Elon Musk this year partnered with The X-Prize to create a $100 million prize for the best solutions for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or ocean. This $100 million represents the biggest incentive prize in history, and likely the biggest single investment made into negative emissions to date. We talk to the X-Prize Executive Director Marcius Extavour and Erica Dodds the CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration about the prize, and the lay of the land when it comes to developing and executing these processes that would pull CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

You can find out more about the X-Prize here, or about the work of the Foundation for Climate Restoration here. 

Subscribe to The Elephant  on Spotify, oriTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode we speak to Peter Eisenberger the co-founder of Global Thermostat -  one of the leading direct air capture companies in the world. 

In the interview we talk about how we could create what Peter calls the renewable energy and materials related economy, how the current Coronavirus pandemic influenced his thinking on climate change, and why he is convinced that all organizations within the direct air capture sector need to cooperate to help accelerate the technology as quickly as possible.

Listen above, or subscribe in your favourite podcasting app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. ​

Global Thermostat Website: https://globalthermostat.com/ 

You can find our original series on direct air capture here. 

Today we're featuring an episode from another one of our favourite environmental podcasts Future Ecologies, and specifically their new mini-series "Scales of Change."

In the 8-part series, hosts Mendel and Adam take a deep dive into the various "Dragons of Climate Inaction," a term developed by the environmental psychologist Robert Gifford for the various psychological barriers we have as humans which hinder us from responding to climate change with the appropriate urgency.

Listen to this episode on "Technosalvation" above and make sure to subscribe to their series by searching for Future Ecologies, wherever you listen to podcasts.

​It’s the recommendation show! With all the new time many of us have on our hands, we wanted to tip our hat to some of our favourite things we think you should know about. In this episode we speak with Anja Krieger, the journalist behind one of our favourite environmental podcasts called The Plastisphere. In it she investigates the complex nature and hard to solve challenges posed by that most wondrous and durable of materials: plastic. And later on, we feature an episode of the Plastisphere called: “Confused About Bioplastics?”

Show Notes: 

The Plastisphere’s Website.

The Plastisphere on Spotify.

The Plastisphere on Soundcloud.

Foreign Policy’s Heat of the Moment Podcast. 

Music in this episode by Podington Bear and Blue Note Sessions

Just because we’re dealing with the fast moving crisis called Covid-19 currently, doesn’t mean that we can't also take this moment to think creatively on how we can solve another, much slower moving challenge called climate change.

Solomon Goldstein-Rose is a climate activist and former Massachusetts state representative. In his new book, "The 100% Solution" he breaks down what in his view it will take for society to come up with a complete solution to the problem of climate change, which means achieving net negative emissions by the year 2050. From revolutionizing the transportation and industrial sectors, to Apollo-program level funding initiatives to help get carbon neutral technologies to scale, Solomon believes it's possible, as long as we're willing to be bold, and do what it takes. 
 
Solomon Goldstein-Rose lives in Amherst, MA, which is where I reached him by Skype on March 11th. Listen to the interview above, or subscribe toThe Elephant in Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

Since we first started looking at the science of CO2 removal with our podcast series on direct air capture, a huge amount has happened. So In this episode we take you inside all the exciting news and developments that have been announced recently, which are pushing the goal of pulling back large amounts of CO2 back out of the atmosphere closer to reality.

To hear, just listen above, or subscribe to The Elephant in your favourite podcasting app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

Featured in this episode: 
Noah Deich - Executive Director of Carbon180 

Companies mentioned in this episode: 
Climeworks - Company based in Zurich Switzerland, partnerships with Carbfix, and Coca-Cola. 
Carbon Engineering - Canadian company partnering with Occidental Petroleum 
Silicon Kingdom Holdings - New company based in Dublin, Ireland which have partnered with Klaus Lackner, and ASU 

Imagine we overcame all the obstacles and successfully built the giant infrastructure that would be needed to directly capture billions of tons of CO2 back out of the air each year.  You might reasonably think that we would have then completely solved the problem. But there’s one big question mark that would still be lingering in the air:

Where exactly are we going to safely store all this carbon dioxide gas? After all, it’s a gas! if you put it in the ground, it’s going to want to come back up.

That’s where an ingenious experiment underway in Iceland called Carbfix comes into play.  Nestled among volcanic mountains, a team of scientists are hard at work experimenting with turning large amounts of CO2 into rock.

Is this the new alchemy? Or a genuine solution that could end up helping us solve climate change?

We head to Iceland and explore this exciting project in our final series on negative emissions. Listen above, or subscribe in your favourite podcasting app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

This Episode Features:
Sigurður (siggi) Reynir Gíslason​ - Research professor at the University of Iceland, and Chairman of CarbFix
Bergur Sigfusson - PhD, Carbfix member, and Geochemist at Reykjavík Energy
Sandra Ó. Snæbjörnsdóttir - PhD from University of Iceland, Geologist / Geochemist at Reykjavík Energy
Klaus Lackner - Professor and Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 

​Carbon dioxide removal does already exist, but only at the tiniest of scales. We're talking a few thousand tons a year. But what might a future where we're successfully capturing billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year actually look like? After all, those are scales at which carbon capture needs to be operating at if it's truly to play a part of the solution to climate change. But taking billions of tons of CO2 out of the air is not without its challenges. 
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Where would all this CO2 be stored? What might the carbon capture machines look like and where would they be placed? And how are we going to get this whole carbon capturing business off the ground in the first place?

We explore these and other questions in this third episode in our four-part series looking at Carbon Dioxide Removal.

Listen above, or subscribe in your favourite podcasting app like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 
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This Episode Features: 
Klaus Lackner - Professor and Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 
Tim Flannery - Scientist and Chief Councillor of the Climate Council, author of Atmosphere of Hope

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As we learned in our last episode, taking carbon dioxide out of the air is technically possible and different researchers and start-ups are already experimenting with the best ways to do just that. But there's much more than engineering that currently stands in the way of seeing air capture become a big part of the solution to climate change. For starters? Who is going to pay to take out these billions of tons out of the air each year? 

In this episode we look at the social, political and financial hurdles which need to be overcome if we truly are going to find a way to take billion of tons of CO2 out of the air each year, as most of the UN's own predictions indicate that we will need to. 

This is the second of four episodes in a series that we’ll be releasing, which all deal with the subject of carbon dioxide removal.  
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Listen above, or subscribe in your favourite podcasting app such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 
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This Episode Features: 
Klaus Lackner - Professor and Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 
Allen Wright - Executive Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 
Tim Flannery - Scientist and Chief Councillor of the Climate Council, and author of Atmosphere of Hope
Kevin Anderson - Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester
Glen Peters - Research Director at CICERO (The Center for International Climate Research) 
Myles Allen - Professor of Geosystem Science and Leader of Climate Research Programme at Oxford University 

For close to 25 years scientist Klaus Lackner has dedicated himself to researching and finding potential ways of taking CO2 back out of the atmosphere, all in a bid to help the world avoid the worst consequences of climate change. But capturing billions of tons of CO2 from the air is no easy task. 

Originally a theoretical physicist, Klaus now directs the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, where he works alongside his long-time collaborator Allen Wright.  In this episode, we learn about Klaus and Allen's journey, explore the science of capturing CO2 from the air, and learn if taking CO2 back out of the atmosphere might just hold the key to us solving climate change. 
 
This is the first of four episodes in a series that we’ll be releasing, which all deal with the subject of carbon dioxide removal.  These episodes will be coming out on Wednesdays for the next several weeks.

Listen above, or subscribe in your favourite podcasting app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

​This Episode Features: 
Klaus Lackner - Professor and Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 
Allen Wright - Executive Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions 
Tim Flannery - Scientist and Chief Councillor of the Climate Council, and author of Atmosphere of Hope

Heute haben wir eine ganz neue Folge! Normalerweise sind wir ein englischsprachiger Podcast, aber heute ist es mal ganz anders.  In dieser Folge haben wir unser erstes deutsches Interview geführt.

Unser Gast ist der Schauspieler Frederik Götz, und wir sprechen über seinen neuen Film. Er heißt: Rosamunde Pilcher Das Vermächtnis meines Vaters.

Wir sprechen mit Frederik über seine neue Rolle, und Warum Nachhaltigkeit ein wichtiges Thema für ihn ist. 

Man kann den Film am Sonntag, 4. Februar 2018, 20.15 Uh im ZDF anschauen. 

Hier ist das Interview. 

To hear our other episodes about sustainability and climate change, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes

After a lot of work we're excited to bring you a special new episode of The Elephant that travels through space and time to ask one of the most fundamental questions you could ask of our rapidly changing world today - how did we end up here?

Look pretty much anywhere on our planet and it’s clear that human beings are having an outsized impact on the Earth. And it’s not just with climate change. There’s our enormous land footprint, our rapidly growing numbers, our thirst for resources, and the vast quantities of waste we produce every year.

But how did homo sapiens go from a species that had only minor numbers in parts of Africa, to one that is spread across the entire world with 7 billion people, and whose consumption patterns have become so voracious that we’re now threatening the very stability of the planet we depend on?

In this special episode of The Elephant we go on a journey from the dawn of Earth to the 21st century to find out: how did our species end up here? Listen above, or subscribe in iTunes. 

We've been hard at work on a special season two episode of The Elephant, and in advance of the release we've put together a special video trailer. 

In late 1968, with the Apollo 8 mission, astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders became the first human beings ever to  leave Earth's orbit and head to another celestial body. But despite travelling some 200,000 miles and reaching the orbit of the moon, in the end it wasn't the images of the new frontiers that had the most lasting impact,  but the view of back home. 

Below is a short film meditation on the famous Earthrise photo - the first photo of the whole earth ever taken by humans. Featuring Apollo 8 Astronaut Jim Lovell, and footage from the Apollo missions, and was made by Jim Elson. Enjoy!

Conservatives, especially in America, are known for doubting the science of climate change. But earlier this February something rather surprising happened - several elder Republican statesmen released a proposal for what they call a Conservative solution to climate change.  

The plan consists primarily of a carbon tax, something that many progressives have long advocated for. But controversially for Democrats, the proposal also calls for repealing more intricate climate regulations such as the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.

At this time when by all signs it seems like the divide between Republicans and Democrats is wider than ever, can Conservatives and Progressives in America ever find common ground when it comes to climate change?  Radio producer Barbara Lucas investigates... 

Transcript of Barbara Lucas's report available here

March 8th marks international women's day, an annual celebration of the achievements of women across the globe. And this year’s campaign is: Be Bold For Change.

To discuss climate change and equality, and how it intersects with the role of women worldwide, our new Elephant producer and co-host Charlotta Lomas spoke with a woman who has herself been bold for change - Mary Robinson who was the first female President of Ireland from 1990-1997. She now leads the Mary Robinson Foundation: which is devoted to climate justice and she is also the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate Change. We reached Mary Robinson by phone in Dublin.
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Custom Artwork by Krista Lai