It feels like one of the biggest questions of our time: what do we do about meat? Rather than choosing either extreme – business as usual, or ruling out meat altogether – some people suggest the best approach is one of ‘less and better meat’. But how much less is ‘less’? And which meat is ‘better’? How do we even begin to answer these questions?

In this series, co-hosts Katie Revell and Olivia Oldham attempt to unearth what lies beneath questions of technological change and consumer choice. On an expansive, and sometimes personal, journey, they learn that – as much as the debate about meat is sometimes painted as a binary choice between right and wrong – things might not be quite so simple.

They ask who – and what – benefits from different systems of production? What priorities and values do seemingly simple solutions obscure? And, perhaps most importantly, can we find some common ground, some shared principles and values, on which to build a better meat future for all?

Thank you to everyone on our Patreon. Your support helps us in bringing you the stories of regenerative farming around the world, each month. We appreciate it. If you'd like to join, please visit patreon.com/farmerama where you can choose your level of support.

Less And Better?: Ep 1: Its Complicated

In this episode we speak to Patrick Bresnihan of Maynooth University about the nexus between energy, data and ecology in Ireland. Pat recently published 'All we want is the Earth: Land, Labour and Movements beyond Environmentalism' (with Naomi Milner) and is currently working on the connections between Cloud and Bog in Irish ecomodernist developments. We speak to him about the history, significance and enormous energy consumption of data centers in Ireland, and about how the materiality of data and the cloud settles in bog and peri-urban landscapes. He tells us of the many contradictions and ironies of Green Transition in (post)colonial contexts and in rural contexts, which ecomodernism casts as backwards, fostering far right sentiments. This episodes is dedicated to the possibilities of just transition and earth politics, and the urgent work needed for this.

Links and literature:

Data Territories Project https://www.dataterritories.net/

Community Wetlands Forum https://communitywetlandsforum.ie/

No Tech for Apartheid https://www.notechforapartheid.com/

Kate Crawford and Vladan Jolar, Anatomy of an AI System https://ars.electronica.art/outofthebox/en/anatomy-of-ai/

Joana Moll, The Hidden Life of an Amazon User https://www.janavirgin.com/AMZ/

Pat Bresnihan and Pat Brodie (2022) Feeding an Insatiable Monster: Datacenters in Ireland, Rupture Mag https://rupture.ie/articles/feeding-an-insatiable-monster

Pat Bresnihan and Pat Brodie (2023) Power to the profit-makers: Letting big tech source energy directly raises questions of climate justice and democracy. Irish Examiner https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41226262.html

Kate Crawford (2021) Atlas of AI. Power, Poltics and The Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press

AI Now Institute: Confronting Tech Power (2023), Amba Kak & Dr. Sarah Myers West

Anne Pasek Getting into Fights with Data CEntres (2023) https://emmlab.info/Resources_page/Data%20Center%20Fights_digital.pdf

Patrick Bresnihan and Naomi Milner (2023) All We Want Is The Earth: Land, Labour and Movements beyond Environmentalism, Bristol Univerisity Press.

Academic articles (available here https://nuim.academia.edu/PatrickBresnihan )

Bresnihan, P., & Brodie, P. (2021). New extractive frontiers in Ireland and the moebius strip of wind/data. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4(4), 1645-1664.

Bresnihan, P., & Brodie, P. (2023). Data sinks, carbon services: Waste, storage and energy cultures on Ireland’s peat bogs. New Media & Society, 25(2), 361-383.

15. Data, Energy, Bogs and Earth Politics - ecomodernist mirages in Ireland

Wind is air in motion, the breath of Gods, a fairy's curse. It combines with elements of water and fire to bring superstorms and uncontrollable wildfires. It also feeds a fantasy borne in the 19th century -  the fantasy of limitless energy that began with the onset of industrial capitalism, coal and thermodynamics. But the harnessing of wind to the ever expanding energy demands of capitalist growth is not innocent, clean or green. It follows historic patterns of imperial power and colonial resource extraction. We need the wind and its energy but we also need to be clear about who it is for and how it is being put to work.

Text by Patrick Bresnihan @patrickbresnihan
Sound by Colm Keady-Tabbal @psxcaete

Tilting at Windmills

Inequality and injustice cannot be resolved within society without also confronting the destructive and exploitative relations between society and nature. This is a key argument within political ecology, an interdisciplinary approach that challenges ideas among radical thinkers in critical agrarian studies. In this episode, we speak with Prof. Amita Baviskar, a leading Indian scholar and activist involved with struggles around land, forests, water and food. With her, we unpack the concept of ‘political ecology’ and discuss how this differs both from 'ecology' and from 'political economy'. Amita calls for a reconceptualisation of ‘nature’ and a confrontation with both capitalism and patriarchy, in pursuit of sustainable as well as just development across ecological landscapes, insisting that climate change is not the only expression of ecological crisis. We discuss the concepts of 'red' versus 'green' politics, the 'commons', 'degrowth' and the 'Anthropocene' - and what the current global moment of COVID-19 might tell us about society’s relationships with nature, our food system, globalisation, and one another.

Tilting at Windmills

Patrick Bresnihan

Related tracks