Capitalism could not exist without the power and structure of the law — that’s the simple but radical argument made by my guest today, Katharina Pistor, law professor at Columbia University, and the author of The Code of Capital: How The Law Creates Wealth and Inequality. 

On today’s episode, we break down how the law ‘encodes’ capital and invisibly structures our world, from giving corporations the rights of a person, to obscure treaties that allow fossil fuel giants to sue governments when they attempt to act on climate. Ultimately, I ask Katharina whether the law can be harnessed as a force for progress on climate and ecological crisis, and what needs to change to break the legal deadlock.

Katharina Pistor is a professor at Columbia University Law School, where she is the Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation. She is the author of several celebrated books, most recently of The Code of Capital (Princeton University Press).

What would you say a human life is worth? According to the US government, for an American it’s about $7.2 million, compared with the global average of approximately $1.3 million. If you’re Swiss though, you’re worth a pretty penny at $9.4 million.

While these estimates might sound absurd, they're important to understand: these kinds of figures and the models that produce them are a core part of how mainstream economics understands and shapes policy, and they have had a significant role in how governments have responded (or failed to respond) to the climate crisis. In this episode, Adrienne and celebrated economist Ha-Joon Chang break down what mainstream economics gets wrong, and why it has proven so ill-suited to a challenge like climate and ecological crisis, not least by reducing complex decisions to abstract cost-benefit analyses.

Ha-Joon Chang is an economist and Professor at SOAS University of London. Ha-Joon has been an advisor to several international organisations, and is the author of many books, most recently ‘Edible Economics’.

“The stakes could not be higher.” These are the recent words not of climate activists, but of a coalition representing major oil and gas companies in a letter to the US Supreme Court. The context? They’re asking the Court to block dozens of lawsuits that seek to hold these firms to account for their role in driving the climate crisis, including by awarding damages for the costs of extreme weather events.

But how would this actually work? While it’s becoming more frequent, extreme weather has always been a part of our planet’s natural variation - so how can we know which events are part of a new normal as a result of climate change - and which are just ‘normal’? For a long time, it was hard to give a clear answer. But thanks to the work of today’s guest, Dr. Fredi Otto, that’s all beginning to change. In this episode, Adrienne and Fredi Otto break down "attribution science" - a relatively new field that seeks to examine the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Through their work, we’re gaining a much clearer picture not only of our changing planet, but also of how climate change is inescapably tied up with inequality and injustice.

Dr. Otto is Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and co-founder of World Weather Attribution. 

NOTE: Since this episode was recorded, the case of Klima Senniorinen vs. Switzerland was ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, affirming that the government had violated their rights by failing to act on climate, in a landmark judgement.

In this special episode, Adam Hanieh explains the threads linking the global oil economy; more than a century of Western imperialism; contemporary American interests in the Middle East; and the response of governments in the US, UK and much of Europe to the ongoing genocide and ecocide in Gaza. Ultimately, he explains why these overlapping histories demand shared solidarity between the climate movement and the movement for a free Palestine.

Oil is fundamental to our understanding of the climate crisis. But despite its starring role, the dominance of oil in the global energy system is a relatively recent phenomenon, with the industry only really taking off after the Second World War. So how, in just a few decades, did oil become so integral to American power and to our understanding of global capitalism?

In this episode of the Break Down, Adrienne and Adam Hanieh break down the history and geopolitics of oil and imperialism, and explore how the petrochemicals and plastics that now permeate our lives, from the foods we eat to the clothes we wear and everything in between, are making it increasingly difficult to challenge the power of the fossil fuel industry.

Renewable energy is often held up as the great success story of climate change, with policymakers and journalists constantly celebrating that clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. By their logic, these plummeting costs mean that when it comes to the energy transition, the economics are essentially sorted, and we're now on an inevitable path to a world of clean energy. But is it really that straightforward?  

On the first episode of the Break Down, Adrienne speaks to Brett Christophers, an acclaimed author and economic geographer at Uppsala University, about his latest book, The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Solve the Climate Crisis. In it, Brett breaks down the energy system and its critical role in confronting the climate crisis, and makes the case that in a system structured around private ownership and "free" markets, profit — not cheapness — is ultimately what matters.

Welcome to The Break Down. 

A new project dedicated to exploring capitalism has shaped, and is being fundamentally reshaped by, accelerating climate and ecological crisis.

In our first episode, Adrienne and Brett Christophers will unpack the energy system: how it works, the problem with profits, and why “free” markets can’t deliver clean energy.

Launching tomorrow, Thursday 30th May.

Stay tuned.