Hello and welcome to outragerage and Optimism,

a new podcast about solving the climate crisis and remaking the world.

I'm Tom Rivekarnack.

I'm Christina Figuettes.

And I'm Paul Dickinson.

Today, we bring you a special conversation with Prime Minister Theresa May.

In her final days of office, the Prime Minister has announced a net zero by 2050 target for the UK. This is the most ambitious target

of any G7 country. We talk to her about why she's done it and what it means. So we have something special for you today.

Theresa May, the outgoing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,

has invited us to come to number 10 to have a discussion with

Christina about the net zero target by 2050 that the UK has adopted. Now we

haven't had a G7 head of government on the podcast yet so this is new for us and I don't know if Theresa May has been on many podcasts so perhaps it's new for her too but I thought what we might do at the top end is just spend a few minutes talking about the target itself, what the missing pieces are so

that we can understand it better. So just to set the scene here, it is undeniable that

this is ambitious by international standards. It's true that other countries like Costa Rica and Finland

have set targets like this, but the UK is the first G7 country to do so and by far the largest economy.

And it's also done this at a critical time.

We need to see countries stepping up with significant additional ambition

between now and the end of 2020

to give us a chance to stay at 1.5 degrees and this

signal from the UK could well precipitate more countries around the world

stepping up and we're already beginning to see that with encouraging signals from the Germans and the

French about an EU step up.

...