The Climate Briefing

The race to secure critical raw materials is turning attention towards an unlikely place: the ocean floor. In this episode, Anna speaks with Dr Isaac Kardon (Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and Meredith Schwartz (Associate Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies) about the geopolitics of deep-sea mining.

The EU has introduced a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage – when companies move production to countries with weaker climate rules, or when EU products are replaced by more carbon-intensive imports. But the measure has sparked controversy and concern, especially among countries in the Global South, as seen during COP30 in Belém.
This episode of the Climate Briefing explores the implications of the EU's CBAM for countries in the Global South: What are their main concerns, and what could be done to mitigate negative impacts?
To discuss these questions and more, Anna is joined by Aparna Sharma (Programme Lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water – CEEW), Shimukunku Manchishi (Senior Policy Officer at the African Futures Policy Hub), and Ieva Baršauskaitė (Lead on Trade and Green Transition at the International Institute for Sustainable Development – IISD).

Exactly one year has passed since President Trump returned to the White House. How has the first year of Trump 2.0 impacted global efforts to address climate change, and what might happen going forward?
To discuss this, Anna and Bhargabi are joined by Gina McCarthy (former US National Climate Advisor, former EPA Administrator and Chair of the America Is All In Coalition).

In the final episode of the year, Anna speaks to Professor Tim Lenton (Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter) about climate tipping points – the thresholds where a tiny change could lead to large and often irreversible transformations in the Earth system, with potentially disastrous consequences. Examples of such 'negative' tipping points include the dieback of the Amazon rainforest, the melting of the Greenland icesheet, and the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). But not all tipping points are bad. In the interview, Anna and Tim also discuss how the triggering of 'positive tipping points' within human societies could lead to rapid decarbonization.
 
For further reading, please see:
Tim Lenton's book 'Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis'.
Tim Lenton's article 'Why some tipping points may be positive for the planet' in Chatham House's magazine 'The World Today'.

COP30 in Belém is over. What happened at the conference? What were the main outcomes? And what needs to happen next?
 
To find out, Anna speaks to Jennifer Morgan (Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance; and former State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action at the German Federal Foreign Office) and David Waskow (Director for the International Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute).