Episode
Mike Berners-Lee: The Climate Lies You’ve Been Sold
- Podcast
- Climate Unf*cked
- Published
- Dec 8, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4066
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://episode.flightcast.com/01KBZ5Y1QQGESBPJFTWCQYG39C.mp3
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Summary
Professor Mike Berners-Lee is the internationally renowned bestselling author of How Bad Are Bananas?, The Burning Question (co-authored with Duncan Clark), There Is No Planet B, and most recently A Climate of Truth. He's a professor at Lancaster University and works on carbon footprinting through his company Small World Consulting, which has worked with companies like BT, Microsoft, and all 15 UK national parks. A couple of weeks ago, Mike chaired the National Emergency Briefing in Westminster Hall to hundreds of political, business, faith, culture and media leaders. In this episode, we dive into: Why the "energy transition" is actually an "energy addition" - we've grown renewable energy by 2.5x since the first COP, but fossil fuel use has grown 60% in the same period The three things actually needed for energy transition: grow renewables, constrain fossil fuel supply through carbon pricing, AND reduce total global energy demand Why individual carbon footprints don't directly cut global emissions (it's like squeezing a balloon - it pops out elsewhere) - but why they still matter for creating ripple effects and cultural change The psychology of climate denial - from grief transition curves to "disavowal" (when you understand the evidence but live as if you don't) - and how to move past protective mechanisms Why carbon accounting is broken - most companies use random system boundaries that make numbers incomparable, and why we need to count everything in supply chains once and once only The dishonesty crisis: how a "broken trinity" of politics, media and business is dragging each other down instead of raising the game - and why we need a "me too moment" for political deceit Media ownership matters - who owns what you read, their track record, and how subtle influence sh…