Per Espen Stoknes is a psychologist, economist, and one of the world's leading experts on why climate change feels so hard to act on—and what actually works to break through that paralysis. He's the author of ‘What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming’, ‘Tomorrow's Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth’ and ‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’He’s associate professor and co-director of the BI Center for Sustainability and Energy, and someone who's spent decades unpacking the psychological barriers that keep us stuck: distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity.This conversation goes deep into the mechanics of climate psychology—why telling people what to do almost always backfires, why inequality is one of the biggest accelerants of climate inaction, and why the pendulum swings of history might be our strangest source of hope. We talk about why comedy and messengers like Joe Rogan matter more than scientists think, why AI and privacy loss mirror the climate crisis psychologically, and why Per believes the next frontier isn't just decarbonisation—it's rewilding finance itself.We cover why attacking someone's identity shuts down climate conversation immediately, how social trust is the variable that determines whether governments can actually implement climate policy, and why the UK cutting 2% of global emissions matters far more than the math suggests. Per explains why the five barriers to climate action—distance, doom, dissonance, denial, and identity—also apply to digital privacy and AI, why inequality creates a vicious cycle that makes climate action nearly impossible, and why universal basic income might be one of the most powerful climate policies we're not talking about.We also talk about why Per thinks Trump's second term might accidentally be the pendulum swing we need, why possibilism is a better philosophical framework than optimism or pessimism, and why the people with the answers—indigenous communities—are the ones we keep ignoring. He shares his vision for biodiversity credits that pay land stewards for regeneration, why AI could either accelerate the climate transition or make inequality catastrophically worse, and why the questions he wishes people would ask are about the assumptions underneath everything we're doing.——Find Per's work at stoknes.comLearn more about Earth for All at earth4all.lifeSubscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/——Chapters