Climate Unf*cked

Anna Hughes is the Director of Flight Free UK, a charity that encourages people to travel without flying and runs the Flight Free Challenge to take a year off flying. Katie Thompson flew as a commercial pilot for about 20 years and ran the flight safety department for a large private jet operator, before returning to university for a master’s in sustainable air transport management and founding Bumprints, a nonprofit that raises awareness among airline passengers.

In this conversation, I ask Anna and Katie what may be the hardest topic in climate: why flying is so difficult to talk about, why it has no like-for-like substitute the way a vegan burger does for meat, and why almost nobody thinks of themselves as a frequent flyer. We get into why international jet fuel goes untaxed, how contrails add a second warming effect on top of CO2, and why they doubt sustainable aviation fuel can solve the problem. We also ask whether it’s hypocritical to fly to climate conferences, what the climate justice side of flying looks like, and what taking a year off flying can actually give you.

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Find Anna’s work: https://flightfree.co.uk/
Find Katie’s work: https://bumprints.org/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 Why flying is the hardest climate conversation
2:54 Even climate nerds struggle
4:16 There’s no like-for-like swap for a trip to Iceland
8:14 Take it off the menu and your tastes change
10:00 A year off flying, not never again
15:27 Honeymoon to Thailand by rail, and a pilot’s Mayday
18:22 Who is the problem?
21:50 Why nobody thinks they’re a frequent flyer
24:20 Yet fuel is 0% tax, but car fuel is 50%
26:17 How contrails and 9/11 exposed flying’s second warming effect
30:12 Adding flights took a 0.8 tonne footprint to 16 tonnes
34:34 The first generation to take flying for granted
37:55 Why the UK has a special responsibility on flying
44:11 Why the climate justice message rarely lands
46:26 Lockdown, mystery flights and private jets for dogs
49:38 Electric planes and the 0.6% problem
54:33 How sustainable is ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ really?
58:29 How to pick the lowest carbon flight if you must fly
1:00:06 Is it hypocritical to fly to climate conferences?
1:03:59 Leading by example
1:09:47 When your friends keep asking you to fly
1:11:42 Slovenia by train for £332

Lennard de Klerk is the lead author of the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War and has worked on climate change for more than 25 years. Today, his focus is the emissions from war and the military, including the work of calculating the climate cost of the war in Ukraine.

In this conversation, I wanted to ask Lennard whether NATO’s push towards 3.5% of GDP on defence can ever sit alongside net zero, and why most military emissions come from peacetime operations rather than active conflict. Lennard breaks down where the roughly 311 million tonnes of CO2 from four years of war in Ukraine came from, including warfare itself, landscape fires, reconstruction and rerouted flights, explains how fossil fuel dependence is also a security weakness, and shares what a post-war rebuild with hemp, recycled steel and low-carbon cement could look like. We also chat about the effort to have Russia held accountable for climate damage through the Council of Europe’s compensation process, what the social cost of carbon really measures, and why Lennard stopped flying within Europe.

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Find Lennard’s work: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warbon/?originalSubdomain=ua

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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0:00 Does increasing defence spending shatter climate targets?
4:40 The 2 competing worlds of defence and climate
8:14 Why calculate the Ukraine war carbon emissions?
12:35 Military emissions are 5.5% of the global total
15:55 The war in Ukraine as another Finland
17:15 What militaries say when you bring up their emissions
20:53 Cutting fossil fuels is a defence strategy
27:32 Biofuels, hydrogen and the alternative fuel problem
29:36 Militaries have gone quiet on their climate targets
30:16 Where the emissions from the war in Ukraine come from
34:24 Wildfires fuelled by war and climate change
37:00 Rebuilding Ukraine with cement and steel
39:32 The flight detours caused by closed Russian airspace
43:28 Building back better, with hemp and recycled concrete
48:06 Replanting Ukraine’s forests for a hotter future
49:24 Can Russia be held liable for climate damage?
56:18 Can a Russian superyacht fund climate claims?
59:08 What on earth is the social cost of carbon?
1:03:18 Why Lennard stopped flying within Europe
1:06:48 Balancing personal footprint with the huge war emissions
1:10:00 The question Lennard wishes more people would ask

Bob Ward is Policy and Communications Director at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who started out as a science reporter at the Daily Telegraph, and one of the few people willing to take on climate sceptics in public, from debating Nigel Farage on GB News to addressing oil and gas executives at International Petroleum Week.

In this conversation, Bob explains why he thinks climate has become a culture war that leaves everyone stuck, why many sceptical arguments about the science are really proxies for fears about government regulation or daily life, and why he separates bad faith actors from people who have simply been misled. We get into the Frank Luntz memo, the shift from denial to delay and the rise of the “lukewarmers”, how climate got caught up in the culture war, and why Bob believes dropping the phrase “net zero” would be a mistake. We also cover the “less than 1% of emissions” argument, why the message of sacrifice doesn’t sell, what a warming climate could cost the UK economy, and why the insurance industry is so alarmed.

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Bob’s LSE Grantham Climate Institute (inc. all research, media and policy) https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/profile/bob-ward/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 Who is winning the climate culture war?
3:11 Why are culture wars bad?
6:09 Who is the villain?
12:14 Does debating sceptics actually change minds?
14:35 The memo that changed science denial forever
16:31 Should you share a stage with bad faith arguments?
20:06 Being right doesn’t win arguments
25:20 From “it’s not happening” to “just grow wine”
33:41 How the UK caught the US culture war
40:36 Should we stop using the phrase ‘Net Zero’?
44:29 “The UK is less than 1% of emissions”
49:38 Have we really failed to bring the public along?
56:20 Is consuming less the answer?
1:00:49 Is flying worth it?
1:05:39 What climate change could cost the UK economy
1:10:51 Why the insurance industry is sounding the alarm
1:15:12 Why you rarely meet a CEO who denies the science
1:18:35 The question Bob is sick of being asked
1:22:10 What Bob wishes more people would ask him

I had the privilege of hosting 3 incredible guests who each deserve an episode of their own. We tackled the topic of optimism, solutions and how the climate story needs to move on to the part where we’re saving the world, not just saying how f*cked we are.

Lucy Siegle is a journalist, broadcaster and author who has reported on climate, nature and the fashion industry's footprint for two decades, including as a reporter on BBC One's The One Show.

Angus Hervey is a political economist and the founding editor of Fix The News, the solutions journalism newsletter that goes looking for the progress the headlines usually miss.

Solitaire Townsend is the co-founder and Chief Solutionist of Futerra, the sustainability agency, and the author of The Solutionists, a book on how business can fix the future.

Together, we each brought a climate solution we’re excited about and discussed them.

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Links

Fix The News: https://fixthenews.com/

Futerra: https://www.wearefuterra.com/

Solitaire’s website for books, speaking and more: https://www.solitairetownsend.com/

Lucy’s Substack: https://theweathermakers.substack.com/

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We also cover:

• The stat that 50% of under 30s think we're doomed, and what that has done to the youth climate movement
• Why the climate movement has been stuck at the "inciting incident" of the story for 30 years
• How Just Stop Oil briefly pushed climate coverage level with mentions of ghosts and cake
• Why climate scientists are more hopeful than the public, and why recycling is still the solution people name most
• Angus on why 2026 has been a low wildfire year globally, and why cameras in Western Europe skew our perception
• Why Angus thinks the biggest climate story is China, from its EV boom to its emissions plateauing
• How giving indigenous groups land tenure could keep carbon in the ground (only 14% have official tenure, according to Angus)
• Why fear doesn't motivate most people, and the pioneers, settlers and prospectors model
• Lucy on Suzanne Simard's forest research and a tourism-funded recovery project with the Hamalco people in British Columbia
• Restage, a plan to recirculate the props and sets the UK film and theatre industry throws away
• How writers and filmmakers can weave climate solutions into romance, action and everyday stories
• The National Emergency Briefing and why it gives people something to do next
• Why Solitaire and Lucy argue that dismissing personal action is sexist, including the women-led sugar boycotts
• Angus on why the UK is doing better than most countries on cutting emissions

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0:00 Why doom does the same job as denial
3:58 Why half of under 30s think we're doomed
6:07 The climate story is stuck in act one
9:29 The fuck doom hats and the waiter who loved one
13:20 Why optimism is a political act
15:10 Ghosts, cake and Just Stop Oil
20:37 Why experts are more hopeful than the public
23:08 Why the world isn't actually on fire
24:50 Climate change is really a China story
27:30 Indigenous land beats locked off parks
29:31 Will good news make people complacent?
32:31 Climate people are the weirdos
34:18 Growing up on coal, now living on solar
37:53 "Is coal bad?"
40:37 Suzanne Simard and the mother tree
42:50 Using tourism money to heal and restore land
47:00 What happens to film sets after the shoot
49:41 On track for five to eight degrees in 1997
51:30 Storytelling is curated emotion, not facts
57:05 Where's the electric Aston Martin in Bond?
59:20 The National Emergency Briefing
1:04:10 Inside the room at the National Emergency Briefing
1:07:33 Why we need to drop the personal action divide
1:12:34 Who benefits when personal action gets dismissed
1:15:40 The UK is doing better than you think

Manjeet Dhakal is Advisor to the Chair of the UN's Least Developed Countries Group and Director of Climate Analytics' South Asia office. He’s been involved with climate negotiations and diplomacy for almost 20 years and now helps the world's most climate-vulnerable nations negotiate international climate policy. He's currently completing a PhD and recently published research on climate attribution in Nepal.

Dr Manal Shehabi, an applied development economist and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford's Institute for New Economic Thinking, who also teaches Economics for Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and sits on Oxford's Children and Climate Initiative.

On August 26th, 2026, a catastrophic flood devastated Nepal's Langtang Valley. A mass of ice and rock detached from a Himalayan peak at approximately 5,200 metres and triggered a flood that has killed more than 1,300 people and left 5,000+ missing. This conversation walks through what actually happened, why the Himalayas are warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, why Nepal producing 0.1% of global emissions makes this a sobering example of climate injustice, and much more.

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Manjeet’s July paper Climate-induced loss and damage in Nepal: attribution analysis and institutional readiness for international support: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2026.1782991/full

Manal Shehabi: https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/manal-shehabi

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Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 What Manjeet saw on the ground
5:08 The new kind of disaster we're facing
9:18 Why the Himalayas are called the third pole
10:13 How permafrost collapse triggered the avalanche
12:07 Why 2 billion people depend on Himalayan glaciers, and the immediate human cost
15:32 Nepal's interconnection with China and India
22:07 Why mountain regions warm faster than the rest of the planet
24:38 The science behind ice, rock, and heat absorption
25:30 Climate justice: Nepal's 0.1% of emissions
26:37 Historical vs current emissions: who pays?
28:55 Why adaptation funding isn't enough, and intergenerational injustice
34:33 What a just response to this disaster looks like
35:34 Why the Loss and Damage Fund hasn't responded
40:55 Concessional grants vs debt, and why we can't treat disasters as isolated
44:32 What you can actually do

Holly Alpine spent a decade at Microsoft, co-founding the company's 10,000-strong employee sustainability group and running programs for data center communities. Then she discovered something that made her leave: the company was signing contracts explicitly designed to help fossil fuel companies extract more oil and gas, faster and cheaper, using AI. Now she's leading one of the only campaigns in the world working to expose what she calls the most underestimated climate threat of the AI era.

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The peer reviewed journal article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-026-00411-0

Enabled Emissions campaign website: https://www.enabledemissions.com/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 AI’s Climate Impact Isn’t What You Think
2:06 What Holly saw Inside Microsoft
5:13 The Emissions Nobody Is Counting
8:45 Why AI Helps Fossil Fuels Far More Than Renewables
12:16 Winning Sustainability Awards While Helping Exxon Drill More
16:10 What AI Actually Does Inside an Oil Well
19:34 The Undrillable Wells AI Made Viable
24:08 Why Fiduciary Duty Is Corporate Folklore
28:52 The Promises Microsoft Made and Didn't Keep
32:21 How Data Centers Became the Entire Climate Story
36:48 You're Only Looking at One Team's Points
40:33 The Biggest Loophole in Climate Accounting
43:36 The Climate Blind Spot Nobody Noticed for a Decade
47:42 Why Pension Funds Are Starting to Listen
52:00 The Coalition Forming Against AI Expansion
56:32 What Keeps Holly Going and What You Can Do

“A newsletter for people pissed off about the climate crisis” is the tagline of Emily Atkin’s newsletter, HEATED. She’s one of the foremost climate journalists in the US and the founder of Heated, an independent newsletter with 150k subscribers dedicated to accountability journalism on the climate crisis.

Originally trained in traditional mainstream media outlets like The New Republic, she left to build her own publication in 2019 after growing frustrated with the reluctance to cover climate change as the power and corruption story it really is. She now writes for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis and want to understand the forces blocking action.

This conversation goes deep into why Emily believes climate change should be covered as a corruption story, not an environmental one. We talk about how BP invented the term "carbon footprint" as a marketing campaign to shift attention away from corporate responsibility, why the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to privatise profits while socialising the costs of climate damage onto everyone else, and why that arrangement is profoundly corrupt. Emily explains why she thinks journalism's obsession with objectivity has made outlets wimps and cowards, why anger is her most powerful tool as a journalist, and why she refuses to comfort people with hope when what they really need is information to act.

We also cover why right wing billionaires buying up media outlets is creating an information crisis, why she spent months investigating an anti solar influencer with two million followers, and why she believes media literacy is one of the biggest barriers to climate action. Emily shares what it's like running an independent publication that refuses to paywall climate news, why she thinks individual action matters more than she used to, and why she wishes more people would leak her documents from inside their companies instead of asking her what gives her hope.

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Find Emily's work at Heated: https://heated.world/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

00:00 Why is climate change a sexy corruption story?

04:30 How BP invented the carbon footprint to shift blame

09:15 Why people feel relief when you reframe climate as a power problem

13:40 What Emily tells people who ask "what can I do?"

18:20 We need to support real journalism

22:50 What the billionaire takeover of media means for climate coverage

28:35 AI’s worst impact isn’t from data centres

34:10 The anti solar influencer with 2m followers

42:25 Why acknowledging downsides makes your argument stronger

48:15 Journalism is about telling the truth, not building bridges

53:40 Why Emily's tagline is "for people who are pissed off"

1:00:20 Compassion without anger becomes pity

1:06:45 How readers respond to emotional, personal climate journalism

1:11:30 Betting platforms are incentivising wildfire arson

1:14:50 Why Emily changed her mind on individual action

1:17:20 The fiction book Emily wants to write about climate absurdity

1:20:35 Why she's tired of being asked what gives her hope

1:23:50 What Emily wishes people would ask her instead

Professor Paul Behrens of the Oxford martin School at the University of Oxford works at the intersection of food systems, climate change, and food security. Originally trained in physics and astronomy, he spent years working on energy systems before turning his attention to what he now believes is one of the most fragile and underestimated threats we face: the food system that feeds us.

Paul is the author of the popular science book, The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science (Indigo Press, 2021) which describes humanity’s current trajectory and possible futures in paired chapters of pessimism and hope. His research and writing on climate, energy, and food, has appeared in scientific journals and media outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Thomson Reuters, Politico, Nature Sustainability, Nature Energy, PNAS, Nature Food, and

We cover

• Climate change is already driving a third of food price inflation in the UK, with drought, flooding, geopolitical instability, and energy shocks potentially pushing prices to 1970s levels
• The UK holds between three days and three weeks of food storage; Finland has nine months
• A Joint Intelligence Committee report on ecosystem collapse was suppressed before being released in abridged form.
• Animals lose between 80–97% of the calories fed to them; that inefficiency becomes catastrophic as climate change shrinks the productive biosphere
• Shifting to a planetary health diet could reduce emissions by 61%, spare an area the size of Scotland, and save the NHS tens of billions of pounds a year
• We massively underestimate each other's willingness to act on climate — 60% of people intending to vote Reform support onshore wind turbines
• Over 40% of the UK supports a meat tax, despite politicians treating it as political suicide
• Food price spikes historically drive political instability and state collapse; climate change contributed to the Syrian conflict and is already destabilising politics worldwide
• Trump's election and the current political atmosphere are partly driven by climate impacts we're not naming as such
• Denmark's food transition plan is the most credible government approach in the world
• New York hospitals made plant-based meals the default and found them cheaper, healthier, and more popular
• Far more grazing land could support arable agriculture than commonly assumed
• Heritage arguments about land use are recent and shouldn't override future food security
• Rewilding and nature management could increase farmer incomes while restoring biodiversity

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Find Paul's work and research at the University of Oxford

Read the National Emergency Briefing at https://www.nebriefing.org/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

00:00 Should we be worried about food system collapse?

04:03 Are we choosing this change or being forced into it?

04:33 The thermodynamics of a shrinking food supply

07:22 What the "planetary health diet" looks like

09:30 How to rewild land the size of Scotland

11:54 Why food decisions are emotional

13:48 We wildly underestimate how much people care

16:25 Meat Tax

18:52 The purpose of misinformation

24:47 How much bad diets are costing the NHS

27:12 The supressed gov. report on food collapse

33:11 The link between food prices and state collapse

36:04 Trump, cost of living and the politics of instability

38:33 Is any country actually food secure?

41:01 The UK has 3 days of food storage. Finland has 9 months

46:19 Could we grow crops on grazing land instead?

51:07 Why plants = electrification for humans

55:58 Denmark's groundbreaking plan

59:10 The NYC hospital expreiment

1:01:02 Paul's billboard message to the world

1:03:48 The one paper Paul wishes everyone would read

1:05:14 What to actually do today

Dr Mark Harber is a consultant nephrologist (kidney doctor) and the Royal College of Physicians' special adviser on healthcare sustainability and climate change.

He's spent years working at the intersection of medicine and the environment as a member of the Sustainable Kidney Care committee, a clinical lead for the NHS London sustainability group, and an advisor to the UCL Partners Climate Collaborative. Now, he helps shape how the RCP advocates and lobbies on healthcare's role in the climate crisis.

This conversation goes deep into the surprisingly stark relationship between heat and human health: why the death rate in London starts climbing at just 24 degrees, why 2026's June heatwave in the UK heatwave produced an estimated 2,900 excess deaths, and why chronic conditions from epilepsy to kidney failure get dramatically worse as the mercury rises. Mark explains why big national statistics can feel strangely meaningless next to a single hospital admission, and why he believes there's little point terrifying the public without giving them something practical to do about it.

We talk about the NHS's own outsized carbon footprint (around 5% of the UK's total, more than the aviation industry) and why it became the first health system in the world to commit to net zero, back in 2019. Mark explains the hidden environmental cost of kidney dialysis, which can use 400 litres of water per session and carries 16 times the carbon footprint of an average NHS patient, and why the UK is on track to be 6 billion litres of water short every day by 2050. We also cover the less obvious ways climate change threatens healthcare itself: 90% of English hospitals at risk of overheating, a tenth to a third at risk of flooding, and disease-carrying mosquitoes now established in France and Italy that never used to survive this far north.

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Learn more about the RCP's Green Physician Toolkit at https://www.rcp.ac.uk/policy-and-campaigns/our-policy-priorities/climate-and-sustainability/green-physician-toolkit/

Find the National Emergency Briefing at https://www.nebriefing.org/

Find Real Zero's 7 Acts to Save the World at https://www.realzero.earth

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: /rob-coop https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 Why 24°C Already Raises the Death Rate
2:52 The Grim Maths Behind 2,900 Excess Deaths
4:17 Why Big Climate Numbers Feel Meaningless
6:20 Should We Be Scaring the Public About Heat?
8:13 The Delhi Cooling Rooms Saving Tuk-Tuk Drivers
10:41 Why Flights Are Up 80% in 20 Years
12:15 The Healthcare Sector Emits More Than Aviation
15:43 Why Institutions Fear the "Art of the Possible"
18:43 Why Your Dialysis Machine Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint
23:13 The Hospital Built to Handle Only 28°C
25:09 The Mosquito Bringing Dengue to Britain
27:35 Methane Is 80 Times Worse Than CO2
29:53 You're More Likely to Leave Your Partner Than Your Bank
33:18 Why Doctors Won't Sell You on Climate
37:12 How One Kilo of Plastic Costs Three of Oil
40:22 Why Politicians Won't Just Tell Us the Truth
44:50 The Hidden Kidney Risk in London's Air
49:43 The Hospital That Stopped Mowing Its Lawns
53:20 What Climate Activism Can Learn From Medicine
56:30 Why "What Can I Do?" Is Almost Enough
59:43 Tell Your Canvasser Climate Change Matters

Per Espen Stoknes is a psychologist, economist, and one of the world's leading experts on why climate change feels so hard to act on—and what actually works to break through that paralysis. He's the author of ‘What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming’, ‘Tomorrow's Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth’ and ‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’

He’s associate professor and co-director of the BI Center for Sustainability and Energy, and someone who's spent decades unpacking the psychological barriers that keep us stuck: distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity.

This conversation goes deep into the mechanics of climate psychology—why telling people what to do almost always backfires, why inequality is one of the biggest accelerants of climate inaction, and why the pendulum swings of history might be our strangest source of hope. We talk about why comedy and messengers like Joe Rogan matter more than scientists think, why AI and privacy loss mirror the climate crisis psychologically, and why Per believes the next frontier isn't just decarbonisation—it's rewilding finance itself.

We cover why attacking someone's identity shuts down climate conversation immediately, how social trust is the variable that determines whether governments can actually implement climate policy, and why the UK cutting 2% of global emissions matters far more than the math suggests. Per explains why the five barriers to climate action—distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity—also apply to digital privacy and AI, why inequality creates a vicious cycle that makes climate action nearly impossible, and why universal basic income might be one of the most powerful climate policies we're not talking about.

We also talk about why Per thinks Trump's second term might accidentally be the pendulum swing we need, why possibilism is a better philosophical framework than optimism or pessimism, and why the people with the answers—indigenous communities—are the ones we keep ignoring. He shares his vision for biodiversity credits that pay land stewards for regeneration, why AI could either accelerate the climate transition or make inequality catastrophically worse, and why the questions he wishes people would ask are about the assumptions underneath everything we're doing.

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Find Per's work at stoknes.com

Learn more about Earth for All at earth4all.life

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

0:00 Why Facts Make People Believe You Less
2:35 The Real Reason Arguments Feel Like Personal Attacks
3:26 The One Question That Defuses Any Disagreement
4:09 What Jeremy Clarkson Gets Right
6:13 Why You Only Listen to People Like You
8:51 A Psychologist's Dream Messenger: Joe Rogan
9:49 The Two Groups Who Care Least About Climate
10:50 Why You Need 9 Good Stories for Every Bad One
14:49 The Solar Boom That Could Power the Entire Planet
18:11 Why Systems Thinking Kills Polarisation
22:07 The Pizza That Explains Why Your 2% Matters
24:11 How One Norwegian Tax Made Your EV Cheaper
27:35 Why You're Not as Powerless as You Feel
30:10 The Two Trends That Could Undo Everything
34:32 The 5 Turnarounds We Actually Need
37:08 Why Things Get Worse Before They Get Better
42:02 "I Fell Through the Floor When Trump Won Again"
42:45 The Black Swan That Changes Everything
46:05 The Hidden Link Between Inequality and Climate
53:16 Is AI a Confirmation Bias Machine?
57:38 How AI Could Quietly Make Us More Unequal
58:08 The Surprising Ways AI Could Save Us
1:05:37 What One Person Can Actually Do About AI
1:07:54 The 4 Roles You Didn't Know You Had
1:10:03 Why Climate and Privacy Break Your Brain the Same Way
1:12:00 The Data Trap You're Walking Into
1:15:05 Why We Can't See Inside AI
1:16:05 Paying Indigenous Tribes to Protect Jaguars
1:19:16 The Questions Per Is Sick of Being Asked
1:21:01 Why 35 Years of Sustainability Failed

Stuart Goldsmith is a stand-up comedian with 20 years of experience who's spent the last five years doing something almost no other comic attempts: making audiences laugh about the climate crisis.

Professor Lauren Feldman teaches Media and Climate Change at Rutgers University, where her students regularly bring in clips of Stuart's work to dissect in class. She's the co-author of A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, and her research unpacks why comedy is one of the most powerful tools we have for breaking through climate denial, fear, and apathy.

This conversation explores why it's so hard to make people laugh about something that genuinely terrifies you, why comedy works when facts and fear don't, and why the brand of climate action is so catastrophically bad that we desperately need comedians to fix it. We talk about the psychology of counter-arguing, why charged information shuts down the prefrontal cortex, and how comedy creates a kind of social lubricant that lets unpalatable truths slip past our defenses.

Stuart explains why he had to convince himself not to cry on stage, why his climate confessions format helps people admit their hypocrisy without shame, and why he's trying to write the perfect joke about how activists are the only professionals not allowed to fly. Lauren shares research showing that comedy increases engagement, makes messages more memorable, and helps people feel less alone in their climate anxiety. We also talk about why partisan comedy backfires with skeptical audiences, why the tabloid press treated Britain's hottest May on record like a beach party, and why Stuart believes the more you learn about climate change, the less paralyzed you feel.

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Find Stuart's work and UK tour dates at stuartgoldsmith.com

Find Lauren's book A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar on Amazon and University of California Press

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

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Chapters

00:00 Lauren studies Stuart's work
01:53 Is it odd to make people laugh about something that scares you?
04:18 What emotion should comedy target?
05:59 Comedy as a social lubricant
08:23 Why learning more makes you less scared
11:40 The brand of climate is terrible
13:44 Lauren's research: nonpartisan vs partisan comedy
17:39 Does comedy break down barriers better than other mediums?
20:11 How comedy reduces counter-arguing
23:43 Jokes as compressed files
24:38 The hypocrisy bit: flying to a climate conference
26:27 Do you lean into virtue signalling or stay away?
29:02 Climate confessions and why they work
33:05 Does shaming change behaviour?
35:44 Disrupting the doomism narrative
39:33 Does it work differently online?
45:16 The heatwave and making the invisible visible
48:48 Arthur's Seat caught fire: complexity in comedy
50:16 Talking about effects vs causes
51:34 The Joint Intelligence Committee report on biodiversity
54:52 Your phones are fine, everyone else's have slave minerals
56:17 If you had a billboard, what would it say?
1:03:09 The joke Stuart wishes he could write
1:06:51 Personal action as background work, not the solution
1:09:58 Where to find Stuart and Lauren's work

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Vojtech Vosecky is one of the world's leading voices on the circular economy, with nearly a quarter of a million people following his work on LinkedIn. He's an environmental engineer who's spent over a decade working inside the European Parliament, advising governments, training over 350 circular economy professionals, and building a global community of changemakers across 20 cities from Barcelona to Melbourne. His mission is simple: turn as many people as possible into circular economists, because he believes that's where the exponential impact lies in unfucking our climate.

This conversation unpacks why 90% of people think climate change is only about energy when the other half of the coin is resources. We dive into what the circular economy actually is, why nature has always been circular, and why recycling is the worst of all the good options we have. Vojtech explains why 45% of global emissions come from how we make, use, and waste stuff, and why the plastic bottle you drink from in 30 seconds represents months of materials, fossil fuels, and energy that's lost the moment you throw it away.

This is a masterclass in rethinking waste, rethinking consumption, and rethinking what it means to be a changemaker instead of a consumer.

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Vojtech on LinkedIn and learn more about his circular economy training program: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vojtechvosecky/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

Chapters

00:00 What is the circular economy?

06:30 Linear vs circular: the plastic bottle example

12:15 Why climate isn't just about energy

18:40 The problem with the carbon footprint

24:50 Individual action vs systemic change

30:20 Building a community of circular economists

36:45 Which sectors need circularity most?

42:10 Gothenburg's housing crisis solved without building

48:30 How Philips pivoted from selling to leasing light

54:00 The 9 circular business models explained

1:02:15 Why 40% of food is wasted before it's eaten

1:08:40 Designing waste out of the system

1:14:20 What individuals can actually do

1:20:30 Stop being a consumer, start being a changemaker

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Aurélie Maréchal is the Director of Positive Money Europe, an organisation working to reform the economic system so that it works for people and the planet. She's spent 15 years inside the European policy machine, watching the Green Deal go from a fringe idea to the headline of the European Commission, and then watching it disappear from political discourse entirely in just five years. She now spends her time showing policymakers, central banks, and businesses why the way we handle money, interest rates, and investment is one of the most powerful climate levers we're not using properly.

This conversation unpacks the relationship between climate and economics that almost nobody explains clearly: why fossil fuels drive inflation, why raising interest rates to fight that inflation actually makes renewable energy harder to finance, and why the European Central Bank's standard playbook is accidentally locking us into the very system we're trying to escape.

We talk about fossil inflation and climate inflation, why renewable energy projects are more sensitive to interest rate changes than fossil fuel infrastructure, and why the Green Deal went from mainstream policy to politically toxic in the space of two election cycles. Aurélie also shares what it's like working as an insider in Brussels, why lobbying isn't a dirty word but power imbalances make it dangerous, and why the arguments that work today aren't about saving the planet, they're about sovereignty, security, and competitiveness.

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Positive Money at: https://positivemoney.org

Follow Positive Money Europe on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, and TikTok

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

Chapters

00:00 Why are we talking about money?

06:30 What is monetary policy?

12:45 What is fossil inflation and climateflation?

18:20 Why raising interest rates makes renewables harder to finance

24:10 Evidence that renewables reduce electricity prices

29:40 The rise and fall of the Green Deal

35:50 Why climate arguments don't work anymore

41:15 The insider/outsider strategy

47:30 How lobbying actually works

54:00 What can you do after this episode?

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Christophe Hodder is the world's first UN-appointed Climate Peace and Security Advisor, working in Somalia, the 5th most climate-vulnerable country on Earth. He's spent six years on the frontlines of where climate breakdown meets armed conflict, helping communities navigate droughts, floods, displacement, and violence in a country that contributes just 0.08% of global emissions but bears some of the heaviest consequences.

This conversation goes deep into what climate insecurity actually looks like on the ground: two goat herders fighting over shrinking grazing land, clans feuding over water access, young men with guns caught in cycles of violence made worse by collapsing ecosystems. Christophe explains why climate change doesn't directly cause conflict, but it intensifies every existing tension, and why restoring land, building trust between communities, and creating economic opportunities are all part of the same solution.

We also talk about what climate finance pays for when it's done right, how Al-Shabab uses resource control as a weapon, and how the instability happening in Somalia can eventually show up on Britain's doorstep through migration, terrorism, and disrupted global trade.

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find out more about the UN Climate Security Mechanism and follow Chris on LinkedIn

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

Chapters

00:00 What is a Climate Peace and Security Advisor?

04:15 How climate impacts show up as violence on the ground

08:45 Somalia's conflict context and why it matters

13:20 How drought and flooding drive resource competition

18:10 The Mataban project: building trust between clans

24:30 Somalia's first £100 million in climate finance

29:50 How Al-Shabab exploits resource scarcity

35:15 Why half of Somalia's population is under 30

40:20 Kenya vs Somalia: stable ecosystems vs conflict spirals

46:10 What surprised Chris most in six years

51:30 Success stories: from small trials to big programs

56:45 Why this matters to someone in the UK

1:07:10 What Chris wishes more people would ask

1:10:30 Where to learn more and get involved

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

General Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE spent 35 years in the British military, rising to the executive committee of defence. He's now one of the most important voices connecting climate change to national security, arguing that the biggest threats to Britain aren't just missiles and tanks, but water scarcity, food system collapse, migration flows, and the geopolitical contests opening up in a melting Arctic.

This conversation was recorded twice. The first time was on the day the Iran war started. Given that Richard's expertise sits at the intersection of conflict, energy security, and climate, we decided to re-record a few weeks later to capture how the war has changed the global energy landscape and what it means for the UK's climate and security strategy going forward.

We talk about why national security is much more than defence spending, why the Straits of Hormuz closing should terrify anyone who cares about food or fuel, and why building renewable energy isn't just good for the planet, it's one of the smartest military strategies we could deploy. Richard also explains why electric tanks are a stupid idea, why biodiversity loss is the crisis nobody's talking about, and why pragmatic optimism is the only mindset that works when facing a problem this big.

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

00:59 Impact of Iran War

05:34 Will the war speed up renewables?

09:18 Africa's hidden fertilizer crisis

12:08 Defence spending vs the green transition

18:52 What national security actually means

20:49 Food, water and energy are already under threat

23:37 The 5 types of climate security

25:35 The Arctic: a new geopolitical battleground

26:58 Migration is where the rubber hits the road

43:49 Biodiversity: the dog that hasn't barked

50:00 Iraq, heat and a military turning point

56:15 How do you make the military care about climate?

1:02:46 The company that proved sustainability is cheaper

1:11:20 Why electric tanks is the wrong question

1:14:45 $250 a litre: fuel cost soldiers' lives

1:19:49 The UK port responsible for 25% of our energy

1:25:54 Pragmatic optimism: the military mindset

1:31:01 "UK is only 2%" — Richard's answer

1:39:20 Hope and opportunity: what to take away

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Dr Simon Clark is a climate YouTuber with 720,000+ subscribers who's spent 15 years translating climate science for audiences who didn't know they needed it. He's a physicist by training, a communicator by choice, and someone who's watched misinformation campaigns evolve from fringe conspiracy theories into sophisticated, well-funded operations that now shape how millions of people understand the climate crisis.

This conversation goes deep into why lies are winning, why the truth resists simplicity, and why the platforms we rely on to spread information are fundamentally designed to reward the wrong things. We also talk about what's actually working when it comes to UK climate policy, why Ed Miliband might be the most underrated figure in British politics right now, and why Simon thinks the Iran crisis could be Asia's Ukraine moment for clean energy.

We cover:

Why climate misinformation is so successful: it's simple, it fits social media, and it tells people what they want to hear

The fundamental shift from debunking to pre-bunking, and why signal-boosting bad arguments by responding to them is a trap

Why food misinformation has escaped scrutiny in a way fossil fuels haven't, and how Big Tobacco's playbook was inherited by the food industry

The conditions that created the misinformation crisis: a deficit in media literacy, platforms designed to reward sensationalism, and billionaires buying up media to control the algorithm

Why democratic oversight of discovery algorithms is one of the most important climate conversations we're not having

Trojan Horse videos: how Simon packages climate content to look like skeptic material, then pulls the rug two minutes in to reach people outside the choir

Why the UK has reduced domestic emissions by over 50% since 1990, and why almost nobody knows that

Simon's honest assessment of the UK government's climate policy: energy gets four stars out of five, nature and biodiversity gets two

Why Ed Miliband knows his stuff, why carbon capture isn't as stupid as people think, and why the decision not to introduce zonal pricing was actually defensible

The Iran crisis as a potential turning point: why this could be Asia's Ukraine moment for renewables, and why it's extraordinary good fortune that the world's largest emitter is also the country building all the clean technology

Why Trump might go down in history as the president who accidentally accelerated the energy transition by creating an oil crisis

The balance between hope and despair, why Simon hates being asked that question, and why the only way to guarantee we don't make it is by stopping

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Simon's work at www.youtube.com/@SimonClark

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

Chapters

00:00 Why is climate misinformation so successful?

08:30 How do you tackle it?

15:42 Food misinformation and the Big Tobacco playbook

23:15 What conditions created the misinformation?

32:40 Should algorithms have oversight?

38:20 Using a Trojan Horse to break out the echo chamber

47:15 The UK’s climate wins most people don’t realise

54:30 How well is the UK gov. really doing?

1:06:20 Carbon capture, zonal pricing, and Ed Miliband

1:18:45 The Iran crisis as Asia's Ukraine moment

1:27:30 Why Trump might accidentally accelerate the transition

1:35:10 The hypothetical video with £100,000

1:42:50 Hope, despair, and why stopping guarantees failure

Check out the UK's most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

This is a slightly different ep. The first ½ is a more traditional podcast chat. But the 2nd ½ is me putting Phil to the test by roleplaying as 4 different people: A secondary school teacher, a middle-class retiree, a young professional and a right-wing politician

Phil Korbel is the co-founder of the Carbon Literacy Project, a Manchester-based charity that has trained over 153,000 people across 50 countries in climate action. Starting from a shared desk with no salary and a big idea, Phil and his co-founder Dave Coleman have built one of the most powerful climate education movements in the world - reaching everyone from security guards to IPCC scientists, wedding planners to funeral directors.

We cover:

• Why recycling is near the bottom of the list, and what actually moves the needle
• The Carbon Literacy formula: how does acting on climate help you thrive in your specific role?
• Why polar bears are banned from Phil's training (and what that says about climate communication)
• The emotional structure of a carbon literacy day and why doom without agency is dangerous
• How 153,000 people got trained mostly through word of mouth
• Why professional advisors - lawyers, accountants, financial advisors - need to understand climate as a core competency
• The "Burt the security guard" story that perfectly captures what a culture shift actually looks like
• How to handle a denier in the room without letting them suck up all the oxygen
• What Phil says to a right-wing politician who thinks clean energy means living in caves
• Why anger about climate might be your most useful tool - if you channel it right

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here:

https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find out more about the Carbon Literacy Project and get trained at carbonliteracy.com

——

Chapters

00:00 Why Phil banned polar bears from carbon literacy training

03:30 What is the Carbon Literacy Project?

09:30 Why does ‘relevance’ matter?

12:40 From a shared desk with no salary to 153,000 people trained

15:42 Why they gave away the IP and became a charity

17:44 What caused the hockey stick growth

20:08 Do you work with high-emitting companies?

22:26 How to handle a denier in the room

25:50 Why doom without agency is dangerous

28:41 Phil’s approach to skeptics

37:02 Role-play 1: The secondary school teacher

46:15 Role-play 2: The middle-class retiree

1:00:26 Role-play 3: The young professional

1:09:32 Role-play 4: The right-wing politician

1:11:05 Energy sovereignty, batteries and the Reform mayor who quietly signed up

1:19:36 The 97 engineers on the bridge

Check out the UK’s most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Kevin Anderson is one of the world's leading climate scientists and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester's Tyndall Centre. A former oil and gas engineer turned academic, he's advised governments across the UK and Wales, worked closely with Greta Thunberg, and spent three decades arguing that the gap between what climate science demands and what policymakers actually do isn't accidental — it's a choice.

In this conversation, we get into the raw numbers behind our climate commitments, why the people who know the most tend to say the least, and why Kevin believes the real agents of change aren't the experts or politicians. They're us.

We cover:

• The three numbers everyone needs to understand about climate change
• Why 1.5°C is almost certainly already gone
• Why net zero 2050 is a moving goalpost that nobody's updating
• The academic "delusion" — why experts say one thing on microphones and something very different over a pint
• Carbon capture, blue hydrogen and SAF
• How climate change is a continuation of colonialism
• Why we are absolutely not "all in this together" — and why pretending we are suits exactly the people it should embarrass
• What he learned fromGreta Thunberg
• Where hope actually lives (hint: it's not renewable energy stats)

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Kevin's writing and talks at climateuncensored.com

——

Chapters

00:00 3 things everyone needs to understand about climate

04:50 Why 1.5 degrees is gone

08:21 Should China’s declining emissions be celebrated?

11:11 Why we should talk about impacts, not temperature

13:41 Where is the communication breaking down?

17:06 Why Kevin believes his field has been deliberately dishonest

19:54 What climate models hide

24:24 How do you find the truth when the whole system is delusional?

29:09 What happens when you challenge academics off the record?

32:28 Why Kevin won't spin the cheery yarn

36:50 How does Kevin know Greta Thunberg?

42:19 How is our approach to climate colonial?

47:03 "We are not all in this together" — emissions inequality within the UK

52:56 Private luxury, public squalor — and who's really paying

57:37 The 4.5x gap between high and low income households

1:05:15 If we could start again, how would we talk about climate differently?

1:10:07 What actually gives Kevin hope?

1:16:36 The questions he wishes people would ask

1:17:42 The question he's tired of being asked

1:19:27 What he wants to leave you with

🎙️

Check out the UK’s most trusted climate action platform, Ecologi at: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Frank Holleman is the founder of Fork Ranger, an app and movement that's helping 150,000+ people to eat more sustainably. He's spent six years proving that the most effective climate action isn't perfection, it's making sustainable eating so ridiculously easy that it slips under people's resistance radar. His philosophy is simple: we don't need a few perfect environmentalists, we need millions of people taking imperfect action.

This conversation unpacks why food is responsible for one third of global emissions, why beef is five times worse than chicken, and why replacing beef with literally anything else is the single easiest climate win most people aren't taking. We also talk about the psychology of behaviour change, why going from "never again" to "90% less" makes all the difference, and how eating seasonally became Fork Ranger's most popular product even though it only reduces 2% of food emissions.

Frank also shares the framework that drives his entire approach: make the invitation to change small enough that it never triggers fight or flight, and why level three of sustainable eating isn't about cutting dairy, it's about inviting two friends to start level one.

——

In this episode, we dive into:

Why food causes one third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and over half of that comes from meat (even though it contributes only 17% of calories but uses 83% of agricultural land)

The carbon footprint gap: beef is five times worse than chicken, which means swapping beef for chicken is a bigger climate win than most people realize (and you don't even have to go vegetarian)

Why there IS a role for animals in a sustainable food system, but only on marginal lands in small amounts, which means meat becomes a luxury, not a weekly staple

The two hardest parts of eating sustainably: the unknown and behavior change itself (finding new recipes, imagining what it tastes like without meat), and then the social pressure of being the only one who cares at the dinner table

Fork Ranger's three levels: Level 1 is replace beef with chicken or pork (not even vegetarian, just different meat). Level 2 is reduce food waste (one third of all food is wasted, mostly at home, and it's usually because we're too picky). Level 3 is invite two friends to start Level 1 and 2, because we don't need perfect environmentalists, we need millions taking action

Why food waste is the second level, not cutting dairy: it's a huge environmental problem, and solving it reinforces the mindset that food is valuable, not a cheap commodity we can afford to throw away

The 25% tipping point: if a quarter of people in a group do something against the norm, the rest become so uncertain about what's normal that they follow along and it suddenly flips (like fist bumps vs handshakes)

Book recommendations: Kaizen: One Small Step to Change Your Life, Project Drawdown, Change: How to Make Big Things Happen, and You Are What You Love

——

This podcast is sponsored by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Fork Ranger at: https://forkranger.com

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

00:00 Why is eating sustainably hard?
06:41 Why we need to talk about meat

10:52 Why You Don't Have To Go Vegan
12:57 Food Causes 1/3 Of All Climate Change

14:32 The Important Truth For Meat Lovers

21:13 The Psychology Of Behaviour Change

26:49 The 3-Level System For Eating Sustainably

30:39 Why food waste is a huge problem

35:44 Is your app actually changing behaviour?

40:01 The 25% Tipping Point That Could Change Everything
43:28 Influential Books and Resources

47:51 Shopping Malls, Consumerism & Why Eating Is Political
52:04 Unexpected impact of eating seasonally
57:26 Individual Choices vs. Systemic Change

Check out Ecologi at https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth.

Juliet Davenport founded Good Energy and spent 20 years proving that a distributed renewable energy business could actually work driven by the philosophy that ordinary people, not governments or corporations, should drive the energy transition.

This conversation goes deep into the parts of the energy debate that almost nobody explains clearly — why your energy bills are high, who's actually responsible for fixing the grid, and whether lower carbon and lower costs can genuinely happen at the same time.

We talk about why wind and solar were designed to maximise output rather than serve customers, how the national grid went from managing 30 power stations to millions of generators overnight, and the uncomfortable truth about why fossil fuel lobbying works as well as it does.

Juliet also shares the framework that shaped her entire approach to climate action — and why she thinks getting angry at bad actors is one of the least effective things you can do.

——

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

In this episode, we dive into:

Why energy conversations should be about people, not power stations - and how we've spent decades designing renewables to maximise output instead of delivering what consumers actually need

The engineering mistake that's costing us billions: wind turbines designed for maximum megawatt hours instead of smooth, predictable output that matches when people use power

How the UK energy system went from managing 30 fossil fuel generators to millions of renewable sources - and why the data and software still aren't good enough to handle it

Marginal pricing explained: why gas sometimes sets the energy price (and sometimes doesn't) - and why in summer we actually get too much renewable power, causing prices to go negative

The price cap paradox: why the policy that protected consumers for 15 years might now be keeping energy bills higher than they need to be (because everyone buys power at the same time)

Why decoupling energy prices from gas isn't the answer - it'll happen naturally as renewables grow, and there are bigger regulatory fixes that would cut bills faster

The lobbying reality: fossil fuel companies will fight to protect their business model until they can't - so Juliet built Good Energy to prove a zero-carbon business could work commercially, not as a charity

Why AI energy use is like "using precision laser tooling to cut bread" - we need quantum computing for low-accuracy tasks and smarter algorithms, not powering everything with coal-fired data centers

The three forces needed for systemic change: activism (to open conversations), policy (to set direction), and business (to deliver) - and why anger between bad actors and activists can actually get stuck in a loop that prevents progress

What Juliet would do with a billion pounds: grid reinforcement, European interconnectors, automatic meter readers in every UK home (not overcomplicated smart meters), an innovation fund for energy efficiency, and a democracy campaign so people understand energy beyond media filters

Why households should run like mini power stations - using energy at the right time of day automatically, without expecting consumers to think about it

The Finnish town heated entirely by waste heat from a data centre - and why tech companies aren't being smart enough about secondary energy use

——

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

00:00 Energy Should Be About People, Not Power Stations

04:30 Why Renewables Were Designed Wrong From the Start

08:30 The 2030 Clean Power Plan & Fixing Government Contracts

12:00 Why the National Grid Is Struggling to Keep Up

16:30 Can We Have Lower Bills AND Lower Carbon?

20:30 How Energy Prices Are Actually Decided

27:00 Are Fossil Fuel Companies Actively Blocking Change?

33:00 Why Getting Angry at Bad Actors Doesn't Work

40:30 Why Activism, Policy & Business Are The Levers of Change

48:30 AI's Energy Problem & Why Big Tech Isn't Being Smart

56:00 Where Juliet Would Spend £1M, £1B & £100B

1:03:30 The Question Nobody Asks Her

1:06:30 How Do We Accelerate the UK's Clean Energy Transition?

Kate Williams is CEO of 1% for the Planet, the global movement founded by Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard that's certified over $820 million in environmental giving - and they're on track to hit their first billion. She's spent the last 11 years scaling a model that proves capitalism can work differently: 1% of revenue (not profit) goes to vetted environmental nonprofits, no matter what kind of year you've had.

It means rent for the planet (and its financial discipline) is baked into the P&L. And it's proof that simple actions, done repeatedly, in community, at scale, can aggregate to billions of dollars in impact - without putting a ceiling on what companies can do beyond that.

——

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

In this episode, we dive into:

→ What trends is she seeing in the market?

→ How is 1% for the Planet different from Patagonia?

→ Why should nonprofits exist separate from the market?

→ What has Kate learned from Yvon? (Patagonia’s founder)

→ Why did the pandemic cause a huge increase in sign-ups?

→ How is 1% using capitalism’s mechanisms for good?

→ What are non-profit’s role in climate progress?

→ Would Kate pick up a call from ExxonMobil?

——

Find out more about 1% for the Planet at: https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/

Connect with Kate Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katewilliams87/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

Timestamps

00:00 Non profit’s role in climate

05:42 What is 1% for the Planet?

11:28 Why 1% of Revenue, Not Profit?

18:35 Vetting Nonprofits and Impact Areas

23:47 Dollar-Per-Impact vs Systemic Change

27:29 How can we do capitalism differently?

29:51 How is 1% like a tax?

33:55 Why 1% on revenue, not profit?

40:38 How has Kate grown 1%?

44:37 Why did sign-ups increase in covid?

49:33 What has Kate learned from Yvon (Patagonia founder?)

55:28 Does the ‘green’ movement exclude people?

01:09:45 Being an "N of Many" vs Patagonia's "N of One"

01:06:33 Trends Kate is seeing

01:14:19 “What do you wish more people would ask you?”

01:19:47 “What are you fed up of being asked?”

01:22:00 How to learn more about 1%?

Dr. Renée Lertzman is a climate psychologist who's worked with the likes of Google, Transport for London, the White House,and WWF - and her TED Talk has been viewed over 2 million times. She trains changemakers, organisations, and businesses around the world to stop using outdated models of human behaviour and start applying what we actually know about psychology to create real, lasting change.

Most of us are working from an old, outdated understanding of humans as rational, logical beings - and it's killing our effectiveness. Her work is about ditching the "yell, tell, and sell" approach and learning how to create the relational conditions where people can access the care they already have.

——

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

In this episode, we dive into:

Why you can't make anyone care about climate - and the reframe that actually works: people already care, but something's getting in the way of that care

The three things blocking people from acting on climate: feeling powerless, perceived conflicts with identity/heritage, and lack of safety to express vulnerability

"Yell, tell, and sell" - the three dominant (and failing) approaches to climate communication: moralising and scaring people, over-educating with facts, and toxic positivity cheerleading

Why motivational interviewing works: asking "what's your experience with flying?" instead of "don't you realise how bad flying is for the planet?"

The Transport for London cycling campaign that showed a woman riding through a park with flowers - and why honest, gritty messaging (like showing someone drenched and miserable) would actually work better

How Renée trained message researchers to talk with conservative Republican climate skeptics using active listening - and by the end of a two-minute script, they were saying "yeah, let's do something about climate"

Why that breakthrough research can't get traction - and Renée's frustration that the climate world won't listen to what actually works

The question everyone needs to interrogate: what is your theory of change? (Inspiration? Storytelling? Market transformation? Better research? Processing feelings? The arts?)

Why charged information that evokes disgust, shame, blame, or guilt actually impairs our prefrontal cortex - we literally can't process the information we're being given

The five guiding principles for effective changemaking: attune, reveal, convene, equip, and sustain

Why Renée draws the line at having conversations with people who don't recognize her humanity (like Trump) - but why the "messy middle" of people feeling fearful and threatened is where our energy needs to go

Her upcoming book The Changemaker Code - a playbook for anyone who cares deeply about the world and wants to be more effective while protecting their own resilience and well-being

——

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

Timestamps

00:00 Psychology of Climate Communication

01:58 How do I make people care reframe

06:31 Creating the conditions for change

11:23 The Air Travel Pilot Project

14:05 Transport for London Cycling example

19:45 Just Stop Oil and the Spectrum of Climate Action

23:14 3 Ineffective Approaches

25:51 Theories of Change: What Really Drives Human Behaviour

29:42 Republican Climate Skeptics Project: Listening Works

40:16 What about Trump?

45:58 Renée’s upcoming book

48:26 The Neuroscience of Change: Why Fear Backfires

50:28 Final Bits: Being Seen and Heard

Mark Shayler has spent 35 years working in sustainability before it was cool - and he's saved his clients over $200 million while doing it. He's an environmental consultant, innovation specialist, and straight-talking force of nature who works with everyone from Coca-Cola to Unilever to tiny manufacturing businesses in Bradford. He believes that, whilst business created most of the world's problems, it's also the thing that can fix them.

Mark doesn't do sandals-and-placards environmentalism. He meets companies where they are, speaks the language of profit and loss, and isn't afraid to work with the "bad guys" if it means shifting their trajectory by even half a degree. This is sustainability from the inside out - messy, pragmatic, and unapologetically commercial.

In this episode, we dive into:

Why "being green" has become a way of beating people down instead of democratising climate action - and how judgment creates division, not progress

The evolution of corporate sustainability requests: from "keep me out of prison" to "keep me lean" to "help me care more" to today's "help me stay relevant and attract talent"

Why Mark would work with Shein - and exactly what he'd change (regenerative cotton, circular polyester, legitimate leasing instead of borrowing-with-tags-on)

The project-level litmus test: if you can't put the company name on your intro slide without embarrassment, don't take the work

Why quarterly reporting and employer-tied healthcare in America are the biggest brakes on innovation and brave climate action

The "highways department conundrum" - we'll need to see it's too late before we do something about it ("no one's died yet, do you want me to volunteer my 93-year-old nan?")

How consumption became an anti-depressant and why we're no happier buying our 10th pair of jeans than our first

The fertility of "rapid deposition" - why the last third of life should be about giving knowledge away, not hoarding it (and why Mark's plan is: don't retire, don't die)

Why populism and the rolling back of the green agenda isn't about sustainability at all - it's about trust, science, and people being left behind economically

The rise of "green hushing" and why we need to reclaim the narrative - ecology and economy come from the same Greek word meaning "home"

Finding the rebels and renegades inside organisations - the "weird kids" who take risks and want excitement, not corporate uniformity

Why materiality beats moral purity, why movement is a message, and why "for the many, not the few - and you are the many" is the billboard Mark would put up everywhere

——

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

——

Find Mark at: https://www.markshayler.com/

And his work at: https://www.thisisape.co.uk/

Timestamps:

00:00 How Mark Explains His Work

03:40 The Problem with Green Washing vs Green Hushing

05:39 Working With "Bad" Companies Like Coca-Cola

08:25 How Mark Judges Which Projects to Take

11:53 Projects He's Said No To

13:45 The Tension Between Good People and Bad Systems

16:30 The Shein Hypothetical

21:37 When Companies Change Beyond Recognition

23:07 How Mark Has Saved Clients $200 Million

26:00 What Green People Get Wrong About Communication

29:15 Why American Healthcare Traps Innovation

32:23 Finding the Rebels Inside Organisations

36:48 Imagination vs Constraint in Sustainability

40:35 The Gentle Stick and Massive Carrot Approach

42:28 Why You Shouldn't Retire

46:03 “Mark, can you help me to…”

49:06 The Threat of Populism to Climate Action

52:03 What Comes After "Mark, Can You Help Me?"

54:47 Will We Roll Back the Green Agenda?

58:00 Patriots vs Jingoists

59:20 If Mark Had a Global Billboard

1:01:15 Why Mark Does What He Does

Professor Mike Berners-Lee is the internationally renowned bestselling author of How Bad Are Bananas?, The Burning Question (co-authored with Duncan Clark), There Is No Planet B, and most recently A Climate of Truth. He's a professor at Lancaster University and works on carbon footprinting through his company Small World Consulting, which has worked with companies like BT, Microsoft, and all 15 UK national parks. A couple of weeks ago, Mike chaired the National Emergency Briefing in Westminster Hall to hundreds of political, business, faith, culture and media leaders.

In this episode, we dive into:

Why the "energy transition" is actually an "energy addition" - we've grown renewable energy by 2.5x since the first COP, but fossil fuel use has grown 60% in the same period

The three things actually needed for energy transition: grow renewables, constrain fossil fuel supply through carbon pricing, AND reduce total global energy demand

Why individual carbon footprints don't directly cut global emissions (it's like squeezing a balloon - it pops out elsewhere) - but why they still matter for creating ripple effects and cultural change

The psychology of climate denial - from grief transition curves to "disavowal" (when you understand the evidence but live as if you don't) - and how to move past protective mechanisms

Why carbon accounting is broken - most companies use random system boundaries that make numbers incomparable, and why we need to count everything in supply chains once and once only

The dishonesty crisis: how a "broken trinity" of politics, media and business is dragging each other down instead of raising the game - and why we need a "me too moment" for political deceit

Media ownership matters - who owns what you read, their track record, and how subtle influence shapes thinking over time (including a taxonomy of deceit techniques)

The week Mike spent investivating Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist that exposed hundreds of errors and scientific dishonesty

Bill Gates has "gone bonkers" on climate - from claiming to invent a decades-old formula to missing tipping points entirely, plus his recent memo saying climate isn't the most pressing issue

The journey from How Bad Are Bananas? (individual action) to A Climate of Truth (systemic change) - and why we need humanity to undergo "urgent evolution" to become Anthropocene-fit

Why narrative is everything right now - this is NOT the time to go quiet on climate action, it's time to stand up, be brave, and talk even louder

——

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

——

Find Mike’s latest book A Climate of Truth

Sign the letter for a National Emergency Briefing broadcast: https://www.nebriefing.org/open-letter-keir

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

00:00 Understanding the Green Spectrum
03:08 Psychological Barriers to Climate Action
05:48 The Shift from Individual to Systemic Change
08:57 The Journey of Climate Literature
11:54 The Need for Economic and Political Reform
14:53 Energy Transition: Myths and Realities
17:45 The Role of Technology in Climate Solutions
21:07 The Influence of Family and Upbringing
23:49 The Importance of Honesty in Climate Discourse
33:42 Media Ownership and Its Influence
36:00 Political Nuance and Environmental Discourse
39:53 Personal Responsibility vs. Systemic Change
43:01 The Ripple Effect of Individual Actions
46:48 The Importance of Narrative in Climate Action
49:30 Challenging Misleading Environmental Narratives
56:14 Psychological Barriers to Climate Action
01:01:40 The Call for Courageous Conversations

Sam Zindel is Managing Director at digital marketing agency Propellernet and founder of GEN R. Gen R is an environmental movement that uses music and art to support nature. He's created a jukebox that plants trees for every song played - and it spent the summer with Fatboy Slim.

Sam's mission is to drag environmentalism out of the culture wars and root it back into popular culture where it belongs. No sandals required. No technical jargon. Just fun, accessible climate action that meets people where they already are - at gigs, festivals, and in the pub.

In this episode, we dive into:

Why 80% of people care about the environment but the climate movement is still stuck in an echo chamber - and how to fix it

The story behind the 1959 vinyl jukebox that plants trees, displays holographic bees, and ended up at Fat Boy Slim's Brighton cafe after debuting at Glastonbury

Why scaring people with sea level rise or confusing them with "scope 1 emissions" are terrible entry points to climate action

The school play moment that changed everything - when an 8-year-old read a story about a hummingbird and called out the adults in the room

How Propellornet went from measuring a 91-ton carbon footprint to funding a million trees in three years (and why offsetting for £1,000 felt "appalling")

The three core principles of Gen R: individual decisions without judgment, collective responsibility, and accepting imperfect progress

Why "movement is a message" - from reusable cup schemes at festivals to train travel included in football tickets

The power of imagination over climate denial - even if you don't believe in global warming, who wouldn't want cleaner air at the school drop-off?

Why nature is a superpower in climate storytelling and how the Wildling app makes it accessible to everyone (not just National Trust members)

Book recommendations: How Bad Are Bananas? by Mike Berners-Lee, From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins, and Net Positive by Paul Polman

Thank you to Ecologi for supporting the podcast. They're the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out ‪@Ecologi_hq‬ at https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

Follow the jukebox journey at @gen_r_jukebox on Instagram

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

00:00 The Jukebox that Fatboy Slim hosted

07:40 Engaging Popular Culture for Environmental Change

13:28 Behavior Change Through Storytelling

16:38 Collective vs. Individual Action in Climate Solutions

22:31 Personal Responsibility and Grassroots Action

28:43 Inspiring Hope and Fun in Environmentalism

31:24 The Hummingbird Story that changed Sam’s life

43:09 Awakening to Environmental Responsibility

51:39 Measuring and Reducing Carbon Footprint

58:00 Investing in Nature and Community

01:02:11 The Role of Business in Sustainability

01:09:39 Long-Term Change vs. Short-Term Solutions

Adam Bastock is the founder of People, Planet, Pint. A sustainability meet-up that he’s scaled globally to 15 countries, with only 1.5 full time employees.

In this episode, we cover:

1. Why he’s mellowed on personal action
2. How not to get stuck into perfectionism
3. What people focus on that doesn’t matter
4. How gamification works to change behaviour
5. Difference between demand and need in sustainability
6. How thinking of people as light vs. dark green is helpful
7. The game that even sustainability professionals get wrong
8. How climate action can be thought of as a marketing funnel
9. Why presenting logical facts doesn’t result in logical outcomes

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

You can find out more about Adam on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambastock/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

Oliver Dauert is on a mission to make you an impact millionaire. He’s an ecopreneur with a community with over 40,000 people.

He’s the founder of Wildya where he helps people do exactly that: ecopreneurs go from idea to impact.

Oliver explains why food systems—not energy—are the frontline of biodiversity loss, how shifting to a more “plant-powered” diet creates outsized impact, and why awareness of nature’s decline lags so far behind climate change.

We explore the drivers of nature loss (habitat destruction, over-exploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change) and what ordinary people can do to make a difference.

We also dive into parenthood, community building, and how to actually start conversations about nature with friends and family without turning them off. Oliver shares his take on regenerative agriculture, ecopreneurship, and why being an “impact millionaire” beats chasing unicorn status.

This podcast is brought to you by Ecologi, the UK's most trusted climate action platform. They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/kfswnxth

You can find out more about Oliver on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-dauert-49016075/

Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/

And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/

00:00 What Does “Building a Wilder World” Mean?

02:51 Everyday Examples of Nature Loss

04:32 Simple First Steps to Reconnect with Nature

07:10 Why Biodiversity Awareness Lags Behind Climate

10:08 Kids, Travel & The Spark for Caring About Nature

12:24 The Main Drivers of Nature Decline

15:29 Food Systems & the Impact of Diet

20:19 Becoming More Plant-Powered

21:08 Parenthood & Long-Term Thinking About Nature

25:56 How to Start Conversations About a Wilder World

33:49 What Is Regenerative Agriculture?

38:43 Balancing Work, Life & Time in Nature

44:16 What It Means to Be an Ecopreneur

49:56 Inspiring Ecopreneur Examples (SUGi, Patagonia)

53:50 The Mindset & Habits of Ecopreneurs

58:18 Book & Documentary Recommendations for Nature Lovers

1:07:06 Most Underrated & Overrated Things in Nature