Jacinda Ardern and… Is It Time to Talk About Geoengineering?
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast
Persephonica
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, hosts Tom Rivett Carnac and Paul Dickinson delve into the rapidly emerging - and faintly surreal - world of solar geoengineering.
Politico journalist Karl Mathiesen joins us to unpack his investigation into Stardust, a VC-backed startup claiming it’s ready to spray particles into the stratosphere. Karl explains why this technology is suddenly attracting serious money, why scientists still have major questions about safety and side effects, and how in some places, the global regulatory landscape is almost nonexistent.
And from technological disruption to political stability, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, reflects on the leadership we need. She’s unflinchingly honest about why so many politicians still choose “fear and blame” over long-term action, and why climate remains New Zealand’s “nuclear-free moment.” A test of political character as much as policy. Her argument is hopeful: people, she insists, are ahead of their politics.
As we march towards the end of 2025, these conversations map the terrain of 2026: technologies racing ahead, governance lagging behind, and a public increasingly hungry for leaders willing to act with integrity. If you want to understand where the climate fight is really heading this episode is essential.
Learn more:
📚Read The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming
👂Listen to our episode with Ricken Patel
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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to outrage and optimism. |
| 0:03.9 | I'm Tom Rufit Karnak. |
| 0:04.9 | And I'm Paul Dickinson. |
| 0:06.0 | Just the two of us today, Paul, and we are going to talk about geoengineering with Carl Matheson from Politico. |
| 0:12.1 | And we have a fantastic conversation on leadership with Jacinda Ardenne. |
| 0:16.0 | Thanks for being here. |
| 0:21.4 | So Paul, little old us, we're going to struggle on. |
| 0:23.3 | Christiana is back next week, but sadly not with us. |
| 0:26.2 | I mean, even the best things I guess we need to take a break from. |
| 0:29.3 | So she's on the beach. |
| 0:30.5 | Well, you have to replace one fabulous female leader with another fabulous female leader, not replaced, but compliment. |
| 0:36.7 | Well, Christiana will appear actually in this |
| 0:38.6 | episode in the interview we did with Jacinda, so we'll come to that a bit later. Two fabulous female |
| 0:42.9 | leaders. Two fabulous female leaders. But first of all, we are going to delve into the arena of |
| 0:48.7 | geoengineering. And we're going to do this in a very light way. And this is a topic we're going to |
| 0:53.8 | cover in a lot more detail later, because because actually we've talked about it already on Outraged Autism and it's going to be one of the features of the coming years. So like it or not, we're going to delve into it from different perspectives. But we wanted to cover it today because the episode we did last week with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of course of Ministry for the Future, |
| 1:12.8 | which was a great conversation if you didn't listen to it. That book depicts a solar geoengineering |
| 1:18.8 | intervention where a government uses its air force to inject sulfate aerosols into the upper |
| 1:23.8 | atmosphere. And as I was listening to that episode and reading as I do all the latest |
| 1:29.7 | climate news, I came across an amazing article written by a good friend Carl Matheson that set |
| 1:35.2 | out the current state of the real-life version of that story. So that's what we wanted to dig into, |
| 1:40.3 | wasn't it, Paul, before we got going. Yeah, and I mean, look, this is not exactly |
... |
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