Summary
As Covid-19 forced humans into lockdown, memes emerged showing the earth was healing thanks to our absence. These were false claims – but their popularity revealed how seductive the dangerous idea that ‘we are the virus’ can be. At its most extreme, this way of thinking leads to eco-fascism, the belief the harm humans do to Earth can be reduced by cutting the number of non-white people. But the mainstream green movement is also challenged by a less hateful form of this mentality known as ‘doomism’ – a creeping sense that humans will inevitably cause ecological disaster, that it’s too late to act and that technological solutions only offer more environmental degradation through mining and habitat loss. What vision can environmentalists offer as an antidote to these depressing ideas? And how can green politics encourage radical thinking without opening the door to hateful ideologies? Producer/Presenter: Lucy Proctor Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello, thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis. podcasts. Over the next half hour I'm going to be exploring ecofascism. |
| 0:54.6 | At the start of the coronavirus pandemic you might have seen one of these videos circulating on social media or on |
| 1:04.8 | the news, goats running through a Welsh town, a family of wild balls in an Italian |
| 1:11.7 | suburb. The Himalayas visible again a hundred miles away. |
| 1:17.2 | COVID-19 may have been killing thousands of people, but it was also, apparently, allowing planet Earth to heal itself and giving us some hope |
| 1:27.2 | about the other even bigger crisis, the climate crisis. |
| 1:32.0 | Then a tweet went viral. |
| 1:35.2 | Wow, Earth is recovering. |
| 1:38.2 | Air pollution is slowing down. |
| 1:41.5 | Water pollution is clearing up. |
| 1:43.0 | Natural wildlife returning home. |
| 1:47.0 | Coronovirus is Earth vaccine. |
| 1:50.0 | We're the virus. Thousands of people liked and retweeted. |
| 1:54.0 | Thousands of people liked and retweeted. |
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