How Climate Change Is Being Covered Now (w/ Evlondo Cooper)

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! -------------------- Before the end of the year, I had my annual conversation with the always wonderful Evlondo Cooper, senior writer with the climate and energy program at Media Matters. In this conversation, we explore the new challenges of climate reporting that we saw unfold in the politically charged environment of 2025. We looke at the specific changes under the Trump administration and how a continued lack of diverse voices in climate coverage is helping to contribute to the disconnect between climate issues and political discourse. Additionally, Cooper tracks the ongoing missing context in major climate events of recent years, especially around climate solutions and harms. We look at the role of media in holding politicians accountable, the gaps in current coverage, and how climate media problems visible in recent years may actually be getting worse. You can follow all of Evlondo's coverage here. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! -------------------- This week, we explore a fundamental question at the heart of the climate crisis: why are so many people willing to destory the environment? This is something I think about a lot and can be infurating. It's also a more complicated story when you really dig into the motivators.  To find out why environmental crims happens, Dr. Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist and author of Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them, is on the show. She explains the intersection of criminal psychology and environmental issues and why she wanted to take on this incredibly important and complex subject. Shaw outlines the six psychological pillars that motivate environmental crimes and how motivators often differ greatly by income and levels of power. We also talk abou the murder of environmental defenders, the complexities of land ownership and stewardship, the psychology behind poaching, and the impact of misinformation has on environmental action. Shaw also explains how existing laws and regulations can help combat environmental crimes effectively. Read: Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! ------ This week, we're taking a deep dive into the UNEP fascinating, new Global Environment Outlook with legendary climate scientist Sir Professor Robert Watson. We discuss the state (and accelerating pace) of global warming and environmental destruction. Watson explains how emissions continue to climb, what's happened since the Paris Agreement, the state of biodiversity loss, land degradation, and air pollution, and much more. He also explains the transformative investments and changes needed to come anywhere close to international environmental and climate agreements.  Sir Professor Robert Watson, Former co-chair of IPCC and IPBES and former chief scientific advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House during the Clinton presidency. He is also one of the lead authors report of the 7th edition of UNEP's Global Environment Outlook Report. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.  

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! ------------- We're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In this new series from The Climate Pod, we're looking back on the global pact to determine: how have things changed since 2015 and what has the Paris Agreement accomplished? Our first episode was on extreme heat.  This week, we're looking at the role of adaptation. In the decade that has past since the Paris Agreement was signed, emissions have continued to climb and the globe has continued to warm. How are countries adaptating? What's in store for the future? To answer these questions, we're joined by Susannah Fisher, author of Sink or Swim: How The World Needs To Adapt To A Changing Climate. Fisher is a Principal Research Fellow at University College London and works as a researcher and advisor supporting governments, cities, climate funds and communities adapt to climate change. In this conversation, we discuss what the Paris Agreement accomplished on adaptation and where it has fallen short. We talk about the critical role of finance and understanding the obstacles to sufficient funds for adaptation. We also explore how countries around the globe are adaptating to sea level rise, increased conflict, drought and water shortages, migration changes, food system challenges, and nature preservation.  Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! ------------- When talking about climate change, it's easy to get caught up in the scientific terms. Carbon emissions, parts per million, global average temperature, etc. But I always want to make sure I'm framing this conversation in the human impacts that result from the crisis. That's why I wanted to have Sharon Lerner back on the show this week. Sharon Lerner is a journalist and author at ProPublica, where she cover health and the environment and the agencies that govern them, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Her recent piece is "Trump's Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths. The Poorest Countries Will Be Impacted Most." Lerner and experts conducted an analysis of how the Trump Administration's expansion of fossil fules and rolback of clean enegy and other climate initiatives would impact people around the globe. In this conversation, she explains how that modeling was conducted, what areas of the Global South will be impacted the most, and the questions on impacts that remain unanswered. Lerner also discusses the differences in covering this Trump Administration versus the president's first term and we explore some of the more popular talking points being used against climate action.  Read "Trump's Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths. The Poorest Countries Will Be Impacted Most"  Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! ------------- Another annual UN climate change conference is in the books. So, what did it accomplish? This week, The Guardian's Oliver Milman joins the show to breakdown the results of COP30. We discuss why many thought the conference was underwhelming, the final decisions on a fossil fuel phaseout, finance for adaptation, and improving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). We also talk about the lack of agreement on combating deforestation, the United States failing to show up to COP30, and what's still being said about the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Finally, we discuss the crazy fire that broke out during the conference and Oliver's experience covering more optimistic conversations on Artificial Intelligence.  Next, Joseph Winters, who wrote the piece "UN climate talks are built on consensus. That's part of the problem." for Grist joins the show to discuss why so many think the COP process is broken and why it's still super complicated to try to fix it. We look at potential solutions like a majority vote on big decisions as well as more creative ideas to reform consensus. We also examine how these solutions compare to other UN agreements.  Read Oliver Milman's reporting here and his book The Insect Crisis Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! ------------- We're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In this new series from The Climate Pod, we're looking back on the global pact to determine: how have things changed since 2015 and what has the Paris Agreement accomplished? To kick off the series, Dr. Kristina Dahl, vice president for Science at Climate Central and the co-author of the new report Ten Years of the Paris Agreement: The Present and Future of Extreme Heat, joins the show to talk about how our understanding and projections of extreme heat have changed over the course of the decade. We talk about the importance of the Paris Agreement's temperature targets set and how extreme weather events and the role of attribution science in understanding climate change's impact has radically changed since 2015. We look at the challenges of communicating extreme heat risks now, the need for transformative adaptation strategies, and the importance of addressing structural inequities in climate resilience that haven't been remedied since Paris was signed. Finally, we look at the real threat of extreme heat in the future, how our lives might change, and the deadliest outcomes that haven't yet been truly avoided. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! -------- Are global leaders trying to solve the wrong climate problem? In this episode, Professor Jessica Green aruges that too often governments and institutions have misdiagnosed the core issues of the climate crisis and are going about solutions in all the wrong ways as a result. In her new book,  Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, she focuses on the power dynamics between fossil fuel asset owners and green asset owners and why it's critical to understand this as the central fight at the heart of climate change. Green argues that we need to shift focus from managing greenhouse gas emissions to managing assets, highlighting the existential threat fossil fuel companies face in a carbon-free economy and the potential for green asset owners to thrive in the future. She also explains the role of vulnerable asset owners, the political challenges of carbon pricing, and the importance of green industrial policy. We discuss what the Paris Agreement has and hasn't accomplished and why we need to better understand the limitations of the IPCCC.  Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! This week, Justin Worland, senior correspondent at TIME, is back on the show to delve into the  COP30 and what you will want to know about this critical convening of world leaders. As one of the top journalists covering climate change and international climate policy, Justin shares his  perspective on the evolving nature of these global conferences and what's actually at stake this year in Brazil. We explore the shift from traditional negotiation-focused COPs to more dynamic gatherings where non-state actors, the private sector, and civil societies play pivotal and different roles and government action occurs beyond the final, agreed upon text. Worland highlights the importance of understanding the broader international picture, with domestic pressures playing an even bigger role in this year's global climate considerations. We also discuss Brazil's unique position as this year's host and what that could mean given its outsized role in climate importance and its recent trends toward greater climate action. Worland explains Brazil's focus under President Lula to curb deforestation and advance climate solutions, positioning the country as a true international leader. With this in mind, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of implementing climate commitments in 2025, the role and relevance of multilateralism, and the rising tensions between national interests and global cooperation amid new tarrifs, lacking domestic climate plans, and the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement again. We look at all the big items up for discussion at COP30, including adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance. I also ask Worland to reflect on the past decade since the Paris Agreement and how that serves as a backdrop to the current climate landscape. How resilient can international agreements be amid the current geopolitical shifts? I thought his answer was super interesting. And the same can be said about Worland's examination of the recent Bill Gates' memo on climate change and the subsequent backlash. This episode is a must-listen to both understand COP30 and also the current state of climate action as cultural and political shifts have been tremendously impactful. Follow Justin Worland's reporting here at TIME Magazine during COP30 (and always!) Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Become a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show! It's fun. All the cool kids are doing it! This week, we dive into the transformative potential of a world less reliant on automobiles and ask the question: "why aren't we more honest about the harms caused by our car dependency?" We're joined by the amazing Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, co-hosts of "The War on Cars" podcast and co-authors of the new book, "Life After Cars," to explores the deep-seated cultural and economic ties to car dependency and the urgent need to change it. We look at how car culture became intertwined with the American dream and the historical and societal factors that have perpetuated this problem. Sarah and Doug discuss the environmental and social costs of our car-centric infrastructure, including pollution, social disconnection, and the harms on children's development. We delve into the challenges and opportunities of transitioning to electric vehicles, acknowledging their benefits while cautioning against simply replacing one form of car dependency with another. Finally, we look at very real examples of change like the bike bus movement in the United States and the transformative policies implemented by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to reduce car use. We talk about how these stories illustrate the power of grassroots activism and political courage to create more livable, car-free spaces.  Sarah Goodyear is a journalist and author who has covered cities and transportation for publications such as Grist, CityLab, and Streetsblog. Doug Gordon is a TV producer and writer who is also a neighborhood safe streets advocate, better known online as Brooklyn Spoke. Read Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile By Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter/podcast, The Climate Weekly, to help support this show. Your contributions will make the continuation of this show possible.  Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel.