The decade we could have stopped climate change, with Nathaniel Rich

In this episode of Non-Toxic, we talk to Nathaniel Rich, author of Losing Earth: A Recent History. It’s a bracing conversation about the little known story of the 1980s, when scientists, politicians, and policy-makers were all in agreement that something had to be done to lower carbon emissions—and how at the crucial moment—they failed to act. There are some surprising insights about what went wrong, how to talk about climate change, as well as what we’ve learned about moral urgency since those early days when many people thought all it would take to change the world was laying out the facts.

⁠Support Non-Toxic today.⁠

Guest Bio:

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History , a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award, and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. He is also the author of the novels King Zeno (MCD/FSG, 2018); Odds Against Tomorrow (FSG, 2013); and The Mayor’s Tongue (Riverhead, 2008). Most recently, he released a new collection of nonfiction stories about the uncanniness of life in the climate crisis called Second Nature.