Climate Forward Podcast

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference, the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever.The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three researchers to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of a melting glacier.Ludwig Berger, a sound artist from Alsace in France, first recorded the sounds of the Morteratsch Glacier in Switzerland more than a decade ago. What he heard astonished him: deep resonances of ancient air bubbles being released from crevices and making sounds like wailing synthesizers.As Mr. Berger put it, he records “last sounds.” Each time he returns to record, he has to climb farther up the mountain to reach the ice, as the glacier has retreated. The locations of many of the sounds you’ll hear in his soundscape are now gone, he said. “There’s no ice left there, there’s just a bare rock,” he said.To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference, the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever.The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three field recordists to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of the Amazon rainforest.Izabela Dluzyk, a field recordist originally from Poland, grew up memorizing bird calls and listening closely to sparrows. Inspired by a fascination with parrots, she crowd-funded her way to the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru to record the dusk and dawn symphonies of the rainforest.Blind since birth, Ms. Dluzyk was accompanied into acoustically lush areas of the Amazon by her brother and her Amazonian guide. She captured a thunderous ritual of macaws gathering at eroding clay banks along the Tambopata River, eating the sodium-rich soil that is essential to their health and to raising their chicks.But years of severe droughts threaten to disrupt that delicate balance and turn the sound-rich canopy into grassland. “Rainforests are so fragile,” Ms. Dluzyk said. “ We need to become fascinated with what we can hear.”To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference, the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever.The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three researchers to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of the underwater Arctic.Bernie Krause, a prominent audio ecologist, coined the term “biophony” to describe earthly sounds from nonhuman organisms, like the calls, songs and buzzes produced by animals and insects. Paired with nonbiological sounds of the Earth, or the “geophony,” these layers of sound make up the ambient symphony of our planet. And as our planet warms, this natural soundscape is shifting in surprising ways.For those who have spent their careers listening closely, these changes are not abstract.“When I started going up to the Arctic, I thought I would be spending my career listening to bowhead whales,” said Kate Stafford, a bioacoustician at Oregon State University, who recorded this soundscape.  “But what I’ve ended up doing is listening to climate change.”Dr. Stafford records what she calls the “underwater jungle.” By lowering hydrophones, or waterproof microphones, into the frigid ocean, she captures bowheads moaning, belugas whistling and even the deafening sound of air guns being used in oil exploration. She has heard the shrinking sea ice disrupt animal migration patterns and introduce new predators. As the planet warms, the waters of the ice-covered Arctic is becoming louder and stormier.To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hawaii may be a land of renowned natural beauty, but it is the most oil-dependent state in the United States and is on the front lines of climate change. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, discussed the challenges of turning climate mitigation ambitions into durable policy on the state and national levels and what it takes to build political will in a divided Congress.He also said that his party needed to change the way it talked about climate change if Democrats hoped to win over new voters.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the first time in a generation, demand for electricity in the U.S. is growing, fueled by A.I.’s insatiable thirst for power. And yet, President Trump has taken severe steps to slow the deployment of solar and wind. At the Climate Forward live event, Scott L. Strazik, the C.E.O. of GE Vernova, spoke about what his company is doing to meet the demand, what A.I. means for the American grid and how Trump’s war on wind power has affected his company.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletterhttps://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Few countries face the existential threat of climate change as urgently as the Marshall Islands, where rising seas endanger land, livelihoods and culture. In this conversation, President Hilda Heine spoke with Somini Sengupta about the nation’s fight for survival on the front lines of a warming world. What does climate leadership look like when the stakes are nothing less than a country’s future?Follow Climate Forward’s reporting at https://www.nytimes.com/column/climate-fwd Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As the effects of climate change intensify across Australia — from record-breaking heat waves and prolonged droughts to catastrophic bushfires and floods — the nation stands at a defining crossroads. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia spoke with me about the United States’ withdrawal from global action on climate change, and about other issues Australia faces.“I think action on climate change is the entry fee to credibility and to engagement,” he said in response to a question about America’s standing in the Pacific region.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At the Climate Forward live event. Rainn Wilson, an actor, environmentalist and a star of “The Office,” read from his essay on how to connect environmentalism with spirituality. He said that in order to address climate change, we must transform our relationship with nature. “We need to value nature as profoundly sacred,” he said. “Spiritual, even.”Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletterhttps://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fusion energy has long been hailed as the ultimate climate solution: clean, limitless and just out of reach. At the Climate Forward live event, Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant, discussed how close his company is to bringing fusion energy to reality.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At the Climate Forward event last month, David Wallace-Wells read from “It Isn’t Just the U.S. The Whole World Has Soured on Climate Politics,” an essay in The Times Magazine in which he detailed the world’s retreat from global climate politics, despite a green technology boom.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletterhttps://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.