In this episode, I sit down with Mark Campanale, founder of Carbon Tracker and Planet Tracker, best known for introducing one of the most disruptive ideas in climate finance: the carbon bubble.Mark’s journey began in his 20s, crossing the Sahara and working in a famine camp, where he first saw how capital, policy, and poverty were deeply linked. After years supporting fair-trade cooperatives in East Africa, he shifted to sustainable finance in London, co-launching the Jupiter Ecology Fund and founding the Social Stock Exchange – until a loss of mission led him to step away. Around that time, he noticed a dangerous blind spot: fossil fuel prospectuses running hundreds of pages mentioned climate change in only a handful of lines. That raised a critical question: how much of the global carbon problem was sitting on corporate balance sheets?No one had run the numbers. So he did.He joined forces with Nick Robins and James Leaton to launch a nonprofit and publish a report – renamed last-minute to Unburnable Carbon.The idea was simple – and terrifying.We have a finite carbon budget if we want to stay under 2°C of warming. But the reserves held by fossil fuel companies – already financed, already capitalized – far exceeded that budget. Mark compared it to a game of musical chairs – but the players were oil majors, national oil companies, and gas producers, all scrambling for the planet’s last remaining carbon budget. There aren’t enough seats for everyone to win.That meant much of the fossil fuel industry’s projected value was based on resources the world couldn’t afford to burn. If countries kept their climate promises, those reserves would stay in the ground. And markets weren’t ready for that.The report didn’t just land. It exploded.Rolling Stone headlined it “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” and the term carbon bubble went global. University campaigns launched, the Financial Times ran a feature, and even analysts at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs called Mark in to brief them.He hadn’t meant to start a movement, but once it took off, he knew it needed structure. So he built Carbon Tracker – an independent research group now analyzing over 75 companies, using a traffic-light system to show whether business plans align with the Paris Agreement. Their reports, downloaded tens of thousands of times each month by banks and regulators, speak market language to translate climate risk into financial terms.One of their biggest impacts is that the industry’s reserves life has fallen from 50 years to just 23. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because investors stopped believing those reserves would ever be developed.The idea of “stranded assets” has expanded beyond fossil fuels through Planet Tracker, Mark’s second initiative applying the same forensic lens to oceans, land use, and natural systems. By following overlooked data, he exposed a deeper conflict between financial markets and the planet’s future.Mark is not the loudest voice in the room. But his work has made some of the most powerful institutions take a second look.This is his story.—Connect with SRI360°:Sign up for the free weekly email updateVisit the SRI360° PODCASTVisit the SRI360° WEBSITEFollow SRI360° on XFollow SRI360° on FACEBOOK—Additional Resources:Mark Campanale LinkedInMark Campanale Twitter/XCarbon Tracker InitiativePlanet Tracker

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