Planet: Critical Folgen

Human population is a problem—tackling it through education isn’t.We need to slow our global fertility rate to 1.5 children per woman if we’re to lower our population to a sustainable level of around 3 billion. That decline is already happening in many post-industrial nations, to the chagrin and panic of their leaders. However, many cultures around the world still prize large families. But in a world of increasingly scarce resources like water, limiting family sizes remains the main driver of some campaigners, including Bill Ryerson.Bill is an ecologist and founder of the Population Media Center, an initiative which creates mainstream entertainment in many nations around the world, pushing the needle on cultural practices to drive behaviour change on population and even gender violence. PMC produces telenovelas and radionovelas which have seen fertility rates decline in nations they’ve been shown.Bill and I spend the first half of the episode talking about the population problem, the policy problems, the history of population growth. He then introduces the concept of the demographic dividend, which showed that small families actually lead to economic growth, before explaining the successes and heartwarming stories of the work PMC has done around the world.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 planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe

It’s so much more than “climate change”.The most biodiverse regions of the world are under threat. Beyond the models, the data, the papers and the Twitter spats, the world’s ecosystems are collapsing under the pressure of mankind’s interference, extraction and exploitation. The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, has been mined, plumbed and sawed for its resources to the extent it may soon become a carbon emitter as its systems begin to decay. Protecting it is vital in the fight against our own destruction. Paul Rosolie set out to do just that when he was 18 years old.Paul is a conservationist, writer, speaker, filmmaker, protecting 55000+ acres of Amazonian habitat and wildlife Director of JungleKeepers and Tamandua Expeditions. His memoir, Mother of God, documents his years spent deep in the jungle fighting to save it. Paul joins me to discuss this and more. He reveals the gifts of the Amazon and the lessons to be learned from its inhabitants. He also explains the limitations of typical conservation efforts due to the pressures of our globalised financial system. Finally, he gives a vision for what conservation could be in the future—and a call to action for those who understand the depth of the emergency.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 planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe

“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 planetcritical.substack.com/subscribe