The Agency Crisis: Heatwaves, Tony Blair and the Politics of Powerlessness

About this episode

The episode discusses the recent extreme heat in Europe and the political responses to climate change, exploring themes of agency and hopelessness.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres

Topics covered

• climate change
• politics
• agency
• extreme weather
• human impact
• powerlessness

Keywords

• heatwaves
• climate crisis
• Tony Blair
• Rory Stewart
• political response
• agency
• extreme weather
• human toll

Mentioned in this episode

Places: UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal

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