This is of course a global podcast but this week we want to devote our time to the UK

because so much is happening in the UK. Climate emergency has been declared

and there is civil disobedience in the streets. Hello and welcome to outrage and optimism a new podcast about dealing with the

climate crisis and reshaping the world. My name's Tom Rivak

I'm Christina Figuero and I'm Paul Dickinson and today we explore what's been

going on in the United Kingdom over the last two weeks this has been an amazing period of time for climate action.

From civil disobedience in the streets to the declaration of an emergency, to the first week without

using coal since the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

We'll explore what's been going on and what lessons there are for action in the rest of the world.

And we speak with William Haig, former leader of the Conservative Party,

former Foreign Secretary, about how those on the right of politics

can get engaged in the debate.

Thanks for being here.

Now a lot has happened in the UK in the last two weeks and it merits unpacking because it's both interesting and exciting in itself

and also relevant for other countries that are now trying

to make these shifts and these transitions.

So I'm just going to quickly summarize the many things that have happened and then we can dive

into the conversation.

The first thing is that London was effectively closed down for about 10 days by Extinction

Rebellion who were a UK group and in a remarkably coordinated series of protests shut down multiple sites across London

calling for three things. The first was a declaration of emergency on climate change. The second was a commitment to combat climate change with a new target of net zero by 2025.

And the third was a creation of citizen assemblies on a regional basis to determine how this could be delivered.

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