Free Lancashire
• Kathryn McWhirter and Charles Metcalfe from Frack Free Balcombe Residents’ Association
• Rose Dickinson, campaigner at Friends of the Earth

Next week, we’ll follow up by looking at the newly emerging campaign for a 21st Century Great Democratic Reform Act which would kick the corporate influence out of our government so that it starts to work in the public interest once again.

Owen Jones’ latest book, The Establishment: And how they get away with it (Allen Lane), is a pithy retelling of recent political scandals, studded with dozens of revealing interviews with power brokers.

It has hugely important things to say about the state of our democracy, the shocking pace at which the gains of the post-war settlement (the National Health Service (NHS), the welfare state) are being rolled back, and the extent to which bankers and corporations are now sitting at the very heart of power. It concludes with a call for a democratic revolution and sets out proposals for reform.

I interviewed Owen for New Internationalist online and reviewed his book for the October issue of the magazine. Read the interview here. Climate Radio looked at the rotten state of our democracy and the need for radical reform in a panel discussion in April last year which you can listen to here. Meanwhile Occupy London are calling for an occupation of Parliament Square from 17-26 October. Here’s some advance information about that:

“The domain of art and culture presents us with a realm where we can explore issues we are hard-wired to avoid in a soft or mediated way or in a way that directly speaks to our unconscious. It was interesting then to see how a number of artists explored different ways of confronting extinction in an evening dedicated to performance programmed into the June Facing Extinction conference.”

(…)

“Facing the reality of our ecological crisis is one thing. Acting to stop it is another. To be effective, I would argue, requires having a political analysis that addresses the question of why governments are failing to respond adequately to the signals coming from the scientific community. It also requires artists to think about where to intervene in a complex system.”

Read the full piece at The Wire.