Ep 178. Elemental: The Geopolitics of Climate Change with Arthur Snell

About this episode

Arthur Snell joins Jason Pack to discuss the geopolitics of climate change and the challenges democracies face in addressing it.

The Chinese are cleaning our clock when it comes to lithium batteries and EVs, while the Russians still dominate at nuclear energy? Why? Why can’t the West play the geopolitics of climate change better? Why can’t Western countries work together to prepare for, mitigate, and profit from the upcoming cataclysm? Why are we sleepwalking off the cliff? To find out, we return to friend of the show and former Co-host Arthur Snell returns to Disorder to explore the themes of his new book, Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive it. The overall approach of the book showcases how the Enduring Disorder paradigm epitomizes the collective action challenges democracies face as they compete against each other and see-saw from one policy to another while dictatorships tend to think much more long term when it comes to how to prepare for the opportunities and challenges of climate change. This investigation comes at a highly relevant time as the Iran War has made clear how the geopolitics of energy, electricity, AI Data centres, critical minerals, and climate change are the top table issues of our day. Arthur and Jason start off talking about the situation in the…

People in this episode

Host: Jason Pack

Guest: Arthur Snell

Topics covered

• geopolitics of climate change
• energy transition
• lithium batteries
• nuclear energy
• collective action challenges
• strategic benefits of climate change
• geopolitics of the Arctic and Antarctic

Keywords

• climate change
• geopolitics
• energy
• lithium batteries
• nuclear energy
• collective action
• China
• Russia
• Arctic
• Antarctic

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Evergreen Podcasts

Books & works: Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive it

Places: China, Russia, Straight of Hormuz, Arctic, Antarctic

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