Episodes

‘Tis the season Summerupperers, in which your intrepid hosts, having feasted on climate papers all year long, award the second annual Wonky award for our favourite of 2023 and serve up a deliciously spicy climate take on the movie How To Blow Up a Pipeline.

In one final tip o’ the chapeau, your intrepid hosts go from majlis to multilateral manoevres and sum up the spectacular climax of COP28 in Dubai: approval of the first Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement.

Featuring four podcasters and a baby and recorded on the ground in Dubai as negotiations neared the halfway mark at COP28, your intrepid hosts ditch the usual format in this very special episode of Let Me Sum Up.

Your intrepid hosts are glowing with enthusiasm as they unpack the latest offering on the potential for nuclear energy in Australia - a radiant idea or a total meltdown? Views are split.

Your intrepid hosts try to make the sums add up on Residual Emissions - what’s left when we’ve cut everything possible (?) or practical (?) or convenient (?). Nations’ stated strategies are not yet very convincing!

Your intrepid hosts consider the Contracts For Difference increasingly used to promote clean energy development, and whether they increase burdens on the poorest households.

Your intrepid hosts enter the exotic glamorous world of Benefit Cost Analysis, where footloose Biden Administration Kevin Bacons shock uptight traditionalists by prioritising welfare over efficiency.

Your intrepid hosts jauntily amble into a bunfight over “decision-relevant climate scenarios”. Standard scenarios heavily rely on janky, limited, terrible integrated assessment models. A new paper asks: what if they didn’t?

WONDER! as the Climate Change Authority tries to reset the debate on Carbon Dioxide Removal and how to do it well. GASP! in horror at the strained metaphors your intrepid hosts deploy to describe carbon sequestration.

Your intrepid hosts goggle as a forefather of the National Electricity Market declares his own co-creation past its use-by date in ‘Rethinking markets, regulation and governance for the energy for the energy transition.’

Your intrepid hosts resist the urge to flip straight to the LCOE tables and actually read CSIRO's 2022-23 GenCost report.

Your intrepid hosts reflect on the raw materials that are essential for the clean energy revolution with the International Energy Agency's 'Critical Minerals Market Review 2023'.

Your intrepid hosts discuss a seminal climate paper from 1965, 'Restoring the Quality of Our Environment - Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel’ from the President’s Science Advisory Council.

Your intrepid hosts unpack the Grattan Institute's big new report on decarbonising residential gas use 'Getting off gas: Why, how, and who should pay?'

Your intrepid hosts delve into the depths of discount rates with the dense but delightful 'Discounting the Distant Future: A Critique of the EPA’s Analysis of the Social Cost of Carbon’.

Your intrepid hosts gaze into the crystal ball which is the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council's new report, The Future of Gas.

Your intrepid hosts discuss the Investor Group on Climate Change's new report 'Driving Australian Climate Innovation: Unlocking capital to support a clean industrial revolution.'

Your intrepid hosts unpack the climate and energy measures in the 2023-24 Australian Budget.

Your intrepid hosts review the International Energy Agency's 'Australia 2023: Energy Policy Review'.

Your intrepid hosts ponder the climate volume from the Productivity Commission’s latest 5-yearly productivity inquiry, 'Advancing Prosperity'.

Your intrepid hosts are joined by Guardian Australia Climate and Environment Editor Adam Morton to discuss the big package of reforms to the Safeguard Mechanism agreed in Parliament this week.

Your intrepid hosts take on two papers – including William Nordhaus' 'Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-riding in International Climate Policy' – that consider whether climate clubs are our best hope to supercharge global climate action.

Your intrepid hosts consider what the 'clean' actually means in "‘Clean’ Hydrogen? An analysis of the emissions and costs of fossil fuel based versus renewable electricity based hydrogen."

Your intrepid hosts discuss the prospects for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere laid out in 'The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal'.