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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Bertie is joined by Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, whose research formed the foundation for the Green New Deal. In his new book, “Still No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air,” he underlines that we have already developed the technologies necessary to solve the climate crisis.

Dr. Jacobson argues that wind, water and solar power are the most effective tools for reducing emissions, that the development of energy-intensive “unicorn technologies” such as carbon capture and storage only prolongs fossil fuel use.

Mark Jacobson is Director of Stanford’s Atmosphere and Energy Program and a co-founder of The Solutions Project, which advances clean, renewable energy systems. His new book is available to buy here from Cambridge University Press, with 20% off using the discount code “NOMIRACLES20”.

Further reading:

• 'Carbon capture does not reduce emissions: these three case studies prove it', Mark Z. Jacobson, Land and Climate Review, 2026. 
• Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025, report finds, Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian, 2026.
• No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2023. 
• 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2020. 
• 'A path to sustainable energy by 2030', Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi, Scientific American, 2009 

Correction notice: in the original upload of this podcast, Bertie mistakenly referred to the publisher of Still No Miracles Needed as 'Stanford University Press', rather than Cambridge University Press. This was removed on 27/1/25.

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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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