This post was originally published on Audible.co.uk.
Jerry Portwood: Hi, this is Audible Editor Jerry Portwood. I have the privilege of speaking with Arthur Snell, a former British diplomat, geopolitical advisor, and award-winning podcaster about his new book Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It, which draws on his decades of experience in conflict zones to provide the first comprehensive account of how the climate crisis is fundamentally reshaping global power, migration, and security. Thanks so much for joining us, Arthur.
Arthur Snell: Jerry, thank you for having me.
JP: So, I want to dive right in because we have a lot of fascinating topics to cover, and you have a lot of information in your book. I want to make sure that listeners have an experience of most of it. First, you had a two-decade career with the Foreign Office and served in high-pressure environments, including Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and you eventually served as the British High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago. So, did you ever imagine you'd write this book?
AS: No, I don't think I did. I mean, I had that government service career, and I guess at some point I thought I might stay in that all the way to retirement or whatever. But then I decided that there were bigger and more exciting challenges out there that I felt I could jump into. But certainly one thing about this book is that much of the experiences that I had, places like Yemen, places like Afghanistan, these are places that are fundamentally affected by the climate crisis. But when we look at them, we think about conflict, and we're always looking for political reasons or something to do with tribal disputes or something like that. And often we're not looking at what sits underneath all of that—which is this sort of slow, grinding shift of the climate.
JP: Yeah, I really appreciated how much of the geopolitics that you got in there. I feel like I learned so much. You intend the book to be a guide for the future. You reiterate that several times. Can you just explain to listeners what you mean by that—this guide for the future?
AS: I think we are living in a period of profound and, frankly, confusing change. And of course, a lot of that feels like it's political change, whether we're talking about events in North America or in European countries or whatever. But underlying all of that is a climate that's shifting so quickly, and that is having impacts.
So, just to take an example that has been very current in a lot of news is a situation in the Arctic. I won't get dragged into a big debate on Greenland, but the point there is that there is a complete shift in the way that you can travel through the Arctic, whether you are a military power, a trading nation, moving passengers on a cruise or whatever. And we might be only 10 years away from when, in the summer, there won't be an ice cap in the North Pole. Something that, when I grew up—I'm 50 years old—that when I grew up was the size of Australia. So, these are profound changes. What I'm trying to do with this book is help people think about how those changes will change global power relations in the next 30, 40, maybe, maximum, 50 years.
JP: I agree. I remember years ago The New York Times did a huge piece about how we were going to have this Northwest Passage.
AS: Right.
JP: And how it was going to change everything. And it wasn't a negative piece. You could tell a lot of people were very excited about this. So, with these changes, that's really something you get at is that some people want some of these changes, right? Like, they want Siberia to thaw; they want Canada, as you state, it will become much more significant in some ways because of these changes. What do you think about that collision of some people are looking forward to this, and we know other people are really going to suffer?
AS: Yeah, it's very difficult because certainly what I wouldn't want is anyone to think that I'm writing a book kind of saying, "Climate change is all fine and we should embrace it." Far from that. But it's true: There will be winners and there will be losers. And some of those winners may be, for example, people in the high north whose territories are currently quite uninhabitable, and that will shift. But there are other places in the world, maybe places that, for example, are crucial in the supply chain of critical minerals. Whereas historically, if you have oil or gas, that's a route to wealth—maybe not for an entire country, but certainly for a country's rulers. Well, that might change in the future.
"I'm not remotely relaxed about the threat of climate change, but we have to recognise that there will be winners from it."
So, I think it's part of the story of human history that there are always beneficiaries from these profound shifts. And in fact, as you'll know, Jerry, quite a lot of the book is historic. I look at historic examples of where civilisations have collapsed. And of course that in itself is a tragedy. It's the end of something, but that normally means that something else has happened. Maybe a population has moved to a new geography, or maybe some new technology has taken root and so on. So, again, to re-emphasise, I'm not remotely relaxed about the threat of climate change, but we have to recognise that there will be winners from it.
JP: The thing that I appreciate so much about this book is it's not like any other climate crisis or climate change book that I've read before. You gave me so much history. I felt so much smarter after listening to this book [laughs], and hearing you in my ears. There's so much information packed in, and I wanted to talk about that. How did you organise it? How did you know what you wanted to focus on? I mean, you cover the entire globe and so much information!
AS: Yeah, I mean, maybe it's a crazy plan. I mean, just to reassure listeners: It's not a terribly long book. In written form, it's about 380 pages. But I wanted to try and take this global perspective. I broke it up, as you'll know, into four sections: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Now, these are obviously, in medieval times, we thought that those were the elements that made up our world. And, of course, science has moved on. But actually, I think for people, those are tangible things that we can all understand. We can think about the earth, we can think about water, whether it's sea or fresh water. Fire is something we're all aware of, particularly the concept of wildfires, which have spread in recent years.
So, using that as a sort of organising principle, it was easier to try and break this book down. But I guess the history side of it, I'm a history major. I read history at Oxford University many years ago. I've always felt strongly that history is not just a guide to our present, but it's also a guide to the future. And so, again, I was keen to incorporate quite a lot of that into the book. It's a book that is full of information, but I hope is digestible.
JP: Well, I do want to talk about the cover and the title a little bit before we move to the next stuff, because in some ways it has a sort of sci-fi feel. Did you have any say in that? What was your feeling about how that looks and how it represented?
AS: Well, it's a beautiful cover and it's this sort of stunning evocation of the globe, but incorporating those four elements. In terms of the title, Elemental, it works with this idea of the elements. But of course elemental has a wider meaning in the sense of something that is profound, a change that hits us in a way that is highly impactful. And it seems to me that we are living in this era of elemental change and a lot of the things that we don't think about as related to climate change—one example in the book is the war in Ukraine, that tragic, mistaken crisis that Russia has created by invading Ukraine. There is a climate element to that. I'm not here to say that it's only because of the climate, but it features in so many aspects of our modern world.
JP: Yeah. You get into that about the soil and about people wanting to control the earth, right? The territory—
AS: Exactly. So, Ukraine has some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. It's a globally significant producer of grain, of sunflower oil, of various products like that. And Russia has had an eye on that. After its initial invasion, it basically stole the harvest of the year prior to the invasion and has since allocated a lot of prime agricultural land to some of the people closest to Vladimir Putin. So that just shows us the ways in which the lure of highly productive agricultural land in an era when, because of the change in climate, agricultural productivity is falling on average. This is one of the elements in that mixture.
JP: I'm going to share a personal anecdote. We're the same age and similar generation, but this might not have made it over to the UK, so I just wanted to say, Ted Turner created a cartoon in the '90s called Captain Planet. I don't know if you ever heard of it, but it actually was about this superhero named Captain Planet. And these young people summoned the superhero by putting the five elements together, and the fifth element was heart. And you actually get into this as well. This idea of the essential ingredient is the human element as—
AS: Wow!
JP: —this is the thing that connects us. I thought that was really interesting because you are getting into these ancient ideas of earth, wind, fire, water, and heart. Tell me a little bit about that, because you get into the interconnectivity of all of the different cultures, governments, people. I mean, it really is at a people level.
AS: Yeah, absolutely. I have to say, I think I have a memory of Captain Planet, I'm sure it was there on TV when I was growing up. And certainly I think the kind of initial consciousness of the concept of global warming, as I recollect, sort of entered political consciousness around the time that I was a young teenager.
But yeah, in the end, this is a book about people. The book opens talking about small-scale subsistence farmers in the Sahel, the region to the south of the Sahara Desert, which has encountered incredible climate stress, but also all kinds of tensions in terms of conflict, warfare, and so on. I write about communities in Bangladesh where there are literally millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of people whose actual physical location is threatened by rising oceans.
"I've always felt strongly that history is not just a guide to our present, but it's also a guide to the future."
I've tried to root this in the stories of people. Yes, there are lots of powerful people, there are national leaders, there are presidents, there are prime ministers. But there's also quite a lot of what we might want to call ordinary people in here. Another big aspect of this story is migration. Migration is, of course, a very difficult subject in the modern politics of almost any wealthy country anywhere in the world, certainly in Europe, certainly in North America. And, of course, also migration is a story about, in many cases, the climate crisis changing the entire livelihoods of people in countries such as Guatemala, just for example.
So, I think, yeah, that this is a book about people and about how one of the things you learn as a diplomat is that huge global questions still often come down to individual relationships between two people. We could think about the situation of President Zelenskyy in Ukraine, and the degree to which his relationship with President Trump, with President Putin, may affect the outcome of the war in his country.
That's something you learn as a diplomat—that human relationships are very important. And it's certainly at the heart of this book. This isn't a book full of graphs of where the CO2 is going. I mean, all that's important, but that's not the story here.
JP: Right. I was also fascinated about how you envision the future in other aspects. For example, you talk about Africa potentially powering Europe with solar energy. Tell me some of the biggest hurdles you see to that. I mean, obviously, as you know, many people will be involved in any of these kind of negotiations, but it's sort of inspiring to think about some of the—I know we always think science is going to solve everything, but how do you think this is going to be solved in that context?
AS: Certainly one of the things in the book, I don't want just to write nearly 400 pages of a kind of doomsday scenario, because one of the things that I put right at the start of the book is that, actually, we don't get to walk away. There isn't another planet for us to say, "Well, okay, we messed this one up. Let's go somewhere else." We're all here.
There are outcomes and there are possible future alternative pathways available to us. So, just for example, if you are living particularly in Southern Europe, but even in parts of Northern Europe, the solar generation power potential of North Africa—which in some places is a small number of miles from Southern Europe if you're thinking of Spain and Morocco, just for example—that the power potential there is almost limitless.
In fact, I quote a conversation between two slightly controversial people, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, where Musk points out to Rogan that you could make a small bit of Texas, cover it in solar panels, and power the entire United States. Now, no one's saying that that is a realistic concept, but it's an illustration of what we're talking about where, rather than some people being dismissive of renewable energy, actually, the potential it has is extraordinary.
We're seeing this already now, but in many places, it's already the cheapest form of energy that can be installed. For example, when we talk about, let's say Morocco, there are already long-distance power-generation cables connecting Chinese cities that are hundreds of miles apart. So the idea that you need to be next to the generation is no longer the case.
I think a final point, there is this point about human connection that, actually, one of the best ways to keep societies engaged together, whether in productive political exchanges, trading exchanges, is of course to have ties of economic interdependence. And so just as in the past, we have perhaps been reliant on some countries to supply us with certain types of energy. We may in the future, but that reliance may take a different form, in the form of electricity rather than hydrocarbons shipped in barrels or pipelines.
JP: The other side of this human part is that you explain how extreme weather is driving conspiracy thinking and climate denialism. I was curious how you think young activists can counter these political interests, and how do we go forward without getting bogged down in unproductive online polarisation?
AS: Yeah, and that's a very difficult question because that is one of the features of our age. There is something about the climate crisis, I think that it's an invisible force, that the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is not something anyone can see. And from day-to-day, week-to-week—we're talking as there's been extreme cold weather events in Northeast America, and that allows people to say, "Oh, hey, you know, so much for global warming!"
Now, obviously, we both know it's not that simple, but the degree to which it lends itself to conspiracy thinking because it's the climate crisis is something that is largely mediated by experts drawing on information that we can't see, we can't touch. We have to trust them. And those experts are telling us that our lives are going to get more expensive and more complicated. And that populists can push back against that, and we see that happen around the world.
I think the answer to your question, though: Well, how can young activists push back? I think part of it is actually through awareness, raising awareness. So, of course, yes, there might be a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but are we looking at what's happening to the temperature of the ocean right now? Or are we looking at what's happening to the size of the polar ice cap?
"One of the things you learn as a diplomat is that huge global questions still often come down to individual relationships between two people."
I mean, one of the facts that just when I heard it, it really struck me is that there are polar bears alive today that will live to see an Arctic that is ice-free in the summer. That means the north polar ice cap has gone. That's a staggering thought. These animals, their entire evolution over tens of thousands of years reflects this ecosystem that they inhabit. I think, don't get dragged into an argument about the last blizzard on the Northeast seaboard. Step back and say, "Well, look at this, look at that, look at the other."
But the other thing is, again, to focus on the choices that we have. I think one of the ways that people, who for whatever reasons want to embrace climate denialism, they come up with this argument that somehow this is a way to make your life more expensive, more complicated. Now, increasingly, it's not the case. Some of the cheapest power generation is now clean energy. And to some extent, if a country rejects climate science, they're actually condemning their own population to living more expensive and more difficult lives.
I think that that's another factor to put into the mix here, which is that, you know, we have choices. That it's not that there is no downside. Of course, there are plenty of downsides, and there is an ecological tragedy that unfolds. But there are lots of opportunities that exist that give us an opportunity to live a more sustainable and, ultimately, a cleaner existence. And we can embrace that rather than reject it as a sort of conspiracy.
JP: That's great. No, I agree. I'm curious, you've mentioned something about a youth veto—and I know that that can be sort of controversial—but I was curious if you can explain that idea a little more, because I think the idea of having power is very enticing.
AS: Obviously, there is this idea that, of course, if you are in the sixth decade of your life or maybe the eighth decade of your life, the extent to which the people much more affected by this might be your children or grandchildren, and there's a question around whether or not it is fair or legitimate for people in their seventies, eighties, whatever, to insist that they have the right to make policy on a question which is measured in decades, not in years.
Of course, one of the challenges about this is that most politicians think in maybe weeks, months, maybe years—if you're lucky. Certainly, in democratic Western politics. And this is something that requires us to think in decades. So, the idea is that you allow, in some way, politically, people of a certain younger generation to have a kind of additional political power over certain decisions. Now, Greta Thunberg is obviously a famous example of, as a school student she introduced—what was it initially?—just a solo school strike on climate. Now she's become a hugely influential figure.
I think, in the end, I don't write in my book about whether there is a particular model that needs to be followed, but it seems to me that we—and the “we” I'm using here is somebody who is in the middle part of his life—is we have to recognise, and this is a debate that has to be had publicly, industrialised countries have contributed most of the greenhouse gases that now exist in the atmosphere; it's also true that people of older generations have enjoyed most of the fruits of that industrialisation. I think we have to recognise those questions when formulating policies that will have impacts over the coming decades.
JP: I want to switch gears slightly, and just say that, as I mentioned earlier, I loved having you in my ears as my guide. It was great listening to this book. You are the creator and the host of the geopolitical podcast Doomsday Watch, so you're comfortable in front of a microphone, but what was it like narrating this book?
AS: Well, it was a very specific and new experience because, like anyone who, if you listen to an audiobook and you do it in sort of chapters, or it's your dog walk or whatever, and realising you've got the whole thing, every word. Of course, for very good reason, the producer, the audiobook producer, is very, very strict with you. You can't just sort of skip a bit or mispronounce something. And so that rigour is, of course, at the heart of what makes audiobooks so important, that you get the whole book. It's not just a “version.”
It was surprisingly tiring, actually. But it was also very rewarding. I mean, discovering your own words, reading them out loud is an amazing discipline. I sort of wished I'd done it before I'd sent the book for publication, not because I wanted to change anything, but it really gives you a feel for how the book lands.
JP: I love that you say that because I tell most writers that I work with that they should read their work out loud. And I was thinking that the other day. I was like, “Everybody should have to narrate their book before it goes to publication.”
AS: Yeah.
JP: Because you'll fix things, right? [laughs]
AS: Totally, totally. And there were a few little tiny things that we were able to fix just in time for the final print version. And you're absolutely right. In a way, it's strange because clearly the spoken word is still the fundamental sort of language of human connection. And in that sense, being able to embrace that rather than the written page, which can be a bit dry. I mean, my own writing style is not particularly dry, but it's still, there is something about putting emotion and voice into your own writing, which is quite an interesting process.
JP: Well, we're always curious here if you're an audiobook listener. Do you have any that you like or any recommendations of things that you tune in to?
AS: Yeah, I do listen to audiobooks. And it tends to be, for me, an audiobook I tend to listen—and perhaps this is sort of the category that my book is in—to timely non-fiction, books that feel “of the moment.” Partly because there’s a difference between a book that you might want to own a physical copy of on a shelf, which is not necessarily the same as something that you just want to absorb. So, it tends to be that.
But also, another thing I enjoy a lot is thrillers, sort of spy thrillers. So, whether it's Mick Herron, some of the new John le Carré, kind of continuation novels, things like that. It's something that's gripping, that you don't want to stop it. And so if you listen before you go to sleep or whatever, you kind of wake up wondering what the next chapter has.
"To some extent, if a country rejects climate science, they're actually condemning their own population to living more expensive and more difficult lives."
So, yeah, I do like audiobooks very much, and I think it's a brilliant medium, and it's something that, in a way, that there is something fascinating that before books, all books were audiobooks, right? Whether it's sort of The Iliad or The Odyssey. And the way that we've kind of recaptured that as a common medium of absorbing the written word is quite interesting.
JP: Yeah, I agree. So, I appreciate how you provide this realistic look at all the challenges. As we've already talked about, how do we go from here? You are our guide to this future, and Elemental gives us this guide. What is your advice that you could share with listeners? Everyone wants a little bit of optimism, and you have the Doomsday Watch, so tell us what we can do. [laughs]
AS: Well, I think there are various elements here. So, one is that it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that no change is being made, and that there is no response. And, in fact, what my book describes to some extent is, among many other things, is the degree to which we are seeing changes. The way that China has re-engineered a large part of its manufacturing economy to put EVs into the market.
Now, there are controversies, of course, about do you want your car industry dominated by China? These are all aspects of that debate. But the basic point is that this fabulously significant industrialised economy is re-engineering fast to move to a transition to a post-hydrocarbon world. And even in the US, I'm not going to dive into political controversy, but there clearly is a debate being had. But it's also the case that Tesla, the world's leading EV manufacturer, is an American company.
So, we are living in this time where people are making change. I think one of the things that I think is important for people to think about is the degree to which they can hold public officials to account. Because I think a lot of people hide behind, again, this kind of short-termist argument. And what they'll say is, "Well, the voters aren't interested in what's happening four years from now."
Actually, going back to this point about the youth veto, there actually are a lot of elderly people—to be fair to them, because I don't want to stereotype—there is I think a negative stereotype sometimes around Boomers or whatever. A lot of them are like, "No, I want my grandchildren to live in a better world, in one that is not polluted, that is not subjected to catastrophic warming."
And so if people are more vocal about that, and actually sort of emphasise the degree to which this matters to them, whatever generation they're in, I think that does have impact. Ultimately, particularly in the democratic world, politicians are listeners. They have to be, and they have to respond to the interest of their constituents.
But I think that there is another basic point, which is we live in an era of disinformation. I think I would say this, I'm a writer of books, but high-quality information, it's worth it. It's worth paying for; it's worth seeking out. It's worth second-guessing the things that you see that pop up in your feed or whatever.
I think, we, all of us, are susceptible to that sort of—a catchy image that flashes up that tells you something that seems to accord to an underlying thought that you might have. And we need, particularly in something like this, where there's a lot of science, or a complexity, to step back and say, "Well, hang on, does this accord with something that perhaps has more behind it?" Trying to avoid being sucked into that kind of disinformation vortex is very important.
JP: I just want to thank you again for the fact that you taught me so much. I mean, even the things that I thought I knew, you taught me a lot about Africa that I did not know. I think a lot of times, we forget about certain areas, but also just the dependency between all these different places, that Brazil might be making food for the pigs that are feeding China.
AS: Right.
JP: You know, this is happening. I don't want to give it all away, because I want people to discover how great your writing and research is—but is there anything that we haven't touched on that you want to make sure listeners learn before they dive in?
AS: That's a great question. I think there is something about the degree to which—quite a lot of the book is about how conflict has been, shall we say, catalysed by the climate crisis. So it might not be the underlying cause, but the intensity of it has been increased.
But, actually, there are case studies, and in fact you mentioned the degree to which, for example, China is very dependent on imports both of food and energy. There are degrees to which these dependencies reduce the likelihood of conflict. The fact that, obviously, I can't predict—and I make a point about this in the book—I can't accurately predict the future any more than anyone else can. And anyone who tells you they can is misleading you. But if you are asking yourself, for example, “Would China start a war over Taiwan?” Well, look at the degree to which China has economic dependencies across the world with a whole variety of major global trading partners, including the US, including Brazil, and so on.
So, I think those interdependencies, I think that's something that people should be aware of. That, yes, we're in a very unstable age. There's no debate about that. You only have to switch on the news to see that. But we're also in an age of an economy that is still globalised. There has been a bit of de-globalisation, but nothing that undermines that fundamental basis, and that people still rely on being able to trade with one another. That reduces the tendency toward conflict. I think that that's worth recalling.
JP: Well, I just want to thank you again, Arthur. This has really been a pleasure and I just want to thank you for joining us to talk about it.
AS: Jerry, it's been my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
JP: And listeners, you can get Arthur Snell's Elemental on Audible now.
