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 

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