Just five years ago, two scientists in white coats threw red paint on the Royal Society HQ to protest against the damage being done to Earth. Their action sparked the Scientist Rebellion movement all around the world, where those who know the worst of what is to come took to the streets because to merely study it in their labs was not enough to prevent disaster. Then came the sudden rise of authoritarianism that proved peaceful demands will not be met, and the realisation we our tactics must evolve with the new political climate. 

Natural Scientist Fernando Racimo documented the movement and his own involvement in his book, Science in Resistance: The Scientist Rebellion for Climate Justice. He joins me today to discuss what works, what doesn't, and how deep the rot of complicity goes in universities. We discuss the efficacy of disruptive action and the importance of generative action, with Fernando calling for academics to focus on localised, community-based work, insisting we must embody the changes we wish to see in everything we do—because nobody is going to build a new world for us. 

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The best intentions of mice and men... aft never leave the conference centre, according to this week's guest, Dave Snowden.

Founder of The Cynefin Company, Dave is a management consultant and complexity scientist who has worked for governments and institutions around the world to help them better understand what populations need, and how to deliver it to them. He joins me today to explain why solutions fail, why populism is on the rise, and why the middle class' penchant for what he calls "talking therapy" will never deliver real change—because it ignores the stories on the street.

This is a conversation which explores geo-engineering, putting oil companies to good use, The Troubles and even Obama's first term, with Dave insisting that it is impossible to change people's minds—we can only facilitate different interactions with the world.

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Nations are rushing to secure resources within their own borders.  Globalisation is over. 

Colonialism and mining have always gone hand in hand. But now that the Global South has more political muscle as a bloc, and now that resources are running low, wealthy countries which have historically secured and polluted elsewhere are opening up extractive frontiers within their own territories. This is a tectonic shift in international politics, creating new fault lines, exacerbating inequalities, and causing conflict.

Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College, and the author of Extraction: the Frontiers of Green capitalism. Thea joins me to explain the history of extractivism and its relationship to colonialism, the extractive frontiers that are now being opened up in the global north, the conflict these create within populations, and  the economic interventions that are currently transforming how resources are being extracted. She also details the wave of resistance that is surging to meet these colonial forces as people around the world arm themselves with knowledge and skills to prevent their homelands being torn up and fed to corporate industries. 

Geopolitics is shifting with the supply of critical raw materials. Necessary for the so-called “green transition” these materials have created another resource rush, triggering a mining boom all over the world, which is leaving conflict, environmental devastation and political instability in its wake.

In this episode, researcher and climate analyst Nina Djukanović explains her recently published research into the  competitiveness, security, and socio environmental issues of critical raw materials around the world. Her paper, Material Dependencies, was produced for Czech think tank, the  Association for International Affairs, and she explains we simply do not have enough materials to transition to a green economy within an extractivist and growth model. She explains all this and more, revealing how the green transition is being dangerously interwoven with militarism and digitisation, leaving a political vacuum that the far Right is exploiting, particularly in the EU and USA.

Nina's paper: https://www.amo.cz/en/climate-team/material-dependencies-competitivness-security-and-socio-environmental-issues-of-critical-raw-materials-2/

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Hi everyone,

I’ve designed the new Planet: Critical website and I want your feedback. If there’s any sections, groupings, design changes that you’d like to see—or flaws you notice—I’ll spend the next week incorporating what I can. So please go and play around on the new site here and then comment on this article Substack to let me know what you think.

The new site allows for a lot more flexibility. I’ve created newspaper-like sections dividing the posts into topics. Currently, the sections are: Energy Crisis, Economic Crisis, Ecological Crisis, Political Crisis, Human Crisis, Inconvenient Truths, Good Ideas.

I’ve also created a page for people new to the topics covered on the site, linking the three most important episodes in each section. I hope this will be a helpful onboarding for new readers/listeners as the archive now, after almost five years, is pretty daunting.

I want to know what you think! Sadly, I’ve got no clue how to code (I’d love to add in sign up graphics between each section on the homepage, or some info cards, just to break it up) but I’ll do what I can with your suggestions!

Here’s the temporary URL again. Let me know what you think by commenting below! P:C will be back to regular scheduling before the end of the month.

Thank you for your patience!

Rachel

Doctors are tasked with an impossible job: Keep our bodies healthy while Earth’s collapses.

Our healthcare systems are already under-funded and over-stretched, and that’s before we throw in the drastic changes in disease and mortality that warming temperatures are unleashing around the world. That all this falls on the shoulders of healthcare workers is another symptom of the madness of modernity. Each and every policy is responsible for our healthcare, not just the industry itself.

Sharon Friel is a Professor of Health Equity at Australia National University, researching how planetary health and human health intersect. She joins me to explain the state of health in the coming decades, which institutional policies are already preventing effective treatment, and how our atomistic relationship to cause and effect with regards to climate change is reflected in the biomedical paradigm itself. We discuss how medical curricula around the world can and must change, the necessary integration of different epistemologies, and Sharon reveals what is sending the medical insurance industry into a panic—revealing just high Earth’s fever is climbing.

Is China the next world leader?

Ken Hammond is a professor of history at New Mexico State University, where he specializes in the history of China in the early modern period. Author of China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future, Ken joins me to explain the stark differences in how China is deploying its newfound wealth and political power within its own borders and throughout the Global South.

We also discuss the persecution of the Uyghurs, with Ken and I taking very different positions about how nation states should manage diversity within their borders. We end up debating whether or not a sustainable, socialist future can ever be achieved through centralised forces—and what the possible fallout could be.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

Imagine if we rolled up our sleeves instead of pointed our fingers?

Jessica Hernandez is an indigenous climate scientist and author of Growing Papaya Trees. Her work reveals that the roots of our planetary crisis lies in the violence of colonialism and neo-colonialism. In this gentle and humorous conversation, Jessica explains what it means to be a displaced indigenous person, why the Lands need people to be well, and the worldviews impeding us as a global collective to take the necessary action to protect Earth and each other.

We discuss the recent creation of a global indigenous identity, how renewable energy is encroaching on indigenous rights, our shared suspicion of the “just transition”, the common failures found amongst all humans, and how Western individualism has promoted a culture of blame when what we need, more than ever, is to take accountability for our world today.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

The climate crisis is causing an invisible health crisis.

The number one cause of neurodegenerative disease is the environment. And our environment is changing—releasing bacteria, neurotoxins and pathogens into our warming world which can change the very matter in our brains.

Clayton Aldern is a neuroscientist and environmental reporter at Grist. In his 2024 book, The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains, Clayton revealed how the climate crisis intersects with our psychological, mental and brain health, warning that this health crisis, if left untreated, could upturn our lives. In this astounding episode, he walks through the different ways climate intersects with brain health, revealing the increased risk of a number of different diseases, what triggers them, and the absolute failure of policy-makers to address it. We discuss stress, violence, aggression, and using our bodies as an empathetic tool to understand the pain of others, with Clayton painting an optimistic picture about the power of story-telling to change the world.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

The two hemispheres of our brain collaborate to produce a coherent understanding of the world—at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. In his groundbreaking book, The Master and His Emissary, neuro-philosopher and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, proposed that our culture has been captured by the left hemisphere, whose dogmatic, technical and irrational way of processing information leads it to manifestly dangerous conclusions about the way the world works. Importantly, the left hemisphere never changes its mind.

In one of the widest-ranging conversations on Planet: Critical to date, Iain explains how we came to lose sight of the bigger picture by forsaking the intuition, creativity and intelligence of the right hemisphere. We discuss how our relationship to language makes and unmakes the world, the search for meaning, human agency, relationality, morality, art and the divine, with Iain clearly spelling out a path to human fulfilment—which may very well be the only thing which can save Earth from the worst of us.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.