Cate Blanchett is Australian. I mention this fact because I’d forgotten it, somehow, so her manner of speaking – upbeat, front-footed, Aussie-accented – comes as a surprise. And I’ve spent quite some time hearing her talk over the past couple of days, as she has a new podcast, Climate of Change, which she hosts with her friend Danny Kennedy, another Australian. Kennedy is the CEO of an environmental non-profit, New Energy Nexus, and runs the California Clean Energy Fund. Their podcast, as you may have guessed from the title, is about the climate emergency. But before you come over all world-weary and what’s-the-point, before you get tetchy about preachy celebrities telling us stuff we already know, you might as well stop. Blanchett is already there.
“You can recycle up the wazoo, Miranda,” she says (told you she’s Australian), “but it can just make you feel more cross and isolated and panicky… I get that. What we’re trying to do with the podcast is to turn the magnet towards optimism in these incredibly pessimistic times.”
