Episode Info
- Season12
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
For our end-of-year review, we analyzed the big events and decisions made in 2022 - the headline blockbusters that dominated the headlines: Putin’s war in Ukraine, Xi’s third term, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the surprising United States midterm elections. But what about the choices made that flew under the radar? Or the choices that needed to be made in 2022, but were ignored? One Decision is joined by a panel of leading journalists to discuss a momentous year and the stories that you may have missed.
One Decision has been selected as a finalist for the 1st Annual Signal Listener’s Choice Award for Best Conversation Starter. Please follow this link to vote now: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2022/individual-episodes/general/best-conversation-starter
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: Hi, everyone. Before we start the episode, I have a bit of good news and a favor to ask. First, the good news, One Decision has been selected as a finalist for the first annual Signal Listeners' Choice Award in the category best conversation starter. And now the favor. We need your vote. Please head over to our Twitter page at One Decision Pod to vote now. The deadline to vote is December 22, and the episode in the running was Lithuania and the Two Goliaths, the tiny Baltic nation taking on Russia and China. Without further ado, let's start the show. You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape us all. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. As we come to the end of 2022, it's become clear that it was, as it increasingly seems these days, another momentous year of decisions and news affecting us all. For our annual end of year review, we invited friends of the podcast and fellow journalists Anne McKelvey of The Economist, Prashant Rao from new startup Semafor, and Bloomberg TV's Maria Tadeo to mull over the stories of the year and the results of a survey we commissioned for a 100 journalists around the world on what were the biggest decisions of 2022. The results showed some expected and unexpected results, and you can hear that full episode on our main page wherever you get our podcasts. However, we also wanted to give some space to the important decisions of 2022 that flew under the radar. Decisions that were made such as that by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to declare that the efforts to conserve a 1.5 degree of global warming was now essentially dead. Decisions also that are yet to be made but must be soon, such as the decision to respond to the growing and devastating crisis in Eastern Africa following years of drought and plague. Amid the many big geopolitical stories of the year that impacted multiple nations, we've also had a number of noteworthy general elections, also merited further discussion. For this special episode, we turned over the mic to our colleagues for what their takes were on the underreported decisions of 2022, those made and those still to be made, which affect us all.
CLIMATE AND THE YEAR'S UNDERREPORTED DECISIONS
Rao: This is the perpetual challenge of climate journalism and climate coverage is, you know, people care for It's heartbreaking, but also, you know, voters, you know, it's that kind of diffused decision that's really hard to galvanize a coalition around. And and so, you know, I I think, like, it's one of the difficulties of journalism in general and also this kind of analysis is the kind of slow boil stuff gets sort of cast aside to some degree. You know, you could equally say issues such as, like, debt in developing countries is a burgeoning problem that's only going to get worse. I mean, the climate crisis is the classic problem that is not revolving around one decision. We could talk about COP27 and its failure or otherwise, but with lack of decision But we had this year two huge examples
Mcfarlane: of climate change wreaking havoc. One of them was Pakistan, and the other was in Baghdad where where you were based. Extraordinary scenes, and then protests in Baghdad because of the incredible heat wave and the fact that the the people there had the government was just not
Rao: not prepared to withstand those kinds of conditions, and the people were suffering. I I recall being in back I mean, this is not to downplay it, but this is also, you know, a long running kind of issue. When I was in Iraq, the government would declare heat days because it was just too hot to go into the go into work, and you'd get sort of showers on the I mean, actually, businesses would set up showers on the side of the street where you could just douse yourself because it was just too hot, and you just need to douse yourself in water, and, you know, if you had a shower after sort of seven in the morning, you would be showering in hot water regardless of what you whether you wanted cold water or not. So this is actually, you know, it's to some degree, as with much of the climate crisis, parts of the world wake up to it at various points, but this has been going on for quite some time. Pakistan is another example. Bangladesh, you know, has been dealing with these kinds of floods for years.
Mckelvey: I'm not at all skeptical about the target or at all about man made climate change, but I must say the fact that we're sort of sitting almost kind of a little bit bringing our hands down just mean round this table, but I think that's a sort of view, if you like, in the journalistic community and in lots of progressively minded people is why aren't you guys listening? I think that as far as many people are concerned, apart from the full bandwidth for the reasons that we've talked about on this podcast, they're constantly being told that now you see this thing has happened in Pakistan, this really bad thing has happened in Baghdad, But that is not most people's lived experience. And this is something that campaigners are going to have to take on board. We had a heat wave in the UK, which lasted a magisterial forty eight hours in which the national broadcaster, oh, hey, now you're going to get it. So we had, have you now got the message about climate change? To which, if everyone's being blunt, most people went, well, it was a really hot day and I probably took the day off work and sat outside if you're lucky enough to sit in a garden or a balcony in the evening. But no, the lesson they took away was not that this was an urgency and that they must tune into COP. And until somehow people who are putting across this message are more cognizant of the fact that it's not landing with the broader public the way they want it to. They will keep making the same mistakes in the way that they communicate.
Tadeo: And for a lot of people, would say especially, and this is maybe, you know, your West privilege, but in the context of a war of energy bills, you just you don't care. I mean, we're burning coal. Let's burn coal. We have to bring nuclear back. Let's do nuclear back. I mean, I've heard from a number of officials in Brussels who say, hey, we're burning coal. So what? There's a war going on in in Europe. To me, that's the number one thing. I mean, it's very rough to say, but it's it's changed everything. There's this war. I think the conversation is also immediately, you know, flipped on that. When you look at COP, I remember in the last edition, mean, I everyone was there for three days. I've given a huge massive speech this time around. I mean, Macron was there for what? Five hours? The left then had to go to the G20, where, by the way, it was completely overshadowed by this almost enormous
DROUGHT AND PLAGUE IN AFRICA
Mcfarlane: World War Three crisis scenario. I mean, I think it's it's a this is this is the thing. It's completely changed everything. I wanna throw this one into the mix. The one thing I thought deserved a lot more attention than it got was the the plague and the drought across Africa. And at the moment, there are swarms of locusts sweeping across South Sudan, which is already reeling from widespread hunger and years of civil war. These locusts, which according to the UN can travel up to 95 miles a day and eat their own body weight in greenery, meaning that one swarm, just one square kilometer can eat as much food as 35,000 people in a single day. They've gone from Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, and they're also battling
Rao: unprecedented drought as well. I mean, that fits into the climate story as well. The kind of, like, changing populations, migratory patterns having to shift. I mean, I would say the one thing about the sort of war is it does see, you know, the IEA, this, you know, sort of in December is sort of revised up its projections for renewables installation by the most it's ever revised it up, and they attribute that to the war. The fact is a lot of these countries are realizing that, actually, you know, reliance on Russian gas or gas anywhere from outside is a national security issue. It's not simply a climate change issue. And I recall back in the old sort of New Labour days, David Miliband, when he became foreign secretary, saying that climate only succeeds when it stops being the issue that's run by the climate secretary, and starts becoming an issue when it's a foreign secretary or prime minister who takes charge. And functionally, when climate when we, you know, when it becomes clear, as multiple national security reports have said, that climate's a national security issue, it's an economic issue, it's not an issue, you know, though obviously it is an issue of, you know, ice caps melting simply. It is an issue of people losing their livelihoods, of people having to move across borders against their will. That, you know, that is the kind of thing that I think increasingly will start influencing people's decisions in how they vote, how
MIGRATION
Mckelvey: they behave, that kind of thing. Can I just chip in one thought about, I'm very pleased you mentioned that Africa story, terrifying story, probably largely neglected or at least not high up in the headlines as the plight of a lot of Sub-Saharan Africa at the moment? And for me, the underplayed story of the year is migration and the ongoing impact and indeed the intensification we see it here in UK about the argument about what to do about the small boats and those were coming into claim asylum outside the correct system for doing so, but the fact that it's proving incredibly hard to stop and I speak to politicians of all stripes about this and they all agree when they're not just trying to knock lumps out of the other, that it's very, very hard indeed. This is not going to go away, and what we're seeing in Africa often feeds through and feeds through into the instability in the democracies and directly into our politics. So that to me is another, it's a bit like climate change. It's one of those slow burn stories, is really making and remaking
GIORGIA MELONI AND THE BLURRED POLITICAL LINES
Tadeo: the world and the politics that we're living in. And massive diplomatic spat between the French, the Italians two weeks ago. So it's an interesting story how Meloni, mean, perhaps because I I I I've I've been to Italy so many times. I'm so engaged in this drama. I did the election. I was surprised, of course, that perhaps maybe, you know, it deserved more attention. First female prime minister of Italy. Of course, we all know the narrative going into this election. This was a return of, you know, this new form of fascism. I think what we see now is that in a way, it's very difficult to box her. It's very difficult to figure out who this woman is. You know, she's she run a very smart campaign at home where she just like rattled the points of play well. But internationally, she is in it for Ukraine. She wants a good relationship with the United States. And in Brussels, we were expecting an earthquake. And instead we had, well, a very nice lady. We showed up, Giorgia Meloni, hello, here I am. And I don't want any issues with anyone.
Mckelvey: And the only one that she's had, funnily enough, going back to your point, was migration, is what to do with migration. I think Giorgia Meloni is really interesting and I'm very pleased that you mentioned him in those terms, because I think we get a bit prone and it's understandable because of the Trump years, because of the split now between the West and Russia under Putin is so absolute. Boxing people in think I know what kind of politician this is and perhaps a little bit in the mind way here in the UK of people who said that Boris Johnson, he took us out of the EU, therefore he's not going to want us to be involved in world affairs, which I think is untrue. But I think it speaks to the fact that there are going to be many kinds of politician who mix it up. And I think we will also see a lot more, in inverted commas, reasonable, even progressive politicians taking a leaf out of populist playbooks. So that you have Nigel Farage over there on the naughty step, but at the same time, you can have someone like a Meloni who channels some of that rhetoric and then turns up, as you said, I like the idea of a nice lady turning up in bra. I like to think with the- That's what she said. Said we're big panettone.
Tadeo: You go. I'm actually really nice. I brought panettone. Now can we get down to But also, the term lady, I mean, I'm not sure if I even like use of this, the reason why I said it is I spoke to a contact of mine who was in one of the meetings there the day she decided my first visit outside of Italy will be Brussels. And this person told me she was a nice lady. So I'm like, Okay, so she's a nice lady. At the same time, she also said, You know, I'm not a Martian. I'm
Mckelvey: not that strange. We're not going to be that different. So she's very difficult to read and she's very hard to box. So I guess, yes, you're right. The lines have become very blurred. I'm really interested to see who emerges next year on this model. We've got to lose this idea, you know, we put the goodies over there, the baddies over there, and some people talk in this way, therefore they're progressives. They use these words, therefore they're not. And at the same time, you know, it mustn't lose sight of the fact that there is right and wrong.
SIGN-OFF
Mcfarlane: This has been a special episode of One Decision, looking at the year in important decisions, choices that have been made, and choices still to come. If you enjoyed this episode, do subscribe to us so you never miss a show. We drop new podcasts every Thursday. And if you're feeling generous, do give us your vote. We've been shortlisted for the Signal Listeners' Choice Awards for best conversation starter for our episode earlier this year on Lithuania taking on the two Goliaths of Russia and China. Head on over to our Twitter page One Decision Pod for the link to vote. We'll put it in our show notes as well. For me and the team, thank you so much for being with us. See you next week.
