Explore every episode of the podcast Outrage + Optimism

In Digger, Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose rig sets off a tsunami. Within days of release, it was written off as a flop. Christiana Figueres has seen it twice, and she has questions about how quickly that verdict arrived. As she sees it, the film puts the fossil fuel lobby squarely in the frame.

This week, Christiana, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson meet in person, with a stack of your questions and a bigger one underneath them all: what actually moves people to act? Is it fear, or hope? And what are the hidden influences behind the messages that move us?

If evidence on its own changes so few minds, what does? Christiana has a theory involving cake, but Tom and Paul have different ideas in the oven.

Christiana once asked a Saudi minister what his country needed before it would let the Paris Agreement through. The answer fitted on a napkin. And why does she want to take back the word "tribalism"?

Nearly three in four UK newspaper stories on June's record heatwave didn't mention climate change. Oversight, or a firewall of the kind Christiana saw on screen in Digger? Would a general strike cut through? And what happened when Paul stood at a G8 summit, alone, with a 20-foot sign?

Is there a film or a book that speaks to all this for you? Send it our way. And if you think something stranger is going on with Digger's reviews, Christiana would like to hear from you.

🎬 Watch the trailer for Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's black comedy starring Tom Cruise as a tycoon trying to save the world from a disaster he caused

🗞️ Read ECIU's analysis of UK heatwave coverage, which found 72% of national newspaper articles on June's record heat didn't mention climate change

✊ Explore Erica Chenoweth's 3.5% rule, including her own cautionary update on what it can and can't tell us

📱 Watch the trailer for The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin's film about the Facebook Files, which Paul recommends

🌳 Read the Dasgupta Review, the Treasury-commissioned study of the economics of biodiversity and the case for counting nature in a nation's wealth

💡 Read IRENA's Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2025, which found over 90% of new renewable power added last year was cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before she was Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris agreement, who was she? What did believe in 2015 that she no longer believes?

In June, an event about the next generation of climate leaders was postponed because of extreme heat. This week, Outrage + Optimism comes to you live from Bath Abbey, weeks before COP31 and ten years on from Paris. What is one generation of climate leaders really handing to the next? And will it be enough?

In front of an audience of school children, students, parents and teachers, 22 year old, Xandi Drysdale, asks Christiana to reflect on the differences between her own youth and the world that his own generation is stepping into. And, 16 year old Isla asks: Why we should trust the leaders of today the political and economic systems they have maintained are the very systems that created this crisis?

Young people keep being told they must lead. So what is stopping them? Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson put the question to environmental psychologist Lorraine Whitmarsh and University of Bath Vice-Chancellor Phil Taylor. Then they meet Nav Sawhney, an engineer who promised his neighbour in India a washing machine and built one. Is he a model others can follow?

Paul, Christiana and Tom are in the hot seat in front of a live audience - seated in Bath Abbey, in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, what do they see as the biggest opportunities for the next generation? And what responsibility do we have to the generations after theirs?.

Thanks to the University of Bath for hosting us as part of its 60th anniversary Adelard Series, and to Bath Festivals, Bath Digital Festival and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution for partnering on the evening. Thanks too to Bath Students' Union, and to everyone who came along or sent in a question.

🧺 Discover The Washing Machine Project, Nav Sawhney's organisation bringing the hand-cranked Divya machine to families who wash their clothes by hand

📊 Read CAST's new study of The People's Emergency Briefing, which found nearly nine in ten viewers left more motivated to act

🎬 Find a screening of The People's Emergency Briefing, the film on the UK's climate and nature crisis that Lorraine Whitmarsh advised on

🌡 Read Lorraine Whitmarsh and Bella Zanin on whether this summer's heat made more people worry about climate change

🎓 Learn about Fossil Free Careers, People & Planet's campaign to end fossil fuel recruitment on UK campuses

🏛 Explore the University of Bath's Adelard Series, marking its 60th anniversary and named after the 12th-century scholar often called England's first scientist

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Editor: Miles Martignoni

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A ship rams a canoe. The canoe starts to sink. The ship's crew lean over the rail and offer a loan to repair it.

That is how Surangel Whipps Jr., President of Palau, describes climate finance in the Pacific, a region responsible for around 0.03% of global emissions. He speaks to Christiana Figueres a few weeks into his year as Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, and as pre-COP talks wrap in in Fiji and Tuvalu ahead of COP31.

In Palau, on his islands, high tides are already flooding the taro patches with saltwater, and the main hospital sits at the water's edge.

This week, Christiana returns to the fight that wrote 1.5°C into the Paris Agreement, a limit the small island nations won while most of the world's biggest economies pushed for two degrees. A decade on, the UN expects the world to overshoot it. What does this mean for entire countries that sit just a few metres above sea level?

President Whipps explains why diesel power costs his country close to 30 cents a kilowatt hour, when solar is the cheapest energy in the big markets, and what he says to young Palauans who are no longer sure they should have children.

And, Tom Rivett-Carnac joins Christiana to ask what is actually required of the rest of us. Last year, the world's highest court sided with the islands. Last month, the UN agreed that a country does not stop being a country once the sea takes its land. Why hasn't the money followed?

Thanks to our friends at BE HOPE Podcast Takeover, bringing podcasts around the world together to explore the theme of hope and how we can continue to make progress in a rapidly changing world.

🎬 Watch All Rise, the documentary narrated by Christiana that follows the Pacific law students who took climate change to the world's highest court

🎟️ Register for our Bath Abbey event livestream on 14 October, Powering the Next Generation to Lead Climate Action

🎧 Listen back to our earlier episodes on the road to the world court: Sovereignty and Survival: A Spotlight on Vanuatu, The Climate Case of the Century, and The ICJ Climate Opinion Explained

⚖️ Read the ICJ advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, the unanimous July 2025 ruling that named 1.5°C the primary temperature goal under the Paris Agreement

🌺 Read the Palau Pledge, the promise every visitor signs to the children of Palau on arrival, and the text that has inspired a movement in Costa Rica to write its own

🌊 Understand the UN's first declaration on sea-level rise, Just Security's analysis of what its presumption of continued statehood means for countries that could lose their land

🛂 Learn more about the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union, the treaty behind the climate visa ballot that most of Tuvalu's population entered

🌡️ Read UNEP's Emissions Gap Report 2025, which found the world will very likely pass 1.5°C within the next decade, and why the size of the overshoot still matters

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan

Palau birdsong recorded by JVMoore via xeno-canto

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Net Zero was once a radical idea. Now it’s both an accepted global target, and an increasingly toxic political faultline.

This week, Tom is back from the UN General Assembly and New York Climate week, where António Guterres used his last speech as UN Secretary-General to call for every country to set a timeline for quitting fossil fuels. But around the world, politicians are turning against the very idea. In Britain, a committee of MPs now wants the government to stop saying "net zero" altogether. Should the climate movement let the phrase go, or will its opponents simply come for whatever replaces it?

Christiana Figueres and Paul chat to Professor Phil Taylor, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bath and a member of the government's Net Zero Innovation Board. Phil grew up in a North East England still living with the fallout of its last industrial transition. He warns that the cheapest, easiest progress has already been made. And so far the households gaining the most from the energy transition are the ones who can afford the shift.

So, with energy bills set to rise again, what happens when a shift sold as painless starts to hurt? And can politicians be honest about the costs and still win?

Outrage + Optimism will be live at Bath Abbey on 14 October, after this summer's extreme heat forced the original event to be cancelled. Join the livestream from anywhere using the link below.

🎟️ Register for the Bath Abbey livestream on 14 October, Powering the Next Generation to Lead Climate Action

🌍 Read Climate Home News on Guterres's farewell speech to the General Assembly

🌊 Find out what's in the new UN Declaration on Sea Level Rise

🏛️ Explore the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee's inquiry, Building support for the energy transition

⚡ Read Climate Outreach on what a Burnham government means for climate change in the UK

🏖️ Learn how campaigners stopped the Druridge Bay coal mine

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The news cameras may be following rising tensions between President Trump and President Pezeshkian of Iran, but deep in the bowels of the United Nations, fifteen countries are about to choose, in private, the person who speaks for 8 billion people.

It’s a process so opaque that even the candidates can't see who is voting for or against them, and - bizarrely - rumours are spreading that the eventual winner could be someone who hasn't yet entered the field.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Christiana Figueres are together in New York for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC, joining the Be Hope Podcast Takeover for a second year.

As the race to replace António Guterres heads towards a fourth straw poll, Christiana - who ran for the job herself in 2016 - takes the mechanics apart: the five vetoes, the ten members whose preferences can be overruled, and the 193 countries who ‘approve’ a winner, but never get a choice. Tom and Christiana size up the race, while Christiana remembers the question that probably cost her the job in 2016, and the day she slid a sealed brown envelope across the desk of Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.

And Christiana speaks with her old friend Susana Malcorra, who was Ban Ki-moon's chef de cabinet before becoming Argentina's foreign minister, and running for Secretary-General alongside her in 2016. Despite multiple qualified candidates, the United Nations has never been led by a woman. Susana co-founded GWL Voices, and she has spent the years since campaigning for the first Madam Secretary-General.

Whoever wins inherits a defunded institution in a fractured world, and a first task Christiana calls unavoidable and painful. What is the UN actually for now? And if multilateralism as we've known it has stopped working, who convenes the world on climate instead?

Will the next leader be more Secretary or General?

Recorded in New York during Climate Week NYC, as part of the Be Hope Podcast Takeover for a second year.

🗳️ Read PassBlue's report on the third straw poll, with results from all three rounds

🔍 Discover how the straw polls work in Security Council Report's What's In Blue briefing

🏛️ Compare every candidate's vision statement and CV on the UN's Selection and Appointment of the Next Secretary-General page

🌡️ Find out what the Secretary-General nominees reveal about climate change in PassBlue

📊 Explore GWL Voices' Women in Multilateralism 2026 report, including data on every Secretary-General candidate since 1945

📣 Follow 1 for 8 Billion, the campaign for an open selection process and the first woman Secretary-General

🏙️ Catch up on Climate Week NYC 2026

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This summer, extreme heat killed tens of thousands of people across Europe. The number killed by terrorism was, as our guest puts it, very very small. So why are the institutions built to keep people safe still organised almost entirely around the second one?

Erin Sikorsky is the Director of the Center for Climate and Security, a former deputy director on the US intelligence officer who led long-range strategic analysis at the National Intelligence Council, and now sits on the UK's climate security task force. She tells Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson that we are moving into an era where climate is no longer a threat multiplier, it is the threat.

Between January and July, militaries in 49 countries were deployed more than 110 times to fight fires. Spain sent 1,200 soldiers and 400 vehicles to a single blaze outside Madrid. Militaries are already responding to the climate crisis.

Then there is the weaponisation of the disasters. Why would anyone lie about a flood? Within days of the Nepal glacier collapse that killed more than a thousand people, a false claim was circulating that a Chinese dam had been released. This pattern has repeated in Canada, Portugal, the United Kingdom. Sometimes it is a rival state looking for advantage. Sometimes it is a government deflecting its own failure onto migrants, bad actors or a neighbour state. After Hurricane Helene in the US, disinformation about the federal response led to threats against the emergency workers trying to help.

Erin's case for optimism is that security money and climate money are the same money, and that Generals can be won round on those terms. But Christiana isn't convinced - the military was making this argument five years ago, and Munich, NATO and the Security Council have all held the briefings without producing a single decision. 

So if this summer wasn't the thing that changed it, what will be?

🔎 Read more from Erin Sikorsky on Substack

🌍 Learn more about Climate Action Against Disinformation's tracking of climate narratives across the northern summer 

🔎 Read Manjeet Dhakal of Climate Analytics, on why Nepal's tragedy has to change what happens at COP31

🎬 Watch Christiana on how to twiddle your thumbs. 

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Or get in touch with us via this form.

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson

Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At COP26 in Glasgow, India famously asked to change one word in the final text. ‘Phase out’ became ‘phase down’. The COP President fought back tears, as country after country branded this a moment of shame. For many, India has been a villain of that story ever since.

But like all stories about this country, the truth is far more complex.

In the last of three episodes from India, Tom Rivett-Carnac asks what the world gets right and wrong about the pivotal role that India is playing on the global climate stage. And Christiana Figueres returns to the microphone to trace the argument India has been making in every negotiating room for three decades - and where it might go next.

We meet Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, who was at Copenhagen in 2009, when the rich world promised billions of climate finance to the developing world. But much of that money never came, and what did arrive came mostly as debt. He has a theory about why India still doesn't get the credit he believes it deserves, and it has nothing to do with the climate.

Harjeet Singh, who has campaigned on this for twenty years, shares why his own government treats coal as a matter of national security rather than energy policy.

And Dia Mirza tells us what she did when the Chief Justice of India called people like her a ‘lobby’.

So is India the blocker, or the blueprint? And what happens to the rules when the countries that wrote them stop keeping them?

📄 Read Carbon Brief's analysis of India's new climate pledge, filed after the country hit its non-fossil target five years early 

🔨 Revisit how COP26 ended in Glasgow - the compromise deal, the last-minute change from phasing coal out to phasing it down 

💰 Understand what the $100 billion was actually worth, the Oxfam analysis finding that of $83.3 billion reported for 2020, the real value was at most $24.5 billion 

📉 Check the Climate Target Update Tracker, the running record of every 2035 climate target filed so far

⚖️ Read the International Commission of Jurists on India's foreign funding law, under which thousands of organisations have lost their licences

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism 

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

India Producer and translator: Adnan Bhat

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"This will never work in India."

That's what Indian truck manufacturers said about electric freight. Now they build the trucks.

Something is going on here at a speed the rest of the world has not yet noticed. Solar capacity has gone from under three gigawatts to more than 160 in ten years. Across the same decade, 171 million people moved out of extreme poverty.

But in eastern Delhi, a woman who has lived beside an open mountain of garbage for fifty years asks Tom Rivett-Carnac for one thing: tell the world about us.

So, in the second of three episodes from India, Tom goes looking for what is really driving this change, what it looks like up close, and whether it can deliver for the people who need it most.

A cement executive who set a net zero target in 2018, when nobody else in his industry had, will give you the business case that green is profitable. Ask him what is actually driving him and he gives a different answer. Truck drivers on the Bengaluru highway who can now hear well enough to talk in the cabins. A nine-year-old with a bicycle. This is the largest transition of its kind anywhere on earth, and it is happening right now.

With Delhi-based journalist and filmmaker Adnan Bhat on the ground, and Dia Mirza, Shyla Raghav and Prachi Shevgaonkar on what it all adds up to.

So what does it look like from the inside? And what happens to the people it hasn't yet reached?

Disclosure: the electric freight programme in this episode, Laneshift, was founded by The Climate Pledge, which Global Optimism co-founded with Amazon, alongside the city network C40.

⛰️ Read how Delhi's garbage mountains became heat bombs for the people who work them, Al Jazeera on the waste pickers of Ghazipur, a landfill now roughly as tall as the Qutub Minar

💧 Watch The Waterman of India, Decode Mediacom's film on Dr Rajendra Singh, whose johads and check dams have revived five rivers across drought-hit Rajasthan

🧊 Watch Sonam Wangchuk build an automated ice stupa, the artificial glaciers that freeze winter water into towers and release it when Ladakh needs it in spring

🌾 Learn more about Andhra Pradesh's natural farming programme, which has moved more than 1.7 million farmers off chemical-heavy methods and won the 2026 Food Planet Prize

🏗️ Understand why cement is so hard to clean up, from Chatham House

🗳️ See what Indians actually think about climate change, the Yale programme's opinion maps covering 634 districts

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism 

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

India Producer and translator: Adnan Bhat

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Delhi, lung cancer is no longer a smoker’s disease. It’s a breather’s disease.

But the most polluted capital on earth sits in a country running five years ahead of its Paris clean power target. 

In the first of three dispatches from India, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by Dia Mirza, one of the biggest names in Indian cinema and a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, and Shyla Raghav, formerly Chief Climate Officer at TIME, who describes "a mix of pride, a mix of heartbreak, and, as well, possibility."

With Delhi-based journalist Adnan Bhat guiding and translating, Tom traces the path India is trying to build - development founded on renewable energy, clean transport, and a refusal to accept that getting richer has to cost the earth.

We meet Bhavreen Kandhari, who stopped relying on the government's air quality figures and started keeping her own. Now, she says, every citizen is a scientist. On a good day, indoors, her monitor reads six times the safe limit. 

And, Dr Arvind Kumar, who has been operating on Delhi's lungs since the 1980s. Here, he says, “a child becomes a smoker from the first breath.” But he has yet to see dirty air written onto a death certificate in India.

And in Old Delhi, Bilkis drives a lavender electric rickshaw. She switched because it was cheaper and easier to drive, she says. Which may be how this actually gets done.

Can India grow, bring a fifth of humanity with it, and build a better road than the one the West took and then closed behind it?

🌍 Read IQAir's World Air Quality Report, which has ranked New Delhi the world's most polluted capital for eight years running

📈 Understand what air pollution costs India on the Lancet Countdown's India data sheet

👩‍👧 Explore Warrior Moms, the network Bhavreen Kandhari co-founded in 2020, now 38,000 mothers across 19 states, with guides on filing air quality RTIs and writing to your MLA

🩺 Learn more about the Lung Care Foundation, set up by Dr Arvind Kumar after black deposits started appearing in the lungs of patients who had never smoked

⚖️ Read about Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the first person anywhere to have air pollution recorded as a cause of death, the precedent Dr Kumar wants India to follow

🛺 Get up to date on Delhi's switch to electric autos, under which only electric three-wheelers can be newly registered in the city from January 2027

⚡ See how India passed 50% non-fossil power capacity in July 2025, five years ahead of the target it set under the Paris Agreement 

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism 

YouTube @OutrageandOptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

India Producer and translator: Adnan Bhat

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The summer of 2026 burned the largest wildfire in Spain's recorded history and the largest France has seen since the Second World War. June's heat killed more than 10,000 people across Europe. A heat dome held North Africa and the Sahel above 45°C for days. In Assam, the Brahmaputra put 700,000 people out of their homes.

But it was in the United States, in its hottest month in 132 years of records, that climate reporting found its biggest audience of the summer, in the least likely slot imaginable.

Footballers at the FIFA Men's World Cup had to stop mid-half to drink, cool down and put on ice vests. Two US broadcasters held the rights to those three minutes. One sold them to advertisers. The other used them to explain why the players were stopping at all. 

This week Christiana Figueres speaks with Vanessa Hauc, Emmy award-winning anchor at Noticias Telemundo and creator of its climate unit, Planeta Tierra. Vanessa got Telemundo to hand her time during the hydration breaks. Forty seconds, Saudi Aramco's branding in shot, to tell viewers why the players needed to stop. While competitors sold advertising slots generating an estimated $1bn globally, millions tuned in to Vanessa explaining how human-driven climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, was responsible for the crisis.

Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson join Christiana to pick apart why simply reporting a hotter world is still treated as a provocation, and the three of them take stock of a summer of record heat, Spain's tumbling power prices and the case for telling the economic story better.

What does it take to reach people who will never open a scientific paper but will not miss a match? And why is telling it like it is still the risky option?

Plus, a first look at the next three episodes. Tom has been somewhere that holds the best and the worst of this transition at once. Stay tuned for the end of the episode.

⚽ Read Climate Change Big Player at FIFA World Cup 2026, the World Weather Attribution study Vanessa's team built the reporting on

📺 Watch Noticias Telemundo Planeta Tierra, the only Spanish-language environmental news programme streaming in the US, created and directed by Vanessa

📰 Read The World Cup Story (Almost) No One Told from Covering Climate Now, on how Telemundo became the only US broadcaster to connect the hydration breaks to a warming planet

🗳️ Explore NRDC's polling with Latino Decisions, which found nine in ten Latinos want government action on climate

🌡️ Understand why Latino neighbourhoods carry the heaviest heat burden, UCLA research showing more than twice the share of workers in heat-exposed jobs like agriculture and construction

⚡ Get up to date on Ember analysis’s about how Spain decoupled its electricity prices from gas

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somewhere along the way, acting on a threat to all of humanity became a political act. Not a simple matter of science and economics, but a signal of whose side you are on.

So, what would it take to change the political narrative around climate? This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson answer some difficult questions gathered for our live event at Bath Abbey, postponed when extreme heat made the venue unsafe - as if we needed another reminder of the urgency of this crisis.

They ask: can we lift the climate out of party politics altogether? Does real leverage sit with the decisions made in national capitals, or is it only on the COP conference floor while the cameras are rolling? And if vested interests and lobbying can’t be removed, how do we meet them head on, with an equal and opposite force.

This episode tries to answer the challenge we all face: do we seek to depoliticise this crisis, or fight for it in the open? And, now that the climate crisis has become a political hot potato, can we change course in time?

Learn More

🌍 Explore the Earthshot Prize, Prince William's platform for scaling climate solutions

🗳️ Read about Climate Assembly UK, the citizens' assembly that brought 100+ people together to shape how the country reaches net zero, and why the format keeps vested interests at the door

🚭 Understand Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the treaty clause Paul points to that shields health policy from the tobacco industry

📢 Read how The Hague banned fossil fuel advertising, a world-first local law that survived a court challenge in 2025

💸 Revisit the fossil fuel divestment movement, the student-led campaign, which pushed institutions holding trillions to pull money out of coal, oil and gas

🎬 Watch The People's Emergency Briefing, the film built to give the public the same starting picture of the crisis their governments often will not explain

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Solar power now costs a thousandth of what it did in 1976. Batteries are down more than ninety percent in a decade. By the logic of economics, the climate problem should be close to solved. It isn't. We are on track for close to three degrees of warming, and politics is sliding in the wrong direction.

Few people have thought as long, or as clearly, about the economics of climate change as Lord Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission and first chair of the UK's Climate Change Committee. This week, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac sit down with him to work out what’s going wrong. 

Turner doesn’t soften it. The "electrotech stack" of solar, batteries and motors keeps collapsing in price in a way fossil fuels never can. Sub-Saharan Africa could leapfrog the fossil era outright. China's bet on electrification makes America's wager on cheap gas look like a costly mistake. But the movement he has spent two decades inside has also sold a story it never should have: that the transition would cost no one anything.

So what closes the gap between what the technology makes possible and what our politics will allow? Who pays for the parts that aren't cheap? And if money alone can’t avoid a 3°C hotter future, what can?

Learn More

🎧 Watch Adair Turner’s three LSE lectures, the full “Limiting Climate Change While Growing Prosperity” series this conversation distils.

⚡ Explore the Energy Transitions Commission and its “Protecting Paris” work on staying well below two degrees.

🌡️ Read the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2025 to see where the near three-degree current-policies trajectory comes from.

🚢 Understand the IMO’s Net-Zero Framework, the global shipping carbon price that stalled in London last October.

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, a new frontline of the climate crisis has emerged. Meanwhile, nearly three in four UK newspaper articles about June's record heatwave made no mention of climate change, and into that gap come competing narratives: arson conspiracies, weather manipulation, "it was hotter in 1976". Are we being gaslit?

Tom is joined by Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution, to unpack what so much coverage is missing. Are these extreme events being caused by climate change? How do we know? And how can we tell a better story?

He then speaks with Emma Howard Boyd, former chair of the UK Environment Agency, now chair of the UK's new National Heat Risk Commission. She has spent her career translating slow-moving climate risk for institutions built to move fast - in government, in finance, and now at a commission created for precisely this moment. 

Emma’s doesn’t claim to have the answers, but she does have ideas. She calls for a shift from emergency response to strategic planning, and for local, mayor-led heat plans like Heat Ready London to ensure schools, hospitals and railways are built for the temperatures now arriving.

Every decision we take now either builds in resilience or locks in vulnerability. Which are we choosing? How are we going to bring more people with us? And can institutions built for fast disasters learn to see a slow one?

Learn More:

🔎 Read the ECIU analysis finding three in four UK newspaper articles on the record June heatwave didn’t mention climate change

🔬 Check out World Weather Attribution, for more on latest research and attribution science.

🛰️ Get the latest data on wildfires in Europe from the EC Joint Research Centre

📊 See the rapid analysis from LSHTM, Imperial College London and the Met Office estimating more than 2,700 heat-related deaths in England and Wales in May and June

📋 Find out about the National Heat Risk Commission, chaired by Emma Howard Boyd, reporting later this year

🌍 Explore the London Climate Resilience Review and the Heat Ready London plan

⚖️ Learn more about ClientEarth’s work using the law to protect life on Earth

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 protected ocean, nobody is quite certain what happens next.

You have probably seen these stories reported. But what is actually going on out there?

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson go after the questions underneath the headlines. What is actually changing, who is blocking progress, who is telling the story? And who holds power? 

Can a COP presidency really be split between two governments, one holding the diplomacy and the other the logistics? Christiana, who has run a few COPs, thinks it collapses over furniture. Is the addiction to profit an economic problem or a psychological one? Tom and Paul fight (amicably) about billionaires.

Meanwhile, 1,600 communities across the UK have screened a film briefing the public on a crisis their government will not explain to them. If they can move that fast, what would it take for the rest of us to match them?

LEARN MORE

On China's emissions 

📉 Read Carbon Brief's analysis showing China's CO2 emissions flat or falling for 21 months, the data behind Christiana's answer; and their more recent finding that China's CO2 climbed 2% in early 2026 because of wasted wind and solar, a reminder of how bumpy a plateau can be

On the Chagos Marine Protected Area 

🐠 Explore the Chagos Trust on why the archipelago holds some of the healthiest coral reefs left in the world

🌊 Read the Living Oceans Foundation on plans for a new multi-use marine protected area in the Chagos Archipelago

On local power

🏘️ Browse Carbon Copy, the climate charity co-founded by Ric Casale, mapping place-based action across the UK

💷 Read how Warrington funded local renewables through community municipal bonds, open to residents from £5

On briefing the nation

🎬 Watch The People's Emergency Briefing, the 50-minute film built from the November 2025 Westminster briefing

📍 Find a screening near you on the National Emergency Briefing's interactive map

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 that the activist, Lauren MacDonald, had a different plan. It wasn't a quiet moment to be talking about oil and gas. A couple of weeks later, COP26 would openan hour away, in Lauren's home city of Glasgow. Five months earlier, the International Energy Agency had said something it had never said before: if the world is serious about net zero, there's no room left for a single new oil field, anywhere. Lauren was campaigning to stop Cambo, one of the biggest North Sea developments in a decade. Ben van Beurden, Shell's CEO at the time, was there to argue that oil and gas revenue was what would fund the transition away from it.

Five years later, this is the first time Christiana and Lauren have spoken together publicly about that day. Cambo is paused, but it isn't dead. Its larger neighbour, Rosebank, is still waiting on a government decision - more than 80 UK MPs and MSPs signed a pledge against it this week alone. So what has actually changed - for Christiana, for Lauren, and for the fight itself?

Learn More:

📺 Watch Ted Countdown: Decarbonising Fossil Fuels

🔎 The IEA's Net Zero by 2050 report 

📊 Institute for Government's explainer on the Jackdaw and Rosebank decision

📋 Uplift's guide to the Rosebank oil field

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks and Caitlin Hanrahan

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

*This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.*

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"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 losses she has experienced as a result of climate change. 

This week, Christiana Figueres sits down with Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, two of the authors of the ninth annual Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation report from the Grantham Research Institute at LSE and the Sabin Center at Columbia Law School. And what they find is complex. 

There have been cases that have captured the world’s attention. Last year’s ICJ advisory opinion on the obligations of states. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ landmark advisory opinion establishing a human right to a healthy climate. Or the 2015 case brought by the Urgenda Foundation, where a Dutch court told the government it had a legal duty to protect its citizens from climate change, and ordered it to cut emissions faster. But beneath the headlines, courts on every continent have been litigating how far that duty of care goes and what it looks like. More than 3,600 cases filed across 62 countries - last year at a rate of five a week. And of the 215 that have reached the highest national courts, more than half have gone in a direction favourable to climate action. 

But a maturing field cuts both ways: for every Urgenda-style case there is now a countermove - laws to shield companies from liability, suits designed to stop protest, even governments weighing whether to walk away from their commitments altogether.

So what happens when the law gets ahead of the politics? And who holds the structure together when, as Christiana puts it, nobody is orchestrating the Jenga game?

Learn More:

🔎 Read the executive summary of Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2026 Snapshot - or the full report (Grantham Research Institute, LSE / Sabin Center)

⚖️ Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands - the 2015 ruling, upheld in 2019, that a government has a legal duty to protect its citizens from climate change

📋 Our recent episodes on the ICJ advisory opinion, the Revolution Wind lawsuit, and the New Zealand pushback

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Editing by: Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 without us? How do you keep going when the grief feels total?

None of them have easy answers, and we don't pretend otherwise. Along the way, one listener pushes back on the phrase "pre-traumatic stress" and offers a truer one: earth grief, the other side of the coin from love. Another thread reaches for deep time - William MacAskill's claim that we are barely 2% of the way into humanity's story. How does that perspective change what matters now?

So - what can we actually do? From the language we use, to how we give our time and resources, to the places where each of us touches power. Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson challenge each other and us to find actions that make our shared climate grief easier to carry. 

LEARN MORE

👀 Still looking for new terminology? Producer Ben suggests 'climate disruption', which captures the shift from the stable Holocene to a more uncertain world. 'Climate sabotage' can also be useful, if we want to shift focus to the perpetrators.

📘 Read What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill - the case for deep time and long-term thinking Tom draws on 

📗 Revisit The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac - including the idea of the places where you "touch power" 

🔗 Follow Stephanie Klotz on LinkedIn, whose letter reframed "pre-traumatic stress" as earth grief

🌊 Listen back to our AMOC episode 

💷 Listen back to our philanthropy episode, the starting point for the question on giving small amounts 

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe (https://www.speakpipe.com/OutrageandOptimism)

Join the conversation:

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(Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outrageoptimism/ | LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/outrageoptimism | Contact form: https://www.globaloptimism.com/contact?hsLang=en)

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson report from LCAW 2026, where 75,000 people gathered to work on exactly the crisis unfolding outside. They dig into the politics swirling around the event and the UN Secretary-General's speech that opened it. And with the future uncertain at the UN as well as in Downing Street, Christiana walks through all six candidates to succeed António Guterres, and what each of them actually believes about climate. 

They also speak with Kate Gallego, Mayor of Phoenix, who alongside last week's guest Nick Reece of Melbourne launched the C40 Global Urban Data Centre Pact at LCAW: a commitment signed by 41 cities to push back on unchecked AI infrastructure expansion in communities that haven't always had a say. 

And Tom sits down one-on-one with Rachel Kyte, the UK's Special Representative for Climate. She argues that we forgot ‘the second half of Paris’, explains how climate diplomacy is shifting gears, and tells us why, against the odds, she still finds reasons for optimism. 

Learn More:

📢 Read the UN Secretary-General's full LCAW address.

🌐 Browse the UN's official Secretary-General candidate page, with vision statements and CVs for all six current candidates.

🏙️ Explore the C40 Global Urban Data Centres Pact, signed by 41 cities across six continents at London Climate Action Week.

🤖 Read the UK government announcement of the new FCDO/Met Office AI weather forecasting partnership, designed to bring 10-day early warning capability to the countries most exposed to the climate crisis

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Editing by: Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 buildings need to be situated so close to population centres? And why do the communities that end up hosting them so rarely get a meaningful say?

We hear from Nick Reece, Lord Mayor of Melbourne, one of the most vocal city leaders addressing the challenge head-on. He explains the costs and the unrealised promises, and shares his vision for what a genuinely good deal between the tech industry and host communities could look like.

What would it take for communities to actually share in the benefits of the AI boom? How do cities avoid a race to the bottom while national governments court the biggest investors? And is the world heading for the same story it has seen before: transformative technology reshaping society, with the legislation catching up 20 years too late?

Learn More:

🎥 Watch Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez present contaminated drinking water from Morgan County, Georgia at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing

📋 Read the Southern Environmental Law Center's reporting on xAI's Colossus and how an illegal gas-fired power plant was built in Boxtown

⚡ Explore the IEA's Energy and AI report for the full data on how global electricity demand from data centres is set to double by 2030

🏙️ See the City of Melbourne's C40 initiative for responsible data infrastructure, co-led by Lord Mayor Reece alongside mayors from nine other cities worldwide

🔌 Understand why NERC issued a rare Level 3 alert on the grid stability risks posed by large computational loads that can drop hundreds of megawatts in milliseconds

🎙️ Listen to the Volts podcast episode "Why is NERC so worried about data centers?" for a deep dive into the grid engineering challenges Paul raised in this episode

🌍 After recording, we remembered there IS a precedent for legislation moving fast enough. Read about the Montreal Protocol

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 quarter of World Cup matches played over the next few weeks are projected to be played in conditions that exceed recommended heat safety limits - twice the risk of the last US-based World Cup, in 1994. Only three of the sixteen stadiums across the US, Mexico and Canada are climate-controlled. This will be a trial for elite players, who can adapt up to a point, but what does this mean for the parks, cages and school pitches where the ‘beautiful game’ actually begins? The Count Us In campaign, Where Football Lives, hopes that this can bring about a conversation: one about how extreme heat will change how we live, and what we love. So, should those three-minute breaks be called what they actually are: extreme heat breaks?

And a World Cup falling during a moment of rising fuel prices is exposing more than just the changing climate. When NJ Transit announced return tickets from central New York City to the nearby MetLife Stadium at $150, up from under $15, it laid bare how poorly served the US public is for transportation. The collision of surge pricing and rising pump prices may not be the catalyst anyone planned - but could it help highlight the benefits that a properly funded public transport system could have?

Elsewhere, the Iran war and the fragility it has exposed in global fossil fuel supply chains may be doing more to accelerate the clean energy transition than any policy has managed. Two forces are driving it: Chinese manufacturing dominance, and what we're calling ‘American foreign policy chaos’. Neither is acting for climate reasons. But the case for a post-carbon future has never been stronger.

None of this looks like the transition we imagined. The question is, are we ready to recognise the moment for change when it arrives, in whatever form it takes? And if change happens, does it matter how we get there?

Learn more:

🌍 Check out Where Football Lives, Count Us In's campaign on extreme heat and grassroots football

⚽ Learn how to do a keepy-uppy / juggle a football on the Where Football Lives record attempt page - or simply learn what we’re talking about

🌡️ Read more from Reuters on the threat of extreme heat at this World Cup

⚡ Read the latest on US transit ticketing prices around the tournament

🔎 Listen to Ian Bremmer on the Ezra Klein Show

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 published a lengthy essay calling on the government to halt its net zero acceleration and prioritise cheap energy. Rory Stewart made a similar case on The Rest is Politics, invoking AI data centres and industrial competitiveness. Both are figures from the centre of British politics. Neither is a climate denier. So what's happening? 

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Christiana Figueres sit with this dissonance. They ask what it means when hopelessness becomes self-sustaining, a cultural condition as much as a feeling. They ask whether grief, properly faced, might be what unlocks action rather than foreclosing it. And they look at the history of transformations that began long before success seemed likely.

Is the real crisis not just the climate, but one of agency? And what does it take to act with conviction when outcomes are genuinely uncertain?

Learn More:

☀️ See Severe Weather Europe's recap of the historic heat dome across Europe 

🌡️ Follow CNN's coverage of the human and scientific dimensions of the event 

📝 Read Blair's original essay at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change 

⚡ Explore BusinessGreen's coverage of the investor and political response to Blair's essay 

🧠 Dig into the Lancet Planetary Health study on climate anxiety in children and young people globally, and how perceived government failure shapes distress 

📊 Check out Yale's research on distress, agency, and climate action and how they interact 

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Paul Dickinson sit down with her to ask: what does well-targeted philanthropic money actually unlock? Who decides where it goes? And why, when it works, do we so rarely notice? From the coalition that quietly accelerated the EV transition by decades, to the $30,000 grant that helped take climate responsibility all the way to the World's Court.

The uncomfortable truth is that climate action is becoming reliant on the generosity of a wealthy few. The good news is that this money is growing; the bad news is that it needs to grow much, much more. So how much would it take to start solving some of tomorrow’s problems today? And are there risks in expecting a small and privileged group to fund a movement that belongs to everyone?

Learn More:

🌱 Learn more about Climate Lead and and their work advising philanthropists new to climate giving

⚖️ Catch up on the ICJ advisory opinion on climate obligations of states

⚡ Explore the Drive Electric Campaign, the global NGO coalition whose story Jennifer tells in the episode 

🌍 Learn more about ClientEarth and the legal battles Tom references

📊 Track progress on climate transitions with the Systems Change Lab, referenced by Jennifer in the episode

📺 Read about the Trump AI video throwing Stephen Colbert in a dumpster, posted and reposted by the White House the day after the Late Show ended, via The Hill

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 government has moved to retroactively kill a landmark climate lawsuit -  before it even reaches trial. Tom shares a voice note from ClientEarth CEO Laura Clarke who gives us the inside scoop on what is actually at stake. If this works, where does it end?

Then Greece, which wants to write a legally binding obligation for human-centred AI into its constitution. But can a national document meaningfully govern a borderless technology? And as we increasingly rely on AI for our information, where do these large language models actually go for their climate science?

Finally, the Strait of Hormuz. Financial markets think the situation is priced in. Geopolitical analysts disagree. We ask which sectors might unexpectedly accelerate the energy transition, why the climate movement seems frozen at exactly the moment it should be loudest, and whether this decade's decisive window is already starting to close.

Learn More:

⚖️ Learn more about ClientEarth and its work

🌿 Read about New Zealand amending its climate law via Inside Climate News

🌐 Catch up on the ICJ case on climate obligations of states

🏛️ Discover more about Greece's constitutional AI proposal via the Washington Post

🛢️ Dive into the Strait of Hormuz disruptions with analysis from UNCTAD

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 dependence on fossil fuels, the structural reasons it has proved so hard to break, and whether it’s ever going to be possible to fix. 

They speak with Karel Bockstael and Roxanne van Rijn, former aviation insiders who co-founded Call Aviation to Action, a movement designed to reach the industry’s senior leaders and push for much-needed change. They explain why kerosene remains the only viable option for long-haul flight, how thin margins trap airlines into opposing the very regulation they need, and why this fuel shock may be the scarcity event that finally forces the model to shift. 

Could this crisis become aviation’s turning point? And in a world where up to 80% of people have never set foot on a plane - and 1% account for half of all aviation emissions - what would a truly fair future for flight actually look like?

Learn More:

✈️ Explore Call Aviation to Action - the movement co-founded by Karel and Roxanne and others, pushing for industry-wide transformation from within

📊 Read the UK Climate Change Committee’s aviation analysis, and understand why aviation is on course to become the UK’s single largest emitting sector by 2040

⛽ Get up to date on IEA data on global oil and jet fuel markets, including what the Strait of Hormuz disruption means for aviation fuel supply

🌿 Learn more about Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) via IATA: what it is, why it currently accounts for less than 1% of aviation fuel use, and what scaling it would require

💸 Pay the true price of your next flight via the Future Friendly Fund’s calculator, or check your CO₂ estimate on Google Flights. 

Check out Bumprints for practical tips or Travel Alternative, Roxanne’s recently launched platform highlighting alternatives to flying

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 of the world’s longest-serving television presenter. To celebrate, they're reaching into the archives to share the very first episode of the podcast - a conversation recorded in person with their friend Sir David himself, at the Attenborough Centre in Cambridge in 2019.

They also take stock of seven years of Outrage + Optimism, and on a world that’s changed since that first episode dropped. What's moved faster than anyone expected, what's gone sideways, and what still keeps us at night?

Then Sir David. On why young people's outrage is entirely justified. On what the natural world actually needs from us. On the rare moments in history when nations chose agreement over conflict. And on why understanding might be the thing that saves us.

Learn More:

🎂 Discover moments from Sir David Attenborough's life and career on the BBC

🌿 Watch Secret Gardens, Sir David's recent series exploring the hidden natural world of the British urban garden, mentioned by Tom in this episode (UK login required)

🐋 Explore the history of the International Whaling Commission moratorium, which Sir David cites as a rare model of nations choosing to act before it was too late

🌍 Learn more about the global youth climate movement Fridays For Future, from the early days mentioned in this interview to its activity today

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Response’, to explore the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC: the vast system of currents that helps regulate weather, rainfall and temperature across the Atlantic and far beyond. Recent research suggests it may be weakening faster than previously understood - with potentially profound consequences for food systems, ecosystems and global stability.

They speak with Dr Willem Huiskamp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who explains what AMOC does, and what a much weaker system could mean in practice. Then Tom and David reflect on the harder questions. How do we communicate a risk this vast and uncertain without paralysing people or losing them entirely? Are we socially and politically prepared for -50C winters in parts of Europe? And are we even capable of responding to a threat that may unfold over decades rather than across news cycles and political terms? 

Learn More:

🌊 Discover more about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and why scientists are watching it closely 

🔎 Read the latest paper referenced in this episode, which projects an approximate 50% weakening of AMOC by the end of the century

📘 Check out David’s book, The Response, which will be published by Witness Books on 7th May

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 actors are gathering to build new relationships and explore new routes towards a just transition in an age of geopolitical instability.

Christiana speaks with former President of Ireland Mary Robinson and Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, who lay out the big structural barriers still slowing the shift. From debt traps that make fossil fuel extraction a financial necessity, to vested interests, and subsidies flowing in the wrong direction.

The evidence is clear: the transition is happening. The question is, will it be political machinations or economic urgency that determines how fast? 

Learn More:

🌍 Explore the official page for the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, including its aims, format and participants

🛢️ Understand why the Strait of Hormuz matters so much through the IEA’s Oil Market Report hub

📜 Read the UNFCCC summary of the 2023 COP28 agreement, which for the first time called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”

⚡ See the figures behind the boom in renewables in BloombergNEF’s latest Energy Transition Investment Trends

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ‘forever chemicals’. Through their work, and the work of many others, some progress has been made on regulation, and on supporting the communities most impacted. But this story is far from over. Because these chemicals don't break down. They move through soil, through water, through the food chain and through us. And the impacts on our health and on our ecosystems are only beginning to come to light.So, with environmental protection rollbacks at the US federal level, can progress endure? And can community action take on the big companies and the big money behind this scandal?

This episode is about what happens when institutions fail, what accountability actually requires, and why the clean energy transition is incomplete if we trade one toxic system for another.

🔗Follow the work of Clean Cape Fear 

🔗Learn more about the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association

🎬 Watch Dark Waters (2019) - the film that brought the DuPont PFOA story to a wider audience 

📋Read the Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act 

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 unfolding. And, as co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Sea-Level Rise, Health and Justice, Christiana brings us inside the thinking behind this urgent new effort.

Christiana speaks to commissioners ‘Ofa Kaisamy, Professor Anne Poelina and Dr Sandro Demaio, who paint a vivid picture of what happens before and as the water arrives. This is a story of food insecurity, damaged clinics and hospitals, disease, displacement, trauma, and the loss of ancestral knowledge and cultural continuity. But it also points to an opportunity to finally see sea-level rise in fully human terms, with those on the frontlines shaping the response.

What changes when we stop treating rising seas as a distant environmental problem and start recognising them as a present health emergency? And what might become possible if the people most affected are no longer treated as victims, but as leaders?

Learn More:

🌊 Read The Lancet Commission launch paper on sea-level rise, health and justice.

🩺 Read Christiana’s opinion piece on health and sea-level rise in the Guardian

🏝️ Explore WHO Western Pacific’s work on climate change and health in the Pacific

📈 Go deeper with the IPCC on sea-level rise and low-lying coasts and islands.

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Paul Dickinson look at what the forecasts do and do not tell us about the climate ahead in 2026, and what it means to prepare for a crisis that is still uncertain, but increasingly hard to ignore. 

And in a world of shrinking aid budgets and rising climate risk, they’re joined by Andrew Kruczkiewicz from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and Columbia Climate School - how do you justify spending on a crisis that hasn’t happened yet? 

From anticipatory finance and early warning systems to the politics of aid cuts and the difficulty of communicating risk in real time, they explore what climate preparedness looks like when the stakes are already human and immediate.

Learn More:

🔴 Browse the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre’s work on linking climate science and action

🩺 Read the WHO explainer on ENSO and health

🌊 Get up to date on NOAA’s latest ENSO Diagnostic discussion for the clearest official snapshot of what forecasters are currently saying about the chances of El Niño emerging in 2026

🛰️ Explore the World Food Programme’s work on anticipatory action and see their Bangladesh case study to see how it’s used in practice

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 reality. Last year alone, Southern Africa, Pakistan, Brazil, South Sudan, and many other countries were devastated by catastrophic flooding. We reflect on the scale of the global crisis, the lives upended, and the huge economic losses that too often go uninsured.

Then Paul speaks with Louis Ramirez, co-founder of Flooded People UK, about what happens when flooding stops being just a weather event and becomes a political force. They discuss the growing toll of flooding in the UK, from mental health impacts to rising insurance costs and falling property values, and ask what collective action looks like when communities are forced to confront climate damage on their own doorsteps.

As the front lines of climate change move ever deeper into the Global North, will governments finally respond with the urgency this crisis demands? And can the devastation that flows from climate impacts help rally a social movement for change?

Learn More:

About flooding in the UK…

🌧️ Explore Flooded People’s resources on the state of flooding in the UK

🏠 Read about the government-backed Flood Re insurance programme mentioned in this episode

📍 Check the long-term flood risk for your area (England only, with links to other UK nations)

About flooding internationally…

🌍 Read more about worldwide flood risk from the World Bank

🔎 Explore how extreme weather events are being attributed to climate change at World Weather Attribution

🚨 Understand how flooding is displacing people across the globe at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

War in Iran has triggered another global energy shock. Once again, conflict has exposed the deep instability built into the fossil fuel system. And once again, the world is reminded that these fuels are not only polluting, but precarious.

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson unpack why the threat to oil infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz matters so much, and why these moments keep repeating. What does it mean to build an economy around fuels concentrated in a handful of volatile places, and transported through fragile choke points? And why are many responding to that insecurity by calling for more drilling?

They’re joined by Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance and Chief Growth Officer at the Global Wind Energy Council. Bruce argues that although this is not the first energy crisis of its kind, it may be the first in which the alternatives are ready at scale. Renewables are available now - and, in many cases, cheaper, faster and more secure than doubling down on fossil fuels.

Together they explore the fork in the road now facing governments. In a moment of insecurity, do countries try to squeeze more out of declining oil and gas reserves? Or do they use this as the push they need to invest in a more resilient system? That decision may determine whether this will be remembered as just another oil crisis - or as the moment political leaders finally started to absorb the lesson.

Learn More:

⚡ Read the Global Renewable Alliance’s Renewables Action Plan to break the energy crises cycle

☀️ Learn more about Pakistan’s people-led solar revolution

🌍 Understand why the Strait of Hormuz matters so much to global energy supply

📈 Explore the IEA’s report on the status of renewables today and their forecasts to 2030

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The climate crisis is not one problem. It is a crisis of water, food, energy, language, justice and power - all colliding at once. So how do we respond when climate solutions create new trade-offs of their own? And are we even using the right words to describe what is happening?

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson take on some of the knottiest questions in climate. From water stress and biodiversity loss, to geoengineering, public understanding, and the language of urgency itself. What gets overlooked? What gets simplified? And how do we navigate increasing complexity in the middle of a worsening crisis?

We don’t have all the answers. But as our choices grow harder, these are some of the questions that demand our attention.

Learn More:

💧 Dive into Why Water Matters from the UNFCCC

🦅 Explore how solar and wind energy producers can mitigate impacts on biodiversity

🎧 Listen back to last year’s episode unpacking some of climate’s most common acronyms

☁️ … or return to our most recent episode on geoengineering with Politico’s Karl Mathiesen

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we acknowledge the US strikes on Iran and the escalation that has followed. The immediate human cost is what matters most right now. But this crisis is unfolding within a global system still shaped by oil markets and fossil fuel dependence - a dependence that amplifies regional instability and turns into global vulnerability.

The same structural tensions sit at the heart of this week’s conversation, recorded before these events. Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, one of its largest coal exporters, and a nation with every natural resource it needs to transition to clean energy. The problem isn't will, it’s money. Who it's available to, and on what terms.

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson are joined by Sri Mulyani Indrawati - Indonesia's former Finance Minister under three different presidents, former Managing Director of the World Bank, and one of the most credible voices in the world on exactly this set of challenges. She walks through what it actually costs to retire a single coal plant years ahead of schedule, why developing countries find themselves trapped by contracts they signed in good faith, and why the international finance system is making the transition harder, not easier.

Countries like Indonesia borrow at far higher rates than wealthier economies, even as they face greater exposure to climate impacts. When that exposure feeds into credit ratings, the cost of capital rises, making clean energy investment more expensive precisely where it is needed most.

In a system that makes decarbonisation harder for the countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, who pays?

Learn More:

🏭 Explore Global Energy Monitor's coal plant tracker for Indonesia's existing and planned capacity

🎧 Listen to our interview with Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados.

🏦 Learn about the Bridgetown Agenda and its proposals to reform international development finance

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks 

Edited by: Miles Martignoni 

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan 

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Climate concern is not the problem. Most people have it. What's missing is everything that turns concern into action - and understanding that gap turns out to be a lot more complicated than it looks.

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson sit down with Lorraine Whitmarsh, Professor of Environmental Psychology and Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations at the University of Bath. 

Together they dig into the psychology behind catastrophe apathy: why understanding an existential threat doesn't always lead to action, and what the research says actually moves people.

Lorraine shares real-world evidence - including renewable energy tariffs that shifted 90% of customers onto green power simply by making it the default - and explains why trusted everyday messengers, from hairdressers to taxi drivers, employers to community figures, often have more influence than expert voices in reshaping what feels normal.

The conversation also revisits an uncomfortable history: how the personal carbon footprint, popularised by BP in the early 2000s, reframed climate responsibility around individual choices rather than systemic change. A framing so powerful that even environmental organisations adopted it. Who benefited most from that shift is a question the movement is still grappling with.

If systemic change requires public consent, and public consent requires political will, and political will requires behaviour change - how do you break the climate Catch-22?

With thanks to the University of Bath.

Learn More:

🧠 Explore Lorraine Whitmarsh's research at the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, University of Bath

🔌 Read about the Swiss renewable energy default study — the experiment that moved 90% of customers to green energy by changing a default setting

🗳️ Learn more about citizens' assemblies on climate and deliberative democracy in practice

🌍 Read the IPCC's work on demand-side solutions and behavioural change in its Sixth Assessment Report

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Trump administration last week announced the repeal of the ‘endangerment finding’ - the 2009 determination that climate change threatens public health and welfare. It may sound arcane, but this piece of legislation empowered the US federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This decision weakens the regulatory backbone of American climate policy, and may reshape the country’s emissions trajectory for years to come.

So what happens next?

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson consider the politics, the economics and the climate reality of this move. And Tom calls friend of the show Manish Bapna, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose organisation is preparing to challenge the rollback in court. Speaking to us just as the case was filed, Manish explains why the endangerment finding has long been the legal bedrock of federal climate action, and how the case could climb all the way to the Supreme Court.

Until then, uncertainty reins: is this a temporary political detour - or a structural turning point for US climate leadership? And if federal authority falters, will states, businesses and markets keep the transition moving anyway?

Learn More:

🌿 Learn how the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding established the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases

📊 Understand the ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ - and why putting a price on climate damage matters

⚖️ Read the statement from NRDC and its partners outlining their legal challenge to the rollback 

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who shapes climate action when old systems begin to strain? And where does power really sit - with governments, financial institutions, communities, or individuals?

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson explore climate leadership in a more fragmented geopolitical moment. Picking up the threads from last week’s episode, they ask what happens when multilateralism is threatened - and whether smaller coalitions, subnational actors and civic movements are already stepping in to fill the gap.

Because with great challenges, come new opportunities. What might we gain from faster, more focused alliances? Might Indigenous wisdom provide lessons for building fairer, greener economic models? And how can we use the resources we have to support Brazil’s vision for a global mutirão?

Learn More:

💡 Watch Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos

🍩 Dive into the concept of Doughnut Economics

🏙️ Explore what C40 Cities members are doing across the world

📈 Find out more about ShareAction’s work to build a fairer and more sustainable financial system

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who really holds power in the climate transition? And how do money, politics, and influence shape the pace of change?

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson use some of your most probing questions on the political economy of climate action to unpack what happens behind closed doors and to challenge some of the assumptions that often dominate public debate. 

What does lobbying actually look like - and is it always a bad thing? What are we talking about when we refer to ‘fossil fuel subsidies’? And in an age of populist politics and shrinking attention spans, can complex climate solutions still cut through? Or are we drifting toward simpler narratives that are easier to sell, but harder to govern?

From negotiation rooms to national politics, and the economic systems beneath them, these are the forces both loudly and quietly shaping climate progress. And if we want to accelerate action, we first have to understand where power truly sits.

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

World leaders are flocking to Beijing. In the first weeks of 2026, Canada’s Mark Carney, the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer and South Korea’s Lee Jae-myung have all made high-profile visits - an unmistakable signal of global power recalibrating.

China’s dominance in clean energy manufacturing is already well established: from solar panels and batteries to wind turbines. The question now is whether this transition remains merely made in China, or whether it is increasingly being shaped and led from Beijing.

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson consider what this shift may mean for the future of climate leadership - and for the institutions, alliances and norms that have shaped global climate cooperation for decades. They’re joined by scholar of China’s political economy and climate governance Yixian Sun, who has recently advised the UK government on their engagement with China. He unpacks the country’s own vision of leadership, its evolving role in the Global South, and the risks and opportunities of an increasingly multipolar climate order.

As the world recalibrates around China’s growing role, how does Beijing see itself? And what are other governments actually seeking as they turn towards it? We spoke to the man advising the UK government ahead of Keir Starmer’s arrival in Beijing. 

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How dependent are we - economically, politically and socially - on fossil fuels? And how do we begin to loosen that grip?

As the world reels from geopolitical shocks, multilateral institutions under strain, and the United States’ withdrawal from key climate bodies, Ana Toni - CEO of COP30 - joins the show to discuss what comes next. Both for Brazil’s presidency in this crucial year, and for the wider system of climate cooperation at a moment when the old rules feel increasingly fragile.

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson ask Ana what was achieved in Belém, what fell short, and why the year after the COP may matter more than the summit itself.

Are we entering an era where progress is driven not by universal agreement, but by those willing to move first and bring others with them? And could reframing the transition around ending dependence, rather than negotiating targets, change the politics of climate action?

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the world’s most powerful country walks away from the system it helped to build?

This week, we examine the United States’ decision to withdraw not only from the Paris Agreement, but from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change itself - alongside dozens of other international bodies. Headlines declared the end of multilateral climate cooperation. But is that really what this moment represents?

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson unpack what has actually been announced - and what it does (and doesn’t) change in practice.

They are joined by Sue Biniaz, former US Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change and one of the quiet architects of decades of climate diplomacy. Sue brings rare insight into whether a US president can legally withdraw from a Senate-ratified treaty, the surprising pathways by which a future administration could rejoin, and what influence the US may still wield as a non-party.

Could the absence of the US voice, paradoxically, unlock progress elsewhere? And in a fractured world, where does collective climate leadership now come from?

Learn more:

🎥 Watch our hosts’ immediate response to the US UNFCCC withdrawal announcement, recorded the day after news broke

📰 Read the New York Times profile of Sue Biniaz by Lisa Friedman: Meet the Closer Who Finds the Right Words When Climate Talks Hit a Wall

📄 Dive into the Just Security article penned by Sue Biniaz and Jean Galbraith on treaty withdrawal and re-entry

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The year has barely begun, and already the fault lines of global power are on full display.

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson take stock of a moment that feels both shocking and revealing. The US abduction of Venezuela’s president raises urgent questions about sovereignty, international law, and the enduring grip of fossil fuels on geopolitics - even as the energy transition accelerates. But what’s really driving events in Venezuela? And how can we tease apart the political theatre from the realities of oil markets, military power, and domestic US politics.

Later, we ask: what are the big themes, underlying trends and climate stories already shaping the new year? From the possible rise of left-wing populism, to the intensifying battle over who will become the next UN Secretary-General.

As 2026 begins, the question is not just what kind of year lies ahead for climate action, but what kind of global order will shape it.

Learn more:

🛢️ Deep dive into the stats from the US Energy Information Administration on Venezuelan oil production

🌐 Read more about the appointment process of the UN Secretary-General.

🎧 Listen back to our holiday episodes, Why Beauty Matters in the Climate Crisis and Beginning the Year with Ancestral Wisdom

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As billions around the world mark the beginning of a new year, many are pausing to ask the same questions: what do we carry forward, and what do we leave behind, as we cross from the old into the new? And as headlines fill with predictions about the rise of artificial intelligence, could a different kind of AI - ‘ancestral intelligence’ - offer insights equal to the depth of the climate and biodiversity crises we now face?

This year’s COP saw Indigenous and First Nations Peoples better represented than ever before; but it also showed how far there is still to go to include them in meaningful dialogue. In a conversation recorded at COP30, Christiana Figueres sits down with two Indigenous leaders from different continents and traditions: Mindahi Bastida, from the Otomí-Toltec peoples of Mexico, and Atawévi Akôyi Oussou Lio, Prince of the Tolinou people of Benin. Together, they explore a relationship with the living world grounded in belonging rather than dominance, continuity rather than short-termism, and reciprocity rather than extraction.

Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson then join Christiana to reflect on what it means to carry this wisdom into the year ahead. And if the challenges before us are not only technical and political, but also cultural and spiritual, how might that reshape the way we act, decide, and lead in 2026 and beyond?

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At a moment when the world feels noisier, faster, and more demanding than ever, what role can beauty play in helping us slow down, reconnect, and remember what matters?

As the year draws to a close, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson step back from targets, timelines and political headwinds to explore how craft, design and the quiet appreciation for our objects and spaces can shape both the worlds we live in, and the futures we are trying to build.

Tom is joined in Bath by designer and artist Patrick Williams, founder of the design studio and workshop Berdoulat, whose work is rooted in traditional craft, natural materials and a deep sensitivity to place. Together they reflect on what happens when efficiency crowds out care, when buildings and objects lose their connection to human bodies and natural rhythms, and why the climate crisis may also be a crisis of beauty.

As we reflect on a challenging year for climate action, we also offer an invitation for the days ahead: to slow down, to notice what restores us, and to remember that meaningful change is sustained not just by effort, but by care, beauty and joy.

Learn more:

📖 Find out more about Patrick’s upcoming book release, The House Rules

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the very moment we need clarity and trust, information integrity is being polluted. Disinformation is profitable and the impact on truth is dangerous. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the discourse around climate.

This week, Outrage + Optimism steps into the murky, fast-moving world of climate disinformation. Not simply misunderstanding and confusion, but the deliberate shaping of narratives to delay action, fracture trust, and profit from doubt.

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson explore why disinformation is accelerating just as the climate stakes are rising, how it feeds on human psychology, and why the erosion of shared facts may be one of the greatest barriers to collective climate action.

Paul brings us a conversation from COP30 with Jake Dubbins, a leading voice at the intersection of advertising, climate and human rights. Together they unpack how fossil fuel advertising, opaque algorithms and the attention economy are shaping what we see, what spreads, and what stalls climate action. And they examine the newly launched Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, a first-of-its-kind effort at the international level.

But can governments, platforms and advertisers clean up a poisoned information space without sliding into censorship? And where should the line really be drawn between free expression and preventing harm?

Learn more:

🛡️ Read the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change

📊 Explore the OECD report on disinformation and misinformation

🔍 Find out about the Conscious Advertising Network and Climate Action Against Disinformation

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation: 

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ten years ago, a gavel dropped in a conference hall north of Paris. It was the moment the world agreed on a strategic plan for one of the most consequential transformations in human history. But, a decade later, what has the Paris Agreement truly delivered?

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson pull back the curtain on the moment that changed global climate politics. The emotional reality of that night, the fragile trust built after the failure of Copenhagen, and the architecture of cooperation that still shapes the world today.

Looking back, they ask: was it diplomacy’s greatest breakthrough, or the beginning of a myth we still rely on? Can an agreement built on voluntary commitments survive as the world becomes increasingly fragmented? Is the Paris Agreement still our best chance at limiting the impacts of climate change - or simply the only chance we have?

Learn more:

▶️ Watch Christiana’s Ted Talk 

💌 Read Christiana’s Open Letter of Gratitude

🌱 Read The Future We Choose, by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

🌍 Dive into the Profiles of Paris - including contributions from Tom, Paul, and many former guests of the podcast

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, hosts Tom Rivett Carnac and Paul Dickinson delve into the rapidly emerging - and faintly surreal - world of solar geoengineering. 

Politico journalist Karl Mathiesen joins us to unpack his investigation into Stardust, a VC-backed startup claiming it’s ready to spray particles into the stratosphere. Karl explains why this technology is suddenly attracting serious money, why scientists still have major questions about safety and side effects, and how in some places, the global regulatory landscape is almost nonexistent.

And from technological disruption to political stability, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, reflects on the leadership we need. She’s unflinchingly honest about why so many politicians still choose “fear and blame” over long-term action, and why climate remains New Zealand’s “nuclear-free moment.” A test of political character as much as policy. Her argument is hopeful: people, she insists, are ahead of their politics.

As we march towards the end of 2025, these conversations map the terrain of 2026: technologies racing ahead, governance lagging behind, and a public increasingly hungry for leaders willing to act with integrity. If you want to understand where the climate fight is really heading this episode is essential.

Learn more:

📚Read The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming

👂Listen to our episode with Ricken Patel

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Follow us on social media for behind the scenes moments and to watch our videos:

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Outrage + Optimism, we’re taking a breath.

After two intense weeks of daily updates from COP30 in Belém, we’re returning to weekly programming with something different - a slower, deeper, more reflective conversation that felt too valuable to cut.

While in the Blue Zone, we sat down with Kim Stanley Robinson, the acclaimed author of The Ministry for the Future, 2312, The Mars trilogy, and the Science in the Capital series. His writing has been read by negotiators, ministers, campaigners, and many of you.

In our conversation, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on why The Ministry for the Future begins with such a devastating opening chapter, a “punch in the gut” designed to reveal the human limits of adaptation. He introduces the idea of “pre-traumatic syndrome,” the unsettling clarity that comes from imagining a catastrophe before it happens, and how this can motivate us rather than paralyse us. We explore storytelling as a cultural tool for moving from despair to determination, and why each of us needs a a unifying purpose that gives shape to our actions in a chaotic world.

At a COP defined by urgency, exhaustion, and flashes of courage, this wide-ranging conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson felt like a necessary exhale, a moment to step back and reflect on why we do this work, and what kind of future we’re choosing to build.

We’re airing the conversation almost exactly as it happened.

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Series Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is our final episode of Inside COP. For two weeks we’ve tried to bring you as close as possible to the heart of COP30 - the pace, the pressure, the progress, and the perspectives of those working inside and around the process.

The closing plenary on Saturday began amid unexpected tension. Already running a day behind schedule, the Presidency moved to adopt the final text, but proceedings were paused following questions over whether all interventions had been properly registered. What followed were hours of clarification, consultation and procedural back-and-forth, underscoring concerns among many developing countries who had negotiated through the night to secure their priorities.

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson examine how the final day unfolded, what was agreed, and what it might mean.

But this COP was never just about negotiation. Beyond the formal process, we explore what COP30 revealed about wider trends: shifting clean-energy economics, accelerating deployment across regions, and emerging signs of how the decline of fossil fuels is beginning to influence global decision-making.

🎤 What do you want to hear on Outrage + Optimism? Ask us on SpeakPipe or on our socials where you can also see more behind the scenes moments and to watch our videos:

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Lead Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

With thanks to Groundswell and Global Optimism.

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We recorded this episode across Friday afternoon and deep into the evening inside the Blue Zone at COP30. At the time of publishing, there is still no final deal. The negotiations are ongoing, positions are shifting, and the outcome remains uncertain. We know that by the time you listen, some of what we heard today may already have changed, but we decided there was value in sharing the day with you. 

This episode is meant as a time capsule.

We wanted to bring you inside the atmosphere of a COP Friday: the outrage, the optimism, the urgency, and the sheer human effort that goes into trying to land a deal. 

Rather than wait for the dust to settle, we spoke to the people living this moment. City leaders. Climate diplomats. Ministers from the front lines. Seasoned negotiators who’ve been in this process for decades. Activists still fighting for the best possible outcome for the planet. Their perspectives were captured as they were living this day, not in hindsight.

This episode captures the feeling of a COP Friday: the confusion, the determination, the fear of losing ambition, and the belief, still alive in many corners, that progress is possible if countries choose it.

With thanks to those who spoke with us:

⁠Eric Garcetti, former US Ambassador to India and former mayor of LA 

Mark Watts, CEO of C40

⁠Matt Webb, Associate Director for Global Clean Power Diplomacy, E3G

Gustavo Pinheiro, Senior Associate, E3G

⁠Irene Velez Torres, Colombian Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development and head of the Colombian delegation

⁠Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, Ghanian Negotiator and incoming head of Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN)

Giovanni Maurice Pradipta, Foundation for Sustainability 

🎤 What do you want to hear on Inside COP? Ask us on SpeakPipe or on our socials where you can also see more behind the scenes moments and to watch our videos:

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Produced and edited by: Caitlin Hanrahan and Ben Weaver-Hincks

Additional editing by: Miles Martignoni

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

With thanks to Groundswell and Global Optimism.

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.