Wicked Problems - Climate Tech Conversations – Details, episodes & analysis

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Wicked Problems - Climate Tech Conversations

Richard Delevan

News

Technology

Business

Frequency: 1 episode/5d. Total Eps: 173

A show about climate and climate tech: the intersection of technology and capital, people and politics, that will shape the future, and whether you'd want to live in it.

Host Richard Delevan is normally trapped in the UK, but with a global view - featuring guests from VC/PE, startups, scaleups, corporates, media, and beyond.

Subscribe at wickedproblems.earth for an ad-free version, our newsletter, and member-only goodies.

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Data updated on 04/07/2026

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http://news.wickedproblems.uk/
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http://wickedproblems.earth/
8 shares
https://akshatrathi.com/book/
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https://bsky.app/profile/delevan.bsky.social
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https://bsky.app/profile/ketanjoshi.co
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https://bsky.app/profile/clairebrady.bsky.social
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Everybody Wants to Rule a Warmer World: Arthur Snell on his new book, Elemental

Season 6 · Episode 178

Sunday, March 8, 2026 • Duration 46:38

Former British diplomat Arthur Snell is about to publish a book that explains how climate is rapidly changing the geographic assumptions on which geopolitics is built.

Buy it now — Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It.

But first, check out this Wickedproblems.earth conversation with Arthur Snell about his new book, the first comprehensive account of the geopolitics of climate change.

In this conversation:

00:00 Arctic Ice Wake Up

00:45 War Crowds Out Climate

02:32 Chokepoints Aren’t Fixed

04:08 Meet Arthur Snell

04:22 Why Climate Is Geopolitics

08:05 Alps Collapse Story

11:01 Skiing Lobbies And Emissions

12:40 Geopolitics Map Gets Redrawn

14:59 Arctic Shipping Routes Open

18:37 Trump Greenland And Minerals

22:46 Panama Canal China Leverage

24:20 Panama Canal Leverage

25:56 Who Shapes Strategy

28:24 Migration as Hard Reality

34:55 Greenland Plans Accelerate

39:27 Russia China North Shift

42:28 Wine and Adaptation

44:36 Book Plug and Farewell

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Renewables as Reistance in Ukraine. w Svitlana Romanko of Razom We Stand

Season 6 · Episode 177

Thursday, February 26, 2026 • Duration 39:20

For ad-free listening, articles, and newsletter go to wickedproblems.earth and sign up.

On Wicked Problems, host Richard Delevan interviews Svitlana Romko, founder of Razom We Stand, at the Laudato Si “Raising Hope” conference about linking Ukraine’s war to global fossil fuel dependence. Romko says We Stand formed in early 2022 to coordinate a coalition of 900 organizations from 60 countries urging bans on Russian fossil fuels and investment, and rebuilding Ukraine with renewables to cut financial flows fueling wars. She argues “all gas is bad,” criticizes replacing Russian gas with US LNG, and urges Europe to accelerate renewables for peace, energy security, climate, and human rights. She describes vast destruction, displacement, population decline to about 20 million, and energy capacity collapsing from 54 GW to 9 GW, while 17–18 GW is needed for winter. She highlights faith-led divestment successes, distributed renewables powering communities, and Ukraine’s renewable potential of 653 GW as a basis for rebuilding and hope.

00:00 Ukraine in Ruins

00:21 I ntro

00:21 Confrontation and Repression

00:59 Intro

01:40 Podcast Intro and Guest

03:20 Meet Svitlana at Conference

03:50 We Stand Mission

05:42 No Such Thing as Clean Gas

07:58 Faith Groups and Divestment

10:46 Populism and Fossil Money

15:50 Ukraine Power Grid Under Attack

22:13 Panel Clip Fossil Fuels and Dictators

34:40 Hope Resilience and Closing

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A Perfect Storm: Dana R. Fisher & Green Party CEO Harriet Lamb

Season 6 · Episode 176

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 • Duration 54:28

“Wicked Problems,” hosted by Richard Delevan, returns after a long hiatus and links escalating repression - newly including climate activists - with a high-stakes by-election in Greater Manchester. It opens with concerns about confrontational protest being met with violence and political repression, alongside Nigel Farage's Reform proposing a “UK deportation command,” expanding detention with “no chance of bail,” and “detention will mean deportation.” Devin cites New York Times reporting that the FBI has begun targeting climate activists, including people who have not protested in years, and frames this as part of a broader effort to quash dissent.

Professor Dana R. Fisher of American University discusses what she describes as a “perfect storm” in the US: federal occupations of cities (highlighting Minneapolis), the murder of two American citizens while they were bearing witness to ICE actions, the president getting rid of the endangerment finding underlying US climate policy, and FBI investigations focusing on the "radical fringe" of the climate movement. Fisher argues these groups are “low hanging fruit” because their confrontational tactics (e.g., throwing paint, smearing food, blocking traffic, bird-dogging elected officials) are widely unpopular, making it easier for authorities to target them first as part of a broader slide toward autocracy that also threatens media freedoms. She says repression and violence against peaceful activists historically mobilize larger protests, even as it can lead to persecution, jail, and martyrdom. She also describes survey results from a Women’s March–coordinated “Free America walkout” showing over 75% support for a movement becoming more confrontational and 65% willingness to personally engage in confrontational activism; she notes the participants were largely white, female, older, and highly educated.

Prof. Fisher's Apocalyptic Optimist podcast.

Britain has already jailed nonviolent climate protestors and restricted defenses in court, with ongoing debates about protest trials and labeling Palestine Action a terror group. The Gorton and Denton by-election seems to be between Reform, seeking to import Trump’s climate and migration agenda, and the surging Green Party, treating climate, inequality, and migration as realities to face without losing humanity. The show notes a single constituency poll with Green candidate Hannah Spencer ahead of Reform’s Matt Goodwin, with Labour (which has held the seat for a century) behind; as Labour is consumed by Epstein-linked arrests and scandal involving Peter Mandelson and former Prince Andrew.

Rumble in the Jungle COP

Season 4 · Episode 7

Monday, November 10, 2025 • Duration 40:12

Full show notes, transcripts, and more at wickedproblems.earth

Welcome to Belém, where the world (with some notable exceptions) has gathered to talk about saving the Amazon as if it weren’t already on fire.

Cataloguing the chaos leading up to COP30 Ben Cooke of The Times. His team’s reporting makes clear why the mood isn’t exactly jubilant: the clean-power alliance with zero members, the rainforest pledges with little progress, and the renewed swagger of fossil petrostates.

Even potential bright spots, like the Tropical Forest Forever Facility announced last week, were somewhat dimmed by the spectacle of UK prime minister Keir Starmer reversing an earlier decision not to go to COP, only to make the trip to then announce his government wouldn’t be part of the hoped-for signature initiative out of this event.

We chat with Ben about all of that and more.

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Trump nukes Net Zero Shipping

Season 4 · Episode 6

Thursday, November 6, 2025 • Duration 01:26:07

Full show notes and ad-free listening at wickedproblems.earth

Shipping is one of those things that’s just supposed to work. Post-Titanic, we created a set of rules that currently are looked after by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which successfully removed much of the drama from shipping — so successful that Britain’s “Shipping Forecast” is now soothing ASMR for bedtime listening.

But last month at the IMO in London, what should have been a procedural meeting on decarbonising shipping turned into something far messier. According to a Financial Times investigation, U.S. officials didn’t just lobby against a global carbon levy on shipping — they allegedly threatened, intimidated and black-mailed delegates from smaller nations.

Developing-country delegates said they were warned their ships would face higher U.S. port fees, their officials denied visas, and their trade punished if they didn’t abandon support for the Net Zero Framework the IMO had endorsed only six months earlier. “It was like dealing with the Mob,” one diplomat told the FT.

In the end, it worked. The deal — the world’s first carbon-pricing mechanism for global shipping — was postponed for a year. The IMO, normally the most technocratic of international bodies, was left “in a state of complete shock.”

For the uninitiated this may sound arcane. But shipping matters. Roughly 90 % of global trade moves by sea; the sector accounts for about 3 % of global CO₂ emissions — more than Germany — and until now has been largely outside the reach of meaningful climate regulation.

The Net Zero Framework was meant to change that. It had already been provisionally agreed by a majority of countries in April. But by October, something changed. Countries like China, India, Panama, Liberia — and even Greece and Cyprus, who broke with the EU line — suddenly voted to adjourn. news.wickedproblems.uk

And the shift didn’t come from nowhere: it came from pressure. From a U.S. administration that now treats climate policy as an existential threat to American interests.

Laurie Laybourn on Overshooting 1.5°C

Season 4 · Episode 5

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 43:26

Bonus content at wickedproblems.earth

Overshoot, a new four-part documentary series from climate strategist and Wicked Problems alum Laurie Laybourn—goes further than nearly anyone has before. And he came back to unpack some of the key ideas in Overshoot and what he hopes people will do with it.

In Overshoot the story starts with the fact that we can no longer avoid the storm, we’ve enetered it. How to survive and steer through it—generation after generation—is the conversation we urgently need to have now.

Drawing on interviews with diplomats, scientists, and communities on the frontlines, Laybourn dismantles the win/lose logic that has dominated climate politics since Paris and asks what it means to live in an age of overlapping crises and hard adaptation choices.

Our conversation ranges from the myth of Easter Island to the politics of “carbon sucking,” from managed retreat in Wales to the legal aftershocks of 1.5°C’s failure. It’s a clear-eyed look at what comes next—and why, even at the moment of “net zero,” we’ll be living in the most dangerous period in human history.

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Touch the Feckin' Grass. w Bishop Martin Hayes, Jane Mellett, Eamon Ryan

Season 5 · Episode 4

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 01:08:54

Discussing the Irish contingent at the Raising Hope conference and the future of faith and climate action -Bishop Martin Hayes of Kilmore; former Irish environment minister and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan; and campaigner Jane Mellett, church manager at Irish Catholic overseas development agency Trocaire. More information at climatepilgrim.com.

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Who is my Tu/Akoi (Neighbour)?

Season 5 · Episode 3

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 32:21

Who is my neighbour? 1.5°C is about neighbours, not numbers. Climate Minister Maina Talia of Tuvalu speaks to Richard Delevan about moral clarity in climate and denies the Australian 'climate visa' is about relocating his population. More information at climatepilgrim.com.

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The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, with Kumi Naidoo

Season 5 · Episode 2

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 55:13

Should Pope Leo endorse a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty at COP30? Climate Pilgrim Episode 2: Dr. Kumi Naidoo 'cautiously optimistic' the Vatican and others will add up to 44 countries endorsing Treaty initiative by landmark April conference in Colombia. More detail at climatepilgrim.com.

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Confessions of a Climate Pilgrim

Season 5 · Episode 1

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 56:45

Did Pope Leo double down on climate for the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si'? Or change the relationship between faith and climate action? Colleen Dulle, Vatican Correspondent for America Magazine and author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed, joins Richard Delevan to discuss reactions. More info and episodes at ClimatePilgrim.com.

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Wicked Problems - Climate Tech Conversations – Details, episodes & analysis

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Wicked Problems - Climate Tech Conversations – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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RSS feed quality and score

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Other99+

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Bluesky32