Speaker 1: Last week, our story in Guyana took us straight into
Speaker 1: an issue that sits at the heart of the global
Speaker 1: climate debate, the need to address poverty while also avoiding
Speaker 1: the worst impacts of climate change. The fossil fuel industry
Speaker 1: often positions these two aims as mutually exclusive. Can't solve
Speaker 1: poverty without fossil fuels, but the climate movement also does this,
Speaker 1: with some folks agreeing with oil companies that the only
Speaker 1: way to address global poverty is to continue developing fossil
Speaker 1: fuels in the global South for the foreseeable future, and
Speaker 1: others arguing that there can be no further fossil fuel expansion,
Speaker 1: but failing to offer any real solutions to poverty. As
Speaker 1: with all complicated issues, the answer is equally complex. It
Speaker 1: requires nuance and a whole lot of context, and it
Speaker 1: felt important to bring that in at this point in
Speaker 1: our story. So this week I asked doctor Narasimha Rau
Speaker 1: from Yale University to join me. Doctor raw studies energy
Speaker 1: systems and their relationship to human well being and human development,
Speaker 1: and you lead something called the Decent Living Energy Project.
Speaker 1: That project focuses entirely on this big question, how do
Speaker 1: we solve poverty and climate change at the same time.
Speaker 1: Dr Rao is going to walk us through it right
Speaker 1: after this quick break.
Speaker 2: So my name is Narsim Harau. I'm an associate Professor
Speaker 2: of Energy Systems at the Year School of the Environment.
Speaker 2: I am an INTRODUCIP and researcher with the background in
Speaker 2: electrical engineering and social sciences as well, and over the
Speaker 2: course of my career, I've been interested in understanding the
Speaker 2: relationship between energy systems, especially in the context of climate
Speaker 2: change and energy transitions, and their relationship to human well
Speaker 2: being and human development more broadly.
Speaker 1: And can I have you describe the Decent Living Energy
Speaker 1: Project and define what this term decent Living energy means.
Speaker 2: Sure? So this project addresses two very important global challenges.
Speaker 2: The first of them is persistent poverty eradication and the
Speaker 2: second is climate mitigation. And these are both in the
Speaker 2: global South, extremely important pressing priorities. We understand already that
Speaker 2: climate change is a threat multiplier for people. It exacerbates
Speaker 2: it's poverty poor people face that is proportionate effect off
Speaker 2: climate impacts. They are more vulnerable to extreme events, to
Speaker 2: extreme heat. So that is well understood. But what is
Speaker 2: perhaps less well understood is the impact of poverty eradication
Speaker 2: in terms of resource needs on emissions and climate change.
Speaker 2: That is, bringing people out of poverty all around the
Speaker 2: world going to have such a significant rise in emissions
Speaker 2: that it really complicates our ability to mitigate the climate problem.
Speaker 2: And that's the question that my research has tried to answer.
Speaker 2: It has been of interest for a long time, but
Speaker 2: it has not really been tackled in a manner that
Speaker 2: allows you to really answer the question. So let me
Speaker 2: explain why. The first question is what is poverty in
Speaker 2: the first place. Now, our understanding of poverty, in largely
Speaker 2: in development policy internationally, is based on income thresholds per
Speaker 2: day that people earn around the world, and in global
Speaker 2: international policy we use the World banks originally dollars per
Speaker 2: day that increase with inflation to dollar ninety per day.
Speaker 2: But it's seen, first of all as an acute poverty threshold,
Speaker 2: and there are many issues with this, both in terms
Speaker 2: of its absolute value as well as the notion of
Speaker 2: an income threshold for poverty. First of all, it's hard
Speaker 2: to translate such an absolute income threshold to the actual
Speaker 2: lives of people. What does it mean in terms of
Speaker 2: the services they receive and the actual well being For
Speaker 2: many reasons. Price differences for people in poverty are large
Speaker 2: extent of services that are received non monetarily through social
Speaker 2: transfers or public services. It's very difficult to characterize people's
Speaker 2: living standards with this threshold. Second, of all, different thresholds
Speaker 2: are used in countries, so national poverty lines use different
Speaker 2: threas for different reasons. So some consider absolute conditions of people,
Speaker 2: usually food expenditure and some additional aspects, but also relational poverty.
Speaker 2: So richer countries have higher income poverty lines, and so
Speaker 2: it's not just translating to an absolute level of living
Speaker 2: standards so well being. So for this reason, the first
Speaker 2: question in this project was really fundamental, How should we
Speaker 2: define the material basis of poverty In the first place,
Speaker 2: we don't have anything that we can hang our hat
Speaker 2: on it directly. And I say material in particular because
Speaker 2: that's what we're concerned about with regards to environmental impact.
Speaker 2: Of course, well being has psychological dimensions, social dimensions, and
Speaker 2: what we want this project wanted to do was to
Speaker 2: translate those to material requirements so that it would then
Speaker 2: allow us to estimate energy and material needs and translate
Speaker 2: that to climate impacts. So basically, decent living standards are
Speaker 2: the minimum inviolable material requirements that we consider necessary for
Speaker 2: people to pursue a good life, no matter what else
Speaker 2: they may want in their lives. So can we define
Speaker 2: that minimum threshold, and then decent living energy is then
Speaker 2: the energy requirements to provide everybody with these basic living standards.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about something that's come
Speaker 1: up a lot in We're in the middle of doing
Speaker 1: a long story on oil drilling in Guyana, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that we hear a lot is well,
Speaker 1: we need fossil fuels to develop, and fossil fuels are
Speaker 1: sort of the answer to solving poverty. And I'm just
Speaker 1: wondering what you've seen in your research along those lines
Speaker 1: where that does or doesn't hold up.
Speaker 2: So what people need our services and maybe products, access
Speaker 2: to basic sanitation and water and food and housing and
Speaker 2: these things. That's what they need. What is an absolutely
Speaker 2: unavoidable instrumental need that arises from those goods and services
Speaker 2: is energy. Because we're talking about the transformation of materials
Speaker 2: of natural resources into services that people need or goods,
Speaker 2: and that absolutely requires energy. So the type of energy
Speaker 2: that we use in order to create these services is
Speaker 2: a completely separate matter. We may only speak about the
Speaker 2: energy demand required to eradicate poverty now, in terms of
Speaker 2: what types of energy we use to deliver these services
Speaker 2: is a matter of fuel endowments that country have and
Speaker 2: the costs of technologies and other types of energy sources,
Speaker 2: and then that translates to a matter of global climate justice.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a lot of substance and a
Speaker 2: lot of validity to saying that poor countries right now
Speaker 2: need fossil fuels to eradicate poverty. It's important to unpack
Speaker 2: that and understand that what they really need our energy services.
Speaker 2: But in the current global context, where clean energy is
Speaker 2: not affordable at a large scale in certain countries and
Speaker 2: there is an immediate urgency to build infrastructure and provide
Speaker 2: these services to people, it is only expected that policy
Speaker 2: makers in the global South will build infrastructure using what
Speaker 2: is competitive in those countries right now, and that tends
Speaker 2: to be fossil fuels currently gas, and so that's what
Speaker 2: we're seeing. Another element to this is countries, of course
Speaker 2: follow their own development priorities first, and countries that have resources,
Speaker 2: fossil resources they want to extract them for microeconomic reasons
Speaker 2: for raising revenues for economic development broadly. Now, that is
Speaker 2: a slightly separate issue because those revenues that they earn,
Speaker 2: it's questionable to what extent those are going to eradicate poverty,
Speaker 2: but it certainly may be an important revenue source for
Speaker 2: these countries to invest in those resources unless alternatives are
Speaker 2: made available to them.
Speaker 1: What are you seeing in terms of how those decisions
Speaker 1: get made. This is like a squishy question, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious about something that has come up a lot in
Speaker 1: the reporting that we've been doing recently. Is sort of Okay, well,
Speaker 1: the world is saying we need to reduce emissions and
Speaker 1: get off of fossil fuels and all of these things.
Speaker 1: But in many countries that have fossil resources, they are
Speaker 1: both seen as one of the few economic drivers and
Speaker 1: also one of the few sort of reliable energy sources.
Speaker 1: And there's not really anything immediately presenting itself as an alternative,
Speaker 1: either in terms of financing or funding for alternative energy
Speaker 1: or even the technology scale of alternative energy resources. How
Speaker 1: are countries thinking about this and is there a sense
Speaker 1: that the kind of short term choices are being made
Speaker 1: with any kind of thinking about the long term climate impacts,
Speaker 1: or is it sort of everyone is just making the
Speaker 1: decision that's best for the next ten years and kind
Speaker 1: of leaving it to the next batch of people to
Speaker 1: figure out the rest.
Speaker 2: So you first need to understand that the energy transition
Speaker 2: involves a very deep transformation of all our economic activities.
Speaker 2: This is not just a matter of building solar panels
Speaker 2: instead of coal power plants. It's a lot more than that.
Speaker 2: It's a diverse range of technologies that will require complete
Speaker 2: transformation of economies. So, given that it will require significant
Speaker 2: capital investments on the order of one hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars globally, trillions of dollars that clearly these countries
Speaker 2: do not have and are not made available today. Now
Speaker 2: in this portfolio of technologies, some elements of them are
Speaker 2: getting increasingly competitive cost competitive with existing technologies. So the
Speaker 2: decarbonization of the electricity sector using solar and wind technologies
Speaker 2: up to a point is become cost competitive with coal
Speaker 2: and to some extent with gas as well in certain circumstances. However,
Speaker 2: the complete transformation and decarbonization of the electricity system will
Speaker 2: involve significantly more renewables. The retirement of existing capacity in
Speaker 2: fossil fuel plants, and significant amounts of storage capacity to
Speaker 2: balance the intermittency of the renewables, and a lot of
Speaker 2: technologies and how you run the grid to manage this
Speaker 2: new kind of portfolio of resources. Now that deeper level
Speaker 2: of reliance on renewables, even just for electricity production is
Speaker 2: not cost competitive today, and then there are a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of technologies that you need for industry as well.
Speaker 2: If you think about fertilizer for food production, if you
Speaker 2: think about cement and steel production, and industrial heat production
Speaker 2: which requires hydrogen, these are completely not even commercialized in
Speaker 2: other countries, let alone in poor countries. So the need
Speaker 2: for international cooperation for technology transfer and some sort of
Speaker 2: consideration of fair efforts is essential for deeper transformations in
Speaker 2: these per economies. Having said that, there is some potential
Speaker 2: for them to scale up renewables beyond what they're currently
Speaker 2: doing potentially, but still there's an upfront capital requirement. So
Speaker 2: let me speak about finance for a second. If you
Speaker 2: look at private finance today, the cost of capitals are
Speaker 2: exactly inversely related to the average income of countries, that is,
Speaker 2: the poorest countries in subsidn Africa have the highest costs
Speaker 2: of capital seen by a private finance because they see
Speaker 2: high risk in investing in these economies. But this is
Speaker 2: a problem also of how risk is assessed and measured. So,
Speaker 2: for example, we think about credit risk. People need to
Speaker 2: have debt to get new debt, and that's circular and
Speaker 2: maybe inappropriate for people who have never been part of
Speaker 2: the former economy. But they may yet have a record,
Speaker 2: a perfect record of paying bills to the extent they
Speaker 2: receive existing services. So the existing market for finance on
Speaker 2: its own is going to be even more challenging because
Speaker 2: of the fact that the poorest countries have the highest
Speaker 2: demanding cost of capital. So there's going to have to
Speaker 2: be some kind of government intervention to underwrite private finance
Speaker 2: if at all, or some sort of broadest scheme for
Speaker 2: government cooperation. So that's with regards to the transformation. Now
Speaker 2: are developing countries thinking only short term not thinking long term?
Speaker 2: For the most part, we have to understand that poor
Speaker 2: countries have development priorities that are long standing. And over
Speaker 2: the last few decades, generally countries started out by saying
Speaker 2: that the climate is a northern problem. It's a problem
Speaker 2: created by the West and has to be dealt with
Speaker 2: by them. But over time, for various reasons, it's been
Speaker 2: understood that all countries have to be part of the
Speaker 2: energy transition, and also that there are several opportunities for
Speaker 2: efficiently growing in ways that will be beneficial to even
Speaker 2: low income countries, for example by reducing air pollution and
Speaker 2: other health benefits of transition to clean energy. So there
Speaker 2: has been a push towards trying to integrate and mainstream
Speaker 2: climate conditions and climate priorities into development priorities. But it's
Speaker 2: really important to understand that we have to embed climate
Speaker 2: considerations within the existing set of priorities developing countries have,
Speaker 2: rather than to think about it as let's see how
Speaker 2: we can introduce climate policy and think about other benefits
Speaker 2: for development. So that mainstreaming of climate into development policy,
Speaker 2: I think is happening increasingly, and so yes, poor countries
Speaker 2: are mostly thinking about near term priorities, but there has
Speaker 2: been significant progress and at least formally thinking about climate
Speaker 2: explicitly including them in plans for the future, but very
Speaker 2: often conditional on support from the international community.
Speaker 1: One of the people that we spoke with in Diana
Speaker 1: was saying you know that she feels like the global
Speaker 1: north is doing with fossil fuels sort of what it
Speaker 1: did with tobacco and cars, which is dump the stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want on the global's mouth, and then that
Speaker 1: puts the global stuff that much further behind on energy transition.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious just what you think about that.
Speaker 2: I do think there's a couple of concerns with regards
Speaker 2: to inequality and the kind of fragmentation of the global
Speaker 2: energy system in a couple of ways. One is that
Speaker 2: you have certain countries, wealthier countries investing in renewables but
Speaker 2: not supporting the investment in renewables in poorer countries, and
Speaker 2: then they would go ahead and invest in fossils, and
Speaker 2: so you'd have the segmentation where you have higher fossil
Speaker 2: lock in happening in poorer countries. But there's also the
Speaker 2: risk that investeeing signs of this already, that multilateral institution
Speaker 2: development banks start to stop funding fossil based projects as
Speaker 2: part of their climate first priorities in poor countries before
Speaker 2: you have strong decarbonization in rich countries. So actually the
Speaker 2: opposite effect where they are pushing for renewables but simply
Speaker 2: by not providing lending for fossil resources, and at the
Speaker 2: same time, renewable energy is not very affordable either, So
Speaker 2: that actually puts the risk of investing in more expensive
Speaker 2: clean energy technologies in poor countries well before they are
Speaker 2: cost effective and affordable, and well before they have been
Speaker 2: deep cuts given in Western economies. So I'm as concerned
Speaker 2: about that second scenario as I'm concerned about the first,
Speaker 2: where you just have a fragmentation where poor countries continue
Speaker 2: to invest in fossils and we just don't meet our
Speaker 2: broader climate targets. There's a serious case of justice playing
Speaker 2: out over here where poor countries don't get access to
Speaker 2: the technologies they need to develop, and not only are
Speaker 2: we not solving the climate problem, but we're making their
Speaker 2: existing development problems harder by making all forms of energy
Speaker 2: expensive because we are proscribing the use of fossils without
Speaker 2: making available cheap renewable energy technologies.
Speaker 1: You've kind of already done this in a couple of
Speaker 1: ways that I'm going to ask you more directly to
Speaker 1: just sort of walk me through what a decent living
Speaker 1: energy approach would look like in a less developed country
Speaker 1: and a more developed country.
Speaker 2: So the decent living standard is intended to be a
Speaker 2: universal threshold that defines the minimum material requirements for people
Speaker 2: to pursue a decent life. So we are developing what
Speaker 2: we call universal satisfiers in a modern society, in a
Speaker 2: modern context, which is backed up by theories of justice
Speaker 2: of Beatrix justice. It's supported by regulations around the world
Speaker 2: we see for different elements of decent living standards, as
Speaker 2: well as backed by empirical support. That is, we've seen
Speaker 2: household surveys around the world that show people want to
Speaker 2: have certain things once they reach a certain level of income,
Speaker 2: things like access to the internet, mobile phones, access to televisions, refrigerators,
Speaker 2: durable housing, and things like that. So what was lacking
Speaker 2: in the analytical space was the ability to project or
Speaker 2: to understand the energy requirements stemming from these particular goods
Speaker 2: and services, because we buy and large thing about energy
Speaker 2: demand as a function of GDP growth and maybe decomposed
Speaker 2: into industry versus transport versus buildings, but not really being
Speaker 2: able to translate them to people's own enjoyment of services
Speaker 2: and their well being. So this project is actually creating
Speaker 2: this link between household consumption of goods and services which
Speaker 2: provide us with well being or at least our basis
Speaker 2: for it and the broader energy and environmental environmental impact
Speaker 2: of that consumption. So what will it cost in energy
Speaker 2: terms for meeting the transportation needs of people, the basic
Speaker 2: mobility requirements when they move away from cycles and animal
Speaker 2: power to motorized transport. What will it take to get
Speaker 2: fifty million people households off of slums and into more
Speaker 2: durable housing that protects them from the elements, or will
Speaker 2: it take to get people up to the level of
Speaker 2: nutrition that are consistent with the standards of the Food
Speaker 2: and Agricultural Organization the FAO and with country regulations around
Speaker 2: the world. So we have assessed this and found out
Speaker 2: what it would take in different countries. So what's interesting
Speaker 2: is that we learn that the most important elements of
Speaker 2: consumption anywhere in any country that have the strongest impact
Speaker 2: on climate change in terms of their energy intensity are housing, mobility,
Speaker 2: getting around with motorized transport, and diets. These are three
Speaker 2: of the biggest elements and one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: they are so important is because, in contrast to say, water, sanitation, health,
Speaker 2: and education, that are all services that are provided through
Speaker 2: shared capital, shared resources networks, of infrastructure that are commonly
Speaker 2: used by large populations, cars and houses and food is
Speaker 2: private consumption and that ends up being a lot more
Speaker 2: energy per person to satisfy well being. So the insights
Speaker 2: for poor countries, what does a decent living energy basket
Speaker 2: look like. Equitable development that is geared towards providing these
Speaker 2: fundamental services like water and sanitation, health and education are
Speaker 2: cheapest in energy terms and provide the most important elements
Speaker 2: of well being. In mobility and housing, if we were
Speaker 2: to provide people options for public transit rather than just
Speaker 2: supporting a card dependent economy in emerging cities in the
Speaker 2: global South, if we were to build public housing with
Speaker 2: local materials and efficient construction practices rather than focusing on
Speaker 2: gated communities for high income households, we would satisfy equity
Speaker 2: in terms of focusing on poor poor housing policy, and
Speaker 2: we would reduce the footprint, the carbon footprint of housing
Speaker 2: developments in general. So those are the key synergies we're
Speaker 2: seeing in poor countries. Now, some elements of this are
Speaker 2: the same even in rich countries. Some of the key
Speaker 2: differences are that for the same living standard, you do
Speaker 2: tend to require more energy in richer countries because they
Speaker 2: tend to be colder. So northern European and northern American
Speaker 2: countries need more energy to provide the same thermal comfort
Speaker 2: at home to heat them than the energy you need
Speaker 2: in subtropical and tropical climates to cool homes to the
Speaker 2: same level of comfort. That's one important difference. Another difference
Speaker 2: is we have some path dependence, you know, in our
Speaker 2: economic structures, and ideally we would have more and more
Speaker 2: people moving to public transit, which is much more efficient,
Speaker 2: much less of an impact on climate and on the
Speaker 2: environment in general. But countries like the US or Brazil
Speaker 2: also or Turkey for example, they all are car dependent.
Speaker 2: Over ninety percent of travel demand is met with cass
Speaker 2: or road transport, so you assuming that they can shift
Speaker 2: over to public transit completely is not very realistic. So
Speaker 2: in our analysis, when we kind of create realistic assumptions
Speaker 2: for the shift to public transport, you do find that
Speaker 2: the same mobility requirements, cost warn energy terms in the
Speaker 2: US are in Brazil compared to say India of Japan.
Speaker 2: So those are some of the differences. There are some
Speaker 2: colleagues of mine who are also interested in seeing these
Speaker 2: decent living standards with some adjustments in terms of the
Speaker 2: thresholds as also a sufficiency standard. That is, if we
Speaker 2: just increase the quantity of the size of housing, the
Speaker 2: amount of travel, the amount of food and water we
Speaker 2: consume for different parts of the world that allow a
Speaker 2: slightly higher quality of life, we can still use this
Speaker 2: threshold to think about even sufficiency. As you increase consumption
Speaker 2: levels beyond this minimum point at one time, at what
Speaker 2: point when you start to see diminishing returns to well
Speaker 2: being as we consume more and more. We know that
Speaker 2: it has significant impacts on other people, but can we
Speaker 2: see diminishing returns to our own well being? And we
Speaker 2: don't have sufficient evidence to say that. We only have
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence related to income that people's self assessed to
Speaker 2: well being in terms of life satisfaction. It keeps increasing
Speaker 2: with income, but not at the same rate as at
Speaker 2: lower levels of income. There's diminishing returns at a broad level.
Speaker 2: But we need to do a lot more research to
Speaker 2: understand how different consumption patterns contribute to well being in
Speaker 2: affluent societies, and how we can find lifestyles and patterns
Speaker 2: in the West that are environmentally benign because a lot
Speaker 2: of these lifestyles are being aped in poor countries, and
Speaker 2: we want to we want to generate evidence for these
Speaker 2: lifestyles that are less consumptive and less impact from the environment,
Speaker 2: but still give people high well being. And that's the
Speaker 2: direction that I'm moving now with this research.
Speaker 1: Do you find that that idea is more or less
Speaker 1: accepted in certain areas like I know that in the
Speaker 1: US people are loathed to think about less consumption general.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you find that there's any examples of
Speaker 1: global north countries where it's not such a big ask.
Speaker 2: Well. I think you do see a lot more momentum
Speaker 2: and interest in Europe in demand side questions around consumption
Speaker 2: and sufficiency than you see in the US, and this
Speaker 2: is indicated by the priorities in research, by the papers
Speaker 2: that are coming out. And I should mention that the
Speaker 2: latest sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC for the first
Speaker 2: time has a demand chapter in it that outlines a
Speaker 2: lot of the evidence that we've already accumulated to indicate
Speaker 2: lifestyle changes that would be beneficial for climate and for
Speaker 2: people's well being. A classic example being moderating meat consumption,
Speaker 2: particularly red meat, and the impact on lower cardiovascular disease
Speaker 2: and significant reduction in environmental impacts. So there are differences,
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I am seeing some discussion
Speaker 2: in the media. I've seen in the New York Times
Speaker 2: some articles that do talk about sustainable consumption that talk
Speaker 2: about waste. I think waste is well understood in the US,
Speaker 2: and that is a significant component of demand side discipline,
Speaker 2: if you will, in consumption. You know, forty percent of
Speaker 2: food that's produced is wasted in the US and twenty
Speaker 2: five percent globally. Also, the circular economy is much more
Speaker 2: in the public realm understanding the short product lives and
Speaker 2: the effect that has on waste, and that indirectly, of course,
Speaker 2: requires more energy and therefore has more of an impact
Speaker 2: on climate change. But I would certainly say that there
Speaker 2: is much more receptivity to these ideas in Europe. There
Speaker 2: also are more examples of cities where you're seeing actual
Speaker 2: trends of people driving less. So, for example, we've seen
Speaker 2: a trend in Austria that younger people, younger generations, a
Speaker 2: lower share of them are applying for driving licenses compared
Speaker 2: to before, which is interesting. You also see in Northern
Speaker 2: European cities a lot more people biking and walking as
Speaker 2: a form of commuting, so we actually see as much
Speaker 2: as there's a lot of driving, we just see an
Speaker 2: increase in that amount of commuting by foot and by bike.
Speaker 2: So there's good examples of those in the US. It's
Speaker 2: much harder to find such examples because the cities are
Speaker 2: not set up for that kind of infrastructure, So they
Speaker 2: would need to be a much more transformative change here
Speaker 2: in cities and in living to really encourage major amounts
Speaker 2: of public transport. But having said that, I would say
Speaker 2: that the electrification of mobility has the potential to avoid
Speaker 2: the construction of massive public transit systems. We could use
Speaker 2: emobility right, electric cars and electric scooters and vehicles to
Speaker 2: create new forms of shared transit provisions, and that has
Speaker 2: not been tapped into enough, and that is more realistic
Speaker 2: rather than building metros everywhere in the US. I do
Speaker 2: think we need to take advantage of shared mobility currently. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: we are actually increasing passenger demand with Uber and such
Speaker 2: forms of business, but we need to transition those to
Speaker 2: uber pool from Uber to pool right, and try and
Speaker 2: increase the use of shared scooters and car services that
Speaker 2: are as they're electrifying rather than just providing subsidies for
Speaker 2: SUVs that are hybrid and have some electricity use, because
Speaker 2: that's not that's not going to move the needle enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I just was looking at this
Speaker 1: ad database thing that shows using what companies are spending
Speaker 1: on different types of advertising, and all the US automakers
Speaker 1: are spending two or three times on marketing the SUV
Speaker 1: electric vehicles than the compact efficient vehicles, which seems like
Speaker 1: a potential problem.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you know, it's it's true that electric vehicles
Speaker 2: are generally more efficient and they will reduce emissions, but
Speaker 2: we have to think that we are needing to increase
Speaker 2: the size of our electricity systems to support that much
Speaker 2: more electricity demand. And that pressure is not trivial because
Speaker 2: in the US we're already seeing a slight slowdown in
Speaker 2: renewable investments, not because of the lack of financial investment,
Speaker 2: but because of permitting requirements for connecting to the grid
Speaker 2: and getting permits for the land. And that slowdown is
Speaker 2: equally critical in terms of bottlenecks, because time is a
Speaker 2: pe urgency and the total even the total amount that
Speaker 2: we have to grow the electricity system is an issue.
Speaker 2: The more we need to invest, the slower we're going
Speaker 2: to reach our targets.
Speaker 1: I know this is like a really really broad question,
Speaker 1: but are there particular policies that you think could sort
Speaker 1: of get at these things quickest, Like where do you
Speaker 1: think the US attention would best be placed.
Speaker 2: So in the US, I think we have great momentum
Speaker 2: with the Inflation Reduction Act. It's a good start, and
Speaker 2: there has been a lot of investments in some of
Speaker 2: the right places. But I would want to see a shift,
Speaker 2: like I said, rather than just rebates for electric vehicles
Speaker 2: at large, policies that are supporting shared mobility, shared services
Speaker 2: in particular would be really important. Of course, more investments
Speaker 2: in transit infrastructure, which is a political issue, but that
Speaker 2: would be essential. More support for research into electrification of
Speaker 2: the entire transport and housing sector. So in the case
Speaker 2: of housing, we have not put enough money into electrifying
Speaker 2: homes and considering homes holistically in terms of upgrading them.
Speaker 2: For that low income communities get services that they haven't
Speaker 2: gotten yet. For example, a lot of homes don't heat
Speaker 2: and cool their homes as much as they want to
Speaker 2: because they kind of afford to their homes are of
Speaker 2: poor quality. So there's a chance here to have an
Speaker 2: equitable kind of an upgrade to have the housing sector,
Speaker 2: which is very much part of the priorities of the
Speaker 2: government in terms of the Justice forty initiative, in which
Speaker 2: they want to direct the benefits of federal investments to
Speaker 2: disadvantaged communities, but these need to be translated into policies.
Speaker 2: I think significant investments into housing retrofits is going to
Speaker 2: be critical in the US, and they're not doing in
Speaker 2: that realm at all. An issue with regards to the
Speaker 2: size of homes as well. New homes in the US
Speaker 2: are significantly larger than new homes in some of the
Speaker 2: richest countries in Europe, and that's something that is not
Speaker 2: something one can regulate. It's anaphema to think about reducing consumption.
Speaker 2: But if there's some way to creatively progressively tax houses,
Speaker 2: raise revenues to retrofit them to make them much more efficient,
Speaker 2: that would be some kind of a way to tackle
Speaker 2: that issue. The food sector is untouched in this country.
Speaker 2: I think we need to have incentives policy incentives for
Speaker 2: healthier diets that are more environmentally friendly, and I would
Speaker 2: say these same sectors should be the focus in other
Speaker 2: countries as well, you know, housing, transport, and food. These
Speaker 2: are the most important sectors within which we need to
Speaker 2: make transformative change we will have the biggest impact on
Speaker 2: well being simultaneously with environmental impact.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you want to share about
Speaker 1: research that you're in the process of, or any recent
Speaker 1: publications or anything like that that we didn't talk about.
Speaker 2: It's really important in our research to try and mainstream
Speaker 2: well being as an actual concrete measure in our policy
Speaker 2: and in our research, because we need to start thinking
Speaker 2: of ways we can demonstrate synergies between lifestyle changes technology
Speaker 2: changes that are beneficial for climate and for ourselves, because
Speaker 2: the current mode is encouraging only these decarbonization technologies of
Speaker 2: the existing system, and that's not going to get us
Speaker 2: far enough. So the direction that I'm focusing on bringing
Speaker 2: consumption directly into the center of our analysis, from which
Speaker 2: we trace the decarbonization of the rest of the economy
Speaker 2: allows us to look at well being more directly. And
Speaker 2: I do have a paper on this where I outline
Speaker 2: this future research agenda and nature sustainability that I think
Speaker 2: is one way to think about moving forward. I do
Speaker 2: think there's increased research on how people assess their own
Speaker 2: lives in terms of life satisfaction, but we need more
Speaker 2: research to link at to people's consumption patterns and lifestyles.
Speaker 2: It's also a direction that I'd like to go that
Speaker 2: I'm working on.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting and also interesting that there's not much
Speaker 1: of that research yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean people have looked at the correlation between
Speaker 2: average household income and people's life satisfaction or people's happiness,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're familiar with the happiness in the
Speaker 2: X and others such. Yeah, and we do see some trends,
Speaker 2: very mixed evidence of the saturation of well being, but
Speaker 2: it's not very strong. People's life satisfaction continues to increase
Speaker 2: a high levels of income, so we don't but we
Speaker 2: don't have an understanding of what aspects of their life
Speaker 2: are driving those calls of high well being. It could
Speaker 2: be that it could be dimensions that are not really
Speaker 2: the ones in which we're spending all our money, you know.
Speaker 2: It could be areas that are extremely benign environmentally, in
Speaker 2: which case we're spending lot of money doing things that
Speaker 2: don't matter so much to us and we don't know
Speaker 2: it ourselves. We have if we see evidence of it
Speaker 2: it may influence us.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. My husband is like a giant nerd
Speaker 1: for spreadsheets and data, and we spent a year, maybe
Speaker 1: five or six years ago, tracking how we spent money
Speaker 1: and time and then rating how that equated to life
Speaker 1: satisfaction and actually ended up making a bunch of really
Speaker 1: big changes because we were like, Oh, we're spending all
Speaker 1: this money to do this thing that we don't even
Speaker 1: care about that much, which is live in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: a very expensive place.
Speaker 2: That's great, That's exactly the kind of thing you know,
Speaker 2: I would want people to do.
Speaker 1: Yes, it changed my whole approach to work too.
Speaker 2: I wanted to mention one thing again, you know, so
Speaker 2: a couple of things. There is also a hunch that
Speaker 2: I have that the lifestyles that we lead are coming
Speaker 2: at the expense of our feeling of community and social coretedness,
Speaker 2: and the social isanationalism is leading to so many social problems,
Speaker 2: and it is driven at least in part by our
Speaker 2: structure of living, our urban form and sprawl, and many
Speaker 2: other sub social factors as well. So that another area
Speaker 2: where we can think, are we really furthering our own
Speaker 2: social wellbeing in this kind of expensive isolationist form of infrastructure,
Speaker 2: which is also costing us in terms of climate.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I really appreciate you taking the time
Speaker 1: street to talk to it. This is the context Guyana
Speaker 1: is operating in. Hundreds of years of colonialism have not
Speaker 1: left it with a lot of great choices. This is
Speaker 1: how a country becomes dependent on oil companies to pay
Speaker 1: for climate adaptation. Changing that math means making other options
Speaker 1: readily available and truly valuing the sort of conservation efforts
Speaker 1: that Guyana was known for before it got into the
Speaker 1: oil business. That's our story next time.