Michael Muntisov's Blog, page 5

Australia’s Climate is Changing

How Australians voted at their federal election on 21st May 2022, made headlines across the country and internationally.

On election night as the votes were counted, shockwaves rippled across the country.  In around ten percent of electorates, the voters had shunned the major parties and elected independent or minor party candidates running on strong climate platforms. They defeated well-known major-party representatives. As a result, this new loose bloc of climate-oriented candidates will no...

On stage at The Magnetic Theatre

Watching your novel transform from words on a page to a three dimensional stage performance is akin to magic. It’s like watching your child grow from infant to teenager in fast motion.

When Katie Jones, the artistic director at the North Carolina–based Magnetic Theatre, first told me that she wanted to perform a zoom reading of the stage adaptation of Court of the Grandchildren, I was over the moon. It was a joy to collaborate with the director and cast during rehearsals. The play is set in 2...

The Magnetic Theatre

Court of the Grandchildren – the stage play – premieres on the 8th April 2022 and runs through to the 23rd April at the Magnetic Theatre in Asheville, North Carolina. This follows a successful public reading over zoom last year.

You can buy tickets here.

To whet your appetite, here’s a video trailer.

The Great Rupture

What did the Russian, Ottoman and Chinese empires share in common in the 15th and 20th Centuries? In the 15th century all three shunned the reforms and progress of the trading world. What followed was a multi-century decline, culminating with the collapse of all three empires within the span of a mere decade in the 20th century (1912 to 1922).

In comparison, the open “West” thrived in the wake of the industrial revolution(s) despite regular setbacks and achieved global dominance in economic, ...

The Nutmeg’s Curse

In 1621, the Dutch East Indies Company virtually exterminated the native people of the Bandu Islands in order to seize a monopoly on the lucrative nutmeg trade. Amitav Ghosh uses this central story to imaginatively weave together disparate, seemingly unrelated threads to show how our colonial heritage has shaped the climate dilemma we now face.

There are countless Aha! moments in The Nutmeg’s Curse and many come from the most unlikely of places: from the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centu...

Is Losing the Arctic Ice a big deal?

Are the cartoons of polar bears clinging onto tiny ice floes becoming so commonplace that they’re losing their impact? Beyond the polar bear, what will the loss of arctic ice actually mean?

For many years, climate scientist Paul Beckwith at the University of Ottawa, has been warning that we are losing arctic sea ice at unsustainable rates. He says that arctic temperatures are increasing at around four times the global average rate (not the two times often quoted). He predicts abrupt changes a...

Don’t Look Up

The setup of the movie Don’t Look Up is recognizable enough: Two low-level astronomers (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet which they predict will hit the earth in six months, destroying all life on the planet unless it is deflected. So they try and warn the world, firstly in a much postponed meeting with the US President (played by Meryl Streep) and then through the media, but their naïve communications approach sets up doubt on the validity of their findings.

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Career lessons from writing a novel

You would think that there was not much in common between writing fiction and a management career. And you would be right! The thought patterns and writing styles are completely different. In fact they are virtually opposites. However, in this article I want to explore the similarities rather than the differences.

When I reflected on my experience in writing Court of the Grandchildren, I recognized many career lessons for any field of endeavour. Here are three of them.

Lesson No 1: The pow...

The Shadow

The Shadow was a popular radio show in 1930’s America and starred Orson Welles. The show opened with the line “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” That line came to mind as I read writer Emma Pattee’s recent article Forget your carbon footprint. Let’s talk about your climate shadow.

 Pattee explains how she hit on the idea of the climate shadow.

When BP co-opted the concept of the carbon footprint and tied it to small, “feel-good” activities like shortening y...

Hydrogen is like Champagne

Hydrogen is getting a lot of airplay as a means of decarbonizing the economy. There is talk of its use as a transport fuel, of replacing natural gas as a source of heat, of it being used to store the surplus output of solar and wind power stations, and of it replacing coke in steel production. If all this came to pass, it would usher in a ‘hydrogen economy’.

But first we should recognise that there is already a hydrogen economy. Seventy million tonnes of the stuff are produced every year. Hyd...