‘We can’t pretend the ecological crisis is separate’: the economist thinking differently about climate breakdown

James Meadway, once a Labour adviser and now a podcast host, says the separation between climate and economy has to end

James Meadway is an economist who is not at all impressed with economics. Formerly an adviser to John McDonnell when he was Labour shadow chancellor, Meadway has plenty to say about what mainstream economics gets wrong. But one of his central gripes is the way it treats the environment. We cannot simply pretend that ... the entire ecological crisis is a separate and distinct thing from what's happening in the economy," says Meadway, who now works on climate finance. And yet that is precisely what happens.

This critique informs the podcast, Macrodose, which Meadway presents and which has recently turned one year old. Its tagline is Your weekly fix of climate economics". Every Wednesday, in 15 minutes or so, Meadway analyses the key economic stories of the week. Part of the aim is to make economics more accessible because, he says, it is often thought of as something so difficult that you have to be really clever to do it".