Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Can We Cool The Planet, And Should We Try? | Ep251: Ricken Patel

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Apr 1, 2026

Ricken Patel, founder of Avaaz and Principal at The Climate Hub, is a veteran campaigner in climate and democracy. He discusses underestimated climate risks and the cooling effects we may be losing. He argues for researching geoengineering and carbon removal. He also explores links between democratic resilience, misinformation, and building effective climate movements.

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ADVICE

Show Up To Shift Political Priorities

Show up politically: sustained citizen pressure moves priorities because decision-makers are influenced by media and constituents.
Patel's campaigns succeeded by making issues visible and elevating them on ministers' short priority lists.

ANECDOTE

How Avaaz Scaled Mass Mobilisation

Ricken Patel built Avaaz into a mass mobilization platform reaching ~70 million via email and petitions.
He combined tested campaign messaging with a global team and member-driven decision rules to scale real-world protests and fundraising.

ANECDOTE

Mobilising The Marches Before Paris

Patel predicted and organized the largest global climate marches ahead of Paris to generate political will.
The mass mobilization created media pressure that helped make Paris a rallying success despite earlier pessimism.

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What happens if we’re underestimating the speed and scale of climate risk? This week on Cleaning Up, Bryony Worthington sits down with Ricken Patel, Principal at Climate Hub & Founder of activist network Avaaz, to explore how to build successful climate movements, and the case for research into geoengineering.

Ricken argues that companies have been accidentally geoengineering since the turn of the Industrial Revolution, as a byproduct of their pollution, and says ‘it’s crazy’ that research into deliberate forms of geoengineering isn’t being allowed.

Ricken has a long history as a campaigner and activist working in the climate and democracy spaces. He founded Avaaz, an online activism platform, and led successful campaigns around the Paris Agreement and beyond. He was voted "Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics" by the Huffington Post, listed among the world's top 100 thinkers by Foreign Policy, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Patel studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, graduating first in his class, and holds a Master's from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He went on to live and work on conflict resolution and civilian protection in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and Afghanistan for organizations including the International Crisis Group.

Together, Bryony and Ricken dive into:

Why climate risks may be far greater than current models suggest
The cooling effects we’re losing as we clamp down on pollution
The case for researching geoengineering
How democracy, truth, and climate are deeply intertwined
And how to build a successful movement around climate change.

Leadership Circle:

Cleaning Up is proud to be supported by its Leadership Circle. The members are Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Cygnum Capital, Davidson Kempner, Ecopragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information about the Leadership Circle, visit cleaningup.live

Links and more:

Ricken’s website: https://www.rickenpatel.net/
The Climate Hub: https://www.cc-hub.org
The State of the Climate 2026 | Ep242: Zeke Hausfather: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzySrSD8vz8
Parasol Lost: https://actuaries.org.uk/news-and-media-releases/news-articles/2026/jan/14-jan-26-parasol-lost-recovery-plan-needed/