The Human Toll of Climate Change with Financial Times Moral Money Editor Simon Mundy

Tucker’s guest in this episode is Financial Times journalist and editor of Moral Money, Simon Mundy, to talk about the challenges of climate change in an up-close and personal way.

Mundy’s book, Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis, chronicles his nearly two years travelling through six continents visiting a diverse cast of characters locked in the historic struggle against a warming planet.

About Simon Mundy

Born in the UK, Mundy has reported for the Financial Times since 2010, and was recently appointed Moral Money Editor – covering the push for a cleaner and more sustainable world economy for the award-winning platform.

Mundy started his career in Johannesburg, with the FT to cover Southern Africa. After a stint as a corporate reporter in London he spent seven years in Asia, heading the FT bureau in Seoul and then Mumbai.

Race for Tomorrow

In Race for Tomorrow, Mundy has pulled together hundreds of stories to paint a picture about how our response to climate change is reshaping the world.

“Climate Change is deeply the most regressive thing we’ve ever inflicted upon ourselves,” Mundy tells Tucker. “It’s the poorest of the poor, the people living on the bread lines who are most vulnerable to the impacts.”

In Nicaragua, Mundy visited farmers who had been hit by a pair of record-breaking hurricanes last November. (Photo courtesy: simonmundy.com)

Miners at the Mutoshi cobalt mine in the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Congo produces more than 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt – a key ingredient in the batteries used in electric vehicles. (Photo courtesy: simonmundy.com)

Mundy traveled through Nepal, including to one of the largest glacial lakes forming across the Himalayan mountains as glaciers melt in rising temperatures. (Photo courtesy: simonmundy.com)

“I met people who really are at the sharp end of what’s happening and they’re not just sitting around waiting to be swallowed up by climate change,” says Mundy. “People in the Solomon Islands to Bangladesh to Ethiopia, they’re really fighting to respond. This is really urgent, this is really extreme, something that is happening now, at a scale that’s really an unprecedented event in human history.”

In addition to talking to the people most impacted by climate change, Mundy also interviews experts who are trying to develop methods and technology to get out in front of the problem.

Resources

Race for Tomorrow – Book website
Financial Times – Moral Money
GQ Magazine – “Race for Tomorrow” review
Sky News interview with Simon Mundy at COP26
New York Times Climate Hub interview with Simon Mundy