The BREAK—DOWN
The BREAK—DOWN is a not-for-profit media project that publishes new writing and conversations on capitalism, nature, and the climate. The podcast features in-depth discussions and analyses on these topics. It is supported by its listeners and readers.
Episodes
Understanding China w/Tim Sahay, Li Shuo and Jeremy Wallace
It is by now all but impossible to have a meaningful conversation about climate politics without including China. At the same time, misunderstandings and the astonishing pace of development with respect to China's role on the world stage mean that these conversations can easily collapse into a simplistic binary: China as the world's green energy saviour, or as its oppressive coal-burning bogeyman.
A Crisis of Ideas w/Joel Wainwright
"The Left is in a serious crisis of ideas." Those are the simple and fairly damning words with which our guest, Joel Wainwright, opened his interview with our Editor Adrienne Buller. In a wide-ranging conversation, Adrienne and Joel discuss his extensive work trying to make sense of the specific relationship between capitalism and the climate crisis—drawing this connection not in some ge
Latin America Turns Right – Guillaume Long on the Politics of Extraction and US imperialism in South America
In April this year, the Colombian city of Santa Marta hosted the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. The conference was a landmark gathering which sought to shift the terms of the international climate debate away from technocratic squabbling to the far more pointed question of “How can we end fossil fuel use?”. Much of the impetus for that conference was led by then-Colombia
CONTINENTAL SHIFT Ep 4: Extraction North of Empire
In Canada, intensive resource extraction has long been baked into the country’s political economy and, arguably, to nation-building itself. Resource booms and policy choices have opened landscapes and livelihoods to large-scale mining and fossil fuel extraction, producing harms that are inseparable from the country’s colonial history.Today, as supply chains are restructured around critical mineral
CONTINENTAL SHIFT Ep 3: Extraction South of Empire
The ratification of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994 transformed Mexico in profound ways. Over the next thirty years it deepened and expanded the resource frontier across the country, disproportionately benefiting national and global elites. Mining activity exploded, and with it the socio‑ecological violence that follows large‑scale extraction. Anti‑extractivist struggles ca
CONTINENTAL SHIFT Ep 2: A (Not So) New Gold Rush
The term “critical minerals" suddenly seems to be all over the headlines. Securing access to this group of commodities, from familiar metals like lithium and copper to more obscure “rare earth elements” like yttrium, appears to be a growing priority of world leaders—particularly for those who consider China, currently the world's main producer of most critical minerals, a threat.But what exactly w
CONTINENTAL SHIFT Ep 1: Free Market Fictions and Trade Frictions
Welcome to Continential Shift, a series from The Break—Down and Geopolitical Ecology, where we examine the global rush for critical minerals and the struggle for resource dominance on the North American continent.The phrase "trade regimes" may sound dry, but these rules and agreements are a defining architecture of the global economy. They determine who gets to exploit a country’s resources, and w
LIVE: War and Peace in a Warming World w/Adam Hanieh, Guillaume Long, Samar Al-Bulushi and Lorah Steichen
On Friday 26 June, The BREAK—DOWN, Transition Security Project, and King’s College London co-hosted a public panel called “Securing The Future? War and Peace in a Warming World” as part of the Climate Security Forum during London Climate Action Week. In a panel featuring Samar Al-Bulushi (UC Irvine and Quincy Institute), Adam Hanieh (Director of SOAS Middle East Institute and author of Crude Capit
Iran, Oil and Empire w/Laleh Khalili
Last night, after more than 100 days since the US and Israel went to war against Iran, the US and Iran reached a partial framework for peace. When the war began at the end of February, it was all but impossible to make sense of the irrational explosion of violence. In the months since, that sense of irrationality has hardly ebbed, not least as the economic impacts of the war and resulting closures
LIVE: Airborne Launch w/ Geoff Mann, Daniela Gabor and Oliver Eagleton
We're celebrating the launch of The BREAK—DOWN's spring issue, Airborne! On May 6th, we hosted a live podcast where Adrienne Buller was joined by Geoff Mann, Daniela Gabor and Oliver Eagleton to discuss climate crisis through and beyond the contents of AIRBORNE.ISSUE #3: AirborneThe engines of industrial production that power the modern economy release vast quantities of carbon and polluta
The Billionaire Machine w/ Hettie O'Brien
You may never have heard of private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, Bain Capital or the Carlyle Group, but in recent decades they have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own your hospitals, your nurseries, your energy systems. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the home you rent and the food you eat. In their rise to power, they have resha
Nuclear is Not the Solution w/M.V. Ramana
In the mid-20th century, nuclear energy was seen as the technology of the future. Then, questions about its environmental impact and waste, alongside crises like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, created a major public backlash, and the construction of new nuclear in places like the US stalled altogether.But as the climate crisis pushes demand for non-fossil fuel energy, nuclear is once again bein
How Wall St. Gambles on Your Future w/Ann Pettifor
We’ve all heard it before: any time a politician tries to put forward a policy that might finally improve people’s lives—think Mamdani's fast free buses, affordable homes, or renewable energy infrastructure—they’re met with the same line: we can’t afford it. Media pundits and technocrats alike obsess over the national debt, balancing the books and not “spooking” the ever mysterious bond vigila
Beyond Techno-Optimism w/ David Edgerton
The history of the climate crisis is often told as a story about technology. Growing out of the dark satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution, and accelerating along with new forms of production and consumption in the mid-twentieth century, we often hear that is technological development and innovation that got us into the mess we’re in. But it can also, apparently, get us out of it: what’s need
Free Gifts w/Alyssa Battistoni
Capitalism is often defended on the basis of freedom — “free markets”, free choice, as well as being credited with producing the wealth and material abundance that has freed countless people from poverty.Marx, meanwhile, described workers under capitalism as “free in the double sense”: “free” to sell their labour power in the market, and “free” or divorced from the means of production: the land, m
Survival of the Greenest w/Amir Lebdioui
We hear a lot about “sustainable development”—it’s the buzzword of virtually every UN convening—but often with little clarity on what it means in practice. Countries like the US, Canada or the UK hardly developed “sustainably”, so to demand that others organise their economies and societies in ways that we never did can feel like pulling up the ladder behind us. Moreover, how is “development” real
Lula’s Dilemma w/ Sabrina Fernandes
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, was re-elected as the President of Brazil in 2022, defeating Jair Bolsonaro in a tense election, the Brazilian left and many around the world breathed an almost literal sigh of relief. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ecological and climate record was scorched, with deforestation in the Amazon reaching record highs.Hopes were high, and for good reason: Lula campai
LIVE: The Afterlives of Neoliberalism w/ Quinn Slobodian and Geoff Mann
To celebrate the launch of The BREAK—DOWN ISSUE #1, editor Adrienne Buller was joined by Quinn Slobodian and Geoff Mann for a timely conversation on the afterlives of neoliberalism, the climate crisis, and the global rise of the far right.ISSUE #1The BREAK—DOWN is dedicated to exploring the political economy of the climate crisis. We bring together personal stories, cultural critique, expert insig
Legacies of Empire w/ Kojo Koram
In much of the media, the importance of the legacies of empire and colonialism are often dismissed, with the public conversation dominated by the "culture war" elements, from debates about statues to institutions like the National Trust becoming "woke". The implication within much of this discourse is that empire and colonialism are features of the past, and should be left there.In reality, it is
Capitalism Without Growth? w/ Hans Stegeman
Around the world, politics is incredibly polarised, but if there’s one thing politicians of all major parties can agree on, it’s growth — that their political rivals failed to deliver growth, that we need more of it, and that getting it will solve all of our problems, from inequality and poverty to crumbling public services and stalling investment.But not everyone agrees. For a growing movement of
Year in Review: A Macrodose x Break Down Crossover
A lot has happened in the six months since we launched this project. It feels like every week of 2024 has packed a decade’s worth of news. In just the past few weeks, we've seen crises hit the French and German governments, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a day of martial law in South Korea, and, of course, Trump’s reelection to the White House.Amidst all of it, climate has generally taken
After Overshoot w/ Andreas Malm
In 2024, we’re set to break a major climate threshold for the first time: this will be the first calendar year in which global average temperatures breach the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold enshrined in the Paris Agreement. Importantly, while one year at this temperature doesn’t mean all is lost, it does fire a profound warning shot over our faltering progress on mitigating and adapting to the clima
Climate Change as Class War w/ Matt Huber
In the wake of the US election, hot takes and autopsies of the Democrats’ fairly spectacular loss are a dime a dozen. Amid the swirl of diagnoses there has also been real fear about what a Trump presidency means for the climate — an issue that felt almost entirely absent from either campaign, despite its significant role in Biden’s policy platform. How should we understand what just happened? What
US Election Special w/ Kate Aronoff and Waleed Shahid
Amid the threat of “Project 2025”, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and a nation-wide battle over reproductive rights, to name a few major issues, the climate crisis has been considerably sidelined in the US election taking place on November 5th. But even if it’s not grabbing headlines, what the United States does — or does not do — on climate has profound implications for the entire world. So where doe
Cycles of Extraction: Ecuador, Oil and the IMF w/ Andrés Arauz
In a 2023 referendum, the people of Ecuador voted 59 per cent to 41 per cent to stop exploiting oil in the Yasuní region, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with more tree species in one single hectare than in all of the landmass of Canada and the US combined. It was a massive break with the global status quo, in a year when fossil fuel use around the world reached record highs and profit
Reaping What We Sow w/ Sonali McDermid
We have become incredibly good at producing food. In doing so we have transformed our planet. Yet when we go to the supermarket or eat at a restaurant, the supply chains, labour and environmental impacts that went into our food are all but invisible. Those impacts are huge. Today, humans and livestock make up 96 per cent of all mammals. Agriculture consumes about 70 per cent of global freshwater,
Utopia and Crisis w/ Kim Stanley Robinson
In a 2004 essay for the New Left Review, theorist and literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote: “Utopias are non-fictional, even though they are also non-existent. Utopias in fact come to us as barely audible messages from a future that may never come into being.”Today's episode of The Break Down explores the idea and the power of utopian fiction with guest Kim Stanley Robinson, the acclaimed science
Public Energy No. 1 w/ Chris Hayes and Melanie Brusseler
Followers of The Break Down may remember our very first episode, in which Adrienne spoke to the brilliant Brett Christophers about the many and varied reasons why — despite all the hype about how cheap renewables have become — the transition to renewable energy cannot be left to the market and the profit motive. What that interview didn't leave us with, however, was an answer to the obvious questi
The End of Liberalism? w/ Chris Shaw
As a listener of The Break Down, chances are you’re living in a political system that could be defined as “liberal”. But what does “liberalism” really describe? Is it about democracy? Free markets? The protection of individual freedom? Ask ten different people, and you’re likely to get ten different answers. According to Chris Shaw, liberalism can boiled down to a system oriented around the “bourg
7: Political Futures w/ Geoff Mann
"To the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer.” These words were written fifty years ago by philosopher Hannah Arendt, but are just as relevant to the present moment, in which our political leaders and systems continue to fail to grapple with climate and ecological crisis at the scale or urgency they demand. The deg
The Climate Impact of Military Power w/ Khem Rogaly
If you listen to this podcast, chances are you’ve heard of the global target of “net zero emissions” by 2050. You’ve probably also heard about how off track we are from meeting it. But what if I told you we’re even more off track than you might think, because thanks to some effective lobbying, governments don’t have to count the emissions from their militaries, despite their being some of the worl
The Invisible Code of Capitalism w/ Katharina Pistor
Capitalism could not exist without the power and structure of the law — that’s the simple but radical argument made by my guest today, Katharina Pistor, law professor at Columbia University, and the author of The Code of Capital: How The Law Creates Wealth and Inequality. On today’s episode, we break down how the law ‘encodes’ capital and invisibly structures our world, from giving corporations th
What Economics Gets Wrong About Climate Change w/ Ha-Joon Chang
What would you say a human life is worth? According to the US government, for an American it’s about $7.2 million, compared with the global average of approximately $1.3 million. If you’re Swiss though, you’re worth a pretty penny at $9.4 million.While these estimates might sound absurd, they're important to understand: these kinds of figures and the models that produce them are a core part of how
In Pursuit of Climate Justice w/ Fredi Otto
“The stakes could not be higher.” These are the recent words not of climate activists, but of a coalition representing major oil and gas companies in a letter to the US Supreme Court. The context? They’re asking the Court to block dozens of lawsuits that seek to hold these firms to account for their role in driving the climate crisis, including by awarding damages for the costs of extreme weather
Special Episode: Oil, Palestine and Climate Crisis w/ Adam Hanieh
In this special episode, Adam Hanieh explains the threads linking the global oil economy; more than a century of Western imperialism; contemporary American interests in the Middle East; and the response of governments in the US, UK and much of Europe to the ongoing genocide and ecocide in Gaza. Ultimately, he explains why these overlapping histories demand shared solidarity between the climate mov
A World Made of Oil w/ Adam Hanieh
Oil is fundamental to our understanding of the climate crisis. But despite its starring role, the dominance of oil in the global energy system is a relatively recent phenomenon, with the industry only really taking off after the Second World War. So how, in just a few decades, did oil become so integral to American power and to our understanding of global capitalism?In this episode of the Break Do
The Price is Wrong w/ Brett Christophers
Renewable energy is often held up as the great success story of climate change, with policymakers and journalists constantly celebrating that clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. By their logic, these plummeting costs mean that when it comes to the energy transition, the economics are essentially sorted, and we're now on an inevitable path to a world of clean energy. But is it really tha
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