Planet: Critical

Frederic Hache is the cofounder and executive director of Green Finance Observatory, an NGO tracking the world of “sustainable finance”, debunking its claims, and working with European policymakers to warn against supposed market-based solutions.

He joins me to explain how the markets have financialised and commodified the climate crisis: why carbon credit schemes are nonsense, the worrying advent of biodiversity offsetting, and the tokenisation of environmental protection. He explains that environmental regulations have a long history of being effective, and questions why protection of the natural world is being handed over to markets.

He reveals which “green” markets are already linked to human rights abuses around the world, how crypto is muscling in on the space, and how lobbyists have hijacked the agenda to protect profits.

* Listen on Apple or Spotify

* Watch on Youtube

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it.

© Rachel Donald

This week the world marks Save the Vaquita Day.

Our featured article examines a threat to this critically endangered marine mammal (Phocoena sinus), a small porpoise that lives only in the Upper Gulf of California, and of which only 8 remain in the wild.

Mongabay reports that a recent CITES decision lifting a prohibition on the export of captive-bred totaoba fish from Mexico could paradoxically spell disaster for vaquitas--which drown in nets that are set to capture the fish illegally, to feed a black market which will likely continue to thrive if a legal trade in farmed totoaba is established.

To also read & share the story, go here: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/experts-fear-end-of-vaquitas-after-green-light-for-export-of-captive-bred-totoaba-fish/

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Photo Credit: An illustration of a vaquita. Image courtesy of Greenpeace.

Please send feedback to [email protected], and thank you for listening.

Katherine Stewart is an investigative reporter and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. She’s spent the past 12 years investigating how USA’s far right got organised after the original Roe vs Wade ruling, using abortion to polarize political debate in the USA and unite a multi-denominational movement to enact their vision of white ethno-nationalism.

She joins me to explain how abortion became key to their rise to power; how they’ve spent the past 50 years inserting themselves into education, legislature, and government; the deep network of funders, organisations and individuals whose sole wish is to take power back from the Left.

These people aren’t pro-life. They’re pro-power. And to claw it back from them, Katherine says we need to begin organising with the same vigilance and determination they exhibit.

* Listen on Apple or Spotify

* Listen on Youtube

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it.

© Rachel Donald

We discuss the effectiveness of combining traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science for conservation and restoration initiatives on this episode.

Our first guest is Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, an ethnobotanist at the University of Arizona, who discusses an ancestral food of the Comcaac people in the state of Sonora in Mexico: eelgrass.

Nabhan explains how eelgrass is making a big comeback thanks to the people's restoration work, and is retaking its place at the table as a sustainable source of food for the Comcaac community while gaining international culinary attention in the process.

Host Mike G. also speaks with Dr. Sara Iverson, a professor of biology at Canada’s Dalhousie University, about a research project called Apoqnmatulti’k that aims to better understand the movements of lobster, eel, and tomcod in two important ecosystems on Canada’s Atlantic coast.

Iverson explains why those study species were chosen by the Mi’kmaq people and why it’s so important that the project combines different ways of knowing, including Western science and traditional Indigenous knowledge, which a Mi’kmaq elder dubbed 'two-eyed seeing.'

Further reading about Apoqnmatulti’k here:

• “In Canada, Indigenous communities and scientists collaborate on marine research”

Listen to episode #145 (June 1, 2022) of this podcast to hear about related Indigenous aquaculture traditions via your favorite podcast provider, or here:

• “Podcast: Indigenous, ingenious and sustainable aquaculture from the distant past to today”

Episode artwork: A conservationist working on a seagrass restoration project. Image courtesy of Seawilding.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and ideas! [email protected].

Henrik Nordborg is a physics professor at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, and program director for the university’s Renewable Energy and Environmental Technology. He began giving public lectures about the climate crisis some years ago when he felt his students deserved more honest information about the state of the world and the looming crisis. This led to him developing the Global Climate Compensation, a plan to tax fossil fuel companies and redistribute those funds to every nation around the world.

Henrik’s plan differs from other carbon tax proposals—he wants to tax fossil fuel companies at production, not from calculations of their emissions. He says this not only prevents companies’ capacity to skew the data, but actually involves no additional accounting—these companies know exactly how much they’re producing because that’s where their profits come from.

The redistribution factor is equally key. This fund would be redistributed around the world, per capita, and governments could then choose what to do with that money. It could provide a buffer for developing nations to begin their own energy transition. This is crucial in a world where Western nations are avoiding paying climate reparations—Loss and Damages payments—which Global South nations have tried to bring to the table at Cop conferences.

* Listen on Apple or Spotify

* Watch on Youtube

* Read the interview transcript

Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.

© Rachel Donald

Our featured article this week examines archaeological research revealing details of a massive, Pre-Columbian urban settlement in the Amazon, 4,500 square kilometers in size, that provides valuable insights into how humanity could develop sustainable cities without degrading their environments. 

To also read & share the story, go here: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/lost-amazonian-cities-hint-at-how-to-build-urban-landscapes-without-harming-nature/

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Photo Credit: Incachaca archaeological site in Bolivia. Image courtesy of Greg Keelen on Unspash.

Please send feedback to [email protected], and thank you for listening.

Jeremy Lent is an author and integrator whose dedicated his life since the dot com boom to understanding meaning: how to find it, how to make it, and how to apply it.

Author of renowned books ‘The Web of Meaning’ and ‘The Patterning Instinct’, Jeremy joins me to discuss how to combine traditional knowledge with scientific understanding to navigate the polycrisis, the impact of cultural worldviews and how to shift them, and how we can use interconnectedness as a foundation to create a better and more diverse world.

* Listen on Apple or Spotify

* Watch on Youtube

* Read the interview transcript

* Bonus video out on Monday

Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.

© Rachel Donald

Host Mike G. dives into new discoveries from the exciting field of marine bioacoustics research that are helping us better understand the lives of whales and dophins, and we feature fascinating recordings from that research.

His first guest is Erin Ross-Marsh, the lead researcher on a study of humpback whales at the Vema Seamount in the South Atlantic off the coast of South Africa. Ross-Marsh tells us about the study’s finding that these humpbacks were making gunshot calls, a type of non-song call that was previously unknown in these particular whales, and plays some humpback songs, non-song calls, and gunshot calls for us to listen to.

He also speaks with Sarah Trabue, a research assistant with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who is the lead author of a recently published paper detailing the findings of a bioacoustic study of bottlenose dolphins in and around New York Harbor.

Trabue discusses what the study reveals about dolphin behavior in the highly trafficked waters around New York City and plays for us some of the dolphin vocalizations recorded as part of the study.

Further reading:

• Mongabay: “What’s popping? Humpbacks off South Africa, new acoustic study finds”

• WCS: “The New York – New Jersey Harbor Estuary is a Dining Hotspot During Summer and Autumn Months for Bottlenose Dolphins”

Episode artwork: humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii. Photo Credit: Ed Lyman/NOAA.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and ideas! [email protected].

How do we build resilient systems? How do we allow for transformation? How do we encourage adaptation? How does this apply to both to ecosystems and human systems? And how we use this to better understand and tackle the climate crisis?

These are questions Professor Graeme Cumming answers on today’s episode. Graeme is the Director of the Arc Center of Excellence coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia. An ecologist by training, his research increasingly focuses on socio-ecological functions, problems and resilience in systems.

He explains what dung beetles can teach us about political division, why resilience is not enough on its own, and ultimately why we cannot use ecological systems as an exact map for understanding the complexity of human systems.

* Listen on Apple or Spotify

* Watch on Youtube

* Read the interview transcript

* Bonus video out on Monday

© Rachel Donald

Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.

Our featured article this week summarizes a joint investigation Mongabay recently conducted with BBC News and The Gecko Project, uncovering how companies have cut local & Indigenous communities out of the profits from Indonesia's palm oil boom, despite being legally required to share those profits.

Major brands including Kellogg's, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, and numerous others have sourced palm oil from these plantations. 

To also read & share the story, go here: 'A hidden crisis in Indonesia's palm oil sector: 6 takeaways from our investigation.' https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/a-hidden-crisis-in-indonesias-palm-oil-sector-6-takeaways-from-our-investigation/

Read the responses from consumer goods firms to our plasma investigation: https://thegeckoproject.org/articles/responses-from-consumer-goods-firms-to-our-plasma-investigation/

Read the full investigation here: 'The promise was a lie': How Indonesian villagers lost their cut of the palm oil boom. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/the-promise-was-a-lie-how-indonesian-villagers-lost-their-cut-of-the-palm-oil-boom/

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Photo Credit: A bag of oil palm fruitlets gathered by the Suku Anak Dalam. Image by Nopri Ismi.

Please send feedback to [email protected], and thank you for listening.