The Most Important Question

Can Capitalism (Justly) Solve the Climate Crisis?


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The climate clock is ticking faster and faster.

How can we use capitalism to undo the bad stuff that capitalism did and maybe even make things better?

That's today's big (loaded) question, and my returning guest is Akshat Rathi.

Akshat is a London-based senior reporter, newsletter writer, and podcaster for Bloomberg News.

Akshat has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. Akshat was previously a senior reporter at Quartz and a science editor at The Conversation.

He is here today to talk about his first book, Climate Capitalism.

This wonderful book tells the stories of people building solutions at scale to tackle one of humanity's greatest challenges. Some solutions we've already built, like solar and batteries, and some we're still working on because they take a lot of work, and money, and politics.

In a world where journalism is going bye-bye, and the climate clock is ticking, but we've made so much progress, and we can make so much more, Akshat's reporting in this book couldn't be more timely, as we seek to answer the question, where are we on this timeline?

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INI Book Club:

  • The Long View by Richard Fisher

  • Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

  • Links:

    • Order Climate Capitalism in the US/Canada (out March 12)

    • Order Climate Capitalism in the UK (out now)

    • Order Climate Capitalism in India (out now)

    • Order Climate Capitalism in the rest of the world

    • Listen to Akshat on his podcast Zero, and subscribe to his newsletter

    • Read about the Biden Administration's regulations on the social costs of climate change here and here

    • Follow us:

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      • Edited by Anthony Luciani

      • Produced by Willow Beck

      • Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

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