In this episode of Non-Toxic, we talk to Nathaniel Rich, author of Losing Earth: A Recent History. It’s a bracing conversation about the little known story of the 1980s, when scientists, politicians, and policy-makers were all in agreement that something had to be done to lower carbon emissions—and how at the crucial moment—they failed to act. There are some surprising insights about what went wrong, how to talk about climate change, as well as what we’ve learned about moral urgency since those early days when many people thought all it would take to change the world was laying out the facts.

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Guest Bio:

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History , a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award, and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. He is also the author of the novels King Zeno (MCD/FSG, 2018); Odds Against Tomorrow (FSG, 2013); and The Mayor’s Tongue (Riverhead, 2008). Most recently, he released a new collection of nonfiction stories about the uncanniness of life in the climate crisis called Second Nature.

In this episode of Non-toxic, we're talking with activist Amanda Sukenick and philosopher Matti Häyry about the state of antinatalist thinking, exploring the arguments about risk and the potential for suffering that have come to animate a certain corner of the "doomer" climate conversation.

This is the second in a two part series on climate babies. Last week, we talked to Sian Norris about far-right efforts to roll back women's bodily autonomy in order to increase populations of white Americans and Europeans and keep out people from the Global South. This week, we're thinking about the other side of the climate baby coin—from pronatalists to antinatalists—who argue humanity should cease to exist completely.

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Links:

Watch First Reformed if you haven't seen it yet.

In a survey by Hewlet Packard, 91% of parents in India, Mexico, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States reported that climate change was impacting their family planning and leading them to have fewer children.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein says your kids aren't doomed

Climate scientist Kimberly Nichols argues you can still have kids in a warming world in Under the Sky We Make.

US birthrates continue to decline.

Antinatalist philosopher David Benetar's influential book, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence

An interesting account of how The Population Bomb by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, incited a mass panic about overpopulation in 1968.

Reddit's childfree community has over 1.5 million members?!

Guest bios:

Amanda ‘Oldphan’ Sukenick, is an activist, writer, film-maker, and host of The Exploring Antinatalism Podcast. She lives in Chicago.

Matti Häyry is a professor of business ethics and philosophy of social science in the department of management at Aalto University in Helsinki. He is the author of several books and papers discussing the ethical dilemmas and risks of having children, including "A rational cure for pre-reproductive stress syndrome" as well as, "If you must make babies, then at least make the best babies you can?"

You can check out Matti and Amanda's forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press, ⁠Antinatalism, Extinction, and the End of Procreative Self-Corruption.⁠

What do abortion restrictions have to do with climate change? According to believers of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, it's all connected.

Journalist and author Sian Norris joins Non-toxic to talk about her new book, Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global. We talk about everything from the fascistic obsession with the laws of nature to Vladimir Putin's pro-natalist vision for Russia to why far-right tradwives love to post photos of their homesteads on Instagram. If you've ever wondered why the far-right is so fixated on making more white babies in the era of the climate crisis, this episode is for you. And stay tuned for next week, when we talk to a pair of antinatalists who are advocating for all of humanity do the complete opposite: cease to exist.

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Links

A superclip of Tucker Carlson "just asking questions" about the Great Replacement.

A timeline of Repblican congressman Steve King's fliration with the Great Replacement theory

Conservative darling Victor Orban's remarks at CPAC Dallas 2022

Far-right provacteur Lauren Southern's anti-feminist highlight reel

The Center for Reproductive Rights' map of the the world’s abortion laws

A recent Gallup poll on what Americans think about abortion

Guest bio

Sean Norris is a journalist and author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, published in 2023 by Verso. Her reporting can be found in The Observer, The Guardian, The Times, The Eye, and The New Statesman, among others.

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This week on Non-toxic we're talking about the state of advertising in the age of the climate crisis with Lucy von Sturmer, greenwashing guru and founder of Creatives for Climate. Lucy charts her journey from fossil fuel hack to climate activist and breaks down how ads continue to tap into the sexual insecurities and desires of men and women to sell them on the idea of sustainability—or undermine it. From electric pickup trucks that won't quit until their payload is delivered to Kim Kardashian's pointy nipple bras that are somehow connected to melted glaciers.

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Links

The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing

France outlawed fossil fuel ads. Why can't we?

Premature Electrification Ram Truck Superbowl ad

Mobil 1 explains their bizarre anti-EV ad

The Skims Ultimate Nipple Bra (now with extra plastic!)

The Creatives for Climate free greenwashing watch course

Guest bio:

Lucy von Sturmer is the founder of award-winning impact consultancy The Humblebrag and the initiator of Creatives for Climate, a global network of creatives, activists, and policy-makers working collaboratively to drive action and awareness on the climate emergency.

Help detoxify the discourse by ⁠becoming a Non-toxic supporter today.⁠

Researchers are starting to discover surprising links between loneliness and biophobia. Why are people avoiding social interactions and staying inside so much? Why does an indoor life make the natural world seem so scary and gross? And how do these two trends affect men in particular, who are already more lonely than women? We talk to journalist Hannah Seo to find out.

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Links:

Recent findings on "the vicious cycle of biophobia"

How spending time in ⁠green spaces is linked to social cohesion and improved mental health⁠

How American's are spending more time alone than ever before

Men are ⁠four times more likely than women to die by suicide⁠ but ten percentage points less likely than women to access mental health care.

A YouGov poll in 2019 concluded that one in five British men have no close friends, twice as many as women.

Guest Bio:

Hannah Seo is a Korean-Canadian freelance journalist, writer, editor, fact-checker and poet based in Brooklyn. She recently completed a reporting fellowship with The New York Times, and her other journalism can be found in The Atlantic, Vox, and The Guardian, among others. Her beats include the oceans, climate change, and mental health. The article we discuss in this episode, called "⁠America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That’s Not a Coincidence,"⁠ was published in the Atlantic.

When it comes to sustainability, something is popping in the state of Denmark. In this bonus episode, recorded in the offices of Ganni during Copenhagen Fashion Week, we talk with former Ganni CEO Nicolaj Reffstrup and (di)vision Creative Director Simon Wick about how Denmark has positioned itself as a global sustainability leader, what it takes to run a sustainable fashion company, and whether sustainability in the fashion industry is even possible.

Further reading:

My article for The New York Times on Copenhagen Fashion Week’s revolutionary sustainability commitments.

A full account of just how much pollution the fashion industry emits, and the solutions we need to implement to clean it up

Read the Ganni 2022 Responsibility Report

Vogue goes inside the studio with Simon Wick

It’s the season finale of Non-toxic, and we’re thinking about endings. In this case, what happens to our bodies when we die. We’re asking why do we cremate people or pump them full of formaldehyde and then trap them in a casket six feet under? Bob Hendrikx, inventor and founder of Loop, thinks there’s a better way to return to the place from whence we came: Mycelium coffins that can compost a human body in a matter of weeks. As Bob likes to say, we’re all going to die one day. Do you want your body to become waste or compost?

Links

The surprising environmental toll of cremation

How the death industry could soon go green.

Mycelium’s newly discovered carbon sink capacities.

Guest bio:
Bob Hendrikx is a bio-designer, architect, and founder of Loop, a green burial company that produces living coffins made of molded mycelium.

There’s a better way to landscape your garden. That's the message Jordan "JP Charisma" Parker is preaching on YouTube and TikTok, where he's teaching his tens of thousands of followers the lost art of native plant gardening. In our conversation with JP, we learn why native species are better than imports for your local environment (and your water bill) and how they can help fragile species, like butterflies and bees, to keep doing their thing.

JP also reflects on his interesting — and sometimes difficult — social media journey, from sports car critic to #BlackButterflyMan, and what it means to be a young BIPOC gardener in a space that is often lily white.

Show notes:

Here's a great guide to native planting 

Explore the Florida Native Plant Society 

What is OE? 

Guest bio:

Jordan "JP Charisma" Parker, aka BlackButterflyMan

JP is a social media influencer whose mission is to rehabilitate natural areas for butterflies nationwide. He also has a native plant online store at jpcharisma.com

Find him on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram @jpcharisma

Did you know that illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest criminal enterprise in the world? Though it touches every corner of the globe–there is no international agency devoted to stopping it–so ex-intelligence operative Andrea Crosta stepped in. As head of Earth League International, Andrea has spent the past ten years investigating and exposing the people who get rich wiping out rare species and despoiling our planet.

And he’s got a lot of stories to tell. In this episode, Non-toxic goes undercover with Andrea to see how greedy traffickers take advantage of desperate poachers, how Latin American jaguar teeth are passed off as Asian tiger fangs, and how South African rhino horns are ground up for increasingly expensive virility cures.

Become a Patron

To keep detoxifying the discourse, Non-toxic needs your help. If you want to see a second season of this groundbreaking podcast, show your support by and become a patron today. And don’t forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts to new listeners find us.

Links

Read Earth League International’s recent report on the Jaguar fang trade. 

Read this recent profile of Andrea in the New Yorker.

Check out this overview on the economics of the illegal wildlife trade.

Check out this graphic novel about ELI’s efforts to save the vaquita.

Watch this Netflix documentary about the illegal ivory trade and this Nat Geo doc ‘Sea of Shadows’, about illegal fishing and the potential extinction of the Vaquita porpoise.

Guest bio

Andrea Crosta, Executive Director and Board Member

Andrea is the founder of Earth League International (ELI), among the founding members of the Wildlife Justice Commission, in The Netherlands, a Member of the Board of  The Africa Conservancy Foundation, and the creator and project manager of WildLeaks, the world’s first wildlife crime whistleblower initiative.

He has been working for almost two decades as an international consultant to companies and governmental agencies on high-end security technologies & services, homeland security, anti-piracy, investigations and risk management. He now applies this unique knowledge to conservation, environmental crime, and wildlife protection.

Fire up the grill, fellas… This week, Andrew talks to journalist and author Joe Fassler, who went undercover for The Guardian to investigate an invite-only “beefluencer” training program created by America’s biggest beef lobby. What he uncovered was a complex public messaging machine funneling beef industry climate denialism through university-affiliated research groups and into the Facebook feeds of your unsuspecting friends and neighbors. How do you like your psy-ops: rare, medium, or well done?

To keep going, Non-toxic needs your help. If you want to see a second season of this groundbreaking podcast, show your support by and become a patron today. And don’t forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

For further reading, you can find Joe’s article and other links below.

Read Joe’s article, “Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay”

Read the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nation’s report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”

Watch an early “Beef, It’s What’s For Dinner” TV commercial 

Read this study on the cumulative impacts of industrial beef production

Guest bio:

Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Colorado, USA. His writing on food, environmental issues, books, and culture has been published in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Best American Food Writing. He’s currently at work on a novel, forthcoming from Penguin Books, called The Sky Was Ours.