Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

@racheldonald.bsky.social

Posts

I investigate why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it.
• Creator https://www.planetcritical.com
• Curator www.wewillbearwitness.org
• Climate corruption journalist
• Exclusives previously Guardian/The Intercept/Mongabay. Now exclusively on P:C

Posts Replies Media

When I was a child I almost succumbed to a terrible fever. It was just a 2.5 degree increase. Such a small number. It almost killed me. The smallest bodies will be killed by this global fever. We must bring the temperature down. www.planetcritical.com/p/its-just-t...

It’s Just Two Degreeswww.planetcritical.com We cannot let this fever run its course

There is an unspoken hope that A.I, a superior intelligence, will arrive and “mend all of our problems”, that it will save us from ourselves—that it will save us from our sins. Welcome to the sado-masochism of Judeo-Christian hyper-reality. www.planetcritical.com/p/the-messia...

The Messiah is an A.I.www.planetcritical.com And A.I. is a dominatrix

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

A high risk of famine persists across Gaza as almost the entire population faces high levels of acute food insecurity or worse, including half a million suffering starvation, according to a global hunger monitor. More than half of all households have exchanged their clothes for money to buy food.

Famine threat persists in Gaza as half a million starving, monitor findswww.middleeasteye.net UN-backed report says hundreds of thousands of people people go entire days and nights without eating as Israel tightens siege

There is no Law in a Rule of Harm. www.planetcritical.com/p/the-rule-o...

The Rule of Harmwww.planetcritical.com Living in a lawless world

What would you lose to take a stand? I spoke with @ggrimalda.bsky.social, the climate change researcher who lost his job for refusing to fly, about doing the right thing – and that we cannot rely on our institutions for moral clarity. www.planetcritical.com/p/doing-the-...

Doing the Right Thing | Gianluca Grimaldawww.planetcritical.com Listen now | The climate change researcher who was fired for refusing to fly

Forests may control that waterways of the world, according to physicist Anastassia Makarieva's 'Biotic Pump Theory'. This means further forest loss may have unknown and devastating effects on not just the global climate, but also on water supplies. news.mongabay.com/2024/06/if-f...

If forests truly drive wind and water cycles, what does it mean for the climate?news.mongabay.com The biotic pump theory has ruffled feathers in the climate science community ever since Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov submitted their paper “Where do winds come from?” to the journal Atmosp...

Violence is not innate in a world of meaning. It is a product of meaninglessness, of senselessness, of forgetting how to feel. www.planetcritical.com/p/rewilding-...

Rewilding the Commonswww.planetcritical.com To gain some common sense

Our bodies know what words fail to describe. The body politic lives in our own bodies, informing and inhibiting our experience in the world. Listen to my conversation with artist, Ranu Mukherjee, about violence, power, connection and time. www.planetcritical.com/p/the-body-p...

The Body Politic | Ranu Mukherjeewww.planetcritical.com Ruptures and Revolution

Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is? I spoke with journalist Justin Catanoso about what Drax – the UK's biggest CO2 emitter whose emissions are struck off the nation's carbon budget—is up to in California. news.mongabay.com/2024/06/burn...

Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?news.mongabay.com Justin Catanoso is no stranger to wood pellet plants, as he lives near four of them in the U.S. state of North Carolina, where biomass giant Enviva has several facilities. While that company filed for...

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

Research on news coverage of protests shows that journalists tend to follow a "protest paradigm" that is uninformative, distorted, biased toward official accounts and that limits the impact of protests. 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/here...

Here’s Why Protest News Doesn’t Tell You Muchwww.scientificamerican.com Baked-in news practices cover only the worst moments of protests and neglect telling people what protesters are asking for, extensive research shows

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

On the latest Mongabay Podcast, economist Rebecca Adamson speaks with @racheldonald.bsky.social about Indigenous economics systems, and why Wall Street's attempt to financialize nature misses the big picture: news.mongabay.com/2024/06/what...

What is nature worth? As Wall Street assigns a dollar value, Indigenous economics charts different pathnews.mongabay.com Putting a dollar amount on a single species, let alone entire ecosystems, is a controversial idea, but creating a tradable asset class based on that monetary value is even more problematic, experts sa...

“We are nature, territorialised, impaled on the flagpole, flapping in the wind like a bird desperate to escape… lost in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore, without language to speak of the harm, without language to heal the harm.” www.planetcritical.com/p/embracing-...

Embracing Nature’s Complexitywww.planetcritical.com Letting meaning run away with itself

@ingridrobeyns.bsky.social I would love to interview you later in the year on your work on Limitarianism. Can you email me? [email protected]

"Humanity uses its energy surplus to transform materials from one thing to another – even if we did find a way to create a renewable supply of energy, we would still run up against hard limits to material transformation: the planet is finite." www.planetcritical.com/p/the-holy-t...

The Holy Trinitywww.planetcritical.com Getting a grip on energy, materials and civilisation

There is meaning to be found at the very edge when we come together with raw throats and red eyes and dare admit the terrors we are facing. There is sanity to be won by coming home to our bodies. Me for @postcarbon.bsky.social www.resilience.org/stories/2024...

Duende: From Scream to Song at the Edge of Insanitywww.resilience.org There may be no way to explain how you feel because nobody can inhabit your body with you, and for all the skills of a poet, the mirrored and empty wastelands of fear are a terribly lonely place. We a...

What's the relationship between our energy consumption, our material footprint and our economies? I spoke with the funnest physicist I know @nephologue.bsky.social to find out. Listen now: www.planetcritical.com/p/the-thermo...

The Thermodynamics of Degrowth | Tim Garrettwww.planetcritical.com Collapse and Recovery

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

Private property vs public good: “There needs to be a rethinking of what people’s place is in the landscape and how that intersects with a kind of new relationship between people and nature as well.” Essential conversation hosted by @racheldonald.bsky.social on ‘right to roam’ movement in the UK:

‘Right to roam’ movement fights to give the commons back to the publicnews.mongabay.com Like most nations, England doesn’t have legally recognized rights for citizens to cross non-public lands. This means that the nearly 56 million people who live there are only legally allowed to access...

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

I was very excited to edit this week's episode on the Mongabay Newscast. @racheldonald.bsky.social speaks with Jon Moses about the 'Right to Roam.' A movement that seeks to reclaim common rights to access, use and enjoy both private and public land. news.mongabay.com/2024/05/righ...

Some weeks ago I attended a small gathering of the private jet industry to discuss ecological and economic collapse. Their response shocked me. www.planetcritical.com/p/even-the-m...

Even The Millionaires Are Fed Upwww.planetcritical.com How to speak to a hostile crowd

Russia finds oil in the Antarctic totalling to 10x the 50 year output of the North Sea. UK gov says they trust Russia will respect The Antarctic Treaty that the region is not to be exploited. Resource extraction is the priority, at any cost. archive.ph/mmHDm

archive.ph

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

On the latest Mongabay Newscast @racheldonald.bsky.social speaks with @thenarwhalca.bsky.social halca.bsky.social co-founder Emma Gilchrist. This was such a good conversation about the environmental news landscape in Canada. Thanks for joining us Emma! news.mongabay.com/2024/05/the-...

The Narwhal makes waves in Canada for environmental journalismnews.mongabay.com The Narwhal is an award-winning, non-profit, environmental news outlet based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It was co-founded in 2018 by podcast guest Emma Gilchrist, who joins the show to dis...

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"In 2013, Attenborough suggested withholding aid to those suffering famine in Ethiopia because aid didn’t address population growth. He also specifically targets regions in the Global South" From a few years ago, my thing on Nature Dad being problematic ketanjoshi.co/2020/10/05/d...

David Attenborough’s good film and the bad past it’s haunted byketanjoshi.co David Attenborough's new film, 'A life on our planet', is pretty good, and well worth your time. It's well produced, heartfelt and interesting. It is a moment of pause, reflection and seriousness from...

Israel using AI to target members of Hamas and killing women and children in the process makes the destruction of Gaza the first 21st century war. Israel achieves what Silicon Valley promises: the destruction of human relationships. www.planetcritical.com/p/friction

Frictionwww.planetcritical.com In a world without seams, things falls apart

In which I argue we are all material girls. www.planetcritical.com/p/are-you-de...

Are You Dense?www.planetcritical.com You may be living in a material world

State power is built on a “willingness to put bodies on the line”. It is founded on violence. But that violence has been re-imagined as justice, ensuring that the most violent actors in the world are free of scrutiny or accountability. www.planetcritical.com/p/the-unspea...

The Unspeakable Violence of Stateswww.planetcritical.com We call it law and order

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Rachel Donald (Planet: Critical)

“That such people need to be presented with incentives in order to take rational, considered and long-term decisions only shows they are fundamentally incapable of navigating the eco-crisis they have been instrumental in causing.”

It's 2024 and I'm suspicious of solutions. There’s no magic bullet for this level of complexity. www.planetcritical.com/p/dont-talk-...

Don’t Talk To Me About Solutionswww.planetcritical.com The System Itself is the Problem

It's 2024 and I'm suspicious of solutions. There’s no magic bullet for this level of complexity. www.planetcritical.com/p/dont-talk-...

Don’t Talk To Me About Solutionswww.planetcritical.com The System Itself is the Problem

Nations complicit in Darfur genocide: UAE, Russia, Libya, Chad, CAR, reports Middle East Eye. I wrote about this 2 months ago, and how the USA brokered deals for UAE to supply LNG to EU in exchange to stop propping up the Russian ruble with Sudanese gold. www.planetcritical.com/p/climate-wa...

Climate wars fuelling genocide in Sudanwww.planetcritical.com Welcome to the genocidal energy transition

Civil engineer Delton Chen joins me to discuss the Global Carbon Reward, a “carrot policy” to incentivise polluting industries to reduce emissions whilst encouraging the private market to invest in research and development of mitigation technologies. www.planetcritical.com/p/global-car...

Global Carbon Reward | Delton Chenwww.planetcritical.com Incentivising polluting industries to reduce emissions

I interviewed Dahr Jamail for @mongabay.bsky.social on the resource wars driving conflict around the world. These wars are often dressed up in ideological terms that obscure material reality: Land, oil, water, labour. news.mongabay.com/2024/04/reso...

Resource wars and the geopolitics behind climate-fueled conflictsnews.mongabay.com Dahr Jamail was working in Alaska’s Denali National Park in the early 2000s when he decided to travel to Iraq to better cover the U.S.-led invasion of the region, on the now debunked basis that Iraq’s...