The Land & Climate Podcast
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
Episodes
83 episodes since 2021
Overshoot: has the world surrendered to climate breakdown?
In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this ta...
September 06, 2024
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30:18
Will military emissions ever be counted?
Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues. But Ukraine has helpe...
August 23, 2024
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16:12
Is green steel possible?
Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far. Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisa...
August 09, 2024
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29:15
Are toxic chemicals in fashion under-regulated?
Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back. Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks wi...
July 26, 2024
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36:32
Does tax dodging limit climate finance?
Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis. They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at...
July 12, 2024
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27:25
Can renewables ever be profitable enough?
Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research a...
June 28, 2024
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26:40
Can a country become 100% organic?
Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conse...
June 14, 2024
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30:04
What is commercial forestry getting wrong?
Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management. Peter and Alasdair discuss the ...
May 31, 2024
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33:16
Why is the EU backtracking on green agriculture?
Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bure...
May 17, 2024
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27:27
How does US agriculture affect climate change?
Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director o...
May 03, 2024
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29:53
Can nuclear waste teach us about long-term thinking?
Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this? Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's S...
April 19, 2024
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30:18
Are monopolies breaking our food system?
Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry. Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy...
April 05, 2024
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27:52
Why is Eni struggling to grow biofuels in Africa?
Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects. The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya ...
March 22, 2024
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18:18
Are Canada's sustainable forestry claims accurate?
Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard ...
March 08, 2024
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31:17
Are fishing laws doing enough for human rights and climate?
As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fis...
February 23, 2024
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28:41
What are the risks in storing CO2 underground?
This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently st...
February 09, 2024
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37:27
Are green flights clear for takeoff?
What are the impacts of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees? Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the ...
January 26, 2024
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37:11
How does fossil fuel-funded research affect policy?
Bertie speaks to Agathe Bounfour, Oil Investigations Lead at Transport and Environment, about her investigation into the fossil funded research group CONCAWE. The investigation revealed...
January 13, 2024
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28:00
Are carbon offsets mostly worthless?
In this episode Alasdair caught up with Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at campaign organisation Corporate Accountability to discuss their new research with the Guar...
December 22, 2023
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26:54
Europe was going to halve pesticide use - what happened?
2023 was expected to be a big year for Europe in reducing harm from agrochemicals. But in a surprise move in November, European Parliament rejected a law to halve pesticide use. That same month, The European Commission stated it would renew the...
December 08, 2023
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26:26
Can we build a sustainable economy?
Alasdair talks to Sir Dieter Helm, a Professor of Economic Policy at The University of Oxford, about his new book Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. Cambridge University Press has published the work online as a free open ace...
November 24, 2023
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28:45
What happens when climate adaptation goes wrong?
Bertie speaks to environmental journalist Stephen Robert Miller about his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature. Spanning Bangladesh, Japan, and Arizona in the US, it covers the...
November 10, 2023
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34:31
Is nuclear needed for net-zero?
Nuclear energy is not renewable, but it is low-carbon. Whether it should be part of the post-fossil fuel power grid is heatedly debated. Bertie took this question to Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow of the University of Sussex's Sc...
October 27, 2023
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26:48
Are we now in the century of fire?
Alasdair talks to John Vaillant, author of the Baillie Gifford shortlisted book Fire Weather: A True Story F...
October 13, 2023
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33:57
Has Equinor made Norway dependent on oil?
In a controversial decision this week, the UK government approved development of a huge new oil and gas field in the North Sea. The Rosebank oil and gas field is majority owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor. Follow...
September 29, 2023
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14:06