Heat of the Moment

This year at COP26 in Glasgow, developing countries were clear: wealthier countries need to do more to help finance the world’s movement away from fossil fuels. And their argument is gaining traction: debt is holding countries back from adapting to climate change.

Leading off this episode of Heat of the Moment, we hear from Mamadou Honadia, one of the lead climate negotiators for Burkina Faso, who shares how his country's respon...

The United States military is one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the world. What is less known is that when it comes to the climate crisis, the U.S. military is also a place for innovation and strategic thinking.

And that’s thanks in no small part to our guest today -- Sherri Goodman, who is considered to be the godmother of Climate Security. Goodman is currently a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Senior S...

We are in the midst of one of the greatest moments of human migration in recent history. Wars and unrest in the Middle East, political tensions in Latin America, and ethnic clashes in places like Myanmar have caused millions of people to flee their homes looking for safety and security for themselves and their families. But there’s also another set of migrants: those who are fleeing because they’ve determined their homes are no lon...

On this episode we meet former oil worker Allen Hubbard. Hubbard spent most of his professional career as a geologist working on oil rigs in Louisiana trying to calculate the best spots to drill. Since leaving the industry Hubbard began learning more about the climate crisis from people like Al Gore and decided he needed to do a complete 180. Now in his 80s, Hubbard has made it his duty to speak out and try to motivate people to cu...

Moving away from coal is a top priority in the fight against climate change. But how should local economies, who depend on coal, ensure that workers and their communities are protected? We turn to the Energy Capital of the U.S. -- Gillette, Wyoming -- to see how that coal community is beginning to think about moving its economy away from fossil fuels.

On today’s episode we hear first from Shannon Anderson, Staff Attorney at the Powd...

On today's episode of Heat of the Moment, we take a look at one of the most innovative ways we can cut greenhouses from our global food production: kelp. Our guest, Bren Smith, a regenerative ocean farmer in Connecticut, is leading the way on rethinking how we might farm our oceans by developing polyculture practices for farming shellfish, seaweeds, and kelps.

This is a big week for the climate. Leaders from all over the world a...

Converting to electric vehicles is an important part of the quest to eliminate carbon pollution and stabilize the atmosphere. It’s estimated that globally the transportation sector contributes about or about one fifth of all global emissions; three quarters of that comes from road travel. And it’s not just CO2 emissions that are on people’s minds when they think about converting, it’s also clean air and less sound pollution, and gr...

While developing countries only make up a small percentage of the world's CO2 emissions, they're often the ones on the front lines dealing with impact of the climate crisis. This is especially true for low lying countries and island nations who are vulnerable to flooding caused by sea level rise and more intensive storm systems due to warming oceans.

On today's episode we begin with first from Sarah Nandudu, the Vice Cha...

With leaders from across the globe preparing to convene in Glasgow, Scotland for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) Heat of the Moment, begins its season by looking back at the historic agreement reached at 2015 conference in Paris. In this episode, host John Sutter speaks with Rachel Kyte. Currently the Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, she previously served as s World Bank Group Vice President and Special Env...

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There are plenty of people sitting around waiting for some magical new or improved technology to come along and fix the mess we’ve made for ourselves with the climate emergency. That’s probably not going to happen—and, anyway, we have the tools we need to ditch fossil fuels now. In the first part of the episode, reporter Molly Schwartz looks into some of these solutions, including wind farm construction and carbon capture, utilizat...

All of the weather these days is forming in an atmosphere that humans have warmed on average by about 1 degree Celsius. It’s not that fossil fuel pollution is causing all the bad weather, but it does play an inextricable role. In this episode of Heat of the Moment, host John D. Sutter speaks with MIT professor Kerry Emanuel, a leading expert on hurricanes and climate change, about how the crisis has evolved.

Later in the episode, re...

How much would it cost to fix climate change—and who should pay? Should it be the United States—the biggest polluter historically? Should it be China—the largest annual polluter these days? Is the entire industrial world to blame? These are some of the thorny questions the Heat of the Moment host John D. Sutter discusses with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz is a top expert on how economic policy can play a l...

Water is our most vital resource, but climate change is making weather patterns and seasonal rainfall less predictable. Now, drought and water scarcity are increasingly threatening the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable communities around the planet. In this episode of Heat of the Moment, host John D. Sutter speaks with Peter Gleick, president emeritus of the Pacific Institute, and a leading global thinker on the relationship betw...

The dialogue surrounding climate change is often passionate and sometimes contentious, especially when it touches on people’s livelihoods, religion, or political beliefs. So how can those seeking action get past the rancor and have a constructive dialogue? In this episode of Heat of the Moment, host John D. Sutter speaks with Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University, who regularly engages with aud...

The Amazon rainforest has been called “the lungs of the planet” as it plays an outsized role in absorbing the Earth’s carbon dioxide output. But industrial interests have led to rapid deforestation in parts of the Amazon, which is not only disrupting ecosystems but also indigenous communities. To get a better sense of the human impact of deforestation, host John Sutter speaks with the climate activist Nina Gualinga. Gualinga is fro...