The Land & Climate Podcast

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Titans-of-Industrial-Agriculture-by-Jennifer-Clapp/9780262551700?srsltid=AfmBOopELSc1sCbVc8BajGMmXPpPpwRIL4ba6xLH1gF2mlgFx1GcLgH0For the second time in five years, conflict has seriously destablised global markets. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to US and Israeli attacks on Iran has limited trade, causing skyrocketing prices - but not only for oil. 
Most fertiliser production relies on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Gulf nations including Qatar and Saudi Arabia are major fertiliser producers, and one third of the world's seaborne fertiliser trade usually passes through the Strait, which is currently unavailable. Other fertiliser producing nations are reducing production due to limited gas supply. Are food shortages inevitable? 
Alasdair is joined by Noah Gordon to discuss the international and environmental politics of fertilisers. They discuss fertiliser production, its uses and misuses, its role in global inequality and whether gas dependency can be avoided. 
Noah Gordon is the acting Co-Director of the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.  
Further reading: 
'The Other Global Crisis Stemming From the Strait of Hormuz’s Blockage', Emissary, March 2026
'A Trump Order Protected a Weedkiller. And Also a Weapon of War.' New York Times, March 2026
How to Feed the World by Vaclav Smil, 2025
'How a few giant companies came to dominate global food', Land and Climate Review, May 2025
'Why was organic policy blamed for Sri Lanka’s financial crisis?' Land and Climate Review, June 2024
'Fertiliser emissions could be cut to ‘one-fifth of current levels’ by 2050', Carbon Brief, February 2023
The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager, 2009
Titans of Industrial Agriculture by Jennifer Clapp, 2025
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With the recent 'AI Boom', the energy demand of computing has risen dramatically. As generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot and Grok become more mainstream, tech companies are racing to build and power new data centres - the physical 'computer factories' that store and process our information and online services. 
This new infrastructure is significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions - but tech companies argue that the climate innovations and efficiency improvements catalysed by AI tools will offset negative impacts. Could such claims prove true, or are they greenwashed PR? 
Alasdair puts this question to writer and energy analyst Ketan Joshi, who recently authored a report on AI's climate impacts alongside several leading nonprofits. 
Further reading:
Read more from Ketan on climate and AI on his blog, here. 
'Does Generative AI “Work”? That’s a Misleading Question.', Ketan Joshi, The New Republic, March 2026
The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts, Ketan Joshi, February 2026
'Crypto and AI exploit conflict zones and fossil fuels – with destructive consequences', Hito Steyerl, Gago Gagoshidze and Miloš Trakilović, Land and Climate Review, July 2025
Empire of AI, Karen Hao, May 2025
'Big Tech’s green promises are hypocritical gestures', Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alessandra Mularoni, Land and Climate Review, April 2025
SYSTEM OVERLOAD: How new data centres could throw Europe’s energy transition off course, Beyond Fossil Fuels, February 2025
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Climate change is making the lives of many more difficult. Tens of millions of people are already displaced by weather events each year, and studies show that climate breakdown drives mental and physical health crises, increased conflict, drought, and food insecurity, among many other challenges. 
So why do leading climate models primarily measure impacts on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rather than human wellbeing?
Inge Schrijver joins Alasdair on the podcast to discuss her new research into this question, and to explain how climate models work, how they are used, and what they are missing. 
Inge Schrijver is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University. Her study, “Inclusion of wellbeing impacts of climate change: a review of literature and integrated environment–society–economy models,” was co-authored with René Kleijn, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, and is available to read here.  
Further reading:
‘Climate action saves lives. So why do climate models ignore wellbeing?‘ Inge Schrijver, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra, The Conversation, 2025
‘Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022 
‘Sufficiency means degrowth‘, Timothée Parrique, 2022
‘Is climate modelling undermined by economics and ideology?‘, The Land & Climate Podcast, 2022
‘The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change‘, Steve Keen, Globalizations, 2020
WISE Horizons project
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Long before the recent economic crash and brutal killings of protestors in Iran, the country faced enduring environmental crises. Depleted dams and dried rivers have left stretches of land exposed, sending dust clouds across the country and severely degrading air quality. Last October, President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the capital, Tehran, may have to be evacuated due to the country's water bankruptcy. 
Have these problems contributed to the civil unrest this winter? Bertie puts this question to Dr. Sanam Mahoozi, who reports on Iran for the US news press, and recently completed a PhD researching media framings of environmental protests in the country. Sanam traces the developments of climate politics and environmental media coverage in Iran, against the backdrop of a highly uncertain political future.  
Further reading: 
Sanam’s recent news reporting for The New York Times 
Sanam’s writing about Iranian reporting and environmental issues for The Conversation 
Media Framing of Iran’s 2021 Water Protests, Sanam Mahoozi, 2025, City, University of London 
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In September 2025, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the climate crisis presents “risks” for Russia that are “very dangerous”. Though not unprecedented, such statements differ from other Russian government messaging that has argued climate threats are overstated as part of a Western agenda, or that climate change could benefit the country. Is the state’s narrative changing? 
This week on The Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair MacEwen is joined by Marianna Poberezhskaya to discuss the history of complex and often contradictory climate politics in Russia. They also discuss Russia’s burgeoning climate conspiracism, the history of climatology through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s increasingly isolationist stance on climate cooperation. 
Marianna Poberezhskaya is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University, where she researches climate discourse from non-democratic governments and their nations’ media, with particular focus on Russia.
Further reading:  
'Explainer: How Russia seeks to 'instrumentalise' climate issues at COP30', Clare Denning, 2025, BBC 
'Conspiracies as one of the dangers of online climate change communication: origins, spread, and impact', Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2025, Routledge handbook on climate crisis communication pp. 229-239 
'Climate obstruction in Russia: surviving a resource-dependent economy, an authoritarian regime, and a disappearing civil society', Marianna Poberezhskaya and Ellie Martus, 2024, Climate obstruction across Europe pp. 214-242  
'Russian climate scepticism: an understudied case', Teresa Ashe and Marianna Poberezhskaya, 2022, Climatic Change 172 (3-4)
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