Episodes
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It is becoming common for the fossil fuel industry to sue governments that attempt to decarbonise over âlost future profits.â They do so via an obscure part of international law called international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that can allow them to extract billions in public money.
Alasdair speaks to Eunjung Lee, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G. The two discuss how ISDS began, how the international treaties came to being predatory, and what measures countries should take to prevent the exploitation of the claims.
Eunjung Lee is a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G and is the lead investigator of international investment governance. She previously served as a South Korean diplomat and has worked in the Korean embassy in London.
Further reading:
Investment treaties are undermining the global energy transition - E3G The climate crisis requires a new approach to international investment treaties - E3G The Energy Charter Treaty remains the most dangerous investment treaty to the energy transition - E3G Clean investments shun Investor-State Dispute Settlements - E3G Investor-state disputes threaten the global green energy transition | Science âShocking and sadâ: how corporations use investment agreements to block decarbonisation in the Global South - Land and Climate Review How Exxon is using international law to sue the Dutch governmentClick here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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With India kicking off 2025 with an historic space-docking experiment, and Elon Musk's growing power in the US government raising questions over the future of his spacecraft and satellite companies SpaceX and Starlink, we may be at the dawn of a new era for space exploration.
Unlike the 20th Century Space Race, however, it will likely be private companies that cross new mildstones - not public agencies. But who will regulate mining on the moon and tourism in space, and what are the environmental implications?
Bertie talks about these issues with D. Raghunandan, Director of the Delhi Science Forum, as well as discussing the positive contributions of the space sector towards climate and environmental science.
Further reading:
'Indian Space Sector on a High This Year', News Click, February 2025'Mining the moon for minerals could be worth billions, but astronomers warn it's bad news for science', Business Insider, February 2025'India File: Jostling for position in the space race', Reuters, January 2025'How Elon Muskâs partnership with Trump could shape science in the US â and beyond', Nature, December 2024'Donald Trumpâs approach to US space policy could throw up some surprises, especially with Elon Musk on board', Durham University, November 2024'The dark side of SpaceXâs flight of innovation', People's Dispatch, November 2023Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Episodes manquant?
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Alasdair speaks to journalist Margot Gibbs about her investigation into a US government-funded PR firm that profiled pesticide scientists.
Last autumn, Lighthouse Reports - in collaboration with media partners across Europe - published an investigation into v-Fluence, a US-based PR firm that worked to discredit anti-pesticide scientists and campaigners.
Alasdair speaks to Margot Gibbs, a journalist who led the investigation, about its findings and what it reveals about the agro-chemicals lobby.
Margot Gibbs is an investigative reporter at Lighthouse Reports focusing on money trails and food systems reporting. Before joining Lighthouse she was a reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Finance Uncovered.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
'US-funded âsocial networkâ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation', The Guardian, February 2025'Poison PR', Lighthouse Reports, September 2024'How the US agrochemical lobby is meddling in the future of Kenyan farming', The New Humanitarian, September 2024'Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkillerâs link to Parkinsonâs disease', The Guardian, October 2022'"Monsanto papers": the pesticide giant's war against science', Le Monde, June 2017Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, 2010Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked global energy markets, and changed the EU's long and short-term plans for decarbonisation. But how have three years of conflict changed Ukraine's own policies and plans around energy security and net zero?
Bertie discusses this issue with Ukrainian economist Maksym Chepeliev, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University, USA.
Read Professor Chepeliev's research:
'Net-Zero Transition in Ukraine: Implications for Sustainable Development Goal 7', Aligning the Energy Transition with the Sustainable Development Goals, 2024'Can Ukraine go âgreenâ on the post-war recovery path?', Joule, 2023'What is the future of nuclear power in Ukraine? The role of war, techno-economic drivers, and safety considerations', Energy Policy, 2023'The role of bioenergy in Ukraine's climate mitigation policy by 2050', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021See our previous episodes on:
nuclear power and net-zero, in which we discuss security concerns about Zaporizhzhiamilitary emissions, in which we discuss the carbon cost of the Russia-Ukraine Warthe future of Russian oil, from 2022Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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In a recently published report, âCriminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protestsâ, Dr. Oscar Berglund and his colleagues identified four key mechanisms through which climate and environmental protests are repressed: the introduction of new anti-protest laws, the broadening use of existing legislation, excessive policing and killings and disappearances of activists.
Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests, University of Bristol, 2024Civic Activism in an Intensifying Climate Crisis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2024 Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, Columbia University Press, 2024
Alasdair and Oscar discuss the findings of the report and the ways in which the clampdown on climate protest represents a threat to both democracy and net zero targets.
Oscar Berglund is Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. He is an expert on climate change activism and civil disobedience.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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âThe capitalist system is necessarily built on creating ecological crises.â
Bertie speaks to StÄle Holgersen about his new book Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World, in which he argues that, contrary to popular economic thought, economic crises are not triggered by ecological ones but instead the capitalist economy benefits from ecological crises.Bertie and StÄle discuss the ways in which crises are defined, the drawbacks to arguments for degrowth and the potential solutions to the climate emergency.
StÄle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the Zetkin Collective, an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists primarily working on the political ecologies of the far right.
Against the Crisis was published last month and is available to buy from Verso here.
Further reading:
Read an extract from Against the Crisis on Land and Climate Review. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, The Zetkin Collective, 2021Searching for âSolutionsâ to Crisis: A Critique of Urban Austerity and Keynesianism, Uppsala University, 2018Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisis, Uppsala University, 2016Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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One month ago, Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as the new president of Indonesia. An investigation by The Gecko Project has revealed that Subianto has invested in or owned companies involved with rainforest logging, coal mining, palm oil production, and industrial fishing - but many of the companies appear to be inactive.
Read Margareth's reporting here. 'Activists fear supercharged âbusiness as usualâ under Indonesiaâs new president', Mongabay, November 2024The 'Indonesian environmental activists keep dying in suspicious circumstances', Gecko Project, September 2024
Do these investments representing potentially concerning conflicts of interest, or are they par for the course? Are his own claims of enormous wealth accurate or exaggerated?
Alasdair speaks to the author of the Gecko Project research, Margareth Aritonang, who is also the Pulitzer Center's 2024 Rainforest Investigations Fellow for Indonesia.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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This year, Land and Climate Reviewâs first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills.
Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Reviewâs Canadian investigations, which were featured on BBC Newsnight.
They discuss the process of uncovering environmental violations at wood pellet mills owned by Drax Group, which operates the UKâs largest power station, and how residents in Mississippi and British Columbia say they have been affected by the pollution from the mills.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski and Podcast House.
Read the investigations:
âDrax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the USâ, Land and Climate Review, November 2024âThe Dirty Business of Clean Energy: The U.K. Power Company Polluting Small Towns Across the U.S.â, The Intercept, September 2024âDraxâs pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canadaâ, Land and Climate Review, May 2024âDrax faces penalty after Canadian biomass plant fails to submit pollution reportâ, The Independent, October 2023Related episodes:
Are Canadaâs sustainable forestry claims accurate? - with Richard Robertson from Stand.EarthDoes bioenergy increase CO2 emissions more than burning coal? - with John Sterman from MITWhat is BECCS and what does it mean for climate policy? - with Daniel Quiggin from Chatham HouseClick here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to MarĂa Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest Peopleâs Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia.
A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the regionâs wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.
Bertie and MarĂa discuss the reportâs findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots.
Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021'Colombiaâs cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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âIn 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.â
Read the full report, which includes maps outlining the threatened and logged forest areas: Unheeded Warnings: Forest Biomass Threats to Tropical Forests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'Rush to Burn Wood for Energy Threatens Indonesian and Southeast Asian Forests & Communities', Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'The President's new clothes', The Gecko Project, October 2024Bioenergy Explained, Land and Climate Review, 2022
Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities.
Titled Unheeded Warnings, the report warns that the Indonesian governmentâs plans for biomass power risk harming 10 million hectares of untouched primary forest, and "the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta â resulting in CO2 emissions almost five hundred times higher than current levels.â
Alasdair and Timer discuss the investigation process, the scale of these potential impacts, and the Indonesian Government.
To see photos from Timer's investigation, click here.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier:
Click here to buy Threat Multiplier from Island Press. 'A career spent trying to make the military care about climate change', The Washington Post, August 2024'The US Department of Defenseâs Role in Integrating Climate Change into Security Planning', New Security Beat, May 2024'Changing climates for Arctic security', The Wilson Quaterly, 2017National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007
Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.
From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate change as a national security threat in the US.
Threat Multiplier documents key environmental and climatic challenges during her career, such as negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and managing geopolitical risk in the Arctic as melting permafrost changes the ocean landscape.
Goodman is now Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report âFast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghanaâ. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.
Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for the harmful textile imports and what can be done to alleviate the problem.
Sam Quashie-Idun is Head of Investigations at Greenpeace Africa and a member of Land and Climate Review's investigations unit.
Poisoned Gifts, Greenpeace, 2023How to Ensure Waste Colonialism is Not Written Into Law and That Fashionâs Biggest Polluters Have to Change, The Or Foundation, 2023ââItâs like a death pitâ: how Ghana became fast fashionâs dumping groundâ, The Guardian, 2023âEuropean secondary textile sector âon the brink of collapseââ, Recycling International, 2024
You can read the report here and watch Samâs Instagram video summarising its findings here.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Buy Overshoot from Verso Books'The overshoot myth: you canât keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C', The Conversation, August 2024'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land & Climate Review, 2022'What does the IPCC say about carbon removal?', Land & Climate Review, 2022'Global warming overshoots increase risks of climate tipping cascades in a network model', Nature Climate Change, 2022'Overshooting tipping point thresholds in a changing climate', Nature Climate Change, 2021'Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?', in Has It Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink, 2020How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, Verso Books, 2020
Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scientific concern, as the devastating impacts of crossing this threshold may not be reversible.
In their new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton study this risky approach to policy, and the economic interests that they theorise have led to it. Alasdair spoke to them both about the new book.
Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, and the celebrated author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, among other works. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, and the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues.
'Russiaâs war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows', The Guardian, June 2024'Revealed: repairing Israelâs destruction of Gaza will come at huge climate cost', The Guardian, June 2024'National climate action plans must include military emissions', CEOBS Blog, June 2024'UNEA-6 passes resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflict', CEOBS Blog, March 2024'Does reporting military emissions data really threaten national security?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024'Ticking boxes: are military climate mitigation strategies fit for purpose?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024 Estimating the Militaryâs Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2022
But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a staggering 5.5% of global emissions.
Bertie spoke to Lindsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, about the military emissions gap in carbon accounting, and the campaign for UNFCCC rules to be changed to acknowledge it.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far.
'Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel', Roosevelt Institute, 2024'Phase-in and phase-out policies in the global steel transition', Climate Policy, 2024'Building a stronger steel transition: Global cooperation and procurement in construction', One Earth, 2023'Paris compatible steel capacity: Contraction and replacement for zero emissions', Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund university, 2023
Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back.
Buy To Dye For from Penguin Random House. Visit Alden's website, EcoCult, for more reporting on these issues. 'Hitting the gym or going to yoga? Your workout clothes could be doing more harm than you realize', CNN, 2023 'That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think', New York Times, 2022'Sick of smelly, plastic clothes? Blame oil and industrial farming', Land & Climate Review, 2023
Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis.
Tax Wars, ICRICT'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up to $220bn', Financial Times, 2024'McDonaldâs to pay more than âŹ1B to settle French tax case', Politico, 2022It is time for a global asset registry to tackle hidden wealth, ICRICT, 2022'L`affaire Elf en rĂ©sumĂ©', Challenges, 2007
They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Wonât Save the Planet.
'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024'Everything Youâre Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024
Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala Universityâs Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.
Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets canât be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.
The Price is Wrong was published in February and is available to buy from Verso books here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further listening:Further reading:
'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024Other books by Brett:
Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conservative ambition for 15% of farmland.
'Bhutan's challenges and prospects in becoming a 100% organic country', Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Asia Global Dialogue, 2022Case Studies of Successful Farmers, Agri-enterprises and Farmers' Groups and Cooperatives in Bhutan, 2022'Farmersâ perception on transitioning to organic agriculture (OA) in Tsirang district, Bhutan', Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2022'Bridging the Gap between the Sustainable Development Goals and Happiness Metrics', International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2019'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', The Guardian, 2012
Bhutan may be small, but on this issue it's a global outlier. Motivated by its policy to measure development in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, the South Asian nation has been slowly working towards becoming 100% organic since 2012 - and now has a target date of 2035.
Bertie spoke to Dr Sonam Tashi, an organic agriculture expert and Dean of Research & Industrial Linkages at the College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan, to hear about how Bhutan's organic transition is going.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.
'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022
Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.
Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.
How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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