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A genetically engineered (GE) chestnut modified with a wheat gene is being framed as a conservation breakthrough, but the reality is far messier and far more permanent. After the USDA deregulated the GE American chestnut for release, we asked the question regulators keep sidestepping: what does “safety” even mean when a tree can live for centuries, spread pollen for miles, and reproduce in ecosystems we cannot control?

We speak with Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project and the Campaign to Stop GE Trees about the Darling 54 GE chestnut and its defects documented along the way, including loss of blight resistance, high mortality rates and other serious problems tied to the genetic engineering process. We also unpack the next regulatory hurdle at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the fungus-resistance trait could be treated as a plant-incorporated protectant, raising thorny issues around tracking, accountability, and the basic impossibility of recalling a self-spreading organism once it is loose in the wild.

Then we step back and look at what’s already happening without genetic engineering: wild American chestnuts persisting and returning across the range, breeding work to strengthen natural blight resistance in wild American chestnuts, and a vivid on-the-ground example captured in our short film featuring naturalist Bernd Heinrich, where multiple generations of chestnuts are thriving and reproducing. We also dig into the controversy around GE chestnuts planted o the White House lawn, and why cross-border pollen drift puts Canada’s endangered chestnut population in the blast zone.

If you care about forest ecology, biodiversity, and real restoration, listen through to the end for ways to get involved, then subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more people can follow what the USDA, EPA, and the GE tree industry do next.

You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you.

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We talk with investigative journalist and filmmaker Zahra Moloo about how conservation in Southeast Cameroon has meant the eviction of the Baka people from their ancestral forests, while logging, trophy hunting, and fortress conservation-style "protected areas" expand side by side. We trace the colonial and capitalist roots of fortress conservation, what violence associated with fortress conservation has done to the Baka people community over time, and what justice might require if conservation is going to include human rights.
• fortress conservation and why “pristine wilderness” often means forced removals of the indigenous inhabitants
• Zahra’s reporting in Southeast Cameroon around Lobeke, Nki, and Boumba Bek parks
• Baka communities living on the roadside and the daily cost of losing forest access
• trophy hunting zones, logging concessions, and how “sustainable development” gets justified
• the 2019 access agreement, reduced violence claims, and why fear can still keep people out
• sedentarization, citizenship paperwork, and how colonial land law shapes dispossession
• violence as a tool of enclosure and discipline across parks and trophy hunting areas
• what accountability could look like beyond so-called grievance mechanisms
• centering Indigenous knowledge as the world pushes 30x30 conservation targets

If you’re enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues.

You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you.

Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights, and expose false solutions. Simply text Give G I V E 2 1716 257 4187. That’s 1716 257 4187.

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Photo: Orin Langelle / Global Justice Ecology Project

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It is tasked with the promotion of global peace and security through international cooperation in education, science, culture, and information.

Yet recent reporting by Survival International focuses on how UNESCO has used its influence to support the forced relocation of the Indigenous Maasai People from their ancestral land in Tanzania.

We talk with Survival International researcher Paul Renaut about the model of “fortress conservation,” that is driving forced evictions of Maasai people in Tanzania and how the UNESCO World Heritage status is amplifying that pressure.

We trace what these forced relocations look like on the ground, who profits, and why Indigenous land rights are central to real biodiversity protection.

In the episode we discuss:
• Survival International’s campaign to decolonize conservation and expose human rights abuses committed in the name of nature protection
• How the “empty nature” myth frames Indigenous people as threats despite long-term stewardship
• Violence linked to protected areas including beatings, torture, rape, and armed repression by ranger forces funded by major conservation groups
• Maasai displacement history from Serengeti and the ongoing threat across Maasai land tied to tourism and trophy hunting
• UNESCO’s role through World Heritage designations, “population pressure” language, and legitimizing forced relocation narratives
• What “voluntary relocation” can mean in practice including cattle confiscation, arrests, and suspension of vital services
• Scientific and cultural arguments for pastoralism as a biodiversity-positive land management system
• How carbon credits and offset thinking can shift environmental burdens onto Indigenous communities
• Maasai-led resistance through legal work, organizing, mass protests, and direct engagement with international institutions

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues.

You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org.

Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187.

link to the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance’s website : https://www.misasolidarity.org/

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In the face of new studies showing increased dangers of exposure to radiation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing the repeal of a 50 year old safety regulation known "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" or ALARA. This is being done to fast track small modular reactors (SMRs). A proposed new nuclear technology, SMRs are seen as a possible answer to the energy bottleneck for the expansion of data centers that feed artificial intelligence.

SMRs would be smaller but spread out in more communities. They would be less efficient and use a more dangerous nuclear fuel. All of this is being greenwash under the banner of a so-called nuclear renaissance by big tech corporations and some supporters, who claim that it is an answer to climate change. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Peter Jones.

Peter Jones is trained as a physicist and as a lawyer, and he is director of nuclear waste policy at the Samuel Lawrence Foundation.

We track how the NRC’s push to weaken long-standing radiation safeguards lines up with the rush to license small modular reactors marketed as climate solutions. We connect new research on low dose radiation risk to the unresolved nuclear waste crisis and the growing demand for electricity from AI data centers.
• Why a “nuclear renaissance” narrative is gaining traction
• How San Onofre illustrates the problem of stranded nuclear waste
• The missing federal repository problem and the Yucca Mountain dead end
• How NRC staffing pressure and rushed rulemaking change the regulatory landscape
• Why data centers and AI are reshaping energy investment and political incentives
• What recent studies suggest about low dose ionizing radiation and cancer risk
• Why repealing Alara shifts risk onto workers and nearby communities
• How SMRs can be less efficient and generate more waste per unit of energy
• Liability limits, the Price Anderson Act, and gaps for newer reactor categories
• HALEU fuel, higher enrichment, and increased non-proliferation concerns
• The danger of reducing security requirements while using hotter fuel
• Why nuclear contamination is difficult to contain, clean up, and reverse

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187. That's 1 716 257 4187.

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We talk with Kaleb Lay from Oregon Rural Action about how people living in a rural Oregon “sacrifice zone” end up with poisoned well water, and a widening wealth gap. We explore environmentalist claims that industrial farming, combined with a rapid build-out of Amazon data centers is compounding deadly nitrate contamination while communities fight for testing, transparency, and accountability.

• what Oregon Rural Action does across immigration justice and pollution work in Northeast Oregon
• why the Lower Umatilla Basin is described as a sacrifice zone
• how industrial scale agriculture drives nitrate groundwater contamination
• what nitrate does in the body, from blue baby syndrome to links with cancers and thyroid dysfunction
• how door to door well testing exposed widespread unsafe drinking water after decades of state inaction
• what retaliation can look like when organizers challenge powerful industries
• what Amazon says about liability and what a $20.5M settlement does and does not change
• why exascale projects raise alarms on water use, electricity demand, and rate impacts
• how transparency gaps and inflated job numbers shape local decision making
• why PFAS testing and disclosure matter for data center waste streams

Kaleb Lay is a fifth-generation eastern Oregonian and former journalist who now serves as Director of Policy & Research with Oregon Rural Action, a nonprofit organization that works with frontline communities in rural northeast Oregon. He is a leading expert in pollution issues in Oregon’s Lower Umatilla Basin, which is both one of the most polluted places in the Pacific Northwest and one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in the United States. He’s also an avid outdoorsman, and gardener

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187. That's 1 716 257 4187.

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Some US service members say they were told a war with Iran wouldn’t just be strategic—it would be biblical.

According to complaints gathered by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, certain US commanders allegedly framed the conflict as part of God’s plan: a step toward Armageddon and the return of Jesus.

If true, that raises urgent questions about how religious ideology may be shaping military culture—and potentially influencing decisions with global consequences.

In this episode of Breaking Green, we speak with journalist Jonathan Larsen about what troops are reporting, why the Pentagon’s silence matters, and what this reveals about the growing influence of religious nationalism in US policy.

On this episode:

• Why the Pentagon didn’t deny this
• What the Armageddon messaging looked like in a combat preparation context
• How religious framing of war can amplify danger and widen perceived enemies
• How end-times beliefs can influence real-world military and foreign policy decisions
• Why corporate media rarely investigates religion’s influence on geopolitics
• Who The Family is, how the National Prayer Breakfast fits in, and what “ministering to power” means
• Why we should avoid conspiratorial thinking and focus on systems and incentives

Jonathan Larsen is a veteran reporter and former executive producer at MSNBC, where he worked on shows including Up with Chris Hayes and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. He has also reported for United Press International and Al Jazeera America.

Find more on Jonathan Larsen at: JonathanLarsen.substack.com
thefuckingnews.substack.com

If you’re enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. The interviews heard here are often ignored by mainstream media, and without your support, these stories would not be covered. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

Or find us on Substack at https://gjep.substack.com

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We trace how the Great Plains still lives with Dust Bowl forces as Dr. Joshua Anderson links soil loss, monoculture, and rural decline to a culture that no longer asks if we are growing food. Caregiving for his father with MS shapes a vision to “restory” land and rebuild soil health through minimal disturbance, living roots, diversity, and cover.

Joshua T. Anderson is a writer and soil conservationist from rural North Dakota committed to flyways, foodways, and folkways. His featured article on the intersection of soil health and human health appears in the fall issue ofEarth Island Journal, and his creative nonfiction essay on the dominance of the sugar industry in North Dakota’s Red River Valley appears in Open Space(the online journal of North American Review). His recent publications on regenerative agriculture and grassland conservation appear inMary Swander's Emerging Voices,Iowa Capital Dispatch, andNorth Dakota Monitor. He was recently an artist-in-residence at the Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture in Sisters, Oregon. His soil and water conservation efforts have been featured in newspapers throughout the Great Plains, including feature interviews about his podcast, prairie conservation through arts and education, and his work to protect his home watershed. He is the co-founder of the Flyway Institute, which brings artists to rural communities in support of conservation efforts throughout the North American flyways. His first narrative nonfiction book Soil Horizons will be published by Plainspoken Books.

In this episode:

• topsoil loss in North Dakota since the 1960s
• monoculture sugar and fuel displacing real food
• food deserts amid vast agricultural acres
• soil health principles and prairie ecology
• costs of inputs rising as organic matter falls
• cultural change and land consolidation pressures
• small diversified farms feeding communities
• language links: humus, humility, human
• excerpt reading from Rooted In Care
• forthcoming book Soil Horizons and its themes

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We talk with Oglala Lakota poet and organizer Mark K. Tilson about the ICE surge in Minneapolis, the killing of Renee Good, and how neighbors are building a decentralized resistance. The conversation traces lawless tactics, historical patterns, and the courage that grows when people act together.

• collapse of civic life in Minneapolis under raids and fear
• judicial warrants versus administrative actions
• masked agents, unmarked vehicles, and disinformation
• legal observers, community recording, and evidence
• targeting at churches, schools, and traffic stops
• Indigenous detentions and the Whipple Building’s history
• AIM patrol legacy and modern rapid response
• AI surveillance, stingrays, and counter-tactics
• decentralized movement led by everyday neighbors
• fear transforming into large-scale public courage
• poem “Around the Neighborhood” honoring Renee Good

This episode of Breaking Green is dedicated to Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis who was shot and killed by ICE on 24 January 2026

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org

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