We need to confront political impossibility.A few months ago, I was sitting on a train bashing out a furious article about the British government’s climate incompetence. The man next to me was in a zoom call on climate change, vigorously shaking his head. I couldn’t help but ask. That’s how I met today’s guest, Jonathan Mille, a researcher at University College London’s Climate Action Unit, where he studies systemic risk and the impact of our interdependent global systems on climate change response. Jonathan focuses much of his attention on the physical and political possibility of the energy transition, and in today’s episode we discuss that exact tension between what is physically possible and what is politically possible. We explore the narrative challenge we face as a society, along with the distinct knowledge gaps found in industry, policy circles and business which create blind spots of psychological vulnerabilities, impeding the necessary psychological transition. © Rachel DonaldPlanet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today! Get full access to Planet: Critical at planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe
PolitikWirtschaftTalk
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Planet: Critical is the podcast for a world in crisis. We face severe climate, energy, economic and political breakdown. Journalist Rachel Donald interviews those confronting the crisis, revealing what's really going on—and what needs to be done. planetcritical.substack.com
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241 Folgen
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Folge vom 21.03.2024The Psychological Transition | Jonathan Mille
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Folge vom 14.03.2024Rewilding the Earth to Rewild Ourselves | Laura MartinWe need to restore our own ecology.That doesn’t just mean fencing off parts of the earth into “nature conservation” spaces because, as this week’s guest Laura Martin points out, what does that say about the space on the other side of the fence? That human spaces are unnatural? Or that they don’t deserve to be protected?Laura is an environmental historian, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College, and author of the extraordinary book, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration. She joins me to discuss how policies create crises, not just abstract notions of neoliberalism, fossil-fuelled capitalism, and industrialisation. She says that environmental policies offer us alternatives to our present. So which ones can we use to build a world that protects both ourselves and the species with whom we share this planet? We then discuss at length the difference between conservation and restoration, with ecological restoration—rewilding—offering a politics of care that sees humanity collaborate with fellow species to promote ecological well-being everywhere, from the grasslands to the inner city. © Rachel DonaldPlanet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today! Get full access to Planet: Critical at planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe
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Folge vom 07.03.2024Is Nuclear the Answer? | Mark NelsonNuclear: The perfect energy or perfect weapon.There are such widely-held—and understandable—fears surrounding nuclear that in 2023 the Green party in Germany were instrumental in decommissioning the nation’s final plants—in the middle of an energy crisis. The environmentalists in the sixtoies and seventies were key to the anti-nuclear movement which swept the world, with France one of the only nations to resist the calls to shut down the reactors for fear of states weaponising the waste. That decision means France is now one of the only energy resilient nations in Europe.There are obvious benefits to nuclear, and a new generation of nuclear engineers desperate to prove it. Mark Nelson is one of them. An engineer and consultant in the energy transition, Mark joined me to dispel myths around nuclear, where he believes the backlash started, and how we can transform existing fossil fuel infrastructure into truly renewable energy. We cover a lot in this conversation—including a couple of disagreements on the social and political angles—and there’s a lot to be mined in the episode. It certainly won’t be the last one on nuclear energy. Get full access to Planet: Critical at planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe
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Folge vom 29.02.2024Art, AI and Octopus | Mer Maggie RobertsCould AI be a natural intelligence?Artist Mer Maggie Roberts, cofounder of the collective Orphan Drift, has been investigating how the natural world can inspire technological development to resist continuing anthropocentrism. The more-than-human world has so many perspectives to offer which could open our eyes to our own blind spots, and encourage a politics of care, stewardship and understanding. We need diversity, more than ever, and not limited only to human experience. But AI, an unknowably powerful tool, is being coded in man’s image, with all the biases, reductionisms, flaws and dispassion we exhibit.Maggie sought to open up the fields of possibility with a project that imagines training an AI model on the experience of an octopus. Octopi are multi-perspectival creatures, boasting one brain in each leg and a ninth, central brain in their body. The way they experience the world is complex, nuanced and utterly different to our own experience. Building technology which reflects rather than consumes the natural world could be a critical tool in marrying man’s relationship to the wider world, which we discuss in this wonderfully wide-ranging and nuanced conversation on the role of art in a crisis.Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today! Get full access to Planet: Critical at planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe