Search
Login
Sign Up
May 4, 2026
When Protecting the Planet Gets a Standing Ovation
When Protecting the Planet Gets a Standing Ovation
00:00
17:09
Transcript
0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Viro Podcast. Every week, we dig into what's really happening, where climate crashes into culture, politics, and the world you actually live in. The stuff that matters, told straight.
0:17
This is Viro. Let's go. Let's talk about Billie Eilish for a second.
0:24
National Geographic just did a full sit-down with her about her tour and sustainability, and honestly, it is one of the better celebrity climate stories we have seen in a while. Because she is not just talking about it.
0:37
Here is the context. She's been touring since she was 16, and from the very beginning, she was floored by how destructive the concert business actually is.
0:47
Idling tour buses running all night, generators burning diesel around the clock, single-use plastic water bottles everywhere, mountains of merch made from virgin materials, private jets, diesel trucks.
1:01
She called it a giant, beautiful money-printing trash machine. And instead of just accepting that this is how the industry works, she changed it.
1:09
Her last tour ran for 14 months, 15 countries, four continents, and she partnered with a nonprofit called Reverb to overhaul the whole operation.
1:19
Reusable water bottles at every show, merch made from recycled materials, plant-based food at venues. They partnered with Google Maps to help fans get to shows on public transit.
1:29
Tour vehicles were forbidden from idling outside venues. 27 food drives. Millions raised for 102 nonprofits and 19 climate projects. And they kept 103,000 water bottles out of landfills from one tour.
1:44
When the vegan menu at her San Jose show was a hit, the arena kept it on the menu permanently. Metallica and Paramore both reached out to replicate her model. James Cameron joined the tour to film it.
1:56
The whole thing is becoming a blueprint. And here is the quote from her that actually stuck with me. She said, "Things don't have to be done the same way they have always been done."
2:06
And she asks in every single area of her career the same first question: "How can we do this in the most sustainable way possible?"
2:14
Which sounds simple, but think about how rarely anyone actually does that, how rarely a major artist with that kind of leverage uses it to change the infrastructure around them instead of just the aesthetics.
2:27
And she is not preachy about it. She said she expresses as much as she can without shoving it in anybody's face, which is exactly why it works. Fans are telling her their whole families went vegan because of her.
2:39
People became activists because of something she posted. That is real cultural influence moving in the right direction. Look, one tour does not fix climate change. We know that.
2:51
But culture moves people in ways that policy never can. Last episode, we talked about Pixar's Hoppers doing the same thing for a younger generation.
3:00
Billie Eilish is doing it for a slightly older one, and the message is the same. Caring about this is not cringe. It is not performative. It is just the obvious thing to do when you have the power to do it.
3:13
The concert industry is a massive emissions machine.
3:15
Private jets alone from the music industry are genuinely significant, and the fact that one of the biggest artists on the planet looked at that and said, "Not on my tour," that matters.
3:27
A quick note for any brands listening. Want to showcase your brand with us? Partner with the Viro Podcast, and your marketing dollars go directly toward funding renewable energy and climate projects. Simple as that.
3:41
Link in the show notes. Okay, somebody call Andy Cohen, because this is some real trashy reality TV drama, and we are here for every second of it.
3:52
Elon Musk versus Sam Altman in an actual federal courtroom in Oakland, California, with a nine-person jury, courtroom sketches, a judge scolding both of them like children, and at one point, Musk's own lawyer yelling at the judge, "We could all die because of AI."
4:09
Let's go back to the beginning, because the origin story of this beef is actually wild. It is 2015. Elon Musk and Sam Altman co-found a little nonprofit called OpenAI.
4:21
The mission is right there in the founding charter: open source technology for the public benefit, not organized for the private gain of any person. Build AI safely for people and the planet, not for profit.
4:33
Musk puts in $38 million, helps recruit the key people, comes up with the name. He is all in. And then ChatGPT launches in 2022 and becomes the fastest-growing consumer product in human history.
4:46
Suddenly, OpenAI is worth $850 billion. Microsoft pumps in $10 billion. The nonprofit shell is still there, but the for-profit subsidiary is now the whole show. Altman is worth hundreds of millions.
4:59
Brockman is worth hundreds of millions. The charity that was supposedly not organized for the private gain of any person has made a lot of people very, very rich. And Musk loses his mind.
5:11
He texts Altman, "What the hell is going on?" He calls it a bait and switch.
5:16
He says on the stand, quote, "I actually was a fool who donated $38 million to a nonprofit, which was then used to create an $800 billion for-profit company."
5:28
So he sues, accusing Altman and Brockman of betraying their mission, enriching themselves from a charity, stealing the nonprofit. His team is asking for up to $134 billion in damages. $134 billion.
5:44
OpenAI fires back. Their lawyer stands up in court and says, "We are here because Mr. Musk didn't get his way at OpenAI. That's what happened. He quit, saying they would fail for sure.
5:57
But my clients had the nerve to go on and succeed without him." [laughs] And here is where it gets actually great. Because OpenAI's lawyer starts pressing Musk on the stand.
6:09
He asks, "Why didn't you start a new AI nonprofit after you left?" Musk says, "Why would I start another nonprofit when I already started one? That doesn't make any sense."
6:18
The lawyer points out that Musk then started xAI, a for-profit AI company, and tried to buy OpenAI last year with a group of for-profit investors. For-profit investors trying to buy the charity he says was stolen.
6:33
The judge at one point literally had to tell Musk to actually answer the questions he was being asked.
6:40
And when Musk's lawyer tried to argue that AI could cause human extinction, and therefore the jury needed to hear it, the judge shut it down and said, "I suspect there are plenty of people who don't want to put the future of humanity in Mr.
6:54
Musk's hands. But it doesn't matter. We aren't going to get into those issues." [laughs] Iconic.Absolutely iconic. And here is where we zoom out, because this is not just tech gossip.
7:06
This is the story of what happens when big money shows up and meets a mission. OpenAI started with a genuinely good idea: build AI safely for humanity, not for profit.
7:19
And then the product worked, and the money came, and the mission quietly walked out the back door while everyone was busy counting the billions.
7:28
And Elon Musk, the guy who is now suing over the betrayal of that mission, is the exact same person who built an illegal power plant in a majority Black neighborhood in Memphis, who mounted gas turbines on truck beds and called them temporary, who is building xAI as a for-profit AI company right now with zero nonprofit mandate, who merged xAI with SpaceX for what one can only assume are maximum profit reasons.
7:57
So we have a guy who abandoned a nonprofit mission suing a guy who abandoned a nonprofit mission for abandoning a nonprofit mission. Let that sit.
8:05
And it connects directly to everything we have been talking about this season. Remember Allbirds, benefit corporation, legally required to generate positive impact on society and the environment.
8:16
Saw the AI money, sold the shoe IP, rebranded as Newbird AI, gone. It is the same pattern every single time. Someone starts with a mission: climate, humanity, the public good.
8:28
And then the money shows up, and the mission becomes a press release they point to while doing the opposite. OpenAI’s founding charter said it was not organized for the private gain of any person.
8:41
It is now valued at $850 billion. Altman is a billionaire. The original mission is a footnote in a legal filing.
8:50
And while this courtroom drama plays out in Oakland, the AI industry is still building data centers with no permits, still burning fossil fuels to power the models, still making promises about safety and humanity and the public good while printing money as fast as possible.
9:07
Both of these guys started with the right words: safe AI for humanity, for the planet. And both of them ended up exactly where every billionaire ends up when enough money is on the table. At the money.
9:19
The mission was real until it became expensive. And that is not a Musk problem or an Altman problem. That is a systemic problem. The system rewards abandoning your values the moment they become inconvenient.
9:34
And until that changes, we are going to keep watching charities become billion-dollar corporations and billion-dollar corporations sue each other over who betrayed the mission first.
9:45
You cannot build AI for humanity while building it for maximum profit. You have to pick one. And so far, nobody at the top of this industry has picked humanity when the other option was on the table.
9:58
Which is exactly why what Viro is doing matters, not because we are perfect, but because the choice to fund clean energy with every prompt, to not sell your data, to actually mean the mission.
10:11
That choice gets harder every time the money gets bigger. And we are choosing it anyway. Sam and Elon will figure out who gets the hundred and thirty-four billion.
10:20
We will be over here making sure the people using AI are actually helping the planet while they do it. Andy Cohen, if you are listening, we have your next season right here. Up next is King Charles.
10:33
And before you tune out thinking this is a royal family gossip segment, stay with us, because this one actually gave us chills. [upbeat music] A quick note for any brands listening. Want to showcase your brand with us?
10:45
Partner with the Viro Podcast, and your marketing dollars go directly toward funding renewable energy and climate projects. Simple as that. Link in the show notes.
10:57
King Charles came to Washington last week, addressed a joint session of Congress, second British monarch in history to ever do that, thirty minutes, in a room full of people who agree on almost nothing.
11:08
And he talked about climate and AI in the same speech to the same room. And when he said, "We have a shared responsibility to safeguard nature," the entire room stood up and applauded.
11:20
Democrats, Republicans, together, standing, clapping. In 2026, all of Congress, standing ovation for climate. Let that actually sink in for a second.
11:32
Because here is the thing about King Charles that most people do not know. This is not a new interest for him. He did not discover climate change last year. He has been talking about this for over fifty years.
11:45
In 1970, he was twenty-one years old, Prince Charles, not yet king, and he gave a speech warning about plastic pollution and industrial damage to the environment.
11:55
1970, most people thought he was completely out of his mind. He said himself that people thought his ideas were dotty. Dotty.
12:02
In 1970, about plastic pollution, which we now know is one of the most serious environmental crises on the planet.
12:09
And he just kept going for five decades through every administration, every political shift, every moment when it would have been easier to just be quiet and wave from a balcony.
12:21
He converted his Duchy of Cornwall estate to organic farming in the '80s, when organic farming was still considered a fringe idea. He installed solar panels and biomass boilers at his properties.
12:32
He had his Aston Martin converted to run on bioethanol made from cheese and wine. Cheese and wine. The man is running his car on cheese and wine. Truly a king.
12:44
He launched the Terra Carta in 2021, a charter for companies to commit to sustainable practices. He spoke at COP21 in Paris when the landmark climate deal was struck, COP26 in Glasgow, COP27 in Dubai.
12:58
He has been on every stage that matters.One environmental researcher called him possibly the most significant environmentalist in history. And here is what makes the Congress speech so remarkable.
13:12
As king, he is constitutionally bound to stay out of politics. He cannot campaign. He cannot endorse. He cannot take sides.
13:21
And yet, he walked into the most politically divided room in America and said what he has been saying for 50 years: We have a shared responsibility to safeguard nature. Both sides stood up.
13:34
Because protecting the planet is not actually a radical idea. It never was.
13:38
It became radical when money was attached to not protecting it, when fossil fuel interests needed it to be controversial, when the cost of doing the right thing became someone else's profit. But strip all of that away.
13:51
Stand a king in front of Congress and have him say in plain language that the natural world is not a political issue, it is a human issue, and suddenly you remember that most people actually agree.
14:04
Most people want clean air. Most people want clean water. Most people want a planet their kids can live on. He also talked about AI, met with Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang from NVIDIA, Tim Cook, Ruth Porat from Google.
14:17
Talked about AI guardrails, malicious actors, the need for responsible development. He reportedly talked to Bezos about saving the Amazon rainforest. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, rainforest. Charles made that joke himself.
14:29
The man has timing. [laughs] But here is the bigger point. King Charles has been saying the same thing for 50 years, before it was cool, before the science was mainstream, before anyone was listening.
14:43
He kept saying it because he believed it was true and because he understood something that most politicians still don't. This is not left or right. This is not Democrat or Republican.
14:55
This is not even a policy debate at its core. It is the most basic question a civilization can ask itself. Do we want to leave something worth living in behind us or not?
15:07
And when someone stands up and asks that question without partisanship, without an agenda, without a PAC behind them or a donor to protect, even the most divided room in America stands up and claps.
15:21
That moment in Congress this week was proof that the climate conversation does not have to be a culture war. It just gets turned into one by people who benefit from the confusion.
15:32
King Charles has been cutting through that confusion since 1970. He was dotty then. He got a standing ovation last week. The world caught up. We are just trying to help it move a little faster.
15:44
And that is a wrap on another episode of the Viro Podcast.
15:48
Billie Eilish running a greener tour than most governments, Elon and Sam fighting over who betrayed humanity first, and a king walking into the most divided room in America and getting a standing ovation for saying, "Protect the planet."
16:02
Not a bad week, honestly. Before we go, we have some exciting news. Viro just dropped a major update, and you are going to wanna grab it right now. Go to the App Store or Google Play and update the app.
16:13
Here is what is new. You can now add sources directly to your projects, websites, YouTube videos, documents. Drop them in, and Viro will actually use them as context when you are working.
16:25
It is like giving your AI a brain that knows exactly what you need it to know. This one is really fun. You can now share the personas you create.
16:34
So if you have built the perfect assistant or a custom expert or just a really good creative collaborator, you can share it, and everyone can chat with them.
16:44
We are building this thing in real time with you, and this is just the beginning. Go update the app, try the new features, and let us know what you think. Reply to the newsletter. Tag us when you are using it.
16:55
We read everything, and we genuinely love hearing from you. Catch us next week. More culture, more climate, more heat. [upbeat music]
Climate Culture
Listen on
Apple Podcasts
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Spotify
Recent episodes
Where's the Water?
May 15, 2026
Dirty Data Centers, Beautiful Clean Coal, and the AI Fighting Back
Apr 27, 2026
Wait, Allbirds is an AI Company?
Apr 20, 2026
Wait, The White House Runs on Solar?
Apr 19, 2026
