Planet: Critical

The Eco-Crisis is a Feminist Crisis | Natasha Walter

The women's movement sprang into being in a different world. How must it adapt to meet the challenges we face today?Natasha Walter is a journalist, the founder of the Women for Refugee Women Charity, and the author of multiple books, including her most recent, Feminism for a World on Fire (UK version and US version out today). In it, Natasha investigates the successes and weaknesses of the women's movement, taking a scalpel to the most recent decades of feminist thought and action and revealing how they have been shaped by neoliberalism. She joins me to discuss just that, explaining how our hyper individualist economy has created a feminist culture which is more invested in the individuals success than in structural change and collective liberation. From there, we discuss care as an organising principle, and why this feminist school of thought must be seeded in climate camps, from degrowth theory to mobilisation.
We also explore the effects of a neoliberal feminism on young women around the world, many of whom are now turning their backs on the women's movement to instead pledge allegiance to "tradwives" and other typically patriarchal forms of social organisation. We ask: What is feminism failing to provide these young women? And what about the women's movement needs to change to confront and overcome the political, economic and ecological crises which threaten our very future?
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Deep Ecology | John Seed

We don't need more ecological ideas, we need ecological selves. That's the message of this week's guest, John Seed, a longtime environmental activist who has been instrumental to the Deep Ecology movement. John joins me to explain exactly what Deep Ecology can offer us—a sense of place, time and connection in a world coming apart. He walks us through the philosophy and multiple exercises, revealing how our coming together with the world around us can also help us come together as people—to grieve, to love, to be.
This a beautiful, resonant and poetic episode, with John's wisdom and humility blooming forth to offer a vision which neither despairs nor denies, but is instead devoted to truths that surpass humans alone and encircle all of us, each of us, in this great web of life, to be held and to hold, even for just a moment. 
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The Truly Sustainable Alternative | Julia Steinberger

A flourishing human society doesn't have to cost the earth. In fact, our wellbeing and Earth's wellbeing hinge on the same thing: reducing inequality.
Julia Steinberger is a renowned degrowth scholar at the University of Lausanne where she and her colleagues recently produced Living Well Within Limits, which shows there is no tension between human and ecological flourishing. Julia joins me to explain their award-winning research in this exciting and hopeful episode. To reduce our pressure on the planet and to improve our wellbeing, we simply need more public services. This would reduce our material footprints, energy footprints, and, of course, societal inequality. This is not a vision which has room for billionaires and autocrats. But by getting rid of them, we have room for all 8 billion of us—on a healthy, regenerating planet. 
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Tech Titans Won't Save Us | Paris Marx

Silicon Valley's robotic grip on the world is destroying our social fabric. "Artificial intelligence" models are now baked into our militaries, economies and political institutions—without there being a clear benefit yet as to why. a.i. is behind the indiscriminate attacks on civilian lives in Gaza and Iran, has encouraged users to commit suicide in the United States, and helped one Canadian plan the worst mass shooting in recent history. Despite the risks to us and the planet, the incredibly wealthy individuals pushing our dystopia insist its for our own benefit, while cementing their political and financial power. 
Paris Marx is one of the most vocal tech critics in the Minority World, challenging the techno-capitalist hegemony on his podcast Tech Won't Save Us, his newsletter Disconnect, and his first book, Road To Nowhere. He joins me to explain the deepening relationship between the tech industry and the military, who and what is being sacrificed in the pursuit of "artificial intelligence", and Silicon Valley's disturbing vision for our future. These technologists promise revolution—but not the kind any of us want to see. 
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How Finance Ruined Capitalism | Hettie O'Brien

Capitalism was envisioned—and is still defended—as a vehicle for growth. This growth was meant to increase everyone's share of the pie. But one of the most opaque and unregulated finance sectors got its fingers into that pie—and built a mechanism to extract wealth from the very companies, public services and infrastructure it buys.
Welcome the the world of private equity, a shadow fleet of financial vehicles which are buying up our homes, schools, nurseries, roads, technology and everything in between—and yet that we know very little about. Journalist Hettie O'Brien, author of the newly released The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, joins me to expose just how wide the influence of this crooked sector is, explaining how over the past few decades private equity has undermined democracy, caused avoidable deaths in care homes, lobbied—and secured—access to our pensions, and has driven economic stagnation. Crucially, private equity does not create value—it extracts it, with no thought for the consequences which are offset onto the rest of us while the super rich get even richer off of our misfortune.
🔴 Get the UK version of The Asset Class today, or pre-order the USA version here.
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Reform, Not Revolution | Andrés Velasco

Andrés Velasco is the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Chile's former Minister of Finance. He and his colleagues at LSE recently released The London Consensus, a collection of economics essays arguing for the a range of reforms to neoclassical, capitalist economics. Much needs to change, they argue—but it can be done within the existing institutions, and without affecting growth. 
Andrés joins me to explain their position and reasoning, and we enjoy numerous disagreements about the need for growth, the definition of development, the determining factors of inequality, the limits of redistribution and resource exploitation. While we agree that much must change, for Andrés the solution lies not in overhauling the fundamentals, but regulating the excesses.
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The Founding Mothers | Laura George

The Founding Fathers were legal revolutionaries. But over two centuries on, the world needs an update.
Reverend Laura George is the co-founder of the Founding Mothers, a movement dedicated to universal dignity, human rights, peace and ending war. By focussing on women's liberation, the Founding Mothers seek to protect the future for generations to come through policies which empower women to make very different choices to the power brokers of today. On the episode, she explains the architecture of the movement, its goals and strategies, the campaigns and strikes being organised, and the importance of centring women to achieve peace. Finally, we discuss the importance of collaborating across campaigns, with Laura calling for a fierce love—a love that can defend us. 
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How Mexico City Unleashed Its Political Imagination | Ashwin Ravikumar

Under the left-wing leadership of mayor Clara Brugada, Mexico City has invested millions in the city's poorest neighbourhoods, building UTOPIAs which provide food, healthcare, therapy, and many other public services to those in need. The story of this incredible project involves a century-old social movement which found support in the left-wing Moderna party, led by Claudia Sheinbaum, revealing a fascinating relationship between state power and people power which is radically transforming the material conditions of Mexico's poorest residents.
In this fascinating episode, professor of Environmental Studies ath Amherst College, Ashwin Ravikumar, walks us through the history of the social movement which mobilised both rural and inner-city workers, developing a collective political consciousness which made them a formidable political force in a time of land grabs and immense corruption. Ashwin explains how the national government also sprang out of this movement, and the tensions which have had to be navigated now that they have access to state power. He also explains the UTOPIAs in great detail, revealing the incredible services provided, how they're funded, and the plan to develop even more because, for the Mayor and the people, these spaces are to provide a physical space where people can come together and learn from one another, educate, agitate and win back the ground that was lost to a century of corruption to build a utopia for all. 
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Feeding The Future | Nicole Negowetti

Wars have repeatedly shown us over the last few years how fragile our global supply chains are. But while we can live without semiconductors, collapses in our food supply systems are extremelhy dangerous. And this is only one of the problems of depending on a heavily industrialised food industry, an industry which harms Earth's body as much as our own. So: How can we feed the future sustainably?
Nicole Negowetti is a lawyer, author of Feeding The Future, and founder of Food For Us. She joins me to discuss the fragility embedded in our industrialised processes, how our diets are making us sick, the food infrastructure we need to ensure localised food security, and the importance of working with existing landowners and farmers to achieve all this. We also discuss the cultural variances which affect this conversation, with Nicole insisting that food is the most intimate way we can express our relationship with Earth.
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🟢 Land Liberators film: https://www.planetcoordinate.com/land-liberators-popayan-colombia/

Rojava: The Feminist Resistance in the Heart of the Middle East | Matt Broomfield

For over a decade, an autonomous zone in the Middle East founded on the principles of women's liberation has controlled and sustained a territory the size of Lebanon. Rojava is a beacon of possibility and hope, and a fierce exercise in self-determination for the Kurdish people at the heart of it. At its core, it is a self defence movement against imperialist forces, religious extremism and exploitation. It has successfully fought off ISIS and the former Assad government. But in just the past six weeks, with the United States backing a former jihadist to take over the Syrian government, the fate of this feminist, anarchist resistance has changed and is now threatening to collapse.
Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist, PhD researcher, co-founder of the Rojava Information Center and the author of Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment. In this extraordinary episode, Matt reveals how Rojava came to be, the contradictions and compromises that they had to make in order to retain their autonomy, and the lessons the Western Left can learn from this remarkable political project. Above all, he commends the vision of the Kurds to exercise their self-determination in the strident belief that, against all odds, new worlds are possible—a defence and determination which has kept the movement alive against imperial onslaughts from all sides for years.
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