In this Climate Genn episode I am speaking with climate analyst Genevieve Walker about how we are not preparing for the dangerously extreme climate we have created for ourselves. Genevieve points out that we are continuing to pump out the highest volume of emissions, while incrementally preparing our infrastructure for a climate that we have already said good-bye to.

A note on the terminology. Genevieve uses the terminology of climate science reporting to describe pathways to the future. In particular there is the SSP1, SSP3 and SSP5, where SSP stands for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. These translate roughly as the following:

“SSP1 – Safer future: Some climate disruption, but many impacts remain manageable.” 

“SSP3 – Divided world: Heat, floods and crop failures become widespread; many communities cannot adapt.”

“SSP5– Fossil‑fuel dominated world where we were not meant to go: Multiple systems fail – major cities, food systems and ecosystems face catastrophic stress.” Remember, that last one is SSP5.

With many of the poorest, most vulnerable people suffering already, it is worth adding that we, in places like northwest Europe, are no where near ready for the dangerous extremes coming our way. Please do share your thoughts in the comments - I do try to read and reply to as much as possible. 

Thank you to all who watch, comment, share and subscribe. It is really appreciated. You can subscribe to see episodes early and support this work.

In this episode of GENN, Nick Breeze talks to Professor Mike Berners-Lee, Chair of the National Emergency Briefing (NEB), about why the UK is “not ready” for the accelerating climate and nature emergency.

Visit: https://nebriefing.org

They begin with the recent Europe-wide heat dome that led to an estimated 20,000 excess deaths and record breaking UK temperatures, then explore what this tells us about how exposed our societies have become to extreme weather. Mike explains why the conditions we are living through now are likely to be the least extreme we will ever see in the UK, with a super El Niño expected to drive even more intense heat in the near term.

The conversation covers the UK’s ageing infrastructure, under investment in resilience and the rapid shift from “one in a thousand year” events to risks that now carry a realistic chance of occurring every year. Mike argues that the climate and nature transition is entirely doable and economically attractive, highlighting analysis that shows large scale investment in net zero and retrofit pays back rapidly and creates skilled jobs across the country.

Nick and Mike dig into the role of disinformation and comforting narratives such as “we cannot afford it” or “Britain is only one per cent of global emissions so does not matter,” and why these stories amount to denial of the scale of response now needed. Mike explains how the NEB takes a different view of the public, treating people as capable of handling difficult truth, and how honest communication can improve psychological health by replacing vague anxiety with clear agency.

They discuss systemic risk across food security, national security and infrastructure breakdown, including the possibility of a future food shock that could act as a national wake up call. Mike describes the NEB’s work to create trusted briefings for leaders and the public, the energy in the Westminster briefing where no one felt the situation was exaggerated, and the growing movement around the People’s Emergency Briefing film presented by Chris Packham.

You will also hear how NEB screenings are snowballing across the UK and beyond, how the initiative is building support for a televised government supported national emergency briefing on climate and nature, and why Mike believes there is “nothing not to like” about a fair green transition that strengthens communities, farmers and livelihoods.

The episode closes with a focus on agency: from attending NEB screenings and inviting MPs, to getting involved in local resilience and non partisan political work, and helping to take this emergency briefing model international. Mike sets out a theory of change for how public engagement, honest information and systemic action can still turn the tide, even in the face of deep geopolitical barriers.

Key topics:

• Europe-wide heat dome and excess deaths

• Why “we are not ready” for extreme weather

• UK infrastructure, heatwaves and super El Niño

• Net zero investment, jobs and payback

• Disinformation, denial and national narratives

• Food security, biodiversity and systemic risk

• The National Emergency Briefing and People’s Emergency Briefing film

• Public agency, psychological health and community resilience

• How to get involved and help NEB go mainstream

Links mentioned:

• National Emergency Briefing: nebriefing.org

Would you like a shorter, 2–3 paragraph version of these notes as well for platforms that truncate descriptions more aggressively?

Rafe Pomerance, who died on May 21, 2026 at age 79, spent nearly five decades trying to make the world take climate change seriously before it was too late. I last spoke with him at the Arctic Repair conference in Cambridge in summer 2025, where he told me his message was "absolutely the same" as it had been in 2018: the fate of Miami is tied to the fate of Greenland.

A Career That Started With a Coal Report

Pomerance's climate awakening began almost by accident. In the late 1970s, while lobbying for clean air at Friends of the Earth, he came across a government report on coal liquefaction warning that carbon dioxide emissions could cause a "significant and damaging" rise in Earth's temperature. From that point he devoted himself almost entirely to climate change, pushing Congress toward hearings and testifying himself in 1984 that the consequences, once clear, would be irreversible. He helped organize the landmark 1986 Senate hearings on the greenhouse effect, a genuine turning point in public awareness. From 1986 to 1993 he worked at the World Resources Institute, and under President Clinton he became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, leading the U.S. negotiating team that helped produce the Kyoto Protocol.

In August 2018, the New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue — "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change" — to the story of how climate action nearly happened in the 1980s, with Pomerance at its center. The piece, later expanded into a book of the same name, cemented his reputation as one of the movement's earliest and most persistent voices, sometimes dubbed the "Paul Revere of climate change."

In our Cambridge interview, Pomerance was focused on his final project: the Upper Limit Project, which sought to establish a global cap on sea-level rise as a companion metric to the 1.5°C temperature target. He argued that temperature alone had failed to sufficiently drive policy, but that sea-level rise — visceral, universal, and tied to the collapsing Greenland ice sheet's 24 feet of locked-up sea-level potential — could finally galvanize leaders from Miami to Tuvalu. He was candid about America's retreat from climate leadership under President Trump, calling the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act "a real tragedy," though he found some relief in China's growing role in clean energy technology.

Despite the political headwinds, Pomerance remained resolutely hopeful. "It's just not acceptable to lose the homes of hundreds of millions of people over time," he told me, "and that's not an outcome that the world can accept." He leaves behind a policy legacy stretching from the Clean Air Coalition to Kyoto to the Arctic Repair movement, and generations of scientists and advocates he personally inspired.

The Cover That Made Him FamousStill Pushing, Even at the EndAn Optimist to the Last

In this ClimateGenn episode I am joined by Dr Simone Mordue, Conservaton Scientist at the Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds, and by Bethany Chamberlain, Senior Policy Officer, working on climate adaptation. 

We are discussing the new RSPB report titled ‘Climate Change And The UK’s Birds – Impacts risks and Conservation Responses. Also attached is the Economic Case For Nature report.

This report is an urgent call for everyone to get involved to help prevent the loss of over 70% of UK seabirds, as well as other species that are vulnerable to extreme weather events and cascading climate impacts that we see accelerating towards us.

The report is only bleak if we collectively choose to do nothing. If we take action, we have a great deal of agency we can drive into this effort to try and prevent the worst outcomes. It includes citizens science, which we discuss, and also making sure we tell everyone around us, including politicians, that we really do care about nature.

Conservation action is the hinge upon which the fate of so many birds rests and it is a critical topic in the UK. Tackling climate by working with nature pays big dividends both to nature and to humanity – so please find away to get involved.

If you listen to this and have noticed changes in the wildlife around where you live, please do share in the comments. Also check out the notes for links to the report, additional reports supplied by Simone and Beth.

Thank you to all subscribers, commenters and everyone who supports this channel. I do try to read every communication som please do get in touch via comments or social media. 

In this episode, Nick Breeze speaks with Dr. Claudia Wieners, climate scientist at the University of Utrecht, to explore one of the most urgent and controversial questions in climate science: could Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) be used to prevent the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)?

Dr. Wieners explains how AMOC is driven to collapse by two key forces — ocean warming and freshwater influx from increased rainfall and Greenland melt — and why SAI could theoretically counter both. She breaks down the role of the subpolar gyre and deep convection zones in sustaining AMOC, and why the timing of any SAI deployment is absolutely critical: wait too long, and you don't just fail to save AMOC — you could trigger a dangerous "double cooling" effect around the North Atlantic.

The conversation also tackles the complex trade-offs that make SAI so politically charged: its potential impact on the Amazon rainforest, the risk of it being used as a pretext to slow down emissions reductions, and why many EU policymakers refuse to engage with the topic at all — even though, as Dr. Wieners argues, that refusal itself carries serious risks.

Dr. Wieners outlines what a credible research programme would look like: better climate modelling, small-scale stratospheric measurements, and international monitoring infrastructure — and she issues a sobering warning that every year of delay increases the chance we've already crossed a critical threshold for AMOC without knowing it.

🔔 Subscribe for more in-depth conversations on climate tipping points, geoengineering, and the science shaping our future.

In this Climate Genn Episode I speak with the Former UK Green Party leader, baroness Natalie Bennett, who is currently sitting as a Green peer in the House of Lords. 

View more on https://genn.cc - become a member on patreon or Youtube for early episodes.

Since the Greens scored a resounding win in the former Labour Stronghold of Gorton & Denton, many pundits and opposition party representatives have claimed that the Greens are embracing a form of Far-Leftwing populism, detracting from the Greens traditional focus on environmental issues. 

I asked Natalie if she would come on the podcast to clarify whether the Green’s under Zac Polanski are a different party altogether, or whether the manifesto of decades past is still intact today.

In this ClimateGenn Episode I speak with former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government and Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, Sir David King. The interview was initiated in response to David being quoted in the Financial Times. The article reported on how people in the East of England being forced to evacuate their homes due to erosion from inundation of sea water. A problem that is forecast to see thousands of homes abandoned in the coming years.

We cover a lot of topics in this conversation but they all illustrate the gargantuan size of problem we face and how badly we humans are responding to challenges. For all the talk of Artificial Intelligence, the glaring truth is: if we focussed our collective real intelligence on solving these problems, the horrors accelerating around us might be greatly reduced and even manageable. If only.

In the next episode I am speaking with former UK Green Party Leader, Baroness Natalie Bennet about the mainstream media narrative emerging claiming that the UK Green Party have replaced environmental policy in order to appeal to the so-called far-left. Is this a radical shift for political opportunism, or, is there consistency with the Green manifesto of the past and how does it all hang together?

There are more episodes scheduled with leading world experts on critical issues from collapsing ice sheets in Antarctica, to how climate is changing all around us, in realtime— 

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who commented on the last interview with Dr Jennifer Francis, sharing thoughts and examples of how extreme impacts are impacting your regions and communities. 

In this ClimateGenn episode I am discussing the forecast 2026 El Niño event with Dr Jennifer Francis from the Woodwell Climate Research Centre in the US. I don’t mind admitting my heart sank a little when I heard the news of the forthcoming el Niño. 

Visit: Genn.cc for more information about this podcast

The intensity of climate induced extremes that life on earth has been experiencing in recent years, coupled with the negligence and, in many cases, gross degenerate policymaking, has set us up to be woefully unprepared for the climate extremes we can expect later this year. Jennifer gives us the detail on this but always remember that this is a crisis that we are continuing to worsen by not cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the fastest rate possible. 

In this end of year episode I am looking back on the main climate highlights of 2025 with Research Director at the Breakthrough National Centre For Climate Restoration, David Spratt. Links:David Spratt's own 2025 Climate Round-up:https://www.climatecodered.org/2025/12/climate-hot-takes-on-2025.html?m=1National Emergency Briefing Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@nebriefing/videosProf. Stefan Rahmstorf at ATLAS25- Our heating system is heading for shutdown, #AMOC – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKBTZ324COADr James Hansen at ATLAS25 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2abyXGvELIRafe Pomerance Discussing Overshoot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX6FzVd4kC0&t=596sVisit https://genn.cc for more information about the ClimateGenn podcast.Here we discuss some of the key aspects of 2025’s narrative on climate, concentrating on the longer-term themes that will be central to our 2026 climate agenda.We mention several conferences where key talks are presented online – I am putting links to these in the notes and on the genn.cc website. I have also included a clip of Professor Kevin Anderson as quoted by David. I do recommend that listeners check out the official recordings of the National Emergency Briefing.

In this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with cofounder of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and author of Paradise Lost, Paul Hoggett. Paul’s book was published in 2023 and is more relevant today than it was a couple of years ago, given the ongoing tragedies and violence we are all being subjected to and forced to respond to. 

"There's that kind of coldness, that cold indifference in the face of inhumanity and suffering is something I think has been a very powerful element in the way in which, for example, oil companies and oil company professionals and executives have functioned."

Paul Hoggett - Author of 'Paradise Lost' 2023

For more information visit: https://genn.cc/a-blank-and-pitiless-stare-confronting-the-inhuman/

Paul refers to the work of the poet WB Yeats, in particular, one poem, ‘The Second Coming’ written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first world war. Given its resonance in the context of our lives today, I have pasted below for those who have not read it:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Source Wikipedia

I definitely recommend Paul’s book, Pandora’s Box too if you want to explore the issues that we discuss in this episode. I have found it fascinating.

W.B. Yeats – The Second Coming