The Elephant

Elon Musk this year partnered with The X-Prize to create a $100 million prize for the best solutions for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or ocean. This $100 million represents the biggest incentive prize in history, and likely the biggest single investment made into negative emissions to date. We talk wih the X-Prize's Executive Director Marcius Extavour and Erica Dodds, the CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration about the prize and the lay of the land when it comes to developing and executing these processes that would pull CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

In this episode we speak to Peter Eisenberger the co-founder of Global Thermostat - one of the leading direct air capture companies in the world. In the interview we talk about how we could create what Peter calls the renewable energy and materials related economy, how the current Coronavirus pandemic influenced his thinking on climate change, and why he is convinced that all organizations within the direct air capture sector need to cooperate to help accelerate the technology as quickly as possible. Global Thermostat Website: https://globalthermostat.com/ You can find our original series on direct air capture here: https://bit.ly/directairpod

Today we're featuring an episode from one of our favourite podcasts Future Ecologies, and their new mini-series "Scales of Change." In the series, hosts Mendel and Adam take a deep dive into the various "Dragons of Climate Inaction," the psychological barriers which prevent us from collectively responding to climate change with the appropriate urgency. Listen to this episode on "Technosalvation" and subscribe to their series by searching for Future Ecologies, wherever you listen to podcasts. Website: https://www.futureecologies.net/dragons

It's the recommendation show! With all the new time many of us have on our hands, we wanted to tip our hat to some of our favourite things we think you should know about. In this episode we speak with Anja Krieger, the journalist behind one of our favourite environmental podcasts called The Plastisphere. In it she investigates the complex nature and hard to solve challenges caused by that most wondrous and durable of materials: plastic. And later on, we feature an episode of the Plastisphere called: “Confused About Bioplastics?” The Plastisphere's Website: www.plastisphere.earth The Plastisphere on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LpqhWz The Plastisphere on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/plastisphere-podcast Foreign Policy's Heat of the Moment Podcast: https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/heat-of-the-moment-climate-change/ Music in this episode by Podington Bear and Blue Note Sessions

Solomon Goldstein-Rose is a climate activist and former Massachusetts state representative. In his new book, "The 100% Solution" he breaks down what it will take in his view for society to come up with a complete systemic solution to climate change, and achieve net negative emissions by 2050.

Since we first started looking at the science of CO2 removal with our podcast series on direct air capture, a huge amount has happened. So In this episode, we take you inside all the exciting news and developments that have been announced recently, which are pushing the goal of taking large amounts of CO2 back out of the atmosphere closer to reality.

Imagine we overcame the many obstacles and successfully built the giant infrastructure that would be needed to directly capture billions of tons of CO2 back out of the air each year. You might reasonably think that we would have then completely solved the problem. But there's one big question mark that would still be lingering in the air: Where exactly are we going to safely store all of this carbon dioxide? After all, it's a gas! if you put it in the ground, it's going to want to come back up. That's where an ingenious experiment underway in Iceland called Carbfix comes into play. Nestled among volcanic mountains, a team of scientists are hard at work experimenting with turning large amounts of CO2 into rock. Is this the new alchemy? Or a genuine solution that could end up helping us solve climate change? Listen to this, our final episode in our series on negative emissions, to find out!

Carbon dioxide removal does already exist, but only at the tiniest of scales. But what could a future where we're successfully capturing billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year, actually look like? Where would all the CO2 be stored? What might the carbon capture machines look like? And how are we going to get this whole carbon capturing business off the ground? We explore these and other questions in this 3rd episode in our series looking at Carbon Dioxide Removal. (Pictured: an artist's illustration from the Canadian company Carbon Engineering depicting what a future carbon capture installation might look like)

Taking carbon dioxide out of the air - as we learned in our last episode - is technically possible. And different researchers and start-ups are experimenting with the best ways to do just that. But there's much more than engineering that currently stands in the way of seeing Air Capture become a big part of the solution to climate change. There's also the not too small problem of paying for it. For example, would you be willing to pay $10,000 each year to offset your emissions? In this episode we look at the social, political and financial hurdles that need to be overcome if we truly are going to find a way to take billion of tons of CO2 out of the air each year. This is Episode 2 of 4 of our series looking at Carbon Dioxide Removal (Pictured: The Climeworks Carbon Capture plant outside of Zurich Switzerland)

For over the past two decades scientist Klaus Lackner has dedicated himself to finding potential ways of taking CO2 back out of the atmosphere, all in a bid to help the world avoid the worst consequences of climate change. In this episode, we learn about Klaus's journey, explore the science of CO2 removal, and learn if pulling CO2 back out of the air might just hold the key to us solving climate change. This is the first of four episodes in a series that we'll be releasing, which all deal with the subject of carbon dioxide removal. These episodes will be coming out on Wednesdays for the next several weeks. This series of episode was made possible with funding from EIT Climate-KIC. Climate-KIC is a European knowledge and innovation community, working towards a prosperous, inclusive, climate-resilient society founded on a circular, zero-carbon economy. Find out more at www.climate-kic.org ​

Look pretty much anywhere on our planet and it's clear that human beings are having an outsized impact on the Earth. And it's not just climate change. There's our enormous land footprint, our rapidly growing numbers, our thirst for resources, and the vast quantities of waste we produce every year. But how did homo sapiens transform from a species with only minor numbers in parts of Africa, to one that's spread across the world with 7 billion people, and whose consumption patterns have become so voracious that we're now threatening the very stability of the planet we depend on? In this special episode of The Elephant we go on a journey from the dawn of Earth to the 21st century to find out - how exactly did we end up here?

Conservatives, especially in America, are known for doubting the scientific basis of man-made climate change, and the need to do anything about it. But earlier this February something surprising happened - several elder Republican statesmen released a proposal for what they call a Conservative solution to climate change. The plan consists primarily of carbon tax - something that many progressives have long advocated for. But controversially for Democrats, the plan also calls for repealing more intricate climate regulations such as the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. At this time when by all signs it seems like the divide between Republicans and Democrats is wider than ever, Radio producer Barbara Lucas takes a look at the plan, and asks, when it comes to climate change, can Conservatives and Progressives in the U.S. ever find common ground?

March 8th marks international women's day, an annual celebration of the achievements of women across the globe. And this year's campaign is: Be Bold For Change. To discuss climate change and equality, and how it intersects with the role of women worldwide, our new Elephant producer and co-host Charlotta Lomas spoke with a woman who has herself been bold for change - Mary Robinson who was the first female President of Ireland from 1990-1997. She now leads the Mary Robinson Foundation: which is devoted to climate justice and she is also the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate Change. We reached Mary Robinson by phone in Dublin. Custom Artwork by Krista Lai

The Elephant has been in Marrakech Morocco the past week for COP 22. And on Friday, on the last day of the conference, we caught up with a few youth groups from around the world to find out what motivated them to come to the talks, and how they feel about the future in a world grappling with climate change.

Last week Donald Trump's election sent shockwaves around the world - particularly within the climate community. Trump has long denied that climate change even exists and has vowed to roll back all federal action. So what should those of us who actually care about reality do next? We caught up with activist and campaigner Nicolas Haeringer, of 350.org, in Marrakech to get his thoughts on where the climate movement goes from here, and what lessons we can draw from Trump's shocking win.

When humanity first travelled into space, it didn't just mean exploring new worlds and frontiers. It also meant for the first time seeing our home planet in an entirely new light. What from the ground seemed infinite and indestructible - something that we could never impact -from space suddenly appeared finite and fragile. When it comes to truly understanding that blue marble we all call home, few people can claim as much insight as Piers Sellers. Not only as an astronaut did Piers get the chance to witness Earth from that ultimate bird's eye view, but now as the division director of NASA's Earth Sciences department, he oversees the work of 1600 scientists tasked with understanding how the natural systems of our planet operate, and how they're changing because of humanity's collective impact. In this special Season 1 Finale of The Elephant, we speak with Piers Sellers about his experiences as an astronaut and what it was like to view earth from space, the exciting new science of understanding the earth's natural systems, and why despite the serious work ahead, he's optimistic humanity will be able to overcome the challenge posed by climate change.

The Greenland ice-sheet is massive. So massive that if it were to melt completely global sea-levels would rise by more than 6 meters. So it's critical that scientists understand how the ice-sheet is changing because of climate change. Liam Colgan is a glaciologist and professor at York University who specifically studies the Greenland ice-sheet and we got a hold of him by satellite phone as he was in Greenland on a 36 day research expedition led by NASA. We learn about how the Greenland ice-sheet is changing due to climate change, why it matters, and what it's like to do research in such an extreme environment.

For decades Noam Chomsky has been one of the most important political dissidents and intellectuals in the world. Now in an exclusive new interview with The Elephant, Chomsky reflects on the incredible period in human history we currently find ourselves in, and how the peculiar institutional systems we've set up put considerations of short-term profits ahead of the very future of our species. In our interview, Noam Chomsky also shares his thoughts on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand on climate change, and why advertising has a tremendously distorting effect on our society.

The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is right at this moment suffering from what is the most devastating bleaching event in its entire fossil history, with 93% of its reefs experiencing at least some degree of bleaching. Many of these reefs will be killed permanently, and similar damage is occurring to countless other coral reef systems around the world. And the culprit? Human caused climate change. We called up professor Justin Marshall, a coral reef expert who has studied these ecosystems for over three decades, to learn about the damage being done, why it matters, and why our only hope for saving these systems is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

The Occupy movement of 2011 was one of the most successful activist actions of the last few decades. It changed the discourse, raised the issue of income inequality world-wide, and it galvanized a new generation of activists. But its co-founder, Micah White, considers Occupy a 'constructive failure', but one that that has lessons that activists - including those of us in the environmental movement - can learn from. With Micah we talk about the story behind how Occupy Wall Street started, the future of protest, and how activists can bring about the social change that our world so badly needs.

Toronto is Canada's biggest city, and it's also one of its biggest successes when it comes to acting on climate thus far. While the average emissions for the country have been going up, Toronto has managed to not only meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gases, but exceed them by more than double. We sat down to speak with former Toronto mayor David Miller about some of the successful policies the city put in place to meet its emissions cuts, what some of the challenges were to getting there, and why in his view social integration and climate sustainability go hand in hand.

How our cities are run and designed can have a huge impact on the carbon footprint we have as individuals. Is there convenient and affordable transit available for example? Or are the buildings heated and cooled efficiently? But fortunately cities around the world are increasingly making their planning decisions with climate emissions in mind. In fact, actions by cities have been a rare bright spot in an otherwise mostly stagnant decade when it comes to climate action. We speak to Mark Watts - who leads a group called the C40 made up of some of the world's biggest cities - about some of the ways that cities are leading the way on climate.

If you care about climate, then it's been a wild couple of weeks on the U.S. supreme court. First, in a surprise decision the court issued a stay against the EPA's Clean Power Plan - dealing a devastating blow to the U.S.'s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. And then just a few days after the ruling, Antonin Scalia, one of the 5 conservative justices who voted for the stay died at age 79. unleashing a huge battle over the future of the court. We speak to journalist John Upton of Climate Central about what the recent ruling, and Antonin Scalia's death, means for both America, and the future of the climate.

In the Paris accord, 195 countries agreed that they would collectively keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees. But what does science have to say on actually keeping that goal? And how fast, and by how much, will we have to cut our emissions to get there? Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre is a climate scientist who looks at exactly this question. And the math he comes away with, isn't pretty.

Jose Maria Figueres is the President of the Carbon War Room, an organization that supports initiatives by private companies to reduce their carbon emissions. And previously he was the president of Costa Rica. We talked with Figueres about why he sees moving towards low carbon economies as an opportunity to combat other issues such as poverty, and about Costa Rica's own ambitious efforts to become carbon neutral by 2021.

Guardian columnist and journalist George Monbiot is one of the foremost political and environmental thinkers in Britain today and for decades he has been putting a spotlight on ecological issues of critical importance. He joins us to talk about how the climate change crisis isn't just an isolated problem, but one that intersects with the other major problems we're facing in our societies - from the run-away political power of corporations and the undermining of our democracies, to the rampant consumerism culture that dominates the West.

In 2014 a surprising announcement was made that ricocheted around the world - the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune would be divesting their entire $860 million dollar philanthropic organization of fossil fuel holdings. The announcement marked a turning point for the divestment movement, which suddenly was catapulted into the mainstream. During COP21 we caught up with Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to talk to him about the fund's daring decision to divest, and his thoughts on how the movement has been growing ever since.

On Saturday Dec 12th, as the final hours of the Paris agreement were coming together, a mass mobilization of over 10,000 climate activists gathered near the Arc de Triomphe and marched to the Eiffel Tower to push governments to take the steps required and show that a "liveable climate is a red line" that the movement is prepared to defend. We went down to hear the sounds and meet some of the people taking part.

The economy hasn't exactly done a great job of taking care of our planet's climate. And one might say that business models oriented towards profit while ignoring externalities are part of the problem, not the solution. But can companies that have sustainability at the core of their businesses, and yet are run for profit, be part of the solution? Enter Climate-KIC, a large European public-private partnership that helps grow start-ups whose products are focused on sustainability. We first sit down with Mary Ritter, co-founder and former CEO of Climate-KIC, to discuss the role sustainable businesses can play in saving the climate. And in the second half, we talk to Climate-KIC's Director of Education Ebrahim Mohamed about what is wrong with the way economic models are taught to business students, and how changing economic education may help change the future.

We sit down with Naomi Klein to speak about Paris, why climate change is threatening to elite power, and why when it comes to dealing with the crisis, we need to temper our fears with hope for the future.

Former NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen is one of the most respected climate scientists in the world. In fact he's famous for helping first-bring the issue of climate change to wide-spread public attention way back in 1988 when he testified in-front of congress to alert senators that the greenhouse gas effect was real, and that we were already starting to see its impacts on the climate. We caught up with Dr. Hansen at COP 21 to speak with him about what the world needs to do to act on climate, and why when it comes to global warming "we're already at a level of emergency."

Nearly 150 world leaders have assembled here in Paris for the start of COP 21, the UN climate summit. And whatever may come out of it over the course of the next two weeks, it's hard to overstate the crucial importance of this year's conference. Elizabeth May has seen these UN climate conferences inside and out. She was at the Earth Summit in Rio when the UNFCCC was first created in 1992, and since then she has attended most, if not all of the 20 COPs. This year Elizabeth May is attending COP 21 as a member of the Canadian government's delegation. We reached her by Skype a couple of weeks ago to talk to her about what the process is like, what the obstacles to an agreement are, and why when it comes to Paris, there's never been a more critical COP.

Yeb Saño for years was the lead negotiator at UN climate talks for the Philippines. But he first came to worldwide prominence in 2013 when he delivered an emotional speech at COP 19 in Warsaw, urging countries to set aside their differences and commit to averting the looming climate disaster. While no longer on the official delegation for his country, Yeb hasn't stopped passionately speaking out about the climate crisis, and he recently finished a 1500km walk from Rome to Paris to urge the world of need to act. We reached Yeb to speak to him about his people's pilgrimage, and what he hopes to come out of Paris.

The United Nations climate summit in Paris - or COP 21 - is just around the corner. But there's a lot to get a handle on with how these negotiations actually work. You might wonder, why have they failed in the past? What is it like to be there in the room? And what are the main points of contention between countries? To get insights into these questions, and just what we can expect from Paris, we rang up Kevin Conrad, who for 8 years represented Papua New Guinea at UN climate talks, and this year is on the delegation for Panama.

With the birth of the industrial revolution and the creation of the modern world, economics helped us in a sense get into the mess we're in today with the climate. But what role could economics play in helping us solve the problem? And what types of economic policies could help move us towards a sustainable future? To explore these questions, we sit down with Cameron Hepburn, an Environmental Economist at the University of Oxford.

Antarctica's ice sheet contains enough water to rise sea-levels by over 60 meters, yet we know surprisingly little about the frozen continent to our south. In fact we know more about the surface of Mars than we do the topography of Antarctica. In a live interview in Birmingham with Glaciologist Dr. Martin Siegert, we learn the innovative ways in which scientists are studying the ice-sheet, why it matters for the world, and hear about the mysterious sub-glacial lakes that lie beneath the surface of the ice

John Schellnhuber is one of the world's most influential climate scientists, advising politicians, governments, and influential figures on the numbers behind our warming planet. Not only was he the principal climatologist to the pope for the Encyclical, he's also the mind who first forwarded the now internationally accepted 2 degree target as the global red-line that shouldn't be crossed. We speak about the birth of the 2 degree target, what it was like working with the Pope, and what it would mean for the world if Donald Trump became president.

During the dark early hours of a morning this past July, 13 Greenpeace protesters descended off a bridge as part of an ingenious and daring plan that placed their bodies between Shell and its controversial plans to drill in the Arctic. This is their story...

The first in our short series highlighting inspiring on the ground climate actions taking place around the world. What happened earlier this year when 50 students from Fossil Free Yale occupied the administration building on campus. Story by Phoebe Petrovic

Noam Chomsky shares his insights into the threat of climate change, what can be done by ordinary citizens to combat it, and reflects on why it's so "crucial that those with the most privileged get involved."

We've all encountered those who passionately deny climate change is real. But given the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, where does this doubt held by such a large proportion of the public stem from? Turns out, it's not there by accident. It's been consciously seeded within society by a few key corporations, free-market ideologues, and scientists. Through interviews with Naomi Oreskes, historian of science and author of Merchants of Doubt, and Kert Davies of the Climate Investigations Centre, we uncover the story of this secretive climate denial machine and learn about some of the key players who have been sowing doubt, and blocking action on the greatest threat facing our society.

We typically think of global warming in terms of the consequences it has for humanity. But it also has huge and troubling impacts on the other species we share our planet with. In this episode we speak with Elizabeth Kolbert about her Pulitzer Prize winning book the Sixth Extinction, and discuss how like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, human beings are having an impact so disruptive on the environment, that a large proportion of the earth's species will have likely gone extinct by the end of the century.

Climate change is in some ways a surprisingly old story, but it's also one that some of the finest minds in journalism have struggled to tell effectively. We speak with Ira Glass, Alan Rusbridger, and Max Boykoff about the ins and outs of how the media has dealt with the story of climate change, and why in 2015, things finally might be improving.

Climate change is not just about science. It's also about politics and power. And 2015 is the year that the fight to take on climate change is really heating up, with movements around the world battling the power of the fossil fuel industry. To help put this growing battle and political fight in context, we speak to Bill McKibben founder of 350.org, and Tim Flannery, scientist and author of The Weather Makers.

By now we've all heard that the climate is warming, but how do climate scientists study the problem and how do they know the current warming is unlike anything in the past? What tools do they use, and what can they tell us about how the planet is changing? To answer these questions we spend the hour with renowned professor Michael Mann, one of the foremost climate scientists in the world today, and author of the famous 'Hockey Stick' graph.

On July 16th, The Elephant, a brand new podcast series journeying into our changing climate and our changing world launches here. But it's about much more than just the climate. From international politics and rising seas, to pipelines and how we get our food, through illuminating interviews The Elephant is a series that delves into the surprising questions, stories, battlegrounds, and changes occurring throughout the world due to climate change, and seeks to understand the challenge of our time. Hosted by Kevin Caners, and produced with support from the CKAA.