Climate Crisis: We're Solving It?!

Hi. I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, how do we solve the climate crisis? Can we do it? A couple of weeks ago, we had an episode about climate change tipping points that ended a little sadly. The climate's not doing well. It's hot. There's been fires. There's been floods, and we may have even crossed some rather scary climate tipping points. But I did tell you that there was hope, and that's what this episode is hopefully about. We asked for your questions, what you want to know when it comes to solving the climate crisis. We heard from hundreds of people all around the globe. Generally, these questions fit into two big batches. One, what can me as a little individual person do for the climate, if anything? And two, what exciting new technologies could help get us out of this mess? So to answer these questions and more, we have our first guest, doctor Sven Teske. He is the research director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. And Sven studies how countries and industries can do the seemingly impossible, which is to get off fossil fuels. He has written detailed analysis for more than 50 countries for how they can get to net zero. These are countries like The US, China, India, France, and Bangladesh. So welcome to the show, Sven. Thanks for inviting me. Our second guest is Wei Hsu. She is the head of strategy at Monash University's ClimateWorks Centre in Melbourne. ClimateWorks is a climate nonprofit that gives advice to governments and companies about how to reduce their emissions, focusing on Australia, Southeast Asia, and The Pacific. And Wei is a self described nerd at heart. So welcome to the family. Thanks for having me. Question number one actually comes from the Science versus team. So when you both think about climate change right now, which song best represents where we're at? I'll give you some options. It's the end of the world as we know it by REM, Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift, We Can Work It Out by The Beatles, Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows, famously by Lesley Gore. What do you think? Where are we at with the climber right now? We can work it out. We can work it out. Well, I actually agree. You actually okay. And why do you say that? There's actually some really simple steps if you distill it down to what can be done. And these steps are one let's we'll have to save them for after the break. Don't do a spoiler alert there. Now, Sven, as someone who's been in this in the climate space for a long time, decades now, what's been the most frustrating thing for you? Well, I I was, at COP one, a youth representative. So I'm almost 16 o these people who don't know what COP what's COP? COP one, the climate, the the climate negotiations. …