What the climate story gets wrong

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story we tell about climate change is mostly a story about loss. But look to the data, and that story starts to fall apart. Emissions are peaking in key sectors. Clean energy is scaling faster than anyone predicted. Real progress is happening. It’s just not happening in the way we imagine it. Sean’s guest today is Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data and author of Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change. They discuss why our picture of the planet is so distorted, why despair can be as dangerous as denial, and what a truly energy-abundant, livable future could look like. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Hannah Ritchie, author of Clearing the Air We’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you thought of this episode at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members This episode was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The world is changing faster than ever. Now, with The Economist Insider, a new premium video offering,
0:05.8	we're giving you unprecedented access to the debates shaping our world. I have set around that
0:10.6	table at NATO. There is an incoming missile attack now. Could you answer the question? I'm sorry,
0:15.3	we've got way little time left. With a few surprises along the way. I can't promise we'll have a cocktail
0:19.2	every time, but we'll try.
0:23.1	So, don't just be an Economist reader.
0:25.9	Get on the inside track with The Economist Insider.
0:28.8	Go to Economist.com to join the conversation.
0:33.5	Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just... Speaking into the void.
0:36.2	But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact.
0:41.7	You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title?
0:47.5	See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads.
0:51.5	Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one.
0:56.4	Get started at LinkedIn.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
1:02.4	Most stories about climate change begin in the same place with loss, fire, flood, extinction, collapse. That's what all the charts and
1:15.1	grass show us after all. But what if there was a different story to tell? One that began with
1:22.4	what's working, with what we're already building. One based on a whole different set of numbers,
1:30.3	the ones that show us how far we've already come.
1:34.3	I'm Sean Elling, and this is the gray area.
1:43.3	My guest today is Hannah Ritchie.
1:46.2	She's a data scientist at Oxford and the author of Clearing the Air.
1:51.5	She calls herself a data optimist and her work shows that the world is decarbonizing much
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.