This weekend, I am launching the COPOut Podcast for apocalyptically optimistic climate conversations. During each episode, I will host a panel of guest experts who will share their unique perspectives on the state of climate action, the path towards more effective climate solutions, and the role that the international regime—including the annual UN sponsored Conferences of the Parties (COPs)—can and should play in getting us where we need to go.
The first episode goes live on Sunday November 9th, 2025 at 3pm. You can watch the episode at the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity, access it via our YouTube Channel or on Apple Podcasts. Here is a full list of guests. Check out the trailer here:
For more background on the rationale for doing the #COPOut podcast instead of traveling to Belém, Brazil, here’s what I wrote in Chapter 2 of Saving Ourselves (Columbia University Press 2024):
There was a time when I would go to all the big climate negotiations; I was even there when the Kyoto Protocol was finished at the second round of the COP6 negotiations in summer 2000. We stayed up all night watching the teams of negotiators finalize the text that made it possible to move to enter into the ratification phase of the Protocol. Attending the climate meetings and participating in the side events where groups presented their findings to the world used to make me hopeful. After 2 weeks of debate, discord, and performative protest, everyone would come together at the last moment with some sort of an agreement that would finally work. Attending the meetings felt like we were in the middle of the most important and inspiring race to save the world.
Unfortunately, after so many years and too many rounds of last-minute deals to save the world, it’s clear to me that the real story of international climate governance is a roller coaster ride of promising opportunities that ended up falling short of achieving their goals. It’s been more than 30 years since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was finalized and opened for signatures. Since then, countries have held 29 rounds of negotiations with the goal of implementing policies that will limit the effects of climate change. Over the years, the international regime has cycled through a range of policy instruments—from the completely voluntary to the legally binding. No matter the mechanism, though, all of these international agreements have failed to meet their goals of stopping the constant increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases building up in our atmosphere.
Watching all of these agreements fail to achieve their broad climate goals in terms of emissions reductions and providing adequate financial support for loss and damage in the developing world has jaded me. After all these years, I have a very different perspective on these huge international meetings that create the appearance of progress without achieving sufficient tangible goals (and emitting too much carbon in the process). They are all just smoke, green mirrors, and a bunch of hot air. No longer do these meetings seem like opportunities to save the world; rather, they are just exercises in greenwashing and elaborate games to kick the can down the road until it’s too late.
–from Chapter 2: Saving Ourselves is a Long Game, pp 27-29.
Dana R Fisher 