🎙️ Are we facing a climate crisis — or the consequences of the systems we built?
In this eye-opening episode of Tangelic Talks, co-hosts Victoria Cornelio and Andres Tamez sit down with Rachel Donald — investigative journalist and creator of Planet Critical — to unpack the deeper forces shaping today’s climate reality.
Instead of focusing only on emissions and technology, Rachel invites us to zoom out.
Because behind climate headlines lie bigger questions about power, economics, geopolitics, and the stories we tell ourselves about progress.
This conversation challenges the idea that climate change is just an environmental issue — and reframes it as a systemic one.
🌍 In This Episode, We Explore:
🧠 Why the climate crisis may actually be a crisis of governance and incentives
💰 How financial flows influence real-world climate outcomes
📊 The limits of GDP and traditional growth models
🌐 The hidden links between resource extraction and global conflict
📰 The responsibility of journalism in holding systems accountable
⚡ The danger of over-relying on techno-fixes
🏛️ Why climate solutions are shaped by politics, not just science
🔥 How frustration can fuel meaningful change
🤝 The importance of building cross-ideological coalitions
🗺️ Why systemic structures drive environmental breakdown
📖 How storytelling helps shift from despair to agency
🔹 About Our Guest: Rachel Donald is an independent journalist and systems thinker whose work examines how power, policy, and financial systems intersect with ecological collapse. Through Planet Critical, she connects economic decisions and political realities to the environmental crises shaping our future.
💬 Join the Conversation: Is climate change a technical challenge — or a systemic one? Do we need better technologies… or better systems?
Drop your thoughts below 👇
🌱 Support the Mission: If conversations like this matter to you — help us keep them going 👉 TangelicLife.org
🔖 #ClimateCrisis #SystemicChange #InvestigativeJournalism #ClimateJustice #ClimateFinance #PoliticalEconomy #ResourceExtraction #PowerAndPolitics #EcologicalCrisis #SustainabilityNarratives #ClimateStorytelling #GlobalSystems #Degrowth #ClimateMedia #ClimateGovernance #EconomicJustice #EnergyTransition #ClimateLeadership #FutureOfSystems #TangelicTalks
🔖 Tags: Climate Systems, Rachel Donald, Climate Justice, Climate Finance, Global Power, Resource Politics, Economic Systems, Climate Media, Degrowth, Sustainability Debate, Energy Transition, Governance, Climate Storytelling, Environmental Systems, Tangelic Talks
In this eye-opening episode of Tangelic Talks, co-hosts Victoria Cornelio and Andres Tamez sit down with Rachel Donald — investigative journalist and creator of Planet Critical — to unpack the deeper forces shaping today’s climate reality.
Instead of focusing only on emissions and technology, Rachel invites us to zoom out.
Because behind climate headlines lie bigger questions about power, economics, geopolitics, and the stories we tell ourselves about progress.
This conversation challenges the idea that climate change is just an environmental issue — and reframes it as a systemic one.
🌍 In This Episode, We Explore:
🧠 Why the climate crisis may actually be a crisis of governance and incentives
💰 How financial flows influence real-world climate outcomes
📊 The limits of GDP and traditional growth models
🌐 The hidden links between resource extraction and global conflict
📰 The responsibility of journalism in holding systems accountable
⚡ The danger of over-relying on techno-fixes
🏛️ Why climate solutions are shaped by politics, not just science
🔥 How frustration can fuel meaningful change
🤝 The importance of building cross-ideological coalitions
🗺️ Why systemic structures drive environmental breakdown
📖 How storytelling helps shift from despair to agency
🔹 About Our Guest: Rachel Donald is an independent journalist and systems thinker whose work examines how power, policy, and financial systems intersect with ecological collapse. Through Planet Critical, she connects economic decisions and political realities to the environmental crises shaping our future.
💬 Join the Conversation: Is climate change a technical challenge — or a systemic one? Do we need better technologies… or better systems?
Drop your thoughts below 👇
🌱 Support the Mission: If conversations like this matter to you — help us keep them going 👉 TangelicLife.org
🔖 #ClimateCrisis #SystemicChange #InvestigativeJournalism #ClimateJustice #ClimateFinance #PoliticalEconomy #ResourceExtraction #PowerAndPolitics #EcologicalCrisis #SustainabilityNarratives #ClimateStorytelling #GlobalSystems #Degrowth #ClimateMedia #ClimateGovernance #EconomicJustice #EnergyTransition #ClimateLeadership #FutureOfSystems #TangelicTalks
🔖 Tags: Climate Systems, Rachel Donald, Climate Justice, Climate Finance, Global Power, Resource Politics, Economic Systems, Climate Media, Degrowth, Sustainability Debate, Energy Transition, Governance, Climate Storytelling, Environmental Systems, Tangelic Talks
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:10Welcome to Tangelic Talks, your go-to podcast from Tangelic, where we dive into the vibrant
00:16world of clean energy, development, sustainability, and climate change in Africa.
00:21We bring you inspiring stories, insightful discussions, and groundbreaking innovations
00:26from the continent-making waves in the global community.
00:29Tune in and join the conversation toward a brighter, greener future.
00:33Let's get started.
00:37All right.
00:38Hello, everyone.
00:38Welcome to Tangelic Talks, a podcast at the intersection of energy, equity, and empowerment
00:44with your regular co-hosts, Andres Temez and Victoria Cornelio.
00:48Well, we have Rachel Donald today with us.
00:51She doesn't just report on the crisis.
00:53She interrogates why the world is in it and what we'll actually take to respond.
00:57Rachel Donald is an independent journalist, researcher, and systems thinker whose work
01:02cuts through headlines to reveal the deeper structures shaping our political, economic,
01:07and ecological realities.
01:08Through her platform, Planet Critical, and the documentary series, Planet Coordinate, Rachel
01:13weeks together power, finance, governance, and the stories we tell ourselves about progress.
01:18She asks very uncomfortable questions about who benefits, who pays the price, and why so
01:23many proposed solutions, very sadly, as we know, fall short.
01:26Welcome, Rachel.
01:28Gosh, what a lovely introduction.
01:29Thank you very much for having me.
01:31No, we're really excited to have you on.
01:33And if we just, if we just go right into it, you're an investigative journalist.
01:37We have the context already.
01:39Why?
01:40How?
01:41How does one say, I'm going to be an investigative journalist for life?
01:46Ah, well, I, when you grow up in a family that does it, I'm afraid.
01:51Yeah, I'm, I'm like Kate Winslet's son, you know, just a Nepo baby, really.
01:58I, I.
01:59It was just the default, you know.
02:02And it's such a classic response as well for journalists.
02:04But I'm fourth generation.
02:06So my mother and my grandfather and his father were all investigative journalists.
02:11And so, um, I had no interest in doing it when I was younger, but I grew up sort of
02:17watching
02:17it, learning the trade, literally watching how they would interrogate people, whether
02:23that was, um, to do with their work or my high school teachers, just, it was sort of
02:28a, a way of life really for our family.
02:31Um, you're good at grilling.
02:33A bit of grilling.
02:34Yeah.
02:35Yeah.
02:35Just, just can't help ourselves.
02:38Um, and I think then when I was in my early twenties, you know, I just, just so disappointed
02:42with the world and with the direction of travel.
02:44And it felt very obvious to me that nothing was really as it seemed and everything was
02:47just a bit of a joke and there was corruption everywhere.
02:51And it was just inevitable, really.
02:53Like I really did try to avoid it cause I didn't want to be that cliche, but, um, I love
02:58to write, I love to grill.
03:00Um, I got really a world-class sort of training growing up in that house.
03:06Um, and so eventually I just sort of fell into it and a part of it was because I couldn't
03:12find the stories that I wanted to investigate, you know, these like very intersectional sort
03:18of systemic stories that, you know, try and attempt to look at something from multiple
03:24sides and maybe also don't try to answer the question, but just try and weave it all together
03:28and be like, look, look, isn't this interesting?
03:30Shouldn't we be thinking about this?
03:32Um, particularly with regards to how we were treating the earth and all of the corruption
03:37that was facilitating the climate crisis and ecological destruction, let alone harm against
03:42human beings.
03:43And I just didn't see very many publications, which perhaps just went to show how little
03:50red I was at the time, but that we're doing it.
03:52And I kept stumbling across things.
03:54And so I just started publishing and thankfully I cut my teeth working with.
03:58Um, Claire Rucastle Brown, who exposed the largest financial corruption scandal in the history
04:03of the world with a blog.
04:05And so I knew that it could be done as an independent journalist and I trained with her.
04:11Um, so I just started and what can I say, you know, people obviously find value in it because
04:17now we're sitting at 180 subscribers, sorry, from 186 countries in the world.
04:22Um, so I think everybody feels that sort of legacy media is simply not cut out for this
04:29moment in time in many respects, because it is invested in the continuation of, you know,
04:36the current systems of power.
04:38Um, the agility that independent journalism allows for this time is part of what I think
04:42makes it so attractive to readers.
04:43That's really cool.
04:45And planet critical, we're going to be linking it below.
04:48So if you want to get the updates on Rachel and her incredible reporting, please do.
04:52I've already subscribed.
04:53So we're, we're all going to be in the same media space.
04:56And I really like how you describe your work as weaving because you're connecting dots across
05:01crises rather than reporting on them in isolation, which I think is something we don't see very
05:06often.
05:07It's kind of like this thing happened over here and this happened over here as if they have nothing
05:10to do with each other, how did you start, like, how do you map that out?
05:16How do you find how things weave?
05:18Oh, gosh, what a question.
05:25Um, that's a very difficult question to answer now because it's such an implicit frame.
05:34You know, I'm always looking for energy flows, material flows, financial flows, the flows
05:40of social capital, even, you know, and these are, these are all the same thing essentially,
05:46because our material throughput is essentially our GDP and people that have access to accumulating
05:52resources while they're also people with social capital.
05:54So you're essentially looking for the same thing in its different iterations.
05:58And that's just quite intuitive now to me.
06:02But what sets apart an investigative journalist from other types of journalists or reporters?
06:08Why is that word in there?
06:09It's people with ADHD.
06:12It's people that are really stubborn and can lock into something for weeks at a time without,
06:22without stopping.
06:25It is a privilege in a sense to be an investigative reporter, right?
06:28Because they are being, their funding is being slashed all over the world.
06:33Only recently, and I would say in the past 18 months in the UK, has funding come back for
06:38investigative journalism, but it was on its deathbed.
06:41Investigative journalists want to know what is actually happening, literally.
06:47And I think journalists, a lot of journalists want to communicate what is happening.
06:54And often what is happening is the line of what is happening.
06:57And very often, you know, that's true.
07:00But investigative reporters will work on one story for three, six months, a year, three years.
07:07So obviously not all journalists could be investigative.
07:11It doesn't make that much, you know, financial sense.
07:13That's one of the reasons, like, it's sort of like, you say legacy media is no longer equipped
07:19for a plethora of reasons to handle these sorts of stories, right?
07:23But at the same time, for that same reason, a lot of these sort of independent types that come out,
07:30the instant is like, I see, I see you.
07:33You came out of nowhere, and your funding came out of nowhere, and I don't trust you.
07:42Yeah, because these closures.
07:45Yeah, exactly.
07:47And it's like, there's like, is there like an ethics thing for you, having grown up in that sort of
07:53environment?
07:53Like where, like, because I feel like that's like sorely lacking just everywhere.
07:59And no matter where I look, my, my, my, my core reaction is I just don't, I don't trust any
08:06sort
08:06of media, personally.
08:08Unless it's someone that I personally vetted, and that gives me the green light both in like consistency.
08:15Like I can see that they're, they're, the threads they're putting together, go together.
08:21And they give me a good vibe, you know, you have to give me a good vibe, you know, which
08:27you do.
08:29I think that's a good system.
08:30I mean, absolutely, you should be vetting the person, right?
08:34And so I think I'm very clear as well with with my journalism about my bias, right?
08:39Because I don't buy into and frankly, scholarship proves as well,
08:43there's no human being on the planet that doesn't have their own bias, right?
08:45Including journalists as much as they like to profess, quote unquote,
08:48objectivity and impartiality.
08:50So it's very, very important that people can feel who you are,
08:53because the frames of who you are will be making, helping you make decisions about
08:56what kind of questions you're going to ask, and what kind of stories you're going to chase,
09:01and how you're going to frame what it is that you find.
09:04For me, the ethics of journalism is incredibly important and fascinating, right?
09:09And I was raised really old school, which is that you take money from essentially nobody,
09:16right?
09:16So all of my funding comes from my paying subscribers, a hundred percent.
09:22There are no ads on Planet Critical.
09:25There are no paywalls either, because I don't think information should ever be paywalled.
09:29And I don't take money from like sponsors or whatever, you know, I think maybe once or twice.
09:39Actually, once I got this message on LinkedIn from this guy that wanted to send me like a
09:43pretty significant donation, I think it was to the tune of like a couple of thousand euros.
09:48Honestly, I think he was drunk, seriously.
09:52And amazingly, he did follow up the following week and be like,
09:57yeah, all right, I'll still do it.
09:58That's the biggest chunk.
09:59And that was just like an individual person that sort of came out of the blue.
10:03But I'm very, very careful about not to partner up as well.
10:08So even people will be like, oh, you know, do you want to do like a podcast swap thing
10:13where you feature me and I feature you?
10:15And I have to say no.
10:17If your work is interesting, like maybe I'll feed like,
10:20let me look at you and figure it out.
10:22But I don't want anything in return for that.
10:24Like feature me if you want to feature me and I will feature you if I want to feature you.
10:28But we have to be 100% transparent so that our audience can literally build a relationship with
10:33us.
10:34Because how can you build a relationship with something if you can't figure out what it is
10:36or if it's lying to you?
10:38Right.
10:38And so that's the same with any media I post or any journalists.
10:41So yeah.
10:42What are the incentives that the relationship is built on is the, is the big one, right?
10:47So if it's, if it's just, we're going to swap for financial reasons,
10:50then there's no point in doing it and it makes you look bad.
10:53Of course it does.
10:54Yeah.
10:54And people sniff you out, like you, especially your subscribers have been with you for a while.
10:58Right.
10:58If I changed my tune on any of this, I would hope that there would be a mass exodus of
11:04these people.
11:05Right.
11:05As there should be.
11:07Um, it's so, it's so, so important.
11:09And I think a part, like people should just be, um, how do I put this?
11:13Again, it's the anti-capitalist in me.
11:15Like I am willing to make much less money than I could in order to do my job well.
11:20And I think that is what makes me good at my job ultimately.
11:24And a lot of it is driven by passion from what I'm hearing.
11:26And it's really refreshing because when I was reading your articles,
11:29I can hear the author of that article on here.
11:33And that's, that's really cool.
11:34Cause I, like you said, a lot of journalists sort of
11:37have this belief that they have to be unbiased and sort of this neutral force.
11:44And their voice is kind of lost in the just reporting.
11:48And like you said, communicating, whereas you're going deeper and kind of checking.
11:51So for example, a lot of climate coverage focuses on emissions, targets, technology,
11:56you know, those are like popping off at the moment from your perspective.
12:00What are those deeper stories that we're not telling often enough?
12:03Uh, the connection between material throughputs like material footprint and GDP,
12:09the fact that our economy is a physical economy,
12:11and the fact that our digital infrastructure is also physical.
12:14I mean, the ecological destruction of earth's body is mirrored in the destruction of our own bodies,
12:21right?
12:22Not just say the health crisis, but the,
12:24the severing of relationships between us all as our communities come under attack and our ways of life
12:30come under attack.
12:31I mean, it is so profoundly obvious that the political and economic system,
12:37which engenders a global crisis that is now an existential threat and threatens the body of the
12:45one place known in the universe that can support life, not just human life, but life.
12:51If that is not, if that system is not compatible with life, then that system needs to be put to
12:57rest.
12:58That the problem, this is not a climate crisis.
13:02It's a crisis of destruction.
13:04It's a crisis of violence.
13:05It's a crisis of greed and everything really does need to change in certain corners of the world
13:13in order for us all to come out of this in a better position.
13:17And the window for achieving that is getting smaller every day.
13:20From my perspective, right?
13:21There's a, a, a line of thought that was carried back, I guess, in the era of the boomers or
13:29something
13:29like that, where the increase in GDP equated to increase in quality of life.
13:35And in our generation, that's become decoupled completely.
13:39And they still want to live in a world.
13:42The people that are in power still want to live in that world, acting as if this,
13:46the constant growth of the GDP is the most important thing.
13:50Even though the reason people accepted it was because it supposedly increased quality of life.
13:57And now we know it doesn't.
13:59And so what, what we're having right now is a crisis with, with, I think my, our generation
14:05being like, okay, this, this doesn't serve me.
14:10This doesn't serve earth.
14:11This doesn't serve, this doesn't serve anything that matters, the soul, our relationships.
14:17So it needs to be gone.
14:20And I can hear that in you.
14:21You're like, it needs to go.
14:24We need, there needs to be a shift in our priorities as human beings and as societies
14:31and all of that, all of that different stuff.
14:34And what, what do you think?
14:37Cause I like very people are like, it's this, it's that it's like, it's everything.
14:42It's everything.
14:43The government is colluding with the banks, colluding with the, colluding with the companies.
14:47Everybody is in on it, except for us, except for the normal people.
14:54And yet, and, and yet I don't think that collusion is entirely conscious.
15:01Yes.
15:01We could, you know, shift our energy systems.
15:03And I do think we need to shift our energy systems, just not at the expense of places
15:07like Latin America and the Pacific, um, that are being absolutely, you know, colonized at
15:12the moment for the minerals.
15:14Um, so we're going to have to like melt down things that exist and, you know, re-envision
15:18what our cities look like and what our lives look like.
15:20And it could be a really exciting possibility, but the ultimate reality of that, the eventuality
15:25is that everything's going to be smaller, right?
15:28Our energy consumption is going to be smaller.
15:30Our material footprints are going to be smaller.
15:31That means our economies are going to be smaller, right?
15:33It is going to be, uh, a decline in a sense, which could be totally liberatory,
15:39but those in power, like cannot do that because it would spook all the other chess pieces,
15:48if you will.
15:49And I think it would then throw everything into quite a chaotic sequence of events
15:54that wouldn't really be good for any of us either.
15:57Yeah.
15:58And I mean, if I'm understanding correctly, we've lost the plot.
16:02Yeah.
16:03Basically like it's this right train is just going and no one is actually driving it.
16:09Someone's just sat at the driver's seats and nothing's working inside the, is that the capsule?
16:13Yeah.
16:15Yeah, yeah, essentially, essentially.
16:18And I think that's an important realization because, um,
16:24whilst I don't think anybody should ever negotiate with somebody who wants their death
16:29or their harm, uh, there are those who are in seats of power or like illusory seats of power
16:36who are worried about their future or their children or the earth or whatever it is.
16:41And so it is very important.
16:44And I think for the left to find a narrative that befits building relationships with people
16:50with whom it was previously sort of unimaginable too, because ultimately it's not all going to hit
16:57us the same, but it is all going to hit us.
16:59Right.
16:59And we do need allies everywhere we can.
17:02If we're going to traverse, um, the great difficulties that are coming.
17:07And I, and I think it's worth attempting to do that now while we still can.
17:12And in that theme of uncomfortable truths, I guess I'm wondering, are there any like economic
17:19narratives that you found particularly difficult to get audiences or institutions to confront?
17:24Is there that one thing that it's like, it's just not sticking?
17:28Uh, I find it, I think that it's quite difficult for organizations to confront the reality of
17:34capitalism.
17:35Uh, and the fact that it, you know, it's just not functioning in the way that it once did.
17:40And even the guy who, you know, invented it suggested that it should be used for a
17:44short amount of time to produce growth.
17:46And then we should transition to something else, you know?
17:49Um, but I find like when I'm speaking to, you know, people, people like us, it makes sense
17:57because people aren't idiots.
17:58They can see that things are getting worse and that the promises that they were given are not
18:02delivering and that something needs to change.
18:05I think the further up you go on the wealth scale, the more people go like, oh, GDP though,
18:09growth.
18:11Um, that's, as I said, that's an increasingly smaller number of people.
18:15Yeah.
18:16And in the climate space, from a journalist perspective, why is finance such a critical
18:22but to, again, maybe I'm not good on the internet, but I find it very underreported
18:28part of the climate story.
18:29It's something that we talk about as a silo rather than weaved into this is,
18:34I don't know, a tool that we need to fight it.
18:37Okay.
18:37Segway.
18:38Uh, I don't know if I personally find it underreported.
18:41I think when the cops come around, that is sort of the predominant discussion actually
18:47is the finance as opposed to the active production or any other shift.
18:52Um, and I think certain papers like the guardian is really good when cop comes around to keep
18:58hammering, you know, the, the, um, what's not been delivered and how much money is missing
19:03for the funds, et cetera, et cetera.
19:05Um, I think that we face a very difficult situation whereby we are going to have to ask
19:17certain countries to not use their resources, right?
19:21Not use the, the fossil fuels that they may have.
19:23Um, and yet they still deserve to explore, um, whatever infrastructure.
19:31I'm not going to say progress or development, but whatever infrastructure may feel right
19:35for them.
19:36And the only way to achieve that is through richer countries financing it.
19:41Um, and I think that that is a share of the equity that was stolen.
19:45I do think it's necessary.
19:46And I think that it is a viable, uh, part of what needs to happen as long as these wealthy
19:53countries also then begin to reduce, um, their own consumption.
19:58Um, this is really basic degrowth stuff and post-growth economics.
20:04And I think that, um, brilliant scholars, um, have essentially tapped into existing indigenous
20:11wisdom to, to figure out really straightforward things that we need to do going forward.
20:15And climate finance is one of them.
20:17Absolutely.
20:19Yeah.
20:19And it's one of those things, I think from what you explained it, that even though we try to
20:24frame it as a neutral or technical thing, it's deeply political.
20:27Oh yeah.
20:29So what, what.
20:30I'm just trying to flame anything neutral.
20:32Yeah.
20:32So what gets lost when we treat finance as a purely economic issue rather than a social one?
20:38What is a conversation we're not having because it's so uncomfortable?
20:42A realistic conversation.
20:44Right.
20:47I mean, you just have to look at the countries that are saying no, um, at different
20:53cops to get an idea of the political stage and what they're frightened about.
20:58And interestingly, you know, the United States is very big on, on refusing to give money to, um,
21:05the loss and development fund, which is the fund essentially that, um, like acknowledges
21:13what has been lost, um, and, uh, provides a pathway for countries, uh, going forward to,
21:21you know, have finance to build themselves in whatever way they see fit.
21:26Um, and the United States is very, very reticent to doing that because it believes that it will open
21:31that fund, giving money to that fund will open it up to being sued for the theft of resources over
21:38the,
21:38you know, course of the history of course of history and sued in future for not doing enough
21:44to then mitigate, you know, future loss and damage moving back a little bit.
21:49I just have a question.
21:50You know, I feel like, I feel like you mentioned that when cop comes around, um, there's a lot
21:57of talk about climate finance, but isn't that a disservice because you would, I don't think
22:03the important stuff happens around cop because real, like from what I understand
22:10in talking with, with Victoria and having, having actually been very conscious of the previous cop,
22:15nothing really happens around cop.
22:19And I think most of the real stuff happens between, between, um, in between and, and
22:30I, I think there's a, we, we don't hear about it.
22:33The yes, we, we, we do get a lot of coverage about what is promised and not delivered or
22:40promised and delivered during cop, but there's also a lot of money genuinely just moving around,
22:46um, for, for, or not moving around for just causes that we just have no idea where it's coming
22:55from, where it's going, how, uh, when it's happening, it's not getting the visibility
23:00that it should, um, for good, for good or bad reasons.
23:04I feel like, um, cop sort of distress.
23:06It's sort of a red herring that distracts from everything else.
23:09Yeah, maybe fair point.
23:12Um, to report effectively on climate finance in the in-between, you know, between cops, you,
23:20you really have to know it.
23:22Right.
23:22And there are some journalists that really know their stuff on climate finance and are
23:26very, very good, but they are few and far between because part of when you're working
23:32for a newspaper and you have an editor, part of the negotiation essentially is like, what
23:36are the stories that are newsworthy?
23:38What are the stories that are most newsworthy?
23:40And I think given the amount of like ecological incidents are ramping up every month, you know,
23:47floods, wildfires, ocean temperatures off the charts, you know, air temperatures off the charts,
23:54mass mortality events, um, freak weather events.
23:58Those are more newsworthy to the average reader than all of this kind of like technical stuff
24:04about climate finance.
24:06Right.
24:06So that might also be just to give my fellow climate journalists, you know, a bit of a
24:12bit of a break here in the eyes of the public.
24:14That might also be why that's happening.
24:17Why the stories that you want to see aren't getting reported on as much because there's
24:21literally limited room in a paper.
24:23Right.
24:24And there's limited room online because there's a limited number of journalists and there's a
24:28limited number of people that you kind of have focusing on that very specific thing.
24:33Um, because that's all they will be following.
24:35Right.
24:36So as we see the effects of the eco crisis ramping up, I think we are in quite a dangerous
24:44position
24:44where we're going to see less of the politics and less of the economics being reported on
24:50because so much attention will be going to the literal, you know, breakdown of Earth's body in
24:55front of us.
24:55That's really scary because it's sort of, it benefits the colluders we were talking about
25:01earlier to have those stories not make it.
25:04If we're so focused on the physical thing that we can actually picture and take videos of this
25:11terrible natural disaster, rather than talk about how the government failed to fund the
25:16right seawall so this wouldn't happen, for example.
25:20Sure.
25:21But it's also how you get more people on board, right?
25:24If you want people to care more and more about Earth, they're going to have to
25:28really feel it viscerally in their body.
25:30I do feel that you can get your, your fix of climate finance by looking at the anti-climate finance.
25:37Um, because I, I constantly get fed stories.
25:41It's just, it's just rage bait for me at this point.
25:42I'm just fed rage bait all the time by, by Google about like, uh, like, uh, the U S government
25:48giving billions to the, the, the extremely needy open AI or extremely needy NVIDIA.
25:55And that's, I, I think that's anti-climate finance because the, the, the, there are so
26:01many levels in which that screws over everyone, um, that, uh, that it's just impossible to go through them.
26:11Um, so that's, that's sort of one of the ways that I look like, where is the money going?
26:16Oh, it's all going to just destruction, just the endless destruction in the, and the number go up.
26:24Yeah.
26:24See where the money's moving and where it's not.
26:27Yeah, exactly.
26:29Exactly.
26:29When you follow the money in climate action, do you see patterns emerging?
26:34In climate action?
26:35In climate, like in the climate story and climate crisis, um, stories, when you're doing your,
26:42for example, research on specific cases or industries, companies, even, is there a pattern
26:48that you're finding?
26:50Well, I'm not a climate finance reporter, right?
26:52I've done a little bit on loss and damages back in the day.
26:55So I'm really not the person to ask, um, about patterns.
26:58I would say typically it's, you know, companies that have that boards that have that social capital,
27:04essentially sucking up, you know, a lot of resources.
27:07Like, you know, a lot of these big foundations are very interested in geoengineering because
27:11that delays the symptoms of what we're feeling so that we can continue, you know, this madness
27:16for as long as possible.
27:17Um, but yeah, you'd have to speak to a proper climate finance reporter to, to really find out
27:22about the patterns.
27:23I guess zooming out then in your space of reporting, are there patterns that you find
27:28when you get that gut feeling of something's off and I need to investigate this?
27:32Is the same thing off or are you just finding that it is off every time, but for different reasons?
27:40What should we look out for?
27:42I am particularly interested and my reporting in recent years has focused on, um, how
27:49the resource rush is impacting geopolitics and that very often, I mean, unless you are talking about
27:59small groups of people enacting some sort of cultural war, it's more often than not actually
28:07states weaponizing a perceived difference in their public in order to justify violence against another
28:17group in order to get their hands on their resources.
28:21That's what I'm always looking at.
28:24Yeah.
28:25And that resource extraction and sort of dependency theory all over again, you know,
28:30we like to think colonization is over, but sadly not the case.
28:38Yeah, no, very much not.
28:40I feel like the, I don't know about colonization, but the wars are never over.
28:45Yeah.
28:47There's always something to find about.
28:49And I guess, I guess to close off on a lighter note, right?
28:54In a world where so many climate narratives, narratives lead to paralysis, despair, you know,
29:01everything you're telling us is quite rough and it can feel quite bleak, especially people who are
29:06in spaces that they are very passionate about.
29:09Burnout is always just around the corner because you're throwing yourself into this.
29:14How do you think storytelling can still open space for agency and for us to feel like,
29:19no, don't, don't just lie down and die.
29:21Like, let's, let's go, we can do this.
29:24Or is it just more wishful thinking than anything?
29:27Well, see, I don't understand what, you know, the sort of our current reticence of using anger
29:36is, you know, I don't feel burnt out doing my work and I don't feel despair doing my work.
29:45I mean, sometimes, but rarely, I feel angry.
29:49I am so angry.
29:51I'm furious with the state of the world.
29:53I'm furious that this is where we've gotten to.
29:55I'm furious that we're essentially living in this like endless cycle over the thousands of years.
30:00I'm still perpetuating these inane violences against one another and the natural world.
30:05I'm angry.
30:06I'm angry deep in my bones and it keeps me going.
30:08And so I think storytellers should be, you know, we use that and it fits the research,
30:14you know, which emotion travels the fastest on social media, it's anger.
30:20It's anger.
30:21And I, and I think that if you're engaging, you know, with an audience that is clued in,
30:28ie, you know, is looking for stories about the world and about everything that we've been talking
30:32about, if you tell them that there's something to be hopeful about, they might not, they might just
30:36not believe you at this stage.
30:38You know, I think people want a sense of, of realism and they want to be told that they're
30:42allowed to feel sort of the full spectrum of things.
30:45I often hear that it's people working in sort of like the institutional space that are feeling
30:51burnt out.
30:52And I'm not surprised.
30:53I mean, they're all just banging.
30:55They've all just been banging their heads against walls for decades, essentially,
30:59like not, not achieving very much to be totally Frank or the great achievements that they have,
31:05but then so easily washed away by shifts in governments and policies.
31:09I mean, that is incredibly depressing.
31:11I think to feel futile, to feel ineffective is depressing.
31:17So whatever gets you feeling effective, um, and angry, I think is helpful.
31:23And so stories that focus, I think on that, on what people can achieve together and also how
31:30they can fight back together.
31:32I've learned a piece of information today, doing one of my interviews for the podcast,
31:36um, that apparently watching the hunger games film, um, actually increases people's like
31:45willingness to sort of like hypothetically resist against authoritarianism.
31:50And, you know, great, cool.
31:52I don't think anybody watched the hunger games and felt hopeful,
31:56you know, for the first half of it, you know, I think they're feeling pretty angry.
32:00You know, what is this crazy system that has been set up that these poor children are having to
32:04engage in?
32:04You should feel the same way about this reality.
32:06This timeline sucks.
32:08Get angry about it.
32:10I agree.
32:11And I'm a big fan of channeling anger into action.
32:14You know, as someone who engages in activism, I'm always angry, but it's got to go somewhere.
32:19One of, one of, uh, one of the gripes that I have with the modern state of things is like,
32:24this is the most boring dystopia.
32:26Oh, I know.
32:26I say that all the time.
32:27It's so boring.
32:29So, everything's so cliched.
32:33Nothing about it is interesting.
32:35Nothing about it is like random or, um, surprising.
32:41Everything is just ticking along as it should have been written by AI chat bots.
32:45And, you know, and yet we're not on the street with our, you know, like with our pitchforks,
32:52quite frankly, get angry.
32:54Your life is being written to dust by AI chat bots.
32:58Pitchforks is too whimsical.
33:00I feel like.
33:01Yeah, too shrek.
33:02Yeah, sadly.
33:04But we are going to unpack that and we're going to talk about journalism as an intervention,
33:08not observation during the blog.
33:10So, you can check that out on tangeliclife.org.
33:14You can check out Planet Critical and everything Rachel is working on.
33:17Keep an eye out.
33:18Subscribe to her newsletter.
33:20And thank you guys for joining us for the first episode of season four of Tangelic Talks.
33:25We'll catch you guys on the next one.
33:26Bye.
33:33Let's stop change.
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