Climate Action for the World We Live In: Trump, Iran, and Navigating This Moment

Diese Folge ist in englischer Sprache, es stehen aber auf Youtube deutsche Untertitel zur Verfügung.

In this episode of the Effektiv Spenden Podcast, Basti Schwiecker talks with Johannes Ackva, Climate Lead at Founders Pledge, about how to do the most good for the climate with your donations. We're recording this one in English to reach an even wider audience. Johannes explains why his team funds exclusively through a donation fund, why effective climate action should be less about maximizing emission reductions and more about risk management – and why energy crises and geopolitical shocks are often the most powerful "climate policies" of all.

Key topics of the conversation:

- A fund instead of top charities: Why the climate space – unlike GiveWell in global health – offers almost no "evergreen" recommendations, and why expert-led, active grantmaking through a pooled fund is the most effective strategy.

- Climate action as risk management: Because climate damage rises non-linearly, the goal isn't to avoid as many emissions as possible, but to minimize expected damage – deliberately investing in solutions that become especially valuable in the "worst case" (e.g. geothermal and nuclear as dispatchable complements to wind and solar).

- Against the best-case bias: Why much of the climate community strings together optimistic assumptions instead of hedging risk – and how Founders Pledge prepared for tougher geopolitical conditions back in 2021 and for a possible Republican presidency in 2023.

- Climate policy under Trump: Why the outlook for short-term U.S. decarbonization has worsened (the Big Beautiful Bill, repealed tax credits), yet the U.S. as a global innovation engine – fueled by the energy hunger of AI – looks more hopeful than the headlines suggest.

- Local & short-term vs. global & long-term: Why Germany's renewable energy law (EEG) was expensive and inefficient as local climate policy, but globally revolutionized the cost of solar – and what that reveals about how to properly evaluate climate policy.

- Energy shocks as turning points: Why the war in Iran (half-jokingly "the most important climate policy of the 2020s") and historical parallels like the 1973 oil crisis often shape the energy transition more than climate policy itself.

Effective climate action isn't about hoping for the best-case scenario – it's about hedging against the bad ones. Watch the episode to understand how to achieve the greatest possible leverage for the climate with limited resources.

Learn more & support: Find out more about the Founders Pledge Climate Fund at https://www.founderspledge.com/programs/climate-fund/about or donate tax-deductibly from Germany and Switzerland through our donation fund "Klima schützen": https://effektiv-spenden.org/effektiver-klimaschutz/

If you have questions or are interested in free, independent donation advice, you can easily book an appointment here: https://effektiv-spenden.org/spendenberatung/