Nikos Giannakis is a biologist with the University of Leeds, currently working in Greece. His graduate work was in environmental pollution control and agricultural chemistry, and his PhD was on soil microbiology. His national service requirement in Greece led to environmental consulting including impact assessment. Currently he is living with his wife (an architect specializing in natural building techniques) and six cats in an abandoned village in a national park in northwestern Greece. His activism focuses on defending nature from "green energy" projects and on bringing land use into the climate conversation.

Our interview hit many topics including "green energy" projects in Europe; land use as the "other leg" of climate change (besides the greenhouse effect), as highlighted by Spanish climatalogist Millán Millán; carbon reductionism in the climate change narrative; the hijacking of the environmental movement by the carbon conversation; land use and fire mitigation; the necessity to be wholistic in our relationship with nature; the all-too-material reality of the digital realm; increasingly extreme weather; conservation efforts worldwide (which Nikos is involved with); future directions for agriculture; public vs. private land; humans as keystone species in ecology; the importance of community; opportunities for young people to find new answers; the power of media to control narratives and hence public perception, and much more!

LINKS called out in interview:

Millán Millán, climatologist: Publications on Academia.edu: https://independent.academia.edu/Mill%C3%A1nMill%C3%A1n1

Rob Lewis' three part series, "Millan Millan and the Mystery of the Missing Mediterranean Storms," on land use as the "other leg" of climate change: Part I: https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/p/millan-millan-and-the-mystery-of Part II: https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/p/millan-millan-and-the-mystery-of-526 Part III: https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/p/millan-millan-and-the-mystery-of-0e9

Meghan Walla-Murphy, bear tracker: http://www.meghanwallamurphy.com/

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CREDIT: Intro & outro narration: Sarah Beth Reiss

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