Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati this week imagining Utopia
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five. I love reading science fiction, and
Speaker 1: one of the sci fi writers who has had an
Speaker 1: impact on me in recent years is Kim Stanley Robinson.
Speaker 1: Stan is perhaps best known for his Mars trilogy, published
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, but Zero listeners are likely to
Speaker 1: know him for his writings over the past decade on
Speaker 1: what climate futures here on Earth might look like. Be
Speaker 1: it the underwater metropolis he imagined in his novel New
Speaker 1: York twenty one forty, or how a United Nations agency
Speaker 1: and its dark wing of eco terrorists tackle the climate
Speaker 1: crisis in his book The Ministry for the Future. Stan
Speaker 1: has been a guest on Zero before, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to speak with him again because that book, The Ministry
Speaker 1: for the Future has been on my mind recently. Although
Speaker 1: it was published in twenty twenty, The story in the
Speaker 1: book kicks off in the year twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: well here we are. The book opens just after a
Speaker 1: fictional COP twenty nine summit, as a deadly heat wave
Speaker 1: hits India. The plot follows the choices faced by United
Speaker 1: Nations officials in a new department called the Ministry for
Speaker 1: the Future, as they try to cope with the spiraling
Speaker 1: impacts of a warming planet. With twenty twenty five upon us,
Speaker 1: I wanted to see how Stan was feeling about the
Speaker 1: book's version of this timeline and find out what he
Speaker 1: thought about the unpredictable direction real life events have taken
Speaker 1: since he wrote it. We talked about the value of
Speaker 1: science fiction as a way to see into the future,
Speaker 1: as well as sci fi's dangers, and why a writer
Speaker 1: who admires science and technology so much still remains enamored
Speaker 1: with the unglamorous work of a body like the Yuan.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Aukshott. It's good to be back.
Speaker 1: So I listened to our conversation from a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, and I have to say you sounded optimistic,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three there were good reasons to
Speaker 1: be optimistic. We talked about how after the Paris Agreement,
Speaker 1: when the world was headed towards maybe four or five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius of warming, we had these forces come together,
Speaker 1: including the US turning around and having a climate law passed,
Speaker 1: and there was a general sense of coherence in the
Speaker 1: world trying to do something about climate change at a scale. Finally,
Speaker 1: So now here we are sitting at the start of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, the exact time period when the Ministry
Speaker 1: for the Future sort of gets started on his journey,
Speaker 1: and I thought it might be interesting to just revisit
Speaker 1: and update our outlooks of where we are, sort of
Speaker 1: a check in. We are in the future you were
Speaker 1: imagining today it is here.
Speaker 2: How are you feeling well? I want to say first
Speaker 2: that you're in a better position to judge the situation
Speaker 2: than I am, given your work, and that you're talking
Speaker 2: to everybody, and I'd be very interested to hear your impressions.
Speaker 2: As for me here in Davis, California, just looking out
Speaker 2: at the world, I have this sense that everything is accelerating.
Speaker 2: And that was already true in twenty twenty two. I
Speaker 2: had realized that the dates that I had put in
Speaker 2: Ministry for the Future were all wrong, and that I
Speaker 2: had set things out happening in the far future of
Speaker 2: a few decades from now that were going to happen
Speaker 2: one way or another in the twenty twenty So the
Speaker 2: acceleration seems to stay. You'll be speeding up, and I
Speaker 2: mean by this, both bad things and good things. And
Speaker 2: I suppose I should address what looks to be the
Speaker 2: big reversal, which is the unexpected reelection of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: At least it wasn't expected by me. I had it
Speaker 2: called exactly backwards. And I'm still shocked and dismayed. But
Speaker 2: I'll point out that my novel Ministry for the Future
Speaker 2: was written during Trump years. I was very angry then,
Speaker 2: and it postulated a world in which the United States
Speaker 2: was not a major player in dealing with climate change.
Speaker 2: It was really the other nations of the world driving
Speaker 2: the process out of necessity, and the United States being
Speaker 2: a somewhat big rich kid and narcissistic child in the background,
Speaker 2: being dragged along into the adult world of reality. And
Speaker 2: maybe that's again a little bit true. But a lot
Speaker 2: of things happened between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: that are now path dependent in their own good way.
Speaker 2: The good things have been speeding up as well as
Speaker 2: the bad things. It's simply cheaper to build new clean
Speaker 2: energy than old dirty energy, and this is crucial in
Speaker 2: a capitalist world that every source of investment that isn't
Speaker 2: government is looking for some kind of highest rate of return,
Speaker 2: and if there is a higher rate of return that
Speaker 2: can come to doing a green project rather than a
Speaker 2: dirty project, then it will get done. So some guardrails
Speaker 2: have changed a little. The I rebuild that the Biaden
Speaker 2: administration got pasted was very important because it shows that
Speaker 2: it's not just a matter of carbon quantitative easying of
Speaker 2: the central banks and the government's cooking up new money,
Speaker 2: which I think is important and really needs to happen,
Speaker 2: but also simply legislation that legislators of the world, when
Speaker 2: they vote in climate action, economic activities, and investments in
Speaker 2: private businesses in their nation, states that good things can
Speaker 2: happen and that they multiply.
Speaker 1: I think you're right in that, yes, clean energy has
Speaker 1: become cheaper than dirty energy, and that fact has sunk in.
Speaker 1: But there are ways in which dirty energy is made
Speaker 1: cheaper artificially to keep its life going, and we're going
Speaker 1: to see a lot more of that. But I just
Speaker 1: wanted to come back to the ministry because to me,
Speaker 1: it is a good framework to start from. The climate
Speaker 1: problem is a problem created of inequality, and there is
Speaker 1: no way to solve it without bringing more equality to
Speaker 1: bear on the planet. That is in the form of
Speaker 1: wealth transfer, in technology transfer, in creating a carbon space
Speaker 1: for developing countries to use, and COP meetings are the
Speaker 1: place where that conversation around inequality comes to bear, and
Speaker 1: the ministry for the future is created through the COP framework.
Speaker 1: As you imagine. And you've been a regular listener of
Speaker 1: this show, and I'm guessing you've followed the coverage of
Speaker 1: what happened at COP twenty nine. How do you think
Speaker 1: this year's COP stacks up against what you imagine cops
Speaker 1: to be doing.
Speaker 2: Well, it's pretty in line with the previous cops and
Speaker 2: with what I portrayed in my book, which is a
Speaker 2: process that is you might call necessary but not sufficient,
Speaker 2: or a set of public promises in a society of
Speaker 2: the spectacle where at least it gets discussed every years
Speaker 2: in a way that the world pays attention to. So
Speaker 2: I still think the COP process is crucial, but it's
Speaker 2: not enough because it's built on a consensus model, so
Speaker 2: it's necessarily glacially slow. So necessary but not sufficient. And
Speaker 2: the other things have to happen that we're all doing
Speaker 2: in individual nation states and in the internationally, just in
Speaker 2: terms of trade and international relations that are more tangible
Speaker 2: than the promises made at COP and their good things
Speaker 2: can happen. Now, I want to point out that in
Speaker 2: my Ministry for the Future, it starts as a tiny,
Speaker 2: little functionary agency that is trying to rally year round
Speaker 2: support to get COP promises adhere to. And in a way,
Speaker 2: it's kind of an invention that creates a point of
Speaker 2: view for a novel that is legible in that there's
Speaker 2: characters with a plot. But at the same time, last September,
Speaker 2: the UN out of the Secretary General's Office, issued a
Speaker 2: Pact for the Future during their Summit of the Future,
Speaker 2: which was their name for Climate Week last September. And
Speaker 2: they're appointing an Envoy for the Future.
Speaker 1: So well, you know that that sounds a lot like
Speaker 1: the Ministry for the Future run by the UN in
Speaker 1: your book. So did the book inspire this pact?
Speaker 2: Yes, they tell me that it did it. They thought, oh,
Speaker 2: what a good idea. And I have to say that
Speaker 2: the UN's story is weirdly, you know, in some senses
Speaker 2: the secret masters of the Universe in their black helicopters
Speaker 2: and ultra powerful and then also at the same time
Speaker 2: and maybe more accurately, another place of promises where all
Speaker 2: the nation states go to talk to each other without
Speaker 2: any power in particular of its own. The UN has
Speaker 2: a lot of consensus, but it also has the post
Speaker 2: World War two structure that means that it is not
Speaker 2: a gigantically effective agency. So a novel that says, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, we got something done in the world by
Speaker 2: something coming out of the UN. Naturally, my novel is
Speaker 2: popular there amongst those young diplomats, and they're feeling like
Speaker 2: the world is spinning out of their control, like all
Speaker 2: of us, feel they're doing the best that they can,
Speaker 2: and they think this is maybe one tool to focus
Speaker 2: on the future, to focus on the narrative of the
Speaker 2: member states nation states becoming member states in something larger
Speaker 2: that manages to cope successfully with climate change. So yes,
Speaker 2: by telling that story from that point of view, I
Speaker 2: have inspired that particular group of people.
Speaker 1: And fiction does have real consequences. We talked about some
Speaker 1: of them in our last conversation. Another one that happened
Speaker 1: is that Oxford University launched the Ministry for the Future
Speaker 1: at Hartford College. There's supposed to be some real life
Speaker 1: efforts being put underneath that. What do you hope those
Speaker 1: can accomplish well?
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful thing for me to see because Oxford
Speaker 2: is a very powerful collection of smart and energetic people
Speaker 2: who are very devoted to the cause of trying to
Speaker 2: help the world. So an Oxford Ministry for the Future
Speaker 2: is kind of a gathering space. It's not quite a
Speaker 2: research center, not quite a think tank, series of public events,
Speaker 2: and what I hope is that it will workshop ideas
Speaker 2: for how to create a new political economy that's adequate
Speaker 2: to coping with climate change. So they want it to
Speaker 2: be a place of public outreach, of changing hearts and minds,
Speaker 2: of explaining the story, of organizing the narrative and repeating
Speaker 2: it and over and over again. It's not exactly a collaboration,
Speaker 2: but I am a sort of senior advisor, instant le emeritus.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping to a push to make sure that we
Speaker 2: make it something that is of interest to the audiences
Speaker 2: who come to it or hear about it.
Speaker 1: So, as a science nerd, I have always seen technology
Speaker 1: growth as a way to imagine futures, not just near futures,
Speaker 1: but long futures. And that's why I love reading science fiction.
Speaker 1: That's why I love reading the work you've put out
Speaker 1: over the years. But there is a side of me,
Speaker 1: as a journalist who sort of focused on the now,
Speaker 1: who is to think about the near future because that's
Speaker 1: my job that I'm noticing. Maybe it is politics, maybe
Speaker 1: it is social media. Maybe it is the way we
Speaker 1: consume media in general. That we as a people are
Speaker 1: imagining the future less and less, or we are imagining
Speaker 1: the future much nearer, that our horizons are not as
Speaker 1: far as they used to be. Is that a perception
Speaker 1: that is accurate or is it just in my mind?
Speaker 2: I think climate change, since the pandemic is at least
Speaker 2: ten times more prominent in everybody's minds, the world mind
Speaker 2: than it was before. If a pandemic can punch us
Speaker 2: in the nose, kill one out of every thousand persons,
Speaker 2: and that's a success because it could have been far worse.
Speaker 2: But we organize quickly to make up these vaccines. Climate
Speaker 2: change could do that and make it even worse. It's
Speaker 2: the poly crisis, as Adam Tooz calls it, all of
Speaker 2: the crises of pollution of pandemics coming out of the
Speaker 2: natural world, and then also the various political complications of
Speaker 2: our own making. So there's a poly crisis. Well, I
Speaker 2: feel like attention to that in the twenty twenties is
Speaker 2: such that the farther futures are and this is finally
Speaker 2: getting to answer in your questions. You don't think about, oh,
Speaker 2: what will happen when we go to the stars, which
Speaker 2: is always impossible. You don't even think about, oh, what
Speaker 2: about the greatness that will happen when we all live
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty years and it's the year twenty
Speaker 2: four hundred? Who can think that? When we are having
Speaker 2: trouble thinking our way through the twenty first century. So
Speaker 2: science fiction has collapsed to near future science fiction is
Speaker 2: one way to call it.
Speaker 1: And that difficulty of having sort of the world mind
Speaker 1: or so many pieces of information held together to try
Speaker 1: and make sense of the moment often collapses for individuals
Speaker 1: in sort of the vibe, the emotion that is driving you,
Speaker 1: and one that I think can be classed as the
Speaker 1: emotion of twenty twenty five is we are starting off
Speaker 1: on a bleak note. So is there a way if
Speaker 1: I were to force you to imagine a utopia? Because
Speaker 1: I know you do that sometimes for twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2: What could it be an interesting question? And I think
Speaker 2: it's possible there will be a realization that you can't
Speaker 2: count on the leadership of the United States, and I
Speaker 2: mean by that the leadership of the United States in
Speaker 2: the world, but also the leadership of the United States
Speaker 2: in terms of the incoming administration, which is looking to
Speaker 2: be a kind of clown show. What would be the
Speaker 2: utopian story is how there's always been idiots at the
Speaker 2: top of the system and the governments of the world,
Speaker 2: the bureaucrats, the technocrats, the scientists, the teachers. Society is resilient.
Speaker 2: Civil society is real in which we help each other
Speaker 2: out in daily life, transcend fools at the top shouting
Speaker 2: and trying to wreck the system. So we have a
Speaker 2: soap opera, But is the soap opera actually wreaking the
Speaker 2: damage that it pretends that it wants to wreak. Everybody
Speaker 2: actually wants their daily life to continue as best it
Speaker 2: can in a positive direction. Everybody's stressed out, everybody's in
Speaker 2: the precariat. The last thing you need is for the
Speaker 2: soap app that the talk to actually be meaningful. And
Speaker 2: if life goes on for everybody in their ordinary daily existence,
Speaker 2: substantially the same. Because of the path dependencies of all
Speaker 2: of our systems and the kind of resiliency of civil
Speaker 2: society that in itself will be a victory. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it's a sure thing by any means. This
Speaker 2: is sort of an experiment. And how strong is the
Speaker 2: American system If there is a group at the top
Speaker 2: trying to wreck it, deliberately trying to wreck it, we'll
Speaker 2: see we are in a corrupt political system and there's
Speaker 2: huge challenges to democracy. On the other hand, votes are
Speaker 2: still votes, and it's not entirely possible to buy them.
Speaker 2: So it's a mix, right, It's a you can't actually
Speaker 2: give up. You can't actually start celebrating. The twenty twenties
Speaker 2: were always going to be a kind of crux in
Speaker 2: human history, and they still are. And it might be
Speaker 2: that the crux goes on for a decade longer than that.
Speaker 2: It's not at all inevitable that things are going to
Speaker 2: be all right, given the tendency of the forces of
Speaker 2: disordered rising. But the situation is not impossible either, And
Speaker 2: I guess you know is that the utopian statement the
Speaker 2: good result is not impossible. Yet.
Speaker 1: We've sort of talked about some of the things that
Speaker 1: are big in front of our minds and on the
Speaker 1: front pages of headlines. But they're also smaller things that
Speaker 1: could become big that I would like to touch on.
Speaker 1: So one that I know both you and I have
Speaker 1: been interested in is Colombia's efforts to try and move
Speaker 1: away from fossil fuels. Now, Columbia extracts coal and oil
Speaker 1: and gas, and its economy has been dependent on it
Speaker 1: for quite some time. But it is the first sort
Speaker 1: of big and it's not very big, but it's still
Speaker 1: a big ish producer of fossil fuels that has signed
Speaker 1: up to the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty. We had
Speaker 1: Minister Susanna Muhammad, who has the Environment Ministry under her
Speaker 1: talk on this podcast. And I know you've been thinking
Speaker 1: about how this is going to play out, you wrote
Speaker 1: to me after listening to that episode. So when you
Speaker 1: try and imagine a future where a country has to
Speaker 1: build its entire economy anew to move away from the
Speaker 1: old stuff because the old stuff just can't continue at
Speaker 1: current pace, how do you think that happened?
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for that. I'm really interested in it.
Speaker 2: The Petro states, those nations that depend on more than
Speaker 2: fifty percent of their income on selling their fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: They have also signed the Paris Agreement, and so they're
Speaker 2: in a double bind. They are on the one hand
Speaker 2: promising to stop selling fossil fuels. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: that will bankrupt them and they could become failed states.
Speaker 2: And we're talking about well more than a billion people
Speaker 2: these petro states. What happens then we can't afford in
Speaker 2: social senses to have failed states left right and center.
Speaker 2: They need help. How could it come? Well, there's the
Speaker 2: Loss and Damage Fund, there's a Paris Agreement itself, and
Speaker 2: this Fossil Fuel's Non Proliferation Treaty is really important as
Speaker 2: a framework that if a nation like Columbia, who is
Speaker 2: a great example because they're the fifth biggest coal producer
Speaker 2: on Earth, if they say we want to stop, help us.
Speaker 2: Help needs to come. So at that point you need
Speaker 2: a system that is arranged sort of like the cop
Speaker 2: processes Lost in Damage or like the International Monetary Fund's
Speaker 2: Special Drawing Rights, which is a mechanism to help countries
Speaker 2: that are in trouble in paying their debts to get
Speaker 2: them the money that they need. And so this system
Speaker 2: would have to have these aspects of it that I've
Speaker 2: considered and I throw it out there for others to consider.
Speaker 2: It would need to be a discounted compensation. They can't
Speaker 2: be paid as much as they would be for fossil
Speaker 2: fuels as they stand on the market now that's like
Speaker 2: one six hundred trillion dollars. What you would need is
Speaker 2: a discounted system. They take a haircut. Also, it would
Speaker 2: have to be amortized so that they get paid out
Speaker 2: over a century like it would have been if the
Speaker 2: fossil fuels had been burned, and then every country that
Speaker 2: signs on would be getting a steady payment that would
Speaker 2: also be entailed. You'd be signing something like the Extractive
Speaker 2: Industry's Transparency Initiative eiiti that already exists, just like the
Speaker 2: Fossil Fuels Non Proliferation Treaty and the IMF Special Drawing
Speaker 2: Rights and the cop Loss and Damage Fund that three
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars was just promised into. When a nation
Speaker 2: signed on that line, they would then have an income
Speaker 2: stream that they had promised to keep from being corrupted,
Speaker 2: and that it would be devoted to green projects and
Speaker 2: the clean transition. And that way there would be a
Speaker 2: a financial inducement for signing the Fossil Fuels Non Proliferation
Speaker 2: Treaty and then also the physical and financial help to
Speaker 2: make that transition possible and save these countries from falling
Speaker 2: into dysfunction by way of bankruptcy and social disorder. It
Speaker 2: seems to me it has to happen. And I've talked
Speaker 2: to people about it at OECD and in other places,
Speaker 2: other venues, other people in places of power, including the UN,
Speaker 2: and I have to say it usually gets a cool
Speaker 2: response or a visible shutter of oh my god. You know,
Speaker 2: the Saudi's suggested something like that, even though they're rich
Speaker 2: as creases, et cetera. Well, none of the past is
Speaker 2: really relevant now in this respect, We've got seventy five
Speaker 2: percent of the fossil fuels on this earth owned by
Speaker 2: nation states that have governments that are responsible to their people,
Speaker 2: and accommodation simply must be made. And when the question
Speaker 2: then follows, oh, well, where could that much money come from,
Speaker 2: you just answer quantitative easing. You point to two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, you point to twenty twenty. At the start
Speaker 2: of the pandemic, trillions were generated. I'm gonna say out
Speaker 2: of thin air, because the mechanisms involved are complicated, but
Speaker 2: in fact, federal governments, central banks make up new money
Speaker 2: all the time. The money can be made. And I'll
Speaker 2: end with this, John Maynard Keynes really the most important
Speaker 2: economists for our current moment. I would say, anything that
Speaker 2: we have to do, we can afford to do.
Speaker 1: After the break, more of my conversation with sci fi
Speaker 1: writer Kim Stanley Robinson. And by the way, if you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It
Speaker 1: helps other listeners find the show. Well. There is a
Speaker 1: yearning in the politics today of the past, of a
Speaker 1: period where I don't know, gender, racial, wealth, hierarchies were enforced.
Speaker 1: And it feels contradictory to me because you know, if
Speaker 1: I were to be born anytime in history and I
Speaker 1: had the choice, I would be born today because it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good time to be born. You have a
Speaker 1: whole set of diseases that we know how to defeat.
Speaker 1: You have the ability to be able to travel across continents,
Speaker 1: you have the ability to be able to speak to
Speaker 1: anybody in any corner of the world for almost free,
Speaker 1: and yet there is this yearning for the past. How
Speaker 1: do you make sense of this yearning for the past
Speaker 1: where none of these good things existed.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a kind of a mistake. It's nostalgia, the
Speaker 2: ache of the lost home, nostalgia in Greek. Nostalgia is
Speaker 2: a very powerful feeling. I feel it myself, but it's
Speaker 2: almost always a category error. What are you regretting your youth?
Speaker 2: Your childhood? The world itself was just as messed up then,
Speaker 2: and as you point out, it was often in many
Speaker 2: material ways, much worse than now. But you don't know that.
Speaker 2: Your lived experience is when you were younger, you were healthier,
Speaker 2: Your life lay before you as a set of open
Speaker 2: possibilities or a struggle to be had. But in any case,
Speaker 2: nostalgia for the past is always a kind of delusion
Speaker 2: that one has because the future is scary. Individually, you're
Speaker 2: going to end up falling apart somehow and dying. The
Speaker 2: future never looks particularly good for the individual. For the collective,
Speaker 2: you can imagine that things will go on for our descendants,
Speaker 2: and that they will be in a better world, and
Speaker 2: that's the solace of being human. I myself am very
Speaker 2: much in love with science right now. I should be
Speaker 2: dead at this point. Medical science has saved me now twice.
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful. I'm very cognizant that science is a
Speaker 2: force for good, is a Utaon'tian effort in the world
Speaker 2: that is making us all of our necessities and all
Speaker 2: of our toys, and that when people are anti science,
Speaker 2: when they speak against it, when they get sick, they'll
Speaker 2: run to a scientist. So it isn't real. It's another
Speaker 2: not a nostalgia, but a denial of reality that there's
Speaker 2: this collective force in the world, a group of people
Speaker 2: following a method that is enormously productive and is saving
Speaker 2: our lives and keeping us going, and who knows what
Speaker 2: it might accomplish in the future as a collective effort.
Speaker 1: As somebody who trained in the sciences, I find it
Speaker 1: are that most woments around the world do not have
Speaker 1: more people with training in the sciences in the cabinet
Speaker 1: of the highest level. But we might see some of
Speaker 1: that coming through in the White House this time. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of Silicon Valley people who are yes investors,
Speaker 1: but have science trainings, who want to come in with
Speaker 1: ideas that may seem quite dangerous and are there dangers
Speaker 1: of sci fi thinking that you could articulate.
Speaker 2: Well, you've got to destrand that there's scientists and there's engineers.
Speaker 2: So Silicon Valley is not a bunch of scientists. It's
Speaker 2: a bunch of computer programmers. They're engineers, and they've read
Speaker 2: science fiction and they have often become rich by being lucky,
Speaker 2: and then they think they're smart. And so that crowd
Speaker 2: in power is dangerous because they can be nice people.
Speaker 2: It's suspicious how well that ninety five percent of them
Speaker 2: are men. That's a sign that something's wrong in that
Speaker 2: whole social world. But in any case, that crowd is
Speaker 2: not to be trusted because often politically and philosophically they're
Speaker 2: intensely naive. They seize on one idea and then that
Speaker 2: explains everything, and because they're rich, they think they know
Speaker 2: it all. Now, I am overgeneralizing here, and in my
Speaker 2: own personal acquaintanceships with billionaires, because I am near Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley and I am a science fiction writer, I've met
Speaker 2: a few. They are very often nice guys. They are
Speaker 2: very often meaning well. They are very often Democrats rather
Speaker 2: than Republicans. So you have to go to soap opera
Speaker 2: land to get a kind of a unicorn figure like
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, who is particularly wealthy but particularly volatile and unhelpful,
Speaker 2: you might say in his narcissism. Not all of the
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley computer billionaires who go to Washington are going
Speaker 2: to be narcissists. A lot of them are going to
Speaker 2: be solid citizens, saying I've got more money than I need.
Speaker 2: Why don't we have progressive taxation? And also, why don't
Speaker 2: you try plan A, B, and C that we have
Speaker 2: carefully tested and it might work. So again, the technocrats,
Speaker 2: the billionaires, none of them can be trusted to be
Speaker 2: the solution. In a way. It's like saying AI will
Speaker 2: solve a problems. These are artificial intelligences. These individual humans.
Speaker 2: They're natural, but they're artificial in the sense of why
Speaker 2: are they so wealthy? The solution always comes from elsewhere,
Speaker 2: But actually it's a more collective thing. Really.
Speaker 1: Now, last question, fun question. If there was a wish
Speaker 1: that could be granted to you, it could be anything
Speaker 1: a climate fake, some investment, a particular technology, a policy change,
Speaker 1: diplomatic breakthrough, societal change, whatever. What would you ask for
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean this is so hard. This is I
Speaker 2: would ask for three more wishes to come true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll go back to the just the political economy level
Speaker 2: because really this is Bloomberg Green, and I want to
Speaker 2: say again, thanks to Bloomberg Green. I followed it intensely
Speaker 2: through the last COP twenty nine by far the best
Speaker 2: reporting of COP twenty nine that I'm aware of, and
Speaker 2: just keeping people aware of the world of politics and economy,
Speaker 2: of business and government in interaction with each other. It's
Speaker 2: it's really crucial stuff. So at that level, I would
Speaker 2: say the European Union shows what happens when nation states
Speaker 2: become member states, and so the European Union is powerful
Speaker 2: even though it includes many little countries that are in
Speaker 2: economic trouble, but they're part of a larger hole. They
Speaker 2: hang together. It's fractious, it's difficult, it's hard to work it,
Speaker 2: but it's a change of consciousness in that when you're
Speaker 2: a member state, you have a different financial, legal, and
Speaker 2: emotional set of circumstances that guide you. If something like
Speaker 2: the UN or the WTO or the OECD taken seriously,
Speaker 2: as if those organizations had teeth and you had to
Speaker 2: do what was agreed there because you were a member
Speaker 2: in good standing, well that would make a huge difference now,
Speaker 2: who's most likely to ignore and flaunt that forever The
Speaker 2: United States of America. The US has this slim majority
Speaker 2: that lives in a fantasy of, Oh, we can go
Speaker 2: it all alone. We're the best, not the best, can't
Speaker 2: go it alone. These fantasies hopefully will lose at the
Speaker 2: ballot box after the probably spectacularly stupid political events at
Speaker 2: the top over the next couple of years, and then
Speaker 2: maybe that would be like the last flaring out of
Speaker 2: some resentful minority that's losing its power to the world majority.
Speaker 2: Who knows, But here's my wish that every nation state
Speaker 2: took its membership in the larger organizations dead seriously as
Speaker 2: a guide to action, and then climate change would have
Speaker 2: a chance to be solved by us.
Speaker 1: Well, I didn't see it coming that. You want the
Speaker 1: G twenty to be a real power. Thank you Stam,
Speaker 1: Thank you Akshat.
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to zero. And now for the
Speaker 1: sound of the week. That's the sound of the trailer
Speaker 1: of a nineteen eighty three film called Endgame, which takes
Speaker 1: place in a fictional twenty twenty five, but of course
Speaker 1: it sounds a lot like nineteen eighty three and clearly
Speaker 1: no one imagined electric vehicles would be a thing. If
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Speaker 1: for the United Nations. Zero's producer is Mighty Lee Rao
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Head of podcast is Saige Bauman, and Head of
Speaker 1: Talk is Brendan nunim Our. Theme music is composed by
Speaker 1: Wonder Lee. Special thanks to Schwan Wagner, Shan Chan, Ethan Steinberg,
Speaker 1: and Jessica beck I, am Aksha Thrati back So