The Climate Question

Geothermal energy is renewable, reliable and powerful. So, why is most of it untapped?

That’s what our listener, Anna in the UK, wants to know. Full disclosure, she’s a geologist and is thoroughly perplexed by the lack of uptake. Geothermal is renewable, reliable and abundant and yet, less than 1% of the world’s energy is generated from it.

Host Graihagh Jackson hears about a team in Iceland who hope to "super-charge" geothermal power by drilling directly into volcanic magma. And she travels to Germany to visit Vulcan Energy, a company which is combining geothermal with extracting one of the world's most sought-after metals: Lithium. Plus, our reporter in Indonesia tells Graihagh about local opposition to some geothermal power plants.

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Host: Graihagh Jackson

Experts predict that millions of people around the world will have to migrate by 2050 because of sea level rise linked to climate change. How will they cope? Jordan Dunbar hears stories from Fiji and the UK.

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Presenter: Jordan Dunbar

The United Nations has just published a worrying new report about the rate of sea level rise in the Pacific. BBC climate reporter Esme Stallard talks us through the details.

Plus, Mexico is preparing for the inauguration of an environmental scientist as its new president. The BBC's Will Grant heads to a bustling market in Mexico City to report on Claudia Sheinbaum's record in her previous job as mayor of one of the world's biggest metropolises.

And we hear how climate change is fuelling a crisis for cocoa growers in Ivory Coast - and sending global prices for chocolate sky high. John Murphy from the BBC's Assignment podcast has that story.

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Presenter and Producer: Graihagh Jackson

BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt travels to Somalia to investigate the links between global warming and the decades-long conflict there. He hears how Somalis are responding by launching businesses and their own renewables industry.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt

Climate change is transforming wine production around the world. New wine-growing regions are emerging, where the conditions have never been better; while for many traditional producers, drought and rising temperatures are causing a crisis. How is the changing climate impacting the taste and origin of wine, and who are the winners and losers?

Presenter Sophie Eastaugh heads to the Crouch Valley in Essex, England, to find out why the area’s becoming a hotspot for boutique wine. And she travels to Penedes in Catalonia, where one of Spain’s oldest family wine companies, Familia Torres, are battling a four-year drought. How can traditional wine growers adapt to the challenge of a warming world?

Featuring:

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Production team:

Extreme weather, such as droughts and storms, is increasing the risk of more girls being pushed into child marriage. Graihagh Jackson speaks to girls and parents in Bangladesh who are experiencing these impacts first hand, and finds out why this is happening and what is being done to stop the problem.

A huge thanks to UNICEF and Save the Children's Gabrielle Szabo, for their help in making this programme.

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Engineers across the globe, from China to East Africa and the US, are turning to a new, nature-based solutions to fight floods, which are becoming more likely in many places because of climate change. They’re taking a pickaxe to asphalt and concrete and instead are restoring wetlands, parks and riverbanks, turning our metropolises into so-called ‘sponge cities’. Plants, trees and lakes act just like a sponge, mopping up rainwater instead of letting it pool and eventually flood our homes.

Professor Priti Parikh tells Jordan Dunbar how these spongey solutions have many benefits beyond flooding, encouraging biodiversity, helping our mental health and storing the planet warming gas, carbon dioxide. The BBC’s China Correspondent, Laura Bicker, meets the man who came up with the concept, Professor Kongjian Yu, and visits Zhengzhou, a sponge city in the making. And Katya Reyna tells Jordan how her NGO is helping low-income communities in Portland in the US to ‘depave’ disused car parks, turning them into plant-oases.

Got a climate question you’d like answered? Email: [email protected] or WhatsApp: +44 8000 321 721

Contributors:

Producers: Graihagh Jackson, Ben Cooper and Joyce Liu

Presenter Graihagh Jackson and her regular panel take Climate Questions from listeners. BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, Prof Tamsin Edwards of King's College London, and Dr Akshat Rathi, senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News, discuss ideas for geo-engineering the atmosphere, the links between climate change and shipping, and which animals do the best job of helping us store carbon.

Plus, Graihagh visits a Climate Question listener to investigate his idea of using yoghurt to keep our homes cool in heatwaves!

If you've got a head-scratcher, email us at [email protected] or leave a Whatsapp message on +44 8000 321 721

Producer: Osman Iqbal

Climate change has been tightening its grip on the people of Afghanistan, with flood after flood and drought after drought. It’s considered one of the most vulnerable countries in the world, not just because it’s warming twice as fast as the global average, but because its people’s ability to fight back has been severely hampered by decades of conflict and war. To add insult to injury, Afghanistan has contributed very little to the industrial emissions that fuel the global climate crisis.

Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, financial aid to help locals adapt has drastically dropped, leaving Afghans to take matters into their own hands.

Experts include:

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Producers: Jordan Dunbar and Barry Sadid from BBC Monitoring

In this special programme, the Climate Question team join forces with our World Service colleagues from People Fixing The World to share some of our favourite ways of fighting the impacts of climate change.

Jordan Dunbar and Myra Anubi discuss solutions big and small - from tidal power in Northern Ireland to floating solar panels in Albania. Plus, we hear about pioneering community initiatives to protect forests in Borneo and Colombia

Production team: Osman Iqbal, Zoe Gelber, Craig Langran, Tom Colls, Jon Bithrey and Simon Watts

Got a question for The Climate Question? Email us: [email protected]