Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast

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.

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 🎤 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.

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?🎤 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.