David and Stephen Flynn
The happy pear podcast logo
David and Stephen Flynn

The Happy Pear Podcast

Dave and Steve are on a mission to make fruit and veg sexy and this podcast is about inspiring you to be a happier, healthier version of yourself.

Each week, there will be great conversations which will give you practical takeaways to enable you to be at your best.

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dr tara shine and madeleine murray

Episode 8 – Sustainability & Climate Action with Dr Tara Shine & Madeleine Murray

This week’s episode is with the amazing duo of Dr Tara Shine & Madeleine Murray, of Change by Degrees.

Tara and Madeleine are wonderful humans. Tara has spent 20 years as an international climate change negotiator and advisor to governments and world leaders on environmental policy, most notably as a Special Advisor to the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice.  Madeleine brings a multifaceted background and is expert in employee sustainability engagement and helping businesses create and tell their sustainability stories.

Together, they run Change by Degrees, an organisation dedicated to delivering strategic sustainable advice, employee engagement and specialised sustainability comms.

Tara and Madeleine are powerful women, helping create the future we aspire towards.  Climate change as we all know is the major topic of our time which isn’t going away and learning practical digestible steps from experts can really help us continue to take the necessary action needed to bring our world more into balance.

We loved the simplicity of these 3 steps we need to take collectively:

  1. Reduce our emissions (no power and fuel to come from fossil fuels and all to come from renewables)
  2. Store more carbon in our natural environment (through looking after nature; planting more trees; restoring our biodiversity and moving towards better agricultural practices that build our soils)
  3. Adapt to living with more storminess – climate change is real and will change things; we need to prepare for these events (the reality of more flooding, higher sea level rise and to create a more equitable and inclusive society for all as we move forward).

In this episode, we hear about the importance of societal action on the “Climate Emergency’; the importance of effective communication in climate action; the incredible value beneath our feet in our soils.

The girls bring to life the opportunity for incredible innovation within climate action.  They give us some very practical daily sustainable and environmentally friendly actions that each of us can take and the powerful ripple effect this can play.  They weave not only personal action we can take but also how critical it is for businesses to bake sustainability into the very core of what they are about so all business units know and own goals in relation to it.

Being mothers themselves, they explain how they navigate parenthood.  We loved how they asked us all to have conversations with our kids on this topic – ask them to describe what a sustainable world looks like to them and by so doing we encourage them to use their voice and spread their vision.

Be sure to check out changebydegrees.com and Tara’s book – “How to Save Your Planet One Object at a time” which is available at all good bookstores.

This episode is a fantastic listen – we learnt so much.  This podcast was an honour to bring remembrance and more light to this topic and we really hope you enjoy it and take practical nuggets from it.

Big love,

Dave & Steve

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