Saving the World From Bad Ideas

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Dakota Gruener, CEO of Reflective, a nonprofit working to advance research into sunlight reflection as a method to combat global heating and cool the planet. Mark and Dakota discuss the tool of sunlight reflection methods (SRM) as a potential means to save the planet from climate breakdown, and why further research is vital — not because it makes SRM inevitable, but because we need better scientific evidence to inform a decision about deployment or not. Dakota argues that we, as a global community, must embrace researching reflective technology — whether stratospheric sulfur injections, marine cloud brightening or something else — as a means to better understand the options before it’s too late. 

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Dr. Siddhartha Roy, an environmental scientist who was among the first researchers to identify lead contamination in Flint, Michigan’s tap water. Dr. Roy discusses his team’s critical role in exposing the crisis and holding city officials accountable — as well as his subsequent less popular but data-driven research that created friction among his allies and the public. Drawing on millions of blood lead test results, this later work by Dr. Roy and his team challenged claims that widespread lead poisoning was responsible for rising rates of learning difficulties and brain damage among Flint’s children. Now a Maddox Prize recipient for these findings and his commitment to evidence-based thinking despite serious social pushback, Dr. Roy joins Mark in discussing the importance of remaining true to the science — even when it conflicts with strong emotional narratives and political and public pressure.

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Olivia Boyd, Senior Engagement Lead at WePlanet, to discuss the campaign to end industrial krill fishing in Antarctic waters. Olivia explains how krill are a keystone species, supplying food and nutrients to whales, penguins and seals across Antarctica — but industrial trawlers, run by a Norwegian billionaire, are increasingly competing with wildlife for this vital food resource. And for what? Omega-3 health supplements and pet food… 

Join Olivia and the WePlanet team in pressuring retailers to stop the sale of krill pills and protect one of the planet’s last remaining great wildernesses. Sign the petition here → https://secure.weplanet.org/page/202721/petition/1

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Professor Lonnie Thompson, a pioneering ice core paleoclimatologist whose life’s work has been key to understanding Earth's recent climate history. Just a few weeks ago, we were honoured to welcome Lonnie onto our Saving the World from Bad Ideas podcast to discuss his remarkable career collecting ice cores from high mountains around the world to preserve their fast-vanishing ice for science and research. Watch Lonnie's conversation with Mark to learn more about his incredible career — including his recent expedition to collect ice cores from Huascarán in Peru, the tallest mountain in the tropics, whose ice contains a critical climate record. Our thoughts are with Lonnie’s family, friends and colleagues at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at this time. His passing at the age of 78 is a great loss for the scientific world, and he will be sorely missed.

https://byrd.osu.edu/news/ohio-state-mourns-loss-dr.-lonnie-thompson

Episode summary

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Professor Lonnie Thompson, an ice paleoclimatologist with The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State University. In this episode, they discuss Lonnie’s legacy of over 50 years of strenuous expeditions traveling to tropical high mountain glaciers around the world, to take ice core samples that date back tens of thousands of years. Mark and Lonnie dive into the critical importance of these ice cores — some of which are the last remnants of mountain glaciers that have since melted away completely — as they hold records of greenhouse gases, temperatures, microbes and volcanic activity over Earth’s history that will continue to prove valuable to science for years to come.

“Probably this year or next, those glaciers will totally disappear. And the only ice from that part of the world is here in the freezers at Ohio State University. From these ice cores, we can go back thirty, forty thousand years and see how that has varied in the natural world. The ice records anything that's in the atmosphere.

And I can only imagine 20 years from now, there are things that we haven't even asked about, that will be important and only preserved in these frozen ice cores.”

Watch the film Canary, a full-length documentary that dives into Lonnie Thompson’s legacy of work: https://canary.oscilloscope.net/ 

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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Episode summary 

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by George Monbiot, columnist in The Guardian and environmental campaigner of worldwide renown, to discuss the return of bluefin tuna to British waters and the critical importance of protecting this wonderful marine megafauna from being exploited and killed by fishing. 

George isn’t just an academic expert — he tells Mark about his recent and ongoing exploits in a sea kayak, watching these incredible animals leap out of the water while chasing their prey. He and Mark then discuss how overfishing has depleted marine ecosystems around the United Kingdom and beyond and why the fishing industry escapes scrutiny while corporate lobbying and political inaction block meaningful change.

“We have a very storybook view of the fishing industry, but it's actually rife with multimillionaires and billionaires running these enormous boats and huge corporations. It's very, very concentrated. It's utterly ruthless. It hides just like farming does. We have these radical double standards when it comes to fishing and farming,” says George. 

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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Episode summary 

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Roger Hallam, climate campaigner and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, to discuss his evolution in climate activism and the case for mass civil resistance. Roger reflects on the successes and failures of Extinction Rebellion, his various arrests and time in prison, and his subsequent international campaigns. Mark and Roger discuss Roger’s most recent and controversial “4 Billion Dead” campaign, discussing the role of science communication about climate impacts at high levels of global heating. Roger argues that our political systems are failing to respond at the scale and speed required, and advocates for civil resistance, citizens’ assemblies and even solar geoengineering as possible responses to the planet’s escalating climate crisis.

“As a general rule, 99% of humans find courage through the community of collective action,” says Roger Hallam. “Then they radicalise through that experience and that can happen very quickly. As a general rule, if 3% of a population occupies a capital city for anything from 10 to 20 days, then you're rolling a dice on whether you get regime change or structural change in the regime. And we know that's what's necessary to slash carbon emissions at the present time.”

Join ‘4 Billion Dead’ for monthly campaigning and organizing Zoom calls at this link → 4billiondead.org

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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Episode summary 

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by Quico Toro, Director of Climate Repair at the Anthropocene Institute, to discuss his research on ocean-based carbon dioxide removal via phytoplankton. Quico challenges the idea that photosynthesis must only occur on land via reforestation, when 70% of our planet is ocean. He also discusses working with stakeholders in the South Pacific, like the Kingdom of Tonga, in collaborating with knowledge keepers and local ocean ecosystem experts to address concerns about carbon removal and approach the practice thoughtfully, scientifically and responsibly.

“To me, the obvious answer to carbon removal is photosynthesis. The forestry people had it right in the first place: photosynthesis is great. It's had a billion and a half years to develop through research and development and evolution. Oceanographers have been thinking for many years that a logical way to approach this problem would be to increase carbon dioxide removal by increasing phytoplankton concentrations in the center of the ocean.”

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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Episode summary 

In this inaugural episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas Season 4, host Mark Lynas is joined by scientist Joshua Elliott, director of Advanced Research for Climate Emergencies (ARC) and chief scientist at Renaissance Philanthropy, to discuss Earth's tipping points and rapidly changing climate systems — and how human intervention, via approaches like climate stabilization, is a fast becoming a moral imperative to combat the worst projections of climate breakdown. 

“We have been geoengineering this planet since we first developed agriculture,” says Joshua Elliott. “The tacit belief that accidental geoengineering is somehow okay, but that thoughtful, science-driven, purposeful, researched and scaled geoengineering or stabilization is somehow a horrible moral hazard. I mean, to me, that just completely defies logic.”

About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future.

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Finally a new season is launching, and Mark is ready to tell us what season 04 of Saving the world from BAD IDEAS is going to be about.

In this season-ending episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, host Mark Lynas is joined by environmental journalist and author George Monbiot to explore a new framework for understanding environmentalism. George argues that what is often treated as a single movement actually contains three distinct and frequently conflicting philosophies: Green Liberationism, Green Pragmatism, and Green Social Nostalgia. The conversation traces the historical roots of each tradition, from anti-colonial activism and technocratic climate policy to rural revivalism and its relationship with fascism. Along the way, Mark and George discuss population debates, food systems, ecomodernism, the influence of religion on environmental thought, and the growing challenge of far-right infiltration into parts of the green movement. It's a wide-ranging examination of the ideas and tensions that shape environmentalism.

🧠 Topics Discussed

🌱 Why environmentalism may be better understood as three competing philosophies rather than a single movement

✊ What George calls "Green Liberationism" and how it draws on civil rights, anti-colonial struggles, feminism, and social justice movements

⚙️ What "Green Pragmatism" looks like in practice, from clean energy deployment to technocratic climate governance

🌾 What George means by "Green Social Nostalgia" and why he sees it as a powerful but problematic force within environmentalism

📜 Why George argues that rural revivalism became a foundational component of twentieth-century fascist movements

🌳 How post-war environmentalism inherited ideas from both progressive and deeply conservative traditions

🍽️ Why George believes many nostalgic visions of agriculture struggle to answer basic questions about feeding large populations

👶 How population anxiety became embedded in parts of environmental thought and why George sees it as politically unhelpful

⛪ How Christian traditions, pastoral imagery, and millenarian thinking continue to shape environmental narratives

🧘 How wellness culture, alternative health movements, and environmental politics can become vulnerable to far-right influence

🌍 What figures like RFK Jr., Vandana Shiva, and other controversial environmental voices reveal about ideological drift within green movements

🍔 How precision fermentation, microbial protein, and cultivated foods could transform debates about meat, land use, and sustainability

🤝 Why successful environmental politics requires combining technological innovation with democratic participation and social legitimacy

🚨 Why the environmental movement may be underestimating the challenge posed by far-right actors adopting green rhetoric

👤 Guest Bio

George Monbiot is an environmental journalist, author, and campaigner known for his work on ecology, politics, land use, food systems, and climate change. A longtime columnist and public intellectual, he has written extensively on environmental justice, rewilding, democracy, and the social forces shaping ecological crises.

📚 Recommended Reading & Resources

📖 Feral — George Monbiot

📖 Regenesis — George Monbiot

📖 The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

📖 Works by Wendell Berry

📖 Writings and debates surrounding Paul Kingsnorth and the Dark Mountain Project

💬 Quote Highlights

💬 “You can have rural revivalism without fascism, but you can’t have fascism without rural revivalism.”

— George Monbiot

💬 “Power and politics don't disappear when you push people out of the way.”

— George Monbiot

💬 “You needed the technologies in order to realise the more political liberationist vision.”

— George Monbiot

💬 “We’ve been far too unprepared for the takeover of aspects of our movement by the far right.”

— George Monbiot

🌐 About WePlanet

WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises.

📥 Join the Conversation

💬 ⁠[email protected]⁠

📩 ⁠https://weplanet.org/podcast⁠

👁️⁠ https://twitter.com/weplanetint⁠