The Economy, Land & Climate Podcast: Recent Episodes
Economy Land & Climate Insight Team
The editorial team Economy, Land & Climate Insight interview thinkers and policymakers in the world of economics, land-use and climate policy. Find more on the ELCI site at www.elc-insight.org
Solar and wind power is growing worldwide, but so is electricity consumption: as a result, renewables are often only added to the energy mix, rather than replacing fossil fuels.
Reducing energy demand would make net zero more achievable, but it recieves far less attention than decarbonisation efforts. This may be due to a perception that managing energy demand would be politically unpopular, requiring governments to make radical interventions into people's lifestyles and spending.
Oliver Broad, Senior Research Fellow at University College London, tells Alasdair that such fears are unfounded. His team's research found that the UK could reduce energy demand by 52% without new tech or overly disruptive societal change, and has worked with policymakers and public focus groups to demonstrate political acceptability.
Further reading:
- 'Policymakers and academics envision energy demand reductions beyond typical policies in the United Kingdom', Nature Energy, 2025
- 'Policymaker-led scenarios and public dialogue facilitate energy demand analysis for net-zero futures', Nature Energy, 2025
- 'Energy demand reduction options for meeting national zero-emission targets in the United Kingdom', Nature Energy, 2022
- 'Real people or "economic processing units"? The limited understanding of people's roles in energy and climate governance', Energy Research & Social Science, 2022
- 'A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies', Nature Energy, 2018
- 'Invisible energy policies: A new agenda for energy demand reduction', Energy Policy, 2018
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Geoengineering research is growing, as scientists look for increasingly radical means to protect humanity from the disastrous impacts of global heating.
Less publicly, concerns are also building about the use of these techniques for geopolitical disruption or control.
Technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM) and stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) are controversial amongst climate scientists: they could buy us time through a temporary cooling effect, but they would not actually stop global heating, and could cause other negative impacts.
Danielle Young tells Alasdair that scientific research on these technologies often lacks alignment with political realities. While scientists plan for multilateral governance regimes to protect global populations from heat, government and military officials are more likely to think about SRM or SAI in terms of weaponisation and international power struggles.
Dr Danielle Young is an Assistant Professor in Politics and International Studies at The University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the geopolitical and security implications of emerging solar geoengineering technologies.
Further reading:
- 'Why we need to explore conflict and competition around solar geoengineering', PLOS Climate, 2026
- 'Who could deploy stratospheric aerosol injection? The United States, China, and large‐scale, rapid planetary cooling', Global Policy, 2025
- 'How will capitalism react to climate collapse?', Land and Climate Review, 2025
- 'Who Can Govern from a House on Fire? International Order, State
Responsibility, and the Problem of Solar Radiation Modification', Ethics & International Affairs, 2024 - 'Scientific models versus power politics: How security expertise reframes solar geoengineering', Review of International Studies, 2024
- 'Considering stratospheric aerosol injections beyond an environmental frame: The intelligible ‘emergency’ techno-fix and preemptive security', European Journal of International Security, 2023
- 'Do-or-Die: Should we be talking about geoengineering?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
- 'The Geopolitical ecology of solar geoengineering: From a ‘logic of multilateralism’ to logics of militarization', Journal of Political Ecology, 2020
- Geoengineering, the Anthropocene and the End of Nature, Jeremy Baskin, 2019
- ‘The entwined Cold War roots of missile defense and climate geoengineering’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2019
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Click here to watch the video recording of this interview.
In her latest book, Ann Pettifor argues that we are not governed by politicians or diplomats, but “by wealthy and powerful players in markets based in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the City of London.”
These players, she says, largely either ignore the threat of climate breakdown, or see it as a struggle for resource control. The “unregulated actions of private actors and institutions in global markets have led to the increasingly rapid breakdown of the world’s climate and ecosystem.”
In a special episode of The Land and Climate Podcast, recorded live in front of an audience as part of London Climate Action Week, Bertie and Ann discuss the influence financial markets exert over climate policy, and strategies to reassert democratic control.
Ann Pettifor is a political economist known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, successfully campaigning to cancel approximately $100 billion in debt owed by poor countries, and for co-authoring and advocating the Green New Deal.
In January 2026, Verso published her latest book, The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet. Buy a copy from Verso's website before 31st July and recieve 30% off with the following discount code: CLIMATEREVIEW30
Further reading:
- Ann's Substack, System Change.
- The Case for the Green New Deal, 2019
- The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, 2018
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Most net zero policies and major scientific models rely on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to limit global heating to 2℃. The most commonly known methods include afforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture, and direct air capture - but various proposals are emerging for ocean-based CDR technologies.
Could marine CDR offset emissions from sectors that cannot easily decarbonise, or are the costs and risks too great? Bertie sat down with oceanographer David Ho to discuss these questions, shortly after he returned from the 4th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal in Milan.
David Ho is a professor at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and a lead author on the upcoming IPCC methodology report on carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. His 2023 article for Nature criticising overreliance on CDR has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
Further reading:
- 'Three challenges to marine carbon dioxide removal', npj Ocean Sustainability, November 2025
- Principles for responsible and effective marine carbon dioxide removal development and governance, 2025
- 'Marine carbon dioxide removal may be a future climate solution', Dialogues on Climate Change, November 2024
- 'Can coastal and marine carbon dioxide removal help to close the emissions gap? Scientific, legal, economic, and governance considerations', Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, August 2024
- 'Deployment expectations of multi-gigatonne scale carbon removal could have adverse impacts on Asia’s energy-water-land nexus', Nature Communications, July 2024
- 'Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative', Nature, April 2023
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
The 17th Century Little Ice Age wreaked havoc on weather systems and economies around the world. In China, extreme cold and intense droughts led to soaring grain prices, and as food security collapsed, so did the centuries old political regime of the Ming dynasty.
Alasdair speaks to Tim Brook about his groundbreaking book ‘The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China’. They discuss the importance of climate changes in the rise and fall of empires, and the lessons that can be learned from climate-induced famines in dynastic China.
Dr Book is a Canadian historian and an Emeritus Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He held the Republic of China Chair at UBC’s Centre for Chinese Research until his retirement in 2022.
Further reading:
- ‘What is climate-flation?’, Land and Climate Review, March 2026
- The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China by Timothy Brook, 2023
- The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720 by Dagomar Degroot, 2018
- ‘Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries’, WIREs Climate Change, March 2018
- ‘Nine sloughs: profiling the climate history of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, 1260-1644’, Journal of Chinese History, November 2016
- The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties by Timothy Brook, 2013
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Scientists warn we are in an age of mass-extinction. Entire species are ceasing to exist at unprecedented rates. When did this age begin, and when did humans start to confront their impacts on ecosystems and living populations?
Sadiah Qureshi explores extinction as ‘unnatural’ and inherently political, by placing humanity at the centre of her latest book, 'Vanished: an Unnatural History of Extinction'.
In conversation with Bertie, she traces the history of the concept of extinction in European thought and its connection with settler-colonial politics. Bertie and Sadiah also discuss present day conservation policy, and echoes of imperialist thought within it.
Sadiah Qureshi is a Chair of Modern British History at the University of Manchester, and a historian of science, race and empire.
Further reading
- ‘Vanished: An Unnatural History Of Extinction,’ is available to purchase from Penguin here.
- This week, Professor Qureshi delivered the annual Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture for the Royal Society. You can watch that here.
- 'What can histories of Empire teach us about modern environmental efforts?', The British Academy, December 2025
- 'Reversing extinction', aeon
- '‘A billionaire will pay a lot of money to shoot a recreated being’: historian Sadiah Qureshi on extinction and empire', The Guardian, June 2025
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Last year, multilateral negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty broke down after countries failed to agree to limits on plastic production - as opposed to simply regulating plastic waste.
This distinction between 'upstream' and 'downstream' measures to tackle plastic pollution is a point of contention between industry and campaigners, with the plastic lobby favouring recycling advocacy over efforts to curb plastic production.
Alasdair discusses this issue with Dr Rob Ralston, who researches the different stakeholders within the industry lobby, and the ways in which this bloc has co-opted formerly radical policy frameworks, such as the idea of 'circular economy', to delay major policy interventions.
Rob Ralston is a lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh, and an expert in global health and environmental politics.
Further reading:
- Click here for our other podcasts and articles on plastic pollution on Land and Climate Review.
- 'Ultra-processed foods are a key driver of the global plastics pollution crisis', Nature Food, April 2026
- 'The battle for plastic hegemony: the petrochemical historical bloc and the UN Global Plastics Treaty', Review of International Political Economy, March 2026
- Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty, Greenpeace, 2024
- The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, Center for Climate Integrity, 2024
- 'Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics', Global Environmental Politics, April 2021
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
What happens after a country's electricity infrastructure is destroyed by war? Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Turkish conglomerate Karadeniz Holding had an innovative idea: if ships could be retrofitted as floating power plants, they could be quickly deployed to countries in crisis, then moved elsewhere again when needed.
Gökçe Günel returns to the Land and Climate Podcast to discuss her latest book, which uses the history of ‘powerships’ and their operations in Ghana to analyse the unexpected ways that geopolitics, business and conflict shape energy systems, and to question the concept of a linear energy transition.
Gökçe Günel is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Her 2019 book “Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi” explored Masdar City project - discussed in our previous episode here. Her new book, “Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations,” published by Duke University Press, is available to purchase here.
Further reading:
- ‘Energy accumulates: Ghana shows that the “energy transition” is more myth than fact’, Land & Climate Review, 2026
- ‘Cin Fikir: Infrastructure, War and Progress’, Against Catastrophe, 2025
- ‘Leapfrogging to Solar’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 2021
- ‘Energy Accumulation’, e-flux Architecture, 2020,
- Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, 2019
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
The labour movement has contributed to climate and environmental policy for decades, and developed the concept of a ‘just transition’. Despite this, the relationship between unions and climate policymakers can be strained, with concerns from both parties about how the other will approach job losses from phasing out fossil fuels.
How has trade union policy on decarbonisation developed over the decades, and what are union leaders’ perspectives on more radical academic arguments, such as the need to structure economic policy around other metrics than GDP?
With particular focus on Germany and the UK, Bertie talks to Vera Trappmann about union engagement with green policymaking, what a just transition means for workers, and how this varies between Global North and South.
Vera Trappmann is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at Leeds University, where she co-leads the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. Her work focuses on climate change’s impact on workers, as well as union movement perspectives and policies on climate issues.
Further reading:
- 'Perspectives on Social and Justice Issues in Climate Policy – Comparing the Just Transitions, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-Social Policy Literatures', Milena Büchs, Vera Trappmann, Gina Moran, Max Koch, WIREs Climate Change, 2026
- 'Trades unions, climate policy and just transition in the UK', Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, Ursula Balderson, 2026
- 'German Trade Unions and Decarbonisation: A Transition to Green Growth, A‐Growth or Degrowth?'Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrial Relations Journal, 2025
- What workers want: Conditions for a fair and just transition in the UK, Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, and Alice Garvey, 2025
- 'Conjunctures of eco-social partnership unionism: The German Trade Union Confederation’s climate policies over three decades', Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrielle Beziehungen, 2024
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
For the second time in five years, conflict has seriously destablised global markets. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to US and Israeli attacks on Iran has limited trade, causing skyrocketing prices - but not only for oil.
Most fertiliser production relies on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Gulf nations including Qatar and Saudi Arabia are major fertiliser producers, and one third of the world's seaborne fertiliser trade usually passes through the Strait, which is currently unavailable. Other fertiliser producing nations are reducing production due to limited gas supply. Are food shortages inevitable?
Alasdair is joined by Noah Gordon to discuss the international and environmental politics of fertilisers. They discuss fertiliser production, its uses and misuses, its role in global inequality and whether gas dependency can be avoided.
Noah Gordon is the acting Co-Director of the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.
Further reading:
- 'The Other Global Crisis Stemming From the Strait of Hormuz’s Blockage', Emissary, March 2026
- 'A Trump Order Protected a Weedkiller. And Also a Weapon of War.' New York Times, March 2026
- How to Feed the World by Vaclav Smil, 2025
- 'How a few giant companies came to dominate global food', Land and Climate Review, May 2025
- 'Why was organic policy blamed for Sri Lanka’s financial crisis?' Land and Climate Review, June 2024
- 'Fertiliser emissions could be cut to ‘one-fifth of current levels’ by 2050', Carbon Brief, February 2023
- The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager, 2009
- Titans of Industrial Agriculture by Jennifer Clapp, 2025
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
With the recent 'AI Boom', the energy demand of computing has risen dramatically. As generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot and Grok become more mainstream, tech companies are racing to build and power new data centres - the physical 'computer factories' that store and process our information and online services.
This new infrastructure is significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions - but tech companies argue that the climate innovations and efficiency improvements catalysed by AI tools will offset negative impacts. Could such claims prove true, or are they greenwashed PR?
Alasdair puts this question to writer and energy analyst Ketan Joshi, who recently authored a report on AI's climate impacts alongside several leading nonprofits.
Further reading:
- Read more from Ketan on climate and AI on his blog, here.
- 'Does Generative AI “Work”? That’s a Misleading Question.', Ketan Joshi, The New Republic, March 2026
- The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts, Ketan Joshi, February 2026
- 'Crypto and AI exploit conflict zones and fossil fuels – with destructive consequences', Hito Steyerl, Gago Gagoshidze and Miloš Trakilović, Land and Climate Review, July 2025
- Empire of AI, Karen Hao, May 2025
- 'Big Tech’s green promises are hypocritical gestures', Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alessandra Mularoni, Land and Climate Review, April 2025
- SYSTEM OVERLOAD: How new data centres could throw Europe’s energy transition off course, Beyond Fossil Fuels, February 2025
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Climate change is making the lives of many more difficult. Tens of millions of people are already displaced by weather events each year, and studies show that climate breakdown drives mental and physical health crises, increased conflict, drought, and food insecurity, among many other challenges.
So why do leading climate models primarily measure impacts on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rather than human wellbeing?
Inge Schrijver joins Alasdair on the podcast to discuss her new research into this question, and to explain how climate models work, how they are used, and what they are missing.
Inge Schrijver is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University. Her study, “Inclusion of wellbeing impacts of climate change: a review of literature and integrated environment–society–economy models,” was co-authored with René Kleijn, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, and is available to read here.
Further reading:
- ‘Climate action saves lives. So why do climate models ignore wellbeing?‘ Inge Schrijver, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, The Conversation, 2025
- ‘Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022
- ‘Sufficiency means degrowth‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022
- ‘Is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?‘, The Land & Climate Podcast, 2022
- ‘The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change‘, Steve Keen, Globalizations, 2020
- WISE Horizons project
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Long before the recent economic crash and brutal killings of protestors in Iran, the country faced enduring environmental crises. Depleted dams and dried rivers have left stretches of land exposed, sending dust clouds across the country and severely degrading air quality. Last October, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the capital, Tehran, may have to be evacuated due to the country's water bankruptcy.
Have these problems contributed to the civil unrest this winter? Bertie puts this question to Dr. Sanam Mahoozi, who reports on Iran for the US news press, and recently completed a PhD researching media framings of environmental protests in the country. Sanam traces the developments of climate politics and environmental media coverage in Iran, against the backdrop of a highly uncertain political future.
Further reading:
- Sanam’s recent news reporting for The New York Times
- Sanam’s writing about Iranian reporting and environmental issues for The Conversation
- Media Framing of Iran’s 2021 Water Protests, Sanam Mahoozi, 2025, City, University of London
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
In September 2025, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the climate crisis presents “risks” for Russia that are “very dangerous”. Though not unprecedented, such statements differ from other Russian government messaging that has argued climate threats are overstated as part of a Western agenda, or that climate change could benefit the country. Is the state’s narrative changing?
This week on The Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair MacEwen is joined by Marianna Poberezhskaya to discuss the history of complex and often contradictory climate politics in Russia. They also discuss Russia’s burgeoning climate conspiracism, the history of climatology through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s increasingly isolationist stance on climate cooperation.
Marianna Poberezhskaya is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University, where she researches climate discourse from non-democratic governments and their nations’ media, with particular focus on Russia.
Further reading:
- 'Explainer: How Russia seeks to 'instrumentalise' climate issues at COP30', Clare Denning, 2025, BBC
- 'Conspiracies as one of the dangers of online climate change communication: origins, spread, and impact', Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2025,Routledge handbook on climate crisis communication pp. 229-239
- 'Climate obstruction in Russia: surviving a resource-dependent economy, an authoritarian regime, and a disappearing civil society', Marianna Poberezhskaya and Ellie Martus, 2024, Climate obstruction across Europe pp. 214-242
- 'Russian climate scepticism: an understudied case', Teresa Ashe and Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2022, Climatic Change 172 (3-4)
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
President Trump has long expressed ambitions to annex Greenland, with mentions of the US acquiring the Danish autonomous territory dating back to 2019. But the US relationship and interest with Greenland goes back centuries.
In a bonus episode of the Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair is joined by returning guest and Arctic expert Mia Bennett to examine Greenland’s complex history and connections to the US, Trump’s recent interest, and her views on the reasons behind them.
Mia Bennett is the co-author of "Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic," published by Yale University Press. She is an associate professor of geography at the University of Washington and the founder of Cryopolitics, a blog covering contemporary and historic developments in the Arctic.
Further reading:
- Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, Yale University Press, 2025
- Trump and Rutte cannot make a deal without Greenland at the table', Julie Rademacher, Financial Times, 2026
- 'Greenland: Staying with the Polar Inuit. How a secret military base helped trigger the silent collapse of an Arctic world', Ludovic Slimak, The Conversation, 2026
- 'The cryosphere is nearing irreversible tipping points – and the world is not prepared', Letizia Tedesco, Josephine Z. Rapp and Petra Heil, Land and Climate Review, 2025
- The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future, Jon Gertner, Postscript Books, 2019
- Crimson, Niviaq Korneliussen, Anna Halager (Translator), Virago Books, 2018
- So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump, Elizabeth Buchanan, Hurst Publishers, 2025
- This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich, Fourth Estate, 2003
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Bertie is joined by Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, whose research formed the foundation for the Green New Deal. In his new book, “Still No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air,” he underlines that we have already developed the technologies necessary to solve the climate crisis.
Dr. Jacobson argues that wind, water and solar power are the most effective tools for reducing emissions, that the development of energy-intensive “unicorn technologies” such as carbon capture and storage only prolongs fossil fuel use.
Mark Jacobson is Director of Stanford’s Atmosphere and Energy Program and a co-founder of The Solutions Project, which advances clean, renewable energy systems. His new book is available to buy here from Cambridge University Press, with 20% off using the discount code “NOMIRACLES20”.
Further reading:
- 'Carbon capture does not reduce emissions: these three case studies prove it', Mark Z. Jacobson, Land and Climate Review, 2026.
- Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025, report finds, Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian, 2026.
- No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
- 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- 'A path to sustainable energy by 2030', Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi, Scientific American, 2009
Correction notice: in the original upload of this podcast, Bertie mistakenly referred to the publisher of Still No Miracles Needed as 'Stanford University Press', rather than Cambridge University Press. This was removed on 27/1/25.
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
Last September, power cuts and water shortages triggered civil unrest in Madagascar, leading to the dissolution of its government. In recent months, Iran’s water crisis has led to public demonstrations and even a warning from President Masoud Pezeshkian that Tehran could be evacuated. Protests over access to food and water are intensifying globally.
Dagomar Degroot returns to the podcast to discuss the role of climate change in regime breakdown. He and Alasdair discuss historical examples of societal collapse influenced by climatic conditions, the effects of the “Little Ice Age” on droughts and harvests, and how the Global North might be less resilient than many realise.
Dr. Dagomar Degroot is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University, an expert on climate change, space exploration and existential risk. His forthcoming book, “Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: How the Solar System Shapes Human History – and May Help Save Our Planet,” will be published by Penguin in February. Listen to Alasdair and Dagomar’s discussion about the book here.
Further reading:
- 'After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up', Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, December 2025.
- 'Climate crisis or a warning from God? Iranians desperate for answers as water dries up', Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, November 2025.
- 'Madagascar’s president dissolves government amid youth-led protests', The Guardian, September 2025.
- Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Luke Kemp, 2025.
- 'Climate, peace, and conflict—past and present: Bridging insights from historical sciences and contemporary research', Sam White et al., Ambio, 2025.
- Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor, Harvey Weiss (ed.), 2017.
- Questioning collapse : human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire, Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee (eds.), 2010.
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
The Arctic is heating four times faster than the global average, with scientists predicting the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of ice in summer by the early 2030s. This rapid melting presents an existential threat to Arctic infrastructure and ecosystems, as well as opening new claims on strategically valuable resources. As temperatures rise in the Arctic, so do geopolitical tensions.
This week, Alasdair is joined by Mia Bennett, co-author with Klaus Dodds of “Unfrozen: The Fight for The Future of The Arctic,” published by Yale University Press. Mia explains the environmental consequences of melting permafrost, the roles multilateral organisations and Indigenous communities have within policymaking, and the growing militarisation of the region.
Mia Bennett is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, and a British Academy Visiting Fellow at UCL’s Centre for Outer Space Studies. Her book "Unfrozen” and long-running blog “Cryopolitics” examine Arctic developments – including the science of climate breakdown, national and Indigenous politics, and the emergence of new markets.
“Unfrozen: The Fight for The Future of The Arctic,” is available to purchase from Yale University Press here.
Further reading:
- 'Have we reached peak Arctic Circle?' Mia Bennett, Cryopolitics, 2025
- 'The cryosphere is nearing irreversible tipping points – and the world is not prepared', Letizia Tedesco, Josephine Z. Rapp and Petra Heil, Land and Climate Review, 2025
- Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, Bathsheba Demuth, WW Norton & Company, 2019
- The Paradox of Svalbard: Climate Change and Globalisation in the Arctic, Zdenka Sokolíčková, Pluto Books, 2023
- 'Russia’s espionage war in the Arctic', Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 2024
- Seven poems from Dark Traffic,Joan Naviyuk Kane , 2021
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
This week, Bertie Harrison-Broninski speaks with Professor Annette Kehnel, Chair of Medieval History at the University of Mannheim. Kehnel gives us a potted history of sustainability and argues that sustainable practices have existed throughout history, yet our modern collective memory is influenced by ideas of resource exploitation introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Annette Kehnel is currently a visiting fellow at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. She is the author of The Green Ages: Sustainable Practices, winner of the 2021 NDR Book Prize. Its English translation by Geshe Ipsen has been shortlisted for the 2025 Schlegel-Tieck Prize.
Further reading:
- The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability, Annette Kehnel, Profile Books
- Die sieben Todsünden: Menschheitswissen für das Zeitalter der Krise (The Seven Deadly Sins: Human Knowledge for the Age of Crisis), Annette Kehnel, Rowohlt
- Governing the commons : the evolution of institutions for collective action, Elinor Ostrom, Cambridge University Press
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes, Bloomsbury
- Managing the Lake Constance Fisheries, ca. 1350-1800, Michael Zeheter, Berghahn
Send us Fan Mail
Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has claimed that nuclear fusion can be harnessed within the next five years, and that its application to the electricity grid is expected within eight to fifteen years.
Fusion research has been ongoing for over a century, with experiments beginning in the 1950s, but there has recently been a surge in private investment. Nearly $10 billion has been raised in the last five years, primarily from private funders in the USA.
Fusion expert Matthew Hole tells Bertie Harrison-Broninski that many of these new companies are likely to go bankrupt, and that fusion power is unlikely to be operational in time to contribute to net zero targets. They discuss the different forms of fuel for fusion power, the world’s largest fusion project in France, and the high-risk, high-reward nature of fusion investment.
Matthew Hole is a professor at the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University and a leading authority on plasma fusion physics. In 2005, he founded the Australian ITER Forum and currently serves as co-chair of the International Fusion Research Council of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Further reading:
- Billions in private cash is blooding into fusion power. Will it pay off? Professor Matthew Hole, 2025, The Conversation
- US energy chief tells BBC nuclear fusion will soon power the world, Justin Rowlatt, 2025, BBC
- Helion Energy starts construction on nuclear fusion plant to power Microsoft data centers, Stephen Nellis, 2025 Reuters
- What’s fueling the commercial fusion hype? Victor Gilinsky, 2024, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
- Iter, the nuclear-fusion project proving that multilateral collaboration still works, Simon Bouvier, 2025, Monocle
- What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains, Professor Matthew Hole, 2024, The Conversation
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Controversial efforts at space tourism, such as by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, have reignited old debates about the purpose of space exploration. What relevance does the world beyond our planet have to anyone apart from billionaires and their super-rich clients?
Without defending the growing commercialisation of the space sector, environmental historian Professor Dagomar Degroot offers some answers. In conversation with Alasdair, he examines the solar system's influence on humanity - and humanity's influence on the solar system. They explore how humans have survived past climate shifts, and how human understanding of climate and space have always been connected.
Dagomar Degroot is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on the Little Ice Age. His first book, “The Frigid Golden Age,” was published in 2018. His new work, “Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean,” is published by Penguin and available to pre-order here. He also has a podcast telling the story of climate's influence on humanity, The Climate Chronicles.
Further reading:
- Little Ice Age Lessons, Dagomar Degroot, Aeon, 2025
- The Frigid Golden Age, Dagomar Degroot, Cambridge University Press, 2018
- The History of Climate and Society, Dagomar Degroot,IOPScience, 2022
- Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present, Benjamin Lieberman and Elizabeth Gordon, 2022, Bloomsbury
- The Story of CO₂ Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made our World, Peter Brannen, 2025, Harper Collins
- Colonial Cataclysms: Climate, Landscape, and Memory in Mexico’s Little Ice Age, Bradley Skipyk, 2020, University of Arizona Press
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
In 2006, the Masdar City project was launched in the United Arab Emirates. Supported by $22 billion in state-funding, it aimed to be the world’s most sustainable city. Situated 6km away from Zayed International Airport, neighbouring a Formula 1 racetrack and golf course, Abu Dhabi’s eco-utopia is full of contradictions.
Bertie discusses why oil-rich Gulf states like UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing in sustainability with Gökçe Günel, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Gökçe is the author of Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, published in 2019 by Duke University Press.
Further reading:
- Inside COP28: A Participant’s Take on Climate Diplomacy Efforts in Dubai, Gökçe Günel, Baker Institute, 2024
- Horizons, Gökçe Günel, e-flux Architecture, 2022
- Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, Gökçe Günel, Duke University Press, 2019
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Global heating in 2024 exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but most governments continue to extend fossil fuel use. Are we now in a political situation where decarbonisation and mitigation efforts are failing? Is climate disaster irreversible?
Alasdair MacEwen discusses these questions with Wim Carton, who returns to the podcast following publication of his new book, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late, co-authored with Andreas Malm.
Wim also explains the desperate technological solutions being considered for carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering, which he argues could do more harm than good.
Wim Carton is a senior lecturer at the Lund University Centre for Sustainable Studies. His research centres on carbon capture and negative emissions. The Long Heat is the second book he has co-authored with Andreas Malm for Verso Books, after 2024's Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.
Further reading:
- Click here to buyThe Long Heatfrom Verso Books.
- Overshoot: has the world surrendered to climate breakdown?, Land and Climate Review, 2024
- Is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?, Land and Climate Review, 2022
- Overshoot: Navigating a world beyond 1.5°C, Planet B Productions and the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative., Laurie Laybourn, 2025
- Scientists Clash over whether Polar Geoengineering Is a Dangerous Gamble, Scientific American, Alec Luhn and Andrea Thompson, 2025
- A ‘doom loop’ of climate change and geopolitical instability is beginning, The Conversation, Laurie Laybourn and James Dyke, 2024
- The Sunlight Managers, The Break-Down, Sofia Menemenlis, 2025
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
As the energy transition accelerates, critical minerals have become increasingly important, and the priorities of extraction for countries in the Global North are beginning to shift. The U.S., EU, and others are now exploring the possibility of on-shoring critical mineral mining - potentially bringing a divisive industry closer to home.
This week, Alasdair talks to extraction expert Dr. Thea Riofrancos, who explains the tension between the harmful consequences of mining and the key role of extractive industries in facilitating the energy transition. She outlines the history of lithium mining in Chile, the environmental and human-rights consequences of extraction, and why we may have overestimated the quantities of critical minerals we actually need.
Thea Riofrancos’ new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, published by Island Press and W.W. Norton & Company, is available for purchase here. Thea is an associate professor of political science at Providence College and a strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute.
Further reading
Electric cars are drying up the desert, Meabh Byrne, 2023, Land and Climate Review
The ‘critical minerals’ rush could result in a resource war, Thea Riofrancos, 2025, Financial Times
The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North, Thea Riofrancos, 2023, MIT Press Direct
Endogenous Participation: Prior Consultation in Extractive Economies, Thea Riofrancos, Julia Falleti, 2017 World Politics
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Alasdair speaks with Jessica F. Green, author of the new book Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, about why thirty years of climate policy have failed to reduce emissions.
They discuss why carbon pricing has been largely ineffective, how net zero pledges are misleading, and why focus must shift from measuring emissions by the tonne to measuring profitability.
Jessica is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and an expert in carbon pricing and global governance. Her new book addresses the climate crisis through asset revaluation and is available to preorder from Princeton University Press here.
Further reading:
- The Decarbonization Bargain: How the Decarbonizable Sector Shapes Climate Politics, Nils Kupzok and Jonas Nahm, Cambridge University Press, 2024
- The False Promise of Carbon Offsets, Jessica F. Green, Foreign Affairs, 2023
- Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy, Jonas Nahm, Oxford University Press, 2021
- Follow the Money, Jessica F. Green, Foreign Affairs, 2021
- Does carbon pricing reduce emissions? A review of ex-post analyses, Jessica F. Green, Environmental Research Letters, 2021
- Making Climate Policy Work, Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor, Wiley, 2020
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Bertie speaks with Mark Parrington about this year’s record-breaking wildfires, and the health implications of increasing air pollution.
Mark is a senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, where he uses satellite imagery to monitor wildfire emissions in real-time.
He tells Bertie about the scale of the recent surge in wildfires across Europe, North America, and the Arctic, and the health impacts of particulate matter and long-range pollution transport. They also discuss the climate implications as wildfires – especially in Arctic peatlands - release millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Further reading:
- Arctic Climate Change Update 2024: Key Trends and Impacts, AMAP , 2024
- State of Wildfires 2023-2024, Earth System Science Data, 2024
- 'Global, regional, and national mortality burden attributable to air pollution from landscape fires: a health impact assessment study', The Lancet, 2024
- 'EU wildfires worst on record as burning season continues', The Guardian,2025
- 'Why are Europe and the Arctic heating up faster than the rest of the world?' Copernicus, 2025
- 'Current wildfire situation in Europe', The Joint Research Centre: EU Science Hub, 2025
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Next week, negotiators meet in Geneva to finalise the UN’s historic Global Plastics Treaty, originally announced in 2022. The additional session was scheduled after years of tense international disagreement.
Bertie talks to Punyathorn ‘Arm’ Jeungsmarn, Plastics Campaign Researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation. Arm attended previous rounds of the UN talks, and recently worked on research about problematic solutions to plastic pollution.
Arm discusses his experience of the negotiations and the influence of industry lobbying, as well as issues around the implementation of policies addressing plastic waste – from bioplastics to recycling.
Further reading:
- False solutions unmasking policy gaps in addressing plastic pollution in Thailand and Southeast Asia, Environmental Justice Foundation, 2025
- A global treaty to limit plastic pollution is within reach – will countries seize the moment? The Conversation, 2025
- Room for Reduction: Towards sustainable production and consumption of plastics in Thailand, Environmental Justice Foundation, 2024
- There is so much to say about plastic pollution. Why are we not talking about it? Land and Climate Review, 2023
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
In April, the International Maritime Organisation held the 83rd session of its Environment Protection Committee, where it established a system of penalties and rewards to advance shipping decarbonisation. This follows 2023 industry commitments to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030.
Alasdair speaks with Simon Bullock about whether the recent agreement is strong enough to meet climate goals and explores practical actions that can be taken now without relying on greenwashing, expensive infrastructure, or scarce biofuels.
Simon Bullock is an interdisciplinary climate change Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester. He recently completed his doctorate, with his thesis focusing on "Accelerating shipping's climate change transition, and the role of UK shore power.
Further reading:
Ten ways to cut shipping’s contribution to climate change,The Conversation, 2021
Update on the latest International Maritime Organization climate meeting, The Conversation, 2025
The need for action now on shipping and climate, Climate Policy, 2025
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Yesterday, the U.S. Congress approved President Donald Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill'. This controversial federal budget is set to defund a huge proportion of the nation's climate and environmental science - what will the impacts be for America, and for global efforts against the climate crisis?
Bertie spoke to John Holdren, who served as President Barack Obama's Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009-2017, becoming the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in U.S. history. He is now a Research Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Further reading:
- ‘How the G.O.P. Bill Will Reshape America’s Energy Landscape’, The New York Times, 3/7/25
- ‘Key climate change reports removed from US government websites’, The Guardian, 1/7/25
- ‘Turmoil at US science academy as Trump cuts force layoffs’, Nature, 1/7/25
- ‘Here Is All the Science at Risk in Trump’s Clash With Harvard’, The New York Times, 22/6/25
- ‘Time for Congress to save American science … and the nation’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 6/6/25
- ‘The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies’, MIT Technology Review, 2/6/25
- ‘The U.S. Under Trump: Alone in Its Climate Denial’, The New York Times, 19/5/25
- ‘The Future of the U S Climate and Environmental Science Funding’, The Salata Institute, 14/5/25 [video]
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
In 2022, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing candidate to win the Colombian presidential election. During his election campaign, Petro pledged to put an end to oil and gas exploration, a commitment his government has so far succeeded in maintaining.
This week, Alasdair speaks with third-year doctoral student Guy Edwards who has interviewed over 50 people - from former government ministers to academics and industry representatives - about the impact of Petro’s pledge on Colombia’s energy transition.
Guy and Alasdair discuss what the pledge entails, how it was received by the fossil fuel industry and right-wing media and what will likely become of it following fresh presidential elections next year.
Guy Edwards is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of Sussex and a member of the Working Group on Natural Resources, Energy and Climate Obstruction in the Global South of the Climate Social Science Network
Further reading:
Commentary: The Petro government’s big gamble on ending fossil fuel licensing,
University of Sussex, 2025
Climate obstruction in the Global South: Future research trajectories, PLOS Climate Journals, 2023
Supply-side climate policy: A new frontier in climate governance, WIREs Climate Change, 2024
El dilema de Colombia y el mundo: salir de la era fósil o sufrir sus impactos devastadores, Elespectador, 2023
Retrasar la transición energética podría costarle a Colombia 88.000 millones de dólares,
Elespectador, 2023
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Germany's 2025 federal election saw the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) double its support to 20.8%, becoming the second largest party, while the Green Party fell from 14.8% to 11.6%. The AfD denies climate science and opposes environmental policies on economic grounds.
This week, Alasdair interviews academic Felix Schulz, whose recent research has examined public attitudes toward climate policy across six countries - three in the global north and three in the global south.
The research found that core values – particularly those derived from neoliberalism and free-market ideology – are more effective than socioeconomic factors in indicating how people will respond to climate policies.
Felix and Alasdair discuss how neoliberal thinking has shaped public opinion, why climate policy must integrate social and economic considerations, and how job security concerns in industrial roles affect political support for climate action.
Felix Schulz is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lund University researching public opinion and climate policy.
Further reading:
- Why focusing on “climate change denial” is counterproductive, 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- People with neoliberal views are less likely to support climate-friendly policies, 2025, The Conversation
- Public support for climate policies and its ideological predictors across countries of the Global North and Global South, 2025, Ecological Economics
- Navigating sustainable futures: The role of terminal and instrumental values, 2024, Ecological Economics
- German elections: why most political parties aren’t talking about the climate crisis, 2025, The Conversation
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
From widespread industrial pollution to emerging as a green powerhouse, China’s economic evolution shows how grassroots activism has pushed ecological issues to the political forefront.
Tianjie and Bertie discuss China’s green evolution, Pan Yue’s introduction of environmental nationalism (now championed by Xi Jinping), flawed provincial reporting, and whether the country’s model can be sustained.
Ma Tianjie is a freelance writer and environmental activist based in Beijing. He worked as Greenpeace’s Program Director for Mainland China until 2015, and then as Director of China Dialogue Beijing until 2022. His book, In Search of Green China, was published in February 2025 by Polity Press. Buy it here.
Audio engineering by Vasco Kostovski.
Further reading:
Après moi, le deluge: how a fight over garbage challenged China’s growth model, Land and Climate Review, 2025
Researchers unveil roadmap for a carbon neutral China by 2060, Modern Diplomacy, 2020
Clearing the skies: how Beijing tackled air pollution & what lies ahead Sustainable Mobility, 2023
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
A UK government agency recently announced it would spend £57 million on a controversial project to develop geoengineering technologies.
The Exploring Climate Cooling Programme will fund 21 international research teams to conduct small-scale, controlled outdoor experiments to thicken Arctic sea ice and brighten clouds, to prevent global warming from increasing past irreversible tipping points.
Geoengineering has long been a point of contention amongst scientists, environmental academics and conspiracy theorists - each firm in their beliefs about whether such interventions are necessary, effective, or risk irreversibly damaging the planet.
Alasdair speaks with two academics studying geoengineering - Albert Van Wijngaarden and Adrian Hindes - who call for nuanced understanding and more productive conversation between the advocates and opposers of such radical interventions. They discuss the history of polar and solar geoengineering, the risks involved, and the lack of global governance.
If you enjoyed this episode, stay tuned - we plan to explore geoengineering in more detail in the future.
Further reading:
Plans to cool the Earth by blocking sunlight are gaining momentum but critical voices risk being excluded, October 2024, Albert Van Wijngaarden and Adrian Hindes
Do-or-Die: Should we be talking about geoengineering?, December 2022, Land and Climate Review
Soviet and Russian perspectives on geoengineering and climate management - Oldfield, J. D., & Poberezhskaya, M. (2023). .Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews
Controversial geoengineering projects to test Earth-cooling tech funded by UK agency, May 2025, Nature
Not such a bright idea: cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space is a dangerous distraction, March 2024, The Conversation
Securing the ‘great white shield’? Climate change, Arctic security and the geopolitics of solar geoengineering, August 2024, Nordic International Studies Association
After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair and Restoration, 2019, Holly Jean Buck, Verso
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
On 6th June 2023, the Nova Kakhovka dam was breached while under Russian occupation, releasing a wave of toxic pollution into Ukraine’s rivers. The number of casualties – both human and animal – may never be fully known.
Ukraine is one of a small number of countries to include ecocide in its domestic criminal code, and the destruction of Kakhovka Dam is one of hundreds of incidents that prosecutors are studying while building environmental damages cases against Russia. On the global stage, Ukraine is leading efforts for the International Criminal Court to recognise ecocide as the fifth core international crime, alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.
Bertie speaks to Darya Tsymbalyuk, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, about her new book, “Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War.” They discuss the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, the sensory impact of war, and Tsymbalyuk’s intention to bring Ukrainian environmentalists and humanities scholars into this growing legal dialogue.
Buy a copy of Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War from Polity Press here.
Further reading:
Destruction og Ukraine dam casued 'toxic timebomb' of heavy metals, study finds, The Guardian, March 2025
Ukraine's Ravaged Environment, The New York Times, April 2025
Constellations of Ukranian Thought and the Environmental Humanities, Tanya Richardson and Darya Tsymbalyuk, 2024
What my body taught me about being a scholar of Ukraine and from Ukraine in times of Russia’s war of aggression, Springer Nature – Darya Tsymbalyuk, July 2023
The unlikely species entangled in Ukraine's resistance to Russia, BBC, February 2024
A Landmine Detonates in the Woods, IWM – Darya Tsymbalyuk, October 2022
Darya’s fundraising for Ukraine
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
In 2022, the Swedish government granted an exploitation concession to Jokkmokk Iron Mines AB — a subsidiary of British company named Beowulf Mining — to develop an open-pit iron mine in Northern Sweden. The decision has been opposed by both Indigenous and environmental activists, who have expressed concerns about the mine’s impacts on Saami communities and the surrounding ecology.
Bertie speaks to Tor Tuorda about the long history of extraction and exploitation in the region, the erasure of Saami culture, and resistance from Indigenous and environmental activists.
Tor Tuorda is a nature photographer and Indigenous campaigner based in Jokkmokk. He is a long-time opponent of the Kallak mine, and a prominent voice in Saami activism.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- Read Tor's blog here [Swedish]
- 'EU’s raw materials plan an attack on Indigenous land and culture, says Saami Council', The Barents Observer, April 2025
- 'Swedish Court gives green light to controversial mining plans in Kallak', The Barents Observer, June 2024
- '‘The Klondike of ore mining’: Fighting for the Sami way of life', Al Jazeera, 2019
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Nearly half of the global agriculture market is controlled by four companies. This level of concentration - driven by decades of mergers and poor regulation - has allowed agribusiness “titans” to dominate the farming sector.
Alasdair talks to Dr Jennifer Clapp, author of a new book about corporate domination of the farm sector and why it matters. Alasdair and Jennifer discuss how and why mass-merging has led to market distortions and high prices, and what solutions could improve the state of the sector.
Dr. Jennifer Clapp is a Professor at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
It is becoming common for the fossil fuel industry to sue governments that attempt to decarbonise over “lost future profits.” They do so via an obscure part of international law called international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that can allow them to extract billions in public money.
Alasdair speaks to Eunjung Lee, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G. The two discuss how ISDS began, how the international treaties came to being predatory, and what measures countries should take to prevent the exploitation of the claims.
Eunjung Lee is a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G and is the lead investigator of international investment governance. She previously served as a South Korean diplomat and has worked in the Korean embassy in London.
Further reading:
- Investment treaties are undermining the global energy transition - E3G
- The climate crisis requires a new approach to international investment treaties - E3G
- The Energy Charter Treaty remains the most dangerous investment treaty to the energy transition - E3G
- Clean investments shun Investor-State Dispute Settlements - E3G
- Investor-state disputes threaten the global green energy transition | Science
- “Shocking and sad”: how corporations use investment agreements to block decarbonisation in the Global South - Land and Climate Review
- How Exxon is using international law to sue the Dutch government
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
With India kicking off 2025 with an historic space-docking experiment, and Elon Musk's growing power in the US government raising questions over the future of his spacecraft and satellite companies SpaceX and Starlink, we may be at the dawn of a new era for space exploration.
Unlike the 20th Century Space Race, however, it will likely be private companies that cross new mildstones - not public agencies. But who will regulate mining on the moon and tourism in space, and what are the environmental implications?
Bertie talks about these issues with D. Raghunandan, Director of the Delhi Science Forum, as well as discussing the positive contributions of the space sector towards climate and environmental science.
Further reading:
- 'Indian Space Sector on a High This Year', News Click, February 2025
- 'Mining the moon for minerals could be worth billions, but astronomers warn it's bad news for science', Business Insider, February 2025
- 'India File: Jostling for position in the space race', Reuters, January 2025
- 'How Elon Musk’s partnership with Trump could shape science in the US — and beyond', Nature, December 2024
- 'Donald Trump’s approach to US space policy could throw up some surprises, especially with Elon Musk on board', Durham University, November 2024
- 'The dark side of SpaceX’s flight of innovation', People's Dispatch, November 2023
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Alasdair speaks to journalist Margot Gibbs about her investigation into a US government-funded PR firm that profiled pesticide scientists.
Last autumn, Lighthouse Reports - in collaboration with media partners across Europe - published an investigation into v-Fluence, a US-based PR firm that worked to discredit anti-pesticide scientists and campaigners.
Alasdair speaks to Margot Gibbs, a journalist who led the investigation, about its findings and what it reveals about the agro-chemicals lobby.
Margot Gibbs is an investigative reporter at Lighthouse Reports focusing on money trails and food systems reporting. Before joining Lighthouse she was a reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Finance Uncovered.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'US-funded ‘social network’ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation', The Guardian, February 2025
- 'Poison PR', Lighthouse Reports, September 2024
- 'How the US agrochemical lobby is meddling in the future of Kenyan farming', The New Humanitarian, September 2024
- 'Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease', The Guardian, October 2022
- '"Monsanto papers": the pesticide giant's war against science', Le Monde, June 2017
- Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, 2010
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked global energy markets, and changed the EU's long and short-term plans for decarbonisation. But how have three years of conflict changed Ukraine's own policies and plans around energy security and net zero?
Bertie discusses this issue with Ukrainian economist Maksym Chepeliev, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University, USA.
Read Professor Chepeliev's research:
- 'Net-Zero Transition in Ukraine: Implications for Sustainable Development Goal 7', Aligning the Energy Transition with the Sustainable Development Goals, 2024
- 'Can Ukraine go “green” on the post-war recovery path?', Joule, 2023
- 'What is the future of nuclear power in Ukraine? The role of war, techno-economic drivers, and safety considerations', Energy Policy, 2023
- 'The role of bioenergy in Ukraine's climate mitigation policy by 2050', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021
See our previous episodes on:
- nuclear power and net-zero, in which we discuss security concerns about Zaporizhzhia
- military emissions, in which we discuss the carbon cost of the Russia-Ukraine War
- the future of Russian oil, from 2022
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
In a recently published report, “Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests”, Dr. Oscar Berglund and his colleagues identified four key mechanisms through which climate and environmental protests are repressed: the introduction of new anti-protest laws, the broadening use of existing legislation, excessive policing and killings and disappearances of activists.
Alasdair and Oscar discuss the findings of the report and the ways in which the clampdown on climate protest represents a threat to both democracy and net zero targets.
Oscar Berglund is Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. He is an expert on climate change activism and civil disobedience.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests, University of Bristol, 2024
- Civic Activism in an Intensifying Climate Crisis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2024
- Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, Columbia University Press, 2024
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
“The capitalist system is necessarily built on creating ecological crises.”
Bertie speaks to Ståle Holgersen about his new book Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World, in which he argues that, contrary to popular economic thought, economic crises are not triggered by ecological ones but instead the capitalist economy benefits from ecological crises.
Bertie and Ståle discuss the ways in which crises are defined, the drawbacks to arguments for degrowth and the potential solutions to the climate emergency.
Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the Zetkin Collective, an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists primarily working on the political ecologies of the far right.
Against the Crisis was published last month and is available to buy from Verso here.
Further reading:
- Read an extract from Against the Crisis on Land and Climate Review.
- White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, The Zetkin Collective, 2021
- Searching for “Solutions” to Crisis: A Critique of Urban Austerity and Keynesianism, Uppsala University, 2018
- Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisis, Uppsala University, 2016
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
One month ago, Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as the new president of Indonesia. An investigation by The Gecko Project has revealed that Subianto has invested in or owned companies involved with rainforest logging, coal mining, palm oil production, and industrial fishing - but many of the companies appear to be inactive.
Do these investments representing potentially concerning conflicts of interest, or are they par for the course? Are his own claims of enormous wealth accurate or exaggerated?
Alasdair speaks to the author of the Gecko Project research, Margareth Aritonang, who is also the Pulitzer Center's 2024 Rainforest Investigations Fellow for Indonesia.
Further reading:
- Read Margareth's reporting here.
- 'Activists fear supercharged ‘business as usual’ under Indonesia’s new president', Mongabay, November 2024
- The 'Indonesian environmental activists keep dying in suspicious circumstances', Gecko Project, September 2024
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
This year, Land and Climate Review’s first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills.
Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Review’s Canadian investigations, which were featured on BBC Newsnight.
They discuss the process of uncovering environmental violations at wood pellet mills owned by Drax Group, which operates the UK’s largest power station, and how residents in Mississippi and British Columbia say they have been affected by the pollution from the mills.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski and Podcast House.
Read the investigations:
- ‘Drax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the US’, Land and Climate Review, November 2024
- ‘The Dirty Business of Clean Energy: The U.K. Power Company Polluting Small Towns Across the U.S.’, The Intercept, September 2024
- ‘Drax’s pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canada’, Land and Climate Review, May 2024
- ‘Drax faces penalty after Canadian biomass plant fails to submit pollution report’, The Independent, October 2023
Related episodes:
- Are Canada’s sustainable forestry claims accurate? - with Richard Robertson from Stand.Earth
- Does bioenergy increase CO2 emissions more than burning coal? - with John Sterman from MIT
- What is BECCS and what does it mean for climate policy? - with Daniel Quiggin from Chatham House
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia.
A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.
Bertie and María discuss the report’s findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots.
Further reading:
- Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024
- The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021
- 'Colombia’s cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
“In 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.”
Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities.
Titled Unheeded Warnings, the report warns that the Indonesian government’s plans for biomass power risk harming 10 million hectares of untouched primary forest, and "the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta — resulting in CO2 emissions almost five hundred times higher than current levels.”
Alasdair and Timer discuss the investigation process, the scale of these potential impacts, and the Indonesian Government.
To see photos from Timer's investigation, click here.
Further reading:
- Read the full report, which includes maps outlining the threatened and logged forest areas: Unheeded Warnings: Forest Biomass Threats to Tropical Forests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Auriga Nusantara, October 2024
- 'Rush to Burn Wood for Energy Threatens Indonesian and Southeast Asian Forests & Communities', Auriga Nusantara, October 2024
- 'The President's new clothes', The Gecko Project, October 2024
- Bioenergy Explained, Land and Climate Review, 2022
Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.
Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier:
Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate change as a national security threat in the US.
Threat Multiplier documents key environmental and climatic challenges during her career, such as negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and managing geopolitical risk in the Arctic as melting permafrost changes the ocean landscape.
Goodman is now Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center.
Further reading:
- Click here to buy Threat Multiplier from Island Press.
- 'A career spent trying to make the military care about climate change', The Washington Post, August 2024
- 'The US Department of Defense’s Role in Integrating Climate Change into Security Planning', New Security Beat, May 2024
- 'Changing climates for Arctic security', The Wilson Quaterly, 2017
- National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.
Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for the harmful textile imports and what can be done to alleviate the problem.
Sam Quashie-Idun is Head of Investigations at Greenpeace Africa and a member of Land and Climate Review's investigations unit.
You can read the report here and watch Sam’s Instagram video summarising its findings here.
Further reading:
- Poisoned Gifts, Greenpeace, 2023
- How to Ensure Waste Colonialism is Not Written Into Law and That Fashion’s Biggest Polluters Have to Change, The Or Foundation, 2023
- ‘‘It’s like a death pit’: how Ghana became fast fashion’s dumping ground’, The Guardian, 2023
- ‘European secondary textile sector ‘on the brink of collapse’’, Recycling International, 2024
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scientific concern, as the devastating impacts of crossing this threshold may not be reversible.
In their new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton study this risky approach to policy, and the economic interests that they theorise have led to it. Alasdair spoke to them both about the new book.
Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, and the celebrated author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, among other works. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, and the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics.
Further reading:
- Buy Overshoot from Verso Books
- 'The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C', The Conversation, August 2024
- 'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land & Climate Review, 2022
- 'What does the IPCC say about carbon removal?', Land & Climate Review, 2022
- 'Global warming overshoots increase risks of climate tipping cascades in a network model', Nature Climate Change, 2022
- 'Overshooting tipping point thresholds in a changing climate', Nature Climate Change, 2021
- 'Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?', in Has It Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink, 2020
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, Verso Books, 2020
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues.
But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a staggering 5.5% of global emissions.
Bertie spoke to Lindsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, about the military emissions gap in carbon accounting, and the campaign for UNFCCC rules to be changed to acknowledge it.
Further reading:
- 'Russia’s war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows', The Guardian, June 2024
- 'Revealed: repairing Israel’s destruction of Gaza will come at huge climate cost', The Guardian, June 2024
- 'National climate action plans must include military emissions', CEOBS Blog, June 2024
- 'UNEA-6 passes resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflict', CEOBS Blog, March 2024
- 'Does reporting military emissions data really threaten national security?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024
- 'Ticking boxes: are military climate mitigation strategies fit for purpose?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024
- Estimating the Military’s Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2022
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far.
Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy.
Further reading:
- 'Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel', Roosevelt Institute, 2024
- 'Phase-in and phase-out policies in the global steel transition', Climate Policy, 2024
- 'Building a stronger steel transition: Global cooperation and procurement in construction', One Earth, 2023
- 'Paris compatible steel capacity: Contraction and replacement for zero emissions', Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund university, 2023
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back.Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue.
Further reading:
- Buy To Dye Forfrom Penguin Random House.
- Visit Alden's website, EcoCult, for more reporting on these issues.
- 'Hitting the gym or going to yoga? Your workout clothes could be doing more harm than you realize', CNN, 2023
- 'That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think', New York Times, 2022
- 'Sick of smelly, plastic clothes? Blame oil and industrial farming', Land & Climate Review, 2023
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis.
They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).
Further reading:
- Tax Wars, ICRICT
- 'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up to $220bn', Financial Times, 2024
- 'McDonald’s to pay more than €1B to settle French tax case', Politico, 2022
- It is time for a global asset registry to tackle hidden wealth, ICRICT, 2022
- 'L`affaire Elf en résumé', Challenges, 2007
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.
Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.
The Price is Wrong was published inFebruary and is available to buy from Verso books here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further listening:
- 'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024
- 'Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024
Further reading:
- 'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024
- 'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024
Other books by Brett:
- Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023
- Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020
- The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conservative ambition for 15% of farmland.
Bhutan may be small, but on this issue it's a global outlier. Motivated by its policy to measure development in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, the South Asian nation has been slowly working towards becoming 100% organic since 2012 - and now has a target date of 2035.
Bertie spoke to Dr Sonam Tashi, an organic agriculture expert and Dean of Research & Industrial Linkages at the College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan, to hear about how Bhutan's organic transition is going.
Further reading:
- 'Bhutan's challenges and prospects in becoming a 100% organic country', Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Asia Global Dialogue, 2022
- Case Studies of Successful Farmers, Agri-enterprises and Farmers' Groups and Cooperatives in Bhutan, 2022
- 'Farmers’ perception on transitioning to organic agriculture (OA) in Tsirang district, Bhutan', Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2022
- 'Bridging the Gap between the Sustainable Development Goals and Happiness Metrics', International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2019
- 'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', The Guardian, 2012
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.
Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.
Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.
How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024
- 'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024
- 'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024
- 'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022
- 'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.
Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a Europe-wide network of environmental citizens' organisations.
Alasdair and Faustine discuss the Nature Restoration Law, reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and what the upcoming European elections might mean for the future of EU agriculture.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- NGOs unite against EU’s rollback of green policies for the agrifood sector, Euractiv
- Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks, European Environment Agency
- Open letter from the ECVC and IFOAM to Ursula Von der Leyen on CAP simplification, European Coordination Via Campesina
- European Pact for the Future, European Environmental Bureau
- Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll, Desmog
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.
Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.
Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:
- Building on the IRA’s Farm Policy Momentum
- Harvesting Climate Benefits from the 2024 Farm Bill
- Ripe for Change
- The Real Cost of Food
Peter’s book:
- Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?
Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.
His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.
Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.
Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here.
- 'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021
- 'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023
- 'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.
Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.
Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.
Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.
Further reading:
- Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer
- ‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon
- ‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic
- ‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, Forbes
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects.
The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya and Republic of the Congo. The investigation found that key promises have not been met around intercropping, and collected testimonies of alleged expropriation driven by Eni's business partners. T&E say farmers are now giving up on the projects.
To hear more details, Alasdair welcomed Agathe Bounfour back to the podcast, Oil Investigations Lead at T&E.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- Read Agathe's op-ed about the investigation on Land and Climate Review.
- Read T&E's full investigation.
- Read The Continent's front page cover story about the investigation.
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.
Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”
Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.
Further reading:
- Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations: The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The Spin
- Read the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s Forests
- Read Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction
- 'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.
They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.
Further reading:
- 'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023
- 'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023
- Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023
- The ever widening net: mapping the scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022
- A manifesto for our ocean, 2023
- 'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently stored underground.
The extent to which carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology should be a part of climate planning is contentious, but advocates often point to Norway's long-running CCS plants as proof that it can work.
Are Equinor's North Sea gas field facilities the gold standard for successful CCS, or have they had issues too? Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report exploring that question.
Bertie spoke to the report's author and IEEFA's Strategic Energy Finance Advisor for Asia, Grant Hauber, to hear about his findings.
Further reading:
- Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?, IEEFA, 2023
- Blue hydrogen: Not clean, not low carbon, not a solution, IEEFA, 2023
- 'Carbon capture key to reaching net-zero, but climate chief urges caution', Euronews, 7/2/24
- 'What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
- 'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land and Climate Review, 2022
- 'Capturing and storing problems', Land and Climate Review, 2022
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
What are the impacts of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees?
Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre. Dr Quiggin is an expert in the analysis of how national and global energy systems will evolve to 2050 and author of recent research on Net zero and the role of the aviation industry.
Further reading:
- Net zero and the role of the aviation industry, Chatham House, November 2023
- 'First net zero flight takes off but decarbonisation remains on runway', November 2023
Link to the Chatham House webinar on the research:
3pm GMT on Wednesday 31st January 2024
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to Agathe Bounfour, Oil Investigations Lead at Transport and Environment, about her investigation into the fossil funded research group CONCAWE.
The investigation revealed that CONCAWE undermined the European Union's attempt to regulate human exposure to benzene, a carcinogenic pollutant. After oil industry lobbying and research, the new regulated limit from 2024 will be ten times higher than the original suggestions from scientific agencies.
Read the full investigation here.
Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'Action to tackle air pollution failing to keep up with research', The Guardian, 2023
- 'Benzene and worker cancers: ‘An American tragedy’', The Center for Public Integrity, 2014
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, 2012
- Doubt is Their Product: How industry's assault on science threatens your health, David Michaels, 2008
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
In this episode Alasdair caught up with Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at campaign organisation Corporate Accountability to discuss their new research with the Guardian which found considerable flaws in the 50 most used offset projects. He asked about the recent research and what value offset projects might actually have.
The Land and Climate podcast is produced by Vasko Kostovski
Recommended reading:
- ‘Revealed: top carbon offset projects may not cut planet-heating’, The Guardian, September 2023
- ‘Gas-Lit: No, the Dubai Climate Talks Did Not Save the Planet’, Newsweek, December 2023
- '10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted’, Climate Home News, December 2020
- ‘Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation’, Science, August 2023
- ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Carbon Crediting’,Berkeley Public Policy, September 2023
- ‘The Verra Scandal Explained: why avoid deforestation credits are hazardous’ London School of Economics Blogs, January 2023
- ‘The Land Gap Report’, Various, 2023
- 'The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets'
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
2023 was expected to be a big year for Europe in reducing harm from agrochemicals. But in a surprise move in November, European Parliament rejected a law to halve pesticide use. That same month, The European Commission stated it would renew the controversial approval of glyphosate for another 10 years.
What happened?
Alasdair talks to Dr Martin Dermine, Executive Director of Pesticide Action Network Europe, about why EU regulation of agrochemicals is moving so slowly.
Further reading:
- 'Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is showing up in pregnant women', The Conversation, December 2023
- 'EU Commission hosts a secret 3-day meeting with the pesticide industry as their exclusive guest', Pesticide Action Network, December 2023
- 'Green Deal is dead', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
- 'Beneath the orange fields: Impact of Glyphosate on soil organisms', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
- 'Conservative backlash kills off EU’s Green Deal push to slash pesticide use', Politico, November 2023
- 'EU to renew herbicide glyphosate approval for 10 years', Reuters, November 2023
- 'Long-term evidence for ecological intensification as a pathway to sustainable agriculture', Nature Sustainability, 2022
- Listen to our previous episodes on Monsanto, EU lobbying, and Neonics.
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair talks to Sir Dieter Helm, a Professor of Economic Policy at The University of Oxford, about his new book Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. Cambridge University Press has published the work online as a free open acess title.
Further reading:
- Read Legacy for free here.
- Video presentations and slides on the book's components can be found here.
- The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to environmental journalist Stephen Robert Miller about his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature. Spanning Bangladesh, Japan, and Arizona in the US, it covers the risks involved in adaptating to changing climate and weather, and the deadly costs of poor planning.
Also featuring our new theme music - let us know what you think!
Further reading from Stephen Robert Miller:
- Buy Over the Seawall from Island Press.
- 'When Climate Adaptation Backfires' in Discover Magazine
- 'Why Are We Paying for Crop Failures in the Desert?' in Apocalypse Soon
- '‘White gold’: why shrimp aquaculture is a solution that caused a huge problem' in The Guardian
- 'What Should Farmers Grow in the Desert?' in Mother Jones
- 'Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?' in National Geographic
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Nuclear energy is not renewable, but it is low-carbon. Whether it should be part of the post-fossil fuel power grid is heatedly debated.
Bertie took this question to Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow of the University of Sussex's Science Policy Research Unit, and the Chair of nonprofit institute the Nuclear Consulting Group. Dr. Dorfman is an expert in nuclear risk and has advised the Irish, UK, French and EU governments on nuclear policy.
Further reading:
- 'Is nuclear power the key to reaching net zero?', by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, August 2023
- 'Saudi nukes: A desire for energy, weapons, or just leverage?' by
Stasa Salacanin in The Cradle, October 2023 - 'The end of Oppenheimer's energy dream' by Allison Macfarlane in IAI News, July 2023
- 'The West hasn’t gone after Russia’s nuclear energy. Here’s why' by Clare Sebastian in CNN, March 2023
- 'The Debate: Nuclear is already well past its sell-by date' by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, May 2022
- 'Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why' by Paul Dorfman in The Conversation, June 2021
- 'Things fall apart' by Paul Dorfman in The Ecologist, October 2021
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair talks to John Vaillant, author of the Baillie Gifford shortlisted book Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World and explores how fire is evolving in the 21st century and if humanity is going to be sufficiently prepared to tackle its advance.
Fire Weather tells of the catastrophic wildfire in Fort McMurray in Canada in May 2016, and asks if the fire's surprising power and devastation is a harbinger for greater threats to our climate as we know it.
John Vaillant's recommended further reading:
- Less is More by Jason Hickel
- Energy and Civilisation by Vaclav Smil
- 'Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show' by Inside Climate News
Audio production by Vasko Kostovski.
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
In a controversial decision this week, the UK government approved development of a huge new oil and gas field in the North Sea. The Rosebank oil and gas field is majority owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor.
Following this news, Alasdair talked to Professor Jonas Fossli Gjersø (University of Stavanger) about the history of Equinor - previously Statoil - and the way it has shaped Norway's economy, history, and environmental policy.
Audio production by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'Britain approves huge, controversial oil and gas field in the North Sea', CNN, 27/9/23
- 'The Great Leap Offshore: Sino-Norwegian Relations and Petro-Knowledge Transfers, 1976–1997' by Jonas Fossli Gjersø in Enterprise and Society, 2022
- Commerce and politics: Statoil and Equinor 1972-2001, Eivind Thomassen, 2022
- 'Norway wants to lead on climate change. But first it must face its legacy of oil and gas', Vox, 15/1/21
- 'A greener shade of black? Statoil, the Norwegian government and climate change, 1990—2005' by Ada Nissen in Scandinavian Journal of History, 2021
- Det svarte skiftet, Eivind Trædal, 2018 [Norweigan]
- 'A Short History of the Norwegian Oil Industry: From Protected National Champions to Internationally Competitive Multinationals' by Helge Ryggvik in Business History Review, 2015
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
American agrochemical firm Monsanto was the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds until merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018. Its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping farms, landscapes and ecosystems all over the world.
Bart Elmore is a professor of environmental history at Ohio State University, as well as an award-winning author. Alasdair spoke to him about his 2021 book on the history of Monsanto, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future.Further reading:
- Click here to buy Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future
- Click here to buy Bart's latest book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet
- 'The herbicide dicamba was supposed to solve farmers’ weed problems – instead, it’s making farming harder for many of them', The Conversation, January 2022
- 'Coca-Cola’s biggest challenge in greening its operations is its own global marketing strategy', The Conversation, May 2023
- Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, Ellen Griffith Spears, 2014
- Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2016
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
At the beginning of August, hundreds of NGOs signed a letter to Kenyan President William Ruto, alleging that US and European governments and companies had "seized" the inaugural Africa Climate Summit due to begin in Nairobi on Monday 4th September, in order to "hijack Africa’s just energy transition".
Their criticism paid particular mention to international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, who were removed from the summit website and events calendar shortly after. Bertie spoke to one of the campaign leaders, Omar Elmawi, about these issues.
President Ruto has denied that the summit has been "hijacked by foreign interests", telling the BBC that "African people will truly be represented" at the summit. McKinsey declined to comment, or answer our questions, but directed us to this press conference, and the question at 0:57. Further reading:
- You can find the 'Real Africa Climate Summit' campaign website here, which includes the original letter.
- 'Africa Climate Summit: Kenya’s green growth pitch sparks justice concerns', African Arguments, 21/08/23
- 'Why fury has met McKinsey’s return in Nairobi summit', Daily Nation, 15/08/23
- 'Omar Elmawi Believes In an Africa Free From Fossil Fuels', Sierra, 27/4/23
- The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, 2023
- On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa, Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, 2022
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to investigative journalists Eli Moskowitz from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Mira Sys from Follow the Money about biofuel fraud in the EU.
Along with Mubarek Asani from the Bosnian Center for Investigative Reporting, Eli and Mira recently reported that a biofuel company called System Ecologica scammed the International Sustainability Carbon Certification, petrol companies, and EU governments, in a fraud case totalling tens of millions of euros. Regulators are increasingly worried that other companies may similarly be passing off unsustainable, imported vegetable oil as used cooking oil (UCO). This would have severe implications for emissions, deforestation, and the viability of a key EU climate initiative.
Further reading:
- Read Eli, Mira and Mubarek's story on OCCRP here.
- 'Multimillionaire convicted of tampering with biodiesel', Follow the Money, 22/7/23(Dutch)
- 'Europe Battles Flood of Green Fuel Suspected to Be Fraudulent', Bloomberg, 27/4/23
- 'Industry suspects fraud as flood of Chinese biodiesel destabilises market', Euractiv, 8/6/23
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Last week, after intense debate between member states, the UN's International Seabed Authority decided not to fast-track licences to start mining the deep ocean floor. But while waters have calmed for now, nothing is set in stone: talks renew in 2024.
Ahead of the conference, Alasdair spoke to Professor Mats Ingulstad, who is leading the TripleDeep research project at the Norweigan University of Science and Technology. They discussed the history of extraction in Norway & the development of discussions around deep sea mining, as well as the risks and rewards of this new frontier.
Further reading:
- 'Deep sea mining: Here’s which countries oppose and support the controversial practice', Euronews, 2/8/2023
- 'Experts agree – deep sea mining is not worth the risk', Land and Climate Review, 13/7/2023
- 'A historical perspective on deep-sea mining for manganese nodules, 1965–2019', Ole Sparenberg
- 'The Mining Industry: Expanding, Deepening, and Widening since the 1750s', Ingulstad et al., 2023
- 'Marine minerals' role in future holistic mineral resource management', Ingulstad et al., 2022
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Copa Cogeca is the largest agricultural lobbying group in Europe, claiming to be "the united voice" of 22 million farmers. But a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports suggests the true size of their membership is far smaller than this - and that the group uses its unrivalled influence to block climate and environmental reform, and lobby for industrial farmers at the expense of smallholders.
Bertie spoke to award-winning journalist Thin Lei Win, Lighthouse's Lead Food Systems Reporter, about the story.
Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'Europe’s Potemkin Lobby' - Lighthouse Reports
- 'The truth behind Europe’s most powerful farmers lobby' - Politico
- View Copa-Cogeca's specific figures on lobbying spending on lobbyfacts.eu here.
- Greenpeace's Out of Balancereport, mentioned in the interview.
- 'EU Investigating Agribusiness Lobby Group Copa-Cogeca Over Potential Transparency Breach', DeSmog
- Romanian language reporting on the story from Libertatea here and here.
- Danish language reporting on the story from Danwatch here.
- Polish language reporting on the story from OKO.press here.
Click here to visit The Future Unrefined,our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair speaks to Professor Ángela Vergara about the history, economics, and environmental impact of mining in Chile.
Ángela Vergara is a member of the history faculty at California State University. Her books include Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Copper Workers, International Business and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile (Penn State, 2008).
Further reading:
- 'The ‘Alterlives’ of Green Extractivism: Lithium Mining and Exhausted Ecologies in the Atacama Desert', International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement.
- Stay tuned for our upcoming collection on www.landclimate.org, The future unrefined,coming next week - including content about Chilean mining!
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Joëlle Gergis (@joellegergis) is an award-winning climatologist and writer based at the Australian National University. Her latest book, Humanity's Moment: A Scientist's Case for Hope, is a passionate and unsparing look at what has been lost but also what can still be saved - and why should still have hope. Dr Gergis draws on her experience as the lead author of Working Group 1, of the IPCC's latest assessment report (AR.6), as well as on her own experiences of facing up to the scale of the challenges posed by a rapidly warming natural world. She speaks to Edward Robinson. Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.
You can read more about Joëlle, including about her new podcast series at the Conversation, here and you can her order Humanity's Moment from Island Press, here.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Following US Climate Envoy John Kerry's latest remarks on overpopulation, Bertie spoke to Diana Ojeda, Associate Professor in sustainability, environment and development at the Universidad de los Andes' Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies, about why many scholars and activists are wary of populationist narratives in climate planning.
Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
- 'A feminist exploration of ‘populationism’: engaging contemporary forms of population control'
- 'Confronting populationism: Feminist challenges to population control in an era of climate change'
- 'Malthus’s specter and the anthropocene'
- Anne Hendrixson and Diana Ojeda's article on population for Uneven Earth
- Betsy Hartmann’s webpage
- PopDev’s short documents series
- 'For reproductive justice in an era of Gates and Modi – the violence of India’s population policies' by Kalpana Wilson
- Libby Lunstrum’s work
- 'Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat' by Anne Hendrixson
- Jade Sasser’s work
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair speaks to Thomas Pellerin Carlin, Director of the EU Programme at the Institute for Climate Economics, about France's relationship with nuclear energy, growing support for legislation focused on sufficiency, and how party politics shapes these issues.
Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to Professor Laura Murphy about international supply chains and forced labour in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, where more than a million Uyghur people have been detained in concentration camps.
The solar panel industry has been disentangling itself from the Uyghur genocide for several years, since researchers publicised how much polysilicon was produced by Uyghur forced labour. Professor Murphy's work has now found that the electric vehicle industry is risking a similar path, and that China uses Xinjiang as a production zone exempt from climatic or environmental regulation.
Podcast edited by Vasko Kostovski.
Read Professor Murphy's reports:
- Driving Force: Automotive Supply Chains and Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region (2022)
- Built on repression: PVC building materials' reliance on forced labor and environmental abuses in the Uyghur region (2022)
- Financing & Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region (2022)
- In broad daylight: Uyghur forced labour in global solar supply chains (2021)
- And more on the Helena Kennedy Centre website.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
The UK was the first major power to sign net zero into law in 2019, and was once considered a global leader on climate policy. After Brexit and a change of government, is the country failing to live up to its promises?
Alasdair speaks to Dr. Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's Chief Scientist, about the UK's place on the global stage, how its net zero policies are progressing, and how the country is taking dangerous risks with nuclear and aviation.
Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to Wijnand Stoefs, Carbon Market Watch's policy lead on Carbon Removal, about how EU policy is developing around greenhouse gas removals.
They discuss the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, along with other legislation like the Innovation Fund and the Sustainable Carbon Cycles Communication, as well as talking about risks with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and failures of France's Label Bas-Carbone.
Futher reading:
- Read Carbon Market Watch's position paper on the Carbon Removal Certification Framework here.
- 'Environmental stewardship yes, ‘carbon farming’ no', Social Europe
- 'EU’s carbon farming plan comes under fire', Politico
- 'EU’s Carbon Removals Certification Framework is certifiably problematic', Carbon Market Watch
- 'EU member states’ haphazard approach to carbon removals puts climate goals and nature at risk', Carbon Market Watch
- Le Label Bas-Carbone : outil d’optimisation ou de transition? , Le Réseau Action Climat [French]
- 'What are the European Commission’s plans for negative emissions?', Land and Climate Review
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
In this next installment in our oil series, we have Professor Paul Stevens, Emeritus Professor at the University of Dundee and senior research fellow at Chatham House. Professor Stevens is a world leading expert on global petroleum policy. We spoke about the history of energy transitions and the fallacy of ‘peak oil’. Covered in this episode are: the current “energy establishment”, forecasts of the speed of the energy transition, and oil exporter’s dominance at climate talks.
Recommended reading:
Handbook on Oil and International Relations. (2022). eds. R. Dannreuther, W. Ostrowski. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
Gustafson, T. (2012). Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.
Blas, J., Farchy, J. (2021). The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources. United States: Oxford University Press.
Helm, D. (2017). Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels. United Kingdom: Yale University Press.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Bertie speaks to fashion journalist and sustainability consultant Lucianne Tonti about her new book Sundressed: Natural Fabrics and the Future of Clothing.
They discuss issues with sustainability indexes and modern fibres created from crude oil and trees, vs the benefits of clothes made from natural materials produced through regenerative agriculture.
Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Futher reading:
- Buy Sundressedfrom Island Press.
- Read Lucianne's column in The Guardian.
- Preorder To Dye For from Penguin.
- 'There is so much to say about plastic pollution. Why are we not talking about it?' on Land and Climate Review.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair speaks to Professor Mike Norton, Environment Programme Director at the European Academies Science Advisory Council, about newly published research on neonicotinoid pesticides.
In 2013, the European Commission severely restricted the use of several 'neonics' due to emerging research showing they had wide ranging harfmul environmental impacts on insect populations and ecosystems. But last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that Belgium had abused emergency authorisations to continue using them. Many Member States have similiarly authorised their continued usage since 2013, and the EU is now considering stricter legislation to prohibit the substances.
**Further reading:
- Read the full EASAC report here, or the press release here.
- 'EU Court puts end to emergency use of bee-toxic pesticides', EURACTIV, Jan '23
- 'Commission’s verdict still out on EU court ruling on bee-toxic pesticides', EURACTIV, Feb '23
- 'Neonicotinoids in Africa' - a 2020 article by Mike for Chemistry World
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
In this episode, Lauren Sneade speaks to Professor Thane Gustafson for a second instalment on how the Russian oil industry affects the country's attitudes towards climate change, given the country's distinguished history of climate science. They cover how climate change has affected the country so far, and how Russian policymaking has responded, raising questions around the political will of Russian political figures to tackle the crisis.
Further reading:
Igor Makarov, Henry Chen & Sergey Paltsev (2020) Impacts of climate change policies worldwide on the Russian economy
Thane Gustafson, Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change. Harvard University Press
Tynkkynen, V. (2019). The Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Gordon, D. (2021). No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World. United States: Oxford University Press.
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair talks to Roger Smith, Japan Director for Mighty Earth, about Japanese biomass imports and the risks of the country's coal power stations switching to wood-burning.
Further reading:
- SMOKESCREEN: SUMITOMO’S “CARBON NEUTRAL” FAILURES
- SUMITOMO CORPORATION’S DIRTY ENERGY TRADE: Biomass, Coal and Japan’s Energy Future
- Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia, Mongabay
- As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood?, Mongabay
- Fossil Free Japan
- Biomass Info, a resource library (Japanese)
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was signed in 1959, and will not be modified until 2048. Climate diplomacy expert Dhanasree Jayaram tells Bertie about the environmental risks that could threaten Antarctica before then, including illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, militarisation, bioprospecting, increased tourism, and resource extraction.
Dr. Jayaram is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, and Co-Coordinator of the Centre for Climate Studies, in Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellow.
Further reading:
- In 30 years the Antarctic Treaty becomes modifiable, and the fate of a continent could hang in the balance, The Conversation
By Dr. Jayaram:
- 'Geopolitics, Environmental Change and Antarctic Governance: A Region in Need of a Transformative Approach to Science Diplomacy', Assessing the Antarctic Environment from a Climate Change Perspective
- 'Geopolitical and geoeconomic implications of climate change in the Arctic region: the future of contestation and cooperation', Understanding Present and Past Arctic Environments
- 'Geopolitics, Science and Climate Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: An Assessment', Science Diplomacy Review
- Climate Diplomacy and Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Long before Elon Musk's takeover drew accusations of increased disinformation on the platform, there was already a rapid growth of climate scepticism and denial on Twitter, according to research by The IRIS Academic Research Group.
Their analysis studied climate discourse during the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs), and found that criticism of climate action had grown from 1% of influential accounts during COP20 in 2014, to 16% of accounts during COP26.
Bertie spoke to two of the researchers, Professor Andrea Baronchelli and Dr. Max Falkenberg, to discuss this trend, and what might be driving it.
Futher reading:
- Read the paper in Nature Climate Change
- Read Andrea and Max's commentary about the research on the LSE blog
- Read the IRIS blog about misinformation
- 'Climate-sceptic tweets surge after Musk’s Twitter takeover', The Times, 2/12/22
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Alasdair speaks to Kelly Stone, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid, about her time at COP27 and where international diplomacy is taking offset markets and their governance.
Further reading:
- CLARA's resources on 'net zero', including info on Article 6.
- Read Kelly's articles on the ActionAid blog
- 'Silicon Valley's non existent offsets', in Land and Climate Review
- Visit our new collection, The Negative Emissions Gamble
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Afforestation projects are being used worldwide as a nature-based solution to climate change. Afforestry is the practice of planting trees on otherwise arid, barren land. Harvard scholar Rosetta Elkin explains how large-scale tree planting in otherwise treeless environments rarely makes ecological sense. In many instances throughout history, these projects have also been used as instruments of colonial forestry, used by the coloniser as a way of staking claim to the land. Elkin argues for a better understanding of our ecosystem on the scale of one single tree rather than whole forests.
Further Reading
- Buy "Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation" from Minnesota Press
- "The Long Shadow of Colonial Forestry is a threat to savannas and grasslands"
- "Hygienic Nature: Afforestation and the greening of colonial Hong Kong"
Click here to visit The Negative Emissions Gamble, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on carbon removal.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org
Lauren Sneade talks to Thane Gustafson about the future of Russian oil through the climate crisis and the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Gustafson is a professor of political science at Georgetown University, and an author of numerous books about Russia's fossil fuel dependence, the most recent being 2021's Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change.
Lauren and Professor Gustafson discuss the question: is Putin promoting a geopolitical narrative of Russian supremacy over the country’s national economic future?
Further reading
- Buy Klimat: Russian in the Age of Climate Change from Havard University Press.
- Professor Gustafson's Substack.
- 'Russia can no longer ignore the threat posed by climate change', LSE Blog, January 2022
- Part 1 and Part 2 of a Washington Post interview with Professor Gustafson in September 2022.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.elc-insight.org
A major report published ahead of COP27 analysed national climate policies and found that "over-reliance on carbon removals could push ecosystems, land rights and food security to the brink."
Alasdair spoke to Dr. Kate Dooley, one of the Land Gap Report authors and a Research Fellow at Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College, to hear about what policymakers are getting wrong.
Further reading from Dr. Dooley:
- Read the full Land Gap Report.
- 'Nature restoration no substitute for cutting fossil fuels'; Pursuit, 2022
- 'No more excuses: restoring nature is not a silver bullet for global warming, we must cut emissions outright'; The Conversation, 2022
- 'Forests can’t handle all the net-zero emissions plans – companies and countries expect nature to offset too much carbon'; The Conversation, 2022
- 'COP27: Urgent need to respect human rights in all climate change action, say UN experts', 2022
Find more podcasts and articles at www.elc-insight.org
As COP27 begins in Egypt following historic floods in Pakistan and a summer of international droughts, will this finally be the year rich governments begin to take climate finance seriously?
Bertie speaks to Karim Ahmed about his recent white policy paper on loss and damage, which is being presented at COP27. Dr. Ahmed is a director of the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and a Professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He has previously had high level roles at NRDC, US Government departments, UN environmental bodies, and the World Bank.
Further reading from Dr. Ahmed:
- The Impact of Global Climate Change on Vulnerable Communities: Climate-Related Loss & Damage and Financial Reparations, a Policy White Paper(2022)
- Climate Justice, Humans Rights, and the Case for Reparations, Health and Human Rights Journal (2021)
- Why we need a Global Climate Reparations Fund, ELCI (2022)
- What is the financial cost of loss and damage from climate change?, ELCI (2022)
Find more podcasts and articles at www.elc-insight.org
Governments and the aviation industry have been promising for decades that fuel made from plants could solve the transport sector's CO2 emissions. Why hasn't it happened?
John DeCicco, Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, has been studying transport emissions & biofuels for decades. Alasdair asked him about the alarming findings of his research: liquid biofuels could be worse for the climate than fossil fuels.
Further reading:
- 'Biofuels turn out to be a climate mistake – here's why' - The Conversation
- 'U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds' - Reuters
- 'Cellulosic ethanol falling far short of the hype' - Forbes
- 'Biofuel isn't as carbon neutral as we want it to be' - GreenBiz
- Two of Professor DeCicco's papers: 'Reconsidering bioenergy given the urgency of climate protection'; 'Carbon balance effects of U.S. biofuel production and use'
- Also see our podcasts with John Sterman (forest bioenergy) and Finlay Asher (sustainable aviation fuel), and browse our online bioenergy hub.
Find more podcasts and articles at www.elc-insight.org
Bertie talks to science journalist Matt Simon about his upcoming book; A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.Further reading:
- pre-order Matt's book from Island Press
- Plastic: A Toxic Love Story
- Read Wired's reporting on plastic
- Read Beyond Plastic's report on the link between plastics and climate change
- The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene
- The Waste Makers
After being "stonewalled" by his bosses over concerns about decarbonisation claims, Finlay Asher quit his job as a senior aviation engineer at Rolls Royce to found Safe Landing, an organisation that campaigns against growing the aviation sector.
Alasdair spoke to him about this journey, the reasons technological and market-based solutions to aviation emissions are not going to get us to net-zero, and what the sector shouldbe doing instead.
Further reading:
- Check out Finlay's Youtube channel
- Stay Grounded’s greenwashing fact sheet series
- T&E’s EU Aviation 2050 roadmap
- ICCT’s ‘Aligning Aviation with the Paris Agreement'
On 23 May 2022, the Australian Labor Party entered government for the first time since 2013, under the leadership of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Alasdair spoke to Dr. Marija Taflaga, Director of the Australian National University's Center for the Study of Australian Politics, to talk about shifting climate politics in the county, and what the new government could mean for the green transition.
Further reading:
- 'The frontline: Inside Australia's climate emergency' in The Guardian. Read here.
- Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunityby Ross Garnaut. Read more and purchase here.
- How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Differenceby Rebecca Huntley. Read more and purchase here.
- The Carbon Club: How a network of influential climate sceptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia's climate policy by Marian Wilkinson, Allen and Unwin, 2020
Lauren talks to Tania Li, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, about the sustainability of the oil that's in 50% of supermarket food products - and the issues with labour and land rights in Indonesia's palm oil industry.
Further reading:
- Tania's books and other publications can be found on her website, taniali.org
- Oil palm development in Thailand: economic, social and environmental considerations, by Jonas Dallinger
- Rainforest Alliance: Our Response to the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products
- Chain Action Research: EU Deforestation Regulation: Implications for the Palm Oil Industry and Its Financers
- Chain Action Research: Indonesian Moratoria: Loopholes, Lack of Sanctions Fail to Stop Palm Oil-Linked Deforestation
Sri Lanka is in the midst of an acute economic, energy, and political crisis. With fuel, food and electricity shortages, protestors have taken to the streets and are now being arrested in the thousands.
On June 8, Bertie spoke to Melani Gunathilaka, an activist with Extinction Rebellion and Climate Action Now who has become a leading voice in the Gotagogama protests. They discussed the role of climate policy in the cascading crises and corruption allegations that have recently plagued the country.
Further reading:
- Is organic farming really to blame for Sri Lanka's ongoing food crisis?
- What is the financial cost of loss and damage from climate change?
- Watch: 'Inside Sri Lanka's economic crisis'
- Melani shared a list of demands made by Gotagogama protestors. You can read page one of the demands here, and then page two here.
Bertie talks to Drew Pendergrass, coauthor of Half Earth Socialism, recently published by Verso books. They discuss geoengineering, population scaremongering, climate colonialism, and the big question for many on the left: will we be able to mitigate the climate crisis under capitalism?
Further reading:
- Buy Half Earth Socialism from Verso, currently at a discount.
- Read Bertie's review of the book on ELCI here.
- Play Troy and Drew's climate simulation game here.
- Find more from Troy and Drew on their website.
In this episode, Lauren talks to Assaad Razzouk, host of the Angry Clean Energy Guy podcast and British Lebanese clean energy entrepreneur. They talk about the recent elections in Lebanon, systemic problems with climate finance, and the ways a clean energy transition could help struggling economies.
Daniel Klier is CEO of ESG Book, and was previously HSBC's first Head of Sustainability, and Chair of the Bank of England Climate Risk Working Group. Alasdair spoke to him about how banks are confronting climate mitigation, and what needs to be done for banks and the finance industry to meet net zero targets.
Daniel's suggested further reading:
- The IEA's Net Zero Scenario
- Bloomberg New Energy Finance
- Publications from the Energy Transition Commission
- Impact Investing Institute
- ESG Book Insights
The controversial election of Bongbong Marcos as President of the Philippines on May 9th overshadowed another Filipino news item of global importance that week. After a nearly 7-year-long inquiry, the Philippines Human Rights Commission published a huge document detailing how human rights are infringed by climate change, who is responsible, and what courts could do about it.
ELCI Assistant Editor Bertie Harrison-Broninski talked to the Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Yeb Saño, about the groundbreaking report.
Further reading:
- You can read the report in full here.
- Read Greenpeace International's press release about the report here.
- Read Greenpeace's summary of the Filipino presidential candidates' climate platforms here.
Award winning author and journalist Sonia Shah talks to Alasdair about her book, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. She talks about what we can learn about human migration from wildlife, why climate migration should be seen as an adaptation strategy rather than a coming crisis, and the dangers of elitism in scholarly science.
Further reading:
- Details about The Next Great Migration and where to buy it, as well as Sonia's other books, can be found here on her website.
- 'First Came the Hurricane, Then Came the Campaign of Terror', by Sonia Shah in The Nation.
- Native Species or Invasive? The Distinction Blurs as the World Warms, by Sonia Shah in Yale School of the Environment
- Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Lawby Jane McAdam
- Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challengesby Robert McLeman.
- 'Follow the science: but whose science, and to where?' by Lauren Sneade on ELCI, and check out our other articles and podcasts on www.elc-insight.org
Did you know that methane is more than 25 times more potent than co2 in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere? In this episode we look at reducing methane emissions without mandating veganism. Our guests Anatoli Smirnov and Sabina Assan are researchers at Ember, international data analysts for clean energy solutions in the power sector.
Despite drives to plant-based eating in the West, meat consumption is only going up and will not change any time soon. The other big methane emitters come from the power sector. Coal mining emits 52 million metric tons of methane per year, more than is emitted from either the oil sector, which emits 39 million tons, or the gas industry, which emits 45 million tons. So closing coal mines is the only viable alternative in tackling methane. Global methane emissions from the energy sector are about 70% higher than the amount national governments have officially reported. Methane reduction is critical.
Check out the methane hub to find out about how world leaders and businesses are looking to fulfil the 2030 methane pledge: https://globalmethanehub.org/
You can read more about Ember's work here: https://ember-climate.org/insights/commentary/coal-mine-methane-leaks-worse-than-shipping-aviation/
The day before 80 countries meet in Palau to discuss ocean governance, Bertie talked to Dame Meg Taylor DBE about the changes the Pacific Elders' Voice are campaigning for, including pollution of plastics and nuclear waste, illegal and unsustainable fishing, and loss and damage.
Pacific Elders' Voice is a group of diplomats, academics, and creatives who work together to platform issues important to the future of the Pacific Islands. Meg Taylor's distinguished career includes serving as the Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, Mexico and Canada (1989-1994), Vice President of the International Finance Corporation (1999-2014), and most recently, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum (2014-2021). She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002.
Further Reading:
- Read more about the Our Ocean Conference 2022
- Read the Pacific Elders' Voice Statement on Oceans
- 'UN ocean treaty summit collapses as states accused of dragging out talks', The Guardian, 21 Mar 2022
- 'Nations commit to develop a legally binding agreement': press release announcing the proposed treaty on plastic pollution, with links to the full text.
- 'This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking', The Guardian, Fri 3 Jul 2015
- Follow Pacific Elders Voice here on Twitter, and here on Facebook.
Dr. Howard Herzog is a pioneer of carbon capture and storage research, having studied it since 1989 in what is now called MIT's Energy Initiative. He was also a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC's 2005 Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, and he is author of the 2018 book Carbon Capture.Bertie Harrison-Broninski talked to Dr. Herzog about the different forms of CCS, issues around direct air capture's cost, why enhanced oil recovery and CCUS are not the way forward, and what policies need to be put in place to incentivise CCS deployment.
Further reading:
- ELCI has begun publishing our series of long reads on CCS. The first two are linked here:
- What is happening with carbon capture and storage?
- Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money
- Publications by Dr. Herzog from recent years on CCS include:
- Hard-to-Abate Sectors: The role of industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) in emission mitigation Applied Energy (2021).
- Assessment of CCS Technology in a Climate Mitigation Portfolio (CCS Assessment Phase 1 Report) MIT Joint Program Special Report (2019)
- Read Dr. Herzog's 2018 book Carbon Capture, part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.
Bertie talked to renowned peatland expert Professor Roxane Andersen, of the University of Highlands & Islands, the Environmental Research Institute, and the Flow Country Research Hub.
They talked about the Flow Country in Scotland, her research on restoration, monitoring, and peatland fires, and more generally about why peatlands are so important for climate mitigation.
After our podcast last year with Ed Struzik, listeners got in touch to say they wanted more content on peatlands, especially covering the science! We reached out to Professor Andersen, and were delighted she agreed to come on the show: do get in touch with recommendations or feedback, if there is anything you would like to hear about. We love hearing from you all.
Further reading from this episode:
- Read about the InSAR monitoring technology here, and in even more detail here!
- Read about the FireBlanket project here
- Read about the damaging afforestation on peatlands in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s here
- Read about the Flow Country here, including the application to make it a UNESCO world heritage site
Alasdair MacEwen talks to Associate Professor Wim Carton of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies about offset markets, carbon removal technologies, and IPCC modelling.
They wade into some tricky questions: are scientists watering down recommendations to make them politically palateable? How are neoclassical economics affecting the world's approach to climate mitigation? Why do the IPCC working groups have contradictory messages on saviour tech?
Further reading
- Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?
- Seize the Means of Carbon Removal: The Political Economy of Direct Air Capture
- Undoing Equivalence: Rethinking Carbon Accounting for Just Carbon Removal
- The meaning of net zero and how to get it right
- Social Science Sequestered
With the invasion of Ukraine ongoing, ELCI's Assistant Editor Bertie Harrison-Broninski talks to Sam Lawson, Director of investigative NGO Earthsight, following a public letter from 120 NGOs calling for a boycott on Russian and Belarusian wood.
The public letter was led by Ukrainian environmental groups in response to the invasion, but Earthsight have been investigating illegal and unsustainable Russian and Belarusian logging for years. Their work has exposed major failings of EU, UK, and US law, and particularly of certifiers like FSC, SBP and PEFC.
NOTE: this is a faster-moving story than we normally cover in our podcasts. Since recording this conversation on Tuesday 8th March, SBP and FSC have both announced that they are longer certifying Russian wood.
Further reading:
· The campaign backed by 120 NGOs to boycott Russian and Belarusian wood
· Russia’s timber oligarchs – new Earthsight analysis
· Earthsight’s ‘Taiga King’ investigations exposing illegal Russian logging for European export
· IKEA’s House of Horrors – Earthsight’s investigation into IKEA’s illegal Russian supply chain
· 2020 investigation by The Telegraphexposing unsustainable Russian logging in Drax’s supply chain
Sami Yassa, senior scientist at the US based NGO the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and their scientific lead on forests and forest biomass, sets out NRDC research on the use of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) which looks at whether it can really produce negative emissions. He also explains NRDC's work with the US Congress on biomass.
Further reading from Sami Yassa:
· NRDC's recent research on BECCS
· Further explanatory documents and data from the research
· NRDC US Congress work around biomass and ensuring scientific independence for US environmental agencies
Liz Carlisle talks to Bertie about her new book, soon to be published by Island Press: 'Healing Grounds - Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming'.
The agroecologist, Environmental Studies Professor and award-winning author has spent the last year talking to Indigenous communities & farmers of colour across North America about their approaches to land, crop cultivation and livestock. Originally looking to learn more about soil sequestration, she was confronted with bigger picture issues about the relationships between climate policy, social justice, and agriculture.
Liz's further reading:
· HEAL Platform for Real Food
· Soul Fire Farm
· Vox’s coverage of Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren’s farming legislation
· IPES Food reports
· Adam Calo’s work on Scottish low carbon farming
· You can order Liz Carlisle’s previous books on agroecology on her website
Alasdair talks to John Sterman about his groundbreaking research that proved burning wood for energy will "increase atmospheric CO2 for at least a century".
John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Director of the MIT System Dynamics Group and the Director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. His team developed a model for dynamic bioenergy lifecycle analysis, which he hoped would prove burning "wood was part of the solution" for the climate. Instead, "it came out the other way".
Further reading:
· Professor Sterman’s paper about the outcomes from his bioenergy modelling
· More details on the study, in reply to a comment on the paper
· En-Roads, MIT Sustainability Initiative’s interactive climate simulator that allows users to explore the impacts of different climate policies
· Read more about bioenergy and BECCS, and listen to more podcasts on the topic, in ELCI's bioenergy hub
Louisa Casson from Greenpeace (now on an Antarctic expedition) explains her work looking into carbon offsets and how they have developed since COP26. She also gives her view on the development of voluntary carbon markets.
Here is some of Louisa's suggested further reading on the issue:
- Oxfam’s report on the use of offsets in net zero
- European Climate Foundation CEO, Laurence Tubiana's commentary on offsets
"There is more CO2 contained in the oil and gas reserves already being extracted than in our entire global carbon budget to keep warming under 1.5 degrees C."
Romain Loulalalen from NGO Oil Change International (OCI) tells Alasdair at ELCI where we are on the global phase out of fossil fuels, what the current challenges are, how COP26 was significant and what political changes to expect in the next few years on oil and gas. He also comments on whether the oil majors are genuinely committed to net zero targets.
Further reading:
- Production Gap Report 2021
- Managing Peak Oil: a recent report by Carbon Tracker
- Oil Change International's Big Oil Reality Check
- Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance
- The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative
Is the net zero approach to climate mitigation working, or is it an unrealistic framework that does more to help corporations than the planet?
Professor Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York comes onto the podcast to discuss her new book, 'Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough' with ELCI Assistant Editor Bertie Harrison-Broninski.
You can order the book here from Verso, or read Bertie's review of it here.
ELCI's Assistant Editor Lauren asks Dr. Mark Bould about his new book 'The Anthropocene Unconscious'.
They discuss whether fiction goes far enough in representing narratives of climate crisis, ranging from Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’ to the 'Fast & Furious' franchise.
You can also read Lauren's review of 'The Anthropocene Unconscious' here.
"In 2019, the use of United States sourced wood pellets in the UK was accountable for 16 million to 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, mostly burned by Drax. That is roughly equivalent to a quarter of all the emissions from the UK power sector."
ELCI editor Edward Robinson speaks to Duncan Brack, Associate Fellow at Chatham House and author of numerous reports into industrial-scale biomass and forestry policy.
"If you follow the developments at Glasgow, everyone's looking for the Big Idea. This, in my mind, is an obvious one."
ELCI Assistant Editor Bertie Harrison-Broninski takes over to talk with veteran climate journalist Edward Struzik about his new book, Swamplands: tundra beavers, quaking bogs, and the improbable world of peat. They talk COP, burning peat for energy, the process of rewetting peatland, and Edward gives a cultural & historical background to peatlands, arguing that we still need to change cultural perspectives of our bogs, fens and marshes.
You can also read our review of the book here.
Alasdair from ELCI talks to Phil MacDonald, Chief Operating Officer of think-tank Ember, about the the energy think-tank's latest analysis which places Drax as the UK's single biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the UK and among the top 5 emitters in Europe.
Phil provides a startling explanation of how a huge amount of carbon emissions are being missed, and how incentives exist for governments to use biomass for power because of an apparent accounting loophole around its use.
In this episode Alasdair MacEwen talks to Lina Burnelius of Protect the Forest Sweden about the Swedish forestry model and the threat that industry poses to biodiversity and the survival of ancient Forests.
In this episode, Alasdair speaks to Dr Dan Quiggin, Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House currently researching the implications of using Bioenergy with Capture and Storage or BECCS .
He then asks Ember, Chief Operating Officer, Phil MacDonald [NB after 43mins] for his analysis of negative emissions, BECCS and Dr Quiggin's findings.
They reach sobering conclusions about the potential impact of pursuing BECCS to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The COP26 lead at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), Gareth Redmond-King talks to Alasdair about the preparations for the next climate talks in November.
He explains what the crucial discussions will be on, the UK's role as a climate leader, recent odd missteps leading to the talks, his take on existing progress and how he thinks talks will go.
Chief Operating Officer of energy think tank Ember, Phil MacDonald, talks to Alasdair about the new challenges of decarbonising the global energy sector and what has been achieved so far in Europe in the UK.
He explains how the gradual phasing out of coal use has switched the focus to other fossil fuels and how the UK's need to show climate leadership for the next COP may be creating unnecessary pressures for finding so called "negative emissions".
Edward and Alasdair speak to Sasha Stashwick, climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), on how the Biden Administration is gearing up to tackle climate change and issues with the use of biomass for tackling climate goals.
Check out the ELCI website for more background information: www.elc-insight.org
Edward Robinson speaks to Prof Michael Norton, outgoing director of the environment programme at the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC). Mike speaks about the need to understand what 'transformative change' actually is, the gap between science and policy urgency on environmental boundaries and on the flawed concept of GDP.
Check out the ELCI website for more background information: www.elc-insight.org
Alasdair speaks to Doug Parr, Chief Scientist and Head of Policy at Greenpeace UK about how British climate policy has changed and what might happen after the pandemic. Doug also speaks about greenhouse gas removal technologies, what 'negative emissions' are and the risks of rising 'institutional greenwash' in climate policy and business.
Check out the ELCI website for more background information: www.elc-insight.org