We’re breaking all kinds of records at the moment: cities are boiling at 62C, ocean temperatures are literally off the charts, and governments have increased the global defence budget to an alarming $2440 billion.

War costs life, and not just human life. The environmental impacts of war are colossal, with one study already showing that the first few months of Israel’s assault on Gaza emitted more carbon dioxide than 20 climate-vulnerable nations do in one year. Our ecosystems are at their breaking point, with six of nine planetary boundaries crossed. We need global collaboration to commit the huge systems overhaul necessary to survive the planetary crises and mitigate the catastrophic decisions of the last centuries.

Olivia Lazard, research fellow at Carnegie Europe, joins me to discuss just how complex that task is, detailing the five steps of the Anthropocene and how violence increases at each step. We discuss these legacy systems of extraction and violence and how they are embedded into decisions being made around A.I., creating security risks in a resource-scarce world. We also cover the dematerialisation of our economies, the myths that blind us to energy and materials, before discussing the balance of power tipping our planet and human systems further into crisis.

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Can the market do the right thing?

Not without supportive policy. Market-based solutions do not have a good track record when it comes to climate, stuck as they are within an exploitative economic framework. But, equally, we cannot just do away with markets, which have existed for millennia in many different forms. They need revolutionised, not abandoned.

Civil engineer and geo-hydrologist Delton Chen joins me to discuss the Global Carbon Reward, a policy for managing climate-related risk. Described as a “carrot policy”, Delton says the GCR incentivises polluting industries to reduce their emissions whilst encouraging the private market to invest in research and development of mitigation technologies. This conversation is filled with nuance, technicality, analysis and discussion on the viability of market-based solutions in a market that drives perverse incentives.

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You can also listen to my latest episode of the Mongabay Newscast where I spoke with Dahr Jamail about the resource wars driving climate-fuelled conflict.

Here’s the good news: People can change—quickly.

Sometimes it feels impossible to imagine anything other than collapse with the way our energy systems are designed, the corruption in governance, and the financial motives which skew the present system towards profit over everything else. It’s true that if nothing changes, the global system will collapse. But it’s also true that people are capable of amazing feats of imagination and adaptation—especially social imagination.

This week I’m joined by Erin Remblance, degrowth advocate and co-founder of ReBiz, an “un/school” designed to equip all people with the worldview and skills to create regenerative and pluriversal post-growth futures. ReBiz offers a core course on social tipping points and Erin joined me to discuss exactly that: What are social tipping points? And, importantly, how do we create them? This is a conversation about technology, economy, imagination, politics and a just transition—because most people are good people.

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