Bad Idea #56 "Just leave it to the market" with Tom Crowther

Bad Idea #56 "Just leave it to the market" with Tom Crowther

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas speaks with global ecologist Tom Crowther about a seductive but dangerous assumption: just leave it to the market. While part of the conversation focuses directly on capitalism, inequality, poverty, and wealth redistribution, the discussion is much broader than economics alone. Drawing on Tom’s new book Nature’s Echo, they explore how feedback loops shape everything from the birth of stars to the spread of ideas, the dynamics of ecosystems, the structure of societies, and the possibility of ecological recovery. The central argument is that markets can generate growth, innovation, and momentum, but without balancing forces they also drive instability, degradation, and collapse. It is a wide-ranging conversation about regeneration, resilience, scientific thinking, and how human systems might better mirror the stabilising logic of the natural world. 🧠 Topics Discussed 🔁 Why feedback loops are one of the most useful ways to understand nature and society 🌌 How the same looping dynamics help explain the formation of stars, life, and ecosystems 😱 Why climate doomism can become self-fulfilling if it closes off regenerative possibilities ⚡ Why renewables and electrification may now be driven by powerful self-reinforcing momentum 📉 Why no exponential growth system lasts forever, and why overshoot matters 🌱 How regenerative feedback loops can build when livelihoods improve alongside nature 🚜 Why Tom distinguishes regenerative livelihoods from simplistic anti-industrial romanticism 🌾 How nature loss can eventually reduce agricultural yields, even in intensive systems 🥩 Why plant-based proteins and nuclear energy could radically reduce ecological pressure 💸 Why poverty is one of the strongest drivers of environmental degradation 🧾 How wealth redistribution can act as a stabilising feedback in both society and ecology 🌳 What the trillion trees controversy got wrong about restoration 🗺️ How the Restore platform helps land stewards, funders, and the public support regeneration on the ground 🧪 Why science needs both rigour and humility, especially when defining the world in fixed categories 🧠 How constructivist thinking, belief, and consensus shape the way societies understand reality 👩‍🏫 Guest Bio Dr Tom Crowther is a global ecologist working across multiple universities, with his foundation based in Switzerland. His research spans biodiversity, forests, restoration, agriculture, and the feedback loops that shape planetary systems. He is also the author of Nature’s Echo: Harnessing Ancient Feedback Loops to Heal a Changing Planet, which is now available. 📚 Recommended Reading & Resources Nature’s Echo: Harnessing Ancient Feedback Loops to Heal a Changing Planet by Tom Crowther The Restore platform Research on ecological restoration, regenerative livelihoods, and nature recovery Work on feedback loops in climate, biodiversity, and social systems Writing and debate on trillion trees, reforestation, and restoration policy 💬 Quote Highlights 💬 “For me, the bad idea is that we’re doomed to a bleak future.” Tom Crowther 💬 “There’s unbelievable potential for regenerative loops to build momentum as well.” Tom Crowther 💬 “I am trying to think like a natural system.” Tom Crowther 💬 “I think our economic system needs to perfectly mirror that.” Tom Crowther 💬 “Poverty is the biggest driver of degradation.” Tom Crowther 💬 “When they are lifted out of poverty, that is when nature thrives and they start to thrive more, which makes nature thrive more.” Tom Crowther 🌐 About WePlanet WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future. 📥 Join the Conversation 💬 podcast@weplanet.org 📩 https://weplanet.org/podcast 👁️ https://twitter.com/weplanetint

Bad Idea #55 "Life's only about competition" with Rowan Hooper

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas speaks with science writer Rowan Hooper about one of the deepest misconceptions in biology: that life is only about competition. Drawing on Hooper’s new book Togetherness, they explore how symbiosis and cooperation run through life at every scale, from lichens and corals to ants, orchids, the human microbiome, and even the origin of complex cells. The conversation also revisits Darwin, Malthus, ecology, overconsumption, and the ways modern society has been shaped by an overly narrow reading of evolution. It is a wide-ranging discussion about why life’s greatest successes often come not from ruthless struggle alone, but from collaboration, interdependence, and living together. 🧠 Topics Discussed 🧬 Why cooperation and symbiosis have been neglected in biology for so long 🍄 How lichens show that radically different life forms can combine into one successful organism 🪸 Why coral reefs depend on symbiosis between animals and algae 🔋 How mitochondria and chloroplasts reveal that complex cells were built through endosymbiosis 🦠 Why humans are ecosystems, not just individuals, thanks to the microbiome 🧠 How symbiotic microbes influence digestion, mood, sleep, and immunity 📚 Whether modern understandings of symbiosis challenge Darwin, or deepen him ⚔️ How Darwin strategically emphasized competition to make his theory acceptable 📈 Why Malthusian thinking shaped both Darwinism and modern ideas of scarcity 🌾 How artificial fertilizer helped humanity escape Malthus, while creating new ecological damage 🐜 How leaf-cutter ants became extraordinary farmers through fungal symbiosis 🌸 Why orchids cannot even germinate without fungal partners 🌍 How ecological stress and climate change are breaking down vital symbiotic relationships 🧪 Why technologies such as genetic engineering may help restore ecological function 🌱 What it means to live more ecologically on a crowded planet 👩‍🏫 Guest Bio Dr Rowan Hooper is a science writer and author whose work explores biology, evolution, ecology, and what science can tell us about the human place in nature. In this episode he discusses his new book, Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life’s Greatest Collaborations. The book is published on June 4 in the UK, and on August 14 in the US and Canada. 📚 Recommended Reading & Resources Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life’s Greatest Collaborations by Rowan Hooper Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Work on Lynn Margulis and endosymbiosis Research on the human microbiome Writing on ecology, soil health, plant-fungal symbiosis, and coral bleaching 💬 Quote Highlights 💬 “The emphasis ever since Darwin has been on competition. And while that is correct in many ways, it’s led to a terrible neglect of cooperation and symbiosis.” Rowan Hooper 💬 “That’s done real damage to the way we live in the world.” Rowan Hooper 💬 “I am an ecosystem, mobile ecosystem.” Rowan Hooper 💬 “Darwin was actually... a very cunning plan basically. He did it deliberately in order for his book to be accepted.” Rowan Hooper 💬 “Orchids are super successful and the whole root of their success is through symbiosis.” Rowan Hooper 💬 “From the origin of life to now and then into the future. We need it.” Rowan Hooper 🌐 About WePlanet WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future. 📥 Join the Conversation 💬 podcast@weplanet.org 📩 https://weplanet.org/podcast 👁️ https://twitter.com/weplanetint

Bad Idea #54 "Shut down the cobalt mines" with Nicholas Niarchos

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas speaks with journalist and author Nicholas Niarchos about the dirty, dangerous, and politically fraught supply chains behind lithium-ion batteries. Using cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a central case study, they explore how a technology essential to electrification and decarbonisation became tied to child labour, unsafe artisanal mines, corruption, colonial legacies, and weak global accountability. The conversation pushes back against a simplistic response, namely shutting down cobalt mining altogether. Niarchos argues that cobalt is a highly effective battery material and that the real problem is not the mineral itself, but the governance failures and moral outsourcing that allow abuse to persist across global supply chains. 🧠 Topics Discussed 🔋 Why lithium-ion batteries became central to the clean energy transition ⚙️ Which minerals go into modern batteries, including cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, graphite, and phosphates 🏭 How Exxon helped pioneer lithium-ion battery research before abandoning it 🚗 Why lithium-ion batteries made modern electric vehicles viable ⛏️ Why cobalt from the DRC became so important to battery chemistry 👷 The realities of artisanal mining, including child labour, mine collapses, and extreme precarity 📱 How major brands such as Apple are tied to these supply chains, even when they claim high standards ⚖️ Why industrial mines and artisanal mines differ, but both still raise serious questions ♻️ Why recycling alone does not solve the underlying justice problem 🧪 Whether sodium-ion and other new battery chemistries will reduce dependence on cobalt 🌍 Why the goal should be fixing the supply chain, not abandoning battery technology or Congo itself 👩‍🏫 Guest Bio Nicholas Niarchos is a journalist and author whose work focuses on conflict, extraction, inequality, and global supply chains. In this conversation he discusses his book on the hidden human and political costs behind lithium-ion batteries and the minerals that power the energy transition, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 📚 Recommended Reading & Resources * The Elements of Power by Nicholas Niarchos * Reporting on cobalt mining and battery supply chains in the Democratic Republic of Congo * Research on artisanal and industrial cobalt mining * Work on battery chemistry, electrification, and critical minerals * Analysis of colonial extraction, governance, and resource politics in Central Africa 💬 Quote Highlights * 💬 “The bad idea is the battery supply chain itself, which arose from a series of decisions that didn’t seem to be taken particularly consciously, but seem to be driven by avarice, essentially.” - Nicholas Niarchos * 💬 “I have been to mines that sit directly in Apple’s supply chain and watched as people without shoes go into these mines.” - Nicholas Niarchos * 💬 “The iPhone is the great success story for Apple. Don’t forget it. This success was built on the backs of these kinds of labor conditions. - Nicholas Niarchos * 💬 “If we start recycling all our material, which we’re admittedly a very, very long way off from, what gets left in Congo? - Nicholas Niarchos * 💬 “There’s no need to go to sodium. There’s no need to try and figure out new technologies... because we have the technology. The technology is the lithium ion battery.” - Nicholas Niarchos * 💬 “The bad idea is the supply chain, not the use of cobalt in batteries.” - Mark Lynas 🌐 About WePlanet WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future. 📥 Join the Conversation 💬 podcast@weplanet.org 📩 https://weplanet.org/podcast 👁️ https://twitter.com/weplanetint

Bad Idea #53 "History shows nuclear war will never happen.” with David Holloway

In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas speaks with Stanford historian David Holloway about one of the most dangerous assumptions of the nuclear age: history shows nuclear war will never happen. Drawing on Holloway’s new book Nuclear Weapons and International History, they trace the development of the bomb from the Manhattan Project to the thermonuclear age, the Cuban Missile Crisis, launch-on-warning doctrines, arms control, and the unraveling of the post-Cold War nuclear order. The conversation makes clear that the fact nuclear war has not happened yet is no guarantee it never will. Instead, it is a story of repeated near misses, fragile restraint, and a continuing risk that humanity has learned to treat as background noise. 🧠 Topics Discussed ☢️ Why David Holloway wanted to write an international history of nuclear weapons 💥 The difference between atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs 🔥 Why thermonuclear weapons transformed the scale of human destructiveness 🧊 How the Cold War became a confrontation shaped by catastrophic nuclear risk 🚨 How close the Cuban Missile Crisis came to becoming a nuclear war 🛳️ The Soviet submarine incident on Black Saturday and the role of sheer luck ☎️ Why the hotline and early arms control efforts emerged after Cuba 🕊️ How scientists helped launch the anti-nuclear movement 🎯 How deterrence, mutual assured destruction, and launch-on-warning doctrines evolved ⚠️ Why false alarms and misread signals remain one of the greatest nuclear dangers 🤖 How artificial intelligence and new technologies may make nuclear risk worse 🛰️ Why missile defense systems like Star Wars and the proposed Golden Dome are so controversial 📉 How the arms control system built during the Cold War has eroded 🌍 Why a world with fewer nuclear weapons is still a world in grave danger ❓ Whether humanity can find an alternative to living indefinitely with nuclear arsenals 👩‍🏫 Guest Bio David Holloway is Emeritus Professor of History at Stanford University and one of the world’s leading historians of nuclear weapons and the Cold War. His work has focused on the Soviet Union, international security, nuclear strategy, and the political history of the atomic age. His new book, Nuclear Weapons and International History, offers a sweeping account of how nuclear weapons shaped global politics from 1945 onward. 📚 Recommended Reading & Resources * Nuclear Weapons and International History by David Holloway * Six Minutes to Winter by Mark Lynas * Research and historical accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis * Writing on the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and the Pugwash movement * Histories of nuclear deterrence, arms control, and the thermonuclear arms race 💬 Quote Highlights 💬 “I think we’re entering a new and very dangerous period, partly linked to changes in the world order.” - David Holloway 💬 “The H-bomb is a big step forward in terms of sheer destructiveness.” - David Holloway 💬 “It was a war they didn’t want that they came close to having.” - David Holloway 💬 “We’re entering a new and very dangerous period.” -David Holloway 💬 “We can live with nuclear weapons... I think it’s a very bad idea.” -David Holloway 🌐 About WePlanet WePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future. 📥 Join the Conversation 💬 podcast@weplanet.org 📩 https://weplanet.org/podcast 👁️ https://twitter.com/weplanetint

Bad Idea #52 "Attenborough’s films ignore human impacts” with Colin Butfield

“Attenborough’s films ignore human impacts.” In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas speaks with filmmaker and environmental storyteller Colin Butfield, co-founder of Open Planet Studios and a long-time collaborator of David Attenborough. They discuss how Attenborough’s work has evolved from classic nature spectacle toward a much more explicit confrontation with ecological destruction, restoration, and humanity’s role in shaping the living world. Through the making of Ocean with David Attenborough, they explore the shocking reality of bottom trawling and Antarctic krill fishing, the changing grammar of nature documentaries in the Anthropocene, and why stories of damage now have to sit alongside stories of recovery. It is a rich conversation about storytelling, responsibility, and the power of film to show that human impacts can no longer be ignored. 🧠 Topics Discussed: * 🎥 What it is like working with David Attenborough over nearly two decades * 🗣️ How Attenborough delivers those iconic pieces to camera * 🌍 How nature documentaries shifted from pristine spectacle to ecological reality * 🌊 Why Ocean with David Attenborough was made as an urgent film about human impacts * 🐟 How bottom trawling devastates marine ecosystems on an industrial scale * 🛑 Why bottom trawling is still allowed in many marine protected areas * 🐋 How Antarctic krill fishing competes directly with whales and destabilises the Southern Ocean food web * 🧾 Why “sustainable” seafood labels often deserve much more scrutiny * 📚 How films can remain true to documentary storytelling while still driving real-world campaigns * 🎬 Why Open Planet gives footage away for education and advocacy * 🌱 What ecological recovery can look like when people choose restoration and protection * 🤝 Why humans are not inherently destructive and can become a force for good * 🐻 What it takes to film extraordinary wildlife and wild places around the world * 🚀 Why “we can always go and live on Mars” is its own terrible environmental fantasy 👩‍🏫 Guest Bio:Colin Butfield is co-founder and director of Open Planet Studios. As a filmmaker, writer and environmental storyteller, he has worked on major productions including A Life on Our Planet, Breaking Boundaries, Our Planet, and Ocean with David Attenborough. He has also co-written Ocean with David Attenborough and works at the intersection of documentary storytelling, conservation, and public engagement. 📚 Recommended Reading & Resources * Ocean by David Attenborough and Colin Butfield * Ocean with David Attenborough * Open Planet * Campaigns and research on bottom trawling in marine protected areas * Work on marine protection, krill fisheries, and ocean restoration * Sea Shepherd footage and reporting on the Southern Ocean krill fishery 💬 Quote Highlights💬 “This is what we’ve chosen to do as a society or chosen to allow.”Colin Butfield 💬 “I can absolutely sympathize with a community casting nets, even bottom trawling though I hope we can get away from that to feed their families, feed their communities, and earn a living. That’s a million miles away from going all the way down to Antarctica, hauling up krill for pet food and supplements.”Colin Butfield 💬 “You just got to a point where it felt very strange... not to mention humanity or talk about the changes that are happening in them.”Colin Butfield 💬 “It was unavoidable. You just can’t ignore this. It’s crazy to ignore it.”Colin Butfield 💬 “I don’t think humans are inherently bad.”Colin Butfield 🌐 About WePlanetWePlanet is an international movement campaigning for science-based solutions to the climate, nature and development crises. Through conversations like this one, we challenge bad ideas, spotlight better ones, and make the case for a more abundant, resilient and hopeful future. 📥 Join the Conversation💬 podcast@weplanet.org 📩 https://weplanet.org/podcast [https://weplanet.org/podcast] 👁️ https://twitter.com/weplanetint [https://twitter.com/weplanetint]