Richard Black, Isabel Hilton, Akshat Rathi & Andrew Simms - Trafalgar Sq

Join us in welcoming a panel of authors: Richard Black, Isabel Hilton and Akshat Rathi, moderated by Andrew Simms, to discuss the future of energy, and discuss the story of energy and key technologies that can prove to be sustainable alternatives.

Richard Black spent fifteen years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC, largely for World Service radio, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and works for the global clean energy think-tank Ember, which tells the story of the energy transition through data and analysis. He is the author of Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism and most recently The Future of Energy, and he is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

Isabel Hilton is a journalist, broadcaster and commentator on world affairs and the environment. As a news correspondent she covered Latin America for the Sunday Times through and after the Falklands War, and joined The Independent as Latin America Editor and then Europe Editor during the fall of communism. She has been a staff writer for the New Yorker and a columnist for The Guardian. Her broaTraf event - 28.10 - dcasting work includes presenting Nightwaves on BBC Radio Three and The World Tonight on Radio Four, and making a number of radio and television documentaries. Her books include The Search for the Panchen Lama, exploring the complex relations between Tibet and China. In 2006 Isabel was the founding editor of ChinaDialogue, a bilingual newsroom website covering climate change and other environmental topics with a particular focus on China.

Akshat Rathi is a London-based senior reporter for Bloomberg News. His first book Climate Capitalism (John Murray, 2024) was named one of the best books of the year by The Times and The Economic Times, while Bill Gates desctibed it as ‘An important read for anyone in need of optimism.’ Akshat hosts the weekly Bloomberg podcast Zero, and has won a number of journalism awards including the 2023 Whitman Bassow Award from the Overseas Press Club for the best reporting on international environmental issues. He also edited United We Are Unstoppable (John Muray, 2020), a collection of 60 essays from young climate leaders around the world.

Andrew Simms is an author, political economist and campaigner. He co-authored the original Green New Deal, came up with Earth Overshoot Day, and jointly proposed the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty (with Prof Peter Newell). He is co-director of the New Weather Institute, coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, and a research associate at the University of Sussex. He set up and coordinates the Badvertising campaign to stop adverts fuelling the climate emergency and his books include Cancel the Apocalypse, Ecological Debt, Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth, the heterodox guide, Economics: A Crash Course, and Badvertising: Polluting Our Minds and Fuelling Climate Chaos. He is on social media at: @andrewsimms_uk @[email protected]

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Waterstones, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom