Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast

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:Instagram @outrageoptimism  LinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form.(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-HincksEdited by: Miles MartignoniPlanning: Caitlin HanrahanExec Producer: Ellie CliffordThis 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 SpeakPipeJoin the conversation:Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form.Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksPlanning: Caitlin Hanrahan Exec Producer: Ellie CliffordThis 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🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipeJoin the conversation: Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form. Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksPlanning: Caitlin HanrahanAssistant Producer: Caillin McDaidExec Producer: Ellie CliffordThis 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.  🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipeJoin the conversation: Instagram @outrageoptimismLinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form. Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksPlanning: Caitlin HanrahanAssistant Producer: Caillin McDaidExec Producer: Ellie CliffordThis 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.