ClimateGenn hosted by Nick Breeze

In this climategenn episode, I am speaking with journalist-and-author, Andy Neather, about his new book: Rooted In Change – The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine, co authored with Master of Wine, Jane Masters. The authors set out to document the challenges facing all aspects of wine production from the vineyard to the glass.Order 'Rooted In Change'Wine makes up an estimated 0.3% of agriculture globally and yet despite this tiny proportion, it is a beverage that humans have been making for thousands of years– serving sometimes with food, or as a ceremonial drink, or, in times more extreme, as a source of calories for French soldiers in the 1st World War trenches. Today vineyard around the world– from France to Australia or Chile to China– are at risk from worsening impacts of climate change – in that sense, this 0.3% of agriculture is as vulnerable as much of the other 99.7% of agriculture that underpins our global food supply. As Professor Paul Behrens said in the previous episode, 30-40% of inflation on food in the UK is due to climate change.A decade ago in Champagne, a wine producer told me harvest dates shifted forward in the late 1980s due to warming. Polar researchers I'd interviewed earlier noted Arctic sea ice decline accelerated in the same decade. Both independent observations confirmed the same reality: our world is heating up.This new book, Rooted In Change, gives us a glimpse of the global response of the wine industry to save it self while acting responsibly as stewards of both land and atmosphere.

In this climategenn episode I am speaking with Professor Paul Behrens, British Academy Global Professor, at the Oxford Martin School, at the University of Oxford, UK. “If we continue on the way we’re going, we just have less and less resiliency in the system, less and less ability to roll with the punches of climate change.”Paul is the keynote speaker at the Sustainability In Drinks conference being held in London on the 21st October, where he will highlighting the incredibly fragile state of food production and supply. This fragility is being exacerbated by climate change.https://sustainabilityindrinks.com/“Some research suggests that food prices will increase between one and three percentage points, so an extra one to three percent per year by 2035, based on climate impacts. Now, the thing you've got to remember on the modelling on this is it's very hard, extremely hard, to model all the different impacts on the food system. In general, when I look at a model or an outcome of the model, I typically think that it's probably going to be a little bit worse than what you read.”Here we discuss the changes urgently required to help us navigate a more resilient pathway to the future. Aside from the Sustainability In Drinks conference on the 21st October, Paul is also part of a broader presentation being given at Westminster Hall in London on 27th November. This National Emergency Briefing on climate change will be given to MP’s, as well as other government officials and business leaders. Please check the link below:https://www.nebriefing.org/In the next episode I speak with author Andy Neather about his newly published book ROOTED IN CHANGE – The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine, coauthored with Jane Masters, Master of Wine. Available to order from the Academie du Vin Library.Thank you to all listeners commenters and members. There are many more episodes being recorded so please do subscribe to stay up to date.

In this ClimateGenn episode I speak with Dr René van Westen about his recently published papers with colleagues that identify a physics based method for forecasting the very consequential AMOC Tipping Point. LINK TO RESEARCH PAPER: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025JC022651If or when the AMOC – full name, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – collapses, it will lead to North western Europe plunging into freezing conditions with an estimated 20% less rainfall, and widespread societal disruption, especially to food production and energy needs.In René’s own words: “There is this signal that this may be a potential scenario, which we can’t ignore because the impacts are quite, quite drastic. And therefore it is very worthwhile to know what we can expect as a society. And I hope in the end that I’m wrong also in the predictions, because we don’t want to deal with these kinds of changes because that’s in the end will be very difficult to adapt to.”In the next episode I am speaking with Professor Paul Behrens, who is the British Academy Global Professor at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. Paul specialises in exploring the intersections of climate, energy, and food systems, suggesting one proven action that we can all take that could change our course from famine, to one of better health and more abundant and affordable food supply. Paul Behrens is also the keynote speaker at next weeks Sustainability In Drinks conference in London where I will also be chairing the high-level panel at the end of the session. If you are in London and work in any aspect of the Drinks Business then do consider coming along. Tickets are available from the SID website.

"The car seems like freedom, and it might have been the freedom of the 20th century, but it certainly isn’t the freedom of the 21st century." Dame Hentrietta MooreIn this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with Professor Dame Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay about their new book Road Kill – Unveiling the true cost of our toxic relationship with cars.Despite the motorcars association with freedom, it is become responsible for the degeneration of our town and city centres, enormous fossil fuel consumption, lung damage from air pollution, and a whole host of undesirable impacts. This book Roadkill is not just about diagnosing our car blindness and true costs of maintaining our addiction to them, it is also about rethinking the future, including urban design and local thinking. Henrietta and Arthur give us insights into how they are tackling this uber-toxic issue. More information on Roadkill and how to order the book can be found here. 

IN this ClimateGenn episode I speak with ecologist and founder of the Ecosystem Restoration Communities, John D. Liu. We explore the insights that John has acquired from many years observing nature and humanity, while also pragmatically seeking collective pathways to a better tomorrow. Full of wisdom and inspiration, it is a pleasure to feature John on the ClimateGenn podcast.Visit https://genn.cc for more information.

In this Climate.Genn episode I am speaking with Erin Sikorsky, Director at The Center for Climate and Security and also the Security Director at the The International Military Council on Climate and Security. We are discussing issues that Erin covers in her new book, Climate Change on the Battlefield. With so much focus on national defence spending, while fires and floods are tearing through nations around the world, this is a timely subject. Here, Erin guides us in untangling the contradictions of investing in modern warfare, while simultaneously struggling to keep citizens safe from the extreme impacts of fire and floods that are worsening in intensity and frequency. In Spain in recent days there has been 199 wild fires counted with more across the northern hemisphere, whilst floods across countries like Pakistan and China, and across S America and beyond, are taking lives and costing billions in infrastructure damage.Yet, countries are being coerced into spending hundreds of billions on defence that excludes protecting against the raging climate. How we proceed from here has consequences and Erin, with her book ‘Climate Change on the Battlefield’ offers many essential insights.Order: https://amzn.to/4fAcfi8

In this climategenn episode I speak with climate policy analyst and Research Director at the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, David Spratt. He has recently published a report titled: Warming has reached 1.5°C. What does that mean for climate advocacy?https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/climateadvocacy2025David offers his perspective on climate policy through the Australian lens as the Earth heats to 1.5. degrees with no end in sight for the damage that it is causing to human life, nature and infrastructure.

In this ClimateGenn episode I speak with researcher, Rene van Westen. We discuss his recent paper looking at how the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) responds in three different carbon emissions scenarios. This work builds on his – and colleagues – previous research that looked at establishing the conditions for the AMOC to collapse.René et al's findings shed new light on the risks we are facing from this vital ocean circulation in the Atlantic that connects to the global climate system. The research paper can be accessed here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL114611

In this ClimateGenn episode we are looking at 3 interviews recorded at the Arctic Repair Conference in Cambridge hosted by the Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge. In the 1st interview with Centre for Climate Repair director, Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, we touch on some of the theme emerging from the conference but also from the news cycle during London Climate Week that was running concurrently.In the 2nd interview I speak with Anni Pokela from the Finnish organisation Operaatio Arktis – an emerging think tank looking to articulate informed discussions around extreme climate impacts, tipping points and geoengineering also called climate interventions. Operaatio Arktis have gained international recognition for their clear engagement on these complex and often taboo topics. The 3rd interview in this series is with Justus Lehtisaari also from Operaatio Arktis. Both these conversations are recorded during the evening drinks in Cambridge and attempt to explore how their work interacts with such a broad range of issues that we are collectively facing today.There are 5 more interviews from the Arctic Repair conference that include Indigenous Climate representative from Tuvalu, Faatupu Simeti discussing the existential threat of sea-level rise and inundation, as well as a conversation with Julius Mihkkal Eriksen Lindi, PROJECT COORDINATOR at the Arctic and Environmental Unit from the Saami Council who is tasked with trying to see if climate interventions can help preserve their way of life or be rejected as dangerous to life.There are also a second set of discussions with Kerry Nickols from Ocean Visions, Jason Box from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and Rafe Pomerance, a legendary climate policy expert based in Washington. I have a backlog of interviews waiting to be published and recorded. I will uploaded a preview of my interview this week with David Spratt from Australia, an in-depth discussion of policy and risk response. David is always very well informed and has much to say. Thank you for listening.

In this episode Nick Breeze speaks with Dr Soumitra Das from the Healthy Climate Initiative. Soumitra sheds light on the life threatening challenges that face citizens in India and surrounding countries today. A major threat to life is when heat and humidity combine – known as wet bulb temperatures. This is when the body is unable to cool itself, leading to fatal heatstrokes within a few hours. Today 2% of India’s population are exposed to wet bulb extremes. In a country nearing 1.5 billion people, 2% equates to ~around 30 million people. On the current trajectory this figure is set to rise by midcentury to 70%, or, in real terms, in excess of 1 billion citizens at risk of heatstroke.The fossil fuel industry is the main culprit of this ongoing rise in temperatures, doing everything they can to slow the inevitable transition to clean renewable energy. The impact on peoples lives, infrastructure, biodiversity on land and in the oceans, is incalculable, as carbon emissions continue to rise. All of this is set against the needlessly worsening relations between humans around the world. New episodes include interviews with Professor Mark Maslin at UCL about the state of what the recent World Meteorological Organisation Climate Report tells us and his views on whether we should be looking into methods to cool the earth while we continue to try and reduce emissions. Nick also catch's up with Dr René van Westen at Utrecht University about his and his colleagues new AMOC research paper. The research tells us more indications of Europe’s dramatic climate future as the global mean temperature rises over 2ºC. This is inline with our current emissions scenarios that scientists have told us we should avoid at all costs. Currently our emissions trajectory is taking us much much higher and raises hard questions about the future we want to try and exist in.