We're back for one last episode of 2024 with our most frequent guest on The Climate Pod! Evlondo Cooper is back on the show to review how climate change was covered in mainstream media over the course of the year. In this conversation, Evlondo Cooper discusses the evolving landscape of climate media, why it remains critical to connect extreme weather events to climate change, and how that still continues to be absent from major news coverage. He highlights the power of mainstream media in shaping public perception and the role of independent media is increasingly playing in providing in-depth coverage. We also explore the commercialization of Earth Day, missing coverage of COP29, and the need for more year-round focus on extreme weather events and the integration of attribution science to enhance climate reporting.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the climate and energy program at Media Matters. Check out Evlondo's reporting here: https://www.mediamatters.org/author/evlondo-cooper

Further Reading:

Matt Norlander's article referenced in the conversation

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and our Substack, The Climate Weekly.

What would the world look like at 3-degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels? In his latest work, Collision Course: 3-degrees of warming & humanity’s future, David Spratt explores the catastrophic implications of the planet we're heading towards as warming continues to accelerate. He argues we need to face up to realities of the crisis and have an honest discourse on risks and impacts already occuring. On the show this week, he joins us to discuss the significance of tipping points, and the systemic risks posed by climate change, and the non-linear, catastrophic impacts expected at 3-degrees. We also explore the dire implications for food security, agricultural yields, and social stability. David underscores the need for greater awareness and understanding of climate risks and the importance of leadership in tackling the climate crisis.

David Spratt is a climate and policy analyst who serves as the Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. He is the co-author of the book Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action.

Read Collision Course: 3-degrees of warming & humanity’s future

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and our Substack, The Climate Weekly.

We're undergoing a necessary renewable energy transition. And this transition will require an enormous amount of critical metals in order to power an economy without fossil fuels. Today, the processes we use to extract these materials - from copper, nickel, lithium, and more - are causing harm to both humans and our physical environment. So what do we do about it?

In his new book, Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future, Vince Beiser argues that there are huge opportunities to make mining safer, recycle more metals, and use less energy to help lessen the burden. Though the critical metals necessary for the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles will never come without trade-offs, it's clear we could be doing much better. In this conversation, Beiser discusses the most pressing environmental damage and human rights concerns facing critical metals and how we could start to confront the problem. We also talk about the geopolitical implications of China's dominance in the critical metals supply chain, the scale of demand for metals, and the need for equitable solutions in the energy transition. Finally, we explore deep sea mining, the challenges and opportunities in recycling metals, the growing right to repair movement, and the importance of reducing energy consumption to help ease demand.

Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author. His first book, The World in a Grain, was a finalist for the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and a California Book Award. His work has appeared in Wired, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, among other publications.

Read Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future

Check out Vince's Substack, Power Metals

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and our Substack, The Climate Weekly.

Todd May is a philosopher and the author of eighteen books of philosophy, was a philosophical advisor to the television sit-com The Good Place and currently teaches at Warren Wilson College.

Read Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and our Substack, The Climate Weekly.

If you're a regular listener of this show or often engage with the facts of the climate crisis, it's likely you experience a fair deal of climate anxiety. I know I do. So I wanted to dive into those feelings and how to think about processing it all. For over a decade, Kate Schapira has been having these conversations as a part of her Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth. Now, she has a new book out, Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth - How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World, to document that work and more. She joins the show this week to share her journey into understanding climate change's emotional impact, the importance of listening, and why creating intentional spaces for dialogue is critical. We also explore the complexities of communicating trauma, navigating uncertainty, and the competing feelings of despair and hope we can all feel in the face of unfolding climate crises. This is a really great conversation, especially if you've felt particularly anxious about all the extreme weather and climate impacts we've seen unfold this year.

Kate Schapira is a professor of nonfiction writing at Brown University and work on local efforts toward environmental justice, climate justice and peer mental health support in her home in Providence. She’s the author of six books of poetry.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

COP29 is over. A new agreement has been struck. So what the hell happened?

Climate reporter Dharna Noor is here to explain. She was on the ground during the conference to cover it all and she's on the show this week to deep dive into the results and what it means for global climate action. Dharna discusses the complexities and stakes surrounding COP29, how the central theme of climate finance shaped the conference, and the key takeaways of the final agreement. We also discuss the tension between the Global North and South during negotations, the wild events that unfolded during negotiations, and the importance of good reporting and press coverage during these multilateral discussions.

Dharna Noor is a fossil fuels and climate reporter at Guardian US. Prior to that, Dharna was the Boston Globe's climate producer, worked as a staff writer at Earther, where she also co-produced a season of the podcast Drilled on the fossil fuel industry's influence on education.

Check out Dharna's reporting here.

Check out all of The Guardians's COP29 reporting here.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

“Among the growing effects of the climate crisis, the evolution of hurricanes is one of the more immediate and destructive.” Our oceans are warming. Superstorms are intensifying. In Porter Fox's new book, the accelerating danger resulting from these two realities of the climate crisis is on full display. And Fox is no stranger to the ocean - as a longtime sailor and decades-long climate writer, he literally confronts deadly storms in his reporting. Now, with latest book, Category Five, Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them, he's unpacking what he's heard from scientists and explorers alike to mark the changes we've already seen with oceans and superstorms and what's in store as warming accelerates. He joins this week to talk about the damage we're seeing from natural disasters, the disparity in disaster responses, and why he wanted to combine memoir and climate science for this book.

Porter Fox is a writer and author of books like The Last Winter and Northland. He writes and edits the award-winning literary travel writing journal Nowhere, teaches at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a MacDowell Fellow.

Read Category Five, Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

As our environment changes, so do our brains. Climate changes impact our physical environments is many noticeable ways, but it's also changing us on the inside as well. Clayton Page Aldern is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist who has unpacked this phenomenon in his new book, The Weight of Nature: How A Changing Climate Changes Our Brains. He joins the show this week to discuss how our brains adapt to climate change and limits we face, how shifting baseline syndrome impacts climate action, what's happening to our brains under rising temperatures, and what climate changes tell us about broader ideas surrounding free will.

Clayton's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, The Economist, Scientific American, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter.

Read The Weight of Nature: How A Changing Climate Changes Our Brains

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.