Last September, power cuts and water shortages triggered civil unrest in Madagascar, leading to the dissolution of its government. In recent months, Iran’s water crisis has led to public demonstrations and even a warning from President Masoud Pezeshkian that Tehran could be evacuated. Protests over access to food and water are intensifying globally. 

Dagomar Degroot returns to the podcast to discuss the role of climate change in regime breakdown. He and Alasdair discuss historical examples of societal collapse influenced by climatic conditions, the effects of the “Little Ice Age” on droughts and harvests, and how the Global North might be less resilient than many realise. 

Dr. Dagomar Degroot is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University, an expert on climate change, space exploration and existential risk. His forthcoming book, “Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: How the Solar System Shapes Human History – and May Help Save Our Planet,” will be published by Penguin in February. Listen to Alasdair and Dagomar’s discussion about the book here. 

Further reading: 

• 'After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up', Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, December 2025.
• 'Climate crisis or a warning from God? Iranians desperate for answers as water dries up', Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, November 2025. 
• 'Madagascar’s president dissolves government amid youth-led protests', The Guardian, September 2025. 
• Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Luke Kemp, 2025. 
• 'Climate, peace, and conflict—past and present: Bridging insights from historical sciences and contemporary research', Sam White et al., Ambio, 2025.
• Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor, Harvey Weiss (ed.), 2017. 
• Questioning collapse : human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire, Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee (eds.), 2010. 

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The Arctic is heating four times faster than the global average, with scientists predicting the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of ice in summer by the early 2030s. This rapid melting presents an existential threat to Arctic infrastructure and ecosystems, as well as opening new claims on strategically valuable resources. As temperatures rise in the Arctic, so do geopolitical tensions. 

This week, Alasdair is joined by Mia Bennett, co-author with Klaus Dodds of “Unfrozen: The Fight for The Future of The Arctic,” published by Yale University Press. Mia explains the environmental consequences of melting permafrost, the roles multilateral organisations and Indigenous communities have within policymaking, and the growing militarisation of the region.  

Mia Bennett is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, and a British Academy Visiting Fellow at UCL’s Centre for Outer Space Studies. Her book "Unfrozen” and long-running blog “Cryopolitics” examine Arctic developments – including the science of climate breakdown, national and Indigenous politics, and the emergence of new markets. 

“Unfrozen: The Fight for The Future of The Arctic,” is available to purchase from Yale University Press here.

Further reading: 

• 'Have we reached peak Arctic Circle?' Mia Bennett, Cryopolitics, 2025 
• '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 
• Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, Bathsheba Demuth, WW Norton & Company, 2019 
•  The Paradox of Svalbard: Climate Change and Globalisation in the Arctic, Zdenka Sokolíčková, Pluto Books, 2023 
• 'Russia’s espionage war in the Arctic', Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 2024 
• Seven poems from Dark Traffic, Joan Naviyuk Kane , 2021 

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This week, Bertie Harrison-Broninski speaks with Professor Annette Kehnel, Chair of Medieval History at the University of Mannheim. Kehnel gives us a potted history of sustainability and argues that sustainable practices have existed throughout history, yet our modern collective memory is influenced by ideas of resource exploitation introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries.  

Annette Kehnel is currently a visiting fellow at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. She is the author of The Green Ages: Sustainable Practices, winner of the 2021 NDR Book Prize. Its English translation by Geshe Ipsen has been shortlisted for the 2025 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. 

Further reading:  

• The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability, Annette Kehnel, Profile Books 
• Die sieben Todsünden: Menschheitswissen für das Zeitalter der Krise (The Seven Deadly Sins: Human Knowledge for the Age of Crisis), Annette Kehnel, Rowohlt 
• Governing the commons : the evolution of institutions for collective action, Elinor Ostrom, Cambridge University Press 
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes, Bloomsbury 
• Managing the Lake Constance Fisheries, ca. 1350-1800, Michael Zeheter, Berghahn 

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US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has claimed that nuclear fusion can be harnessed within the next five years, and that its application to the electricity grid is expected within eight to fifteen years. 

Fusion research has been ongoing for over a century, with experiments beginning in the 1950s, but there has recently been a surge in private investment. Nearly $10 billion has been raised in the last five years, primarily from private funders in the USA.

Fusion expert Matthew Hole tells Bertie Harrison-Broninski that many of these new companies are likely to go bankrupt, and that fusion power is unlikely to be operational in time to contribute to net zero targets. They discuss the different forms of fuel for fusion power, the world’s largest fusion project in France, and the high-risk, high-reward nature of fusion investment.

Matthew Hole is a professor at the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University and a leading authority on plasma fusion physics. In 2005, he founded the Australian ITER Forum and currently serves as co-chair of the International Fusion Research Council of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Further reading: 

• Billions in private cash is blooding into fusion power. Will it pay off? Professor Matthew Hole, 2025, The Conversation 
• US energy chief tells BBC nuclear fusion will soon power the world, Justin Rowlatt, 2025, BBC
• Helion Energy starts construction on nuclear fusion plant to power Microsoft data centers, Stephen Nellis, 2025 Reuters
• What’s fueling the commercial fusion hype? Victor Gilinsky, 2024, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Iter, the nuclear-fusion project proving that multilateral collaboration still works, Simon Bouvier, 2025, Monocle
• What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains, Professor Matthew Hole, 2024, The Conversation

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Controversial efforts at space tourism, such as by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, have reignited old debates about the purpose of space exploration. What relevance does the world beyond our planet have to anyone apart from billionaires and their super-rich clients? 

Without defending the growing commercialisation of the space sector, environmental historian Professor Dagomar Degroot offers some answers. In conversation with Alasdair, he examines the solar system's influence on humanity - and humanity's influence on the solar system. They explore how humans have survived past climate shifts, and how human understanding of climate and space have always been connected. 

Dagomar Degroot is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on the Little Ice Age. His first book, “The Frigid Golden Age,” was published in 2018. His new work, “Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean,” is published by Penguin and available to pre-order here.  He also has a podcast telling the story of climate's influence on humanity, The Climate Chronicles.

Further reading: 

• Little Ice Age Lessons, Dagomar Degroot, Aeon, 2025 
• The Frigid Golden Age, Dagomar Degroot, Cambridge University Press, 2018 
• The History of Climate and Society, Dagomar Degroot, IOPScience, 2022 
• Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present, Benjamin Lieberman and Elizabeth Gordon, 2022, Bloomsbury 
• The Story of CO₂ Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made our World, Peter Brannen, 2025, Harper Collins 
• Colonial Cataclysms: Climate, Landscape, and Memory in Mexico’s Little Ice Age, Bradley Skipyk, 2020, University of Arizona Press 

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In 2006, the Masdar City project was launched in the United Arab Emirates. Supported by $22 billion in state-funding, it aimed to be the world’s most sustainable city. Situated 6km away from Zayed International Airport, neighbouring a Formula 1 racetrack and golf course, Abu Dhabi’s eco-utopia is full of contradictions.

Bertie discusses why oil-rich Gulf states like UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing in sustainability with Gökçe Günel, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Gökçe is the author of Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, published in 2019 by Duke University Press. 

Further reading: 

• Inside COP28: A Participant’s Take on Climate Diplomacy Efforts in Dubai, Gökçe Günel, Baker Institute, 2024 
• Horizons, Gökçe Günel, e-flux Architecture, 2022
• Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, Gökçe Günel, Duke University Press, 2019  

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Global heating in 2024 exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but most governments continue to extend fossil fuel use. Are we now in a political situation where decarbonisation and mitigation efforts are failing? Is climate disaster irreversible?

Alasdair MacEwen discusses these questions with Wim Carton, who returns to the podcast following publication of his new book, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late, co-authored with Andreas Malm. 

Wim also explains the desperate technological solutions being considered for carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering, which he argues could do more harm than good.

Wim Carton is a senior lecturer at the Lund University Centre for Sustainable Studies. His research centres on carbon capture and negative emissions. The Long Heat is the second book he has co-authored with Andreas Malm for Verso Books, after 2024's Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.

Further reading:

• Click here to buyThe Long Heat from Verso Books.
• Overshoot: has the world surrendered to climate breakdown?, Land and Climate Review, 2024 
• Is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?, Land and Climate Review, 2022   
• Overshoot: Navigating a world beyond 1.5°C, Planet B Productions and the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative., Laurie Laybourn, 2025 
• Scientists Clash over whether Polar Geoengineering Is a Dangerous Gamble, Scientific American, Alec Luhn and Andrea Thompson, 2025  
• A ‘doom loop’ of climate change and geopolitical instability is beginning, The Conversation, Laurie Laybourn and James Dyke, 2024 
• The Sunlight Managers, The Break-Down, Sofia Menemenlis, 2025 

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As the energy transition accelerates, critical minerals have become increasingly important, and the priorities of extraction for countries in the Global North are beginning to shift. The U.S., EU, and others are now exploring the possibility of on-shoring critical mineral mining -  potentially bringing a divisive industry closer to home.  

This week, Alasdair talks to extraction expert Dr. Thea Riofrancos, who explains the tension between the harmful consequences of mining and the key role of extractive industries in facilitating the energy transition. She outlines the history of lithium mining in Chile, the environmental and human-rights consequences of extraction, and why we may have overestimated the quantities of critical minerals we actually need. 

Thea Riofrancos’ new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, published by Island Press and W.W. Norton & Company, is available for purchase here. Thea is an associate professor of political science at Providence College and a strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute. 

Further reading 

Electric cars are drying up the desert, Meabh Byrne, 2023, Land and Climate Review  

The ‘critical minerals’ rush could result in a resource war, Thea Riofrancos, 2025, Financial Times  

The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North, Thea Riofrancos, 2023, MIT Press Direct 

Endogenous Participation: Prior Consultation in Extractive Economies, Thea Riofrancos, Julia Falleti, 2017 World Politics  

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Alasdair speaks with Jessica F. Green, author of the new book Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, about why thirty years of climate policy have failed to reduce emissions. 

They discuss why carbon pricing has been largely ineffective, how net zero pledges are misleading, and why focus must shift from measuring emissions by the tonne to measuring profitability.  

Jessica is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and an expert in carbon pricing and global governance. Her new book addresses the climate crisis through asset revaluation and is available to preorder from Princeton University Press here.   

Further reading:  

• The Decarbonization Bargain: How the Decarbonizable Sector Shapes Climate Politics, Nils Kupzok and Jonas Nahm, Cambridge University Press, 2024 
• The False Promise of Carbon Offsets, Jessica F. Green, Foreign Affairs, 2023 
• Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy, Jonas Nahm, Oxford University Press, 2021 
• Follow the Money, Jessica F. Green, Foreign Affairs, 2021 
• Does carbon pricing reduce emissions? A review of ex-post analyses, Jessica F. Green, Environmental Research Letters, 2021 
• Making Climate Policy Work, Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor, Wiley, 2020 

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Bertie speaks with Mark Parrington about this year’s record-breaking wildfires, and the health implications of increasing air pollution.  

Mark is a senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, where he uses satellite imagery to monitor wildfire emissions in real-time.  

He tells Bertie about the scale of the recent surge in wildfires across Europe, North America, and the Arctic, and the health impacts of particulate matter and long-range pollution transport. They also discuss the climate implications as wildfires – especially in Arctic peatlands - release millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.  

Further reading:  

• Arctic Climate Change Update 2024: Key Trends and Impacts, AMAP , 2024 
• State of Wildfires 2023-2024, Earth System Science Data, 2024 
• 'Global, regional, and national mortality burden attributable to air pollution from landscape fires: a health impact assessment study', The Lancet, 2024 
•  'EU wildfires worst on record as burning season continues', The Guardian, 2025
•  'Why are Europe and the Arctic heating up faster than the rest of the world?' Copernicus, 2025  
• 'Current wildfire situation in Europe', The Joint Research Centre: EU Science Hub, 2025 

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