About this episode
In this conversation, we update you on two big milestones for the Grange Project, the launch of the Welsh Rewilding Alliance and our OECM recognition, before sitting down with Professor Mike Berners?Lee. We ask Mike to explain the polycrisis: how climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, food insecurity and geopolitical instability are all interlinked. Mike helps us see why recycling alone won’t cut it: plastics are produced almost entirely from fossil fuels, their emissions could eat up a large chunk of the remaining carbon budget and their additives disrupt hormones. We also talk about why technology by itself isn’t enough, how misinformation slows progress and what practical steps we can all take-like switching to trustworthy media and supporting a national information campaign to wake up and act.Episode journey:[00:05] Introduction and mission. We open the show by explaining why we started the Wilder Podcast: to share our learning about rewilding and the wider forces shaping our world. We remind listeners that we created the Grange Project two and a half years ago to restore nature, grow food, support eco?businesses and reconnect people with land.[02:24] Two big updates. We proudly announce the launch of the Welsh Rewilding Alliance and its report A Welsh Way to Wild. We also share that the Grange Project has been recognised by the Welsh Government as an OECM, a big step in confirming that our land management has rigorous governance and real biodiversity benefits.[07:08] Introducing Professor Mike Berners?Lee. We explain how we first encountered Mike’s work-reading There Is No Planet B inspired us to buy the farm and start the Grange Project. Mike introduces himself as a professor, consultant and author.[11:09] What is the polycrisis? Mike explains that the polycrisis is a tangle of interconnected challenges driven by humanity’s unprecedented power. He emphasises that disasters like pandemics and wars no longer happen in isolation; their severity comes from the cascading effects they unleash. For us, it was eye?opening to see how our economic and political systems amplify these stresses.[16:58] Examples of cascading crises. We discuss real?world examples: the COVID?19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine amplifying food and energy crises. Mike highlights that plastic production has boomed since the 1950s and plastics are a major source of emissions and endocrine disruption. It reinforced for us how everything is connected.[20:43] Wake?up call and the National Emergency Briefing. Mike tells us about the National Emergency Briefing in Westminster, where experts covered nine dimensions of the crisis from health and food to national security and no one thought the situat
