Zero: The Climate Race

In December, Europe’s Copernicus weather service announced that it was “virtually certain” that 2024 would be the hottest year ever. What’s more, the global average temperature last year appears to have surpassed 1.5C for the first time, blowing past a threshold that’s taken on enormous significance in the fight against climate change. Does that mean governments, corporations, and activist...

Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson imagines the future for a living. And the future is very much upon us. Robinson’s seminal 2020 novel Ministry for the Future opens in the year 2025. Robinson tells Akshat Rathi about how our real-life climate politics stack up against what he imagined for this era. They also discuss the dangers of science-fiction thinking in politics and why, for all his admiration...

The “cold chain” that delivers our food is inconspicuous but vast. The US alone boasts around 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space; that’s 150 Empire State Buildings’ worth of freezers. Now, the developing world is catching up. On Zero, Nicola Twilley, author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, discusses how refrigeration became so ubiquitous and what our reli...

Capitalism can be blamed for worsening the climate crisis, says journalist Akshat Rathi, but it can also be used to drive the solutions to fix it. In this episode of TED Talks Daily, recorded at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle, Rathi discusses his book Climate Capitalism, and how the strategic use of market forces and government policies can make sustainability profitable.

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Reporter Akshat Rathi speaks to Eric Toone of Breakthrough Energy Ventures about what’s hype and what’s not in the world of energy startups. Breakthrough is one of the world’s biggest funders of early stage climate technologies and has poured billions of dollars in more than 120 startups. Toone weighs in on everything from carbon removal to  the grid, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, and green hy...

General Electric Co was officially founded in 1892, when several of inventor Thomas Edison's ventures were consolidated into one company. From then on, it was a behemoth. But now that’s changed: A break-up that began last year has concluded with GE splitting off into three separate companies. Scott Strazik is the CEO of GE Vernova, which focuses on wind turbines, nuclear power, and carbon capture, as well as grid solut...

It went well past the official deadline, late into the night – but finally, COP29 ended with a deal. Hardly anyone felt victorious. Back from Baku, reporter Akshat Rathi tells producer Mythili Rao why the agreed on New Climate Quantified Goal of $300 billion made both developed and developing countries unhappy, and he shares what heads of state and ministers from Denmark to Mauritania and Indonesia to Israel had to tel...

Plans are already underway for COP30 to pick up the baton-- and tackle COP29's unfinished business. Next year’s climate conference is set to take place in Belem, Brazil, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest. André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s Secretary for Climate, Energy and the Environment tells Akshat Rathi that although holding a global summit in Belem poses logistical challenges, the symbolism of the location holds “fan...

At COP29 in Baku, Akshat Rathi is joined on stage at Bloomberg Green’s live event by Ali Zaidi, President Biden’s National Climate Advisor. Zaidi argues that it would be “economic malpractice” for the Trump administration to abandon the energy transition. Plus, veteran climate diplomat Jonathan Pershing explains why he believes global competition will result in an “acceleration of action” on green policy.

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Climate leaders from around the world have convened in Baku, Azerbaijan for the UN’s biggest annual climate conference, COP29. And this year, it’s all about money. 

Member nations are negotiating over how much responsibility rich countries have to finance the energy transitions of smaller economies. But larger global tensions loom over the proceedings — including the reelection of Donald Trump.

In this episode of the Big Take, Bloo...

Reporter Akshat Rathi sits down with ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, who made his second-ever appearance at the United Nations climate conference. Woods made the case for why incoming US president Donald Trump shouldn’t exit the Paris Agreement, and should uphold the country’s monumental climate legislation passed under the Biden administration. It’s quite the tone shift for a company that has a well-documented history of sowing doubt...

Zero is in Baku, Azerbaijan, where delegates and heads of state from around the world have gathered for COP29.  Can a petrostate make a summit on decarbonization a success? And how much will the election of President Trump damage the US’s credibility on climate– and set negotiations back? Akshat Rathi tells producer Mythili Rao what’s in store in the two weeks ahead, and COP29 President Mukhtar Babyaev explains how Azerbaijan is tr...

Donald Trump’s re-election as the US president drastically changes the climate and energy equation—in the US and around the world. This week, Akshat Rathi speaks with California Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna about what Americans can do to sustain action on climate and clean energy. He also talks to Columbia University’s Jason Bordoff about how much Trump could boost fossil fuels.

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In fractured times, what does it take to reach agreement? That’s the question writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set out to explore in a play about the drama of climate negotiations. Kyoto, which ran at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon this summer, tells the story of the 1997 Kyoto Summit as seen through the eyes of Don Pearlman, a notorious fossil fuel lobbyist and chain-smoking lawyer dubbed “...

Started as a battery company in the 1990s in Shenzhen, BYD is now one of the best-selling EV brands in the world. Once mocked by Elon Musk, the company’s startling growth made it a global player and has sparked tariffs in the US and EU. In this episode of the Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg’s Gabrielle Copolla and Danny Lee about the company’s aggressive expansion and what it means for the global auto mark...

As Republican and Democratic canvassers make their final push to get out the US vote, the famed tech investor Vinod Khosla has been making the case for Vice President Kamala Harris with a very specific audience in mind: Elon Musk. On the social media platform owned by his fellow billionaire, Khosla has pressed the case in a series of X posts that former President Donald Trump is the wrong candidate for the future of the planet. Alt...

Electric vehicle sales have hit the brakes in Europe and the US in recent months, as cost-conscious drivers have opted for cars with exhaust pipes instead. Bucking the trend is ride-sharing giant Uber, which is not only adding zero emission models to its fleet, but also lobbying regulators to demand more EVs on the road. On Zero, Dara Khosrowshahi discusses the company’s short and long-term green goals, and tells Akshat Rathi why h...

As Florida reels from the impact of Hurricane Milton, some Wall Street investors appear to be on track to profit from catastrophe bonds tied to the storm’s outcome. Cat bonds are a specialized insurance tool that can help people who've lost their homes find money to rebuild– or deliver big profits to investors who are willing to gamble on big natural disasters. As Bloomberg’s Gautam Naik has reported, last year cat bonds were the m...