Planet: Critical

Wars have repeatedly shown us over the last few years how fragile our global supply chains are. But while we can live without semiconductors, collapses in our food supply systems are extremelhy dangerous. And this is only one of the problems of depending on a heavily industrialised food industry, an industry which harms Earth's body as much as our own. So: How can we feed the future sustainably?

Nicole Negowetti is a lawyer, author of Feeding The Future, and founder of Food For Us. She joins me to discuss the fragility embedded in our industrialised processes, how our diets are making us sick, the food infrastructure we need to ensure localised food security, and the importance of working with existing landowners and farmers to achieve all this. We also discuss the cultural variances which affect this conversation, with Nicole insisting that food is the most intimate way we can express our relationship with Earth.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

🟢 Land Liberators film: https://www.planetcoordinate.com/land-liberators-popayan-colombia/

For over a decade, an autonomous zone in the Middle East founded on the principles of women's liberation has controlled and sustained a territory the size of Lebanon. Rojava is a beacon of possibility and hope, and a fierce exercise in self-determination for the Kurdish people at the heart of it. At its core, it is a self defence movement against imperialist forces, religious extremism and exploitation. It has successfully fought off ISIS and the former Assad government. But in just the past six weeks, with the United States backing a former jihadist to take over the Syrian government, the fate of this feminist, anarchist resistance has changed and is now threatening to collapse.

Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist, PhD researcher, co-founder of the Rojava Information Center and the author of Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment. In this extraordinary episode, Matt reveals how Rojava came to be, the contradictions and compromises that they had to make in order to retain their autonomy, and the lessons the Western Left can learn from this remarkable political project. Above all, he commends the vision of the Kurds to exercise their self-determination in the strident belief that, against all odds, new worlds are possible—a defence and determination which has kept the movement alive against imperial onslaughts from all sides for years.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

At the end of last year, I received a stunning book in the post: Architecture is Climate delivers an uncompromising review of the state of human and more-than-human affairs. Written by MOULD, a research collective of academics and architects, the book targets the architecture industry specifically for its role in engendering the crisis, asking not what architecture can do for climate breakdown, but what does climate breakdown to do architecture?

MOULD architects, Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, join me to discuss exactly that: the exploitation of space. We explore spatial relations as social relations, examining architecture as a nervous system which can tell us how to live.  We discuss what space is, how we understand space, how we move in space, and how we can live through what we live in. In this moving episode, both Tatjana and Jeremy tell wonderful stories about projects reimagining the role of architecture from an industry which perfects objects, to an effort which designs spaces that facilitate living and community and collaboration.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

Trump's expansionist grabs at Venezuela and Greenland are not the moves of a madman. Whether we like it or not, they're coherent strategies to secure the USA economy and power in a world where resources are running low and China's ascent is inevitable.

This is the message of world-renowned energy expert, Art Berman. We are living in a new world of Putin, Xi and Trump, all of whom are engaging in very similar plays to control as much of Earth's resources and international markets as they can. Art thinks the only possible outcome for this new cold war is a replay of the first: a partition between the East and West, one dominated by China and the other by the USA. In the age of critical materials, I'm calling it the copper curtain.

We discuss all this and more, including the rave to the bottom, peak growth, which resources in particular are running low, and the fragility of renewable-based economies. This is Art's second time on the show. I highly recommend his first episode, Energy Wars, too.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

In the age of the energy transition, Lithium is our miracle mineral, the key to carbon-free energy storage and unlimited, cheap, harmless power. This belief has prompted a massive mining boom all over the world, destabilising ecosystems, communities, and even governance. But this is nothing new. In fact, the history of Lithium tells the same tale over and over again: the solution to our world problems is always more mining. 

Javiera Barandiaran, associate professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara and author of Living Minerals: Nature, Trade and Power in the Race for Lithium, researches the history of critical minerals and how resource rushes to secure them have shaped political discourse and economic policy.

On this episode, she explains the surprising history of lithium, the narrative of Lithium as a cure-all, the reality of Lithium mining in Latin America and its devastating effects and how communities are fighting back. Finally, we discuss the possibility of sustainable mining, with Javiera insisting we have always mined, the problem is that no matter how much mining we do, we're never going to find the dream of unlimited, free power we are desperately clinging onto.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

 Roger Hallam is one of the most prominent climate activists in the United Kingdom. Roger helped co-found Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and other radical organisations. He has repeatedly put his body on the line through act of civil disobedience and been arrested countless times. In July, 2024, Roger was sentenced to five years in jail for participating in a Zoom call, which caused shockwaves around the world.

On this episode, we discuss his theory of change, his commitment to non-violence, and how to spark mass mobilisation. We frequently disagree, and I'm grateful for his willingness to have a detailed back and forth about these things that he has dedicated his life to. While I am publicly wary of theories which propound mathematical certainty about social phenomena, and movements which lean to heavily on the cult of the individual–both of which we discuss–I am indebted to Roger just as I am every environmental defender for his commitment to Life.

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

You may have noticed that billionaires have come out in force over the past year to discredit Universal Basic Income. But here's an idea they hate even more: Universal Basic Services.

I'm joined by Andrew Percy whose research at the Institute for Global Prosperity proves unequivocally that not only can we afford to unconditionally provide healthcare, education, housing, transport, food and other services to our entire societies, but doing so would dramatically improve people's ability to contribute to that society. He explains the myths surrounding UBS which make both politicians and the public wary, the maths which proves it is sound financial policy, and the experiments going on around the UK and Europe which prove UBS changes not only the lives of individuals, but also the very social fabric of a community.

A.I chatbot for UK residents to discover how their lives would change with UBS: https://properchange.uk/policy-analyst/

🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com

What is climate coloniality? What is climate apartheid? How does our exploitation of the more-than-human world feed into the oppression of people? And what are the real pathways towards decolonising?

Interdisciplinary scholar and editor of Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice, Farhana Sultana, addresses all these questions and more on today's episode, explaining how reality is formed by these ideologies, and why we cannot begin to get to the roots of the eco-crisis without first grasping the soil they were planted in.  

We also have a nuanced discussion on the matrix of power upholding supremacist, extractive regimes around the world, pointing out that such ideologies are no longer contained within certain borders or upheld by certain groups, but rather the dominant logic of capitalism playing out across the world in real time.  

Subscribe to support Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com

We're kicking off the year with a very special interview about how present-day literature is reflecting the crisis we're collectively experiencing—and why some of the novels published today fail to grasp both the intensity and complexity of our world.

Heather Milligan is a literature scholar specialising in the relatively recent genre of eco-gothic. She joins me to explain what defines climate literature, from cli-fi and apocalyptic narratives to eco-gothic tales, revealing the key differences between these two genres, and which tends to subtly reflect the same hubris by which humanity continues to believe itself the solution to Earth's emergency.

This is a beautiful episode, filled with references to wonderful novels and key insights into why we turn to literature in times of crisis. 

Welcome to 2026, and this special episode of Planet: Critical where I discuss hope, collapse, effective action and what may yet be in store for us all. 

Here are the questions I chose this year: