Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis.

They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

Further reading:

• Tax Wars, ICRICT
• 'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up to $220bn', Financial Times, 2024
• 'McDonald’s to pay more than €1B to settle French tax case', Politico, 2022
• It is time for a global asset registry to tackle hidden wealth, ICRICT, 2022
• 'L`affaire Elf en résumé', Challenges, 2007

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.

Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.

Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.

The Price is Wrong was published in February and is available to buy from Verso books here.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further listening:

• 'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024
• 'Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024

Further reading:

• 'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024
• 'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024

Other books by Brett:

• Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023
• Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020
• The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conservative ambition for 15% of farmland.

Bhutan may be small, but on this issue it's a global outlier. Motivated by its policy to measure development in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, the South Asian nation has been slowly working towards becoming 100% organic since 2012 - and now has a target date of 2035.

Bertie spoke to Dr Sonam Tashi, an organic agriculture expert and Dean of Research & Industrial Linkages at the College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan, to hear about how Bhutan's organic transition is going.

Further reading:

• 'Bhutan's challenges and prospects in becoming a 100% organic country', Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Asia Global Dialogue, 2022
• Case Studies of Successful Farmers, Agri-enterprises and Farmers' Groups and Cooperatives in Bhutan, 2022
• 'Farmers’ perception on transitioning to organic agriculture (OA) in Tsirang district, Bhutan', Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2022
• 'Bridging the Gap between the Sustainable Development Goals and Happiness Metrics', International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2019
• 'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', The Guardian, 2012

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.

Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.

Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.

How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• 'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024
• 'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024
• 'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024
• 'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022
• 'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.

Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a Europe-wide network of environmental citizens' organisations.

Alasdair and Faustine discuss the Nature Restoration Law, reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and what the upcoming European elections might mean for the future of EU agriculture.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• NGOs unite against EU’s rollback of green policies for the agrifood sector, Euractiv
• Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks, European Environment Agency
• Open letter from the ECVC and IFOAM to Ursula Von der Leyen on CAP simplification, European Coordination Via Campesina
• European Pact for the Future, European Environmental Bureau
• Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll, Desmog

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.

Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.

Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:

• Building on the IRA’s Farm Policy Momentum
• Harvesting Climate Benefits from the 2024 Farm Bill
• Ripe for Change
• The Real Cost of Food

Peter’s book:

• Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?

Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.

His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.

Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.

Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here.
• 'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021
• 'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023
• 'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.

Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.

Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.

Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.

Further reading:

• Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer
• ‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon
• ‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic
• ‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, Forbes

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.