Communicating Earth podcast
Episode 25: Nick Oldridge, Cofounder of the National Emergency Briefing
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
Put the whole picture on the table and trust people with it
Nick Oldridge came to climate campaigning from manufacturing, marketing and insurance. He is a cofounder of Climate Science Breakthrough, which pairs climate scientists with comedians, and he set up the National Emergency Briefing with his brother Simon.
In November 2025, they hired Westminster Central Hall right next to the UK's Houses of Parliament, seated close to 1,300 people and put nine experts on stage to brief MPs and national leaders on the climate and nature crisis. The film made from that evening has passed 3,000 community screenings across the UK.
Tom Clark speaks with him about assembling an event of that scale without an organisation behind it, and about where fear belongs in climate communication after years of correcting for despair.
In this episode:
Why the briefing was built to look like government, from the venue to the suits
How inviting 1,300 people became possible once supporters were deputised as inviters
Why the briefing covered everything at once, from national security and food to health and economics
Why fear on its own isolates people, and what changes when outrage is added to it
Nick is blunt about the trade off underneath this. The turn towards positivity was a fair correction to doom, but he thinks it cost climate its salience and left people assuming the problem is handled. Research with the University of Bath suggests the alternative holds up: most leave the screenings better informed and more motivated to act, and 93% say the UK public is not being told the full story.
Recommended culture: The Language of Climate Politics by Genevieve Guenther.
Follow Nick at: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nick-oldridge-b7a36421/
Additional Notes:
- National Emergency Briefing, including how to host a screening: https://www.nebriefing.org/
- Climate Science Breakthrough https://www.climatesciencebreakthrough.com/
- Zero Hour, the Climate and Nature Bill campaign https://www.zerohour.uk/
- The Language of Climate Politics, Genevieve Guenther https://genevieveguenther.com/books/
- Civic Square, Birmingham https://civicsquare.cc/
- Kris De Meyer https://www.krisdemeyer.com/
Released: 30/9/2026
Run Time: 56 minutes
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
