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Outrage + Optimism

Outrage + Optimism

By: Persephonica and Global Optimism
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Summary

Outrage + Optimism is for anyone who is not ready to give up on making the world a better place. For unrivalled conversations with decision makers, visionary thinkers and a community of like-minded climate optimists, join former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, political strategist Tom Rivett-Carnac and sustainable business consultant Paul Dickinson. Each week they make sense of all the top climate news stories, go behind the scenes at crucial talks and ensure you stay informed and inspired ahead of what is set to be the consequential year for climate action.



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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.

Persephonica Politics & Government Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Overshoot looms. The G7 stayed home. Who’s in charge at COP31?

    Overshoot looms. The G7 stayed home. Who’s in charge at COP31?
    Nov 13 2026
    It's the end of COP31's first week, and from a distance the biggest story looks like the buses. More than 92,000 people registered for Antalya, and not all of them seem to have reached the venue. We wonder whether that's where the real deals get done.Ed King, author of the Climate Diplomacy Brief, joins Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson from Antalya with the gossip and the announcements (and some reassurance for those of us who stayed home).Türkiye holds the gavel and Australia runs the negotiations, so who's actually in charge? The flagship pledge to get electricity to 35% of global energy use by 2035 doesn't say the power has to be clean. Campaigners call that a flaw. Christiana calls it creative ambiguity. Countries still can't agree whether there should be a cover decision at all. And with the UK's Andy Burnham the only G7 leader to make the trip, the clearest leadership so far has come from the Solomon Islands, with $400,000 for the Green Climate Fund.Afterwards, the hosts ask whether the COP is turning into something other than a negotiation. Christiana has a name for it. Tom confesses to a heresy about what really keeps fossil fuels in the ground. And a question from former US negotiator Holly Kaufman goes to the hardest part of Brazil's fossil fuel roadmap: will it stop anyone drilling new fields?UN climate chief Simon Stiell keeps saying a COP isn't a silver bullet. After a UN warning that 1.5°C will be overshot, what would count as a COP31 success? And with no US in the room and China keeping quiet, who leads in week two?Learn More:📰 Subscribe to the Climate Diplomacy Brief, Ed King's daily dispatches from inside COP31📺 Watch our full conversation with Chris Bowen, COP31's president of negotiations🎧 Listen to our episode with Palau's President Surangel Whipps Jr. on what climate finance looks like from the Pacific⚡ Read Climate Home on who's backed the 35-by-35 electrification pledge, Türkiye's non-binding target, and the row over whether the extra electricity needs to be clean🌍 Read PINA on the Solomon Islands' pledge to the Green Climate Fund, the first pledge to the fund's next round of funding📊 Read Carbon Brief's analysis of COP31 delegations, which counts more than 92,000 registered attendees, possibly the most at any COP🛢️ Read Carbon Brief's Q&A on Brazil's fossil fuel roadmap, the plan Lula wants Türkiye and Australia to pick up and run with🌳 Explore the Brazil-led deforestation roadmap, its companion on ending forest loss, and why some countries didn't sign on🌡️ Read UNEP's Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return, on how to keep the overshoot of 1.5°C as small and as short as possible🏆 Discover the 2026 TIME100 Climate list, featuring quite a few friends of the podcastJoin the conversation:🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipeYoutube @OutrageandOptimism Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism Or get in touch with us via this form.Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksAssistant Producer: Saoirse WilsonShowrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan 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.
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    38 mins
  • JUST IN: Trump’s midterm wipeout. Was climate secretly on the ballot?

    JUST IN: Trump’s midterm wipeout. Was climate secretly on the ballot?
    Nov 5 2026
    “I wasn’t on the Ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”So says President Trump, who was “a little bit surprised” by the midterms. The results were unambiguous. Democrats comfortably took the House and the Senate, and won the popular vote by 13 points: the widest margin in a nationwide election in half a century.This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson pick through the Blue-nami. Trump blames fuel prices, pushed up by the war in Iran. Nobody on the campaign trail called that a climate issue, but Christiana doesn’t think they needed to. So is climate now winning elections without ever being named? And with plenty of the new Democrats running on “all of the above” energy, what does the win actually mean for the second-biggest emitter on the planet?From January, Democrats can block Trump’s bills, hold the purse strings and investigate his administration. But he keeps the veto, and he still runs foreign policy - including whatever the US does, or doesn’t do, at COP31.And with COP31 opening in Antalya on Monday, Christiana talks to Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy and the man running the negotiations (while Türkiye hosts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Can he convince Christiana that a split presidency can work?Learn More📺The full conversation with Chris Bowen on our YouTube channel (coming soon). 🔎 Marianne Lavelle at Inside Climate News on why climate is on the ballot, even if it's not in candidates' campaign messages⚖️ Dan Farber at Legal Planet on why the midterms matter for energy and environment, and which climate rollbacks a new Congress can and can't stop. Not discussed in the episode, but it sets out the detail behind Christiana's list of what Congress can do.📊 The UN Environment Programme's Emissions Gap Report 2026, the overshoot findings Chris Bowen responds to🔗 Turkish Minute on how the Türkiye-Australia leadership split raises questions over COP31, including Murat Kurum's view of who has the final say🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipeJoin the conversationJoin the conversation:Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form.Production creditsSenior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan 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.
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    44 mins
  • Lula Has Four More Years. Does the Amazon?

    Lula Has Four More Years. Does the Amazon?
    Oct 29 2026
    Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as President of Brazil, and Ursula von der Leyen says democracy has won in Brazil. But things are never simple. Donald Trump says it looked like “another rigged election”. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president, announced he wants the result annulled, before boarding a plane to the US despite a Brazil Supreme Court order to surrender the travel documents. This week, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac ask how much of his forest agenda Lula can get past the most conservative Congress since the 1980s, and what to make of reports that Washington is floating Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-General.Just days before the vote, satellite data showed the Brazilian Amazon had lost 3,335 square kilometres of forest in a year, the lowest since records began in 1988. The global picture is grimmer. The world promised to end deforestation by 2030, and since 2021 it has cleared 10.7 million hectares more than its own pathway allowed. That’s an area roughly the size of Iceland that should still be forest.Christiana speaks with Nicola Ranger, Executive Director of Earth Capital Nexus and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. In GDP terms, a forest is still worth what you get for cutting it down. Bond markets seem to disagree: Nicola’s research finds countries that degrade their nature are paying more to borrow. Why are the poorest countries paying the most? And will the money for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility arrive in time to change the sums?Tom, who lives in a country with 13% forest cover, wants to know how Costa Rica nearly tripled its own. And if forests were once thought too big to fail, are we now ready to treat them as too critical to lose?Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimismYouTube @OutrageandOptimismLearn more🌳 Read the Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, the annual check on the 2030 forest goals, which found around 7 million hectares lost in 2025 and $410 billion a year going to potentially harmful farm subsidies🛰️ Read Al Jazeera on Brazil’s record-low Amazon deforestation, the satellite figures from Brazil’s space agency showing clearing down 42% in a year and 71% since 2022💰 Understand the race to fund the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, the Brazil-led fund still chasing its first $10 billion, with at least 20% of payments ring-fenced for Indigenous peoples and local communities📉 Read Kicking away the green ladder, Nicola’s research with Alexander Wollenweber and Dieter Wang, which finds nature degradation raises government borrowing costs, by up to three times the average in lower-income countries🌧️ Explore Too big to fail, the Earth Capital Nexus paper arguing that some ecosystems are so central to the economy that we should monitor and protect them like critical infrastructure🇨🇮 Discover Côte d’Ivoire’s sustainability-linked finance framework, which ties the country’s borrowing to keeping forest loss below 300,000 hectares between 2025 and 2030🐟 Explore Trase, which follows the soy, beef, palm oil and cocoa linked to deforestation through global supply chains, all the way to the countries that buy them🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipeOr get in touch with us via this form.Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksAssistant Producer: Saoirse WilsonShowrunner: Caitlin HanrahanThis 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.
    Show More Show Less
    44 mins
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