Zero: The Climate Race

Latest Episodes:

The climate activist trying to change banks from the inside Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

Lucie Pinson is a climate activist focused on the banks that fund fossil fuel projects. But she doesn’t march, chant, picket corporate headquarters, or glue herself to the road. Instead, she and her team at the Paris-based nonprofit Reclaim Finance get to know Corporate Social Responsibility officers, trawl through company statements and portfolios, and join shareholder calls. Reclaim Finance’s strategy is all about finding ways to pressure big financial institutions from the inside– and it works. She tells Akshat Rathi about some of the successes her organization has had, and why even bank employees who don’t care about green issues might find reasons to work with her.

Explore further:

Past episode with Richard Curtis of Make My Money Matter about the push to make retirement plans greener
Past episode on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and what happens when a “climate bank” goes under
Past episode with Brynn O’Brien of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder activist organization focused on publicly traded companies with net zero targets

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, Natasha White, Alastair Marsh, and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stacey Abrams on how kitchen-table decisions can cut emissions Jul 12, 2024

Show notes

At the Bloomberg Green Festival, Akshat Rathi sits down with voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams and Ari Matusiak, who leads the nonprofit Rewiring America. Together, Abrams and Matuisiak are trying help middle and low-income families access the tax breaks that can help them affordably electrify their homes. They discussed why household emissions are such a big deal, how to connect existential questions about the future of the planet to kitchen-table decisions, and whether Joe Biden is still the right Democratic candidate for 2024.

Explore further:

Past episode with Bill Gates about what another Donald Trump presidency could mean for green investments
Past episode with Bill Gates about the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act
Past episode with political scientist Leah Stokes on whether the US could become a global climate policy leader

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim and Matthew Griffin. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An oil lobbyist gets the Shakespearean treatment in ‘Kyoto’ Jul 09, 2024

Show notes

In fractured times, what does it take to reach agreement? That’s the question writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set out to explore in a new play about the drama of climate negotiations. Kyoto, now running at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, tells the story of the 1997 Kyoto Summit as seen through the eyes of Don Pearlman, a notorious fossil fuel lobbyist and chain-smoking lawyer dubbed “the high priest of the Carbon Club” by der Speigel. Actor Stephen Kunken, who plays Pearlman, tells Akshat Rathi why he was drawn to the character, and what Kyoto can teach us about how agreement is achieved.

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Past episode with Al Gore about breaking the petrostates stranglehold on climate progress
Past episode about climate change storytelling with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Ministry for the Future
Past episode with Extrapolations writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry about the growing demand for climate stories

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton, Anna Mazarakis, and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are now 800 carbon removal startups. How many is too many? Jul 02, 2024

Show notes

Tackling climate change now requires not just reducing planet-warming emissions to zero, but also finding a way to draw down existing carbon dioxide from the air. Over the past few years, tech companies have taken the lead to seed hundreds of startups that want to sell carbon removal credits and help companies meet climate goals. But the failure of a major startup, Running Tide, has raised questions about the long-term viability of the market. This week on Zero, we hear from Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe, and pioneer of the carbon-removal market.

Explore further:

Past episode with Jennifer Wilcox of the US Department of Energy’s two gigantic carbon removal hub projects
Past episode with Mark Trexler of The Climatographers about what’s wrong with carbon offsets and how to fix them
Past episode with Notre Dame professor Emily Grubert about the state of carbon capture

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton, Anna Mazarakis and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Bill Gates is investing big in nuclear power Jun 25, 2024

Show notes

Earlier this month, tech billionaire Bill Gates broke ground on a new nuclear plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming– a historic coal town. Gates tells Zero why he hopes the plant, which uses sodium for cooling, rather than water, will be the first of many in the country– no matter who wins this year’s election. “The idea of the US being more energy secure and US innovation allowing us to export, those things are still somewhat bipartisan in nature,” he says. Plus, he weighs in on AI as both a major generator of emissions and as a potential source of climate solutions.

Explore further:

Past episode with BNEF’s Claire Curry on how energy startups can dodge the valley of death
Past episode with Brookfield Asset Management CCEO Connor Teskey on making renewables a profitable bet
Past episode with Bill Gates on the significance of the Inflation Reduction Act

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Kate Evans, and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Making sense of “compound” climate impacts in a time of global weirding Jun 20, 2024

Show notes

We are living through the hottest year on record. That’s not news, but growing climate impacts make bigger and bigger news. At 1.3C of warming beyond pre-industrial levels, people are reckoning with a planetary system that’s out of whack. It’s not like the scientists didn’t see worsening impacts coming, but many of them have been surprised by the ferocity with which some have played out. On this week’s episode of Zero, Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi speaks with his colleague Eric Roston, and Texas Tech University professor Katharine Hayhoe explains why we’re all experiencing “global weirding.”

Explore further:

Past episode about the role fire will play in shaping the 21st century.
Past episode with UN’s global chief heat officer about redesigning cities.
Past episode about finding trillions of dollars needed for climate adaptation.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 21st century will be shaped by fire Jun 13, 2024

Show notes

The 2016 fire that encircled the oil-producing town of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, forced more than 80,000 people to evacuate and left billions of dollars in damage in its wake. It was a disaster of record-breaking proportions, but also an inevitable byproduct of mankind’s obsession with burning fossil fuels. In this episode, John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from A Hotter World, explains how Canada’s fossil fuel industry came into being, why its existence made the Fort McMurray disaster more likely, and what our collective obsession with fire means for the future of our species.

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Big Take Asia: Will the world's biggest nuclear power plant get a restart? Jun 10, 2024

Show notes

All of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors were shut down after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As the country's energy needs soar, debate is heating up over whether to bring the world’s largest nuclear plant back online. In this bonus from The Big Take Asia, host K. Oanh Ha speaks to reporter Shoko Oda about her visit to the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant and the challenges to rebooting it.

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Is Tesla on the road to irrelevance? Jun 06, 2024

Show notes

Over the past 18 months, Tesla has missed its sales goals, seen its share price fall and waded through a series of dramatic decisions from Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who cut car prices, fired much of the Supercharger team and announced nebulous plans to release a robotaxi. All of that looks like a pivot away from the original mission of making mass-market electric cars, but does Tesla going off course really matter to the EV transition? On this week’s Zero, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Liam Denning digs into Tesla’s strategy and what its evolution means for global adoption of electric cars.

Explore further:

Past episode with Carnegie Mellon University professor Venkat Viswanathan on the futuristic promises of flying cars and emission-free aviation
Past episode with Bloomberg NEF’s Colin McKerracher on why China has been successful in the EV transition where others haven’t been
Past bonus episode with Bloomberg NEF’s Colin McKerracher on electrifying vans, trucks, and buses.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Brendan Newnam, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Searching for climate solutions amid the AI hype May 30, 2024

Show notes

Depending on who you ask, AI is either going to save the world or end it. The technology’s capacity for data-crunching and problem-saving can help predict weather events, making it easier to optimize power grids, prepare for natural disasters, and maximize crop output. But artificial intelligence is also energy intensive – and easy to apply to ethically questionable ends. For all of these reasons, Priya Donti, professor of electrical engineering and AI at MIT, decided to found Climate Change AI, a group dedicated to applying AI to tackle climate problems.

Donti tells Akshat Rathi about some of the projects the group is funding around the world, and what the democratization of AI would look like in practice.

Explore further:

Past episode about Microsoft’s rising AI emissions, and President Brad Smith’s claim that the AI will do more good than harm
Past episode with African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina about climate innovation projects across the African continent
Past episode with climate scientist and champion for developing countries Saleemul Huq

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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