I think you’ll love this Sustain What conversation I just had with Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy, the brilliant young playwrights behind Kyoto, the tragicomic play describing the titanic diplomatic and political tussle as climate change science threatened to bring an early end to the fossil fuel age.
My “curtain raiser” post has a heap of details and related links:
But much more emerged in the discussion, which also included Ben Santer, a veteran climate scientist who’s a character in the play (he writes about that here), Jean Chemnick, an E&E News/Politico reporter who wrote in depth on petrostate and industry efforts to derail climate talks, and Jenny Shalant, a Natural Resources Defense Council writer who wrote a great essay after seeing the play.
If you appreciate what I’m doing curating these webcasts, please consider pausing on Giving Tuesday to chip in so I can keep at it in 2026.
Here are a couple of highlights, starting with Joe and Joe’s origin story as public-minded playwrights, which involved building a performance dome in a Calais, France, migrant community.
Here’s Ben Santer, who was consulted in the writing of the play and has seen it three times, describing a crucial turning point in the play and in history - the fingerprint analysis he and others did showing the human effect on climate that undercut the industry’s argument for delay:
Attacks and dead rats
Santer also discussed the discomfort of watching the play describe the attacks he faced, and the fear his son faced, when a rat was left on his doorstep:
The Joes described how they are working on two more plays in what they see as a series - on the Copenhagen round of climate talks in 2009 and the journey to and beyond the Paris Agreement in 2015.
I’m looking forward to the next steps in their theatrical journey.
Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video. Join me for my next live video in the app.
