- Susan Quinn, ELEANOR AND HICK & Naomi Oreskes, THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
- Overpopulation: Ecological Elephant In The Room?
- Naomi Oreskes, THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION & Dr. James Hansen, STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN
- Paul Ehrlich, HOPE ON EARTH & Ryan Mitchell, TINY HOUSE LIVING
- Elizabeth Kolbert, THE SIXTH EXTINCTION & Annalee Newitz, SCATTER, ADAPT AND REMEMBER
- Boris Fishman, A REPLACEMENT LIFE & John Cushman, KEYSTONE AND BEYOND
- John Cushman of Inside Climate News: Keystone XL Pipeline
- Ruth Thomas-Suh, REJECT, Herbert Thomas, THE SHAME RESPONSE TO REJECTION & John Cushman on KXL
- Alan Weisman, COUNTDOWN
- David Bollier on The Commons: GREEN GOVERNANCE & VIRAL SPIRAL
- Richard Heinberg, SNAKE OIL & Bill McKibben, OIL AND HONEY
- Brian Fagan, THE ATTACKING OCEAN & Christine Shearer, KIVALINA
- James Workman, HEART OF DRYNESS & Christine Shearer, KIVALINA
- Paolo Bacigalupe (encore), Susan Rockefeller, MISSION OF MERMAIDS & Jason Chin, ISLAND
- Barbara Kingsolver, FLIGHT BEHAVIOR & James Howard Kunstler TOO MUCH MAGIC
- Richard Zacks, ISLAND OF VICE & Stan Cox, LOSING OUR COOL
- Jonathan Koomey, COLD CASH, COOL CLIMATE & Philip Warburg, HARVEST THE WIND
- Philip Warburg, HARVEST THE WIND
- William deBuys, A GREAT ARIDNESS & Dave Gardner, GROWTHBUSTERS
- Will Potter, GREEN IS THE NEW RED & David Gessner, MY GREEN MANIFESTO
- John Elder Robison, BE DIFFERENT & Tony Sorgi, The New Earth Archive
- Amy Seidl, FINDING HIGHER GROUND & Matthew Stein, WHEN DISASTER STRIKES
- Jim Motavalli, HIGH VOLTAGE & James Hoggan, CLIMATE COVER-UP
- John Michael Greer, APOCALYPSE NOT & Richard Heinberg, THE END OF GROWTH
- Christian Parenti, TROPIC OF CANCER & Marge Bruchac, 1621
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
James Workman talks about his book, THE HEART OF DRYNESS: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. And journalist Christine Shearer talks about KIVALINA: A Climate Change Story.
While world leaders dither in Durban, Writers Voice explores what their inaction on the climate really means.
James Workman
As the world gets hotter, it gets dryer — severe droughts are expected to more than double world-wide. Parts of the globe — including the southwestern US — could face megadroughts lasting decades, or even centuries. How will we cope?
Maybe we could learn something from people who have been living in water-starved regions for tens of thousands of years, the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Their knowledge of how to live off their dry land is intimate and encyclopedic. There is much they can teach us — if they survive the attempts of the Botswana government to push them off their homeland into reservations.
The government wants untrammeled access to the mineral wealth that lies below the surface of the Kalahari’s sands. But the Bushmen have fought back.
It was into the midst of this conflict that James Workman went to get the story he tells in his book, Heart of Dryness. Over time, he shifted from being an uninvolved journalist to a passionate supporter of the Bushmen’s struggle. He also learned lessons about living in a dryer world that he’s adapting to our conditions right here at home.
James Workman is an award-winning journalist and a consultant on water scarcity and climate change adaptation.
Watch video about the struggle of the Bushmen
Christine Shearer
In 2008, the traditional Inupiat Eskimo community of Kivalina, Alaska filed suit against ExxonMobil Corporation and 19 other fossil fuel companies. In 1953, the village of Kivalina covered about 54 acres but now is down to about 27. The village sits at most a few feet above the water and depends on sea ice to protect it. That sea ice is going away.
The people of Kivalina charge the oil companies with contributing to the global warming that’s taking their town — and they’re suing for compensation and relocation costs. It’s a landmark case that is still wending its way through the courts.
Christine Shearer’s book, Kivalina: A Climate Change Story, recounts the struggle of the residents against the oil companies. But she goes beyond that, showing how their story is part of a larger pattern of denial and obstruction on the part of polluting corporations who are fighting tooth and nail to stop action on the climate.
Shearer has worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Climate Progress, and The Journal of Political Ecology, among others.