Samaneh Moafi is the Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture, a research agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art, academia and the law. Their interdisciplinary investigations have been crucial in providing evidence in cases of state violence where ordinary and typical investigative journalism has failed.

Samaneh joins me today to discuss their most recent report released on the state of genocide in Palestine at the hands of Israel. ‘A Cartography of Genocide’ shows how Israel has repeatedly reshaped the Gazan territory, attacked citizens in safe zones, destroyed food and water systems, targeted medical infrastructure, attacked civilian infrastructure and targeted aid. They have come to the conclusion that the violence in Gaza is a systemic and organized campaign to destroy life.

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Ecological collapse doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Our global economy will also collapse by up to 50% before the end of this century if we continue as we are. That’s the latest diagnosis by an interdisciplinary team who are sounding the alarm that current national climate policies are not enough to mitigate the damage to ecology and economy. The Institute of the Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter today published Planetary Solvency which warns that widely used but deeply flawed assessments of the economic impact of climate change render policymakers blind to the immense risk created by current trajectories.

Sandy Trust, actuary and co-author, joins me to explain how these flawed assessments play out in climate policies and an alternative methodology for calculating risk laid out in the report. This is Sandy’s second time on the show, as in 2023 he joined me to explain how the world of finance underestimates the destruction climate change will cause on our economy after 1.5 degrees of warming. The update is no less frightening—especially, as Sandy reveals, given policy makers have little interest in heeding the warnings of experts.

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How do we take Big Oil to the criminal courts?

There's been a major wave of climate litigation over the past 12 months, mostly in civil courts. But groups around the world are figuring out how to make polluting the planet a criminal offence. They're targeting the fossil fuel industries to attempt what governments, so far, are failing to do: Hold Big Oil to account, and stop them dead in their tracks before the whole world goes up in smoke.

Aaron Regunburg is  is a lawyer and progressive politician who served as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. Since leaving government, Aaron has become a progressive organiser, serving as senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program. Aaron joins me to discuss the  legal case they're building in order for local and state courts to take big oil companies to criminal trial for their part in causing climate change and human death.  He explains the legal layout of those cases, the precedent of criminal liability, what a positive result of these cases could look like, and the different strategies and going after both companies as legal entities and individual CEOs and board members as criminal defendants.

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Happy New Year!

Following the success of last year’s special episode, we're ringing in 2025 with another one from me in which I answer your questions about the podcast and the new project we've just launched, Planet: Coordinate.

Here are the questions I chose this year.

* Why is the world in crisis ? Is there a time to cease dissent and protest, to move toward strategy and dreaming of places to survive ?

* Why can't we achieve the scale required to address the urgency of the climate crisis?

* Why do we leave the climate crisis problem-solving in the hands of the problem-makers? Government is not designed, nor interested, in solve the climate crisis. We need to look for other climate heroes.

* What do you see, or hope for, as the necessary social structure after capitalism inevitably collapses. The second thought is: how on earth do 'we' transition to that, given the appalling mess we are in today?

* Thank-you Rachel for your inspired work throughout 2024. I will not be following the new project which looks to me to be another unnecessary travel jolly, burning yet more fossil carbons. I wonder how you justify this when we know we are on the backside slide of the carbon pulse?

* How can we reform and transform mainstream science so it can help solve the multi-crisis / polycrisis rather than make it worse as science is doing now?

* How do we fully dismantle the Domination Paradigm?

* How much fun can we have while attempting to save the planet?

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.

What is a system?

This is the type of question which can only be meandered through, which is exactly what Nathalie Nahai and I do on this week's episode. Nathalie is a polymath: musician, artist, psychologist, AI expert and the host of 'In Conversation', her own podcast which she interviewed me on at the beginning of this year. We had a stunning conversation, one which we continue today, discussing relationships, connections, ecosystems, resilience, care and love.

This is the perfect conversation to approach the new year with, filled with hope, uncertainty and laughter.

Thank you for our time together this year.

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What is the United States for?

Journalist Matt Kennard would argue the most powerful nation in the world exists to undermine democracy, deny national sovereignty, and funnel wealth to the financial elite. His book, The Racket, exposed the true nature of the American Empire, a nature the mainstream on both the Left and Right refuse to acknowledge.

Matt’s first appearance on Planet: Critical saw him exposing How Corporations Overthrew Democracy. Today, he reveals the complicity and active participation of the American State as a counter-revolutionary force in the world, giving numerous examples from almost every continent as to how the United States has sought to undermine the rule of law and democracy in order to secure resources, security and power for itself. We also discuss how difficult it is to broach these topics in the mainstream, with Matt giving a searing critique of major journalism outlets who take up space as seemingly leftist publications without ever challenging imperialism. We also discuss the nightmare in Gaza and how bearing witness to a genocide is radicalising people all around the world to take action. This is an episode about the lies we have been told—and how to fight the information war while we can.

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In the beginning was the word—and that word justified it all.

In this stunning conversation with Sunil Amrith, historian and author of Burning Earth, we explore the systemic nature of violence. We discuss how it permeates the human project at every level, and how language is deployed to obfuscate, distract and even deny that which we bear witness to. Sunil walks us to different points in history to reveal the incontrovertible relationship between violence against the earth and violence against people, and that the justification to extract life from the non-human world inevitably justifies the hierarchies which then see the world’s most vulnerable human beings exploited and even killed.

This is a conversation about how the injustice with which the human project was built, about the ideologies that have justified rampant destruction and extraction, and about how to think of a better world tomorrow with the political language the past has to offer.

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Do things have to get worse before they get better?

Yes, says Dana Fisher, Director of the Center for Environment, Community & Equity and author of Saving Ourselves. Dana’s research suggests that witnessing the inevitable mass repression of fellow citizens through state violence or incarceration will mobilise the public to take action against climate-denying leaders.

This conversation on resistance is nuanced, addressing the uncomfortable truths that post-industrial democracies are suffering from increasing authoritarian policies which inhibit their right to protest and even speak. President-elect Trump has been forthright about his willingness to deploy the police and national guard against his opponents and American citizens. But Dana argues this worsening state violence could be the very thing that tips the rest of the country into action.

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Climate researcher and activist Pasha Bell was jailed for 22 months for protesting against the British government’s climate inaction. They join a growing group of concerned citizens disproportionately punished by the British state for exercising their democratic right to protest. The draconian measures introduced by the last Conservative government—which the current Labour government is making no plans to repeal—were drafted by think tanks funded by Big Oil. The laws are so unjust that the UK’s own High Court declared them illegal earlier this year.

Pasha joins me to run through exactly which laws were changed and how they’ve led to the criminalisation of protest in one of the world’s richest “democracies”, and how these laws are now impacting journalists’ attempts to cover the genocide in Gaza. We go on to discuss the connections between corporations, oligarchs and nation states in liberal democracies, and the alternatives that activists and communities are organising on the ground all over the UK, including Citizens’ Assembly, Youth Demand, and Just Stop Oil.

Is the law fit for purpose?

This is one question Nikki Reisch, Director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law, and I discuss on today’s episode. Nikki joins me to explain the wave of climate litigation taking place around the world, making climate a human rights issue for the first time in history.

We discuss this in the context of nation states currently undermining international law on the global stage. Nikki insists that the law is a powerful tool which must be both used and protected by support from the public arena, reminding us that the basis for law is consent, and that these landmark decisions provide credence for citizens to take action on the ground against climate inaction.

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