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Rare Earth

Leaving Fossil Fuels Behind

5/30/202652 min

Is the conflict in Iran, with its knock-on effect on oil supplies, accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels? Tom Heap and Helen Czerski debate the issues with a panel of experts: Josh Gabbatiss from the environmental journalism website Carbon Brief; Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University; and Cornish farmer Stuart Oates.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Clips

20 Elephants per Gallon
Asia's Fuel Rationing Reality
Fertilizer Free in Ten Years
Pessimism on Fossil Exit
New Trump Age?
Industrial Heat Is 25% Energy

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Helen Czerski· Host0:00

    [intro music] Hello, and welcome to Rare Earth, your weekly debate on the biggest environment issues. Today, we're looking at how the seismic events in the Middle East could transform our relationship with fossil fuels. I'm Helen Czerski.

  2. Tom Heap· Host0:16

    And I'm Tom Heap. And as you can hear, a little bit croaky today, but to be honest, I've come off my deathbed to discuss this issue. [laughs] I think we could be in a hinge moment where we're turning from the oil age into the electric age, into the renewable age. I may need calming down, but, uh, this is what I feel that we could be into, and that Donald Trump, with his war in Iran, may ha- be the accidental father of a green energy revolution.

  3. Helen Czerski· Host0:43

    [music] It feels different, doesn't it? You and I and our guests have been talking about these issues for many, many years, and something feels different about this particular moment. And of course, it's easy to get overexcited by this. I think there's some, some good optimism to have here. So I, I checked today, and as we record this now, the UK's electricity grid is 64% from renewable energy and only 9% from fossil fuels. But of course, electricity is only a small- Yeah ... portion of all the energy that we use, and it might be a dif- bit of a different story with the rest, so we'll be finding out about that.

  4. Tom Heap· Host1:19

    So that's the extraordinary thing, that in this oil and gas, this fossil fuel crisis, there are alternatives that weren't so viable four years ago with Ukraine, years ago with some of the Middle East crises. It does

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