Exploring the implications of ISDS, where a select few can award substantial compensation to companies when governments hinder profits, with a focus on cases involving fossil fuel industries and the power dynamics between the global North and South.
Our guest this week is host of one of my must-listen podcasts - one I've been following since the spring, when Dr Simon Michaux mailed me and said, you need to listen to Rachel - and he was right.
Rachel Donald is host of Planet: Critical one of the world's top-rated podcasts on the poly-crisis and systems change. She interviews some really big players on the world stage with integrity and panache - her conversation with Alastair Campbell where she never lets him off the hook is an absolute exemplar of how to hold power to account and I think we're seeing the change in real time on his podcast with Rory Stewart.
When she's not podcasting, Rachel is a climate corruption journalist who investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. With world exclusives in major papers, Rachel investigates the gaslighting which props up our broken systems. She travels the world talking on - and off - the record to heads of government and oil industry executives, to the people who make our current system tick and who are often just as afraid as we are about the direction and speed of travel towards the edge of the extinction cliff.
Rachel has an almost unique insight into the nature of the systemic catastrophe we've built for ourselves and therefore of the ways we might address it. This was a bracing conversation. There are no easy answers and I had some of my rosier tinted lenses broken along the way. But in the end we came to the place we often get to with this podcast - that building communities of place, purpose and passion where we value each other, and our capacity to love bravely is what might - perhaps - bring us to the emergent edge of inter-becoming that Indy Johar spoke of a few weeks ago.
So brace yourselves, this is not an easy podcast, but we need to know where we're at so we can let go - again - ever more completely - of our assumptions about business as usual and do whatever we can, wherever we are, to be that emergent edge.
Planet: Critical podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/planet-critical/id1545009586
Planet: Critical website https://www.planetcritical.com/
Rachel on Twitter https://twitter.com/CrisisReports
Rachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-donald/
Diem25 - Democracy in Europe Movement https://diem25.org/en/
