Best New Thinking: Politicians, Cartels, Murders, Oh My!
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
12/19/24
•33m
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Politics in Mexico has long been a blood sport: not only “winner takes all,” but also incredibly violent. Last month’s national elections—when the country's first female president won with a record number of votes and by a record margin of victory—demonstrated both trends. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party (founded and still controlled by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) won huge national and state legislative victories. But the electoral campaign was punctuated by more than 100 political assassinations, as well as widespread kidnappings, forced disappearances, attempted murders, and attacks on family members and campaign staff—all by drug cartels competing for turf, control of markets, and quiescent politicians.
Even worse, this kind of political violence seems to be on the upswing in other parts of Latin America from Central America through the Andean countries and even into Chile. Why? The simple answer seems to be that controlling local, state, and national politicians is good for business—even if that sometimes requires killing those who have other ideas.
Can the cartels be stopped? Is Mexico becoming a narco-state? Is the infection spreading too fast in too many places to be contained?
Answers require a deep understanding of the cartels. That’s where Chris Dalby, an expert on cartel violence, comes in. He is a journalist and founder of World of Crime, which investigates and documents how the cartels operate. Listen as he explains what the Mexican cartels want and how they are getting it.
What do you think: Can Mexico beat the cartels or will the cartels beat Mexico?
*This podcast episode was originally published on July 11, 2024, and has been re-released.
Previous Episode
Can the Amazon Be Saved?
December 11, 2024
•32m
What happens in the Amazon is of planetary consequence. Its rainforests influence weather and rainfall around the world. Its rivers account for 1/4 of the available fresh water on earth. Its drainage basin is more than twice as large as that of the Congo River in Africa, which is the world's second-biggest. It harbors an estimated 10% of the planet's known lifeforms.
Our guest this week on New Thinking for a New World is Fernando Trujillo, Colombian marine biologist, 2024 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize winner, and National Geographic Explorer of the Year. Trujillo, who is a global expert on river dolphins, leads a team that is working to keep the Amazon's freshwater basin alive. That is particularly important at a time when the region is suffering from record drought. River levels are low—in some cases historically so—and water temperatures are at intolerably high levels, especially if you're a fish. Continuing deforestation makes everything worse, of course.
Obviously, none of the consequences of the Amazon wasting away would be good for any of us. Can it be stopped? Listen as Trujillo explains his search to answer that question.
Please tell us what you think here.
Next Episode
Best New Thinking: Arctic Heat
December 26, 2024
•35m
That the Arctic is warming is not exactly breaking news on a planet where almost everywhere is warming. But it is critical news that the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the globe since the polar regions are essentially the planet’s air conditioners. Last year's Arctic Report Card documented that 2023 was the Arctic's hottest summer in centuries, with all the attendant consequences: massive wildfires, late June Greenland ice sheet melt, sea surface temperatures 7oC above normal, etc.
The list of firsts, or maybe better put, worst was a long one—and the early evidence is that those were trends, not anomalies, that continue in 2024.
Are we as a planet now locked into ever more warming? Are there potential tipping points that might produce even faster change? Are there actions that can be taken on a timescale that's relevant to people living today?
Even if the answers are "Yes, Yes, No" are there initiatives at scale that are worth pursuing if only to adapt to the massive changes clearly underway? If that question elicits even a tentative "Yes", then the places to start are at the epicenters: the Arctic and Antarctica.
Tero Mustonen— Finnish environmental leader, scientist, fisherman and past recipient of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—is spending his life working to make that last “Yes” more muscular. More immediately, he recently returned from traveling across the Arctic, which gives us a rare opportunity for a firsthand debrief.
Please tell us what you think.
This podcast episode was originally published on June 27, 2024, and has been re-released.
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In the podcast, Tero mentioned arcticseas.org where you can hear the authentic voices of hunters, women, and fishers from Arctic villages as they share their knowledge, often for the first time. These communities, living sustainably in one of the planet's toughest environments, offer vital messages about coexisting with nature.
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