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Speaker 1: Thank you, Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatarati. This week outreach
Speaker 1: and optimism in oil country. Today is the start of
Speaker 1: COP twenty eight, and for the next two weeks I'll
Speaker 1: be in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, along with
Speaker 1: more than seventy thousand other people who will come for
Speaker 1: the year's biggest climate conference. It is one of the
Speaker 1: most controversial corps in recent memory. It is being hosted
Speaker 1: by an oil dependent nation, and the president of the summit,
Speaker 1: Sultan al Jabber, is also the head of the state's
Speaker 1: oil company. Many are worried that it's being run by
Speaker 1: the wrong people at the wrong time, just as the
Speaker 1: world is experiencing record breaking heat, yet representatives of almost
Speaker 1: two hundred countries are now gathered here in the Bay
Speaker 1: to create a new consensus that will hopefully push the
Speaker 1: world closer toward net zero. If things go to plan,
Speaker 1: we should see a global agreement to triple renewables, double
Speaker 1: energy efficiency, phase out fossil fuels, and work out how
Speaker 1: to implement a fund that would compensate vulnerable countries for
Speaker 1: climate impacts. Have no doubt these are difficult negotiations. Getting
Speaker 1: every single country to agree to one common text is
Speaker 1: a gargantuan task. So for this first episode from Copp,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk with someone who's been on the inside,
Speaker 1: someone who has helped forge these agreements from the ashes
Speaker 1: of broken diplomacy. My guest today is Christiana Figures, who
Speaker 1: is now the co host of the podcast Outrage and
Speaker 1: Optimism and was formerly the head of the UNF Triple C,
Speaker 1: the body tasked with running COP meetings. She took over
Speaker 1: the role at a low point in global climate negotiations
Speaker 1: in twenty ten, just after the COP fifteen meeting in Copenhagen,
Speaker 1: where there were big expectations for a meaningful legally binding agreement.
Speaker 1: It didn't come to pass, and the meeting became known
Speaker 1: as Brokenhagen. Christiana arrived in the aftermath and spent the
Speaker 1: next five years bringing world leaders together to form a
Speaker 1: new alliance. Her efforts culminated in the signing of the
Speaker 1: Paris Agreement in twenty fifteen. But now the world is
Speaker 1: way of track to meet that goal. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to hear from Christiana about what we can expect from
Speaker 1: COP twenty eight, the role of the fossil fuel industry
Speaker 1: in these negotiations, and whether COP is still fit for purpose.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Christiana.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for the invitation. Now.
Speaker 1: You were appointed as the head of the UN after
Speaker 1: PLC in twenty ten. This was a year after the
Speaker 1: Copenhagen COP had ended in failure.
Speaker 3: Six months six months.
Speaker 1: After, yes, very soon after, and everyone was pretty down
Speaker 1: on climate diplomacy at the time. What were you thinking
Speaker 1: taking over the job of running the event, the organization
Speaker 1: that makes global climate diplomacy happen.
Speaker 3: What was I thinking? I was thinking that we would
Speaker 3: never ever ever get to a global climate agreement, at
Speaker 3: least not in my lifetime. That was my first thought,
Speaker 3: because the global mood on climate was so despondent, and
Speaker 3: everyone was so angry with each other. No one even
Speaker 3: wanted to talk to each other anymore, let alone any
Speaker 3: trust in the in the system and in the process.
Speaker 3: So it were, they were definitely very very dark days.
Speaker 1: And now climate diplomacy frequently splits on party lines, on
Speaker 1: developed and developing country lines, on very fossil oriented economies
Speaker 1: versus renewable oriented economies. There are just so many divisions.
Speaker 1: What did you need to do at that time, right
Speaker 1: after Copenhagen to bring people back to restart and get
Speaker 1: to the point which you did when the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: was signed.
Speaker 3: Well, definitely did not start bridging those devices that you
Speaker 3: have mentioned, and you gave a short list of the many,
Speaker 3: many device that are there, but rather start much more
Speaker 3: humbly enticing people just to come back to the table,
Speaker 3: all of which was built on the back of re
Speaker 3: energizing the Secretary area itself, which is five hundred people strong,
Speaker 3: because they give their lives to this, this is what
Speaker 3: they do twenty seven hours a day, and they were
Speaker 3: at least partially blamed for the disaster in Copenhagen. So
Speaker 3: my first responsibility was to pick them out of the
Speaker 3: doldrums and re energize them, remotivate them, and slowly build
Speaker 3: them up to the top performing organization that they prove
Speaker 3: themselves to be. In the year twenty fifteen, you.
Speaker 1: Wrote a book called The Future We Choose, which came
Speaker 1: a few years earlier than my book will just come
Speaker 1: out this year, And in that I explained this two
Speaker 1: track world where there is progress happening, clearly we can
Speaker 1: see it, and yet the progress is very far from
Speaker 1: where we need to be because climate impacts are getting worse.
Speaker 1: But coming back to diplomacy, you know, each cop sort
Speaker 1: of builds onto its previous version. This year there is
Speaker 1: a big push on trying to make sure that this
Speaker 1: gap that does exist between where we are and where
Speaker 1: we need to be can be shrunk and quickly. But
Speaker 1: in September you said that cops have become a circus.
Speaker 1: When did you lose faith in the process that pushes
Speaker 1: global climate diplomacy forward.
Speaker 3: I haven't lost faith in the process. That would be
Speaker 3: very odd for someone who's dedicated her entire life to that.
Speaker 3: I have no idea where you got that impression. Now,
Speaker 3: I have definitely not lost faith. What I mean is
Speaker 3: that we have to understand that the cops were designed.
Speaker 3: And I speak because I joined before COP one something
Speaker 3: called the International Negotiating Committee, which was the body that
Speaker 3: designed the cops. So I know for a fact that
Speaker 3: cops were designed for one purpose, and that is to
Speaker 3: hold the multilateral process that reaches legally binding agreements. That
Speaker 3: is what it was designed to do. It has succeeded.
Speaker 3: It has succeeded because in twenty fifteen we adopted the
Speaker 3: Paris Agreement, and in twenty twenty one we adopted the
Speaker 3: rule book for the Paris Agreement. So substantially, although I
Speaker 3: must say there are still some very important parts that
Speaker 3: still need this multilateral negotiation process, but substantially we are
Speaker 3: in the process of moving from negotiation to implementation. The
Speaker 3: cops were never meant to implement. That's the point. Implementation
Speaker 3: doesn't happen as the result of negotiation in negotiation halls.
Speaker 3: It happens in the real economy. It happens through policies.
Speaker 3: It happens through healthy competition, through investments, through innovation and technology.
Speaker 3: That's where the push is. Now. The question then is
Speaker 3: does the COP get redesigned for this new purpose to
Speaker 3: support implementation, Does it stay as a multilateral negotiating process,
Speaker 3: or do you bring both of these together in a
Speaker 3: new way that honesty cannot be what we have now.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how many people are being
Speaker 3: expected at COP twenty eight, but it's it's above sixty thousand,
Speaker 3: and you're not going to get sixty thousand people worth
Speaker 3: of negotiated agreements. And you wonder whether their time and
Speaker 3: effort wouldn't be better used in a different form that
Speaker 3: would actually be there to support implementation and to monitor
Speaker 3: the pace of implementation, because after all, that is the
Speaker 3: purpose of the global stock take, which happens this year
Speaker 3: for the first time, mandated by the Paris Agreement. So
Speaker 3: as of now, what we really should see is how
Speaker 3: quickly are we implementing the Paris Agreement.
Speaker 1: Now, what has happened with COPS is that they've become
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger. As you say, more and more people
Speaker 1: come to them, and the core part of the negotiations
Speaker 1: that continue to happen still remain about the same size.
Speaker 1: It's really all the other things that happen on the
Speaker 1: outside that are becoming bigger. There's what people call really
Speaker 1: the trade show. People wanting to come and show what
Speaker 1: they are doing on trying to reach the Paras agreement,
Speaker 1: or wanting to talk about technology, or just wanting to
Speaker 1: network in a way that is probably needed. But it's
Speaker 1: also happening at a time when we've just had the
Speaker 1: hottest year, we are on track to reach a new
Speaker 1: high in emissions in twenty twenty three, and we are
Speaker 1: going into a COP that is being hosted by an
Speaker 1: oil producing, oil dependent country and led by a president
Speaker 1: who's the head of the national oil company. It's not
Speaker 1: the first time this is happening. We've had a COP
Speaker 1: in Qatar before, where it was an oil producing nation,
Speaker 1: but it was pre paris. What do you think needs
Speaker 1: to happen to make the COP process more effective? Is
Speaker 1: it trimming the number of people going to the COP?
Speaker 1: Is it splitting this into one that does negotiation and
Speaker 1: another that does trade show Where do you think COPS
Speaker 1: need to evolve to make us narrow the gap that
Speaker 1: exists between where we are and where we need to be.
Speaker 3: Well, it is not for me to decide that. That
Speaker 3: is for parties to decide what they want to do.
Speaker 3: I would definitely point you toward the party process that
Speaker 3: is looking at this, but having said that, it does
Speaker 3: seem like first we can't do completely without the multilateral
Speaker 3: negotiations because there are some very important parts that have
Speaker 3: not been agreed to and that are key importance for
Speaker 3: the survival of developing countries. So certainly everything that has
Speaker 3: to do with loss and damage we now have theoretically
Speaker 3: a fund, but it's definitely not up and running. So
Speaker 3: there are some issues that would definitely not just justify,
Speaker 3: but necessitate the multilateral negotiating process to continue. Having said that,
Speaker 3: the implementation I think could stand a redesign. If that
Speaker 3: is the new purpose of yearly meetings, then form follows function.
Speaker 3: And if that is the new function, then how do
Speaker 3: you bring it together? How do you sum it up?
Speaker 3: How do you use it to let us know how
Speaker 3: we are doing with respect to the objectives and the
Speaker 3: targets established in the Powers Agreement. That is the piece
Speaker 3: that I think needs some serious consideration so that we
Speaker 3: would be able to gather the fruits that are put
Speaker 3: on the table at cops. On the side that is
Speaker 3: non negotiating, but it's not enough to gather the fruits
Speaker 3: and put them in a fruit salad. We want to
Speaker 3: know how are we doing, And it should have a
Speaker 3: much more accountability, more accounting going with it so that
Speaker 3: we can know where we are. And I know that
Speaker 3: the Executive Secretary of the Climate Convention, Simon Steel, has
Speaker 3: already launched a process to begin to think about how
Speaker 3: to renew that.
Speaker 1: After the break we talk about the big, oily elephant
Speaker 1: in the room, let's address the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: going into COP twenty eight, which is the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 1: You wrote an op ed in July saying that throughout
Speaker 1: your career as a climate diplomat, you've made efforts to
Speaker 1: bring along fossil fuel companies to move climate goals along.
Speaker 1: But this time you've said you've had enough that you
Speaker 1: were wrong that fossil fuel companies could ever change. What
Speaker 1: made you come to that conclusion? And if that is
Speaker 1: the conclusion that we have come to, how do we
Speaker 1: deal with that reality when we go into COP twenty eight.
Speaker 1: But that many fossil fuel companies showing.
Speaker 3: Up, well, first of all, I don't think that we
Speaker 3: should drown in a class of water people showing up
Speaker 3: at the COP They're going to be thousands of people
Speaker 3: showing up at the COP as we know, and how
Speaker 3: many oil executives going to show up, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We will probably never know, because they can sign in
Speaker 3: as anything else. I understand the symbolic significance of that.
Speaker 3: Completely understand you don't want to have the tobacco companies
Speaker 3: come to a health conference. I understand. I totally understand.
Speaker 3: I am not minimizing that. But also, at the same time,
Speaker 3: let us not be so simplistic as to assume that
Speaker 3: the only influence that oil executives can have is through
Speaker 3: their physical presence. Let's get down to something that is
Speaker 3: more important. I lost patients with the oil companies because
Speaker 3: I have seen what they chose to do with their
Speaker 3: unprecedented profits over the past year or two. I honestly
Speaker 3: had the hope, the expectation, the ambition that seeing as
Speaker 3: much cash as they saw for no reason of their own,
Speaker 3: just because Russia cruelly invaded Ukraine, I had thought wished
Speaker 3: for that they would take part a substantial part of
Speaker 3: that cash and invested in to the energy transition, fully
Speaker 3: well knowing that is not their business model. But if
Speaker 3: they want business continuity, they have to get with the program.
Speaker 3: But they chose not to do so. They chose to
Speaker 3: give much bigger dividends to their shareholders. They chose to
Speaker 3: buy back shares. They chose in the United States to
Speaker 3: put a lot of money into lobbying against climate policy,
Speaker 3: both at the national and at state level. They chose
Speaker 3: to finance a campaign against ESG, on and on and on.
Speaker 3: That is deeply disappointing to me, because, yes, I had
Speaker 3: the hope that this industry, with the engineering capacity that
Speaker 3: it has that is unequaled in any other industry, with
Speaker 3: the pockets that they have that is unequaled in any
Speaker 3: other industry, I had thought that they would be able
Speaker 3: to turn a new leave. They didn't. They chose not to.
Speaker 3: In fact, they chose to step back from where they
Speaker 3: had stepped forward previously. So that is why I lost
Speaker 3: my patience and I lost my hope for them. What
Speaker 3: I find very interesting, Akshot is I don't know if
Speaker 3: you followed this announcement of Exon mobile buying companies, did
Speaker 3: you see.
Speaker 1: That Exon bought Pioneer and Chevron bought hes. Both of
Speaker 1: them have word fifty sixty billion dollars worth of another
Speaker 1: company that is an oil and gas company.
Speaker 3: Very interesting, very very interesting, And I've been wondering why.
Speaker 3: First of all, why did those companies that are admittedly
Speaker 3: much smaller than the ones that purchased them, why did
Speaker 3: they allow themselves to be purchased? If the oil and
Speaker 3: gas industry had a really rosy picture of the future,
Speaker 3: do you think those small companies would allow themselves to
Speaker 3: be purchased or would they have continued to go on
Speaker 3: their own.
Speaker 1: Well, they also did not get as much of a premium.
Speaker 1: So when a company, a big company buys a small company,
Speaker 1: it's typically coming with a premium because it will give
Speaker 1: you a little more than what the stock price is
Speaker 1: currently for that small company. The premium in these cases,
Speaker 1: both the cases was actually quite small relative to historical
Speaker 1: premiums when big oil and gas mergers have happened. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I've understood is that both the companies
Speaker 1: that they've bought most of the time they have an
Speaker 1: exposure to shale oil, which is a much more short
Speaker 1: term oil production. So if you are as an oil
Speaker 1: company thinking about a future where maybe twenty years from
Speaker 1: now oil may not be required as much, but you
Speaker 1: want to make short term profits, you want to try
Speaker 1: and capture the market share right now at a greater
Speaker 1: level because oil prices are high, these are quite good
Speaker 1: bets from just money making perspective. And so there is
Speaker 1: an idea in economics which called it revealed preference. So
Speaker 1: companies may say to you, you know, we believe there's
Speaker 1: a lot of room for oil to still grow, that
Speaker 1: the world is not investing enough in oil that they
Speaker 1: must and then you look at what they are actually doing.
Speaker 1: Turns out they themselves are not investing in oil. This
Speaker 1: is not just happening in USL companies. It's happening even
Speaker 1: with Saudi Aramco.
Speaker 3: So you know what I call what's going on musical chairs,
Speaker 3: That's what I call it. So and so this is
Speaker 3: not a statement of fact. This is just a quirky
Speaker 3: little two in the morning idea. And I'm going to
Speaker 3: put it in a question mark because it is a question.
Speaker 3: Could it be possible that some US based big companies
Speaker 3: are already feeling themselves squeezed between quickly diminishing social tolerance
Speaker 3: and increasing demand destruction which we have already seen, and
Speaker 3: therefore their future is not quite as rosy as they thought,
Speaker 3: and they're trying to acquire more volume and more assets
Speaker 3: that will allow them to be the last man standing
Speaker 3: that will allow them to still have a chair when
Speaker 3: the music stops. If what they're playing now is musical chairs,
Speaker 3: or what the economy plays now is musical chairs, what
Speaker 3: happens if they're getting ready for a showdown? Who is
Speaker 3: going to be the last man standing? And I say
Speaker 3: man because most of them, with the exception of Cheval,
Speaker 3: are led by.
Speaker 1: Men, with the exception of oxy Oxy. Thank you if
Speaker 1: you take that point of view. Still coming back to COP,
Speaker 1: how do you think we should look at fossil fuel
Speaker 1: company's influence on the COP process. It may be symbolic,
Speaker 1: but it is true that we are going into a
Speaker 1: COP in the United Arab Emirates, which is an oil
Speaker 1: dependent economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What I actually think is quite sad is that
Speaker 3: doctor Sulton Algebert I think missed a really important opportunity because,
Speaker 3: as you have mentioned, he's not just the president of
Speaker 3: the oil company, he's the president of a state owned company,
Speaker 3: very different, very different than publicly traded. Let's remember that
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of all oil and gases in the
Speaker 3: hands of state owned companies, and so this could have
Speaker 3: been maybe still is an opportunity for the president to
Speaker 3: mobilize state owned companies, because those are his peers. His
Speaker 3: peers are not Exxon Mobile, Total Shell BP, those are
Speaker 3: not his peers. His peers are the state owned companies.
Speaker 3: So I think it's actually quite a missed opportunity that
Speaker 3: he has not been able to bring state owned companies
Speaker 3: to a more responsible position with respect to climate, because
Speaker 3: I do think that it's very interesting shut that we
Speaker 3: keep on focusing on the publicly traded companies that are
Speaker 3: only twenty five percent of the.
Speaker 1: Production in the Cup negotiations. You have said, there are
Speaker 1: certainly things that require a multilateral framework, a multilateral discussion,
Speaker 1: a multilateral decision making process. One place where that is
Speaker 1: crucial is climate finance. Climate finance can be put in
Speaker 1: three buckets. You put money towards reducing emissions, you put
Speaker 1: money towards adapting to warming, and then you put money
Speaker 1: towards compensating for the damages that come from climate. All
Speaker 1: three buckets need to be funded at different amounts, and
Speaker 1: we'll have a different type of body funding them. But
Speaker 1: the gap that exists, it's trillions of dollars on an
Speaker 1: annual basis. If you add all of them up, what
Speaker 1: do you think is the best way in which we
Speaker 1: can make sure that developed countries start to give the
Speaker 1: kind of money that they must to developing countries to
Speaker 1: the funding gap on all three buckets.
Speaker 3: What is the good news on this first, the good
Speaker 3: news is that last year we invested a trillion dollars
Speaker 3: into fossil fuels and a trillion dollars into renewable. This
Speaker 3: year we're still investing a trillion dollars into vassal fuels.
Speaker 3: I can, I'll believe it. However, we're investing one point
Speaker 3: seven into renewable, so you know, it's it's it's the
Speaker 3: right direction. Now, as you point out, one point seven
Speaker 3: is good but not sufficient. We actually need to get
Speaker 3: to four trillion a year into renewables. However, how interesting
Speaker 3: that we have seven trillion dollars a year that are,
Speaker 3: according to my sense, misallocated to fossil fuels subsidies, and
Speaker 3: that's seven percent of global GDP. So the money is there, right,
Speaker 3: It's just a misallocation that is highly political, understand but
Speaker 3: correcting even a part of that misallocation would go a
Speaker 3: long way. And then, of course, the reform of the
Speaker 3: financial system along the lines of the Bridgetown Initiative to
Speaker 3: mobilize both short term liquidity for the class response as
Speaker 3: well as long term funding for developing countries would be
Speaker 3: hugely helpful. And part of that, as we know, is
Speaker 3: to buy down the first risk of many of these
Speaker 3: investments in the three buckets, so that private capital can
Speaker 3: then follow. So it's not like we don't know what
Speaker 3: to do. There are very important suggestions out there. What's
Speaker 3: missing still, frankly, is political will.
Speaker 1: What should we look out for at COP twenty eight
Speaker 1: this year that would look like success.
Speaker 3: Do you want the ideal or do you want the realistic?
Speaker 3: Both the ideal we need to see commitments to transform
Speaker 3: energy systems, transform food systems, and transform finance systems. So
Speaker 3: transformation in energy, food and finance, and energy tripling energy
Speaker 3: capacity by twenty thirty equitably phase out. We're currently at
Speaker 3: phase down, phase out our fossil fuels, especially reallocating subsidies,
Speaker 3: and very importantly, because we always forget it, double the
Speaker 3: energy efficiency that we have. So those would be the
Speaker 3: three and energy systems and the food systems, and in
Speaker 3: nature transform the food systems. I mean we are food
Speaker 3: system around the world is so inefficient and so unfair.
Speaker 3: The fact that we still have people who go hungry
Speaker 3: when we have enough food production, which is not doing
Speaker 3: a good job of where we produce, how we transport,
Speaker 3: how we get it. So building the resilience to that,
Speaker 3: and then for the non food area of deforestation, increase
Speaker 3: lad restoration and revitalize all or degraded ecosystems that are
Speaker 3: both water ecosystems as well as land. And on the finance,
Speaker 3: we've already touched on it, so you know, the fame
Speaker 3: is one hundred billion. Here we are again ding ding
Speaker 3: ding right, the whole hundred billion? Where are they? And
Speaker 3: adaptation finance, loss and damage fund? What is going to
Speaker 3: happen with that? Can we get granular with that? And
Speaker 3: then reform public finance so the money gets to the
Speaker 3: right people and is easily accessible and is enough of
Speaker 3: a powerful attractor for private finance to align its investment
Speaker 3: plans and portfolios.
Speaker 1: That's a great list. Now a realistic one.
Speaker 3: A realistic I think we can definitely get a text
Speaker 3: that commits everybody to tripling renewables. I think we can
Speaker 3: get a text that commits to doubling energy efficiency. I
Speaker 3: think those two are possible. I think it is desirable.
Speaker 3: But can we get it. I'm not sure phase out
Speaker 3: of possible fuels. Maybe with some very creative working of
Speaker 3: the text, we might be able to get to more
Speaker 3: than we have right now, which is phase down fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: And I think actually we'll get an uptick on finance,
Speaker 3: not where we need to, but an uptick on finance,
Speaker 3: possibly spearheaded by the United Arab Emerts itself. I think
Speaker 3: that we will see quite a few coalitions coming out
Speaker 3: going into sexual transformations, in fact, city based decarbonization efforts,
Speaker 3: so everything that takes us from individual efforts to collective efforts,
Speaker 3: sexual efforts, so going from what I call pilot projects
Speaker 3: to much more industry level projects. And I think that
Speaker 3: we will begin to see the recognition of the pivot
Speaker 3: from incremental to exponents.
Speaker 1: Climate change gets a lot of attention in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three because climate impacts are every where you see them
Speaker 1: and we are hitting all kinds of records. This year's
Speaker 1: cop is expected to have as many as one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. Maybe you entered the climate space at a
Speaker 1: very different time. You've been involved in climate diplomacy since
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties. What drew you to climate diplomacy?
Speaker 1: In the first.
Speaker 3: Place, the disappearance of a species, a tiny little golden
Speaker 3: toad that was endemic to one of our reserves here,
Speaker 3: conservation reserves. It disappeared in my lifetime, and I quickly
Speaker 3: surmised that if I had witnessed the disappearance of one
Speaker 3: species in this tiny, little postage size country of Costa Rica,
Speaker 3: that that must be that many other species were disappearing,
Speaker 3: and low and behold, once I started studying, Yes, many, many,
Speaker 3: many other species have disappeared and continued to disappear.
Speaker 1: Now this is despite Costa Rica being the country that
Speaker 1: protected its forests. So it was when you looked at
Speaker 1: the disappearance of this toad, it was not because you
Speaker 1: weren't doing the work, the country wasn't doing the work.
Speaker 1: It was climate change, a global problem.
Speaker 3: That is correct. And since then I have learned that
Speaker 3: scientists have decided that it was the first species to
Speaker 3: disappear because of climate change. I didn't know that way
Speaker 3: back in the nineties. Scientists didn't know that either, But
Speaker 3: now we know, and I just think, let's just remember
Speaker 3: that all of us alive right now are the ancestors
Speaker 3: of future generations. We think of ancestors only because we
Speaker 3: think of our ancestors going up the line, but do
Speaker 3: we remember that we currently standing right here are the
Speaker 3: ancestors of all generations to come, and are we acting
Speaker 3: with the responsibility that we want as ancestors of the future.
Speaker 1: I could keep talking to you for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Christiana. Since recording this interview with Christiana,
Speaker 1: the BBC and the Center for Climate Reporting published an
Speaker 1: article that alleged that Sultan al Jabber used his role
Speaker 1: as COP twenty eight president to push for fossil fuel
Speaker 1: deals when speaking with members of foreign governments. A spokesperson
Speaker 1: for COP twenty eight said the article was inaccurate. Responding
Speaker 1: to the report, Christiana said, this is the Volkswagen twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen moment for the COP twenty eight presidency got red handed.
Speaker 1: The COP presidency has no other option but to now
Speaker 1: unequivocally step up the transparency, responsibility and accountability with which
Speaker 1: they lead the process. Thank you for listening to zero.
Speaker 1: We'll be at COP twenty eight for the next two weeks.
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Speaker 1: the summit. Sign up for free at Bloomberg dot com.
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Speaker 1: producer is Oscar Boid and senior producer is Christine Riskell.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Kira bendram I am Akshatrati. Back next week.