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

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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

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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.

Are flights across the world about to be grounded? Is a terrible war about to create an unlikely good news story for the climate? As conflict in the Middle East threatens the Strait of Hormuz, jet fuel shortages are forcing aviation to confront a structural vulnerability it has spent decades avoiding.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson examine what the shortage reveals: aviation's near-total dependence on fossil fuels, the structural reasons it has proved so hard to break, and whether it’s ever going to be possible to fix. 

They speak with Karel Bockstael and Roxanne van Rijn, former aviation insiders who co-founded Call Aviation to Action, a movement designed to reach the industry’s senior leaders and push for much-needed change. They explain why kerosene remains the only viable option for long-haul flight, how thin margins trap airlines into opposing the very regulation they need, and why this fuel shock may be the scarcity event that finally forces the model to shift. 

Could this crisis become aviation’s turning point? And in a world where up to 80% of people have never set foot on a plane - and 1% account for half of all aviation emissions - what would a truly fair future for flight actually look like?

Learn More:

✈️ Explore Call Aviation to Action - the movement co-founded by Karel and Roxanne and others, pushing for industry-wide transformation from within

📊 Read the UK Climate Change Committee’s aviation analysis, and understand why aviation is on course to become the UK’s single largest emitting sector by 2040

⛽ Get up to date on IEA data on global oil and jet fuel markets, including what the Strait of Hormuz disruption means for aviation fuel supply

🌿 Learn more about Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) via IATA: what it is, why it currently accounts for less than 1% of aviation fuel use, and what scaling it would require

💸 Pay the true price of your next flight via the Future Friendly Fund’s calculator, or check your CO₂ estimate on Google Flights. 

Check out Bumprints for practical tips or Travel Alternative, Roxanne’s recently launched platform highlighting alternatives to flying

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

Join the conversation:

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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.

Monarch butterflies crossing a continent. Peregrine falcons above Manhattan. A giant lemur most of the world had never heard of, until one man pointed a camera at it. For seventy years, Sir David Attenborough has been asking us to look - really look - at the world we share with three and a half billion years' worth of other life. 

This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson mark the 100th birthday of the world’s longest-serving television presenter. To celebrate, they're reaching into the archives to share the very first episode of the podcast - a conversation recorded in person with their friend Sir David himself, at the Attenborough Centre in Cambridge in 2019.

They also take stock of seven years of Outrage + Optimism, and on a world that’s changed since that first episode dropped. What's moved faster than anyone expected, what's gone sideways, and what still keeps us at night?

Then Sir David. On why young people's outrage is entirely justified. On what the natural world actually needs from us. On the rare moments in history when nations chose agreement over conflict. And on why understanding might be the thing that saves us.

Learn More:

🎂 Discover moments from Sir David Attenborough's life and career on the BBC

🌿 Watch Secret Gardens, Sir David's recent series exploring the hidden natural world of the British urban garden, mentioned by Tom in this episode (UK login required)

🐋 Explore the history of the International Whaling Commission moratorium, which Sir David cites as a rare model of nations choosing to act before it was too late

🌍 Learn more about the global youth climate movement Fridays For Future, from the early days mentioned in this interview to its activity today

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

Join the conversation:

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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.

Europe plunged into a deep freeze. Life as we know it upended. The 2004 film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ gave a generation of terrified journalists an impossible task: how do you communicate the counter intuitive threat of dramatically colder winters caused by global warming? David Shukman was one of them.

This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by the veteran BBC Science Editor and author of the upcoming ‘The Response’, to explore the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC: the vast system of currents that helps regulate weather, rainfall and temperature across the Atlantic and far beyond. Recent research suggests it may be weakening faster than previously understood - with potentially profound consequences for food systems, ecosystems and global stability.

They speak with Dr Willem Huiskamp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who explains what AMOC does, and what a much weaker system could mean in practice. Then Tom and David reflect on the harder questions. How do we communicate a risk this vast and uncertain without paralysing people or losing them entirely? Are we socially and politically prepared for -50C winters in parts of Europe? And are we even capable of responding to a threat that may unfold over decades rather than across news cycles and political terms? 

Learn More:

🌊 Discover more about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and why scientists are watching it closely 

🔎 Read the latest paper referenced in this episode, which projects an approximate 50% weakening of AMOC by the end of the century

📘 Check out David’s book, The Response, which will be published by Witness Books on 7th May

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

Join the conversation:

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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.

The Iran crisis continues to prove how dangerously dependent the global economy is on fossil fuels. But what will it actually take to move beyond them?

In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson look at what the latest oil shock continues to reveal. And they turn to the upcoming First Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, where governments, campaigners and other actors are gathering to build new relationships and explore new routes towards a just transition in an age of geopolitical instability.

Christiana speaks with former President of Ireland Mary Robinson and Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, who lay out the big structural barriers still slowing the shift. From debt traps that make fossil fuel extraction a financial necessity, to vested interests, and subsidies flowing in the wrong direction.

The evidence is clear: the transition is happening. The question is, will it be political machinations or economic urgency that determines how fast? 

Learn More:

🌍 Explore the official page for the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, including its aims, format and participants

🛢️ Understand why the Strait of Hormuz matters so much through the IEA’s Oil Market Report hub

📜 Read the UNFCCC summary of the 2023 COP28 agreement, which for the first time called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”

⚡ See the figures behind the boom in renewables in BloombergNEF’s latest Energy Transition Investment Trends

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

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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.

There are chemicals in your blood that weren't there fifty years ago. They are in the products you use, the water you drink, the food you eat - and for years, almost nobody was told the full truth about the risk.

This week, Christiana speaks to two women who found contamination in their communities and refused to accept it.

Emily Donovan and Sarah Alexander have spent decades fighting for greater regulation of PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’. Through their work, and the work of many others, some progress has been made on regulation, and on supporting the communities most impacted. But this story is far from over. Because these chemicals don't break down. They move through soil, through water, through the food chain and through us. And the impacts on our health and on our ecosystems are only beginning to come to light.So, with environmental protection rollbacks at the US federal level, can progress endure? And can community action take on the big companies and the big money behind this scandal?

This episode is about what happens when institutions fail, what accountability actually requires, and why the clean energy transition is incomplete if we trade one toxic system for another.

🔗Follow the work of Clean Cape Fear 

🔗Learn more about the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association

🎬 Watch Dark Waters (2019) - the film that brought the DuPont PFOA story to a wider audience 

📋Read the Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act 

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

Join the conversation:

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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.

Sea-level rise is often spoken about in centimetres, forecasts and future scenarios. But what if we understood it as a health emergency that is already reshaping lives, harming bodies and minds, and displacing entire communities?

This week, as a landmark Lancet Commission launches, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac argue that sea-level rise must be understood not just as a climate threat, but as a health crisis currently unfolding. And, as co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Sea-Level Rise, Health and Justice, Christiana brings us inside the thinking behind this urgent new effort.

Christiana speaks to commissioners ‘Ofa Kaisamy, Professor Anne Poelina and Dr Sandro Demaio, who paint a vivid picture of what happens before and as the water arrives. This is a story of food insecurity, damaged clinics and hospitals, disease, displacement, trauma, and the loss of ancestral knowledge and cultural continuity. But it also points to an opportunity to finally see sea-level rise in fully human terms, with those on the frontlines shaping the response.

What changes when we stop treating rising seas as a distant environmental problem and start recognising them as a present health emergency? And what might become possible if the people most affected are no longer treated as victims, but as leaders?

Learn More:

🌊 Read The Lancet Commission launch paper on sea-level rise, health and justice.

🩺 Read Christiana’s opinion piece on health and sea-level rise in the Guardian

🏝️ Explore WHO Western Pacific’s work on climate change and health in the Pacific

📈 Go deeper with the IPCC on sea-level rise and low-lying coasts and islands.

🎤 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.