Spencer Glendon: The Probable Futures of Climate Change

Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious

The latest climate change developments make it feel like we are on a runaway train that will flatten the dreams of our children.

With this episode of Wavemaker Conversations, I hope to play a small part in slowing down that train.

My guest, Spencer Glendon, is a former Partner at the trillion-dollar investment firm, Wellington Management. His work there centered on topics ignored in the world of finance but with potential for a seismic impact.

Twenty years ago, when the Chinese economy was relatively insignificant, he foresaw its meteoric rise, and its threat to America’s middle class, before most others.

Ten years ago, he turned his attention to climate change.

And I’ve been following his work closely since 2019, when he gave one of the most riveting presentations on global warming that I’ve ever seen.

After many years working on climate change from his position in the financial world, Glendon has created a nonprofit organization called Probable Futures -- which is developing powerful tools, including interactive maps, that help us visualize the different futures we will probably face with each incremental increase in the Earth's temperature.

In this conversation, Glendon illustrates for us, with great clarity and detail, that we face a range of probable futures -- the most frightening of which we still have the power to avoid.

I strongly recommend that you listen through to the last fifteen minutes, when Glendon shares with us the extreme health struggles he has faced through his life, and a diagnosis that, he says, ". . . provided clarity for me that, okay, I've got some number of years before I get really sick. . . . well, I've got limits. Let's figure out what I can do within those limits."

Glendon's answer to that challenge -- what kind of life can we live within limits -- is inspiring on a personal level, and connects deeply to what we face in an increasingly warm and unstable climate.

If, at this moment, you only have time to sample brief excerpts, you can watch and listen to them on The Wavemaker Conversations Newsletter here.