Climate Unf*cked

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

This is a slightly different ep. The first ½ is a more traditional podcast chat. But the 2nd ½ is me putting Phil to the test by roleplaying as 4 different people: A secondary school teacher, a middle-class retiree, a young professional and a right-wing politician

Phil Korbel is the co-founder of the Carbon Literacy Project, a Manchester-based charity that has trained over 153,000 people across 50 countries in climate action. Starting from a shared desk with no salary and a big idea, Phil and his co-founder Dave Coleman have built one of the most powerful climate education movements in the world - reaching everyone from security guards to IPCC scientists, wedding planners to funeral directors.

We cover:

Why recycling is near the bottom of the list, and what actually moves the needle

The Carbon Literacy formula: how does acting on climate help you thrive in your specific role?

Why polar bears are banned from Phil's training (and what that says about climate communication)

The emotional structure of a carbon literacy day and why doom without agency is dangerous

How 153,000 people got trained mostly through word of mouth

Why professional advisors - lawyers, accountants, financial advisors - need to understand climate as a core competency

The "Burt the security guard" story that perfectly captures what a culture shift actually looks like

How to handle a denier in the room without letting them suck up all the oxygen

What Phil says to a right-wing politician who thinks clean energy means living in caves

Why anger about climate might be your most useful tool - if you channel it right

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This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here:

https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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Find out more about the Carbon Literacy Project and get trained at carbonliteracy.com

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Chapters

00:00 Why Phil banned polar bears from carbon literacy training

03:30 What is the Carbon Literacy Project?

09:30 Why does ‘relevance’ matter?

12:40 From a shared desk with no salary to 153,000 people trained

15:42 Why they gave away the IP and became a charity

17:44 What caused the hockey stick growth

20:08 Do you work with high-emitting companies?

22:26 How to handle a denier in the room

25:50 Why doom without agency is dangerous

28:41 Phil’s approach to skeptics

37:02 Role-play 1: The secondary school teacher

46:15 Role-play 2: The middle-class retiree

1:00:26 Role-play 3: The young professional

1:09:32 Role-play 4: The right-wing politician

1:11:05 Energy sovereignty, batteries and the Reform mayor who quietly signed up

1:19:36 The 97 engineers on the bridge

Check out the UK’s most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Kevin Anderson is one of the world's leading climate scientists and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester's Tyndall Centre. A former oil and gas engineer turned academic, he's advised governments across the UK and Wales, worked closely with Greta Thunberg, and spent three decades arguing that the gap between what climate science demands and what policymakers actually do isn't accidental — it's a choice.

In this conversation, we get into the raw numbers behind our climate commitments, why the people who know the most tend to say the least, and why Kevin believes the real agents of change aren't the experts or politicians. They're us.

We cover:

The three numbers everyone needs to understand about climate change

Why 1.5°C is almost certainly already gone

Why net zero 2050 is a moving goalpost that nobody's updating

The academic "delusion" — why experts say one thing on microphones and something very different over a pint

Carbon capture, blue hydrogen and SAF

How climate change is a continuation of colonialism

Why we are absolutely not "all in this together" — and why pretending we are suits exactly the people it should embarrass

What he learned fromGreta Thunberg

Where hope actually lives (hint: it's not renewable energy stats)

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This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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Find Kevin's writing and talks at climateuncensored.com

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Chapters

00:00 3 things everyone needs to understand about climate

04:50 Why 1.5 degrees is gone

08:21 Should China’s declining emissions be celebrated?

11:11 Why we should talk about impacts, not temperature

13:41 Where is the communication breaking down?

17:06 Why Kevin believes his field has been deliberately dishonest

19:54 What climate models hide

24:24 How do you find the truth when the whole system is delusional?

29:09 What happens when you challenge academics off the record?

32:28 Why Kevin won't spin the cheery yarn

36:50 How does Kevin know Greta Thunberg?

42:19 How is our approach to climate colonial?

47:03 "We are not all in this together" — emissions inequality within the UK

52:56 Private luxury, public squalor — and who's really paying

57:37 The 4.5x gap between high and low income households

1:05:15 If we could start again, how would we talk about climate differently?

1:10:07 What actually gives Kevin hope?

1:16:36 The questions he wishes people would ask

1:17:42 The question he's tired of being asked

1:19:27 What he wants to leave you with

🎙️

Check out the UK’s most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Frank Holleman is the founder of Fork Ranger, an app and movement that's helping 150,000+ people to eat more sustainably. He's spent six years proving that the most effective climate action isn't perfection, it's making sustainable eating so ridiculously easy that it slips under people's resistance radar. His philosophy is simple: we don't need a few perfect environmentalists, we need millions of people taking imperfect action.

This conversation unpacks why food is responsible for one third of global emissions, why beef is five times worse than chicken, and why replacing beef with literally anything else is the single easiest climate win most people aren't taking. We also talk about the psychology of behaviour change, why going from "never again" to "90% less" makes all the difference, and how eating seasonally became Fork Ranger's most popular product even though it only reduces 2% of food emissions.

Frank also shares the framework that drives his entire approach: make the invitation to change small enough that it never triggers fight or flight, and why level three of sustainable eating isn't about cutting dairy, it's about inviting two friends to start level one.

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In this episode, we dive into:

Why food causes one third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and over half of that comes from meat (even though it contributes only 17% of calories but uses 83% of agricultural land)

The carbon footprint gap: beef is five times worse than chicken, which means swapping beef for chicken is a bigger climate win than most people realize (and you don't even have to go vegetarian)

Why there IS a role for animals in a sustainable food system, but only on marginal lands in small amounts, which means meat becomes a luxury, not a weekly staple

The two hardest parts of eating sustainably: the unknown and behavior change itself (finding new recipes, imagining what it tastes like without meat), and then the social pressure of being the only one who cares at the dinner table

Fork Ranger's three levels: Level 1 is replace beef with chicken or pork (not even vegetarian, just different meat). Level 2 is reduce food waste (one third of all food is wasted, mostly at home, and it's usually because we're too picky). Level 3 is invite two friends to start Level 1 and 2, because we don't need perfect environmentalists, we need millions taking action

Why food waste is the second level, not cutting dairy: it's a huge environmental problem, and solving it reinforces the mindset that food is valuable, not a cheap commodity we can afford to throw away

The 25% tipping point: if a quarter of people in a group do something against the norm, the rest become so uncertain about what's normal that they follow along and it suddenly flips (like fist bumps vs handshakes)

Book recommendations: Kaizen: One Small Step to Change Your Life, Project Drawdown, Change: How to Make Big Things Happen, and You Are What You Love

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This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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Find Fork Ranger at: https://forkranger.com

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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00:00 Why is eating sustainably hard?
06:41 Why we need to talk about meat

10:52 Why You Don't Have To Go Vegan
12:57 Food Causes 1/3 Of All Climate Change

14:32 The Important Truth For Meat Lovers

21:13 The Psychology Of Behaviour Change

26:49 The 3-Level System For Eating Sustainably

30:39 Why food waste is a huge problem

35:44 Is your app actually changing behaviour?

40:01 The 25% Tipping Point That Could Change Everything
43:28 Influential Books and Resources

47:51 Shopping Malls, Consumerism & Why Eating Is Political
52:04 Unexpected impact of eating seasonally
57:26 Individual Choices vs. Systemic Change

Check out Ecologi at https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth.

Juliet Davenport founded Good Energy and spent 20 years proving that a distributed renewable energy business could actually work driven by the philosophy that ordinary people, not governments or corporations, should drive the energy transition.

This conversation goes deep into the parts of the energy debate that almost nobody explains clearly — why your energy bills are high, who's actually responsible for fixing the grid, and whether lower carbon and lower costs can genuinely happen at the same time.

We talk about why wind and solar were designed to maximise output rather than serve customers, how the national grid went from managing 30 power stations to millions of generators overnight, and the uncomfortable truth about why fossil fuel lobbying works as well as it does.

Juliet also shares the framework that shaped her entire approach to climate action — and why she thinks getting angry at bad actors is one of the least effective things you can do.

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This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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In this episode, we dive into:

Why energy conversations should be about people, not power stations - and how we've spent decades designing renewables to maximise output instead of delivering what consumers actually need

The engineering mistake that's costing us billions: wind turbines designed for maximum megawatt hours instead of smooth, predictable output that matches when people use power

How the UK energy system went from managing 30 fossil fuel generators to millions of renewable sources - and why the data and software still aren't good enough to handle it

Marginal pricing explained: why gas sometimes sets the energy price (and sometimes doesn't) - and why in summer we actually get too much renewable power, causing prices to go negative

The price cap paradox: why the policy that protected consumers for 15 years might now be keeping energy bills higher than they need to be (because everyone buys power at the same time)

Why decoupling energy prices from gas isn't the answer - it'll happen naturally as renewables grow, and there are bigger regulatory fixes that would cut bills faster

The lobbying reality: fossil fuel companies will fight to protect their business model until they can't - so Juliet built Good Energy to prove a zero-carbon business could work commercially, not as a charity

Why AI energy use is like "using precision laser tooling to cut bread" - we need quantum computing for low-accuracy tasks and smarter algorithms, not powering everything with coal-fired data centers

The three forces needed for systemic change: activism (to open conversations), policy (to set direction), and business (to deliver) - and why anger between bad actors and activists can actually get stuck in a loop that prevents progress

What Juliet would do with a billion pounds: grid reinforcement, European interconnectors, automatic meter readers in every UK home (not overcomplicated smart meters), an innovation fund for energy efficiency, and a democracy campaign so people understand energy beyond media filters

Why households should run like mini power stations - using energy at the right time of day automatically, without expecting consumers to think about it

The Finnish town heated entirely by waste heat from a data centre - and why tech companies aren't being smart enough about secondary energy use

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Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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00:00 Energy Should Be About People, Not Power Stations

04:30 Why Renewables Were Designed Wrong From the Start

08:30 The 2030 Clean Power Plan & Fixing Government Contracts

12:00 Why the National Grid Is Struggling to Keep Up

16:30 Can We Have Lower Bills AND Lower Carbon?

20:30 How Energy Prices Are Actually Decided

27:00 Are Fossil Fuel Companies Actively Blocking Change?

33:00 Why Getting Angry at Bad Actors Doesn't Work

40:30 Why Activism, Policy & Business Are The Levers of Change

48:30 AI's Energy Problem & Why Big Tech Isn't Being Smart

56:00 Where Juliet Would Spend £1M, £1B & £100B

1:03:30 The Question Nobody Asks Her

1:06:30 How Do We Accelerate the UK's Clean Energy Transition?

Kate Williams is CEO of 1% for the Planet, the global movement founded by Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard that's certified over $820 million in environmental giving - and they're on track to hit their first billion. She's spent the last 11 years scaling a model that proves capitalism can work differently: 1% of revenue (not profit) goes to vetted environmental nonprofits, no matter what kind of year you've had.

It means rent for the planet (and its financial discipline) is baked into the P&L. And it's proof that simple actions, done repeatedly, in community, at scale, can aggregate to billions of dollars in impact - without putting a ceiling on what companies can do beyond that.

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This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

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In this episode, we dive into:

→ What trends is she seeing in the market?

→ How is 1% for the Planet different from Patagonia?

→ Why should nonprofits exist separate from the market?

→ What has Kate learned from Yvon? (Patagonia’s founder)

→ Why did the pandemic cause a huge increase in sign-ups?

→ How is 1% using capitalism’s mechanisms for good?

→ What are non-profit’s role in climate progress?

→ Would Kate pick up a call from ExxonMobil?

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Find out more about 1% for the Planet at: https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/

Connect with Kate Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katewilliams87/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

Timestamps

00:00 Non profit’s role in climate

05:42 What is 1% for the Planet?

11:28 Why 1% of Revenue, Not Profit?

18:35 Vetting Nonprofits and Impact Areas

23:47 Dollar-Per-Impact vs Systemic Change

27:29 How can we do capitalism differently?

29:51 How is 1% like a tax?

33:55 Why 1% on revenue, not profit?

40:38 How has Kate grown 1%?

44:37 Why did sign-ups increase in covid?

49:33 What has Kate learned from Yvon (Patagonia founder?)

55:28 Does the ‘green’ movement exclude people?

01:09:45 Being an "N of Many" vs Patagonia's "N of One"

01:06:33 Trends Kate is seeing

01:14:19 “What do you wish more people would ask you?”

01:19:47 “What are you fed up of being asked?”

01:22:00 How to learn more about 1%?