Climate Unf*cked

“A newsletter for people pissed off about the climate crisis” is the tagline of Emily Atkin’s newsletter, HEATED. She’s one of the foremost climate journalists in the US and the founder of Heated, an independent newsletter with 150k subscribers dedicated to accountability journalism on the climate crisis.

Originally trained in traditional mainstream media outlets like The New Republic, she left to build her own publication in 2019 after growing frustrated with the reluctance to cover climate change as the power and corruption story it really is. She now writes for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis and want to understand the forces blocking action.

This conversation goes deep into why Emily believes climate change should be covered as a corruption story, not an environmental one. We talk about how BP invented the term "carbon footprint" as a marketing campaign to shift attention away from corporate responsibility, why the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to privatise profits while socialising the costs of climate damage onto everyone else, and why that arrangement is profoundly corrupt. Emily explains why she thinks journalism's obsession with objectivity has made outlets wimps and cowards, why anger is her most powerful tool as a journalist, and why she refuses to comfort people with hope when what they really need is information to act.

We also cover why right wing billionaires buying up media outlets is creating an information crisis, why she spent months investigating an anti solar influencer with two million followers, and why she believes media literacy is one of the biggest barriers to climate action. Emily shares what it's like running an independent publication that refuses to paywall climate news, why she thinks individual action matters more than she used to, and why she wishes more people would leak her documents from inside their companies instead of asking her what gives her hope.

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Find Emily's work at Heated: https://heated.world/

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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Chapters

00:00 Why is climate change a sexy corruption story?

04:30 How BP invented the carbon footprint to shift blame

09:15 Why people feel relief when you reframe climate as a power problem

13:40 What Emily tells people who ask "what can I do?"

18:20 We need to support real journalism

22:50 What the billionaire takeover of media means for climate coverage

28:35 AI’s worst impact isn’t from data centres

34:10 The anti solar influencer with 2m followers

42:25 Why acknowledging downsides makes your argument stronger

48:15 Journalism is about telling the truth, not building bridges

53:40 Why Emily's tagline is "for people who are pissed off"

1:00:20 Compassion without anger becomes pity

1:06:45 How readers respond to emotional, personal climate journalism

1:11:30 Betting platforms are incentivising wildfire arson

1:14:50 Why Emily changed her mind on individual action

1:17:20 The fiction book Emily wants to write about climate absurdity

1:20:35 Why she's tired of being asked what gives her hope

1:23:50 What Emily wishes people would ask her instead

Professor Paul Behrens of the Oxford martin School at the University of Oxford works at the intersection of food systems, climate change, and food security. Originally trained in physics and astronomy, he spent years working on energy systems before turning his attention to what he now believes is one of the most fragile and underestimated threats we face: the food system that feeds us.

Paul is the author of the popular science book, The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science (Indigo Press, 2021) which describes humanity’s current trajectory and possible futures in paired chapters of pessimism and hope. His research and writing on climate, energy, and food, has appeared in scientific journals and media outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Thomson Reuters, Politico, Nature Sustainability, Nature Energy, PNAS, Nature Food, and

We cover

Climate change is already driving a third of food price inflation in the UK, with drought, flooding, geopolitical instability, and energy shocks potentially pushing prices to 1970s levels

The UK holds between three days and three weeks of food storage; Finland has nine months

A Joint Intelligence Committee report on ecosystem collapse was suppressed before being released in abridged form.

Animals lose between 80–97% of the calories fed to them; that inefficiency becomes catastrophic as climate change shrinks the productive biosphere

Shifting to a planetary health diet could reduce emissions by 61%, spare an area the size of Scotland, and save the NHS tens of billions of pounds a year

We massively underestimate each other's willingness to act on climate — 60% of people intending to vote Reform support onshore wind turbines

Over 40% of the UK supports a meat tax, despite politicians treating it as political suicide

Food price spikes historically drive political instability and state collapse; climate change contributed to the Syrian conflict and is already destabilising politics worldwide

Trump's election and the current political atmosphere are partly driven by climate impacts we're not naming as such

Denmark's food transition plan is the most credible government approach in the world

New York hospitals made plant-based meals the default and found them cheaper, healthier, and more popular

Far more grazing land could support arable agriculture than commonly assumed

Heritage arguments about land use are recent and shouldn't override future food security

Rewilding and nature management could increase farmer incomes while restoring biodiversity

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Find Paul's work and research at the University of Oxford

Read the National Emergency Briefing at https://www.nebriefing.org/

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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Chapters

00:00 Should we be worried about food system collapse?

04:03 Are we choosing this change or being forced into it?

04:33 The thermodynamics of a shrinking food supply

07:22 What the "planetary health diet" looks like

09:30 How to rewild land the size of Scotland

11:54 Why food decisions are emotional

13:48 We wildly underestimate how much people care

16:25 Meat Tax

18:52 The purpose of misinformation

24:47 How much bad diets are costing the NHS

27:12 The supressed gov. report on food collapse

33:11 The link between food prices and state collapse

36:04 Trump, cost of living and the politics of instability

38:33 Is any country actually food secure?

41:01 The UK has 3 days of food storage. Finland has 9 months

46:19 Could we grow crops on grazing land instead?

51:07 Why plants = electrification for humans

55:58 Denmark's groundbreaking plan

59:10 The NYC hospital expreiment

1:01:02 Paul's billboard message to the world

1:03:48 The one paper Paul wishes everyone would read

1:05:14 What to actually do today

Dr Mark Harber is a consultant nephrologist (kidney doctor) and the Royal College of Physicians' special adviser on healthcare sustainability and climate change.

He's spent years working at the intersection of medicine and the environment as a member of the Sustainable Kidney Care committee, a clinical lead for the NHS London sustainability group, and an advisor to the UCL Partners Climate Collaborative. Now, he helps shape how the RCP advocates and lobbies on healthcare's role in the climate crisis.

This conversation goes deep into the surprisingly stark relationship between heat and human health: why the death rate in London starts climbing at just 24 degrees, why 2026's June heatwave in the UK heatwave produced an estimated 2,900 excess deaths, and why chronic conditions from epilepsy to kidney failure get dramatically worse as the mercury rises. Mark explains why big national statistics can feel strangely meaningless next to a single hospital admission, and why he believes there's little point terrifying the public without giving them something practical to do about it.

We talk about the NHS's own outsized carbon footprint (around 5% of the UK's total, more than the aviation industry) and why it became the first health system in the world to commit to net zero, back in 2019. Mark explains the hidden environmental cost of kidney dialysis, which can use 400 litres of water per session and carries 16 times the carbon footprint of an average NHS patient, and why the UK is on track to be 6 billion litres of water short every day by 2050. We also cover the less obvious ways climate change threatens healthcare itself: 90% of English hospitals at risk of overheating, a tenth to a third at risk of flooding, and disease-carrying mosquitoes now established in France and Italy that never used to survive this far north.

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Learn more about the RCP's Green Physician Toolkit at https://www.rcp.ac.uk/policy-and-campaigns/our-policy-priorities/climate-and-sustainability/green-physician-toolkit/

Find the National Emergency Briefing at https://www.nebriefing.org/

Find Real Zero's 7 Acts to Save the World at https://www.realzero.earth

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

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

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Chapters

0:00 Why 24°C Already Raises the Death Rate
2:52 The Grim Maths Behind 2,900 Excess Deaths
4:17 Why Big Climate Numbers Feel Meaningless
6:20 Should We Be Scaring the Public About Heat?
8:13 The Delhi Cooling Rooms Saving Tuk-Tuk Drivers
10:41 Why Flights Are Up 80% in 20 Years
12:15 The Healthcare Sector Emits More Than Aviation
15:43 Why Institutions Fear the "Art of the Possible"
18:43 Why Your Dialysis Machine Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint
23:13 The Hospital Built to Handle Only 28°C
25:09 The Mosquito Bringing Dengue to Britain
27:35 Methane Is 80 Times Worse Than CO2
29:53 You're More Likely to Leave Your Partner Than Your Bank
33:18 Why Doctors Won't Sell You on Climate
37:12 How One Kilo of Plastic Costs Three of Oil
40:22 Why Politicians Won't Just Tell Us the Truth
44:50 The Hidden Kidney Risk in London's Air
49:43 The Hospital That Stopped Mowing Its Lawns
53:20 What Climate Activism Can Learn From Medicine
56:30 Why "What Can I Do?" Is Almost Enough
59:43 Tell Your Canvasser Climate Change Matters

Per Espen Stoknes is a psychologist, economist, and one of the world's leading experts on why climate change feels so hard to act on—and what actually works to break through that paralysis. He's the author of ‘What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming’, ‘Tomorrow's Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth’ and ‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’

He’s associate professor and co-director of the BI Center for Sustainability and Energy, and someone who's spent decades unpacking the psychological barriers that keep us stuck: distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity.

This conversation goes deep into the mechanics of climate psychology—why telling people what to do almost always backfires, why inequality is one of the biggest accelerants of climate inaction, and why the pendulum swings of history might be our strangest source of hope. We talk about why comedy and messengers like Joe Rogan matter more than scientists think, why AI and privacy loss mirror the climate crisis psychologically, and why Per believes the next frontier isn't just decarbonisation—it's rewilding finance itself.

We cover why attacking someone's identity shuts down climate conversation immediately, how social trust is the variable that determines whether governments can actually implement climate policy, and why the UK cutting 2% of global emissions matters far more than the math suggests. Per explains why the five barriers to climate action—distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity—also apply to digital privacy and AI, why inequality creates a vicious cycle that makes climate action nearly impossible, and why universal basic income might be one of the most powerful climate policies we're not talking about.

We also talk about why Per thinks Trump's second term might accidentally be the pendulum swing we need, why possibilism is a better philosophical framework than optimism or pessimism, and why the people with the answers—indigenous communities—are the ones we keep ignoring. He shares his vision for biodiversity credits that pay land stewards for regeneration, why AI could either accelerate the climate transition or make inequality catastrophically worse, and why the questions he wishes people would ask are about the assumptions underneath everything we're doing.

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Find Per's work at stoknes.com

Learn more about Earth for All at earth4all.life

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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Chapters

0:00 Why Facts Make People Believe You Less
2:35 The Real Reason Arguments Feel Like Personal Attacks
3:26 The One Question That Defuses Any Disagreement
4:09 What Jeremy Clarkson Gets Right
6:13 Why You Only Listen to People Like You
8:51 A Psychologist's Dream Messenger: Joe Rogan
9:49 The Two Groups Who Care Least About Climate
10:50 Why You Need 9 Good Stories for Every Bad One
14:49 The Solar Boom That Could Power the Entire Planet
18:11 Why Systems Thinking Kills Polarisation
22:07 The Pizza That Explains Why Your 2% Matters
24:11 How One Norwegian Tax Made Your EV Cheaper
27:35 Why You're Not as Powerless as You Feel
30:10 The Two Trends That Could Undo Everything
34:32 The 5 Turnarounds We Actually Need
37:08 Why Things Get Worse Before They Get Better
42:02 "I Fell Through the Floor When Trump Won Again"
42:45 The Black Swan That Changes Everything
46:05 The Hidden Link Between Inequality and Climate
53:16 Is AI a Confirmation Bias Machine?
57:38 How AI Could Quietly Make Us More Unequal
58:08 The Surprising Ways AI Could Save Us
1:05:37 What One Person Can Actually Do About AI
1:07:54 The 4 Roles You Didn't Know You Had
1:10:03 Why Climate and Privacy Break Your Brain the Same Way
1:12:00 The Data Trap You're Walking Into
1:15:05 Why We Can't See Inside AI
1:16:05 Paying Indigenous Tribes to Protect Jaguars
1:19:16 The Questions Per Is Sick of Being Asked
1:21:01 Why 35 Years of Sustainability Failed

Stuart Goldsmith is a stand-up comedian with 20 years of experience who's spent the last five years doing something almost no other comic attempts: making audiences laugh about the climate crisis.

Professor Lauren Feldman teaches Media and Climate Change at Rutgers University, where her students regularly bring in clips of Stuart's work to dissect in class. She's the co-author of A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, and her research unpacks why comedy is one of the most powerful tools we have for breaking through climate denial, fear, and apathy.

This conversation explores why it's so hard to make people laugh about something that genuinely terrifies you, why comedy works when facts and fear don't, and why the brand of climate action is so catastrophically bad that we desperately need comedians to fix it. We talk about the psychology of counter-arguing, why charged information shuts down the prefrontal cortex, and how comedy creates a kind of social lubricant that lets unpalatable truths slip past our defenses.

Stuart explains why he had to convince himself not to cry on stage, why his climate confessions format helps people admit their hypocrisy without shame, and why he's trying to write the perfect joke about how activists are the only professionals not allowed to fly. Lauren shares research showing that comedy increases engagement, makes messages more memorable, and helps people feel less alone in their climate anxiety. We also talk about why partisan comedy backfires with skeptical audiences, why the tabloid press treated Britain's hottest May on record like a beach party, and why Stuart believes the more you learn about climate change, the less paralyzed you feel.

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Find Stuart's work and UK tour dates at stuartgoldsmith.com

Find Lauren's book A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar on Amazon and University of California Press

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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Chapters

00:00 Lauren studies Stuart's work
01:53 Is it odd to make people laugh about something that scares you?
04:18 What emotion should comedy target?
05:59 Comedy as a social lubricant
08:23 Why learning more makes you less scared
11:40 The brand of climate is terrible
13:44 Lauren's research: nonpartisan vs partisan comedy
17:39 Does comedy break down barriers better than other mediums?
20:11 How comedy reduces counter-arguing
23:43 Jokes as compressed files
24:38 The hypocrisy bit: flying to a climate conference
26:27 Do you lean into virtue signalling or stay away?
29:02 Climate confessions and why they work
33:05 Does shaming change behaviour?
35:44 Disrupting the doomism narrative
39:33 Does it work differently online?
45:16 The heatwave and making the invisible visible
48:48 Arthur's Seat caught fire: complexity in comedy
50:16 Talking about effects vs causes
51:34 The Joint Intelligence Committee report on biodiversity
54:52 Your phones are fine, everyone else's have slave minerals
56:17 If you had a billboard, what would it say?
1:03:09 The joke Stuart wishes he could write
1:06:51 Personal action as background work, not the solution
1:09:58 Where to find Stuart and Lauren's work