Welcome to the politics guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is author, journalist, and environmental activist Mark Linus.

He's a frequent speaker around the world on climate change, biotechnology, and nuclear power, and was climate change advised to the president of the Maldives from

2009 through 2011. In 2013, he was appointed a visiting fellow at Cornell University's Office of

International Programs and now works with the Cornell Alliance for Science, which is funded by the Bill and

Melinda Gates Foundation. His books include Six Degrees, Our Future on a

Hotter Planet, winner of the 2008 Royal Society Science Books Prize, the God Species, Saving

the Planet in an Age of Humans, and most recently, Nuclear 2.0, why a green future needs

nuclear power. Mark Linus, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much for having me, Michael. You know, let's start with just a little bit of your personal history. How long have you been involved with environmental causes and what got you

interested in the first place? Oh, well, I've been an environmentalist since about the age of six.

These things always, I mean, it's something that you kind of grow up with.

It's kind of an identity as much as anything.

The first time I remember being concerned about an environmental issue was in Peru when

I was growing up and I could see some of the disastrous pollution of some of the rivers from

mining waste that you could find in that country.

And I remember being considered about vehicle pollution.

I even wrote an essay on global warming when I was in school sometime in the mid-1980s.

So it's something which is a passion which has been with me for a very long time.

And it's one that I still have today. So, me for a very long time, and it's one

that I still have today. So, you know, first and foremost, as my identity, I consider myself an

environmentalist. Now, your book, Six Degrees, had what I thought was a really interesting

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