Outrage + Optimism

Europe is burning. Wildfires are still alight in the hills outside Bordeaux and the countryside west of Madrid. More than 300,000 people across France and Spain have been forced from their homes, and both countries remain on high alert as they enter the fourth heatwave of the summer. As we publish this episode, new fires are breaking out across Greece and Turkey.

With the continent warming at more than twice the global average, ...

In the nine hours after the Los Angeles wildfires, before the climate movement could get its shoes on, the narrative was being written. Through social media, podcasts and talking heads on cable news, the truth was buried behind a deliberate strategy of disinformation. In the twenty-one months since China's emissions have flatlined, everyone is asking whether this is a blip or a trend. And across 640,000 square kilometres of protect...

Five years ago, a 21-year-old activist stood on a TED stage next to the CEO of Shell and accused him of making ‘evil decisions’ wreaking ‘devastation on communities around the world’.  And then walked off.

Christiana was moderating. She went into that panel believing dialogue itself could be the mechanism for change - that an honest conversation could move a company like Shell. What she didn't know is th...

"Even if you are small in this society, there is something you can do."

Those are the words of Trixy Elle, a mother and a fisherwoman from the Philippines, and one of the claimants from the Odette case, named for the super typhoon she lived through. She may never win in court, but she says that isn’t the point. She is one of more than 100 claimants suing the energy giant Shell, demanding justice and accountability for the ...

Is it already too late? If you follow the climate crisis closely, despair is a reasonable and rational response to what you're looking at.

This week, we’re being led by you. We gathered the messages you've been sending and let them set the agenda. They're heavy ones, and we wanted to stay with them rather than rush past. Is there still hope, or is it over? If this civilisation ends, won't nature simply restore itself witho...

London Climate Action Week doesn't usually have to compete with extreme weather. But this year, the case for climate action was abundantly clear: a red heat warning, schools shut, trains cancelled, and temperatures breaking the UK's all-time June record. A prime minister's resignation on the opening day only added to the sense that events we’d once considered rare now seem to be happening all the time.

This week, Christian...

SpaceX's $1.75 trillion IPO has just created the world's first trillionaire. But for families in Morgan County, Georgia and Boxtown in South Memphis, the AI investment rush seems to look rather different: brown water, diesel fumes, and higher bills.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson take on the data centre boom - now one of the fastest-moving forces in the global energy system. Why exactly do so many of these build...

For the first time, all 104 matches at the Men's Football World Cup will be stopped for a mandatory three-minute hydration break, halfway through each half. For the first time, a global audience of billions will watch climate adaptation happening in real-time.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson look at what a football tournament, a transit scandal, and an oil war have in common.

Around a quar...

The UK, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal shattered their May heat records last week. Scenes reminiscent of high summer arrived months early, across Western Europe. And like all extreme weather events, there was a human toll. Infrastructure under strain, health services stretched, and lives lost. 

But as records fell, the political conversation was moving in the other direction. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair publis...

When climate wins happen, we often credit the market. Or the policy. But is philanthropy the most underappreciated force in the climate fight? And can less than 2% of global giving actually change anything?

Behind the headlines, people like Jennifer Kitt of Climate Lead are identifying where finite resources can be spent in order to make a real difference, and helping to grow the pie. Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres, and ...

An unprecedented government move to outrun the courts. A country racing to write AI into its constitution. And a global energy crisis that's already moved faster than any possible fix. Are our institutions and the rules they rest on still fit for the world they're supposed to protect?

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres, and Paul Dickinson look at three stories the headlines may be missing.

In New Zealand, the g...

Are flights across the world about to be grounded? Is a terrible war about to create an unlikely good news story for the climate? As conflict in the Middle East threatens the Strait of Hormuz, jet fuel shortages are forcing aviation to confront a structural vulnerability it has spent decades avoiding.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson examine what the shortage reveals: aviation's near-total dep...

Monarch butterflies crossing a continent. Peregrine falcons above Manhattan. A giant lemur most of the world had never heard of, until one man pointed a camera at it. For seventy years, Sir David Attenborough has been asking us to look - really look - at the world we share with three and a half billion years' worth of other life. 

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson mark the 100th birthday ...

Europe plunged into a deep freeze. Life as we know it upended. The 2004 film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ gave a generation of terrified journalists an impossible task: how do you communicate the counter intuitive threat of dramatically colder winters caused by global warming? David Shukman was one of them.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by the veteran BBC Science Editor and author of the upcoming ‘The Resp...

The Iran crisis continues to prove how dangerously dependent the global economy is on fossil fuels. But what will it actually take to move beyond them?

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson look at what the latest oil shock continues to reveal. And they turn to the upcoming First Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, where governments, campaigners and other actor...

There are chemicals in your blood that weren't there fifty years ago. They are in the products you use, the water you drink, the food you eat - and for years, almost nobody was told the full truth about the risk.

This week, Christiana speaks to two women who found contamination in their communities and refused to accept it.

Emily Donovan and Sarah Alexander have spent decades fighting for greater regulation of PFAS or ‘...

Sea-level rise is often spoken about in centimetres, forecasts and future scenarios. But what if we understood it as a health emergency that is already reshaping lives, harming bodies and minds, and displacing entire communities?

This week, as a landmark Lancet Commission launches, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac argue that sea-level rise must be understood not just as a climate threat, but as a health crisis currently...

As headlines warn of a possible ‘super El Niño’ later this year, we ask: how do we respond to a warning before it becomes a catastrophe? 

The last major El Niño brought record heat, crop failures, flooding and deepening food insecurity across large parts of the world. This time, the question is not only what may be coming, but whether we are any better prepared to act on the warning?

Tom Rivett-Carnac and Pau...

We used to be shocked by this. Hundreds of thousands displaced, millions affected, whole communities washed out. But somewhere along the way, extreme weather events have become background noise.

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson explore what it means to live in a world where extreme rainfall, displacement and repeated flood damage are no longer rare shocks but part of a rapidly changing climate...