We Don't Have Time Podcast

And now what? Inside the First Global Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels

The world's first international conference dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels just wrapped in Santa Marta, Colombia, and We Don't Have Time was there as the official global media partner. In this episode, we bring you inside the event where a coalition of 57 nations stopped debating whether to end fossil fuels and started working on how. We hear from climate scientist and Potsdam Institute director Johan Rockström on the launch of a landmark new Science Panel for the global energy transition; from Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, on why this conference had to happen outside the UN system; and from former UN Paris Agreement spokesperson Nick Nuttall, who was on the ground in Santa Marta all week. Also featured: Colombia's Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres, whose country hosted the conference; Netherlands Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven, from the co-host country; France's climate envoy Benoît Faraco on France's new fossil fuel phase-out roadmap; Amiera Sawas of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative on debt as the hidden barrier to transition; Mariana Paoli of Oxfam on taxing fossil fuel profits; Shanta Barley, Chief Climate Scientist at Fortesque, on what 90 major businesses agreed on; geographer Philippe Le Billon on the risks of extractivism in the green transition; Paola Yanguas Parra of the IISD on new models of international climate cooperation; and Maina Talia, Tuvalu's Minister for Climate Change, whose country will host the next conference in 2027. Topics covered: fossil fuel phaseout, energy transition roadmaps, climate diplomacy, just transition, fossil fuel subsidies, renewable energy, climate finance, global debt crisis, and the future of international climate cooperation beyond COP. The We Don't Have Time Podcast is part of the world's largest media platform for climate action. Find all interviews and panel discussions from Santa Marta at wedonthavetime.org.

The beginning of the end of fossil fuels

For more than three decades, the world has been trying ot answer a key question: how do you get every country on Earth to act collectively on climate change? In this episode of the We Don't Have Time Podcast, we take you from the early days of international cooperation in the 1990s to the landmark Paris Agreement. While climate diplomacy has made historic progress, there's no denying just how difficult global consensus can be. Conflicting interests, economic inequalities, and the need for unanimous agreement have slowed action, even as the urgency of the crisis has grown. But now, a new chapter may be beginning with the world's First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels to be held in Santa Marta, Colombia, marking a turning point in how the world moves from promises to action. Listen in now and sign up to the event: https://www.wedonthavetime.org/events/transitioningaway [https://www.wedonthavetime.org/events/transitioningaway]

Climate tipping points

What would happen if climate change pushed the planet past a breaking point? If you’ve seen the 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, you might picture massive tidal waves, superstorms engulfing entire continents, and oceans freezing overnight. It made for exciting cinema, but the real scientific discussion around climate “tipping points” is more complicated. Scientists believe that gradual warming could push critical Earth systems over thresholds that trigger large and potentially irreversible changes. From the decline of tropical coral reefs to the risk of shifts in the Amazon rainforest or the Atlantic Ocean circulation, understanding how close we may be to these tipping points is one of the most critical questions we face as a species. But not everyone agrees that “tipping points” are the best way to think about climate risk. Are they a crucial framework about how complex systems behave, or a confusing metaphor that distracts from the real work of cutting emissions?