The Oatly Chronicles Part 2: What’s The Housing Crisis Got To Do With It?

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Swedish oat milk company Oatly says it's on a mission to defeat the almighty dairy industry and save the planet. To do that, it claims it needs to grow into a massive corporate success — and it’s willing to take on controversial investments to get there. In episode two of ‘The Oatly Chronicles’, we investigate what makes those investors so controversial. It takes us on a journey from green capitalism being battled out in the coffee shops of Malmö; to enormous housing protests in a post-financial crisis Spain; to… China? This series is funded by Journalismfund Europe and the Allianz Foundation Thanks for listening. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠ (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by ⁠⁠⁠leaving us a review⁠⁠⁠ or giving us five stars on Spotify. Credits: This episode was produced by Katz Laszlo, and reported by Katz Laszlo and Katy Lee. Editing came from Katy Lee, as well as Justine Paradis, visiting from NPR’s excellent podcast, Outside/In. Editorial support came from Margot Gibbs, Dominic Kraemer and Wojciech Oleksiak, and mastering, scoring and sound design also came from Wojciech. Artwork came from favourite illustrator RTiiiKA. Thank for talking to us: Fredrik Gertten, Lucía Gonzalez Martín, Laura Young, George Monbiot, Max Carbonell, Ben Axler, Brett Christophers, and Gregor Sebastian. Special thanks to lovely neighbours Joris Klingen and Thomas van Dijk, for letting us use their very nice studio. You can find their music under Bovenburen. Interesting links: ‘Change Isn’t Easy’ - Oatly’s statement on the Blackstone investment (August 2022 update) https://community.oatly.com/conversations/news-and-views/change-isnt-easy/62f2f4c91b4bf47dd15fb249 ‘Private Equity Propels the Climate Crisis’ - a report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, 2021 https://pestakeholder.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PESP_SpecialReport_ClimateCrisis_Oct2021_Final.pdf ‘These Photos Show the Reality of Spain's Housing Crisis’ - Time, August 2015 https://time.com/4007349/spain-evictions-housing-crisis/ ‘#RavalVsBlackstone. The right to the city versus the finance-real estate-tourism complex’ - European Network of Corporate Observatories, June 2020 https://corpwatchers.eu/en/investigations/cities-versus-multinationals/ravalvsblackstone-the-right-to-the-city-versus-the-finance-real-estate-tourism ‘Activists sour on Oatly vegan milk after stake sold to Trump-linked Blackstone’ - The Guardian, September 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/sep/01/oatly-vegan-milk-sale-blackstone ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ | Bluesky | ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠[email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi Katie, hi-kete. Hi Katie. Hi Katz hi cats.
0:24.4	Hello.
0:25.0	Hi.
0:25.9	We're back and we're going to be talking about oat milk again this week.
0:30.3	This is part two of the Oatley Chronicles, a mini-series exploring green capitalism through oat milk.
0:38.3	How's it been going, Katie, with your attempt at cutting down on the amount of greer you eat?
0:43.4	I actually haven't had any cheese this week.
0:45.4	Wow.
0:46.0	Which is more by chance than having listened to last week's podcast.
0:50.4	But, you know, small victories.
0:51.8	So you're saying you have absolutely no personal principles, but
0:55.6	accidentally was a good person last week, yes. But Katz is our resident Fligen, flexible vegan.
1:03.2	Yeah, I'm wondering whether Fleigen is becoming a thing. I should check out the hashtags. But
1:07.8	quick reminder for everyone, Katz last week, you had an existential crisis in the
1:13.1	middle of the supermarket aisle. Is that a good summary? Pretty much. Last week, we investigated
1:18.6	whether Oatley's claims that we urgently need to replace dairy with plant-based milk,
1:24.0	whether those claims were legit. And essentially, we learned that yes, dairy is very
1:29.0	destructive and oat milk is drastically more sustainable. But the next step, Otley argues,
1:35.5	is that to defeat the almighty dairy industry, they need to become a massive capitalist success.
1:41.9	And they are willing to take some pretty controversial investments to get
1:46.3	there. So that is what we're looking into this week, those controversial investments.
1:51.6	And Katie, I understand you're joining Detective Katz-Laslo in doing some of the sleuthing for this
	...

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