Bringing about faster action on climate change will require new and unusual backers to drive it - and one potentially powerful ally has just signed up.

A growing global army of tech-savvy K-pop fans - supporters of hugely popular South Korean youth bands - have turned their social media might to saving forests and raising cash for victims of climate-fuelled disasters.

"Every day we are experiencing these effects: pollution, heatwaves, floods, wildfires. We can change this ... so we can enjoy K-pop on a livable planet," says Indonesian Nurul Sarifah, who set up the Kpop4Planet movement last month.

The push could help raise climate awareness "beyond borders and generations", another South Korean fan told our reporter Beh Lih Yi.

While many young climate activists aim to cool an overheating planet, Vladislav Kaim worries about another threat in a warming world: debt-laden economies with few jobs for his generation and workers trapped in dying industries.

"Of course we want to save our planet. It is in everyone's enlightened self-interest. But we also want to eat and have a job," says the 25-year-old Moldovan economics student, an advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General.

His country - Europe's poorest - knows firsthand the perils of big economic change in the post-Soviet era - and Kaim wants to avoid those globally as the world shifts to a greener model.

More Brazilians also say they want action on climate threats - particularly worsening forest fires.

In a new survey, three-quarters of those interviewed said Amazon rainforest fires have hurt the country's image - and that environmental protection should become a priority for Brazil, even if it has an economic cost.

To deal with excess carbon already in the atmosphere, meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk this week offered a $100-million prize for the best new idea to capture excess carbon and lock it away safely. In Iceland, one such innovation is already being tried out - and it's a "petrifying" potential winner.

Need more good news? Nearly six out of 10 voters surveyed in the United States now say the Biden administration should work directly with China to address climate change, something they see as a more important worry even than COVID-19.

See you next week!

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