What's Really Warming the Planet | Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop
Ask anyone anywhere what’s the leading cause of global heating and they’ll tell you: fossil fuels. But what if we’re all wrong? Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop is a scientist for the World Preservation Foundation and worked as a Principal Scientist with Queensland Government Natural Resources, using satellite data to monitor three decades of vegetation cover and broadscale deforestation. In February 2025, he released a paper showing how the IPCC is using different models to calculate the emissions from fossil fuels and animal agriculture. Gerrard researches shows, when we use the same model for both, animal agriculture becomes the biggest driver of global heating. In this episode, Gerard explains his research and other problems with emissions calculation, including how deforestation is disregarded and methane is misrepresented. He calls all of this inconsistent emissions accounting—and it could be leading policy-leaders astray. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
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Resilience is Resistance | Max Wilbert
How do we survive?Max Wilbert is a long-time activist who spent the past few years defending Thacker Pass, and recently joined CELDF to as part of their new strategy to build out community resilience. I first interviewed Max on why techno-optimism won’t save the day. As with many compatriots around the world, the answer he’s landed on as to what will is local action.In this winding and weaving conversation we discuss the new bill on the floor of the New York State Senate which would give rights of nature to all water in the state before examining legal strategies more broadly under the umbrella of climate activism. We then examine Empire’s death throes and how it is violently grasping at power to maintain itself. We discuss violence and defence, patriarchy and permaculture, showing how resilience is an act of resistance in a system which has spent the past 500 years ripping apart our communal social fabric. This is a conversation about how to reweave a tapestry that had been lost to us, and why doing is of vital importance to survive what’s coming. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
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Human Exceptionalism | Christine Webb
What makes humans special?Nothing. But a small band of us in the Western hemisphere have inculcated ourselves over thousands of years to believe in our supremacy over the natural world. Christine Webb, primatologist at Harvard University, argues this unique arrogance is at the root of our ecological crisis in her forthcoming book, The Arrogant Ape.This is a fascinating conversation, with Christine revealing how almost all of the characteristics which we human beings have claimed distinguished ourselves from our kinfolk have eventually been found in other species. Perhaps most importantly, she explains how this culture of arrogance is learned by young children somewhere around the age of 4, who before that do not discriminate between humans and other species, meaning we could very swiftly learn to enjoy the kind of relationship with the more-than-human world that seems to come naturally to us. Although, of course, it would bring all of industrialised modernity tumbling down…Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
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1:00:20
Why We Can't Understand Each Other | Damien Williams
There’s more information than ever — but we can’t agree on what it means.We think of language as a tool of communication. But it’s so much more than that. Language builds worlds and shapes realities; language is how we make sense of what we experience, and that sense-making is always done in partnership with each other. Language is the mechanism by which we develop shared understandings of reality. So why can’t we seem to find common ground with each other? Damien Williams is an assistant professor of philosophy and data science, and he joins me to tackle that question, explaining we live in a world of “bespoke realities” whereby people’s lived experiences are seemingly so different they cannot even come to a mutual understanding of the parts that are objective — like science. He explains why other people’s realities feel threatening, and offers key insight as to how we can build bridges with those who disagree with us. Damien and I only began to scratch the surface of this complex and critical topic. If you’d like to see this conversation continued as a roundtable with more interlocutors, please leave a comment below! 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
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How to Change People's Minds | Sarah Stein Lubrano
Don’t Talk About Politics!That’s the title of neuroscientist and political theorist Sarah Stein Lubrano’s first book. A phenomenal and heavily researched foray into why debate is a useless form of political communication, why citizens of the Western world are particularly prone to disbelieving their neighbour’s lived experience, and the strategies which do work when on the campaign trail, Don’t Talk About Politics explains why the very art of conversation is breaking down with our political systems—and what to do about it.Sarah explains all this and more on the episode, explaining how our brains are atrophying along with our communities, the reason activists score happier than their peers on psychological tests, and how to begin growing the roots of a new political system on our very streets. We discuss her research in the context of the phenomenal community building and resistance movements I documented for Planet: Coordinate across Colombia and Ecuador, adding the lens of inter-relationality as a resource which remains much more available elsewhere. I interviewed Sarah in 2023 when she was deep in research mode for the book so it was a pleasure to have her come back on and reveal her findings, strategies and own lived experience of how to talk about politics—successfully—in the 21st century. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
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
Colombia