Planet: Critical Folgen

“The ways in which we really value property, that to me is an extremely infinite growth capitalism, hyper-masculine and extractive and colonialist thought — this idea that property is as important as like the lives and comfort and kindness that we show people. We must show that same love and kindness and respect to property. And so in that way, I think that we could redefine nonviolence to include property destruction, destruction of specific property, which is essentially doing violence upon future generations or present generations of people in the global south.”Are we really going to protect private property at all costs?That’s the question myself and Rose Abramoff, an earth scientist and activist, circle around this week. We live in a violent world, one in which profiteering infrastructure kills, millions, threatens billions, and is tipping our planet over the edge. In the face of such violence, would sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure really be an equivalent act of violence? Or would it be a necessary act of sabotage to protect life on earth? Rose is one of the first earth scientists to be fired for protesting against the climate crisis. We discuss the reality of the emergency, how to view taking action as a science experiment, the different kinds of action around the world, and the ethics of property destruction. Rose began her career as a forest ecologist and now studies the effect of climate change and land use change on the land carbon cycle, with a focus on plants and soil. As an activist, she works on a variety of environmental justice issues with Scientist Rebellion and other groups. She has engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience targeting colonial resource extraction, luxury emissions, and fossil fuel expansion and funding. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Mastodon at @ultracricket© Rachel DonaldPlanet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

“If you think about how you might get out of this and get to something better, what really matters is the distribution of resources. Who has what? Who holds the wealth? And what are they doing with it? Government borrowing and quantitative easing, this sort of thing, can change some of that, but really when you get down to it, you're going to have to think about how you're going to tax some of that wealth because you need to shift actual resources around. The most effective mechanism we have for doing that is taxation.”Economics is a pretty bizarre field: A social science masquerading as an actual science, economics inflexibly dictates life, relationships, election manifestos and policy despite none of it being set in stone. The beauty of economics is we can radically overhaul our economic systems and institutions to better serve us, rather than being prey to the outputs of a haggard and worn out system. Such a realisation is, though, beyond the imagination of most economic leaders.But there are economists out there working to debunk the myths, cut through the noise, and creating policies which would serve both people and planet. James Meadway—former treasury advisor, member of the Progressive Economy Forum council, and the host of the Macrodose podcast—is one of them. He joins me to discuss the emergency and long-term policies we should implement to navigate the climate crisis, the economic crisis, and to radically overhaul and transition our societies to those which support life over productivity. We discuss some alternative frameworks that are being researched around the world, including de-growth and modern monetary theory, whilst James insists that which needs to be re-evaluated is value itself.Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

What to do when words get in the way?We see the world through language, reality shaped by the words we use to signify concepts, systems, relationships and even knowledge. This surreal layer over the world then becomes more true to us than reality itself, shaping desire, hatred, ideology and conviction. Yet, we have evolved with language, we need it to make sense of the experience of being human. So, how do we reimagine our relationship to language so it may reveal the real instead of hide it?This is what Ray Ison and I discuss in today’s wonderful episode. Ray is a Professor in Systems at the Open University who has been investigating systems and language for decades. We discuss relational dynamics, metaphor theory, knowledge creation, governance, meaning and obfuscation.Ray also explains other forms of signification and communication being explored in the systems community, and how we can participate with language to deframe the world as we see it and reveal its true complexities.Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe