Planet: Critical

If not nuclear, then what else? This is Jessica Lovering's question, co-founder of the Good Energy Collective . She says the most important thing is to lift one billion people out of energy poverty. To do that, we need a low carbon source of energy without intermittency issues. Because of this, she says, nuclear is a form of environmental justice. Jessica begins by explaining the historical and cu...

The U.S Military is going green. But what does that mean? Decarbonised bases, hybrid vehicles, micro electricity grids, recycling methane gas. In fact, the U.S military is doing what climate activists are crying out for governments to do—everything, that is, except changing their overarching strategy. In a mind-bending example of how climate action can be taken when the purpose fits the status quo...

The Paris Agreement is dead. The celebrated target marked in ink in 2016 has been killed by the focus on technocratic solutions over systemic change. Now, rather than address the frightening reality spawned by delusion and incompetence, we're heading even faster towards two degrees—and that being the new acceptable target. Earth system scientist James Dyke explains that we cannot allow this new ta...

We can’t harm the planet without harming ourselves. Plastic. It’s ubiquitous. We are now learning it’s also insidious. Plastic is linked to numerous serious health conditions, from cancers to heart disease. It’s changing our DNA—and now babies are being born pre-polluted. Jane van Dis is a medical doctor, academic and co-founder of ObGyns For Sustainable Future within Healthcare Without Harm . She...

What happens when an industry regulates itself? Bad science, opaque methodologies, incorrect conclusions—and few questions asked. The fashion industry has spent over 10 years drafting sustainability guidelines under the guise of independent analysis which protect brands’ bottom lines. Thanks to an elaborate network of organisations, think tanks and funders, these guidelines have even made their in...

What happens when economics takes precedence over thermodynamics? Eventually, the system collapses—because being incompatible with thermodynamics is impossible. That’s the stark message of this week’s guest, Louis Arnoux , a scientist, engineer and managing director of Fourth Transition , who has been working on this problem for decades. Louis and his team’s research point to our energy systems co...

Can we engineer our way out of dystopia? A.I. technologist Deep Dhillon and I had a heated exchange about technology after meeting by chance in Granada after a flamenco performance. The conversation was fascinating, and I invited him onto the show to discuss what's really going on in Silicon Valley around A.I., what developments are being made and why, and how this technology is going to impact us...

This week, P:C features Mongabay. Nations across the globe are trialing “rights of nature” laws and “legal personhood” for various ecosystems and a range of reasons, from Indigenous reconciliation to biodiversity protection. While these two concepts are closely related, they have some key differences. Viktoria Kahui discusses what distinguishes them and how they’ve been used for conservation, whil...

How has the psychology industry perpetuated the problem? Steffi Bednarek is a climate psychotherapist working both with clients on their anxiety and depression related to climate grief, and the overarching systems within the psychology profession which stigmatises mental health by failing to grasp that poor mental health can be a rational reaction to a broken world. Steffi joins me to discuss how...

Remember the adage it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? Culture inculcates certainties—and only in living against them will we forge new possibilities, says writer Natasha Lennard . Changing the world from the ground up takes time, it takes bravery, it takes collective will to go against. Only power changes fast. But we can live in a world where people—not power—...

What if the solutions are the problem? Life is made beautiful by the myriad possibilities that evolve—spontaneously—from interactions in the world. A look shared between strangers, a joke passed from customer to barista, a story swapped, a birdsong heard. But these possibilities are diminishing with every tech substitution for interaction. Tech gets in the way. I'm joined by journalist and founder...

How do we come home to our bodies? Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher writer, activist, professor of psychology and executive director of the emergence network. He's the author of ' We Will Tell Our Own Story ' and ' These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters To My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home '. Bayo is an extraordinary poet artist, linguistic dancer, who seems to revel at the very edge of tho...

How can businesses make better decisions? The corporate world needs new values, values that inspire different motivations for existing. But doing so within the existing framework of driving shareholder value is so complicated that many are claiming it can't be done. Socio-technological ethicist Nate Kinch is trying anyway. Nate works at the intersection of values and technology, working on redesig...

The global majority are not responsible for global warming. A tiny percentage of the world's population are in positions of power, making decisions that impact the entire planet. These are the people who own and benefit from the fossil-fuelled means of production. Professor Matt Huber says taking power back from them is a class struggle—and cannot be done without building working class power. Buil...

The carbon cycle is more dangerous than an asteroid. An asteroid killed the dinosaurs but unstable carbon cycles caused the worse mass extinctions in earth’s history—and we are putting carbon dioxide into the air at a rate the earth has never seen before. I’m joined by science journalist Peter Brannen , author of The Ends of the World , to discuss how the carbon cycle has caused five out of the si...

A.I. is here—except it isn't. Or is it? A.I. is all over the news all of the time, and nations are scrambling to win the race and become the world leaders in this technology which we're told will change the world. This belief, this myth, is driving policy, investment, hype and conferences. It's the myth that is making A.I., a technology which has consistenly been over-promised and failed to delive...

Reparations provide legal rights. So argues lawyer and humanitarian, Esther Afolaranmi. Esther is the founder of the Golden Love and Hands of Hope Foundation in Nigeria, working on women’s liberation, girls’ education and lobbying the UN to meet the climate pledges promised at COP meetings. Esther joins me to discuss the links between climate, family planning, social justice and explains the corru...

What would you lose to take a stand? Gianluca Grimalda , a climate change researcher, lost his job after he refused to fly back from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Gianluca has been “slow travelling” for decades. He thinks his former employer tried to make an example out of him because of his climate activism. It’s one of those stories that reveals the madness of the world—he was sent to research...

Our bodies know what words fail to describe. Shifts in culture, ravages of violence, ruptures and reconciliation—the body politic lives in our own bodies, informing and inhibiting our experience in the world. Yet, we fail to recognise this connection, and the even wider one of our own bodies as part of the earth's system, which is experiencing great violence and chaos. We need to reconnect with ou...

We belong to our symbols as much as they belong to us. Like the planetary environment, our relationship with language and symbols has impacted our culture, even our biology, argues Professor of Anthropology, Terrence Deacon . Our capacity for interpretation allows us to understand one another and work as a collective mind, explaining the incredible leaps our species has made—and also the trouble w...

Whoever controls the energy supply controls the new world order. Russia and China are deepening their relationship, Western allies in the Middle East are joining the fossil-fuelled BRICS alliance spanning the globe, and the Wagner group is loosening Europe’s grip of Africa. The tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting along new fault lines as rising powers focus on securing resources while the...

What's the relationship between our energy consumption, our material footprint and our economies? Tim Garrett and I come to refer to these as “the holy trinity”. Tim is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, and over two years ago, he joined me to discuss the thermodynamics of collapse , where he explained his research into the behaviour of snowflakes and how you could extr...

What does artificial intelligence have in common with eugenics? The first person to float the idea of a "general intelligence" was a eugenicist who was determined to rank intelligence according to race. This is just one of the legacies of A.I., a technology which Silicon Valley vehemently promises will transform the world, but which for now only consumes enormous quantities of energy. Despite the...

Who takes the initiative when governments fail to ask? Amazingly, in Denmark, an industry is lobbying its government for much tighter regulations to absolutely reduce emissions in order to meet the Paris Agreement. Stakeholders across the entire Danish building industry have agreed to an ambitious reduction roadmap tafter a team of architects undertook an independent review of government policies....

What’s the future of food? Last year, two of my former podcast guests had a long and very public disagreement about the politics of food, locking horns over the utility of farming in a densely-populated world. Activist and writer George Monbiot has written extensively about lab-grown food and the need to revolutionise our food systems with technology so that we can better feed everyone. Farmer and...