25 - Ryan Fortune: Apocalypse Now? Can’t it be later?
January 14th 2019
For Ryan Fortune, the phrase, “the end of life as we know it” is not a concern for future generations; it’s a reality he reckons we will be facing within our foreseeable future. Fortune recalls his journey from a conservative 7th Day Adventist, who’s nose was permanently buried in a book and was taught to keep his questions to himself, to a man who has made it his mission to expose the realities we would rather not face. Once a trouble-making writer in the church journal, Ryan Fortune would soon be covering the stories of “the New South Africa” in a period of what he calls “absolute freedom” in South African journalism. This period would be snuffed out by the rise of sensationalism and censorship, resulting in Fortune leaving commercial media in search of other ways in which he could use his skills to reach the public. Now a core member of UCT’s African Climate & Development Initiative, Ryan Fortune joins us to have the uncomfortable yet urgent conversation about climate change, species extinction, denialism, and whether or not we have passed the point of no return when it comes to reversing the damage we have done.
“Sometimes the machine is so sick and onerous that, in order to stop it, you have to put your body in the gears of the machine, you have to make it stop.”
