Sam Miller McDonald is pursuing a PhD at Oxford studying the intersection of energy production and political power. He’s also an editor at The Trouble, a news site looking at climate change from a left perspective. In 2015, Sam co-founded ActivistLab, an online publication focused on improving social change. Sam is a prolific writer, with work in Current Affairs, the New Republic, the Baffler, In These Times, and elsewhere. 

I should warn you up front that this is a bummer of a conversation, but I’m glad we had it. I found Sam to be informed and honest about the challenge before us. 

We touch on:

Sam's research, the problem of climate change, whether industrial agriculture is actually efficient, what would be in Sam's Green New Deal, whether cities are as good for the environment as we may think, the challenge of resettling the predicted hundreds of millions of climate refugees, dealing with the despair that climate change uniquely inspires, Extinction Rebellion, the role of nuclear power, and how you can fight climate change most effectively.

Show notes:

Sam’s articles we discuss:

The City of Tomorrow

Collapse Despair

Beyond Fluorescent Bulbs: 4 Things Millennials Can Do To Fight Climate Change

Other stuff:

Effective Altruism forum post on whether climate change is an existential risk

Sam on the BBC discussing climate anxiety

Episode photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash