
74 episodes

Planet: Critical Rachel Donald
-
- Society & Culture
-
-
5.0 âą 13 Ratings
-
It's a critical time for our planet. We face severe ecological, economic and energy crises. Journalist Rachel Donald interviews experts confronting those crises head on, revealing the big picture of what's really going on.
www.planetcritical.com
-
Pro-Power: How the Far Right Stole America | Katherine Stewart
Katherine Stewart is an investigative reporter and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Sheâs spent the past 12 years investigating how USAâs far right got organised after the original Roe vs Wade ruling, using abortion to polarize political debate in the USA and unite a multi-denominational movement to enact their vision of white ethno-nationalism.
She joins me to explain how abortion became key to their rise to power; how theyâve spent the past 50 years inserting themselves into education, legislature, and government; the deep network of funders, organisations and individuals whose sole wish is to take power back from the Left.
These people arenât pro-life. Theyâre pro-power. And to claw it back from them, Katherine says we need to begin organising with the same vigilance and determination they exhibit.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Listen on Youtube
Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisisâand what to do about it.
© Rachel Donald
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe -
Global Climate Compensation | Henrik Nordborg
Henrik Nordborg is a physics professor at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, and program director for the universityâs Renewable Energy and Environmental Technology. He began giving public lectures about the climate crisis some years ago when he felt his students deserved more honest information about the state of the world and the looming crisis. This led to him developing the Global Climate Compensation, a plan to tax fossil fuel companies and redistribute those funds to every nation around the world.
Henrikâs plan differs from other carbon tax proposalsâhe wants to tax fossil fuel companies at production, not from calculations of their emissions. He says this not only prevents companiesâ capacity to skew the data, but actually involves no additional accountingâthese companies know exactly how much theyâre producing because thatâs where their profits come from.
The redistribution factor is equally key. This fund would be redistributed around the world, per capita, and governments could then choose what to do with that money. It could provide a buffer for developing nations to begin their own energy transition. This is crucial in a world where Western nations are avoiding paying climate reparationsâLoss and Damages paymentsâwhich Global South nations have tried to bring to the table at Cop conferences.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Watch on Youtube
Read the interview transcript
Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.
© Rachel Donald
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe -
The Meaning Crisis | Jeremy Lent
Jeremy Lent is an author and integrator whose dedicated his life since the dot com boom to understanding meaning: how to find it, how to make it, and how to apply it.
Author of renowned books âThe Web of Meaningâ and âThe Patterning Instinctâ, Jeremy joins me to discuss how to combine traditional knowledge with scientific understanding to navigate the polycrisis, the impact of cultural worldviews and how to shift them, and how we can use interconnectedness as a foundation to create a better and more diverse world.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Watch on Youtube
Read the interview transcript
Bonus video out on Monday
Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.
© Rachel Donald
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe -
Understanding Resilience | Graeme Cumming
How do we build resilient systems? How do we allow for transformation? How do we encourage adaptation? How does this apply to both to ecosystems and human systems? And how we use this to better understand and tackle the climate crisis?
These are questions Professor Graeme Cumming answers on todayâs episode. Graeme is the Director of the Arc Center of Excellence coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia. An ecologist by training, his research increasingly focuses on socio-ecological functions, problems and resilience in systems.
He explains what dung beetles can teach us about political division, why resilience is not enough on its own, and ultimately why we cannot use ecological systems as an exact map for understanding the complexity of human systems.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Watch on Youtube
Read the interview transcript
Bonus video out on Monday
© Rachel Donald
Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe -
Creating Complex Solutions | Asher Miller
One of the greatest challenges we face when tackling the polycrisis is understanding and applying a diversity of approaches. This means recognising the solutions are as complex as the crisis itself. There is no singular, simple answer.
Accepting the ecosystem of solutions we need to implement also comes with accepting both unknown variables and the fact that different people are going to attempt different thingsâbut each attempt is valid, and potentially plays a significant role in the bigger picture. A diversity of approaches demands a diversity of understanding. It also demands accepting weâre not always going to agree with how some choose to fight the battle.
Asher Miller, CEO of Post Carbon Institute, joins me to discuss this very problem on todayâs episode. He explains the role the Institute has played in pointing out the severity of the crisis, the dangers of oversimplifying or universalising responses, and how to apply systems thinking to creating complex solutionsâand just how tough that can be.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Watch on Youtube
Read the interview transcript
Bonus video out on Monday
© Rachel Donald
Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe -
Creating Deliberative Democracies | Susan Clark & Tom Prugh
âToo many cooks spoil the broth.â Thatâs the old adageâbut could the opposite be true when it comes to politics?
Researchers and writers Susan Clark and Tom Prugh say so. Their research into deliberative democracies show that inviting local communities to take responsibility for local governance improves engagement, depoliticises debate, and achieves excellent results. And the best thing about it? The more people see their impact in the community, the more responsibility they takeâcreating even better results every time.
Whatâs even more exciting is the deliberative democracy model scales up. It may not be âfastâ, like the political processes we live in today, but it might just be the model we need to empower citizens to confront the climate crisis and hold their leaders to account.
Listen on Apple or Spotify
Watch on Youtube
Read the interview transcript
Bonus video out on Monday
© Rachel Donald
Planet: Critical is a resource for a world in crisis, supported by people like you. Join the community by becoming a subscriber today.
Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
Customer Reviews
Top topics for hungry minds
Covering some huge and interesting topics that concern us all, Rachel as a presenter brings a great energy to these often intimidating subjects, making them approachable and opening up a new perspective for us all to be dazzled by! She suppprts the underdog and gives the right people that you don't usually hear about, the platformt they deserve! Top notch business. Get it in your ears (and now eyes! the video podcast is class as well!!!!)
Life is Political
Great podcast for chewing the fat, putting the world to rights and generally being more conscious about the world we live in.
Hydrology twins Excellent podcast!
Salton Sea California a shocking disgrace ! The US should be ashamed I was there over 40 yrs ago hugely polluted back then thousands of dead fish floating on surface An enormous man made inland sea a true disaster Astonished to hear still the same if not worse a real testament to how the environment has been bottom of the list in concerns of each and every government since then !!!! Come on President Joe Biden put your money where your mouth is and show the world your government DOES care!
Good luck to the twins on their environmental adventures this is made for TV, Production companies snap them up quick they are win win all the wayđ
L. Donnelly