Scientists warn we are in an age of mass-extinction. Entire species are ceasing to exist at unprecedented rates. When did this age begin, and when did humans start to confront their impacts on ecosystems and living populations?
 
Sadiah Qureshi explores extinction as ‘unnatural’ and inherently political, by placing humanity at the centre of her latest book, 'Vanished: an Unnatural History of Extinction'. 

In conversation with Bertie, she traces the history of the concept of extinction in European thought and its connection with settler-colonial politics. Bertie and Sadiah also discuss present day conservation policy, and echoes of imperialist thought within it.
 
Sadiah Qureshi is a Chair of Modern British History at the University of Manchester, and a historian of science, race and empire. 

Further reading

• ‘Vanished: An Unnatural History Of Extinction,’ is available to purchase from Penguin here.
• This week, Professor Qureshi delivered the annual Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture for the Royal Society. You can watch that here.
• 'What can histories of Empire teach us about modern environmental efforts?', The British Academy, December 2025
• 'Reversing extinction', aeon 
• '‘A billionaire will pay a lot of money to shoot a recreated being’: historian Sadiah Qureshi on extinction and empire', The Guardian, June 2025

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Last year, multilateral negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty broke down after countries failed to agree to limits on plastic production - as opposed to simply regulating plastic waste. 

This distinction between 'upstream' and 'downstream' measures to tackle plastic pollution is a point of contention between industry and campaigners, with the plastic lobby favouring recycling advocacy over efforts to curb plastic production. 

Alasdair discusses this issue with Dr Rob Ralston, who researches the different stakeholders within the industry lobby, and the ways in which this bloc has co-opted formerly radical policy frameworks, such as the idea of 'circular economy', to delay major policy interventions. 

Rob Ralston is a lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh, and an expert in global health and environmental politics.

Further reading: 

• Click here for our other podcasts and articles on plastic pollution on Land and Climate Review. 
• 'Ultra-processed foods are a key driver of the global plastics pollution crisis', Nature Food, April 2026
• 'The battle for plastic hegemony: the petrochemical historical bloc and the UN Global Plastics Treaty', Review of International Political Economy, March 2026
• Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty, Greenpeace, 2024
• The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, Center for Climate Integrity, 2024
• 'Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics', Global Environmental Politics, April 2021

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What happens after a country's electricity infrastructure is destroyed by war? Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Turkish conglomerate Karadeniz Holding had an innovative idea: if ships could be retrofitted as floating power plants, they could be quickly deployed to countries in crisis, then moved elsewhere again when needed.  

Gökçe Günel returns to the Land and Climate Podcast to discuss her latest book, which uses the history of ‘powerships’ and their operations in Ghana to analyse the unexpected ways that geopolitics, business and conflict shape energy systems, and to question the concept of a linear energy transition.  

Gökçe Günel is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Her 2019 book “Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi” explored Masdar City project - discussed in our previous episode here. Her new book, “Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations,” published by Duke University Press, is available to purchase here. 

Further reading:  

• ‘Energy accumulates: Ghana shows that the “energy transition” is more myth than fact’, Land & Climate Review, 2026  
• ‘Cin Fikir: Infrastructure, War and Progress’, Against Catastrophe, 2025 
• ‘Leapfrogging to Solar’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 2021 
• ‘Energy Accumulation’, e-flux Architecture, 2020,   
• Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, 2019 

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The labour movement has contributed to climate and environmental policy for decades, and developed the concept of a ‘just transition’. Despite this, the relationship between unions and climate policymakers can be strained, with concerns from both parties about how the other will approach job losses from phasing out fossil fuels.  

How has trade union policy on decarbonisation developed over the decades, and what are union leaders’ perspectives on more radical academic arguments, such as the need to structure economic policy around other metrics than GDP? 

With particular focus on Germany and the UK, Bertie talks to Vera Trappmann about union engagement with green policymaking, what a just transition means for workers, and how this varies between Global North and South. 

Vera Trappmann is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at Leeds University, where she co-leads the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. Her work focuses on climate change’s impact on workers, as well as union movement perspectives and policies on climate issues. 

Further reading:  

• 'Perspectives on Social and Justice Issues in Climate Policy – Comparing the Just Transitions, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-Social Policy Literatures', Milena Büchs, Vera Trappmann, Gina Moran, Max Koch, WIREs Climate Change, 2026
• 'Trades unions, climate policy and just transition in the UK', Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, Ursula Balderson, 2026
• 'German Trade Unions and Decarbonisation: A Transition to Green Growth, A‐Growth or Degrowth?' Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrial Relations Journal, 2025
• What workers want: Conditions for a fair and just transition in the UK, Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, and Alice Garvey, 2025
• 'Conjunctures of eco-social partnership unionism: The German Trade Union Confederation’s climate policies over three decades', Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrielle Beziehungen, 2024

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For the second time in five years, conflict has seriously destablised global markets. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to US and Israeli attacks on Iran has limited trade, causing skyrocketing prices - but not only for oil. 

Most fertiliser production relies on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Gulf nations including Qatar and Saudi Arabia are major fertiliser producers, and one third of the world's seaborne fertiliser trade usually passes through the Strait, which is currently unavailable. Other fertiliser producing nations are reducing production due to limited gas supply. Are food shortages inevitable? 

Alasdair is joined by Noah Gordon to discuss the international and environmental politics of fertilisers. They discuss fertiliser production, its uses and misuses, its role in global inequality and whether gas dependency can be avoided. 

Noah Gordon is the acting Co-Director of the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.  

Further reading: 

• 'The Other Global Crisis Stemming From the Strait of Hormuz’s Blockage', Emissary, March 2026
• 'A Trump Order Protected a Weedkiller. And Also a Weapon of War.' New York Times, March 2026
• How to Feed the World by Vaclav Smil, 2025
• 'How a few giant companies came to dominate global food', Land and Climate Review, May 2025
• 'Why was organic policy blamed for Sri Lanka’s financial crisis?' Land and Climate Review, June 2024
• 'Fertiliser emissions could be cut to ‘one-fifth of current levels’ by 2050', Carbon Brief, February 2023
• The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager, 2009
• Titans of Industrial Agriculture by Jennifer Clapp, 2025

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With the recent 'AI Boom', the energy demand of computing has risen dramatically. As generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot and Grok become more mainstream, tech companies are racing to build and power new data centres - the physical 'computer factories' that store and process our information and online services. 

This new infrastructure is significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions - but tech companies argue that the climate innovations and efficiency improvements catalysed by AI tools will offset negative impacts. Could such claims prove true, or are they greenwashed PR? 

Alasdair puts this question to writer and energy analyst Ketan Joshi, who recently authored a report on AI's climate impacts alongside several leading nonprofits. 

Further reading:

• Read more from Ketan on climate and AI on his blog, here. 
• 'Does Generative AI “Work”? That’s a Misleading Question.', Ketan Joshi, The New Republic, March 2026
• The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts, Ketan Joshi, February 2026
• 'Crypto and AI exploit conflict zones and fossil fuels – with destructive consequences', Hito Steyerl, Gago Gagoshidze and Miloš Trakilović, Land and Climate Review, July 2025
• Empire of AI, Karen Hao, May 2025
• 'Big Tech’s green promises are hypocritical gestures', Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alessandra Mularoni, Land and Climate Review, April 2025
• SYSTEM OVERLOAD: How new data centres could throw Europe’s energy transition off course, Beyond Fossil Fuels, February 2025

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Climate change is making the lives of many more difficult. Tens of millions of people are already displaced by weather events each year, and studies show that climate breakdown drives mental and physical health crises, increased conflict, drought, and food insecurity, among many other challenges. 

So why do leading climate models primarily measure impacts on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rather than human wellbeing?

Inge Schrijver joins Alasdair on the podcast to discuss her new research into this question, and to explain how climate models work, how they are used, and what they are missing. 

Inge Schrijver is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University. Her study, “Inclusion of wellbeing impacts of climate change: a review of literature and integrated environment–society–economy models,” was co-authored with René Kleijn, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, and is available to read here.  

Further reading:

• ‘Climate action saves lives. So why do climate models ignore wellbeing?‘ Inge Schrijver, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, The Conversation, 2025
• ‘Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022 
• ‘Sufficiency means degrowth‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022
• ‘Is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?‘, The Land & Climate Podcast, 2022
• ‘The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change‘, Steve Keen, Globalizations, 2020
• WISE Horizons project

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Long before the recent economic crash and brutal killings of protestors in Iran, the country faced enduring environmental crises. Depleted dams and dried rivers have left stretches of land exposed, sending dust clouds across the country and severely degrading air quality. Last October, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the capital, Tehran, may have to be evacuated due to the country's water bankruptcy. 

Have these problems contributed to the civil unrest this winter? Bertie puts this question to Dr. Sanam Mahoozi, who reports on Iran for the US news press, and recently completed a PhD researching media framings of environmental protests in the country. Sanam traces the developments of climate politics and environmental media coverage in Iran, against the backdrop of a highly uncertain political future.  

Further reading: 

• Sanam’s recent news reporting for The New York Times 
• Sanam’s writing about Iranian reporting and environmental issues for The Conversation 
• Media Framing of Iran’s 2021 Water Protests, Sanam Mahoozi, 2025, City, University of London 

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In September 2025, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the climate crisis presents “risks” for Russia that are “very dangerous”. Though not unprecedented, such statements differ from other Russian government messaging that has argued climate threats are overstated as part of a Western agenda, or that climate change could benefit the country. Is the state’s narrative changing? 

This week on The Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair MacEwen is joined by Marianna Poberezhskaya to discuss the history of complex and often contradictory climate politics in Russia. They also discuss Russia’s burgeoning climate conspiracism, the history of climatology through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s increasingly isolationist stance on climate cooperation. 

Marianna Poberezhskaya is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University, where she researches climate discourse from non-democratic governments and their nations’ media, with particular focus on Russia.

Further reading:  

• 'Explainer: How Russia seeks to 'instrumentalise' climate issues at COP30', Clare Denning, 2025, BBC 
• 'Conspiracies as one of the dangers of online climate change communication: origins, spread, and impact', Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2025, Routledge handbook on climate crisis communication pp. 229-239 
• 'Climate obstruction in Russia: surviving a resource-dependent economy, an authoritarian regime, and a disappearing civil society', Marianna Poberezhskaya and Ellie Martus, 2024, Climate obstruction across Europe pp. 214-242  
• 'Russian climate scepticism: an understudied case', Teresa Ashe and Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2022, Climatic Change 172 (3-4)

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President Trump has long expressed ambitions to annex Greenland, with mentions of the US acquiring the Danish autonomous territory dating back to 2019.  But the US relationship and interest with Greenland goes back centuries.

In a bonus episode of the Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair is joined by returning guest and Arctic expert Mia Bennett to examine Greenland’s complex history and connections to the US, Trump’s recent interest, and her views on the reasons behind them.

Mia Bennett is the co-author of "Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic," published by Yale University Press. She is an associate professor of geography at the University of Washington and the founder of Cryopolitics, a blog covering contemporary and historic developments in the Arctic.

Further reading: 

• Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, Yale University Press, 2025
• Trump and Rutte cannot make a deal without Greenland at the table', Julie Rademacher, Financial Times, 2026
• 'Greenland: Staying with the Polar Inuit. How a secret military base helped trigger the silent collapse of an Arctic world', Ludovic Slimak, The Conversation, 2026
• 'The cryosphere is nearing irreversible tipping points – and the world is not prepared', Letizia Tedesco, Josephine Z. Rapp and Petra Heil, Land and Climate Review, 2025
• The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future, Jon Gertner, Postscript Books, 2019
• Crimson, Niviaq Korneliussen, Anna Halager (Translator), Virago Books, 2018
• So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump, Elizabeth Buchanan, Hurst Publishers, 2025
• This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich, Fourth Estate, 2003

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