Author: BBC Radio 4

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Slippery Ships

While at sea or in port, the hull of a ship can be an attractive new residence for all sorts or creatures. The initial slime build-up can provide a welcome mat for more and more creatures. This 'biofouling' can end up being inches think and heavy in weight as well as stopping the streamlining of the vessel. The drag caused can result in more fuel being needed to keep the ship moving forwards at the same speed - more cost and more carbon.

Tom Heap meets a new stowaway on ships which will help fight the build up. Paint company Jotun has now developed the Hullskater robot. Monitoring of conditions will alert when the robot needs to be deployed on missions - with its magnetic wheels and high definition cameras it inspects the surface and uses brushes to remove the build up.

With an increasing fleet of ships, Dr Tamsin Edwards from Kings College London also reflects on other measures to keep hulls free of build up and alternative fuels that might help the international fleet reduce its carbon impact.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Bharathram Ganapathisubramani from the University of Southampton.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Will 2021 have more Covid deaths than 2020?

In 2020 there were 1.8 million reported Covid deaths. So far this year, we?ve had 1.2 million. We?re currently seeing around 12,000 deaths a day across the world. But while some areas are seeing falls in numbers, others such as India are seeing a surge.

This week Tim Harford tries to answer the question: Will there be more global deaths this year from Covid 19 compared to last year?

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Polluter Pays

There are already examples around the world where the manufacturer helps to pay for the safe disposal of waste from their goods once used - such as electronic items or bottles. But what about the carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuels?

Tom hears about the 'Carbon Take Back Obligation' concept - in which oil and gas producers would have to capture and store C02 - ratcheting up from 1% of what they produce by 2023, to 10% in 2030 and 100% by 2050. Some say it's impossible to meet the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement without it.

But where would all that carbon dioxide go? How much storage space would we need for it and how much of the cost would trickle down to the petrol pump?

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, armed with statistics gathered by the Royal Geographical Society, joins Tom to add up the numbers.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Stephen Peake of the Open University and Dr Chris Hope of the University of Cambridge.

For more information on the Carbon Take Back Obligation www.carbontakeback.org

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Start the Week - What if the Incas had colonised Europe?

The French writer Laurent Binet’s new book Civilisations is a flight of fancy re-imagining the modern world. He tells Andrew Marr that his counter-factual novel looks at what could have happened if the Vikings had made it to America, Columbus had failed, and the Incas and Aztecs had ended up fighting over the colonisation of Europe.

Caroline Dodds Pennock, one of the world’s foremost historians of Mesoamerican culture, considers the experiences of Indigenous Americans (such as the Aztecs, Maya, Tupi and Algonquians) coming to Europe in the sixteenth century. She argues that these people forged the course of European civilisation, just as surely as European colonists changed America.

Colonisation and empire-building are also at the forefront of Christienna Fryar’s historical research at Goldsmiths, University of London. In her work on the modern Caribbean and Britain she argues that their histories are intertwined and cannot be properly understood in isolation.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Steel without the fossil fuels

Modern civilisation is quite literally built on steel. Our cities, our homes, our cars are unthinkable without it. But steel-making is the biggest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide so the search is on for a clean, green method of turning iron ore into steel.

Tom Heap meets the Swedes who are ahead of the pack. Three local companies- Vattenfall, LKAB and SSAB- have come together to deconstruct the whole process and develop ways to remove fossil-fuels from each stage of steel-making. From the enormous iron ore mines of Arctic Sweden to the smelters and furnaces that produce the steel, carbon dioxide emissions are being radically reduced, but how close can they get to a truly green steel?

Tom and Dr Tamsin Edwards discuss the Swedish plans and calculate just how much of this industry's emissions could be wiped out in a generation.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Chris McDonald of the Materials Processing Institute.

Photo courtesy of: Åsa Bäcklin and HYBRIT

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Bog-tastic!

There's a lot of carbon locked up in the peatlands of Britain and Ireland but many of them have been drained for agriculture and dug for fuel or garden compost. The loss of water resulted in the massive loss of carbon to the atmosphere. Rewetting the bogs can not only stop that leaching of carbon but potentially help the bogs sequester carbon once more. Could these once forboding 'creepy' habitats be something of an underrated super solution? Tom Heap speaks to peat expert, Florence Renou-Wilson of University College Dublin, and takes a virtual tour of a new carbon farm - designed to harvest carbon back from the atmosphere. Dr Tamsin Edwards from Kings College London assesses the potential of this solution.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Christopher Evans of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Mike Peacock of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Ocean Farmers

When the cod disappeared from the Grand Banks of his Newfoundland home, fisherman Bren Smith saw the light. He realised that we need a new relationship with the oceans- the age of the hunter-gatherers was over and the time of the ocean farmers had begun. After many years of trial and error he developed a new farming system that produces thousands of tonnes of shellfish and edible seaweed, cleans the oceans and absorbs our carbon emissions.

Tom Heap meets Bren and takes a trip to the seaweed farm of the Scottish Association for Marine Science to see if the new techniques in ocean farming can be replicated around the islands and sea lochs of the west coast of Scotland.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, joins Tom to calculate just how much of our carbon emissions might be swallowed by farming the oceans.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Jennifer Smith of the University of California San Diego and Professor Michael Graham of San José State University.

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - The Chill Hunters

There's a dirty secret around the back of your fridge. The world's freezers, fridges and air conditioning units are chilled by gases that have planet-warming properties that are hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Disposed of properly they're not a problem but in much of the developing world these gases- legal ones and even more dangerous illegal gases- are simply vented to the atmosphere when the cooling units are dumped or recycled.

In the first of ten more programmes highlighting the world's best carbon-busting ideas, Tom Heap meets the fridge detectives hunting the planet for the worst offenders and safely disposing of their dangerous gases.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, armed with statistics gathered by the Royal Geographical Society, joins Tom to add up the numbers and calculate the carbon impact of the fridge detectives.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Dr Luke Western and Dr Daniel Say of the University of Bristol and to Professor John Pyle of the University of Cambridge.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - How many swimming pools full of vaccine do we need?

If we brought together all the Covid 19 vaccine needed for the whole world, how much space would it fill up? An Olympic size swimming pool? We do some back of the envelope sums.

Plus - we look at the increased risk of clots from pregnancy. Last week we looked at the increased risk of getting a clot from taking the combined contraceptive pill and compared it to risk of possible rare clots identified following the Astra Zeneca jab. How does pregnancy compare?

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Start the Week - Nuclear destruction

In 1962 the world teetered on the edge of nuclear destruction as the Presidents of the USA and the Soviet Union fought over Soviet warheads installed on the islands of Cuba. In Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the historian Serhii Plokhy retells the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. He tells Amol Rajan it was ultimately fear that saved the planet, and it’s time to draw lessons from the many mistakes that were made at the time.

The Cold War era did produce a nuclear arms-control agreement – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – signed in 1987. But the nuclear physicist and former director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research Patricia Lewis says that in 2019 the United States and Russia withdrew their support. Lewis, who now leads the International Security programme at Chatham House, asks whether we are now entering a second nuclear age.

The BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford visited the sites of the Soviet Union's nuclear stations in Cuba when she was posted there in 2011. She wrote about her experiences and the end of the Castro era in Our Woman in Havana. Rainsford is now the BBC’s Moscow correspondent and explores how far Khrushchev’s political scheming and disinformation compare to the strategy of President Putin.

Producer: Katy Hickman