366: The Agency Crisis: Heatwaves, Tony Blair and the Politics of Powerlessness
The UK, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal shattered their May heat records last week. Scenes reminiscent of high summer arrived months early, across Western Europe. And like all extreme weather events, there was a human toll. Infrastructure under strain, health services stretched, and lives lost.
About this episode
But as records fell, the political conversation was moving in the other direction. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair published a lengthy essay calling on the government to halt its net zero acceleration and prioritise cheap energy. Rory Stewart made a similar case on The Rest is Politics, invoking AI data centres and industrial competitiveness. Both are figures from the centre of British politics. Neither is a climate denier. So what's happening?
This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Christiana Figueres sit with this dissonance. They ask what it means when hopelessness becomes self-sustaining, a cultural condition as much as a feeling. They ask whether grief, properly faced, might be what unlocks action rather than foreclosing it. And they look at the history of transformations that began long before success seemed likely.
Is the real crisis not just the climate, but one of agency? And what does it take to act with conviction when outcomes are genuinely uncertain?
Learn More:
☀️ See Severe Weather Europe's recap of the historic heat dome across Europe
🌡️ Follow CNN's coverage of the human and scientific dimensions of the event
📝 Read Blair's original essay at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
⚡ Explore BusinessGreen's coverage of the investor and political response to Blair's essay
🧠 Dig into the Lancet Planetary Health study on climate anxiety in children and young people globally, and how perceived government failure shapes distress
📊 Check out Yale's research on distress, agency, and climate action and how they interact
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
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.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:06.700
Archive news clip: Hello, let's start with those new temperature records that have been set again here in the United Kingdom.
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Archive news clip: Portugal has recorded its hottest May day ever, where temperature is reaching 40.3 degrees Celsius in the central town of Mara.
00:00:15.300 --> 00:00:19.740
Archive news clip: Across Europe, scorching heat even before the official start of summer. Record temperatures blasting France, Spain and the UK, soaring well above average.
00:00:25.340 --> 00:00:28.560
Archive news clip: It's May, and that is what has people worried. I think it's not normal, consensus across the board, that this is to do with man-made global warming.
00:00:35.380 --> 00:00:39.780
Archive news clip: The sweltering heats caused by a specific phenomenon, a heat dome.
00:00:39.840 --> 00:00:46.000
Archive news clip: Daily rounds of rain and storms are often ways to cool temperatures in the summer, but those are more difficult to generate under a heat dome.
00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:50.220
Archive news clip: The air tends to sink, and when it sinks and lowers, the air tends to be dry.
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Archive news clip: A heat dome is a weather phenomenon that has always existed, but is now being amplified by climate change, leading to extreme heat in May and June.
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Archive news clip: That would have been completely unthinkable in the past.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There are moments when separate headlines suddenly stop feeling separate, and this week felt like one of those moments. Across Europe, records fell with extraordinary speed. Britain experienced its hottest May Day ever recorded, for two days in a row. France saw temperatures approaching 40 degrees, and across Spain, Portugal and Western Europe, temperatures more commonly associated with high summer arrived before June had even begun. Now scientists always make an important distinction. No individual heat wave is caused entirely by climate change. Weather systems are complex, and heat domes do happen naturally. But climate change is changing the conditions in which those events occur. The atmosphere is warmer, the oceans are warmer. The baseline from which weather emerges has shifted. So when a heat dome forms today, it forms in a world already carrying significantly more energy. And that is increasingly what scientists are seeing. Not simply hotter temperatures, but records falling more often, extreme events arriving earlier, and seasons beginning to lose their old predictability. This wasn't July, this was May. And even as headlines were illustrated with images of crowded beaches and workers sunbathing on their lunch breaks, the human impacts were real, and sometimes they were deadly.
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Archive news clip: Thousands of homes once again without water, following this week's heatwave.
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Archive news clip: We've all had to sit in the hours of queues just to get water, which is a bit ridiculous, you know.
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Archive news clip: But on the tennis courts at the French Open, it's so excruciating, a ball girl almost fainted. Czech player Jakub Mensik, exhausted, collapsed on the court due to cramps at the end of a nearly five-hour match.
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Archive news clip: It's insane to play in this weather.
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Archive news clip: Very challenging conditions.
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Archive news clip: A school was first to close after corridor temperatures reportedly reached 53 degrees Celsius, causing students to fall ill.
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Archive news clip: The UK Health Security Agency has issued amber alerts for the Midlands, East of England, London and the South East. This means that health and social care services are likely to be significantly impacted by the heat.
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Archive news clip: Across England and Wales, there have been multiple deaths every single day this week in open water during this hot May heat wave. Eleven people are dead, nine are children.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: But as Europe was breaking temperature records, a different conversation was gathering pace. Not a conversation about how to accelerate climate action. A conversation about whether we should slow down.
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Tony Blair (archival clip): Taxes are too high for working people, and some of the things we're spending money on, I think we've got to change. So I particularly identify that the very large sum of money we're spending on net zero, which I just don't think is the right priority for the country now.
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Archive news clip: And indeed, you call on the government to halt the net zero acceleration and prioritize cheap energy over clean energy. So just for total clarity, are you advising Keir Starmer to rip up Ed Miliband's green energy targets, for example?
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Tony Blair (archival clip): Yes, I am, because I'll tell you exactly why. And it's not that I'm against renewable energy, clean energy, and it's not that I'm a climate denier, but it's just, it's coming to terms with this reality. The three biggest emitters in the world today are China, America and India. Together they account for just over 50% of global emissions. Right. All of them are pursuing cheap energy and electrification. Doesn't mean to say they're not doing renewable energy. It just means that the lens through which they judge the policy is cheap energy and the need for electrification, particularly in the age of AI. Britain's emissions are under 1% of global emissions. So we can't solve climate change. And to impose costs on our own business and consumers in order to accelerate to net zero, when the rest of the world is not doing so, is I don't understand the logic behind it. Or shutting down our own North Sea oil and gas industry in circumstances where again, I don't have another country in the world that's doing that if they still got a requirement to import energy from oil and gas.
00:05:20.860 --> 00:05:35.040
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now, Tony Blair is important, not only as the most successful labour leader in recent history, but also someone whose views still help define the political window of opportunity even now, years after he's left office. His argument may not be that climate change isn't real. In fact, he specifically says that he believes climate change represents a considerable threat, nor is it a rejection of climate action per se. But it is a rejection of the scale of action scientists are telling us is needed. And it is a call instead to prioritize economics over the natural world upon which not only economics but human thriving all ultimately depend. And Blair was not the only figure from the Center of British Politics to make this point last week. Rory Stewart, former guest on this podcast and long considered amongst the most progressive members of the Conservative Party, made a similar point on his podcast, The Rest is Politics.
00:06:23.140 --> 00:06:36.880
Rory Stewart (archival clip, The Rest Is Politics): I think that in looking for the kind of things which are causing a big problem for the British economy and its competitiveness and its productivity, we've got to be honest about the fact that our industrial energy prices are very, very high. The reason why the energy prices are high is because of the policies pursued by the government, and in particular, the hurry with which Ed Miliband is pushing ahead for his particular 2030 targets. And why does it matter? Well, it matters because if you're a steel producer, it's really difficult to compete with European steel production. But most importantly of all, I'm, as you know, obsessed with AI and what we can do for our sovereignty and how we can stop ourselves being completely in hoc to the US and China when it comes to AI. We need to build data centers. If we don't have in the UK the chips and the data centers, and they consume an enormous amount of energy, we're going to be completely vulnerable to the US destroying our economy, taking away all our jobs, threatening our national security, and we can't get them built. One of the major reasons we can't get them built, along with normal British problems with planning, is the energy costs are just too high.
00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:35.040
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now, pause for a moment. Europe is experiencing record temperatures. Scientists are warning that continued fossil fuel emissions make events like this more likely. Infrastructure is coming under strain. People are dying, and yet the political conversation is increasingly turning towards slowing climate action. At first glance, it feels almost surreal. But perhaps something deeper is happening. Now, I've met Blair on several occasions doing Climate Week, and I don't believe that he is cynically acting as a mouthpiece for fossil fuel interests. I suspect he genuinely believes he is making a pragmatic intervention. But I do wonder whether he is steeped in a world view that was formed in a different era. An era when climate change was a future problem. An era when fossil fuels were largely assumed to be the foundation of prosperity. And an era when environmental protection and economic growth were often seen as competing priorities. The difficulty is that we may no longer live in that world. Because increasingly, the costs of fossil fuel dependence are arriving in real time. Whether through geopolitical instability, energy shocks, or through extreme weather, or through growing economic disruption. And yet, I don't think this is really a story about Tony Blair, or Rory Stewart, or even about Net Zero. Because underneath every one of those arguments sits a deeper question, one we hear again and again. Why should Britain act if China won't? Why should Europe move if others aren't moving? At first glance, that sounds like a practical question. But I wonder whether it's actually something else. Whether it reflects a growing sense that agency itself is slipping away. That our actions don't really matter. That somebody else needs to go first. Countries waiting for countries. Businesses waiting for competitors. Politicians waiting for voters. Voters waiting for politicians. Everyone waiting. And if everyone waits, nothing happens. Which makes me wonder whether what we're really witnessing is not a crisis of climate politics but a crisis of agency. A crisis of belief that our actions still matter. And that's what I want to explore with Christiana. Because if this moment requires anything from us, it is precisely the ability to act before success is guaranteed. To lead before we know where everyone else stands. So after the break, Christiana and I explore what happens when people lose their sense of agency and how societies can find it again. Stay with us. Christiana, nice to see you. Now you will have heard in the portion of the podcast we just did before the break, Tony Blair and Rory Stewart basically saying, what we do doesn't matter. And you and I have heard versions of that argument for years, right? But we're at a point now in society where that view is rising. There are lots of people who feel that what they do doesn't matter. And I think it's true that if you're going to be an active agent for change, you're going to try and do something to make our world a better place. It's kind of a basic premise that you have to feel like your actions count for something, that what you do can have a difference on the outcome. And what's very difficult about this and where I'd love to just invite you to reflect for a bit is there's a way of looking at this and saying, they're intellectually right, they're right that the US and China and India are not doing enough to keep us to 1.5 degrees. It's true that democracy is under threat. So when people say they feel like they don't have agency, it's hard to say to them, you do, what you do matters. But it's also not true that they don't matter. There's a strange gray area in between which we have to try and to navigate where we know that one individual can't change the future. But if we give in to feeling like there's nothing we can do to change the world, that pathway takes us down a very dark road ultimately. So I realize that's super broad, but I'd love to just ask you to reflect in whatever way you might like about that conundrum humanity has gotten itself into.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, thanks, Tom. I mean, my first comment is that you use UK examples, and UK data, and UK politicians. But as you have just said, this is not a UK topic. We hear this, you and I have heard this, and we continue to hear this in most countries. Because the fact is that with few exceptions of the very high-emitting countries, the US, China, Europe as a whole, most other countries only have a very small percentage of responsibility, and there's many countries that have 0% responsibility. So that argument that it doesn't matter what we do as long as the big tigers continue to do the irresponsible thing they're doing, is something that we hear constantly. So it is, for my first point is, this is not just a UK phenomenon. My second point is that it is very dangerous to think that if you don't do anything, that you're going to stay on neutral territory. What I mean by that is, if agency of responsibility and action declines, then action and decisions on climate protection decline. And when that action declines, the future becomes increasingly shaped by those who are acting and deciding to further increase the impacts of climate change. Because there's no such thing as an empty space of agency. A vacuum of agency is never left empty. It's always filled. So it is either filled by those who are increasing the consequences of climate change, or it is increasingly filled by those who are being more responsible. So the first thing that we have to understand is stepping back from action and from responsible decision is directly allowing those who are increasing the consequences of climate change to do their bidding. That's an important difference because I think many of us think, well, you know, I don't have agency, I can't do anything. I'm going to sit back and then think that we stay neutral. We don't stay neutral. It just increases the concentrations. Of greenhouse gasses and the consequences of climate. And then Tom, my third point is when in history, have we seen that a major transformation occurs exclusively with big action or big actors? It doesn't. Major transformations in history have begun with people who acted before success even seemed likely, just because they were being true to their own principles and values. So let's look at the abolition of slavery. Way before the laws abolished slavery, there were countless people giving their lives to abolish slavery. Same thing with women's suffrage in the UK and in other countries, civil rights in the United States, democracy movements, environmental protection. They all emerged because ordinary people simply refused to accept that their efforts would be insignificant and were courageous enough to step forward. That's the space that we're in right now.
00:15:48.920 --> 00:15:51.900
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I mean, I wonder whether that last example is a very good one. And I wonder whether there's something there that if you were to look back, I remember talking to my grandma about this before she passed away last year. There was a time earlier in the 20th century where citizenship and civic participation felt like a responsibility, that you had to do that, that you were part of keeping your country honest and stepping forward and taking action to move things forward. Whereas now, I think, you know, stepping even a little bit beyond the examples that we started this with, we sort of feel like life happens to us, right? We're sort of at the receiving end of government decisions that happen far away, that business decisions that happen far away, that things that happen to our environment that we can't control. All while we have, you know, arguably we are more powerful as individuals, we have more access to power, we're wealthier than we've been before. So if you're an individual, and a lot of young people are in this point right now, where they look at the future, I mean, I spend a lot of time around teenagers, and they see the future as very bleak, and they have no sense of agency that they're able to participate in that, and they see it as kind of a closed book. And the thing that is potentially alarming is once that culture of a lack of agency takes hold, everyone kind of feels hopeless, it becomes self-sustaining. So how do we begin to think about that? And how do we begin to think about helping people to feel a sense of possibility that change can happen?
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Christiana Figueres: Tom, I think that's a sweeping generalization. Because you and I know personally, of so many people who are actually taking a very different approach to this.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: A hundred percent.
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Christiana Figueres: And there are millions of people who you and I don't know who are taking a different approach to this. So let's first of all not get swept away by generalizations. But I do think that the difference in the world that we live today, between today and when your grandmother lived, is that the world of information has just exploded. And so we are on a daily basis bombarded with much more information about everything that is going on around the world. So we are painfully, excruciatingly painfully aware of global problems. And very often, but not always, disconnected from our ability to influence. Then I will give you that. At the same time, we know that we are in this amazing, amazing moment in human history, in technological evolution, that is the transition between that reality that we're coming out of, last century's reality, and the reality that we're creating for this century. We know we're in the transition. And transitions are very messy. And I think the responsibility is for us to go out there and go like, okay, yes, it's messy. And yes, there are two realities that are competing with each other because that is the definition of a transition. Now, I as an individual, where do I want to focus my attention? Where do I want to put my energy? Do I want to put my energy into sitting back on the couch and despairing? That is an option. And sadly, many people feel like that is their only option. But it's not the only option. We can change our lenses, if you will, and see all of the evidence of the fact that we are moving forward. And as individuals, we have to choose. We have to choose where we want to load our personal time, our professional time. Because the fact is, yes, we're in the middle of big, big systemic changes. But those systemic changes rarely result from a single heroic act. They emerge from countless actions, relationships, conversations, innovations, commitments, goals, financial decisions, technological, all of which reinforce each other to bring about the new cultural norm that is slowly but surely taking place in the middle of a sea of uncertainty. And so that is perhaps the difficulty, right? Because if we could be 100% certain that if everybody does their thing, we are going to deliver a thriving world for everyone, well, then maybe it would be easier. But uncertainty is the reality that we're living in and will continue to live in. It's not a temporary condition. Yeah.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There's a couple of things I was reflecting on recently. One about recent political landslides that we've seen that we haven't necessarily agreed with in recent years have been about trying to bring back a lost world, right? That's what Make America Great Again. That's what Take Back Control in the Brexit vote were about. We are losing a world that is full of values that we appreciate. And not we're trying to create a new world, but we're trying to protect something that we held dear. We've never quite managed to do that on climate and get people to feel that sense of fighting for something that they're losing. Do you buy that?
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Christiana Figueres: But Tom, your tone of voice goes into nostalgia. We're losing something that we loved. Really?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: We're losing something that we loved, which was a reality based on fossil fuels that is killing people. I mean, let's really face it and go, yes, we are losing a reality of the domination of fossil fuels. Thank heavens.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, the point I was making was less about the fossil fuel dominated world and more about the stable climate with the thriving nature and all the things we remember from childhood. We've never quite been able to combine that with a sense of agency, to get people to fight for something. I think that's been kind of a missing piece.
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Christiana Figueres: Okay, good point. Good point. But we have to see that those who are defending their vested interests, fossil fuel industry and all of its political, they are precisely the responsible force for the ecological disasters that we're seeing. I recently received a very thoughtful letter from one of our listeners, from Stephanie Klotz, who points out that what is the predominant feeling here is earth grief, in her words. Earth grief. And maybe that is closer to what you're talking about, Tom. Earth grief that we're feeling about the loss of ecological stability, the loss of social trust, the loss of assumptions that we've been making. And what do we do about that grief? We have to honor it. We can't turn our back to it. We have to embrace it, face it, honor it, and perhaps let it break our heart. A heart that breaks open because of earth grief is a heart that is much more courageous and is a heart that recognizes that we're feeling this grief as evidence of that which we love, as you started saying. We have this grief because we're losing that which we love, the nature that surrounds us, the biodiversity, the flora, the fauna that surrounds us. And so the grief comes out of love. And Tom, you and I know, what are we capable of doing when we act out of love and that which we love is being threatened?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, anything.
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Christiana Figueres: We're capable of a hell of a lot.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: So if we understand that is where we are, we might be able to mobilize so much more than we are right now.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. So I think that's beautiful. And I think that sense of most people are kind of unable or unwilling to feel that deep sense of earth grief and bringing that forward enables us to show up quite differently as people rather than trying to push that away. I don't want to lose that point, but I want to because I think it's connected. What do you feel when you like listen to Tony Blair say, we need to stop bothering to go down this road because it's all too expensive and we need to invest in AI data centers. How do you relate to somebody saying that while these terrible heat waves are going on at the same time?
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Christiana Figueres: You know, honestly, I have to say that my predominant feeling is anger. It's anger because of my judgment and I own up to the judgment, my judgment of where those statements are coming from. They're coming from an attachment to a past that no longer serves us, to a past that has huge sacrifices, especially of the most vulnerable and the ones that are most innocent of us. It makes me take out my social justice sword because it is so deeply unjust and so cruel to them because it denotes a blindness to the pain that is being inflicted now and will continue to be inflicted on all beings, on the web of life.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: On the entire web of life on this planet.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And it's quite astonishing. Do you remember, years ago, we used to think, well, things will get bad, we'll see the suffering and then that will create change. But we get to a point where we're seeing ridiculous heat happening and all these terrible impacts happening. And at the same time, we call to go slower because we see economic challenges, which by the way are a mirage. Climate solutions are solving economic challenges. Let's put that to one side. But that we're still here is insane. And it speaks to the kind of level of, we just have these chips in our head about what we see as important, and we're unable to take them out for long enough to really see what's in front of us. That's the hardest thing to see what's slipping away, and that we have everything we need if we can see it differently.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah. But you know, as humans, we're so attached to the space of comfort where we were. We're so attached to that. It is much, much more difficult to get any human to roll out of the valley of comfort and roll themselves up the hill into the unknown and the new. It's very difficult to do that. It's difficult to do it personally. It's difficult to do it collectively. It's very difficult to do it systemically. Despite the fact that we know that we have to change it and roll it up the hill and on to the next valley. But we humans, that's what we do.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And you're right, like feeling the grief of what we're facing. The other side of that experience lies a whole world of action, right? It's not that you feel the grief and therefore you give up. I think you and I know, we've experienced in lots of ways, that once you open yourself up to feeling something, a space for real action lies the other side of that. I mean, this is the reality that we're facing in the world at the moment, is that this narrative of we can't afford this has gained so much traction. And we are now seeing people all across the political spectrum, all across Europe, North America, lots of other places, basically saying, we're not wealthy enough to afford this transition at this point. And that's making people feel very hopeless. It's making them feel slightly out of control. You see what's happening. Some people have a lot of fight in them, but others feel like this is difficult to counteract. I mean, Donald Trump does this, Nigel Farage, many other people. As a political strategy, it seems to be building momentum. And the ridiculous thing is it's not true. We know the solutions to the climate crisis are more affordable than the incumbent technologies. They're not so volatile. They don't risk destroying not only the planet, but also blowing up economics every few months when one country invades another. So restating that truth is important and helping people get that. And there are people trying to do that. But what is the political strategy by which we try and push back against this misinformation?
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Christiana Figueres: But Tom, the only reason why that narrative is rising, as you call it, is because we allow it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, society allows it. I mean, it's- Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, we humans are what makes up society.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right.
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Christiana Figueres: And so we are allowing for that narrative to take hold at the top political levels because we are baked in to the same narrative about ourselves. It's not that they invent the narrative and they teach us. It's a cyclical process. If we humans begin to accept the myth that we can't do anything about this and that it's helpless and hopeless, then we already produce the cultural social environment, the petri dish, if you will, for these political voices to rise and pick up that narrative. And then they put it out there and we go like, oh yes, yes, yes, because we recognize it out of our petri dish. Well, what if we don't let that in? What if we have a completely different petri dish?
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: And many people do.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: So it's not, I don't think that we see, you know, the message is coming down, no. This is a self-reinforcing, constantly changing reality and we have an influence on that.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And we need to exert that influence, but we also need to be realistic about the fact that it's really getting in the way of a lot of things at the moment. And we need to have a counter-narrative if we're going to build a political perspective and the political momentum that can actually stop that from taking so much of the gains we've achieved.
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Christiana Figueres: But we have the counter-narrative.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Which is?
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Christiana Figueres: Which is everything that we have. Yeah. It's cheaper, better, faster, you know, more, more healthy, more just on and on and on and on and on. We have to actively do that because if we passively just watch what is going on, that pernicious cultural myth takes hold.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: People will probably be listening to this podcast who, yes, they sort of like get up every day and try and do their best to do what they can for our collective future, but also sometimes have that feeling of like, everything feels out of my control. How do you deal with that?
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah. And even that we have to embrace, Tom, because, you know, we're not supermen, we're not superwomen, you know, we don't have control. We don't have full control. And we have to be humble enough to recognize that, humble enough to recognize that we live as a permanent condition, we live in uncertainty. And change is constant, is the only constant in our life. And so to try to hang on to something and say, okay, this is going to be my, this is going to be my life jacket. Honestly, there are very few life jackets in life, because everything is constantly changing, everything is uncertainty. And for me, perhaps the important thing is to differentiate between uncertainty and fear. Because uncertainty is a fact, and constant change is a fact. But fear of that is our response to that fact. And we have control over how we respond to the fact of uncertainty and of constant change. So we have to differentiate between what is a fact and what is our response to that fact. Because otherwise, we confuse them. And we think it's the uncertainty or the constant change that is the problem. No, that's not the problem. It's our fear of that and our fear of not knowing. Because our mind rushes, right? Rushes to predicting control. And when that doesn't happen, then we react with fear, perhaps not even consciously about that. And that narrows our perception of the fact out there. And it allows for anxiety, fear, hopelessness, helplessness to completely control us. And that anxiety about the future is very often what prevents us from thoughtfully, mindfully responding to the present challenge. It's because our feelings run away with us. It's like a galloping horse and we're up on the saddle and we can't even control the horse.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's so nice to hear you say that because I actually think that that's where the agency lies. The agency lies in the choice of how to respond. And we always have a choice.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I mean, I have a very good friend who wrote a book with me a hundred years ago. And he's always saying, it's about how we show up. And that phrase of yours, Tom, is accompanies me honestly. It's always with me because it is about how we show up. It's about how we treat others. It's about how we treat ourselves. It's about how we treat everything that surrounds us. It's about how we show up. And so often we think we don't have control over that. That is a myth. We do have control. We can decide how we show up every day, every minute, for every occasion, for every meeting, for every conversation. How am I showing up? Who am I? Who do I choose to be? And how am I showing up?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, that feels like a good place to leave it.
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Christiana Figueres: Okay.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Thank you, Christiana. Lovely to talk to you about this. Thanks everybody for listening. Hope you enjoyed this slightly different episode of Outrage and Optimism. We will be back with a regular episode together with Paul next week. Bye. Bye.
