It’s fairly easy to write Davos off as the place where billionaires go to meet other billionaires to talk about how to best squirrel away their cash. And consequently to ignore or decry it.

Except that the billionaire cabals are only a small part of the story.

Davos has always been a place for big ideas and serious issues discussed not just by politicians and captains of business, but activists, pressure groups, NGOs, academics, UN agencies, and so many others.

Davos is a place where history is made. It helped avert a war between Greece and Turkey in 1988 and launched the Gavi — the Vaccine alliance which has vaccinated 760 million children — in 2020.

And there is a lot of talking, by everyone. But isn’t that a good thing, especially if it’s accompanied by action? To make a difference on the biggest challenges facing the world — we have to bring everyone into the tent. To have conversations with as many people as possible.

This year was notable for the number of young people at the event. The WEF has had its ‘Shaper’ community there for many years, and Greta Thunberg was joined by activists from all over the world, Isabelle Axelsson (Sweden), Loukina Tille (Switzerland), Vanessa Nakate (Uganda), Greta Thunberg (Sweden) and Luisa Neubauer (Germany). And I was delighted to see folks from One Young World — a partner for the Global GoalsCast.

Here are a few of the many things I noted

1 Everyone gets climate change — and its two minutes to midnight

Ok, so I will caveat this by saying everyone apart from the US and Australian heads of state, but no matter where you were in Davos people were earnestly talking about climate change and what they can do to keep the rise in global temperatures at a limit of 1.5 degrees C. Company after company made announcements on this topic with Microsoft pledging to remove as much carbon as it has emitted in its 45-year history, (as well as unveiling a $1bn green tech fund). The outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mr Carney, also joined the debate saying: “From where I sit, there is a fundamental reshaping of the system under way . . . It means not just profitability going down, it means companies going out of business in sectors that have become sunset industries.”

Away from Davos in his new year message United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres painted an apocalyptic picture of global relations, conjuring up a modern-day version of the “four horsemen.”

“I see four horsemen in our midst — four looming threats that endanger 21st-century progress and imperil 21st-century possibilities,” he said citing geopolitical tensions, the climate crisis, global mistrust and the dark side of technology as the four big existential threats to the planet and its people. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Bible represent pestilence, war, famine and death.

The theme of Davos this year, Stakeholder Capitalism, means that business now does have to at least acknowledge a relationship with the planet. It is no more business as usual.

There were also whispers that several major states are on the verge of making climate-related disclosure mandatory for companies. Maybe they are going to push these through in time for COP26, the major climate summit in Glasgow which is coming in November.

In some cases it isn’t more than greenwash. Greenpeace hit out at Davos banks for $1.4tn climate hypocrisy with a report highlighting financial support given to hydrocarbon sector by 24 institutions. Meanshielin his discussion of stakeholder capitalism Professor Lutfey Siddiqi of the London School of Economics said he was still concerned about the way that tokenism could undermine faith in businesses. He pointed the finger at companies who had made small changes a few years ago, but were not really in proportion to the type of impact they could be making. “Proportionality is important: he added. “if you are a large organisation that can make a big impact you need to move a lot faster.”

Staying positive, at Hub Culture we hosted a press conference featuring five young climate change activists including Greta Thunberg, who once again eloquently expressed their anger about the slow progress in tackling a global emergency.

Meanwhile WWF, Director General Marco Lambertini also found some positives. “Science has never been clearer, awareness has never been greater and we are beginning to see a lot of strong response,” he told me. We are at a key point where people are realising that fixing the planet and stopping climate change is in our own interest.

There was some follow-up to another devastating aspect of climate change which emerged in the lead-up to Davos. What happens to all the animals? The Australian bush fires are reckoned to have wiped out more than half a billion creatures and given us iconic images of Koalas and Kangaroos fleeing the blaze. But — as Vanessa Nakate reminded us — that as tragic as the story is in Australia is millions of animals have already perished in Africa due to climate change, and no one seems to care…

2 We need data to measure SDGs

What about SDGs? To be frank if you weren’t wearing an SDG pin at Davos you might as well have been naked. They were this year’s must wear and pretty much everyone had them.

Away from the pins though it was encouraging to hear how some companies are starting to put sustainability on the agenda and also having the evidence to gauge how they were doing, proving that not everything is green wash.

At the Equality Lounge I chaired an event which featured Alexandra Mousavizadeh, partner at Tortoise Intelligence and authority on companies and social responsibility and Huw van Steenis Senior Adviser to the Chief Executive of UBS and my podcast co-host Claudia Romo Edelman. We discussed what social responsibility really looks like for companies and how it can be accurately measured. Tortoise Media had unveiled its Social Responsibility Index (looking at the FTSE 100 companies) a few weeks before the event.

Huw van Steenis spoke about the importance of having good data for SDGs arguing that data is foundational; without it your can’t risk manage, mobilise capital or hold people to account. He underlined the need to transition to a lower carbon economy, and that $100 trillion of capital could be required to make this happen. Data will enable us to see if we are on track.

3 We are shooting for the moon

Occasionally at Davos you meet someone and learn something totally mind blowing. This year’s epiphany came from Richard Ambrose, the Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin. We had a fascinating chat in the Hub Culture studio about why space travel is back in the agenda. Not only are we going back to the moon as soon as 2024, but this time a woman will be landing there. One small step for woman… You know the rest. We’ll also see a space station set up to orbit the moon. And we’ll be using all of the knowledge gained to work towards landing on Mars.

4 Resistance is Futile: AI might save us all

So where is AI now on technology hype chart? Is it still going to be the technology that will dispatch all those annoying tasks into history leaving us to be more creative? At Davos 2020 AI was definitely back on the agenda. At the Hub Culture studio I conducted a series of interviews with technologists, many of whom are using AI in practical and highly useful ways. Take Nawal Roy of Holmusk who told me about how his company is dedicated to transforming the lives of people with behavioural health and chronic diseases through data driven medicine. He said he thinks that mental health is ‘the cancer of tomorrow’ and that it will be the biggest health problem within 5–10 years. How we create a full treatment protocol around it is going to be crucial and Nawal explained to me how data is going to play a big part in helping us to create this.

And I had another great chat with Olivier Oullier of Emotiv, who has been combining AI with neuroscience to create brain monitors which might help us to perform better, not just at work but in life in general. Maybe AI will be a technology that is not just transformative for humans, maybe even the planet too as we use its data to analyse and ultimately respond to some of the situations that will be caused by climate change.

Stan Stalnaker and I had a fascinating conversation about how to create a digital middle class at Facebook — from decentralised currency to government.

Another highlight for me was a live session with the girls from Kakuma who are part of the @iamtheCODE organisation helmed by the incredible Marieme Jamme. I spoke with girls who want to be climate activists, coders and journalists. Girls who don’t define themselves how the rest of the world sees them — as refugees. It was great to hear their questions for world and business leaders. I like to think that some of the great technological advancements of the 21st century will come from girls and women in the less advantaged areas of the world.

I believe that in 2020 we’ll hear a lot more about what I consider to be the most important issue surrounding climate change: namely financing the transition to a zero-carbon emission economy.

I was therefore fascinated to listen to the interview about climate change finance delivered on New Year’s Eve during Greta Thunberg’s guest-edited Today programme. A significant shift in the debate is that activist and island and coastal region voices — that we’re used to hearing — are now being joined by those of the establishment. In this case, the words came from the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.

For more on climate change listen to the Global GoalsCast podcast here.

Carney said that climate change is a serious threat to investments and could render them worthless. He also called out the financial sector of ignoring the environmental crisis and not moving fast enough to divest from carbon-generating investments like fossil fuels.

“If you add up the policies of all of the companies out there, they are consistent with warming of 3.7–3.8C,” Carney told the BBC.

We know that this is significantly warmer (and wetter, with higher ocean levels) than the pledge of countries signing up to the Paris agreement. They agreed to keep temperatures “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C.”

Carney also suggested that pension fund managers needed to take a long hard look at their investment in fossil fuels, as holdings could end up being worthless, even if they appear attractive now.

“They need to make the argument, to be clear about why is that going to be the case if a substantial proportion of those assets are going to be worthless,” he said.

“If we were to burn all those oil and gases there’s no way we would meet carbon budgets. Up to 80 per cent of coal assets will be stranded, [and] up to half of developed oil reserves.”

“A question for every company, every financial institution, every asset manager, pension fund or insurer — what’s your plan?” he added.

“Now $120tn worth of balance sheets of banks and asset managers are wanting this disclosure [of investments in fossil fuels]. But it’s not moving fast enough.”

Can capitalism save the planet?

The language Carney uses is noteworthy. Talking about carbon budgets, assets, disclosure, divestment plans, and climate crisis (rather than solely climate emergency) — these are financial, business terms. They indicate taking a long, hard look at past behaviour and learning from previous poor performances to avoid similar mistakes.

Carney’s next job will be the UN’s special envoy for climate action and finance in February 2020 — I imagine the language could get even stronger when he isn’t a central banker.

The other fascinating aspect was his answer to the question of whether Capitalism is the system that can deliver can deliver the kind of future we need. Carney responds by saying that we need a role for both — that there’s absolutely a role for public investment and public regulation.

I believe we’ll hear more about this debate this year and as we head towards COP26 in Glasgow about how to implement a higher carbon price. Without this — as I found out with the En-Roads Climate Change Solutions Simulator when I managed to save the planet — it is going to be hard.

His intervention, underlined yet again to me how in this ‘decade of action’ — the only way we will achieve significant action on climate is if we all pull together.

This is a topic I have discussed several times, most notably this episode of my podcast Global GoalsCast. Maybe he is a listener ;-). It’s not just Carney. Goldman Sachs recently ruled out future finance for oil drilling or exploration in the Arctic and said it would not invest in new thermal coal mines (for power stations). Insurance company AXA has pledged to stop insuring any new coal construction projects.

At the end of his interview, Carney urged the world’s politicians to take climate change seriously. “We look to political leaders to start addressing future problems today,” he said.

I look forward to hearing more from Carney in 2020 — we need his help!

Main Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com from

Originally published at https://edielush.com on January 3, 2020.

As AC/DC memorably sang a few decades ago — are we on a Highway to Hell? Well sometimes I wonder…

And so 2019 rolls onto its inevitable finale, ending not just the year but also a decade. So how was it for you? Are you full of fear — intimidated by the magnitude of the challenges that humanity faces knowing that time and time again in the last few years politicians have failed to take the initiative?

Is the open road only leading one way?

Or are you entering the 2020s brimming with optimism and hope for a better world?

No matter how you are feeling about the watered down compromises made at COP25, the ongoing Presidential impeachment process and the inevitability of the UK departing the European Union. I think there are many things that we can agree that have happened in the last few years which constitute at the very least steps in the right direction.

In the latest episode of the Global GoalsCast podcast, my partner Claudia Romo Edelman and I try to counter the gloom with help from Gillian Tett, founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times.

Gilian strongly believes that when it comes to global goals “this was the year that business really stepped up.” The SDGs are a valuable checklist for business, she explains, and virtually every CEO she talks to wants to discuss the environment, corporate governance, and sustainability.

So maybe if governments don’t always live up to our expectations enterprises might have a role in filling the gaps.

In this episode we also look back over 2019 thinking about the people we have met and the stories we have listened to. There have been some incredible tales of human resilience and ingenuity which we want to remember once again.

There is also a special Facts and Actions this episode, drawn from some of the best recommendations throughout the year.

So getting back to my original question? I guess we could be heading for Hades, but at the moment we are at a service station supping a coffee and wondering how we might make that detour…

The Global GoalsCast podcast lives here

Originally published at https://edielush.com on December 20, 2019.

In 1807 William Wilberforce, along with many supporters, managed to put an end to the Transatlantic slave trade. It’s a historical event that is rightly celebrated.

Yet I wonder if many Britons think that this was the end of slavery in the UK.

Sadly this isn’t the case.

At an event I recently attended — Tech Tackles Trafficking which was organised by the Anti-Slavery Collective — I discovered where slavery is now and how technology is helping states, organisations and inspiring individuals to combat it.

The figures for slavery in 2019 are not cheering.

• There are apparently 40.3 million slaves in the world. That is more than the population of the cities of London, New York and Tokyo combined.
• A report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) says forced labour generates $150 billion in illegal profits per year. Two-thirds of that money came from commercial sexual exploitation, while the rest is from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture, child labour and related activities.
• 10,000 kidneys are apparently on sale on the black market at this time.
• Every continent in the world has been involved in human trafficking. In the United States, it is most prevalent in Texas, Florida, New York and California.
• Globally, about one in five victims of human trafficking are children.

Yet at the same time, the will to end slavery once and for all — it is Global Goal number eight which aims for ‘Decent work and economic growth,’ — is inspiring individuals and groups to seek new technologically driven way to combat it.

At the event I listened to Doreen Boyd, from Rights Lab, Nottingham, who gave details of her imaginatively titled programme, ‘Fighting Slavery from Space.’ Doreen and her team harness satellite technology to lead the battle against slavery.

In India many slaves work with brick kilns tirelessly making bricks for their captors. The satellites are able to track the kilns and can record where they are being used, giving information to the authorities to investigate whether the kilns are legitimate or staffed using slave labour.

As Doreen explains, “Modern slavery is one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. It is therefore vital that today’s anti-slavery movement have access to as many tools as possible to both understand and prevent this crime. This includes harnessing available satellite technology to investigate industries, countries and regions where modern slavery practices are commonly reported. Remote sensing can provide evidence to support new forms of advocacy, accountability and action in the effort to prevent slavery and support survivors. In fact, remote sensing technologies are already being implemented to support anti-slavery action.”

Doreen also gave another example: Cobalt mining in the Congo, another industry and region notorious for its use of slave labour. The satellites are able to track movements of earth around holes in the ground where people are entering and exiting mines. Once again the police can be tipped off and can investigate if unauthorised mines are in use.

Technology is also being used to identify slaves in developed countries like the US and UK.

In her presentation Sherrie Caltagirone, Founder and Executive Director, Global Emancipation Network, which is a nonprofit dedicated to ending all forms of human trafficking through coordinated use of technology and data, argued that “human traffickers are reliant on current technology to increase their revenue. But the same technology can be used against them.” She spoke about how image recognition tools have been given other the police to help them identity schoolgirls who are being held as slaves. The app can identify the uniforms and alert authorities if it isn’t a local one. Many schoolgirls are trafficked in their uniforms and often they are the only clothes they own.

It is just one of a series of initiatives that Sherrie and her team have developed. She explained that they take their information from a variety of sources including both the dark web and public records data. They then enrich the data they have with geospatial tools, natural language processing and process images through specialised image analysis tools to gain insights into the people in those images, such as their age, gender, ethnicity, and other attributes. The data is then made available free of charge to all organisations with a valid counter-human trafficking mission via their multi-tenant intelligence and data analytics platform, Minerva.

An example of how it can work is by studying the language used in advertising, including emoji or text embedded in images. One sign of an underage sex trafficking victim could be words like “lolita” and “fresh” in an advertisement. Studying language and data shared in ads also helps differentiate between posts from independent sex workers and those that are likely to be sex-trafficking victims.

Finally Joséphine Goube, CEO from Techfugees outlined ways in which people in developed countries can work to help refugees. There are a host of brilliant innovations listed here including Integreat, an information app and website tailored to the specific needs of both newcomers as the users of the app and municipal administrations as the content provider. It is multilingual, offline and free. Se also Paper Airplanes a nonprofit that uses video conferencing technology to provide free, peer-to-peer language and professional skills instruction to young adults and teens affected by conflict in the Middle East and North Africa.

You can find out more about the organisation behind the event The Anti-Slavery Collective, which was founded by Princess Eugenie and Julia de Boinville here.

Claudia Romo Edelman and I looked at one aspect of the story of human trafficking while telling the story of Ibrahim Kondeh in the Global GoalsCast podcast, an epic tale which spans over two episodes.

You can hear it here.

Posted on November 8, 2019

The discovery of the bodies of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a truck in Essex has once again reminded us that, whether we like it or not, there are still hundreds of thousands of individuals making treacherous journeys to Europe.

What was heart wrenching for me was seeing the images of some of the young people who lost their lives in that lorry. These are real people with real hopes and dreams.

Our most recent GlobalGoals cast podcast ‘We are True Heroes’ also focuses on migration. We tell the story of Ibrahim Kondeh who undertook a perilous from a village in Sierra Leone to the Libyan seashore and then on to Europe.

It’s a tale that is both harrowing and uplifting — and reflects the journey of many migrants from Africa to Europe.

Ibrahim was an ‘Irregular Migrant’ — i.e. traveling without documents or legal permission to enter the countries they are trying to reach. In his case ‘Irregular’ led to exploitation, modern slavery and extraordinary risks — all to pursue an aspiration.

One part of Ibrahim’s journey involved him working as a slave in Sabha, a notorious hive of human trafficking. His captors shipped him out for work and brought him back, keeping the money until they decided they had enough to ship him on. Had he wanted to go home instead of carrying on to Europe, he couldn’t.

Many young women who embark on that path find themselves facing similar challenges, but also tragically for some they are also forced into prostitution.

In the podcast, Mohammed Yahya from the United Nations Development Programme, details how as many as 30,000 Africans have drowned in the four or five years in the Mediterranean.

So what is it that drives them to make a treacherous journey which they know could signal the end of their lives?

Mohammed Yahya stresses it is not just that they are looking for jobs — but it is the quality of jobs and life they are seeking which is the catalyst that makes them prepared to take risks.

“What it means is that the quality of employment matters and that people’s aspirations and the power of their dreams are much bigger than only economic factors.”

“If you go to many African capitals,” he adds, “you hear a lot of discourse around whether if people knew about the risk, they would have taken this dangerous journey. But what we found was that although 93% of those who migrated experienced extreme distress and found the journey itself to be extremely dangerous, only 2% said, knowing what we know now, we would not have done it.”

Mohammed Yahya believes it is time for the world, and especially Europe to look at the creation of a legal pathway for migrants.

“You are not getting the least educated, low-skill people migrating,” he argues. “Migrants are often aspirational people who want to improve their lives. It’s time to start looking at legal pathways. How can we put in place something that is manageable? Because of the illegal nature of the migration it creates anti-immigration feelings in Europe. Once you have a legal pathway, we are confident the irregular nature and the anxiety that is related with the governess of irregular migration may go down. But it will need courage on both sides and a new debate around migration.”

The Global GoalsCast migration podcast is here.

I’m well aware of the overwhelming evidence that eating cows is rubbish for my carbon output. Yet 100% giving up meat and dairy products isn’t something that appeals to everyone. Personally I still can’t get even my head around oat milk.

To be fair a lot of the soya/microprotein/pea based ‘mock meats’ of recent years have gone a long way to ape burgers and sausages with startups in the US like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat and in the UK like Moving Mountains, and of course Quorn — which my daughter loves — and Linda McCartney Foods becoming big businesses in the process.

Yet for me their output simply isn’t (yet) meaty enough.

One development that interests me is lab grown meat which takes animal DNA and then creates something that looks and tastes like meat and has its succulent texture.

Mmm, lab grown meat though.

I have lived in the UK long enough to remember the discussions about genetically modified crops back in the 90s.

Yet its champions claim that once they get lab grown meat right, it will be a true replacement for meat, will be scalable so available across the globe, and in theory could mean that the requirement for animal based meat is significantly reduced which will be good news for the environment.

If this all sounds like something in the future think again.

In recent years, high-profile start-ups such as Mosa Meat and Memphis Meats have completed significant funding rounds as they seek to create lab cultured meat-style products. Dutch company Mosa Meat unveiled its first lab grown burger back in 2013. It cost around £30k. Things have moved on now and the company believes that its its cultured meat could be commercially available in restaurants as soon as 2021 costing around $11 per (£8.50) per hamburger.

So what do cultured meat products taste like? One of the challenges is that while some lab-grown meat experiments have achieved the consistency and taste of products such as sausages and burgers, getting the ‘mouth feel’ right for firmer, highly textured animal products such as steak has proved much trickier.

A big breakthrough

Until now… A breakthrough by researchers at the Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) could bring the days of lab-cultured steak that little bit closer. According to research published in npj Science of Food the Harvard team has grown rabbit and cow muscle cells on edible gelatin scaffolds. They claim this is a significant breakthrough in delivering an analogue that has the texture and consistency of meat. A vegan-friendly version, which uses scaffolding from other edible molecules, was also trialled and successfully implemented.

The scientists succeeded by using an immersion rotary jet spinner — a bit like a candy floss maker — to enable gelatin fibres to form the base for growing the cells. The team then seeded the fibres with rabbit and cow muscle cells, which anchored to the gelatin and grew in long, thin structures, similar to real meat.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” admitted study author Luke MacQueen of Harvard. “The meat texture has yet to be fully recreated.”

As for the taste — well lab etiquette and food safety issues meant that the scientists could only prod their results, not eat it for lunch.

So will you eat lab processed meat? One interesting point is that it could be even healthier than meat as companies could add vitamins and minerals to the mix. You can also likely adjust the amount fat too. Could you create a

Fundamentally, I will, if I trust the company making the meat. I believe trust is the defining issue of our age. Transparency, honesty and openness about how the science develops will be vital in gaining acceptance.

Of course lab-grown meat doesn’t let you off the hook health-wise. As my go-to health blog the Mayo Clinic says, cutting down on red meat has multiple positive benefits.

Still, I hope to — occasionally — tuck into a lab-grown fillet steak.

Why should we care who makes vegan food? Sure, vegans should — but does it matter to the rest of us if companies who specialise in meat production or who have poor record on sustainability or animal welfare are producing plant burgers?

That’s the big debate splashed all over the New York Times today which puts the vegan meat industry under the microscope.

The NYT story runs:

“Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, scrappy start-ups that share a penchant for superlatives and a commitment to protecting the environment, have dominated the relatively new market for vegetarian food that looks and tastes like meat.

But with plant-based burgers, sausages and chicken increasingly popular and available in fast-food restaurants and grocery stores across the United States, a new group of companies has started making meatless meat: the food conglomerates and meat producers that Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods originally set out to disrupt.

In recent months, major food companies like Tyson, Smithfield, Perdue, Hormel and Nestlé have rolled out their own meat alternatives, filling supermarket shelves with plant-based burgers, meatballs and chicken nuggets.”

The article then goes on to talk about how plant based food is being purchased by non-vegans — i.e. flexitarians like me. It’s no surprise that KFC, Burger King and others all want a slice of the vegan pie and the growth of vegan food in US supermarkets.

The debate mirrors a trend that has been happening the UK for over three years. Now every supermarket champions its own vegan range and Tesco has produced a vegan advert featuring a child who doesn’t want to eat animals.

I would argue that the debate should expand to encompass the cost to the planet of meat production. This is an issue Claudia Romo Edelman and I looked at in a recent Global GoalsCast podcast. We know that globally, animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Cow burps (see podcast) are brutal for the planet.

And it is more than carbon emissions.

A flourishing life on land is the foundation for our life on this planet. We are all part of the planet’s ecosystem and we have caused severe damage to it through deforestation, loss of natural habitats and land degradation. As a recent biodiversity report shows, industrial agriculture and overfishing are the primary drivers of the extinction crisis, with the meat and dairy industries having a substantial impact. Of course, industrial agriculture is not the only culprit.

Nevertheless promoting a sustainable use of our ecosystems and preserving biodiversity is not a cause. It is the key to our own survival.

And if that’s too tree-hugger for you, consider that the economic value of ecosystems to human livelihoods and well-being is $US125 trillion per year.

So it does matter that vegan food is being produced by companies who up until now have specialised in animal products. For all the excitement Greggs garnered when it launched a vegan sausage roll, we have to remember this a company that sells 1.5 million meat snacks a week. And it obviously isn’t just Greggs. Several of the big players the article references — Tyson, Smithfield, Perdue, Hormel and Nestlé — have been accused of disregard for the environment and having poor records on animal welfare.

Though I am cheered by Nestle, Tyson and Smithfield’s sustainability moves, reducing consumption of meat by richer, western countries currently isn’t happening fast enough to make a difference. For more on that have a listen to The Unsustainable Ratio.

So while it is great to see vegan food going mainstream, driving competition — but it doesn’t mean that vegans, as well as committed environmentally driven flexitarians like me should just hold our noses and ignore the fact that many of the new big players in vegan meat actually specialise in the real thing.

If you’re going to try a plant burger — I’d argue to go for one of the cleaner vegan startups disrupting the marketer like Impossible, Beyond and Violife, Vurger, Moving Mountains in the UK.

What do you think?

Really excited to say that the new episode of Global GoalsCast — the podcast on development/sustainability issues I host with Claudia Romo Edelman is out today, Friday, October 4th.

In this, the second episode of the series, Claudia and I continue to look at the Climate Crisis. In the wake of UNGA, The Climate Summit and Global Goals Week (which I wrote about here) we take on a big question. Is the zeitgeist shifting toward action to curb global warming and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals? We are joined by esteemed Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett to discuss what might be the defining issue of our age..

While the actions of governments at the Climate Summit were disappointing, we see a new attitude among many businesses, who were far more engaged in UN activity this year. “The balance of risks in the eyes of many business executives have shifted,” says Tett. Many executives now think it is “riskier to stand on the sidelines and do nothing than to actually be involved in some of these social and climate change movements,” Tett reports.

The challenge now is not whether to act but how. I complete my visit with Professor John Sterman at MIT, whose En-Roads computer model of the climate lets me identify policy actions that will hold contain heating of the atmosphere. “The conclusion here is it is, technically, still possible to limit expected warming to 1.5” degrees Celsius, Sterman concludes.

But is it politically possible? For a perspective on that, I solicited Facts and Actions from Bradley Tusk, venture capitalist, political strategist, writer and host of the podcast, Firewall, which looks at the intersection of tech, politics, and culture. He says the deadlock in the US Congress can only be broken by supporting moderate candidates.

This episode is sponsored by BSR, a non-profit working with member companies to support corporate social responsibility. BSR19.org/Podcast

I was recently in New York for UNGA which lands in between the #ClimateStrike and the #ClimateActionSummit. I was also MC for #MiskYouthForum event which included interviewing Actor / activists Adrian Grenier, David Oyelowu, and Imagine co-founder Paul Polman on #SDGs, #climateaction #UNGA #youth, educating girls and more.

It is a memorable time for me as two years ago the @globalgoalscast sprung into being right here at the @unitednations. Along with my co-host @claudiagonzalezromo — I have worked on some amazing stories and created what I believe are some compelling listens.

And now Global Goals Cast is back with the launch episode of Season three. In this podcast we try to save the earth from Climate Apocalypse with some help from MIT Professor John Sterman and his Climate Interactive program which lets you pull the levers — from putting a price on carbon to planting trees to subsidizing renewables.

In part one Claudia González Romo Edelman says that I put on my red cape and fly around the world trying to keep the world’s temperature increase below +2C. You can find out whether I manage to do it on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Details here.

If you are reading this you probably know a bit about me. As for Claudia, she is a Mexican-Swiss diplomat and an advocate for inclusion, equity and representation. She is also the former Chief of Advocacy at Unicef and is Special Advisor to We Are All Human Foundation.

As hosts of Global GoalsCast, we got together to curate a collection of podcasts that highlight and inspire global change.

The article was originally published on Radio Public’s website here

If each of us pulls in the right way, the world will move. That’s why we started this podcast. Global GoalsCast is about the unlikely heroes spurring change, innovation, and disruption that can produce a more equitable world by 2030. We bust development jargon and try not to take ourselves too seriously as we share stories to inspire and empower listeners to make the world a better place, and we sign off every episode with a list of facts and actions.

The Sustainable Development Goals signed by 193 countries in 2015 are the world’s to do list and the guideposts for our podcast. These 17 “Global Goals” range from ending extreme poverty to educating everyone to combating climate change. With each episode of our show, we take each one of these areas, find champions who are doing something extraordinary and make their stories accessible, relatable and attainable for every listener.

What follows are podcasts that feature voices you may not have heard from before — whatever your bubble — who inspire us to think about global issues in a different way.

Global GoalsCast

https://radiopublic.com/global-goalscast-859XRx

The great thing about the Global Goals is that you don’t have to have heard about them to be one of the people achieving them! Sometimes when we approach people to be guests the response we get is, “The global whats?”

Each episode features people making a difference. Some of these names are recognizable: Bill Gates speaks about eradicating extreme poverty, Princess Eugenie on ending the scourge of modern slavery, and Annie Lennox about global feminism. Others are the unsung heroes: in an episode on Migration we hear from Brenda, an undocumented girl who crosses the Rio Grande in third grade, who becomes the first in her family to graduate from high school and is now a software engineer at Google. In our episode about breaking stereotypes, we hear from comedians who challenge bias through their jokes and their lives. And in the Food for all episode, we feature Zambian farmers who — with a bit of tech — go from being subsistence farmers to agricultural entrepreneurs.

Mothers of Invention

https://radiopublic.com/mothers-of-invention-Gbx0pN

We love this not just because it is hosted by two women (one ex-UN like Claudia) and is focused on climate justice (because without serious action tackling climate change, the rest of the global goals will be seriously compromised), but also because the hosts, former Irish President Mary Robinson and comedian Maeve Higgins, like to laugh as well (like us). They celebrate amazing women doing remarkable things from the grassroots to the courtroom, the front lines to the board room, all over the world.

DiverCity

https://radiopublic.com/divercity-podcast-talking-diversi-85wYNo

Host Julia Streets uses her experience both working in the City of London with a range of financial clients and as an advocate of looking at diversity and inclusion with a wide lens to make the commercial argument for why diversity matters and delivers better results. She is a comedian as well (a bit of a theme for us!) so as a host, she manages to keep a light touch with her guests but without shying away from hard issues.

Vegan Curious

https://radiopublic.com/vegan-curious-Wd23wR

We all know that eating less meat and dairy is part of the solution to cutting carbon emissions but (for us at least) the whole vegan scene is a little daunting. No one likes to be told what to do, which is why you don’t have to be a vegan to enjoy this podcast. Sara and Ashley tackle the questions that keep us up at night: namely, what plant milk goes best in tea?

Terra Incognita: The Adventure Podcast

https://radiopublic.com/terra-incognita-the-adventure-pod-6vXY1l

Adventurer and filmmaker Matt Pycroft leads conversations with pioneers of exploration and discovery. When you live in a city like we do (London and New York, respectively), it can be hard to remember why the planet is worth fighting for. From mountaineers to Arctic scientists, tree climbers to polar explorers, Terra Incognita feels at times like a podcast version of The Blue Planet.

Displaced

https://radiopublic.com/Displaced

We have a number of UN and NGO partners who share their stories with us on Global GoalsCast. One of them is the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and we love their podcast about the world on the move. Conflict, economic inequality, and climate change are three of the biggest reasons people move around the planet. As migrants ourselves we know that these issues are complex and emotional, and can’t be dealt with in a tweet or two minute read on the radio or newspaper. On our podcast, we’ve looked at the economic opportunities that refugees offer with Displaced hosts Grant Gordon and Ravi Gurumurthy, and we enjoy the space and time they take to shine a light on the largest displacement crisis the world is facing since World War II.

Green Dreamer

https://radiopublic.com/green-dreamer-sustainability-and-Ww0Pb5

We like to talk about how, despite the bad news, there is a lot of good in the world. In fact, there’s never been a better time to be alive! Host Kamea Cayne talks with people who are regenerating communities, building biodiversity, tackling food waste, creating sustainable fashion and generally contributing to helping our planet thrive. We like her spirit and her action-oriented episodes that aim to keep those who care motivated and involved.

Podship: Earth

https://radiopublic.com/podship-earth-6N9VzA

We have less than 10 years to halt the most serious effects of climate change. We also already know the solutions out there to tackle it. Veteran environmentalist host Jared Blumenfeld (ex-Environmental Protection Agency and Natural Resources Defense Council, and that’s only a tiny portion of his CV) cuts through the crap and produces a highly listenable podcast that deals with things we all care about: plastic pollution, bees, air quality, and the oceans, to name a few.

Conscious Chatter

https://radiopublic.com/conscious-chatter-with-kestrel-je-GOMX16

“Fashion is a reflection of the time,” US Vogue editor Anna Winter said. So what does our overwhelmingly fast and continuous addiction to cheap togs say about us to future generations? That we were unethical, unsustainable, and failed to internalise the externalities of that $1 t-shirt. So what should we do about it? Kestral Jenkins makes us think about the choices we make every day getting dressed, and that we neither have to don a hair-shirt, nor spend a ton, to feel good about how we look.

Without Fail

https://radiopublic.com/without-fail-6pLAyD

We often ask our guests on Global GoalsCast how to scale their ideas so they really make a difference to not just thousands of people but millions or even billions of people. That isn’t possible without tripping up along the way. Host Alex Blumberg talks to founders about just that — the path from idea to action — and all the mis-steps and mis-haps that happen along the way. From basketball stars to chefs to police detectives to tech insiders; it’s utterly listenable.