House on Fire

Fans of direct air capture see it as a surefire way to suck greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. Critics say it’s an overpriced distraction. We ask the people pioneering the technology for their view

Livestock production accounts for a staggering 15% of global emissions per year. With new viruses and zoonotic diseases on the rise, we talk to the entrepreneurs re-engineering the mighty burger and hoping to wean us off animal-based protein.

Big finance gets a lot of bad press - but it might just be our secret weapon in the fight against climate change. In this episode we talk to bankers, insurers and data experts who are pushing the world to divest from fossil fuels.

House on Fire looks at the potential of blue finance. Can ocean solutions be economically as well as environmentally profitable? If so, could private finance unlock the innovation needed to reverse ocean degradation?

The fifth episode of House on Fire looks at the problem of ocean roadkill. Whales are vital to ocean health, but with thousands of them dying in collisions with container ships, we talk to the scientists building a high-tech solution in California.

The fourth episode of House on Fire examines Indonesia’s ambitious national plan to rid itself of plastic waste within a generation. How can the world’s second-largest plastic polluter accomplish this gargantuan task?

The third episode of House on Fire explores a new initiative to grow and conserve a trillion trees on Earth. Is large-scale tree planting even viable? What good would it do and where could it go wrong? To answer these questions we talk to foremost experts – from scientist Tom Crowther to ecologist Karen Holl, from environmentalist Forrest Fleischman to Justin Adams, co-director of the One Trillion Trees platform – to weight the pros and cons of the world’s new fascination for forestation.  

The second episode of House on Fire explores the extraordinary lengths that scientists have gone to in order to find and preserve genetic diversity for future generations. In the teeth of the sixth mass extinction, how urgent is the task of locating and preserving the species that remain? And how might it be done?