Sustain What?

• A Check-in on COP30 with a Top Brazilian Climate Journalist and Kim Stanley Robinson on the Role of Fiction Facing Inconvenient Facts

  I hope you can watch and weigh in on this conversation I had on the final official day of COP30, the thirtieth round of climate treaty talks, which are wrapping up in Belém, the gateway city to Brazil’s vast portion of the Amazon River basin.First we had a pop-up update from my friend Cristiane Prizibisczki, a veteran Brazilian environmental journalist covering the meeting for the great online publication ((o))eco. A big focus of their coverage was the call for a Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty (a tough sell in the formal sessions even without the Trump administration on hand given the suffocating role of Saudi Arabia in these talks (and the entire three decade process).Around 80 countries have signed on, as Prizibisczki reported, “through the launch of a coalition – or “collective effort”, as the COP presidency has used the term – for the abandonment of the use of fossil fuels at a global level. Among the countries present were Germany, Colombia, the United Kingdom and Kenya.” A crucial qualifier is that such a process would need to be “just” - offering different paths for low-emission poor countries than wealthy fossil-fueled powers. (A related concept that I explored in a previous Sustain What show is a “takeback obligation” for fossil fuel companies to capture their CO2.)She also gave a vivid description of the dramatic evacuation triggered by a contained but smoky fire in the negotiators’ “Blue Zone.”My feature guest was Kim Stanley Robinson, the longtime climate-focused science fiction author who’s just returned to his home in Davis, Callifornia, after speaking at the COP30 climate treaty conference in Brazil.He left before the fire erupted in the Blue Zone complex Thursday, causing a mass evacuation just as countries’ delegations were in the final press of negotiations over next steps 10 years after the Paris Agreement.Here’s my curtain raiser post for the webcast, which includes info on the fire:Here’s Robinson’s description of the indigenous protests at COP30:We also talked about the importance of fiction, from Robinson’s sprawling 2020 novel to the play “Kyoto,” which had its first run in London a year ago and is currently Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City through November. I played a scene from the London production that deeply resonated with my decades reporting on Saudi Arabia’s sustained role trying to prevent substantive agreements - and my personal experience with the protagonist, a lawyer and lobbist for fossil interests, Don Pearlman.Please watch and weigh in with your reactions in the comments. And do consider supporting what I’m doing here on Sustain What by sharing this post with friends and contributing financially.Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thank you Meera Subramanian, Keith Kloor, David R. Guenette, Martha Morningsong, Entropy, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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• Update from Journalists at the #COP30 Climate Talks in Brazil

  James Fahn founded the Earth Journalism Network 20 years ago. The organization has helped foster the reporting capacity of journalists around the world and helped build innovative colllaborative news networks like InfoNile and InfoAmazonia. Here I caught him in the middle of the 30th session of negotiations under the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty that is the foundation for the Paris Agreement a decade ago. Share this post or do so on X, on Facebook, on LinkedIn.Fahn lays out the key points being negotiated - in the absence of United States participation under President Trump’s second term.We also discussed the enormous indigenous presence at this COP - not unxpected given that Belem sits at the mouth of the Amazon River.You can explore the stories being generated by journalists affiliated with the Earth Journalism Network here:Sustain What is mostly a labor of love. To support my work, consider becoming a financial supporter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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• Cory Doctorow Explains How to Disenshittify Your Online Life and Brace for the Impending AI Bubble Implosion

  I hope you’ll take time to watch and share this Sustain What conversation withCory Doctorow, a tireless champion of the best that digital technology can give society and foe of those who are enshitifying this public good for profit or power. Also please pass it around on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and X/Twitter. And do subscribe to Sustain What and consider chipping in if you like what I’m doing:Doctorow has done grueling work through innumerable Pluralistic posts and his many books, including Enshittification, the main focus of this chat, and another coming soon on the impending implosion of the AI bubble. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post he wrote that captures that part of what we discussed:[T]he AI bubble is driven by monopolists who’ve conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. “pivot to video,” crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now “super-intelligence.” Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters (“humans in the loop”), which won’t work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging “foundation models” will be shut off and we’ll lose the AI that can’t do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or “discouraged” and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations…. [Read the rest, please]He has also long worked for or advised the Electronic Frontier Foundation, devoted to digital privacy and oline free speech. He suggested you might get involved by finding and joining one of the branches of the related Electronic Frontier Alliance, “a grassroots network made up of independent community organizations…across the United States work to support digital rights and empower their local communities.”Click here for the curtain raiser post that has more context:Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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• Between an Explosive Movie and Trump’s “Golden Dome,” a Reality Check on Nuclear Missile Defense

  If you missed my advance post on my Sustain What conversation with Laura Grego, a longtime analyst of nuclear war risks, strategies and technologies, here’s your chance to watch and weigh in over the weekend. There’s little here that is reassuring. Grego, drawing on two decades of deep diving, says:I would argue that I think things are about as dangerous as they’ve ever been – at least since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The risks of war are higher. There’s a war in Europe that threatens to pull nuclear armed adversaries into direct conflict. All of the nuclear weapons possessing countries are either rebuilding, modernizing, or expanding their arsenals. We have very fraught relationships between the three major nuclear powers – the U.S., Russia and China – and the relationships to manage crises are always really important when things can move as fast as nuclear war…. There is nuclear brinksmanship all over… There’s this idea that nuclear threats are permissible, nuclear threats are a way to achieve political goals.Here are two more key moments. Grego described the monumental size of the problem, but stresses there are paths to defusing the “house of dynamite”:Josh Baran, who led a grassroots-focused campaign around the 1983 ABC movie The Day After, laid out how the network wanted the movie to come and go, but the campaign generated widespread focus:We discussed how that strategy might be applied to “A House of Dynamite” - brainstorming on how to build a social media campaign encouraging people around the country to fill in the blank (spoiler alert: the film ends as a cliffhanger) by creating short videos positing how it ends up. More on that soon!So please watch and offer some input. Here’s the curtain-raiser post with heaps of links to background:This Sustain What project exists in large part because of a small subset of readers and watchers who chip in financially so I can keep things open for the rest of you. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thank you Jeff Jolley, Entropy, Dean Friedman, Vivian Henry, Victor I. Covaleski, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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• Making Good Musical Trouble with Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer

  I just had such a great Sunday Sanity conversation with the activist folk dynamos Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Just watch and enjoy. And share!If you want to learn “No Kings Here,” the song Fink co-wrote with Tom Paxton, here’s their breakdown of the chords:The back story is in yesterday’s post here:Thank you Michael Ludgate, Peter van Soest, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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