Wicked Problems - Climate Tech Conversations

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Professor Federica Genovese of Oxford, Professor Lorenzo Crippa of Strathclyde, and veteran journalist Dave Vetter join host Richard Delevan to discuss Magnifica Humanitas, the papal encyclical being published Monday 25th May 2026. In an unprecedented step, Pope Leo will personally launch the encyclical, joined by theologians, ethicists, and Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. Genovese and Crippa discuss their research paper, Papal Dividends, which looked at past encyclicals including Laudato Si: Care for our Common Home released by Pope Francis in 2015 and how they affected the market value of companies in sectors mentioned by the encyclical. The Vatican has worked on AI ethics issues for years, but this will be a defining moment of Leo's year-old papacy, tying in concerns about the place of humans in the economy and society, the climate impacts of data centres, the use of AI in warfare including current conflicts in Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran.

At a time when the backlash against AI is building, Eric Schmidt and others booed at commencement addresses when mentioning AI, and Peter Thiel going to Rome to accuse anyone trying to slow AI down as 'the antichrist', how will Magnifica Humanitas be received?

00:00 AI as Defining Issue

00:38 Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical

02:21 Can Encyclicals Move Markets

06:04 Media Backlash and Polarization

11:06 Measuring the Market Impact

13:46 AI Bubble and Investor Stakes

16:11 How Leo XIV Might Land

20:28 Legitimacy and Public Trust

28:00 Thiel Rome and AI Warfare

34:12 What to Watch Next Week

Read Genovese and Crippa's research, Papal Dividends: https://lorenzo-crippa.github.io/files/papal_dividends.pdf

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Former British diplomat Arthur Snell is about to publish a book that explains how climate is rapidly changing the geographic assumptions on which geopolitics is built. 

Buy it now — Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It. 

But first, check out this Wickedproblems.earth conversation with Arthur Snell about his new book, the first comprehensive account of the geopolitics of climate change.

In this conversation:

00:00 Arctic Ice Wake Up

00:45 War Crowds Out Climate

02:32 Chokepoints Aren’t Fixed

04:08 Meet Arthur Snell

04:22 Why Climate Is Geopolitics

08:05 Alps Collapse Story

11:01 Skiing Lobbies And Emissions

12:40 Geopolitics Map Gets Redrawn

14:59 Arctic Shipping Routes Open

18:37 Trump Greenland And Minerals

22:46 Panama Canal China Leverage

24:20 Panama Canal Leverage

25:56 Who Shapes Strategy

28:24 Migration as Hard Reality

34:55 Greenland Plans Accelerate

39:27 Russia China North Shift

42:28 Wine and Adaptation

44:36 Book Plug and Farewell

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On Wicked Problems, host Richard Delevan interviews Svitlana Romko, founder of Razom We Stand, at the Laudato Si “Raising Hope” conference about linking Ukraine’s war to global fossil fuel dependence. Romko says We Stand formed in early 2022 to coordinate a coalition of 900 organizations from 60 countries urging bans on Russian fossil fuels and investment, and rebuilding Ukraine with renewables to cut financial flows fueling wars. She argues “all gas is bad,” criticizes replacing Russian gas with US LNG, and urges Europe to accelerate renewables for peace, energy security, climate, and human rights. She describes vast destruction, displacement, population decline to about 20 million, and energy capacity collapsing from 54 GW to 9 GW, while 17–18 GW is needed for winter. She highlights faith-led divestment successes, distributed renewables powering communities, and Ukraine’s renewable potential of 653 GW as a basis for rebuilding and hope.

00:00 Ukraine in Ruins

00:21 I ntro

00:21 Confrontation and Repression

00:59 Intro

01:40 Podcast Intro and Guest

03:20 Meet Svitlana at Conference

03:50 We Stand Mission

05:42 No Such Thing as Clean Gas

07:58 Faith Groups and Divestment

10:46 Populism and Fossil Money

15:50 Ukraine Power Grid Under Attack

22:13 Panel Clip Fossil Fuels and Dictators

34:40 Hope Resilience and Closing

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“Wicked Problems,” hosted by Richard Delevan, returns after a long hiatus and links escalating repression - newly including climate activists - with a high-stakes by-election in Greater Manchester. It opens with concerns about confrontational protest being met with violence and political repression, alongside Nigel Farage's Reform proposing a “UK deportation command,” expanding detention with “no chance of bail,” and “detention will mean deportation.” Devin cites New York Times reporting that the FBI has begun targeting climate activists, including people who have not protested in years, and frames this as part of a broader effort to quash dissent.

Professor Dana R. Fisher of American University discusses what she describes as a “perfect storm” in the US: federal occupations of cities (highlighting Minneapolis), the murder of two American citizens while they were bearing witness to ICE actions, the president getting rid of the endangerment finding underlying US climate policy, and FBI investigations focusing on the "radical fringe" of the climate movement. Fisher argues these groups are “low hanging fruit” because their confrontational tactics (e.g., throwing paint, smearing food, blocking traffic, bird-dogging elected officials) are widely unpopular, making it easier for authorities to target them first as part of a broader slide toward autocracy that also threatens media freedoms. She says repression and violence against peaceful activists historically mobilize larger protests, even as it can lead to persecution, jail, and martyrdom. She also describes survey results from a Women’s March–coordinated “Free America walkout” showing over 75% support for a movement becoming more confrontational and 65% willingness to personally engage in confrontational activism; she notes the participants were largely white, female, older, and highly educated.

Prof. Fisher's Apocalyptic Optimist podcast.

Britain has already jailed nonviolent climate protestors and restricted defenses in court, with ongoing debates about protest trials and labeling Palestine Action a terror group. The Gorton and Denton by-election seems to be between Reform, seeking to import Trump’s climate and migration agenda, and the surging Green Party, treating climate, inequality, and migration as realities to face without losing humanity. The show notes a single constituency poll with Green candidate Hannah Spencer ahead of Reform’s Matt Goodwin, with Labour (which has held the seat for a century) behind; as Labour is consumed by Epstein-linked arrests and scandal involving Peter Mandelson and former Prince Andrew.

In an interview recorded late in 2025, Harriet Lamb, CEO of the Green Party of England and Wales, describes rapid growth following Zach Polanski’s leadership, with membership doubling to over 150,000. Lamb connects her background in international development and environmental and social justice to party politics, argues the UK has shifted into a multi-party system creating both dangers and opportunities, and emphasizes a “people and planet” platform focused on the cost-of-living crisis, inequality, wealth taxes, and strong public support for climate action. She discusses candidate development through a “Greens to Parliament” program aimed at building a diverse slate for 2029, and says coalition politics must protect Green principles and public trust, citing German coalition negotiations and the Scottish Greens’ Bute House agreement as examples.

00:00 Confrontation and Repression

01:35 Wicked Problems Returns

04:11 FBI Targets Climate Activists

07:42 Low Hanging Fruit and Autocracy

19:18 UK By-Election and Green Surge

29:32 Hope Surge and Outreach

31:28 Broad Coalition and Core Values

36:28 Vetting New Recruits

38:39 Road to Parliament and Coalitions

45:24 Milestones and Closing Reflections

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Full show notes, transcripts, and more at wickedproblems.earth

Welcome to Belém, where the world (with some notable exceptions) has gathered to talk about saving the Amazon as if it weren’t already on fire. 

Cataloguing the chaos leading up to COP30 Ben Cooke of The Times. His team’s reporting makes clear why the mood isn’t exactly jubilant: the clean-power alliance with zero members, the rainforest pledges with little progress, and the renewed swagger of fossil petrostates. 

Even potential bright spots, like the Tropical Forest Forever Facility announced last week, were somewhat dimmed by the spectacle of UK prime minister Keir Starmer reversing an earlier decision not to go to COP, only to make the trip to then announce his government wouldn’t be part of the hoped-for signature initiative out of this event.

We chat with Ben about all of that and more.

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Full show notes and ad-free listening at wickedproblems.earth

Shipping is one of those things that’s just supposed to work. Post-Titanic, we created a set of rules that currently are looked after by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which successfully removed much of the drama from shipping — so successful that Britain’s “Shipping Forecast” is now soothing ASMR for bedtime listening. 

But last month at the IMO in London, what should have been a procedural meeting on decarbonising shipping turned into something far messier. According to a Financial Times investigation, U.S. officials didn’t just lobby against a global carbon levy on shipping — they allegedly threatened, intimidated and black-mailed delegates from smaller nations. 

Developing-country delegates said they were warned their ships would face higher U.S. port fees, their officials denied visas, and their trade punished if they didn’t abandon support for the Net Zero Framework the IMO had endorsed only six months earlier. “It was like dealing with the Mob,” one diplomat told the FT.  

In the end, it worked. The deal — the world’s first carbon-pricing mechanism for global shipping — was postponed for a year. The IMO, normally the most technocratic of international bodies, was left “in a state of complete shock.” 

For the uninitiated this may sound arcane. But shipping matters. Roughly 90 % of global trade moves by sea; the sector accounts for about 3 % of global CO₂ emissions — more than Germany — and until now has been largely outside the reach of meaningful climate regulation.  

The Net Zero Framework was meant to change that. It had already been provisionally agreed by a majority of countries in April. But by October, something changed. Countries like China, India, Panama, Liberia — and even Greece and Cyprus, who broke with the EU line — suddenly voted to adjourn. news.wickedproblems.uk

And the shift didn’t come from nowhere: it came from pressure. From a U.S. administration that now treats climate policy as an existential threat to American interests.

🎧 Who we spoke to

• Carly Hicks (Chief Strategy & Impact Officer, Opportunity Green) explains how the IMO had once seemed one of the last genuinely global forums where climate ambition could meet technical reality — until the process was capsized by politics. 
• Ariane Morrissey (Senior Editor, Ship.Energy) was in the building as the talks imploded, describing a surreal scene where delegates who came to discuss fuel standards found themselves under threats of sanctions and visa bans. 
• Professor Tristan Smith (University College London) gave the longer-view: this is less a failure of climate tech than a warning shot about the fragility of multilateralism itself. He argues the US may have bought time — but may also have triggered the rise of regional regulation. The EU’s carbon-trading scheme now covers shipping; Singapore and Japan are exploring carbon levies. The patchwork world is arriving faster than the ships can adjust.  

🎵 Outro music: “Sailing By” (1963) layered with a long-wave “Shipping Forecast” transmission — that calm voice reading “Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire…”

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Bonus content at wickedproblems.earth

Overshoot, a new four-part documentary series from climate strategist and Wicked Problems alum Laurie Laybourn—goes further than nearly anyone has before. And he came back to unpack some of the key ideas in Overshoot and what he hopes people will do with it.

In Overshoot the story starts with the fact that we can no longer avoid the storm, we’ve enetered it. How to survive and steer through it—generation after generation—is the conversation we urgently need to have now. 

Drawing on interviews with diplomats, scientists, and communities on the frontlines, Laybourn dismantles the win/lose logic that has dominated climate politics since Paris and asks what it means to live in an age of overlapping crises and hard adaptation choices.

Our conversation ranges from the myth of Easter Island to the politics of “carbon sucking,” from managed retreat in Wales to the legal aftershocks of 1.5°C’s failure. It’s a clear-eyed look at what comes next—and why, even at the moment of “net zero,” we’ll be living in the most dangerous period in human history.

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