Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati today sewers sanity and solutions.
Speaker 2: Here in Dubay.
Speaker 1: Some hundred thousand people have arrived for COP twenty eight
Speaker 1: from all around the world. For many, it's their first COP.
Speaker 1: They have had to grapple with unfamiliar settings, abundant legalies,
Speaker 1: and an intense schedule of meetings. Others have been here
Speaker 1: since the start. COP is familiar ground. That's the case
Speaker 1: for former US Vice President Al Gore, but he's much
Speaker 1: more than a copcer. Many of today's climate activists have
Speaker 1: told me that Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth was
Speaker 1: the reason they became activists in the first place. The
Speaker 1: movie won an Academy Award in two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: and also bag him that year's Nobel Peace Prize alongside
Speaker 1: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he's been at
Speaker 1: it for much longer. He held hearings on climate change
Speaker 1: in the US Congress as far back as nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Since then, he has become the de facto spokesman for
Speaker 1: climate change. In recent years, and especially before this Climate Conference,
Speaker 1: he's become much more vocal in calling out the villains.
Speaker 1: He has castigated the role of Petro States and all
Speaker 1: companies in shaping the COP agenda, saying they've taken the
Speaker 1: disguise off and are not good faith partners. I spoke
Speaker 1: with al Gore at the Bloombergreen Summit at COP twenty
Speaker 1: eight in Dubai to ask him how to break the
Speaker 1: stranglehold Petro States have over COP, why tackling climate change
Speaker 1: solves many other problems, and why big emitters can no
Speaker 1: longer hide.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you very much, enthusiastic fans of your
Speaker 3: new book.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for your time. It's very precious.
Speaker 2: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: Now let's start with something that you make very clear.
Speaker 1: You say we use our atmosphere as a sewer. We
Speaker 1: dump one hundred and sixty two million tons of COEO
Speaker 1: doing it every day. You're also absolutely clear that COP
Speaker 1: twenty eight must have countries agreeing to phasing out fossil
Speaker 1: fuels without any caveats. But the reason it has taken
Speaker 1: us until COP twenty eight to even talk about phasing
Speaker 1: out fossil fuels is because of what happened at COP
Speaker 1: one in Berlin in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: You were there.
Speaker 1: That's when it was decided that the progress at COPS
Speaker 1: can only happen through consensus. Why are we stuck with
Speaker 1: this process that only pretty u is the minimum viable
Speaker 1: progress that every country, including petrostates, agree on.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for inviting me, and thank you for
Speaker 3: this question. I want to make a brief passing comment
Speaker 3: about that thin blue line that you referred to. I
Speaker 3: always want to make the point so that it really
Speaker 3: sinks in if anybody hasn't really looked into this, that
Speaker 3: thin blue line is blue because that's where the oxygen
Speaker 3: is that refracts the blue light with nitrogen. You've got
Speaker 3: a PhD in this stuff, so I have to be
Speaker 3: careful what I say. But if you could drive a
Speaker 3: car straight up in the air at interstate highway speed,
Speaker 3: you get to the top of it in five to
Speaker 3: seven minutes. You could walk it in an hour. That's
Speaker 3: what we're using as an open sower, and it lingers there.
Speaker 3: On average, each molecule stays one hundred years, and the
Speaker 3: accumulated amount now traps as much extra heat as would
Speaker 3: be lease by seven hundred and fifty thousand Erochma class
Speaker 3: atomic bombs exploding on the Earth every twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: So it's not a good thing. We need to stop
Speaker 3: doing this. And the reason we've had such difficulty even
Speaker 3: discussing the main problem directly for all of these years.
Speaker 3: Since the summer of nineteen ninety two I was in
Speaker 3: Rio at the Earth Summit. It took three years to
Speaker 3: organize the first COP. The president was a charismatic young
Speaker 3: environment minister from Germany, Angela Merkel, and the first order
Speaker 3: of business was to adopt the rules for voting, and
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia objected, and since a consensus was required before
Speaker 3: the rules were adopted, it was laid on the table.
Speaker 3: There was a very famous in those days, very famous
Speaker 3: coal lobbyists from the United States named Don Perlman. Never
Speaker 3: speak ill of the department, but he was extremely influential,
Speaker 3: really legendary, working hand in glove with the Saudi Arabian delegation.
Speaker 2: And so since the rules could not be.
Speaker 3: Adopted over Saudi Arabia's objections, the default procedure was the
Speaker 3: requirement for consensus. And the word consensus differs in definition
Speaker 3: from unanimity in the eye of the president of the COP.
Speaker 3: So the enormous power wielded by the president of a
Speaker 3: COP any COP comes from the discretion that person has
Speaker 3: as the moderator, chair presiding officer to either recognize an
Speaker 3: objection or not. And there have been plenty of times,
Speaker 3: as you know, a shot where Vanuatu or one or
Speaker 3: the other small most threatened nations near the back of
Speaker 3: the chambers waving their arms to object.
Speaker 2: Oh well, seeing no injection, so ordered.
Speaker 3: But if the Saudi delegation wherever they are, raises the head,
Speaker 3: no we don't have consensus. Sorry, And so the situation
Speaker 3: that leaves our world community in is that we have
Speaker 3: to beg for permission from a Petro from the Petro states. Please, sir,
Speaker 3: may we protect the future of humanity?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 3: And yesterday Abdu la Ziz Ben Solomon, the energy minister
Speaker 3: in Saudi Arabia, gave an interview on television and RhoD
Speaker 3: and was asked not about a measure to phase out
Speaker 3: fossil fuels, which course is what we need, but a
Speaker 3: measure to phase down fossil fuels. Would you accept that?
Speaker 3: He said absolutely not. So here we are once again
Speaker 3: we have to go to the largest Petro state and say,
Speaker 3: may we have your permission to do something to protect
Speaker 3: our grandchildren and all future generations.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. Well, you have.
Speaker 1: Said that there is a way to reform this cup process.
Speaker 1: It will require parties to bring a resolution sinx months
Speaker 1: ahead of a COP. Yes, it will require seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of the party, of course, voting in favor to
Speaker 1: get rid of the consensus and put in place perhaps
Speaker 1: a supermajority or whatever the party's decide, but something that
Speaker 1: is not a consensus. Now do you think that can
Speaker 1: ever happen? Are you pushing for it? And who else
Speaker 1: needs to be involved to make it happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's difficult, extremely difficult, but I think
Speaker 3: it is time to push for it because the stakes
Speaker 3: are so high. We have to try every strategy to
Speaker 3: save our future. There's a detail that is important to emphasize,
Speaker 3: o shot. The amendment has to be to the underlying
Speaker 3: treaty from Rio in ninety two. There are those international
Speaker 3: lawyers who will hear this proposal for reform, and based
Speaker 3: on their none of dealing with these cops, they so, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that, and they're right. If you just
Speaker 3: try to amend the rules of the particular cop you can't.
Speaker 3: But if you go back to the original treaty, all
Speaker 3: of these cops are legally appended to the original treaty,
Speaker 3: and if you amend that original treaty, you can put
Speaker 3: in a super majority proposal. There are two countries, Papua
Speaker 3: New Guinea and Mexico I believe that have jointly proposed
Speaker 3: this several times in the past. You're really on top
Speaker 3: of this because you've already pointed out it has to
Speaker 3: be laid on the table six months before the COP
Speaker 3: good for you, and it has not been this time.
Speaker 3: And of course this is not the president of the
Speaker 3: COP to make this happen, but next time it should
Speaker 3: be done. I do plan to argue in favor of that,
Speaker 3: and I do plan to do my best to round
Speaker 3: up some advocates who will also do so.
Speaker 1: You've made the case that the hegemonic system we have
Speaker 1: right now that produces the most progress is democratic capitalism.
Speaker 1: We'll come to the democracy part a little later. Let's
Speaker 1: focus on capitalism. After you left politics, you founded Generation
Speaker 1: Investment Management. It manages some thirty billion dollars.
Speaker 2: It's forty five not didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Its goal is to show that it's possible to do
Speaker 1: good and to make money. An analysis by my colleague
Speaker 1: Stage ocassion looked at one of those funds where you've
Speaker 1: invested in equities and found that about half of the
Speaker 1: holdings had increase in emissions between twenty fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, which is sort of the post Paris period.
Speaker 1: Now that's not the only thing that's happened. There's been
Speaker 1: a huge political backlash on ESG the very metric that
Speaker 1: we can use to try and correct the problems that
Speaker 1: unfettered capitalism that does not take externalities into consideration could correct.
Speaker 1: But that backlash is causing many of the investors who
Speaker 1: could see light, who could figure out, yes, there is
Speaker 1: a way in which capitalism isn't a problem for climate change,
Speaker 1: but a solution. So what needs to happen now, how
Speaker 1: do we figure out whether capitalism can play a positive role?
Speaker 3: The author of climate capitalism, So I'll do my best
Speaker 3: to have this exchange with you. First of all, they're
Speaker 3: two fund Dublin and London, and sometimes the numbers are
Speaker 3: you have to add them both together. But in any case,
Speaker 3: I co founded it with my partner David blood And
Speaker 3: who was the CEO of Goldman's Access at Management for
Speaker 3: eleven years, and other partners.
Speaker 2: There's an old jog.
Speaker 3: But it's literally true that I wanted to the business
Speaker 3: blood and gore, But the other partners I mean.
Speaker 2: Instant brand recognition, I mean, you know, come on.
Speaker 3: But the other our other co founders were not really
Speaker 3: enthusiastic about it. But the whole theory is to invest
Speaker 3: completely through the sustainability lens. Now on the large subject
Speaker 3: you've rave stockshot and that you've studied and written about
Speaker 3: so eloquently.
Speaker 2: I have some.
Speaker 3: Idiosyncratic views about this. First of all, I am a capitalist,
Speaker 3: and I do believe that capitalism is in a way
Speaker 3: a bit like gravity in the sense that it's always
Speaker 3: there and always has been, and to pretend otherwise is
Speaker 3: a waste of time. I think they're thoughtful people who disagree.
Speaker 3: But the you know, the the alternatives to the left
Speaker 3: and right of of market capitalism that we're tried in
Speaker 3: the twentieth century did not really work out too well.
Speaker 3: And I do think that with reforms, capitalism is the
Speaker 3: most useful tool to solve the climate crisis in North
Speaker 3: America and the European Union, well in North America. If
Speaker 3: you look at all of the capital that's been spent
Speaker 3: to deploy solar and wind ninety six percent of it
Speaker 3: is from the private sector, only four percent from public funding. Now,
Speaker 3: because of the unequal access to private lending in developing countries,
Speaker 3: because of currency valuation, fluctuation risk and other country risks,
Speaker 3: those percentages are often reversed. In Nigeria, only fourteen percent
Speaker 3: is from the capital is from private capital. For the
Speaker 3: renewable energy revolution, eighty six percent has to come from
Speaker 3: governments and they don't have it. So we need to
Speaker 3: reform the acts to borrowing capacity for developing countries. But
Speaker 3: the reforms need to go much deeper than that. If
Speaker 3: you'll give me, if you'll let me have just a
Speaker 3: moment on this. In the interwar period, in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 3: when economists were trying to give policymakers better tools to
Speaker 3: avoid another great depression, a great legendary economists named Simon
Speaker 3: Kuznets came up with what are referred to as the
Speaker 3: national accounts, and most corporate accounting categories are derived from
Speaker 3: the national accounts, and it was a brilliant piece of work.
Speaker 3: But when he received his many prizes and awards, he
Speaker 3: made speeches and said, please do not use this system,
Speaker 3: these national accounts as a guide for national economic policy
Speaker 3: because it leaves too much out. And then seven years
Speaker 3: later in Bretton Woods it was completely codified and we
Speaker 3: still use it. It's sort of like the old quirty
Speaker 3: keyboard on the typewriters. It makes no sense, but it's
Speaker 3: a difficult thing to change.
Speaker 1: This is the gross domestic product that we use the economics.
Speaker 3: The version of it that is that is best known.
Speaker 3: But he said what is left out? Four and four
Speaker 3: categories of value, And of course these accounting categories are
Speaker 3: how we determine and decide what is valuable in our
Speaker 3: lives and in the economy. What's left out The first
Speaker 3: is fairly well known. It's almost a buzzphrase, negative externalities.
Speaker 3: All of the global warming pollution is a negative externality.
Speaker 3: It's not included in the accounting categories government or corporate.
Speaker 3: The second thing that's left out is a little bit
Speaker 3: is less well known, positive externalities. Now, what's that If
Speaker 3: a community invests in mental health care, that's an expense
Speaker 3: on the town budget. When the benefits of that care,
Speaker 3: if it's delivered well, come rolling back in in the
Speaker 3: years and even decades afterwards, that is not counted as income.
Speaker 2: So the structural bias is to avoid.
Speaker 3: The expense because you're not getting any income as a result.
Speaker 3: The third category is depletion of natural resources. Now there
Speaker 3: are three categories that really exemplify this part of the problem.
Speaker 3: Underground water, aquifers, out of sight, out of mind, soon
Speaker 3: out of water, topsoil. We are still losing enormous amounts
Speaker 3: of very valuable top soil that can only be replaced
Speaker 3: over centuries. And then, most important of all, the web
Speaker 3: of living species of which we humans are a part.
Speaker 3: We're in the middle of a great extinction crisis, and
Speaker 3: by some estimates, we could lose fifty percent of the
Speaker 3: living species with which we share this earth in the
Speaker 3: century on our watch.
Speaker 2: That can't be good.
Speaker 3: And the fourth thing that's left out is the distribution
Speaker 3: of incomes and net worths, which are affected profoundly by
Speaker 3: things like tax policy and regulatory policy. So if all
Speaker 3: four of those things are left out, you get this
Speaker 3: anomaly where oh, GDP went up three percent. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: look this country has gone up five percent. Yay, big cheers,
Speaker 3: But it's accompanied by vast increases in global warming pollution,
Speaker 3: chronic under investment in public goods like education and healthcare,
Speaker 3: and mental health care, and environmental protection, reckless depreciation of groundwater,
Speaker 3: top soil, and the fraying of the biodiversity. So GDP
Speaker 3: goes up and people celebrate, and it's accompanied by all
Speaker 3: these bad things, plus the emergence of inequality that has
Speaker 3: morphed into hyper inequality. And when the vast majority of
Speaker 3: income goes to the top one tenth of one percent
Speaker 3: and the average middle class and most countries have no
Speaker 3: inflation adjusted increase in income for forty five years, they
Speaker 3: vote for some demagogic, populist authoritarian of which there are
Speaker 3: too many running around these days, including I'm embarrassed to
Speaker 3: say back in my country.
Speaker 1: Well you knew I was going to ask you a
Speaker 1: democracy question. Next, we are sitting here in a Petro
Speaker 1: state which is done arguably more in the region move
Speaker 1: away from fossil fuels than other countries, yet a little
Speaker 1: less than thirty percent of its flawed grows to messages
Speaker 1: when you might say.
Speaker 3: They've moved away more away from Well, can't you write
Speaker 3: the story that said maz dar has is not operating
Speaker 3: twenty gigawatts of renewables but only three point two gigawats?
Speaker 2: Did I did? I just wanted double check that.
Speaker 1: Compared to southi Arabia moving right, A.
Speaker 2: Compared to Saudi.
Speaker 1: Arabia, the UAE gets its income goes domestic product lower yes,
Speaker 1: low bar, so a lower bar. The US, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, gets only three percent of his gross domestic
Speaker 1: product from fossil fields. Yet when the Republican Party is
Speaker 1: in power, it acts like a petro state it does
Speaker 1: on climate change. So big question, what needs to be
Speaker 1: done to fix the democratic crisis in the US, second
Speaker 1: biggest polluter annually, largest polluter historically, to make it a
Speaker 1: credible power during the climate fight, not just under Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's leadership but every president.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My country is the largest producer of
Speaker 3: oil now and largest producer of gas as well, more
Speaker 3: oil and Saudi Arabia more gas than cover. But there
Speaker 3: is a transition underway and the ira is, as most
Speaker 3: understand by far the best and biggest climate legislation any
Speaker 3: countries ever passed. But to your larger question, Oxshot, alongside
Speaker 3: the climate crisis, we also have a democracy crisis. I've
Speaker 3: tried to understand the causes of this. They are many,
Speaker 3: and I believe that the forgive, forgive, the geeky phrase.
Speaker 3: The information ecosystem within which a self government government takes
Speaker 3: place is really important, and the institutions of representative democracy
Speaker 3: innovated in the United States were constructed during the age
Speaker 3: of the printing press. The shift from an information ecosystem
Speaker 3: based on print to one based on broadcasting, and then
Speaker 3: moving on to the Internet and to social media has
Speaker 3: disrupted the balances that used to exist that made representative
Speaker 3: democracy work much better. These centralized information systems tempt autocrats
Speaker 3: to control information. You know, Hitler's book The Triumph of
Speaker 3: the Will implies a question triumph over what. One thing
Speaker 3: that triumphs over is the authority of knowledge because a free,
Speaker 3: self governing people rely on a shared base of knowledge
Speaker 3: that nerves as a basis for reasoning together collectively. But
Speaker 3: if you have social media that is dominated by algorithms
Speaker 3: that pull people down these rabbit holes that are a
Speaker 3: bit like picture plants. These algorithms, they are the digital
Speaker 3: equivalent of ar fifteens. They ought to be banned. They
Speaker 3: really ought to be banned. It's an abuse of the
Speaker 3: public forum. But these when people are pulled down these
Speaker 3: rabbit holes, you know what's at the bottom of the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. That's where the echo chamber is. And if
Speaker 3: you spend too much time in the echo chamber, what's
Speaker 3: weaponized is another form of AI, not artificial intelligence, artificial insanity.
Speaker 3: I'm serious, I'm serious. Q Andon is just the best
Speaker 3: known version of artificial insanity. These devices are the enemies
Speaker 3: of self government and they're the enemies of democracy. We
Speaker 3: need reforms for both democracy and capitalism. Both sets of
Speaker 3: reforms are possible.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems tacking climate change might be actually easier
Speaker 1: than trying to figure out how to fix democracy.
Speaker 3: Well, we hear this new word poly crisis, so many
Speaker 3: different crises.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 3: Solving climate change is a poly solution, and I really
Speaker 3: believe that because we have a shared planetary priority to
Speaker 3: save humanity's future, we are in way more danger right
Speaker 3: now than most people realize. You're probably aware that one
Speaker 3: and a half million people in East Africa are forced
Speaker 3: from their homes today by another of the rain bombs.
Speaker 3: That's the wreck consequence, much worse because of the climate crisis.
Speaker 3: You may be aware that this summer here in Dubai,
Speaker 3: the feels like temperatures, the combination of temperature and humidity
Speaker 3: have been up to sixty degrees sixty two degrees in
Speaker 3: China last years temperature ever. But we are now seeing
Speaker 3: a very real and present danger of a billion climate
Speaker 3: refugees crossing international borders to escape conditions that the scientists
Speaker 3: tell us are becoming physiologically unlivable. And if this authoritarian
Speaker 3: populism is provoked by a few million climate refugees coming
Speaker 3: from the Eastern Mediterranean to Hungary and orban Land and whatever,
Speaker 3: what about a billion, which is what the Lancet projects,
Speaker 3: may be possible. So I honestly think that getting our
Speaker 3: collective act together in order to solve the climate crisis
Speaker 3: could be the engine that pulls solutions for democracy and
Speaker 3: capitalism and the other the extinction crisis, Because if we
Speaker 3: can reconstruct an ability to share a common base of
Speaker 3: accepted knowledge and reason together towards solutions for our crises,
Speaker 3: I think that is the pathway to restoration of sanity
Speaker 3: and self governance.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's where our on stage conversation at the Bloomberg Green
Speaker 1: Summit finished, but I was able to get some more
Speaker 1: time with Al Gore backstage. That's coming up after the break.
Speaker 1: One follow up question from something we talked about on stage.
Speaker 1: We talked about moving to a supermajority system in the
Speaker 1: cup process, but not having a consensus, which is the
Speaker 1: current state, could also cause the process to be less
Speaker 1: credible than say, the Paras agreement, which was achieved through consensus.
Speaker 1: Do you foresee if there is a reform, as you
Speaker 1: argue for, that cobs become even more irrelevant than they
Speaker 1: already are.
Speaker 3: I think they could become more controversial and difficult. But
Speaker 3: the old saying you got to break some eggs to
Speaker 3: make an omelet applies.
Speaker 2: In my view.
Speaker 3: This isn't working. This isn't working. We have seen a dramatic,
Speaker 3: almost miraculous rise in the deployment of solar and wind
Speaker 3: electricity and electric vehicles and batteries, and regenerative agriculture is
Speaker 3: not far behind, and maybe green hydrogen as well. But
Speaker 3: we're still increasing the burning of fossil fuels every year
Speaker 3: and that simply got to stop. And if this go along,
Speaker 3: get along, consensus begging permission from the Petro States is
Speaker 3: not producing solutions. We have to change the process. Too
Speaker 3: much is at stake. We can't just go along to
Speaker 3: get along forever. There have been twenty eight of these
Speaker 3: cops now and the emissions are still going up every
Speaker 3: single year except for the pandemic, and then they went
Speaker 3: right back up up again after that. We can't continue this.
Speaker 3: You know the old cliche. If you keep doing the
Speaker 3: same thing over and over again getting the same terrible result,
Speaker 3: that's a definition of insanity. And we have to change
Speaker 3: this process now.
Speaker 1: In preparation for this interview, we watched a lot of
Speaker 1: your interviews, a lot of your podcast chats. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I've seen has changed. You're a communicator
Speaker 1: of science bar none. You're able to channel scientists and
Speaker 1: get the message across like no other. But you have
Speaker 1: also become angry. If I can say that your speeches
Speaker 1: have become so powerful, what has changed in this time
Speaker 1: of you trying to get the climate message out there.
Speaker 3: I would not use the word anger. I would be
Speaker 3: comfortable with the word passionate. And I guess I can
Speaker 3: fully understand why some of it may come across this anger.
Speaker 3: Maybe I need to dial that back a little bit,
Speaker 3: But whatever word you use to describe it, the reason
Speaker 3: why I have been a lot more passionate in recent years,
Speaker 3: I guess is because we're running out of time. It's
Speaker 3: that simple. Really. I was raised in a family and
Speaker 3: in a country that gave me the belief that reasonable
Speaker 3: people could discuss facts and attempt to come to some
Speaker 3: mutual agreement about what's more likely to be true than not,
Speaker 3: and then, after a discourse and the full airing of disagreements,
Speaker 3: come to enough of a mutual understanding to use that
Speaker 3: as a basis for collective action. In my faith tradition,
Speaker 3: there is the saying, come, let us reason together. And
Speaker 3: what we've witnessed, at least in my country, and I
Speaker 3: see it in quite a few others as well in
Speaker 3: recent years, is what seems to be a very cynical
Speaker 3: use by powerful corporations and individuals sometimes to manipulate the
Speaker 3: ways in which information is presented in the public square
Speaker 3: and to distort it, and then, with repetition through advertising,
Speaker 3: to try to manhandle the process that used to be
Speaker 3: more organic and you used to result in the emergence
Speaker 3: of agreement. I'll give you an example when the scientists
Speaker 3: and doctors decades ago found out that smoking cigarettes causes
Speaker 3: lung cancer. That's the kind of new knowledge that used
Speaker 3: to serve as the basis for discussion and then mutual commitment.
Speaker 3: But the tobacco companies in response to a famous surgeon
Speaker 3: general's report in the US hired actors and dressed them
Speaker 3: up to pretend to be doctors and put them on
Speaker 3: camera with their white coats and stethoscopes, and had them
Speaker 3: look into the camera and with all of the affected
Speaker 3: sincerity they could muster with their theatrical skills reassure people
Speaker 3: that there were no health consequences at all, and one
Speaker 3: hundred million people died. The same pr firms that came
Speaker 3: up with that strategy are now advising Exon Mobile and
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia and the team managing COP twenty eight.
Speaker 1: We are now on day six of this coon and
Speaker 1: yet there has been progress, or at least seemingly progressed.
Speaker 1: There's a loss and damage fund. There's all this money
Speaker 1: being announced, which as investigative journalists we will find out
Speaker 1: whether it's real or not. But those shiny objects are
Speaker 1: being thrown at you. You've been part of these negotiations.
Speaker 1: They are delicate, they require consensus. As we talked through it,
Speaker 1: What does the moment as we stand now tell us
Speaker 1: about how the next ten days are going to play
Speaker 1: out before we do hopefully get a fossil fuel phase
Speaker 1: out agreed on.
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about some of what you describe as progress.
Speaker 3: And example a you used was the loss and Damage fund.
Speaker 3: I'm in favor of establishing the loss and damage fund.
Speaker 3: It was really essentially adopted last year charmel shake. So
Speaker 3: it's pulled out again to recycle the appearance of victory.
Speaker 3: So does that make it a huge victory or a
Speaker 3: bright shiny object that distracts us from job number one?
Speaker 3: Job number one is to phase out fossil fuels. The
Speaker 3: climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, and all of
Speaker 3: the time that we spend talking about something other than
Speaker 3: that is first and foremost a distraction from the moral duty.
Speaker 3: I think this cop has to start phasing out fossil
Speaker 3: fuels as quickly as possible. And this whole discussion about
Speaker 3: unabated fossil fuels, as the Secretary of General said in
Speaker 3: his opening speech, no abatement as they describe it as
Speaker 3: the technologies now available make define it.
Speaker 2: Is a ruse.
Speaker 3: Really, it's a you know, Oxford University conducted a massive
Speaker 3: study of the phenomenon known as Wright's law, the cost
Speaker 3: reduction curves for technologies, and we've seen in our lives,
Speaker 3: some stunning examples, the mobile phones, the flat screen TVs,
Speaker 3: not to mention computer chips, and so they studied all
Speaker 3: of them and some go down and cost very rapidly,
Speaker 3: some a bit slowly. They have a very small category
Speaker 3: labeled non improving technologies. That's the category that carbon capture
Speaker 3: and sequestration is in. For fifty years, there's been zero
Speaker 3: reduction in cost for carbon capture and sequestration. So any
Speaker 3: expectation of a magical breakthrough that brings the cost down,
Speaker 3: while not impossible. We've seen some surprising things in our lives,
Speaker 3: but it's not likely.
Speaker 1: The president of COPP has been the CEO of oil
Speaker 1: company from the day he was announced as the cop president.
Speaker 1: There's been plenty of pushback from civil society, some from politicians,
Speaker 1: but none from the very diplomats who have to work
Speaker 1: with him to try and get a deal. First, why
Speaker 1: was there not a push back from the diplomats? And second,
Speaker 1: where does that leave us for getting a fossil fuel
Speaker 1: phase out in the final community.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, there was pushback, I mean I
Speaker 3: objected to it immediately, and one hundred and thirty elected officials,
Speaker 3: primarily from Europe and the United States drafted and signed
Speaker 3: a very powerful letter objecting to it. But the process
Speaker 3: by which the leadership of these cops is selected is
Speaker 3: itself in need of reform. It rotates between the different
Speaker 3: regions of the world as they're defined by the United Nations,
Speaker 3: and then there is a kind of competition between countries
Speaker 3: in the region whose turn it is. The Republic of
Speaker 3: Korea was the competition for the UAE. A lot of
Speaker 3: deals were made between the UAE and career You aware
Speaker 3: of that. Oh, you might look at the massive oil
Speaker 3: storage facility placed by the UAE and South Korea, millions
Speaker 3: of barrels, giving them first to purchase. You might look
Speaker 3: at the massive investment fund established by the UE and
Speaker 3: South Korea. You might look at the military training relationships
Speaker 3: that were established. And I really and truly do not
Speaker 3: know for a fact that all of those deals and
Speaker 3: all of that money had anything to do with Korea's
Speaker 3: surprising decision to withdraw from the competition and leave the
Speaker 3: UAE as the only candidate. I do not know that.
Speaker 3: I do suspect that the Petro States, and they're not
Speaker 3: the only ones, but the Petro States play these games
Speaker 3: at a very high level look at the World Cup
Speaker 3: for football. Why is it that the day the surprising
Speaker 3: change in the regional rotation was announced, only one country
Speaker 3: was prepared with a bid. No one else knew it
Speaker 3: was coming. In time, similar shenanigans take place in the
Speaker 3: selection of who's going to host these cops, and once
Speaker 3: the country is selected, then that country has the authority
Speaker 3: to name the president of the COP. I believe that
Speaker 3: the UN Secretary General should share the authority for naming
Speaker 3: the COP. Now the Secretary General doesn't want that authority,
Speaker 3: and I'm sympathetic with his desire not to be involved
Speaker 3: with it, but I think we have to change this process.
Speaker 3: It's just not fit for purpose. We're now struggling. We
Speaker 3: don't know where the next COP is going to be
Speaker 3: because another petro state, Russia, has objected to country after
Speaker 3: country in Eastern Europe. Maybe Serbia will emerge as an
Speaker 3: acceptable host, and then after that is Brazil, which is
Speaker 3: on site, and then perhaps Australia. I think that's the
Speaker 3: favored candidate. With the Pacific Island nations.
Speaker 1: We're going into a period which is now less than
Speaker 1: twelve months, when President Biden is likely to rerun for election,
Speaker 1: probably against Donald Trump, and politics goes here and there.
Speaker 1: You have the experience of that, but we also have
Speaker 1: finite time shrinking time. If you don't get Joe Biden reelected,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a Democratic presidency, there is likely
Speaker 1: going to be backsliding on climate probably pretty disastrous backsliding.
Speaker 1: What is it in the next twelve months that you
Speaker 1: think the Democratic Party and President Biden needs to do
Speaker 1: to ensure that he gets re elected.
Speaker 3: Well, I should start by telling you that I am
Speaker 3: a strong supporter of Joe Biden, and I think that
Speaker 3: by any objective assessment, he's done a really good job
Speaker 3: as president. But if you look at the pandemic and
Speaker 3: the reorganization of supply chains, that s lasted a long
Speaker 3: time in the wake of the pandemic and the inflation
Speaker 3: that resulted. Inflation has come down dramatically, but the political
Speaker 3: perception of inflation has a very long tail, and I
Speaker 3: think that is one of the major reasons why he's
Speaker 3: not showing up as well as people like me would
Speaker 3: like in the public opinion polls. It's also important to
Speaker 3: say that a year away from the election, there have
Speaker 3: been many in common presidents who were in this kind
Speaker 3: of political shape in the polling and a year later
Speaker 3: one reelection. But I'm not going to dodge your question, Oxshot.
Speaker 3: It's a definite prospect that this election might not turn
Speaker 3: out as most of us would like it to. And
Speaker 3: what we should do in the meantime, those of us
Speaker 3: like myself who are have at least one foot in
Speaker 3: the political arena, needs to pull out all stops and
Speaker 3: help oh Biden get realcted.
Speaker 1: One of the initiatives you work on is Climate Trace.
Speaker 1: It gives you information now much more granular on who
Speaker 1: are the people producing CO two emissions. You've got satellite measurement,
Speaker 1: which means not many people can hide from this. But
Speaker 1: you're also one who've said that facts alone don't change people.
Speaker 1: So how do you square the circle that, yes, we
Speaker 1: do need more transparency, we need more data to make
Speaker 1: better decisions or convince more people about it. And yet,
Speaker 1: if facts alone aren't going to convince people, why do
Speaker 1: we pursue the path of getting more and more data
Speaker 1: to try and get people.
Speaker 3: Well, let's put this in perspective. Why would a company
Speaker 3: go to the Climate Trace database in search of lower
Speaker 3: carbon emitting suppliers in their supply chain, not simply because
Speaker 3: the facts are there, but it's important that the facts
Speaker 3: are there when they get pressure from their consumers, from
Speaker 3: their employees, from their executives, from the families of the executives,
Speaker 3: from people all over the world who are increasingly aware
Speaker 3: that we are in grave danger unless we sharply reduce
Speaker 3: carbon emissions. So it's the combination of public, social, and
Speaker 3: economic pressure to get with the program and start being
Speaker 3: part of the solution to the climate crisis that makes
Speaker 3: these facts from Climate Trace valuable because the incentive to
Speaker 3: use the facts is present because of activists, and this
Speaker 3: is now the largest social movement in the history of
Speaker 3: the world. There are young people and people of all
Speaker 3: ages in every nation in the world. Some of the
Speaker 3: tatorships like North Korea, you don't see them as much,
Speaker 3: but even there, I can tell you why. I know
Speaker 3: that everywhere in the world there is rising pressure. We
Speaker 3: as human beings have many limitations, many weaknesses, many legacies
Speaker 3: of our long period of evolutionary development. We respond to
Speaker 3: the threats that our ancient ancestors survived using our neocortex
Speaker 3: and our reasoning capacity to communicate with one another about
Speaker 3: more complex challenges and finding the solutions. So that takes time,
Speaker 3: but we have the capacity to rise above our limitations.
Speaker 3: And you know how, I know that we've done it
Speaker 3: in the past, when the anti apartheid movement was successful,
Speaker 3: the civil rights movement in my country, giving women the
Speaker 3: right to vote, Educating women didn't used.
Speaker 2: To be possible.
Speaker 3: Now sixty five percent of the college graduates in the
Speaker 3: UAE in Saudi Arabia are women. These social movements all
Speaker 3: have one thing in common. After the distractions are cleared
Speaker 3: away and the central choice is revealed as a choice
Speaker 3: between what's right and what's wrong, then at a very
Speaker 3: deep level, the outcome becomes fore ordained because of who
Speaker 3: we are in our deepest core. And this climate crisis
Speaker 3: is now presenting us with an approaching political tipping point
Speaker 3: where I'm convinced where we will have enough of a
Speaker 3: global consensus to take action.
Speaker 1: Now, this has been a tremendous conversation. We've talked about
Speaker 1: a number of subjects anything to do with climate. Given
Speaker 1: how many things it touches, we have to have a
Speaker 1: wide range in conversation. But I want to bring us
Speaker 1: to a cluse. You speak to lots of people who
Speaker 1: are in power in places who can make real change happen.
Speaker 1: When you think about what we need to do in
Speaker 1: the urgency that we have, what is in your mind
Speaker 1: the heuristic, which order of things would you bring up
Speaker 1: with somebody that this, one, two, three are the things?
Speaker 1: If we do them, we get this thing going faster
Speaker 1: than we really need to.
Speaker 3: Right now, we're using the sky as an open sewer,
Speaker 3: and our reckless spewing of heat trapping pollution into the
Speaker 3: sky is now causing these climate related horrific disasters to
Speaker 3: be worse and worse and more intense and more frequent,
Speaker 3: and everybody knows it. If you want to change that,
Speaker 3: if you want to say to our young people, you
Speaker 3: don't have to be depressed about the future, You don't
Speaker 3: have to have a dark outlook. We have a mental
Speaker 3: health crisis around the world now, partly because young people
Speaker 3: are losing hope. We need to restore hope. We need
Speaker 3: to prove that we have the capacity as human beings
Speaker 3: to save our future. And I always say that if
Speaker 3: you have any doubt that we as human beings have
Speaker 3: the political will necessary to save ourselves, please remember that
Speaker 3: political will is itself a renewable resource.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Vice President.
Speaker 3: Thank you Akshat.
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Speaker 1: I'm Akshatrati back next week.