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 urgency, but new ways of thinking, communicating, and acting.
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 small, tightly knit communities of fewer than 200 people.
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-world field trials that can scale to meaningful climate benefits, rather than basic research or conventional adaptation and clean energy efforts.
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‑human animals. This isn’t just “a hot summer” – it’s a clear signal of how a rapidly warming climate is reshaping daily life across Europe and the world.
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 Center for Sustainable Development. Now, she returns to share what she has learned and how it will strengthen her climate advocacy going forward.
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 climate-related displacement is internal and temporary so far, yet already reshaping societies and fueling nationalist backlashes.
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 disease, malaria and Vibrio infections spread.
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 production – not just emissions – at the center of climate diplomacy.
This episode of Climate Emergency Forum features a wide‑ranging conversation with Janos Pasztor, former UN Assistant Secretary‑General for Climate Change and founding director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G). We explore how decades of climate diplomacy led him into the controversial world of solar radiation modification (SRM) and his recent work engaging directly with private actors like Stardust that are developing stratospheric aerosol injection technologies.
In this Climate Emergency Forum episode the alarming new science on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – the “mother of all tipping points” is discussed. This includes the reason why the AMOC is weakening, how massive freshwater from Greenland melt and the Arctic is destabilizing the system, and why several recent studies now suggest a coin-flip chance of a severe AMOC shutdown this century.
This episode of Climate Emergency Forum asks whether a “super El Niño” may be forming and what that could mean for record‑breaking global heat and extreme weather. Host Herb Simmens talks with climate scientist Paul Beckwith about new ocean data down to 300 metres, the ENSO cycle, prediction uncertainties, and how even a “moderate” El Niño has already pushed global temperatures above 1.5°C.
Extreme heat is already making daily life dangerous for billions of people, and the burden is falling hardest on those with the least power, wealth, and voice. In this episode of Climate Emergency Forum, we ask a stark question: is it becoming too hot to live—and for whom first? They explore new research on “thermal justice,” wet-bulb temperatures, and the deadly inequality baked into our rapidly warming world.
This episode of Climate Emergency Forum dives into the World Meteorological Organization’s latest State of the Global Climate report, with a sharp focus on the emerging core metric of our era: Earth’s energy imbalance. The planet is now trapping heat equivalent to 12 Hiroshima-sized bombs every second, with most of that energy going into the oceans rather than the air we directly feel. The discussion unpacks how greenhouse gas emissions, reduced air pollution, and failing planetary feedbacks are combining to drive this imbalance to unprecedented levels.
This episode of Climate Emergency Forum explores how the Iran war has triggered a hidden global crisis in fertilizer and food security, far beyond the headlines about oil. Herb Simmens speaks with climate scientist Paul Beckwith and physician and climate analyst Peter Carter about how conflict in the Strait of Hormuz is blocking up to one‑third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer supply, threatening harvests from Iowa and the Punjab to Ukraine and the Nile Delta.
