London’s largest ever public protests for climate and Earth justice have come to a close. An estimated hundred thousand attended the four-day event, over Earth Day weekend, organized by Extinction Rebellion and other UK groups.

“Unite To Survive” was their rallying cry.

Earth Day 2023 protest in London (Credit: Denise Laura Baker and Extinction Rebellion)

They want the UK government to set up Citizens’ Assemblies, that would formulate and propose solutions. I spoke with Marijn van de Geer, External Coordinator for Media and Messaging, and Internal Coordinator for Citizens Assemblies with Extinction Rebellion UK.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the link above, or subscribe here.

Battir, Palestine, where local villagers cooperate with, rather than appropriate, natural Earth productivity. Listen to Vivien Sansour. Click on audio link (David Kattenburg)

Fossil fuel burning and the resulting pollution of Earth’s atmosphere is just one of the insults our planet faces in this human-engineered age of ours – the Anthropocene.

In their relentless hunger for food, fiber and fuel, humans have transformed an estimated three quarters of the planet’s vegetated land surface, and a quarter of its natural productivity. Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production, or HANPP, this is called.

Fridolin Krausmann is an authority on this. Krausmann is professor of sustainable resource use at the Institute of Social Ecology, at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. His research focuses on the metabolism of societies and their economies, and ways of bring socioeconomic metabolism into line with Earth’s natural source and sink capacities.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the link above, or subscribe here.

Environmental bacteria

Bacteria are Earth’s most ancient creatures. Their numbers and total mass are colossal. By some estimates, the combined mass of all bacteria on Earth is a thousand times greater than all humans. Those microbes make planet Earth go round. The vast majority are perfectly harmless, and actually essential for life on this planet.

Marjan Smeulders studies environmental bacteria at Radboud University, in the Netherlands. She studies bacterial adaptations to their environment, and the role they play in ecological systems. Bacterial remediation of human pollution is an obvious application.

Marjan Smeulders is also a climate activist with Scientists4Future NL and Scientist Rebellion NL.

Listen to my conversation with Marjan in today’s podcast. Click on the link above, or subscribe here.

The wonderful guitar in GPM podcasts, courtesy Dan Weisenberger