It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it. But is capitalism up to the challenge of preventing the climate crisis? In his new book Climate Capitalism , Zero host Akshat Rathi introduces a dozen people who are already steering capitalism to solve the climate crisis: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies and the politician who helped make net-zero a UK law to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so he could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat argues tha...
Oct 12, 2023•30 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast The rise of electric cars is staggering. In 2016, just 700,000 electric cars were sold worldwide, this year it’ll be over 14 million. However, we are still off-track to meet climate goals. Colin McKerracher, head of Advanced Transport at BloombergNEF, joins Zero to discuss how electric cars can get on track to meet net-zero targets, why China has succeeded where others haven’t, and when we’ll finally see more electric cars on the roads than those burning fossil fuels. Read more: China Reaches Pe...
Oct 05, 2023•34 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Brynn O’Brien not only reads corporate climate plans, she crunches the numbers. When they don’t add up, she calls her friends who manage trillions of dollars in assets and they all ask to speak to the manager. Brynn is the Executive Director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder activist organization that works to ensure that publicly traded companies with net zero goals are conducting their coal mining, electricity generation, and other activities in a way that ...
Sep 28, 2023•34 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast Are two wheels better than four? Can cutting commuting cap carbon consumption? And where’s all the clean energy coming from? There are many climate numbers out there that we don’t get to talk about on Zero but that deserve attention. In this bonus episode, host Akshat Rathi and producers Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd talk about some of their favorite stats showing people taking action on the climate crisis. More Links: Electric Vehicle Output Report 2023 — BloombergNEF People who work from h...
Sep 25, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Setting world records. Combing through warehouses of old electronics. Seeding the Chinese solar industry from afar. This is the life of Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Green’s work on solar panel design made the modern solar industry possible: 90% of solar panels made last year were based on his designs. He’s still going strong, too, regularly breaking new records in the pursuit of the ...
Sep 21, 2023•30 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Cleantech is hard. Farming is harder. This week, Akshat Rathi visits entrepreneurs doing both. GroGrace in Singapore and Jungle in Paris are two vertical farming companies taking agriculture indoors, and trying to grow crops efficiently and profitably. While the technology to do this has been around since the 1990s, the business model has yet to be perfected, and several other vertical farms have closed down or laid off staff this year. As the world faces rising energy prices, water scarcity, an...
Sep 14, 2023•33 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast Trillions of dollars are needed to fund the climate transition, with both the private sector and governments required to contribute. Australia’s answer is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the world’s largest green bank. Established by the government in 2012 with an initial funding of A$10 billion ($6.5 billion), it was tasked with financing green projects and ambitious Australian climate startups at a time when large-scale investments in things like wind and solar were still seen as ...
Sep 07, 2023•31 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast The concept of a “carbon footprint” began as a distraction from Big Oil: get people to focus on their own actions rather than the impact of large emitters. Oil companies come up with PR campaigns all the time, but the carbon footprint took off because it taps into a question we keep coming back to, can our choices lower emissions? If so, how? And if they don’t, why bother? This week, Akshat is joined by Kira Bindrim, the editor of Bloomberg Greener Living, which focuses on consumer choices, to t...
Aug 31, 2023•35 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast This week, a visit to the energy startup trying to replace coal with a very cheap battery. Form Energy has attracted nearly $900 million in investments and is building its first manufacturing facility in the US. Its big innovation relies on rust. Really. The materials scientists at Form have taken the same process that’s a symbol of time slowly passing and turned it into electricity. It’s one of the first big bets that batteries could help push the grid closer to running without fossil fuels alt...
Aug 24, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period. However, it also degrades much more quickly than CO2, meaning cuts in emissions now can have a quick and significant effect on reducing global warming. On this bonus episode of Zero, producer Oscar Boyd talks with host Akshat Rathi about the methane problem and the ways to solve it. Read more: A Cheap Fix to Global Warming Is Finally Gaining Support The $75 Billion Climate Solution Th...
Aug 21, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast How do you turn climate change into compelling TV? What scenarios do you draw on? And how do you make sure a call for climate action isn’t lost to a feeling that a dystopian future is inevitable? When Extrapolations premiered in March, it became one of the first major TV shows to put climate change at the core of its narrative. Packed with A-list actors like Meryl Streep, Kit Harington and Sienna Miller, Extrapolations begins in a not too distant 2037. The world feels all too familiar, and with ...
Aug 17, 2023•33 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast True crime is one of the most popular genres in every form of storytelling. But can that pull be used to tell stories about the environment? This week, Akshat speaks with Amy Westervelt, a climate reporter for over twenty years, and the creator of the podcast Drilled - a true crime show about climate change. Westervelt launched it after being turned away by large production companies but found over a million listeners in the first season. This is the second of three episodes talking with climate...
Aug 10, 2023•37 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast To tackle climate change, we need good stories and we need good storytellers. Kim Stanley Robinson is a climate fiction author who has written more than 20 novels, including Ministry for the Future, which was published in 2020. It opens in 2025, with a heatwave that kills millions in India. It’s a grim scene, and what follows is the story of humans striving to cope with an increasingly inhospitable planet — there’s ecoterrorism, high-finance, wild chases over the Swiss Alps. What emerges in Mini...
Aug 03, 2023•38 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast What’s worse for the planet than Big Oil? The world’s food system, argues environmental journalist and campaigner George Monbiot in his new book Regenesis. He makes a passionate case for how current agricultural practices not only damage the environment, but prevent vast amounts of land from being rewilded and restored to its natural state. Monbiot speaks with Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi about his proposed solutions, which include an end to livestock farming entirely and using new tech...
Jul 27, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the next three years, 1TW of solar power will be added to the global grid and competition is driving solar prices even lower. And after years of innovation in China, Japan, and Germany, the U.S. is finally getting in the game in a major way through its IRA which offers incentives to manufacture cleantech in the U.S. In early 2023, the South Korean company QCells announced it would build a domestic supply chain in the U.S. to gain access to enormous tax credits. But in a global marketplace, is...
Jul 19, 2023•41 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Where’s all the oil money going? What’s happening with cycling in France? And how far behind China is the US on solar? There are many climate numbers out there that we don’t get to talk about on Zero but that deserve attention. In this bonus episode, host Akshat Rathi and producers Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd talk about some of their favorite stats showing people taking action on the climate crisis. Akshat will be traveling to Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Delhi over the next few weeks....
Jul 17, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Canada is a leading producer of oil and gas. It’s also one of the few G7 members with a carbon tax. As Minister of Environment and Climate Change in 2015, Catherine McKenna was charged with getting Canadians on board with that policy. One of the most important tactics was calling it “a price on pollution.” Carbon taxes are having a moment after the Paris Climate Finance Summit and Cath joins Akshat this week to talk about the political practicalities of passing a carbon tax. She has advice about...
Jul 13, 2023•33 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast China is the world’s factory, and has the emissions to match. But in a planned economy, with weak environmental regulation, can anyone take on this pollution? Today’s guest, Ma Jun, did. In 2006 he began publishing “Pollution Maps” online that detailed levels and sources of air and water pollution. Ma Jun faced pushback, but his work made it possible for people in China to discuss pollution and climate change in a serious way. His work has since gained acceptance from the government and the corp...
Jul 06, 2023•26 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Policy can make or break climate action. Usually, national policy gets the most attention, but what local and regional governments do can make a bigger difference, especially in large countries like the US, India and China. This week, Akshat Rathi speaks with three US governors – Jay Inslee of Washington, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, and Eric Holcomb of Indiana – about how they navigate partisan politics and the need for climate action. As governors who control state budgets and priorit...
Jun 29, 2023•44 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Last week, 50 world leaders met in Paris with the goal of moving trillions in climate finance to developing countries. What was achieved, and what is still left to do? Akshat Rathi was on the ground and gives Oscar Boyd his key takeaways. More: Climate Change and Poverty Are Our Era’s Existential Battles We need trillions to fix the climate. Finally there’s a serious plan. Five Takeaways From the Paris Summit to Fix Global Climate Finance A transcript of this episode. Zero is a production of Blo...
Jun 26, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tesla is a household name, but few people have heard of the Loan Programs Office (LPO), one of Tesla’s crucial early backers. Part of the US Department of Energy, the LPO is tasked with awarding government-backed loans to clean-tech. In 2010, it loaned Tesla $465 million to help it weather the fallout from the financial crisis and build out the production of the Model S. With the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, the LPO was supercharged. It now has more than $400 billion to he...
Jun 22, 2023•38 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Trillions of dollars are needed to shift the world to a low-carbon future, but where will all that money come from? While momentum is growing in rich countries, developing countries are still struggling for finance. Without significant increases in the amount of money spent, the world is unlikely to meet its climate goals, and yet international negotiations are at a deadlock. Avinash Persaud has a plan: the Bridgetown Agenda. He’s the special envoy on investment and financial services for Barbad...
Jun 15, 2023•47 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast A hotter planet is also a smokier one, as residents of New York City are finding out this week. As the intensity and size of wildfires grows, more and more people are being exposed to dangerously unhealthy air. Just how dangerous? Oscar Boyd asks Akshat Rathi to explain the health effects of exposure to intense air pollution. It’s not a new problem, but it’s a growing one and many of us will need to learn how to deal with the risks. Related stories from Bloomberg Green: How wildfire smoke affect...
Jun 08, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast How often do you think about how much your pension or 401(k) is contributing to climate change? Chances are not much, but a growing movement wants you to do just that. Richard Curtis is the writer behind Love Actually , Mr. Bean, Blackadder and Four Weddings and a Funeral . His latest project is not a movie, but a campaign group called Make My Money Matter, which wants to make British retirement plans and banks greener by raising awareness about the trillions of dollars in pensions that are inve...
Jun 01, 2023•35 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Dipender Saluja is the Managing Director of Capricorn Investment Group, a venture capital firm with $9B under management. He was an early investor in Tesla. Today Dipender leads Capricorn’s clean tech investments effort and is betting on nuclear fusion, next gen batteries and electric aviation as the next moneymakers in decarbonizing the economy. Dipender has worked in Silicon Valley for 35 years. This week, Akshat talks with him about why he got interested in venture capital, climate tech, and ...
May 25, 2023•29 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast This week a new report was released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that says we are likely to exceed 1.5C of warming for a single year at some point in the next five years. It’s a big deal for many reasons, especially because limiting global warming to within 1.5C of pre-industrial temperatures is a key goal of the Paris Agreement. In this bonus episode of Zero, Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd talk about what the WMO report says and why it matters. Read more about the WMO report: Bre...
May 18, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast At their best, cities can be a climate solution: densely packed places with good public transport, effective health care, and plenty for everyone to do. Combined with clean energy, they become carbon-efficient centers. But cities can also be a climate disaster: Low levels of vegetation, big concrete buildings, high traffic and poor airflow create the perfect conditions for extreme heat waves. As cities grow and an ever greater percentage of the population become urban dwellers, the impacts of th...
May 18, 2023•34 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been eight months since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. Already the hundreds of billions of dollars it contains for clean energy and slowing climate change —alongside private venture capital investments — are funding a wide array of climate technology projects, from decarbonizing infrastructure to rust-based battery storage. This week we are sharing an episode of the Bloomberg podcast The Big Take that looks at where all the money in U.S. President Biden's signature clim...
May 11, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amazon made Jeff Bezos very rich. In 2020, he decided to pledge a portion of that wealth — $10 billion — to launch the Bezos Earth Fund. It is the largest commitment to climate philanthropy ever made and, by most measures, a vast amount of money. But it is also a small fraction of the $3.5 trillion that is needed annually to hit net zero by 2050. To make an impact, it has to be spent strategically and attract a lot more money from governments and corporations. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi ask...
May 04, 2023•32 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast The world is in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and this time it's being driven by human activity. Slowing it down will provide benefits for tackling climate change, and solutions to reign in global warming will help stem biodiversity loss. But this win-win scenario isn't straightforward to put into action. In December, world leaders gathered at COP15 in Montreal and agreed upon a new global biodiversity framework, with 23 targets including a goal of protecting 30% of all land, waters an...
Apr 27, 2023•34 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast 
