The Land & Climate Podcast

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 2026
The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China by Timothy Brook, 2023
The 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, 2013
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Go to landclimate.org/LCAW for free tickets to a live recording of The Land and Climate Podcast, with political economist Ann Pettifor and Bertie Harrison-Broninski.

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 2025
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Go to landclimate.org/LCAW for free tickets to a live recording of The Land and Climate Podcast, with political economist Ann Pettifor and Bertie Harrison-Broninski.

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 2026
Plastics, Profits and Power: How petrochemical companies are derailing the Global Plastics Treaty, Greenpeace, 2024
The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, Center for Climate Integrity, 2024
'Future-Proofing Capitalism: The Paradox of the Circular Economy for Plastics', Global Environmental Politics, April 2021
Send us Fan Mail
Go to landclimate.org/LCAW for free tickets to a live recording of The Land and Climate Podcast, with political economist Ann Pettifor and Bertie Harrison-Broninski.

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
Go to landclimate.org/LCAW for free tickets to a live recording of The Land and Climate Podcast, with political economist Ann Pettifor and Bertie Harrison-Broninski.

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, 2025
What 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, 2024
Send us Fan Mail
Go to landclimate.org/LCAW for free tickets to a live recording of The Land and Climate Podcast, with political economist Ann Pettifor and Bertie Harrison-Broninski.