Planet: Critical

Rachel Donald

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Planet: Critical

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. www.planetcritical.com

-4 D.

Animal Agriculture Exceptionalism | Kenny Torrella

Big Oil has a Big Brother — animal agriculture. A handful of multinational companies are driving environmental degradation and cruelty around the world to feed their pockets rather than the hungry’s bellies. Welcome to the world of animal agriculture, an industry which gets away with practices which would be considered illegal in any other sector. Vox reporter Kenny Torrella lays out how this destructive industry has inserted itself into policy at every level of government, ensuring policy-makers ignore the fact the sector is the number one driver of air and water pollution, fresh water use, and habitable land exploitation. While some Nordic governments are trying to push back, as Kenny explains, the EU bloc as a whole is deliberately undermining the plant-based food industry while the meat-heavy American diet remains the aspiration for “developing” economies around the world. This episode is both devastating and revealing — but Kenny ends on a note of hope, explaining how, because this industry functions in the shadows, the movement against it politically homeless, meaning it could generate bipartisan support for animal-human-planetary health. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

54 min
20. FEB.

How to Cool the Planet | Sailesh Rao

What is one thing we could all do tomorrow? Switch to a planet-based diet. Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers, joins me to explain how emissions from animal agriculture are not being counted properly in the IPCC report, claiming that animal agriculture is, when analysed properly, responsible for 87% of climate change. Sailesh offers his hypothesis as to why animal agriculture isn’t taking as much heat as the fossil fuel industry, and of course I challenge his position which is contrary to most climate science which points to energy as the leading cause of climate change. We go on to discuss strategies of non-violence, the problem of human supremacy, and how our relationship towards meat impacts our capacity to address the roots of the climate crisis: colonisation and domination. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

51 min
13. FEB.

The B******t Stinking Up Silicon Valley | Ed Zitron

Ed Zitron is one of Silicon Valley’s fiercest critics. Since A.I’s arrival, Ed has virulently exposed its singular lack of intelligence, its huge energy demands, and the dangerous way its hoovering up attention and capital on nothing more than the vague promises of a couple of zealots. He joins me to reveals the myths that abound in the Valley, and the reality that everyone has run out of ideas. He explains that Big Tech is no longer run by techologists but by “barely smart” capitalists who are desperately banking on A.I. to create a new hyper growth market to pull their flailing companies out of their slumps. He walks us through the “enshittification” of tech — why things are getting worse, who’s in charge, who’s pretending to have ideas, and how these powerful men build up their images as geniuses rather than grossly wealthy headless chickens. Sadly, this episode was recorded before Elon’s rapid takeover of the American government and China’s humble popping of the A.I bubble (proving Ed right). Get his take on DeepSeek on his Better Offline podcast, or read his lengthy investigation into Elon Musk on his newsletter. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

57 min
6. FEB.

The Smallest Parts | Craig Slee

Where does your body end? The human body is filled with ecosystems of creatures keeping us alive. It exists within larger ecosystems keeping us alive. Yet considering ourselves as separate and apart, as whole and contained, dismisses the reality of our interconnection. What keeps us alive is everything, from the smallest things to the large web of life. Our very existence is an entanglement of possibility. To understand it, we have to figure out a way to think together, with our bodies, and the earth's body. Craig Slee is a writer and theorist, and he joins me to discuss the permeability of our bodies and therefore of reality itself. This is a conversation about capitalism, ableism, suffering and language, how to find the words from our throats, and how to feel into the very edges of who we are, who we could be, and where, together, we can do. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

1 t 9 min
30. JAN.

Climate Violence | Peter Schwartzstein

A hotter world is a more violent world. Peter Schwartzstein is an environmental journalist and researcher, and author of The Heat and the Fury which investigates the relationship between violence and climate change. He joins me to explain how a changing climate is creating pockets of violence in poor and rural communities around the world. Local and national governance failures are driving violence, with the changes to the earth's body being felt in our own. Taking us all around the world, Peter explains the particular set of circumstances which generate violence, given communities often do their utmost to avoid clashing. Climate change alone does not brew violence, but combined with a loss of sense of self and an awareness of wealth disparity, people turn to extremes to protect themselves from further abandonment. We then turn this model on this West, hypothesising how violence could spring up in liberal democracies where increasingly people are feeling let down by their elected officials. Finally, we explore the trauma of watching the earth break down around us, and how people's minds are being lost with the stability we once knew and relied upon, inspiring behaviour that was also once previously unimaginable. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

57 min
23. JAN.

Israel's Campaign To Destroy Life | Samaneh Moafi

Samaneh Moafi is the Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture, a research agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art, academia and the law. Their interdisciplinary investigations have been crucial in providing evidence in cases of state violence where ordinary and typical investigative journalism has failed. Samaneh joins me today to discuss their most recent report released on the state of genocide in Palestine at the hands of Israel. ‘A Cartography of Genocide’ shows how Israel has repeatedly reshaped the Gazan territory, attacked citizens in safe zones, destroyed food and water systems, targeted medical infrastructure, attacked civilian infrastructure and targeted aid. They have come to the conclusion that the violence in Gaza is a systemic and organized campaign to destroy life. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

43 min
16. JAN.

Planetary Solvency | Sandy Trust

Ecological collapse doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Our global economy will also collapse by up to 50% before the end of this century if we continue as we are. That’s the latest diagnosis by an interdisciplinary team who are sounding the alarm that current national climate policies are not enough to mitigate the damage to ecology and economy. The Institute of the Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter today published Planetary Solvency which warns that widely used but deeply flawed assessments of the economic impact of climate change render policymakers blind to the immense risk created by current trajectories. Sandy Trust, actuary and co-author, joins me to explain how these flawed assessments play out in climate policies and an alternative methodology for calculating risk laid out in the report. This is Sandy’s second time on the show, as in 2023 he joined me to explain how the world of finance underestimates the destruction climate change will cause on our economy after 1.5 degrees of warming. The update is no less frightening—especially, as Sandy reveals, given policy makers have little interest in heeding the warnings of experts. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

51 min
9. JAN.

Climate Criminals | Aaron Regunberg

How do we take Big Oil to the criminal courts? There's been a major wave of climate litigation over the past 12 months, mostly in civil courts. But groups around the world are figuring out how to make polluting the planet a criminal offence. They're targeting the fossil fuel industries to attempt what governments, so far, are failing to do: Hold Big Oil to account, and stop them dead in their tracks before the whole world goes up in smoke. Aaron Regunburg is is a lawyer and progressive politician who served as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. Since leaving government, Aaron has become a progressive organiser, serving as senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program. Aaron joins me to discuss the legal case they're building in order for local and state courts to take big oil companies to criminal trial for their part in causing climate change and human death. He explains the legal layout of those cases, the precedent of criminal liability, what a positive result of these cases could look like, and the different strategies and going after both companies as legal entities and individual CEOs and board members as criminal defendants. 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 www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

1 t 6 min

3,7

av 5

3 vurderinger

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. www.planetcritical.com

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Rachel Donald
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2020 - 2025
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210
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© Rachel Donald
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