The Land & Climate Podcast

Human life is becoming more difficult due to climate change. Tens of millions 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.  
In light of this, 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 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, 2025, The Conversation 
Beyond GDP: a review and conceptual framework for measuring sustainable and inclusive wellbeing, Annegeke Jansen, Ranran Wang, Paul Behrens, Rutger Hoekstra, The Lancet 
Degrowth in the IPCC AR6 WGIII, 2022, Timothée Parrique 
Sufficiency means degrowth, 2022, Timothée Parrique 
The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change, Globalizations, 2020, Taylor & Francis 
 WISE Horizons 
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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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President Trump has long expressed ambitions to annex Greenland, with mentions of the US acquiring the Danish autonomous territory dating back to 2019.  But the US relationship and interest with Greenland goes back centuries.
In a bonus episode of the Land and Climate Podcast, Alasdair is joined by returning guest and Arctic expert Mia Bennett to examine Greenland’s complex history and connections to the US, Trump’s recent interest, and her views on the reasons behind them.
Mia Bennett is the co-author of "Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic," published by Yale University Press. She is an associate professor of geography at the University of Washington and the founder of Cryopolitics, a blog covering contemporary and historic developments in the Arctic.
Further reading: 
Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, Yale University Press, 2025
Trump and Rutte cannot make a deal without Greenland at the table', Julie Rademacher, Financial Times, 2026
'Greenland: Staying with the Polar Inuit. How a secret military base helped trigger the silent collapse of an Arctic world', Ludovic Slimak, The Conversation, 2026
'The cryosphere is nearing irreversible tipping points – and the world is not prepared', Letizia Tedesco, Josephine Z. Rapp and Petra Heil, Land and Climate Review, 2025
The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future, Jon Gertner, Postscript Books, 2019
Crimson, Niviaq Korneliussen, Anna Halager (Translator), Virago Books, 2018
So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump, Elizabeth Buchanan, Hurst Publishers, 2025
This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich, Fourth Estate, 2003
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Bertie is joined by Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, whose research formed the foundation for the Green New Deal. In his new book, “Still No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air,” he underlines that we have already developed the technologies necessary to solve the climate crisis.
Dr. Jacobson argues that wind, water and solar power are the most effective tools for reducing emissions, that the development of energy-intensive “unicorn technologies” such as carbon capture and storage only prolongs fossil fuel use.
Mark Jacobson is Director of Stanford’s Atmosphere and Energy Program and a co-founder of The Solutions Project, which advances clean, renewable energy systems. His new book is available to buy here from Cambridge University Press, with 20% off using the discount code “NOMIRACLES20”.
Further reading:
'Carbon capture does not reduce emissions: these three case studies prove it', Mark Z. Jacobson, Land and Climate Review, 2026. 
Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025, report finds, Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian, 2026.
No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2023. 
100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything, Mark Z. Jacobson, Cambridge University Press, 2020. 
'A path to sustainable energy by 2030', Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi, Scientific American, 2009 
Correction notice: in the original upload of this podcast, Bertie mistakenly referred to the publisher of Still No Miracles Needed as 'Stanford University Press', rather than Cambridge University Press. This was removed on 27/1/25.
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