Nature in Crisis

Lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of the transition away from fossil fuels. But lithium, like the copper, cobalt and rare earths that renewable technologies also require, has to be mined. ‘Everywhere that mines are dug up to provide raw materials for the energy transition,’ Thea Riofrancos writes in Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, ‘global climate action comes into conflict with local environmental protection.’ Or as Meehan puts it at the start of the episode, there’s a fundamental contradiction between two desirable things.

Meehan and Peter discuss Latin America’s long history of resource nationalism and compare the process of lithium extraction through brine evaporation with the far more destructive practices of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The paradoxes inherent in ‘green capitalism’ are brought into sharper focus by Riofrancos’s exploration of these extractive frontiers, but are her solutions – smaller batteries, more recycling, denser cities and fewer cars – a serious proposal or pie in the sky?

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Further reading in the LRB:

Laleh Khalili: Who owns the arctic? https://lrb.me/nicep1101

Adam Tooze: What energy transition? https://lrb.me/nicep1102

‘The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right’ is a different kind of book from the others Meehan and Peter have discussed so far in their series, even as their focus has shifted from biology to society. Its authors, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, are both anti-fascist researchers writing explicitly from the activist left. Unlike commentators such as Mark Lilla, who worry about ‘vilification inflation’, Moore and Roberts make the case for the continuing salience of the word fascism.

They argue that a direct line can be traced between early fascist ideology in Italy and Germany and the ‘reharmonising’ green nationalism of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France and Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Mystical and dangerous ideas claiming to be environmentalist, once the preserve of fringe online groups, have entered the political mainstream through these successful disrupter parties, and understanding the connection between past and present is the only way to speculate meaningfully about the future of far-right ecological thought and action. Meehan and Peter consider the plausibility of the three future scenarios sketched in the book: ‘Fossilised Reaction’, ‘Batteries, Bombs and Borders’ and ‘Climate Collapse Cultists’.

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Read more in the LRB:

Daniel Trilling: Is this fascism? ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/nicep1001⁠⁠

Alan Ryan: Fascism in the Plural ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/nicep404⁠⁠

Edward Luttwak: Why fascism is the wave of the future: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/c6350c ⁠

Over the past twelve years, the walls and shop shutters of Upper Manhattan have been gradually filled by giant paintings of climate-threatened birds, inspired by the species depicted by the artist John James Audubon, who lived in the area. Emily Raboteau’s ‘Lessons for Survival’ (2024) takes these murals, along with Raboteau’s own photographs of local birds, as a way into exploring the challenges faced by a mother of two Black sons in New York City living through Hurricane Sandy, the first Trump presidency, Covid and mounting climate breakdown.

In this episode, Meehan and Peter talk through the different aspects of Raboteau’s project of survival, from experiences of gentrification and medical racism to the models it offers for dealing with existential threat and ‘justifiable rage’, and Raboteau’s stylistic achievement of bringing together the urban and natural environment.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Meehan Crist: When the ice melts: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep901⁠

Liam Shaw: Great Auks: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep902⁠

Richard Fortey: Sea Slugs, Wombats, Microbes: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep903⁠

At Chaco Canyon in the New Mexico desert lie the ruins of a once vibrant and extensive Ancestral Puebloan civilisation. Sometime in the 12th century the society fell into decline, as a fifty-year drought may have helped to push the settlement to collapse. ‘How is it that a complex society like Chaco could survive one drought but not another?’ Roy Scranton asks near the start of ‘Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress’ (2025).

For Scranton, the fate of the civilisation at Chaco Canyon is a microcosm for the crisis now confronting humanity. The challenges we face, from climate change to political instability, are so intractable in part because of their complexity. In this episode, Meehan and Peter discuss Scranton’s analysis of our predicament and his proposal for ‘ethical pessimism’, based on resistance to our bias for optimism, as a way of coping with an uncertain future.

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Further reading:

Adam Tooze: Trouble Transitioning: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep8tooze⁠

Further listening:

Meehan Crist's series on 'Climate, Politics and Procreation' on the LRB Podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/meehanpod⁠

Through folktales, memoir and hard science, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 'Braiding Sweetgrass' argues for the intertwining of Indigenous knowledge systems and empirical science, to support ‘mutual flourishing’ between humans and the environment. 'Braiding Sweetgrass' was an enormous success for a small press publication, becoming a bestseller and a touchstone for readers searching for alternatives to extractivist realpolitik.

In this episode, Meehan and Peter look at the most compelling features of Kimmerer’s technique – reminiscent of Darwin at his best – and where her book risks scientific overreach.

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Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

The idea that a river is a living being has important legal consequences. But it also has imaginative consequences, which can, in George Eliot’s words, ‘enlarge the imagined range for self to move in’. In ‘Is a River Alive?’ (2025), Robert Macfarlane travels with the lawyers, Indigenous people, scientists and others who are working to protect rivers in Ecuador, India and Quebec, and challenges himself to see rivers in a way that widens the category of life.

In this episode, Meehan and Peter assess Macfarlane's quest and look at the different kinds of writing he deploys along the way, including adventure story, biography and philosophy. They also look back to the origins of the rights of nature movement at the University of Southern California in the 1970s and consider whether the choice between seeing a river as either a resource or a fellow being is a false one.

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Read more in the LRB:

Rebecca Solnit on water: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep601⁠

Kathleen Jamie of Robert Macfarlane: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep602

In ‘Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth’ (1979), James Lovelock proposed that the Earth is something like a single living organism, capable of manipulating its circumstances and the environment to suit its needs. While many scientists reject the fullest formulation of this idea, it has nonetheless had a profound influence on our understanding of the ways in which animal and plant life interact with the non-living parts of the environment, to the extent that observations in biological and earth systems science are often assessed for which version of Gaia they might support.

In this episode, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith look at the origins of the Gaia hypothesis in the radical work of Lynn Margulis and the contributions of Lovelock’s academic collaborator Dian Hitchcock, and in the science of cybernetics. They then consider the degree to which any formulation of Gaia can explain certain processes, from the impact of the ecological competition between daisies on the reflection of solar radiation to the carbon-silicate cycle and its control of carbon dioxide levels, and consider some of Lovelock’s wilder theories, including his suggestion that humans should merge their minds with those of whales.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Read more in the LRB:

Meehan Crist on ‘Novocene’: https://lrb.me/natureep501

Peter Godfrey-Smith on Lovelock: https://lrb.me/natureep502

The ‘great acceleration’ is a term used to describe the dramatic surge in the 1950s of both human and earth systems indicators that marked a shift from a relatively stable planetary state to one that's characterised by increasing environmental instability. Alongside measures of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane levels, this shift can be tracked in numerous other areas of human activity, such as GDP, financialisation, foreign direct investment and the spread of telecommunications.

In ‘The Burning Earth’ (2024), Sunil Amrith uses history as a way of understanding why we got to this moment, drawing on multiple strands of human activity over more than 500 years to trace the origins of environmental crisis. In this episode, Meehan and Peter interrogate some of Amrith’s major themes and examples, from the damaging impact of 18th-century ideas of freedom on our relationship to the natural world, to his analysis of postwar environmentalism through the figures of Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson and Indira Gandhi.

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In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture⁠

More from the LRB:

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n24/alexander-bevilacqua/friend-or-food⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n22/pooja-bhatia/the-end-of-the-plantocracy⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n05/benjamin-kunkel/the-capitalocene⁠⁠

Meehan Crist and Alison Bashford on Indira Gandhi and the anthropocene:

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/climate-politics-and-procreation-alison-bashford⁠⁠

Recommendations for the London Review Bookshop from Sunil Amrith: ⁠⁠https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/blog/2025/october/british-academy-book-prize-2025-sunil-amrith-s-reading-recommendations⁠

In Blue Machine (2024), Helen Czerski refigures the ocean as an enormous planetary engine, converting light and heat into motion. Her book invites us to see the ocean not as an ‘absence’ but an intricate series of operations that makes life as we know it possible.

In this episode, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith reflect on the ways Czerski’s book has altered their thinking about the ocean, and whether new perspectives can ever be enough to change public policy.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Get the book: ⁠https://lrb.me/czerskicr⁠

More from the LRB:

Richard Hamblyn on deep-sea exploration:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/richard-hamblyn/hurrah-for-the-dredge⁠

Katherine Rundell on the greenland shark:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/katherine-rundell/consider-the-greenland-shark⁠

Liam Shaw on coral:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n22/liam-shaw/in-the-photic-zone⁠

Amia Srinivasan reviews Peter’s book on octopus minds:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker⁠

Film: Forecasting D-Day

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/lrb-films-interviews/forecasting-d-day⁠

Next episode: ‘The Burning Earth’ by Sunil Amrith

⁠https://lrb.me/amrithcr

In The Light Eaters (2024), Zoë Schlanger reports from the frontiers of botany, where researchers are discovering forms of sensing, signalling and responding that challenge our ideas of plants as passive life forms. Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith explore Schlanger’s account of new research into plant behaviour. They examine the case for plant agency – and the far more speculative claims for plant consciousness – and attempt to make sense of some astonishing discoveries.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture

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After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the synthetic pesticides that proliferated after the Second World War, which were assiduously defended by overconfident policymakers, industrial chemists and agribusiness. The book quickly became a bestseller and kickstarted the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the first episode of Nature in Crisis, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith discuss one of the truly great success stories in science writing. Carson was a masterful stylist and gifted scientist who could make abstruse developments in organic chemistry compelling, accessible and alarmingly intimate.

Meehan and Peter show how Carson wrote at the edge of science, anticipating the study of epigenetics and endocrine disruption. They illustrate why, though some of her proposed solutions fell short, Silent Spring remains ‘both an exhilarating and melancholy pleasure’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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In a time of climate breakdown and mass extinction there is a new urgency to environmental writing, both as literature and as science. So In their series, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith consider some of the most significant books published in the last few years, along with classic texts by Rachel Carson, James Lovelock and Robin Wall Kimmerer – tracing a loose arc from biology to society via questions of plant intelligence, biodiversity loss, the rights of nature, ecofascism and green capitalism.

o listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Meehan Crist is writer in residence in biological sciences at Columbia University.

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney

Books featured in the series:

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters

Helen Czerski, The Blue Machine

Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth

James Lovelock, Gaia

Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Emily Raboteau, Lessons for Survival

Roy Scranton, Impasse

Alex Moore and Sam Roberts, The Rise of Ecofascism

Thea Riofrancos, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism

Venomous Lumspcuker by Ned Beauman and Helm by Sarah Hall