Climate Emergency Forum Podcast

The discussion reviews the 2026 State of the Climate Report, which describes rapid destabilization of Earth’s climate and stresses that the crisis is already unfolding. The panel highlights accelerating greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts, including ocean warming and acidification, ice loss, sea- level rise, extreme weather, and weakening forests’ ability to absorb carbon.

The discussion examines a speech by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to the OSCE framing climate change as a security and economic threat, not only an environmental issue. It focuses on how fossil fuel pollution is damaging natural systems, while increasingly severe and frequent disasters could destabilize insurance, housing, and wider financial markets.

As COP31 approaches, this discussion asks whether the UN climate summit can turn ambitious promises into meaningful action. It explores the unusual division of leadership between Turkey and Australia, expectations for the negotiations, and priorities such as clean energy, electrification, climate finance, and resilient cities. The central concern is whether these initiatives will deliver results a...

In this episode, MIT engineer and Manhattan2 director Glenn Weinreb presents an “engineering approach” to the climate emergency that identify some practical pathways that can operate at the immense scale required, quantify their costs and risks, and invest seriously in the research and industrial capacity needed to carry them out. He argues that the world must not only reduce emissions to zero but...

The discussion examines how human-caused warming is destabilizing the global water cycle, creating a world in which water is increasingly “too much, too little, or too unsafe.” Warmer air holds more water vapour and accelerates evaporation, adding energy to the atmosphere that can intensify torrential rainfall, storms, and flooding while leaving other regions vulnerable to prolonged drought. Recen...

A new UNEP report marks a pivotal acknowledgment: the world is entering an era of climate overshoot beyond 1.5°C of warming. This discussion examines what that means for melting ice sheets, sea-level rise, extreme heat, wildfire, food and water security, ecosystems, and the growing danger of irreversible climate tipping points.

In this episode we examine the intertwined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, water, food, and human health. Drawing on the IPBES Nexus Assessment and the Planetary Health Check, the discussion argues that these are not isolated problems but connected pressures on the systems that sustain life.

In this episode we examine the catastrophic ice-and-rock avalanche and flash flooding that struck the Nepal–Tibet border region. The discussion traces how a collapse on Langtang Lirung sent immense volumes of ice, rock, and debris into steep Himalayan valleys, temporarily damming a river before a powerful wall of water surged downstream, devastating communities, schools, roads, and hydropower infr...

In this episode we examine James Hansen’s analysis of a developing El Niño against the backdrop of a rapidly warming planet. We discuss Hansen’s warning that global warming may be accelerating as Earth absorbs more energy, and that an El Niño occurring on top of this elevated heat could help drive exceptionally high global temperatures in the years ahead.

In this episode we speak with Tom Chi—physicist, engineer, former Google X leader, climate-tech investor, and author of Climate Capital. Chi describes witnessing the rapid bleaching and collapse of a Hawaiian coral reef, an experience that redirected his work toward protecting ecosystems and building a regenerative economy. He argues that the climate and ecological emergency requires not only urge...

In this episode we speak with Clare Farrell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. Clare reflects on XR’s origins, its rapid international rise, and how nonviolent direct action brought the reality and urgency of climate breakdown into mainstream public discussion.

Wildfires are entering a dangerous new phase. In this episode Madrid-based guest Alfonso Soria joins our regular panel to examine the intensifying wildfire crises affecting Europe, North America, and the boreal North. The panel explores how extreme heat, prolonged drought, dry vegetation, erratic winds, and changing jet-stream patterns are creating larger, faster, and more destructive fires.

Learn about what it's like at the bottom of the world with Antarctic facilities engineer and climate restoration advocate Ray Sundby, who spent four winters at McMurdo Station and the Amundsen‑Scott South Pole Station. In this episode, Ray shares first‑hand stories of life in the cold and dark Antarctic winter, from maintaining critical infrastructure and water supplies to navigating isolation in...

In this episode we introduce the Climate Intervention Environmental Impact Fund (CIEIF), a unique family-funded initiative that supports climate intervention field tests by financing rigorous environmental impact assessment and stakeholder outreach. Fund manager and environmental attorney Peter Jenkins and science advisor Dr. Renaud de Richter explain how the fund focuses on projects with real-wor...

Herb Simmens of the Climate Emergency Forum speaks with climate scientist Dr. Ken Caldeira at the first Climate Systems Engineering Conference at the University of Chicago. Caldeira reflects on his pioneering role in solar geoengineering and recounts the unlikely bureaucratic origins of the now‑dominant term “solar radiation management.”

In this episode we examine North America’s extraordinary early‑summer heat, floods, fires, and cascading impacts. From Ottawa’s record rainfall and basement‑flooding storm to northern Canada’s boreal forest ablaze, they connect local disasters to global climate dynamics and jet stream disruptions.

In this episode we examine how repeated spring and early‑summer heatwaves across Europe are undermining crops, livestock, rivers, and food prices. We connect extreme heat, drought, and locked jet‑stream patterns to falling yields, stressed farmers, and rising risks of regional and global food emergencies.

Europe is in the grip of a record‑shattering heatwave, with France, Spain, the UK and much of the continent seeing all‑time and June temperature records fall in rapid succession. From Madrid to New York, our panel unpacks what this extreme heat really means beyond the headlines: deadly heat stress, school closures, wildfire risks, collapsing harvests, and the mounting toll on both humans and non‑h...

This special episode of Climate Emergency Forum welcomes back co‑founder and longtime host Regina after a long absence as she completes her master’s degree in sustainability at Columbia University in New York. Herb Simmens introduces Regina and reflects on how often viewers have asked “Where is Regina?” as she stepped away from the Forum to take on an intensive period of study and work at the Cent...

In this episode we unpack the latest “10 New Insights in Climate Science” report and what it really means for our future. From record‑shattering global and ocean heat to marine heatwaves, weakening land and ocean carbon sinks, and the tight feedback loop between climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, the panel connects the dots across Earth’s rapidly shifting systems.

Retiring RCP 8.5 is being used by denialist and right‑wing media to claim we’ve dodged the worst climate futures and that past climate warnings were overblown. In this episode, Herb Simmens talks with Dr. Peter Carter and Paul Beckwith about why that narrative is dangerously misleading and what today’s record temperatures and ongoing fossil fuel dependence really tell us.

This episode explores what really drives people to move in a rapidly warming world, and why we still have no legal protection for those displaced by climate disruption. Herb Simmens is joined by climate system scientist Paul Beckwith and physician Dr. Peter Carter to unpack the tangled links between heat, drought, food insecurity, conflict, and the politics of borders. They highlight how most clim...

This episode explores how the climate crisis is reshaping the landscape of infectious disease. Drawing on the latest IPCC findings and recent research by Camilo Mora and others, Dr. Peter Carter and climate system scientist Paul Beckwith explain how warming temperatures, marine heat waves, floods, droughts and expanding tropics are altering where and how diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, Lyme...

This episode explores how philanthropy can fund the risky, under‑the‑radar climate ideas that governments and markets often neglect. Host Herb Simmens speaks with Joshua Elliott, Chief Scientist at Renaissance Philanthropy, about why we now need ambitious, translational R&D instead of small, incremental tweaks.

This episode goes inside the landmark Santa Marta conference, the first diplomatic gathering where 60 governments met not to debate whether fossil fuels must go, but how to phase them out. Host Herb Simmens speaks with environmental campaigner Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non‑Proliferation Treaty Initiative, about why this meeting was historic and why it finally puts fossil fuel produ...