The Land & Climate Podcast (Land and Climate Review )

Louisa Casson from Greenpeace (now on an Antarctic expedition) explains her work looking into carbon offsets and how they have developed since COP26.  She also gives her view on the  development of voluntary carbon markets.

Here is some of Louisa's suggested further reading on the issue:

- Oxfam’s report on the use of offsets in net zero 
- European Climate Foundation CEO, Laurence Tubiana's commentary on offsets 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to John Sterman about his groundbreaking research that found burning wood for energy will "increase atmospheric CO2 for at least a century".

John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Director of the MIT System Dynamics Group and the Director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. His team developed a model for dynamic bioenergy lifecycle analysis, which he hoped would prove burning "wood was part of the solution" for the climate. Instead, "it came out the other way".

Further reading:

·         Professor Sterman’s paper about the outcomes from his bioenergy modelling
·         More details on the study, in reply to a comment on the paper
·         En-Roads, MIT Sustainability Initiative’s interactive climate simulator that allows users to explore the impacts of different climate policies
·       Read more about bioenergy and BECCS, and listen to more podcasts on the topic, in Land & Climate's bioenergy hub

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Liz Carlisle talks to Bertie about her new book, soon to be published by Island Press: 'Healing Grounds - Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming'.

The agroecologist, Environmental Studies Professor and award-winning author has spent the last year talking to Indigenous communities & farmers of colour across North America about their approaches to land, crop cultivation and livestock. Originally looking to learn more about soil sequestration, she was confronted with bigger picture issues about the relationships between climate policy, social justice, and agriculture.

Liz's further reading:
·        HEAL Platform for Real Food
·        Soul Fire Farm
·        Vox’s coverage of Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren’s farming legislation
·        IPES Food reports
·        Adam Calo’s work on Scottish low carbon farming
·        You can order Liz Carlisle’s previous books on agroecology on her website

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Sami Yassa, senior scientist at the US based NGO the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and their scientific lead on forests and forest biomass,  sets out NRDC research on the use of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) which looks at whether it can really produce negative emissions.  He also explains NRDC's work with the US Congress on biomass.

Further reading from Sami Yassa:

·         NRDC's recent research on BECCS
·         Further explanatory documents and data from the research
·         NRDC US Congress work around biomass and ensuring scientific independence for US environmental agencies

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

With the invasion of Ukraine ongoing, Bertie talks to Sam Lawson, Director of investigative NGO Earthsight, following a public letter from 120 NGOs calling for a boycott on Russian and Belarusian wood.

The public letter was led by Ukrainian environmental groups in response to the invasion, but Earthsight have been investigating illegal and unsustainable Russian and Belarusian logging for years. Their work has exposed major failings of EU, UK, and US law, and particularly of certifiers like FSC, SBP and PEFC. 

NOTE: this is a faster-moving story than we normally cover in our podcasts. Since recording this conversation on Tuesday 8th March, SBP and FSC have both announced that they are longer certifying Russian wood.

Further reading: 

·         The campaign backed by 120 NGOs to boycott Russian and Belarusian wood
·         Russia’s timber oligarchs – new Earthsight analysis
·         Earthsight’s ‘Taiga King’ investigations exposing illegal Russian logging for European export
·         IKEA’s House of Horrors – Earthsight’s investigation into IKEA’s illegal Russian supply chain
·         2020 investigation by The Telegraph exposing unsustainable Russian logging in Drax’s supply chain

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to Associate Professor Wim Carton of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies about offset markets, carbon removal technologies, and IPCC modelling.

They wade into some tricky questions: are scientists watering down recommendations to make them politically palateable? How are neoclassical economics affecting the world's approach to climate mitigation? Why do the IPCC working groups have contradictory messages on saviour tech?

Further reading

- Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?
- Seize the Means of Carbon Removal: The Political Economy of Direct Air Capture
- Undoing Equivalence: Rethinking Carbon Accounting for Just Carbon Removal
- The meaning of net zero and how to get it right
- Social Science Sequestered

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie talked to renowned peatland expert Professor Roxane Andersen, of the University of Highlands & Islands, the Environmental Research Institute, and the Flow Country Research Hub.

They talked about the Flow Country in Scotland, her research on restoration, monitoring, and peatland fires, and more generally about why peatlands are so important for climate mitigation.

After our podcast last year with Ed Struzik, listeners got in touch to say they wanted more content on peatlands, especially covering the science! We reached out to Professor Andersen, and were delighted she agreed to come on the show: do get in touch with recommendations or feedback, if there is anything you would like to hear about. We love hearing from you all.

Further reading from this episode:

- Read about the InSAR monitoring technology here, and in even more detail here!
- Read about the FireBlanket project here
- Read about the damaging afforestation on peatlands in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s here
- Read about the Flow Country here, including the application to make it a UNESCO world heritage site

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Dr. Howard Herzog is a pioneer of carbon capture and storage research, having studied it since 1989 in what is now called MIT's Energy Initiative. He was also a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC's 2005 Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, and he is author of the 2018 book Carbon Capture.

Bertie talked to Dr. Herzog about the different forms of CCS, issues around direct air capture's cost, why enhanced oil recovery and CCUS are not the way forward, and what policies need to be put in place to incentivise CCS deployment.

Further reading: 

• Read Bertie's series of CCS long reads on Land and Climate:
  • What is happening with carbon capture and storage? 
  • Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money
  • Capturing and storing problems 
• Publications by Dr. Herzog from recent years on CCS include:
  • Hard-to-Abate Sectors: The role of industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) in emission mitigation Applied Energy (2021).
  • Assessment of CCS Technology in a Climate Mitigation Portfolio (CCS Assessment Phase 1 Report) MIT Joint Program Special Report (2019)
  • Read Dr. Herzog's 2018 book Carbon Capture, part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

The day before 80 countries meet in Palau to discuss ocean governance, Bertie talked to Dame Meg Taylor DBE about the changes the Pacific Elders' Voice are campaigning for, including pollution of plastics and nuclear waste, illegal and unsustainable fishing, and loss and damage.

Pacific Elders' Voice is a group of diplomats, academics, and creatives who work together to platform issues important to the future of the Pacific Islands. Meg Taylor's distinguished career includes serving as the Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, Mexico and Canada (1989-1994), Vice President of the International Finance Corporation (1999-2014), and most recently, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum (2014-2021). She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002.

Further Reading: 

• Read more about the Our Ocean Conference 2022
• Read the Pacific Elders' Voice Statement on Oceans 
• 'UN ocean treaty summit collapses as states accused of dragging out talks', The Guardian, 21 Mar 2022
• 'Nations commit to develop a legally binding agreement': press release announcing the proposed treaty on plastic pollution, with links to the full text. 
• 'This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking', The Guardian, Fri 3 Jul 2015
• Follow Pacific Elders Voice here on Twitter, and here on Facebook.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Did you know that methane is more than 25 times more potent than CO2 in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere? In this episode we look at reducing methane emissions without mandating veganism. Our guests Anatoli Smirnov and Sabina Assan are researchers at Ember, international data analysts for clean energy solutions in the power sector.

Despite drives to plant-based eating in the West, meat consumption is only going up and will not change any time soon. The other big methane emitters come from the power sector. Coal mining emits 52 million metric tons of methane per year, more than is emitted from either the oil sector, which emits 39 million tons, or the gas industry, which emits 45 million tons. So closing coal mines is the only viable alternative in tackling methane. Global methane emissions from the energy sector are about 70% higher than the amount national governments have officially reported. Methane reduction is  critical.

Check out the methane hub to find out about how world leaders and businesses are looking to fulfil the 2030 methane pledge.

You can read more about Ember's work here.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Award winning author and journalist Sonia Shah talks to Alasdair about her book, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. She talks about what we can learn about human migration from wildlife, why climate migration should be seen as an adaptation strategy rather than a coming crisis, and the dangers of elitism in scholarly science.

Further reading: 

• Details about The Next Great Migration and where to buy it, as well as Sonia's other books, can be found here on her website.
• 'First Came the Hurricane, Then Came the Campaign of Terror', by Sonia Shah in The Nation.
• Native Species or Invasive? The Distinction Blurs as the World Warms, by Sonia Shah in Yale School of the Environment
• Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law by Jane McAdam
• Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges by Robert McLeman.
• 'Follow the science: but whose science, and to where?' by Lauren Sneade on Land and Climate

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

The controversial election of Bongbong Marcos as President of the Philippines on May 9th overshadowed another Filipino news item of global importance that week. After a nearly 7-year-long inquiry, the Philippines Human Rights Commission published a huge document detailing how human rights are infringed by climate change, who is responsible, and what courts could do about it.

Bertie talked to the Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Yeb Saño, about the groundbreaking report.

Further reading: 

• You can read the report in full here. 
• Read Greenpeace International's press release about the report here. 
• Read Greenpeace's summary of the Filipino presidential candidates' climate platforms here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Daniel Klier is CEO of ESG Book, and was previously HSBC's first Head of Sustainability, and Chair of the Bank of England Climate Risk Working Group. Alasdair spoke to him about how banks are confronting climate mitigation, and what needs to be done for banks and the finance industry to meet net zero targets.

Daniel's suggested further reading: 

• The IEA's Net Zero Scenario 
• Bloomberg New Energy Finance 
• Publications from the Energy Transition Commission 
• Impact Investing Institute
• ESG Book Insights

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Lauren talks to Assaad Razzouk, host of the Angry Clean Energy Guy podcast and British Lebanese clean energy entrepreneur. They talk about the recent elections in Lebanon, systemic problems with climate finance, and the ways a clean energy transition could help struggling economies. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie talks to Drew Pendergrass, coauthor of Half Earth Socialism, recently published by Verso books. They discuss geoengineering, population scaremongering, climate colonialism, and the big question for many on the left: will we be able to mitigate the climate crisis under capitalism?

Further reading: 

• Buy Half Earth Socialism from Verso, currently at a discount.
• Read Bertie's review of the book on Land and Climate here. 
• Play Troy and Drew's climate simulation game here.
• Find more from Troy and Drew on their website. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of an acute economic, energy, and political crisis. With fuel, food and electricity shortages, protestors have taken to the streets and are now being arrested in the thousands.

On June 8, Bertie spoke to Melani Gunathilaka, an activist with Extinction Rebellion and Climate Action Now who has become a leading voice in the Gotagogama protests. They discussed the role of climate policy in the cascading crises and corruption allegations that have recently plagued the country.

Further reading: 

• Is organic farming really to blame for Sri Lanka's ongoing food crisis?
• What is the financial cost of loss and damage from climate change? 
• Watch: 'Inside Sri Lanka's economic crisis'
• Melani shared a list of demands made by Gotagogama protestors. You can read page one of the demands here, and then page two here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Lauren talks to Tania Li, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, about the sustainability of the oil that's in 50% of supermarket food products - and the issues with labour and land rights in Indonesia's palm oil industry.

Further reading: 

• Tania's books and other publications can be found on her website, taniali.org
•  Oil palm development in Thailand: economic, social and environmental considerations, by Jonas Dallinger
• Rainforest Alliance:  Our Response to the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products 
• Chain Action Research:  EU Deforestation Regulation: Implications for the Palm Oil Industry and Its Financers 
• Chain Action Research:  Indonesian Moratoria: Loopholes, Lack of Sanctions Fail to Stop Palm Oil-Linked Deforestation 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

On 23 May 2022, the Australian Labor Party entered government for the first time since 2013, under the leadership of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Alasdair spoke to Dr. Marija Taflaga, Director of the Australian National University's Center for the Study of Australian Politics, to talk about shifting climate politics in the county, and what the new government could mean for the green transition.

Further reading: 

• 'The frontline: Inside Australia's climate emergency' in The Guardian. Read here. 
• Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunity by Ross Garnaut. Read more and purchase here. 
• How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference by Rebecca Huntley. Read more and purchase here. 
• The Carbon Club: How a network of influential climate sceptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia's climate policy by Marian Wilkinson, Allen and Unwin, 2020

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

After being "stonewalled" by his bosses over concerns about decarbonisation claims, Finlay Asher quit his job as a senior aviation engineer at Rolls Royce to found Safe Landing, an organisation that campaigns against growing the aviation sector.

Alasdair spoke to him about this journey, the reasons technological and market-based solutions to aviation emissions are not going to get us to net-zero, and what the sector should be doing instead.

Further reading: 

• Check out Finlay's Youtube channel
• Stay Grounded’s greenwashing fact sheet series
• T&E’s EU Aviation 2050 roadmap
• ICCT’s ‘Aligning Aviation with the Paris Agreement'

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie talks to science journalist Matt Simon about his upcoming book; A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.

Further reading: 

• pre-order Matt's book from Island Press
• Plastic: A Toxic Love Story
• Read Wired's reporting on plastic
• Read Beyond Plastic's report on the link between plastics and climate change
• The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene
• The Waste Makers

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Governments and the aviation industry have been promising for decades that fuel made from plants could solve the transport sector's CO2 emissions. Why hasn't it happened?

John DeCicco, Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, has been studying transport emissions & biofuels for decades. Alasdair asked him about the alarming findings of his research: liquid biofuels could be worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Further reading: 

• 'Biofuels turn out to be a climate mistake – here's why' - The Conversation
•  'U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds' - Reuters 
• 'Cellulosic ethanol falling far short of the hype' - Forbes 
• 'Biofuel isn't as carbon neutral as we want it to be' - GreenBiz
• Two of Professor DeCicco's papers: 'Reconsidering bioenergy given the urgency of climate protection'; 'Carbon balance effects of U.S. biofuel production and use'
• Also see our podcasts with John Sterman (forest bioenergy) and Finlay Asher (sustainable aviation fuel), and browse our online bioenergy hub. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

As COP27 begins in Egypt following historic floods in Pakistan and a summer of international droughts, will this finally be the year rich governments begin to take climate finance seriously?

Bertie speaks to Karim Ahmed about his recent white policy paper on loss and damage, which is being presented at COP27. Dr. Ahmed is a director of the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and a Professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He has previously had high level roles at NRDC, US Government departments, UN environmental bodies, and the World Bank.

Further reading from Dr. Ahmed: 

• The Impact of Global Climate Change on Vulnerable Communities: Climate-Related Loss & Damage and Financial Reparations, a Policy White Paper (2022)
• Climate Justice, Humans Rights, and the Case for Reparations, Health and Human Rights Journal (2021)
• Why we need a Global Climate Reparations Fund, ELCI (2022)
• What is the financial cost of loss and damage from climate change?, ELCI (2022)

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

A major report published ahead of COP27 analysed national climate policies and found that "over-reliance on carbon removals could push ecosystems, land rights and food security to the brink."

Alasdair spoke to Dr. Kate Dooley, one of the Land Gap Report authors and a Research Fellow at Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College, to hear about what policymakers are getting wrong.

Further reading from Dr. Dooley: 

• Read the full Land Gap Report. 
• 'Nature restoration no substitute for cutting fossil fuels'; Pursuit, 2022
• 'No more excuses: restoring nature is not a silver bullet for global warming, we must cut emissions outright'; The Conversation, 2022
• 'Forests can’t handle all the net-zero emissions plans – companies and countries expect nature to offset too much carbon'; The Conversation, 2022
• 'COP27: Urgent need to respect human rights in all climate change action, say UN experts', 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Lauren Sneade talks to Thane Gustafson about the future of Russian oil through the climate crisis and the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Gustafson is a professor of political science at Georgetown University, and an author of numerous books about Russia's fossil fuel dependence, the most recent being 2021's Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change.

Lauren and Professor Gustafson discuss the question: is Putin promoting a geopolitical narrative of Russian supremacy over the country’s national economic future?

Further reading

• Buy Klimat: Russian in the Age of Climate Change  from Havard University Press.
• Professor Gustafson's Substack.
• 'Russia can no longer ignore the threat posed by climate change', LSE Blog, January 2022
• Part 1 and  Part 2 of a Washington Post interview with Professor Gustafson in September 2022. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Afforestation projects are being used worldwide as a nature-based solution to climate change.  Afforestry is the practice of planting trees on otherwise arid, barren land. Harvard scholar Rosetta Elkin explains how large-scale tree planting in otherwise treeless environments rarely makes ecological sense. In many instances throughout history, these projects have also been used as instruments of colonial forestry, used by the coloniser as a way of staking claim to the land. Elkin argues for a better understanding of our ecosystem on the scale of one single tree rather than whole forests.

Further Reading

• Buy "Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation" from Minnesota Press 
• "The Long Shadow of Colonial Forestry is a threat to savannas and grasslands"
• "Hygienic Nature: Afforestation and the greening of colonial Hong Kong"

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Kelly Stone, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid, about her time at COP27 and where international diplomacy is taking offset markets and their governance.

Further reading: 

• CLARA's resources on 'net zero', including info on Article 6. 
• Read Kelly's articles on the ActionAid blog 
• 'Silicon Valley's non existent offsets', in Land and Climate Review 
• Visit our new collection, The Negative Emissions Gamble

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Long before Elon Musk's takeover drew accusations of increased disinformation on the platform, there was already a rapid growth of climate scepticism and denial on Twitter, according to research by The IRIS Academic Research Group.

Their analysis studied climate discourse during the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs), and found that criticism of climate action had grown from 1% of influential accounts during COP20 in 2014, to 16% of accounts during COP26.

Bertie spoke to two of the researchers, Professor Andrea Baronchelli and Dr. Max Falkenberg, to discuss this trend, and what might be driving it.

Futher reading: 

• Read the paper in Nature Climate Change
• Read Andrea and Max's commentary about the research on the LSE blog
• Read the IRIS blog about misinformation
• 'Climate-sceptic tweets surge after Musk’s Twitter takeover', The Times, 2/12/22

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was signed in 1959, and will not be modified until 2048. Climate diplomacy expert Dhanasree Jayaram tells Bertie about the environmental risks that could threaten Antarctica before then, including illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, militarisation, bioprospecting, increased tourism, and resource extraction.

Dr. Jayaram is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, and Co-Coordinator of the Centre for Climate Studies, in Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellow.

Further reading: 

• In 30 years the Antarctic Treaty becomes modifiable, and the fate of a continent could hang in the balance, The Conversation 

By Dr. Jayaram:

• 'Geopolitics, Environmental Change and Antarctic Governance: A Region in Need of a Transformative Approach to Science Diplomacy', Assessing the Antarctic Environment from a Climate Change Perspective
• 'Geopolitical and geoeconomic implications of climate change in the Arctic region: the future of contestation and cooperation', Understanding Present and Past Arctic Environments 
• 'Geopolitics, Science and Climate Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: An Assessment', Science Diplomacy Review
• Climate Diplomacy and Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to Roger Smith, Japan Director for Mighty Earth, about Japanese biomass imports and the risks of the country's coal power stations switching to wood-burning.

Further reading: 

• SMOKESCREEN: SUMITOMO’S “CARBON NEUTRAL” FAILURES 
• SUMITOMO CORPORATION’S DIRTY ENERGY TRADE: Biomass, Coal and Japan’s Energy Future
• Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia, Mongabay
• As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood?, Mongabay
• Fossil Free Japan
• Biomass Info, a resource library  (Japanese) 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In this episode, Lauren Sneade speaks to Professor Thane Gustafson for a second instalment on how the Russian oil industry affects the country's attitudes towards climate change, given the country's distinguished history of climate science. They cover how climate change has affected the country so far, and how Russian policymaking has responded, raising questions around the political will of Russian political figures to tackle the crisis.

Further reading:

Igor Makarov, Henry Chen & Sergey Paltsev (2020) Impacts of climate change policies worldwide on the Russian economy

Thane Gustafson, Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change. Harvard University Press

Tynkkynen, V. (2019). The Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Gordon, D. (2021). No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World. United States: Oxford University Press.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Professor Mike Norton, Environment Programme Director at the European Academies Science Advisory Council, about newly published research on neonicotinoid pesticides. 

In 2013, the European Commission severely restricted the use of several 'neonics' due to emerging research showing they had wide ranging harfmul environmental impacts on insect populations and ecosystems. But last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that Belgium had abused emergency authorisations to continue using them. Many Member States have similiarly authorised their continued usage since 2013, and the EU is now considering stricter legislation to prohibit the substances. 

Further reading: 

- Read the full EASAC report here, or the press release here.
- 'EU Court puts end to emergency use of bee-toxic pesticides', EURACTIV, Jan '23
- 'Commission’s verdict still out on EU court ruling on bee-toxic pesticides', EURACTIV, Feb '23
- 'Neonicotinoids in Africa' - a 2020 article by Mike for Chemistry World

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to fashion journalist and sustainability consultant Lucianne Tonti about her new book Sundressed: Natural Fabrics and the Future of Clothing.

They discuss issues with sustainability indexes and modern fibres created from crude oil and trees, vs the benefits of clothes made from natural materials produced through regenerative agriculture.

Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Futher reading: 

• Buy Sundressed from Island Press.
• Read Lucianne's column in The Guardian.
• Preorder To Dye For from Penguin.
• 'There is so much to say about plastic pollution. Why are we not talking about it?' on Land and Climate Review.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Wijnand Stoefs, Carbon Market Watch's policy lead on Carbon Removal, about how EU policy is developing around greenhouse gas removals. 

They discuss the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, along with other legislation like the Innovation Fund and the Sustainable Carbon Cycles Communication, as well as talking about risks with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and failures of France's Label Bas-Carbone. 

Futher reading: 

• Read Carbon Market Watch's position paper on the Carbon Removal Certification Framework here. 
• 'Environmental stewardship yes, ‘carbon farming’ no', Social Europe
• 'EU’s carbon farming plan comes under fire', Politico
• 'EU’s Carbon Removals Certification Framework is certifiably problematic', Carbon Market Watch
• 'EU member states’ haphazard approach to carbon removals puts climate goals and nature at risk', Carbon Market Watch
• Le Label Bas-Carbone : outil d’optimisation ou de transition? , Le Réseau Action Climat [French]
• 'What are the European Commission’s plans for negative emissions?', Land and Climate Review

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

The UK was the first major power to sign net zero into law in 2019, and was once considered a global leader on climate policy. After Brexit and a change of government, is the country failing to live up to its promises? 

Alasdair speaks to Dr. Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's Chief Scientist, about the UK's place on the global stage, how its net zero policies are progressing, and how the country is taking dangerous risks with nuclear and aviation. 

Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Professor Laura Murphy about international supply chains and forced labour in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, where more than a million Uyghur people have been detained in concentration camps.

The solar panel industry has been disentangling itself from the Uyghur genocide for several years, since researchers publicised how much polysilicon was produced by Uyghur forced labour. Professor Murphy's work has now found that the electric vehicle industry is risking a similar path, and that China uses Xinjiang as a production zone exempt from climatic or environmental regulation.

Podcast edited by Vasko Kostovski.

Read Professor Murphy's reports: 

• Driving Force: Automotive Supply Chains and Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region (2022)
• Built on repression: PVC building materials' reliance on forced labor and environmental abuses in the Uyghur region (2022)
• Financing & Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region (2022)
• In broad daylight: Uyghur forced labour in global solar supply chains (2021)
• And more on the Helena Kennedy Centre website.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Thomas Pellerin Carlin, Director of the EU Programme at the Institute for Climate Economics, about France's relationship with nuclear energy, growing support for legislation focused on sufficiency, and how party politics shapes these issues. 

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Following US Climate Envoy John Kerry's latest remarks on overpopulation, Bertie spoke to Diana Ojeda, Associate Professor in sustainability, environment and development at the Universidad de los Andes' Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies, about why many scholars and activists are wary of populationist narratives in climate planning.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'A feminist exploration of ‘populationism’: engaging contemporary forms of population control'
• 'Confronting populationism: Feminist challenges to population control in an era of climate change'
• 'Malthus’s specter and the anthropocene'
• Anne Hendrixson and Diana Ojeda's article on population for Uneven Earth 
• Betsy Hartmann’s webpage 
• PopDev’s short documents series
• 'For reproductive justice in an era of Gates and Modi – the violence of India’s population policies' by Kalpana Wilson 
• Libby Lunstrum’s work
• 'Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat' by Anne Hendrixson 
• Jade Sasser’s work

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Joëlle Gergis (@joellegergis) is an award-winning climatologist and writer based at the Australian National University. Her latest book, Humanity's Moment: A Scientist's Case for Hope, is a passionate and unsparing look at what has been lost but also what can still be saved - and why should still have hope. Dr Gergis draws on her experience as the lead author of Working Group 1, of the IPCC's latest assessment report (AR.6), as well as on her own experiences of facing up to the scale of the challenges posed by a rapidly warming natural world. She speaks to Edward Robinson. Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski. 

You can read more about Joëlle, including about her new podcast series at the Conversation, here and you can her order Humanity's Moment from Island Press, here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Professor Ángela Vergara about the history, economics, and environmental impact of mining in Chile.

Ángela Vergara is a member of the history faculty at California State University. Her books include Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Copper Workers, International Business and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile (Penn State, 2008).

Podcast Editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'The ‘Alterlives’ of Green Extractivism: Lithium Mining and Exhausted Ecologies in the Atacama Desert', International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement. 
• Stay tuned for our upcoming collection on www.landclimate.org, The future unrefined, coming next week - including content about Chilean mining!

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Copa Cogeca is the largest agricultural lobbying group in Europe, claiming to be "the united voice" of 22 million farmers. But a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports suggests the true size of their membership is far smaller than this - and that the group uses its unrivalled influence to block climate and environmental reform, and lobby for industrial farmers at the expense of smallholders.

Bertie spoke to award-winning journalist Thin Lei Win, Lighthouse's Lead Food Systems Reporter, about the story.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'Europe’s Potemkin Lobby' - Lighthouse Reports 
• 'The truth behind Europe’s most powerful farmers lobby' - Politico 
• View Copa-Cogeca's specific figures on lobbying spending on lobbyfacts.eu here.
• Greenpeace's Out of Balance report, mentioned in the interview.
• 'EU Investigating Agribusiness Lobby Group Copa-Cogeca Over Potential Transparency Breach', DeSmog
• Romanian language reporting on the story from Libertatea here and here.
• Danish language reporting on the story from Danwatch here.
• Polish language reporting on the story from OKO.press here.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Last week, after intense debate between member states, the UN's International Seabed Authority decided not to fast-track licences to start mining the deep ocean floor. But while waters have calmed for now, nothing is set in stone: talks renew in 2024.

Ahead of the conference, Alasdair spoke to Professor Mats Ingulstad, who is leading the TripleDeep research project at the Norweigan University of Science and Technology. They discussed the history of extraction in Norway & the development of discussions around deep sea mining, as well as the risks and rewards of this new frontier.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.
 
Further reading: 

• 'Deep sea mining: Here’s which countries oppose and support the controversial practice', Euronews, 2/8/2023
• 'Experts agree – deep sea mining is not worth the risk', Land and Climate Review, 13/7/2023
• 'A historical perspective on deep-sea mining for manganese nodules, 1965–2019', Ole Sparenberg
• 'The Mining Industry: Expanding, Deepening, and Widening since the 1750s', Ingulstad et al., 2023
• 'Marine minerals' role in future holistic mineral resource management', Ingulstad et al., 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

 A new investigation has revealed that a biofuel company called System Ecologica scammed the International Sustainability Carbon Certification, petrol companies, and EU governments, in a biofuel fraud case totalling tens of millions of euros. Regulators are increasingly worried that other companies may similarly be passing off unsustainable, imported vegetable oil as used cooking oil (UCO). This would have severe implications for emissions, deforestation, and the viability of a key EU climate initiative.

The findings were reported by Eli Moskowitz from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Mira Sys from Follow the Money, along with Mubarek Asani from the Bosnian Center for Investigative Reporting. Bertie caught up with Eli and Mira to get the full story.
 
Further reading: 

• Read Eli, Mira and Mubarek's story on OCCRP here.
• 'Multimillionaire convicted of tampering with biodiesel', Follow the Money, 22/7/23 (Dutch) 
• 'Europe Battles Flood of Green Fuel Suspected to Be Fraudulent', Bloomberg, 27/4/23
• 'Industry suspects fraud as flood of Chinese biodiesel destabilises market', Euractiv, 8/6/23

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

At the beginning of August, hundreds of NGOs signed a letter to Kenyan President William Ruto, alleging that US and European governments and companies had "seized" the inaugural Africa Climate Summit due to begin in Nairobi on Monday 4th September, in order to "hijack Africa’s just energy transition". 

Their criticism paid particular mention to international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, who were removed from the summit website and events calendar shortly after. Bertie spoke to one of the campaign leaders, Omar Elmawi, about these issues. 

President Ruto has denied that the summit has been "hijacked by foreign interests", telling the BBC that "African people will truly be represented" at the summit. McKinsey declined to comment, or answer our questions, but directed us to this press conference, and the question at 0:57.

Further reading:

• You can find the 'Real Africa Climate Summit' campaign website here, which includes the original letter.
• 'Africa Climate Summit: Kenya’s green growth pitch sparks justice concerns', African Arguments, 21/08/23
• 'Why fury has met McKinsey’s return in Nairobi summit', Daily Nation, 15/08/23
• 'Omar Elmawi Believes In an Africa Free From Fossil Fuels', Sierra, 27/4/23
• The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, 2023
• On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa, Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

 American agrochemical firm Monsanto was the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds until merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018. Its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping farms, landscapes and ecosystems all over the world. 

Bart Elmore is a professor of environmental history at Ohio State University, as well as an award-winning author. Alasdair spoke to him about his 2021 book on the history of Monsanto, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future.

Further reading:

• Click here to buy Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future 
• Click here to buy Bart's latest book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet
• 'The herbicide dicamba was supposed to solve farmers’ weed problems – instead, it’s making farming harder for many of them', The Conversation, January 2022
• 'Coca-Cola’s biggest challenge in greening its operations is its own global marketing strategy', The Conversation, May 2023
• Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, Ellen Griffith Spears, 2014
• Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2016

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In a controversial decision this week, the UK government approved development of a huge new oil and gas field in the North Sea. The Rosebank oil and gas field is majority owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor.

Following this news, Alasdair talked to Professor Jonas Fossli Gjersø (University of Stavanger) about the history of Equinor - previously Statoil - and the way it has shaped Norway's economy, history, and environmental policy.

Audio production by Vasko Kostovski. 

Further reading: 

• 'Britain approves huge, controversial oil and gas field in the North Sea', CNN, 27/9/23
• 'The Great Leap Offshore: Sino-Norwegian Relations and Petro-Knowledge Transfers, 1976–1997'  by Jonas Fossli Gjersø in Enterprise and Society, 2022
• Commerce and politics: Statoil and Equinor 1972-2001, Eivind Thomassen, 2022
• 'Norway wants to lead on climate change. But first it must face its legacy of oil and gas', Vox, 15/1/21
• 'A greener shade of black? Statoil, the Norwegian government and climate change, 1990—2005' by Ada Nissen in Scandinavian Journal of History, 2021
• Det svarte skiftet, Eivind Trædal, 2018 [Norweigan]
• 'A Short History of the Norwegian Oil Industry: From Protected National Champions to Internationally Competitive Multinationals' by Helge Ryggvik in Business History Review, 2015

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to John Vaillant, author of the Baillie Gifford shortlisted book Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World and explores how fire is evolving in the 21st century and if humanity is going to be sufficiently prepared to tackle its advance.

Fire Weather tells of the catastrophic wildfire in Fort McMurray in Canada in May 2016, and asks if the fire's surprising power and devastation is a harbinger for greater threats to our climate as we know it.

John Vaillant's recommended further reading:

• Less is More by Jason Hickel
• Energy and Civilisation by Vaclav Smil 
• 'Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show' by Inside Climate News

Audio production by Vasko Kostovski. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Nuclear energy is not renewable, but it is low-carbon. Whether it should be part of the post-fossil fuel power grid is heatedly debated.

Bertie took this question to Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow of the University of Sussex's Science Policy Research Unit, and the Chair of nonprofit institute the Nuclear Consulting Group. Dr. Dorfman is an expert in nuclear risk and has advised the Irish, UK, French and EU governments on nuclear policy.

Further reading: 

• 'Is nuclear power the key to reaching net zero?', by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, August 2023
• 'Saudi nukes: A desire for energy, weapons, or just leverage?' by
  Stasa Salacanin in The Cradle, October 2023
• 'The end of Oppenheimer's energy dream' by Allison Macfarlane in IAI News, July 2023
• 'The West hasn’t gone after Russia’s nuclear energy. Here’s why' by Clare Sebastian in CNN, March 2023
• 'The Debate: Nuclear is already well past its sell-by date' by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, May 2022
• 'Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why' by Paul Dorfman in The Conversation, June 2021
• 'Things fall apart' by Paul Dorfman in The Ecologist, October 2021

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to environmental journalist Stephen Robert Miller about his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature. Spanning Bangladesh, Japan, and Arizona in the US, it covers the risks involved in adaptating to changing climate and weather, and the deadly costs of poor planning.

Also featuring our new theme music - let us know what you think!

Further reading from Stephen Robert Miller: 

• Buy Over the Seawall from Island Press.
• 'When Climate Adaptation Backfires' in Discover Magazine
• 'Why Are We Paying for Crop Failures in the Desert?' in Apocalypse Soon
• '‘White gold’: why shrimp aquaculture is a solution that caused a huge problem' in The Guardian 
• 'What Should Farmers Grow in the Desert?' in Mother Jones 
• 'Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?' in National Geographic

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to Sir Dieter Helm, a Professor of Economic Policy at The University of Oxford, about his new book Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. Cambridge University Press has published the work online as a free open acess title.

Further reading: 

• Read Legacy for free here. 
• Video presentations and slides on the book's components can be found here. 
• The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen (Harvard University Press, 2011).

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

2023 was expected to be a big year for Europe in reducing harm from agrochemicals. But in a surprise move in November, European Parliament rejected a law to halve pesticide use. That same month, The European Commission stated it would renew the controversial approval of glyphosate for another 10 years.

What happened?

Alasdair talks to Dr Martin Dermine, Executive Director of Pesticide Action Network Europe, about why EU regulation of agrochemicals is moving so slowly.

Further reading: 

• 'Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is showing up in pregnant women', The Conversation, December 2023
• 'EU Commission hosts a secret 3-day meeting with the pesticide industry as their exclusive guest', Pesticide Action Network, December 2023
• 'Green Deal is dead', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
• 'Beneath the orange fields: Impact of Glyphosate on soil organisms', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
• 'Conservative backlash kills off EU’s Green Deal push to slash pesticide use', Politico, November 2023
• 'EU to renew herbicide glyphosate approval for 10 years', Reuters, November 2023
• 'Long-term evidence for ecological intensification as a pathway to sustainable agriculture', Nature Sustainability, 2022
• Listen to our previous episodes on Monsanto, EU lobbying, and Neonics.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In this episode Alasdair caught up with Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at campaign organisation Corporate Accountability to discuss their new research with the Guardian which found considerable flaws in the 50 most used offset projects.  He asked about the recent research and what value offset projects might actually have.

The Land and Climate podcast is produced by Vasko Kostovski

Recommended reading:

• ‘Revealed: top carbon offset projects may not cut planet-heating’, The Guardian, September 2023 
• ‘Gas-Lit: No, the Dubai Climate Talks Did Not Save the Planet’, Newsweek, December 2023 
• '10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted’, Climate Home News, December 2020
• ‘Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation’, Science, August 2023 
• ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Carbon Crediting’,Berkeley Public Policy, September 2023  
• ‘The Verra Scandal Explained: why avoid deforestation credits are hazardous’ London School of Economics Blogs, January 2023
• ‘The Land Gap Report’, Various, 2023 
• 'The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets'

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Agathe Bounfour, Oil Investigations Lead at Transport and Environment, about her investigation into the fossil funded research group CONCAWE.

The investigation revealed that CONCAWE undermined the European Union's attempt to regulate human exposure to benzene, a carcinogenic pollutant. After oil industry lobbying and research, the new regulated limit from 2024 will be ten times higher than the original suggestions from scientific agencies. 

Read the full investigation here.

Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• 'Action to tackle air pollution failing to keep up with research', The Guardian, 2023
• 'Benzene and worker cancers: ‘An American tragedy’', The Center for Public Integrity, 2014
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, 2012
• Doubt is Their Product: How industry's assault on science threatens your health, David Michaels, 2008 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

What are the impacts  of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees?

Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre. Dr Quiggin is an expert in the analysis of how national and global energy systems will evolve to 2050 and author of recent research on Net zero and the role of the aviation industry.

Further reading:

• Net zero and the role of the aviation industry, Chatham House, November 2023
• 'First net zero flight takes off but decarbonisation remains on runway', November 2023

Link to the Chatham House webinar on the research:
3pm GMT on Wednesday 31st January 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently stored underground.

The extent to which carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology should be a part of climate planning is contentious, but advocates often point to Norway's long-running CCS plants as proof that it can work.

Are Equinor's North Sea gas field facilities the gold standard for successful CCS, or have they had issues too? Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report exploring that question.

Bertie spoke to the report's author and IEEFA's Strategic Energy Finance Advisor for Asia, Grant Hauber, to hear about his findings.

Further reading: 

• Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?, IEEFA, 2023
• Blue hydrogen: Not clean, not low carbon, not a solution, IEEFA, 2023
• 'Carbon capture key to reaching net-zero, but climate chief urges caution', Euronews, 7/2/24
• 'What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
• 'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land and Climate Review, 2022
• 'Capturing and storing problems', Land and Climate Review, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.

They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.

Further reading:

• 'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023
• 'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023
• Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023
• The ever widening net: mapping the  scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022
• A manifesto for our ocean, 2023
• 'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.

Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”

Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.

Further reading: 

• Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations:  The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The Spin
• Read the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s Forests
• Read Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction
• 'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects.

The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya and Republic of the Congo. The investigation found that key promises have not been met around intercropping, and collected testimonies of alleged expropriation driven by Eni's business partners. T&E say farmers are now giving up on the projects.

To hear more details, Alasdair welcomed Agathe Bounfour back to the podcast, Oil Investigations Lead at T&E.

 Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.   

Further reading: 

• Read Agathe's op-ed about the investigation on Land and Climate Review. 
• Read T&E's full investigation.
• Read The Continent's front page cover story about the investigation. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.

Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.

Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.

Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.

Further reading: 

• Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer 
• ‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon
• ‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic
• ‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, Forbes

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?

Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.

His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.

Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.

Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here. 
• 'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021
• 'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023
• 'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.

Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.

Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America. 

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:

• Building on the IRA’s Farm Policy Momentum
• Harvesting Climate Benefits from the 2024 Farm Bill
• Ripe for Change 
• The Real Cost of Food

Peter’s book:

• Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.

Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a Europe-wide network of environmental citizens' organisations.

Alasdair and Faustine discuss the Nature Restoration Law, reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and what the upcoming European elections might mean for the future of EU agriculture.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• NGOs unite against EU’s rollback of green policies for the agrifood sector, Euractiv
• Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks, European Environment Agency
•  Open letter from the ECVC and IFOAM to Ursula Von der Leyen on CAP simplification, European Coordination Via Campesina 
•  European Pact for the Future, European Environmental Bureau
•  Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll, Desmog

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.

Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.

Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.

How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:  

• 'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024
• 'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024
• 'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024
• 'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022
• 'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conservative ambition for 15% of farmland.

Bhutan may be small, but on this issue it's a global outlier. Motivated by its policy to measure development in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, the South Asian nation has been slowly working towards becoming 100% organic since 2012 - and now has a target date of 2035.

Bertie spoke to Dr Sonam Tashi, an organic agriculture expert and Dean of Research & Industrial Linkages at the College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan, to hear about how Bhutan's organic transition is going.

Further reading: 

• 'Bhutan's challenges and prospects in becoming a 100% organic country', Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Asia Global Dialogue, 2022
• Case Studies of Successful Farmers, Agri-enterprises and Farmers' Groups and Cooperatives in Bhutan, 2022
• 'Farmers’ perception on transitioning to organic agriculture (OA) in Tsirang district, Bhutan', Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2022
• 'Bridging the Gap between the Sustainable Development Goals and Happiness Metrics', International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2019
• 'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', The Guardian, 2012

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.

Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.

Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.

The Price is Wrong  was published in February and is available to buy from Verso books here.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further listening:  

• 'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024
• 'Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024

Further reading:

•  'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024
• 'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024

Other books by Brett:

• Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023
• Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020
• The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis.

They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

Further reading: 

• Tax Wars, ICRICT
• 'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up to $220bn', Financial Times, 2024
• 'McDonald’s to pay more than €1B to settle French tax case', Politico, 2022
• It is time for a global asset registry to tackle hidden wealth, ICRICT, 2022
• 'L`affaire Elf en résumé', Challenges, 2007

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back.

Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue.

Further reading: 

• Buy To Dye For from Penguin Random House. 
• Visit Alden's website, EcoCult, for more reporting on these issues. 
• 'Hitting the gym or going to yoga? Your workout clothes could be doing more harm than you realize', CNN, 2023 
• 'That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think', New York Times, 2022
• 'Sick of smelly, plastic clothes? Blame oil and industrial farming', Land & Climate Review, 2023

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far. 

Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy. 

Further reading: 

• 'Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel', Roosevelt Institute, 2024
• 'Phase-in and phase-out policies in the global steel transition', Climate Policy, 2024
• 'Building a stronger steel transition: Global cooperation and procurement in construction', One Earth, 2023
• 'Paris compatible steel capacity: Contraction and replacement for zero emissions', Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund university, 2023

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues.

But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a staggering 5.5% of global emissions.

Bertie spoke to Lindsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, about the military emissions gap in carbon accounting, and the campaign for UNFCCC rules to be changed to acknowledge it. 

Further reading: 

• 'Russia’s war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows', The Guardian, June 2024
• 'Revealed: repairing Israel’s destruction of Gaza will come at huge climate cost', The Guardian, June 2024
• 'National climate action plans must include military emissions', CEOBS Blog, June 2024
• 'UNEA-6 passes resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflict', CEOBS Blog, March 2024
• 'Does reporting military emissions data really threaten national security?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024
• 'Ticking boxes: are military climate mitigation strategies fit for purpose?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024 
• Estimating the Military’s Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scientific concern, as the devastating impacts of crossing this threshold may not be reversible. 

In their new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton study this risky approach to policy, and the economic interests that they theorise have led to it. Alasdair spoke to them both about the new book.

Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, and the celebrated author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, among other works. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, and the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics.

Further reading: 

• Buy Overshoot from Verso Books
• 'The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C', The Conversation, August 2024
• 'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land & Climate Review, 2022
• 'What does the IPCC say about carbon removal?', Land & Climate Review, 2022
• 'Global warming overshoots increase risks of climate tipping cascades in a network model', Nature Climate Change, 2022
• 'Overshooting tipping point thresholds in a changing climate', Nature Climate Change, 2021
• 'Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?', in Has It Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink, 2020
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, Verso Books, 2020

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.

Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for the harmful textile imports and what can be done to alleviate the problem.

 Sam Quashie-Idun is Head of Investigations at Greenpeace Africa and a member of Land and Climate Review's investigations unit.

You can read the report here and watch Sam’s Instagram video summarising its findings here.

Further reading: 

• Poisoned Gifts, Greenpeace, 2023
• How to Ensure Waste Colonialism is Not Written Into Law and That Fashion’s Biggest Polluters Have to Change, The Or Foundation, 2023
• ‘‘It’s like a death pit’: how Ghana became fast fashion’s dumping ground’, The Guardian, 2023
• ‘European secondary textile sector ‘on the brink of collapse’’, Recycling International, 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier:
Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.

From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate change as a national security threat in the US. 

Threat Multiplier documents key environmental and climatic challenges during her career, such as negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and managing geopolitical risk in the Arctic as melting permafrost changes the ocean landscape.

Goodman is now Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center. 

Further reading: 

• Click here to buy Threat Multiplier from Island Press. 
• 'A career spent trying to make the military care about climate change', The Washington Post, August 2024
• 'The US Department of Defense’s Role in Integrating Climate Change into Security Planning', New Security Beat, May 2024
• 'Changing climates for Arctic security', The Wilson Quaterly, 2017
• National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

“In 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.”

Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities.

Titled Unheeded Warnings, the report warns that the Indonesian government’s plans for biomass power risk harming 10 million hectares of untouched primary forest, and "the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta — resulting in CO2 emissions almost five hundred times higher than current levels.”

Alasdair and Timer discuss the investigation process, the scale of these potential impacts, and the Indonesian Government.

To see photos from Timer's investigation, click here.

Further reading: 

• Read the full report, which includes maps outlining the threatened and logged forest areas: Unheeded Warnings: Forest Biomass Threats to Tropical Forests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Auriga Nusantara, October 2024
• 'Rush to Burn Wood for Energy Threatens Indonesian and Southeast Asian Forests & Communities', Auriga Nusantara, October 2024
• 'The President's new clothes', The Gecko Project, October 2024
• Bioenergy Explained, Land and Climate Review, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia. 

A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.

Bertie and María discuss the report’s findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots.

Further reading: 

• Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024
• The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021
• 'Colombia’s cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

This year, Land and Climate Review’s first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills. 

Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Review’s Canadian investigations, which were featured on BBC Newsnight. 

They discuss the process of uncovering environmental violations at wood pellet mills owned by Drax Group, which operates the UK’s largest power station, and how residents in Mississippi and British Columbia say they have been affected by the pollution from the mills. 

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski and Podcast House. 

Read the investigations: 

• ‘Drax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the US’, Land and Climate Review, November 2024
• ‘The Dirty Business of Clean Energy: The U.K. Power Company Polluting Small Towns Across the U.S.’, The Intercept, September 2024
• ‘Drax’s pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canada’, Land and Climate Review, May 2024
• ‘Drax faces penalty after Canadian biomass plant fails to submit pollution report’, The Independent, October 2023

Related episodes: 

• Are Canada’s sustainable forestry claims accurate? - with Richard Robertson from Stand.Earth
• Does bioenergy increase CO2 emissions more than burning coal? - with John Sterman from MIT
• What is BECCS and what does it mean for climate policy? - with Daniel Quiggin from Chatham House

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

One month ago, Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as the new president of Indonesia. An investigation by The Gecko Project has revealed that Subianto has invested in or owned companies involved with rainforest logging, coal mining, palm oil production, and industrial fishing - but many of the companies appear to be inactive.

Do these investments representing potentially concerning conflicts of interest, or are they par for the course? Are his own claims of enormous wealth accurate or exaggerated?

Alasdair speaks to the author of the Gecko Project research, Margareth Aritonang, who is also the Pulitzer Center's 2024 Rainforest Investigations Fellow for Indonesia.

Further reading: 

• Read Margareth's reporting here. 
• 'Activists fear supercharged ‘business as usual’ under Indonesia’s new president', Mongabay, November 2024
• The 'Indonesian environmental activists keep dying in suspicious circumstances', Gecko Project, September 2024 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

“The capitalist system is necessarily built on creating ecological crises.”

Bertie speaks to Ståle Holgersen about his new book Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World, in which he argues that, contrary to popular economic thought, economic crises are not triggered by ecological ones but instead the capitalist economy benefits from ecological crises. 

Bertie and Ståle discuss the ways in which crises are defined, the drawbacks to arguments for degrowth and the potential solutions to the climate emergency. 

Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the Zetkin Collective, an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists primarily working on the political ecologies of the far right.

Against the Crisis was published last month and is available to buy from Verso here.

Further reading:

• Read an extract from Against the Crisis on Land and Climate Review. 
• White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, The Zetkin Collective, 2021
• Searching for “Solutions” to Crisis: A Critique of Urban Austerity and Keynesianism, Uppsala University, 2018
• Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisis, Uppsala University, 2016

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In a recently published report, “Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests”,  Dr. Oscar Berglund and his colleagues identified four key mechanisms through which climate and environmental protests are repressed: the introduction of new anti-protest laws, the broadening use of existing legislation, excessive policing and killings and disappearances of activists. 

Alasdair and Oscar discuss the findings of the report and the ways in which the clampdown on climate protest represents a threat to both democracy and net zero targets. 

Oscar Berglund is Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. He is an expert on climate change activism and civil disobedience.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests, University of Bristol, 2024
• Civic Activism in an Intensifying Climate Crisis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2024 
• Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, Columbia University Press, 2024

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked global energy markets, and changed the EU's long and short-term plans for decarbonisation. But how have three years of conflict changed Ukraine's own policies and plans around energy security and net zero? 

Bertie discusses this issue with Ukrainian economist Maksym Chepeliev, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University, USA. 

Read Professor Chepeliev's research: 

• 'Net-Zero Transition in Ukraine: Implications for Sustainable Development Goal 7',  Aligning the Energy Transition with the Sustainable Development Goals, 2024
• 'Can Ukraine go “green” on the post-war recovery path?', Joule, 2023
• 'What is the future of nuclear power in Ukraine? The role of war, techno-economic drivers, and safety considerations', Energy Policy, 2023
• 'The role of bioenergy in Ukraine's climate mitigation policy by 2050', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021

See our previous episodes on: 

• nuclear power and net-zero, in which we discuss security concerns about Zaporizhzhia
• military emissions, in which we discuss the carbon cost of the Russia-Ukraine War
• the future of Russian oil, from 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to journalist Margot Gibbs about her investigation into a US government-funded PR firm that profiled pesticide scientists. 

Last autumn, Lighthouse Reports - in collaboration with media partners across Europe - published an investigation into v-Fluence, a US-based PR firm that worked to discredit anti-pesticide scientists and campaigners.

Alasdair speaks to Margot Gibbs, a journalist who led the investigation, about its findings and what it reveals about the agro-chemicals lobby.

Margot Gibbs is an investigative reporter at Lighthouse Reports focusing on money trails and food systems reporting. Before joining Lighthouse she was a reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Finance Uncovered. 

 Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• 'US-funded ‘social network’ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation', The Guardian, February 2025
• 'Poison PR', Lighthouse Reports, September 2024
• 'How the US agrochemical lobby is meddling in the future of Kenyan farming', The New Humanitarian, September 2024
• 'Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease', The Guardian, October 2022
• '"Monsanto papers": the pesticide giant's war against science', Le Monde, June 2017
• Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, 2010

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

With India kicking off 2025 with an historic space-docking experiment, and Elon Musk's growing power in the US government raising questions over the future of his spacecraft and satellite companies SpaceX and Starlink, we may be at the dawn of a new era for space exploration.

Unlike the 20th Century Space Race, however, it will likely be private companies that cross new mildstones - not public agencies. But who will regulate mining on the moon and tourism in space, and what are the environmental implications? 

Bertie talks about these issues with D. Raghunandan, Director of the Delhi Science Forum, as well as discussing the positive contributions of the space sector towards climate and environmental science. 

Further reading: 

• 'Indian Space Sector on a High This Year', News Click, February 2025
• 'Mining the moon for minerals could be worth billions, but astronomers warn it's bad news for science', Business Insider, February 2025
• 'India File: Jostling for position in the space race', Reuters, January 2025
• 'How Elon Musk’s partnership with Trump could shape science in the US — and beyond', Nature, December 2024
• 'Donald Trump’s approach to US space policy could throw up some surprises, especially with Elon Musk on board', Durham University, November 2024
• 'The dark side of SpaceX’s flight of innovation', People's Dispatch, November 2023

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

It is becoming common for the fossil fuel industry to sue governments that attempt to decarbonise over “lost future profits.” They do so via an obscure part of international law called international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that can allow them to extract billions in public money. 

Alasdair speaks to Eunjung Lee, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G. The two discuss how ISDS began, how the international treaties came to being predatory, and what measures countries should take to prevent the exploitation of the claims.  

Eunjung Lee is a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G and is the lead investigator of international investment governance. She previously served as a South Korean diplomat and has worked in the Korean embassy in London. 

Further reading:  

• Investment treaties are undermining the global energy transition  - E3G 
• The climate crisis requires a new approach to international investment treaties - E3G 
• The Energy Charter Treaty remains the most dangerous investment treaty to the energy transition - E3G 
• Clean investments shun Investor-State Dispute Settlements - E3G 
•  Investor-state disputes threaten the global green energy transition | Science 
• “Shocking and sad”: how corporations use investment agreements to block decarbonisation in the Global South - Land and Climate Review 
•  How Exxon is using international law to sue the Dutch government   

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Nearly half of the global agriculture market is controlled by four companies. This level of concentration - driven by decades of mergers and poor regulation - has allowed agribusiness “titans” to dominate the farming sector.  

Alasdair talks to Dr Jennifer Clapp, author of a new book about corporate domination of the farm sector and why it matters. Alasdair and Jennifer discuss how and why mass-merging has led to market distortions and high prices, and what solutions could improve the state of the sector.  

Dr. Jennifer Clapp is a Professor at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.  

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In 2022, the Swedish government granted an exploitation concession to Jokkmokk Iron Mines AB — a subsidiary of British company named Beowulf Mining — to develop an open-pit iron mine in Northern Sweden. The decision has been opposed by both Indigenous and environmental activists, who have expressed concerns about the mine’s impacts on Saami communities and the surrounding ecology.

Bertie speaks to Tor Tuorda about the long history of extraction and exploitation in the region, the erasure of Saami culture, and resistance from Indigenous and environmental activists. 

Tor Tuorda is a nature photographer and Indigenous campaigner based in Jokkmokk. He is a long-time opponent of the Kallak mine, and a prominent voice in Saami activism. 

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski. 

Further reading: 

• Read Tor's blog here [Swedish]
• 'EU’s raw materials plan an attack on Indigenous land and culture, says Saami Council', The Barents Observer, April 2025
• 'Swedish Court gives green light to controversial mining plans in Kallak', The Barents Observer, June 2024
• '‘The Klondike of ore mining’: Fighting for the Sami way of life', Al Jazeera, 2019

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Doug Parr, Chief Scientist and Head of Policy at Greenpeace UK about how British climate policy has changed and what might happen after the pandemic.  Doug also speaks about greenhouse gas removal technologies, what 'negative emissions' are and the risks of rising 'institutional greenwash' in climate policy and business. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Edward speaks to Prof Michael Norton, outgoing  director of the environment programme at the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC). Mike speaks about the need to understand what 'transformative change' actually is, the gap between science and policy urgency on environmental boundaries and on the flawed concept of GDP. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Edward and Alasdair speak to Sasha Stashwick, climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), on how the Biden Administration is  gearing up to tackle climate change and  issues with the use of biomass for tackling climate goals.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Chief Operating Officer of energy think tank Ember, Phil MacDonald, talks to Alasdair about the new challenges of decarbonising the global energy sector and what has been achieved so far in Europe in the UK.  

He explains how the gradual phasing out of coal use has switched the focus to other fossil fuels and how the UK's need to show climate leadership for the next COP may be creating unnecessary pressures for finding so called "negative emissions".

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Gareth Redmond-King, COP26 lead at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), talks to Alasdair about the preparations for the next climate talks in November.  

He explains what the crucial discussions will be on, the UK's role as a climate leader, recent odd missteps leading to the talks,  his take on existing progress and how he thinks talks will go.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Dr Dan Quiggin, Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House  currently researching the implications of using Bioenergy with Capture and Storage or BECCS .

He then asks Ember, Chief Operating Officer, Phil MacDonald [NB after 43mins] for his analysis of negative emissions,  BECCS and Dr Quiggin's findings.   

They reach sobering conclusions about the potential impact of pursuing BECCS to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to Lina Burnelius of Protect the Forest Sweden about the Swedish forestry model and the threat that industry poses to biodiversity and the survival of ancient Forests.

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair talks to Phil MacDonald, Chief Operating Officer of energy think-tank Ember, about new analysis which places Drax as the UK's single biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the UK and among the top 5 emitters in Europe. 

Phil provides a startling explanation of how a huge amount of carbon emissions are being missed, and how incentives exist for governments to use biomass for power because of an apparent accounting loophole around its use.

Read Ember's research here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

"If you follow the developments at Glasgow, everyone's looking for the Big Idea. This, in my mind, is an obvious one."

Bertie talks with veteran climate journalist Edward Struzik about his new book, Swamplands: tundra beavers, quaking bogs, and the improbable world of peat. They talk COP, burning peat for energy, the process of rewetting peatland, and Edward gives a cultural & historical background to peatlands, arguing that we still need to change cultural perspectives of our bogs, fens and marshes. 

• Buy Swamplands from Island Press here. 
• Read Bertie's review of the book here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

"In 2019, the use of United States sourced wood pellets in the UK was accountable for 16 million to 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, mostly burned by Drax. That is roughly equivalent to a quarter of all the emissions from the UK power sector."

Edward speaks to Duncan Brack, Associate Fellow at Chatham House and author of numerous reports into industrial-scale biomass  and forestry policy.

Read the report here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Lauren asks Dr. Mark Bould about his new book The Anthropocene Unconscious.

They discuss whether fiction goes far enough in representing narratives of climate crisis, ranging from Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’ to the 'Fast & Furious' franchise.

You can also read Lauren's review of 'The Anthropocene Unconscious' here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Is the net zero approach to climate mitigation working, or is it an unrealistic framework that does more to help corporations than the planet?

Professor Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York comes onto the podcast to discuss her new book, 'Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough' with Bertie.

You can order the book here from Verso, or read Bertie's review of it here. 

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

"There is more CO2 contained in the oil and gas reserves already being extracted than in our entire global carbon budget to keep warming under 1.5 degrees C."

Romain Loulalalen from NGO Oil Change International (OCI) tells Alasdair where we are on the global phase out of fossil fuels, what the current challenges are, how COP26 was significant and what political changes to expect in the next few years on oil and gas.  He also comments on whether the oil majors are genuinely committed to net zero targets.

Further reading: 

• Production Gap Report 2021
• Managing Peak Oil: a recent report by Carbon Tracker
• Oil Change International's Big Oil Reality Check
• Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance
• The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.