The software and aviation industries have similar carbon footprints globally – and that was the case even before AI became the behemoth it is now. So, we really need to know more about how software and programming can change, and what we can do about our footprints.

Software engineer Annie Freeman ups the Kiwi quota on the show as she joins us to share her experiences and knowledge working in sustainable IT, green software – and code pruning.

We discover just what those terms mean, how software designers and programmers can influence their products’ impact on the environment, and how green ops and fin ops (but not special ops) fit into the picture.

Annie tells us how more efficient software can lead to the need for fewer servers, and thus benefits both the bottom line for a business and the environment, and how webpages can be built to have a similar impact.

We consider how AI can help with these tasks, but has also led to firms drawing back on commitments to reduce their climate impact, and the effects it has had on both coding and editing code.

Plus, why did some airlines take a single olive out of each salad on board their planes? Why do data centres in Australia have different footprints from those in the USA? And what would happen if you were to get rid of that legacy code embedded deeply into your website?

Discover more about Annie here: https://anniefreeman.co/

Find out more about the Green Software Foundation here: https://greensoftware.foundation/

And you can listen to our previous episode AI, Data Centres, and The Great Energy Problem here: https://pod.fo/e/3403ed

‘Conflict is costly’ – yet we see it arising around the world on a constant basis. And climate change can create the conditions for conflict and violence.

So, just how many of these conflicts are related to climate change and weather shocks – and why? And what can we do to break the climate-conflict cycle?

Professor Jean-François Maystadt, from UCLouvain in Belgium and Lancaster University Management School, brings his expertise as an economist specialising in conflicts, natural disasters and forced migration to show us the connections.

We learn that between 5% and 20% of all conflicts globally in the last century had a link to climate change, and see the regional variations in causality across South Asia, Africa and the Middle East in recent years, with some surprising revelations.

We look at the effects of economic shocks in countries such as Somalia, low rainfall monsoon seasons in India, and drought in Syria. And we discover often it is those with more resources who are able to leave a region following a natural disaster, leaving behind those with little to begin with.

We see how many countries choose to intensify practices rather than adapt when it comes to coping with the effects of weather and climate on agriculture and other industries; and come to understand how having nothing to lose can influence the actions of those entering conflict.

JF explains the importance of strong national and regional institutions in helping to prevent conflicts arising, why some communities can cope with shocks when others cannot and collapse into violence, and the importance of agriculture in the big picture.

Plus, how refugee camps can have a positive economic effect on the area around them, how farmers in Kenya benefit from weather-based insurance policies, and why Jan has inner conflict over doughnuts.

Read more about Jean-François’ work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/people/jean-francois-maystadt

We cannot expect the technology of tomorrow to be better than the humans of today. So, if we want Artificial Intelligence and other tech to be better, then we need to improve as people.

Dr Cornelia Walther, from our hosts the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, joins us at the Global Tipping Points 2026 Conference at Sunway University to discuss AI’s links to tipping points, and to the future of humanity.

The complexity of AI makes it hard to know what’s to come, but Cornelia stresses the technology can be both good and bad. The problem is it operates on the garbage in, garbage out principle, when we need it to work on a values in, values out basis. If we want to see that change, we must alter our priorities.

As the last of the analogue generations, living through the move towards a time of hybrid intelligence (HI) – mixing natural intelligence and AI – we consider the effects on our brains of delegating previously everyday functions to the phone in our pocket or the computer on our desk. Will it lead to us all having robot partners?!

We find ourselves asking, how can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and take advantage of AI as a force for good?

This episode was produced in conjunction with the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, hosts of the conference.