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 SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This 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.

For the first time, all 104 matches at the Men's Football World Cup will be stopped for a mandatory three-minute hydration break, halfway through each half. For the first time, a global audience of billions will watch climate adaptation happening in real-time.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson look at what a football tournament, a transit scandal, and an oil war have in common.

Around a quarter of World Cup matches played over the next few weeks are projected to be played in conditions that exceed recommended heat safety limits - twice the risk of the last US-based World Cup, in 1994. Only three of the sixteen stadiums across the US, Mexico and Canada are climate-controlled. This will be a trial for elite players, who can adapt up to a point, but what does this mean for the parks, cages and school pitches where the ‘beautiful game’ actually begins? The Count Us In campaign, Where Football Lives, hopes that this can bring about a conversation: one about how extreme heat will change how we live, and what we love. So, should those three-minute breaks be called what they actually are: extreme heat breaks?

And a World Cup falling during a moment of rising fuel prices is exposing more than just the changing climate. When NJ Transit announced return tickets from central New York City to the nearby MetLife Stadium at $150, up from under $15, it laid bare how poorly served the US public is for transportation. The collision of surge pricing and rising pump prices may not be the catalyst anyone planned - but could it help highlight the benefits that a properly funded public transport system could have?

Elsewhere, the Iran war and the fragility it has exposed in global fossil fuel supply chains may be doing more to accelerate the clean energy transition than any policy has managed. Two forces are driving it: Chinese manufacturing dominance, and what we're calling ‘American foreign policy chaos’. Neither is acting for climate reasons. But the case for a post-carbon future has never been stronger.

None of this looks like the transition we imagined. The question is, are we ready to recognise the moment for change when it arrives, in whatever form it takes? And if change happens, does it matter how we get there?

Learn more:

🌍 Check out Where Football Lives, Count Us In's campaign on extreme heat and grassroots football

⚽ Learn how to do a keepy-uppy / juggle a football on the Where Football Lives record attempt page - or simply learn what we’re talking about

🌡️ Read more from Reuters on the threat of extreme heat at this World Cup

⚡ Read the latest on US transit ticketing prices around the tournament

🔎 Listen to Ian Bremmer on the Ezra Klein Show

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:
Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism

Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This 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.

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 agency? And what does it take to act with conviction when outcomes are genuinely uncertain?

Learn More:
☀️ See Severe Weather Europe's recap of the historic heat dome across Europe
🌡️ Follow CNN's coverage of the human and scientific dimensions of the event
📝 Read Blair's original essay at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
⚡ Explore BusinessGreen's coverage of the investor and political response to Blair's essay
🧠 Dig into the Lancet Planetary Health study on climate anxiety in children and young people globally, and how perceived government failure shapes distress
📊 Check out Yale's research on distress, agency, and climate action and how they interact

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:
Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism
Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This 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.

When climate wins happen, we often credit the market. Or the policy. But is philanthropy the most underappreciated force in the climate fight? And can less than 2% of global giving actually change anything?

Behind the headlines, people like Jennifer Kitt of Climate Lead are identifying where finite resources can be spent in order to make a real difference, and helping to grow the pie. Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres, and Paul Dickinson sit down with her to ask: what does well-targeted philanthropic money actually unlock? Who decides where it goes? And why, when it works, do we so rarely notice? From the coalition that quietly accelerated the EV transition by decades, to the $30,000 grant that helped take climate responsibility all the way to the World's Court.

The uncomfortable truth is that climate action is becoming reliant on the generosity of a wealthy few. The good news is that this money is growing; the bad news is that it needs to grow much, much more. So how much would it take to start solving some of tomorrow’s problems today? And are there risks in expecting a small and privileged group to fund a movement that belongs to everyone?

Learn More:
🌱 Learn more about Climate Lead and and their work advising philanthropists new to climate giving
⚖️ Catch up on the ICJ advisory opinion on climate obligations of states
⚡ Explore the Drive Electric Campaign, the global NGO coalition whose story Jennifer tells in the episode
🌍 Learn more about ClientEarth and the legal battles Tom references
📊 Track progress on climate transitions with the Systems Change Lab, referenced by Jennifer in the episode
📺 Read about the Trump AI video throwing Stephen Colbert in a dumpster, posted and reposted by the White House the day after the Late Show ended, via The Hill

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:
Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism
Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Edited by: Miles Martignoni
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This 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.

An unprecedented government move to outrun the courts. A country racing to write AI into its constitution. And a global energy crisis that's already moved faster than any possible fix. Are our institutions and the rules they rest on still fit for the world they're supposed to protect?

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres, and Paul Dickinson look at three stories the headlines may be missing.

In New Zealand, the government has moved to retroactively kill a landmark climate lawsuit - before it even reaches trial. Tom shares a voice note from ClientEarth CEO Laura Clarke who gives us the inside scoop on what is actually at stake. If this works, where does it end?

Then Greece, which wants to write a legally binding obligation for human-centred AI into its constitution. But can a national document meaningfully govern a borderless technology? And as we increasingly rely on AI for our information, where do these large language models actually go for their climate science?

Finally, the Strait of Hormuz. Financial markets think the situation is priced in. Geopolitical analysts disagree. We ask which sectors might unexpectedly accelerate the energy transition, why the climate movement seems frozen at exactly the moment it should be loudest, and whether this decade's decisive window is already starting to close.

Learn More:
⚖️ Learn more about ClientEarth and its work
🌿 Read about New Zealand amending its climate law via Inside Climate News
🌐 Catch up on the ICJ case on climate obligations of states
🏛️ Discover more about Greece's constitutional AI proposal via the Washington Post
🛢️ Dive into the Strait of Hormuz disruptions with analysis from UNCTAD

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe

Join the conversation:
Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism
Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Edited by: Miles Martignoni
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This 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.