The Land & Climate Podcast

Land and Climate Review

The editorial team from The Land and Climate Review interview thinkers and policymakers in the world of economics, land-use and climate policy. Find more on our site at www.landclimate.org

  1. 2d ago

    Is geoengineering a security threat?

    Geoengineering research is growing, as scientists look for increasingly radical means to protect humanity from the disastrous impacts of global heating. Less publicly, concerns are also building about the use of these techniques for geopolitical disruption or control.  Technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM) and stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) are controversial amongst climate scientists: they could buy us time through a temporary cooling effect, but they would not actually stop global heating, and could cause other negative impacts. Danielle Young tells Alasdair that scientific research on these technologies often lacks alignment with political realities. While scientists plan for multilateral governance regimes to protect global populations from heat, government and military officials are more likely to think about SRM or SAI in terms of weaponisation and international power struggles.  Dr Danielle Young is an Assistant Professor in Politics and International Studies at The University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the geopolitical and security implications of emerging solar geoengineering technologies.  Further reading:  'Why we need to explore conflict and competition around solar geoengineering', PLOS Climate, 2026'Who could deploy stratospheric aerosol injection? The United States, China, and large‐scale, rapid planetary cooling', Global Policy, 2025 'How will capitalism react to climate collapse?', Land and Climate Review, 2025'Who Can Govern from a House on Fire? International Order, State Responsibility, and the Problem of Solar Radiation Modification', Ethics & International Affairs, 2024'Scientific models versus power politics: How security expertise reframes solar geoengineering', Review of International Studies, 2024'Considering stratospheric aerosol injections beyond an environmental frame: The intelligible ‘emergency’ techno-fix and preemptive security', European Journal of International Security, 2023'Do-or-Die: Should we be talking about geoengineering?', Land and Climate Review, 2022'The Geopolitical ecology of solar geoengineering: From a ‘logic of multilateralism’ to logics of militarization', Journal of Political Ecology, 2020Geoengineering, the Anthropocene and the End of Nature, Jeremy Baskin, 2019‘The entwined Cold War roots of missile defense and climate geoengineering’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2019Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  2. Jul 10

    Are financial markets destroying climate ambition?

    Click here to watch the video recording of this interview.  In her latest book, Ann Pettifor argues that we are not governed by politicians or diplomats, but “by wealthy and powerful players in markets based in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the City of London.” These players, she says, largely either ignore the threat of climate breakdown, or see it as a struggle for resource control. The “unregulated actions of private actors and institutions in global markets have led to the increasingly rapid breakdown of the world’s climate and ecosystem.” In a special episode of The Land and Climate Podcast, recorded live in front of an audience as part of London Climate Action Week, Bertie and Ann discuss the influence financial markets exert over climate policy, and strategies to reassert democratic control. Ann Pettifor is a political economist known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, successfully campaigning to cancel approximately $100 billion in debt owed by poor countries, and for co-authoring and advocating the Green New Deal.  In January 2026, Verso published her latest book, The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet. Buy a copy from Verso's website before 31st July and recieve 30% off with the following discount code: CLIMATEREVIEW30  Further reading:  Ann's Substack, System Change.The Case for the Green New Deal, 2019The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, 2018Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  3. Jun 26

    Can ocean technologies combat climate change?

    Most net zero policies and major scientific models rely on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to limit global heating to 2℃. The most commonly known methods include afforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture, and direct air capture - but various proposals are emerging for ocean-based CDR technologies.  Could marine CDR offset emissions from sectors that cannot easily decarbonise, or are the costs and risks too great? Bertie sat down with oceanographer David Ho to discuss these questions, shortly after he returned from the 4th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal in Milan.  David Ho is a professor at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and a lead author on the upcoming IPCC methodology report on carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. His 2023 article for Nature criticising overreliance on CDR has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Further reading:  'Three challenges to marine carbon dioxide removal', npj Ocean Sustainability, November 2025Principles for responsible and effective marine carbon dioxide removal development and governance, 2025'Marine carbon dioxide removal may be a future climate solution', Dialogues on Climate Change, November 2024'Can coastal and marine carbon dioxide removal help to close the emissions gap? Scientific, legal, economic, and governance considerations',  Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, August 2024'Deployment expectations of multi-gigatonne scale carbon removal could have adverse impacts on Asia’s energy-water-land nexus', Nature Communications, July 2024'Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative', Nature, April 2023Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  4. Jun 12

    Was Chinese history shaped by climateflation?

    The 17th Century Little Ice Age wreaked havoc on weather systems and economies around the world. In China, extreme cold and intense droughts led to soaring grain prices, and as food security collapsed, so did the centuries old political regime of the Ming dynasty. Alasdair speaks to Tim Brook about his groundbreaking book ‘The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China’. They discuss the importance of climate changes in the rise and fall of empires, and the lessons that can be learned from climate-induced famines in dynastic China.  Dr Book is a Canadian historian and an Emeritus Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He held the Republic of China Chair at UBC’s Centre for Chinese Research until his retirement in 2022.  Further reading: ‘What is climate-flation?’, Land and Climate Review, March 2026The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China by Timothy Brook, 2023The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720 by Dagomar Degroot, 2018‘Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries’, WIREs Climate Change, March 2018‘Nine sloughs: profiling the climate history of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, 1260-1644’, Journal of Chinese History, November 2016 The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties by Timothy Brook, 2013Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  5. May 29

    What is the history of extinction?

    Scientists warn we are in an age of mass-extinction. Entire species are ceasing to exist at unprecedented rates. When did this age begin, and when did humans start to confront their impacts on ecosystems and living populations?   Sadiah Qureshi explores extinction as ‘unnatural’ and inherently political, by placing humanity at the centre of her latest book, 'Vanished: an Unnatural History of Extinction'.  In conversation with Bertie, she traces the history of the concept of extinction in European thought and its connection with settler-colonial politics. Bertie and Sadiah also discuss present day conservation policy, and echoes of imperialist thought within it.   Sadiah Qureshi is a Chair of Modern British History at the University of Manchester, and a historian of science, race and empire.  Further reading ‘Vanished: An Unnatural History Of Extinction,’ is available to purchase from Penguin here.This week, Professor Qureshi delivered the annual Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture for the Royal Society. You can watch that here.'What can histories of Empire teach us about modern environmental efforts?', The British Academy, December 2025'Reversing extinction', aeon '‘A billionaire will pay a lot of money to shoot a recreated being’: historian Sadiah Qureshi on extinction and empire', The Guardian, June 2025Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  6. May 15

    Has the plastics industry co-opted the circular economy?

    Last year, multilateral negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty broke down after countries failed to agree to limits on plastic production - as opposed to simply regulating plastic waste.  This distinction between 'upstream' and 'downstream' measures to tackle plastic pollution is a point of contention between industry and campaigners, with the plastic lobby favouring recycling advocacy over efforts to curb plastic production.  Alasdair discusses this issue with Dr Rob Ralston, who researches the different stakeholders within the industry lobby, and the ways in which this bloc has co-opted formerly radical policy frameworks, such as the idea of 'circular economy', to delay major policy interventions.  Rob Ralston is a lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh, and an expert in global health and environmental politics. Further reading:  Click here for our other podcasts and articles on plastic pollution on Land and Climate Review. 'Ultra-processed foods are a key driver of the global plastics pollution crisis', Nature Food, April 2026'The battle for plastic hegemony: the petrochemical historical bloc and the UN Global Plastics Treaty', Review of International Political Economy, March 2026Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty, Greenpeace, 2024The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, Center for Climate Integrity, 2024'Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics', Global Environmental Politics, April 2021Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  7. May 1

    Is the idea of 'energy transition' misleading?

    What happens after a country's electricity infrastructure is destroyed by war? Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Turkish conglomerate Karadeniz Holding had an innovative idea: if ships could be retrofitted as floating power plants, they could be quickly deployed to countries in crisis, then moved elsewhere again when needed.   Gökçe Günel returns to the Land and Climate Podcast to discuss her latest book, which uses the history of ‘powerships’ and their operations in Ghana to analyse the unexpected ways that geopolitics, business and conflict shape energy systems, and to question the concept of a linear energy transition.   Gökçe Günel is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Her 2019 book “Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi” explored Masdar City project - discussed in our previous episode here. Her new book, “Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations,” published by Duke University Press, is available to purchase here.  Further reading:   ‘Energy accumulates: Ghana shows that the “energy transition” is more myth than fact’, Land & Climate Review, 2026  ‘Cin Fikir: Infrastructure, War and Progress’, Against Catastrophe, 2025 ‘Leapfrogging to Solar’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 2021 ‘Energy Accumulation’, e-flux Architecture, 2020,   Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, 2019 Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

  8. Apr 17

    How do trade unions influence climate policy?

    The labour movement has contributed to climate and environmental policy for decades, and developed the concept of a ‘just transition’. Despite this, the relationship between unions and climate policymakers can be strained, with concerns from both parties about how the other will approach job losses from phasing out fossil fuels.   How has trade union policy on decarbonisation developed over the decades, and what are union leaders’ perspectives on more radical academic arguments, such as the need to structure economic policy around other metrics than GDP?  With particular focus on Germany and the UK, Bertie talks to Vera Trappmann about union engagement with green policymaking, what a just transition means for workers, and how this varies between Global North and South.  Vera Trappmann is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at Leeds University, where she co-leads the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. Her work focuses on climate change’s impact on workers, as well as union movement perspectives and policies on climate issues.  Further reading:   'Perspectives on Social and Justice Issues in Climate Policy – Comparing the Just Transitions, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-Social Policy Literatures', Milena Büchs, Vera Trappmann, Gina Moran, Max Koch, WIREs Climate Change, 2026'Trades unions, climate policy and just transition in the UK', Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, Ursula Balderson, 2026'German Trade Unions and Decarbonisation: A Transition to Green Growth, A‐Growth or Degrowth?' Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrial Relations Journal, 2025What workers want: Conditions for a fair and just transition in the UK, Vera Trappmann, Jo Cutter, and Alice Garvey, 2025'Conjunctures of eco-social partnership unionism: The German Trade Union Confederation’s climate policies over three decades', Vera Trappmann, Dennis Eversberg, Felix Schulz, Industrielle Beziehungen, 2024Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

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About

The editorial team from The Land and Climate Review interview thinkers and policymakers in the world of economics, land-use and climate policy. Find more on our site at www.landclimate.org

Information

  • Creator
    Land and Climate Review
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    130
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Land & Climate Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Land & Climate Podcast

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