WEBVTT - Drilling Deep: Jessica Green on Why We Need More Confrontation at COP 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.959 Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerwaldt. Today 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:14.640 we are bringing you another episode in our series Drilling Deep, 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.759 in which we look at different books that are coming out, 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.440 either on climate or on science or history, democracy, all 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.000 of the things that we kind of look at here 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.960 on Drilled. Most of the time these interviews are being 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.880 done by Adam Lowenstein, Bless him. He's reading all the 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:33.919 books and talking to all the authors and having these 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:35.800 very very interesting conversations. 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:38.040 Today we're bringing. 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:39.080 You a book that has a lot to do with 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.720 what's happening in climate politics at the moment, because the 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.760 annual conference of the Parties, the UN Climate Summit, is 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.000 underway at the moment in Brazil, and it's a good 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.400 time to look at how that process has been politicized. 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.440 In the book Existential Politics, Jessica F. Green from the 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.320 University of Toronto argues that head on conflict with fossil 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:07.520 fuel interests is a prerequisite for real progress. Green is 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.560 a longtime observer of global climate negotiations and an expert 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.880 on a carbon accounting and she argues that the cop 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.000 embodies a win win approach to the problem of the 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.320 climate crisis and the transitions necessary to deal with it, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.360 for which someone has to lose. The challenging is to 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.640 make sure the right people do the winning well, the 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.720 fossil asset owners, as Green describes them, do the losing. 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.680 Adam had a really interesting conversation with Green, who's someone 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.679 that I've also spoken with in the past about cop proceedings. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.880 She's really, really, really interesting on this stuff. I think 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:45.319 you'll enjoy this chat. 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:59.440 It's coming up after this quick break. 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.120 One thing I was curious about as I was reading 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.440 the book is the what drove you to write this book? 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:18.120 Because it's incredibly complex stuff. As we were discussing a 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.320 few minutes ago, it's not uplifting, So yeah, what was 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:26.720 the driving force behind writing this book? Existential politics? 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:29.160 There are a couple of motivations for the book. One, 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.480 I've been studying carbon accounting and the politics of carbon 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.280 accounting for like fifteen twenty years. My first book, Rethinking 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:42.240 Private Authority, looks a lot at the creation of private 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:46.200 standard setters, who you know, eventually became the voluntary carbon market, 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.120 and even then I was like, this is not going 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:54.000 to end well. So I, you know, I just have 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.160 a deep knowledge of this stuff and it is very technical, 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.960 and so therefore it sort of flies under the radar 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.560 are And so given that I've sort of seen the 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.960 evolution of the voluntary carbon market, I studied the origins 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.760 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which is now an ISO 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.240 standard for how all firms measure their greenhouse gas emissions. Like, 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.240 I just know a lot about where all of this 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:17.200 came from, and it's important to understand where it came 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.480 from to understand how well it can or cannot work. 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.359 So that's one motivation, and the other is I wrote 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.400 a scholarly article with two colleagues, Tom Hale and Jeff 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:34.440 Colgan called Asset Revaluation and Existential Politics, and that was 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.560 part of my thinking about this topic. And it was 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:42.160 born out of the frustration that so many people say, oh, 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.720 this is a collective action problem and we all have 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:48.960 to cooperate to reduce emissions. And you know, what I 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.200 saw as a student of climate politics over many, many 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:54.760 years is that this is really a distributional problem. This 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.680 is about you know, who gets what when and how, 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.200 and so the idea of like, oh, if we all 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.560 just cooperate was just it seemed to me just the 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.040 wrong looking at the wrong problem, and so those were 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.320 the two real motivations for thinking about Okay, well, you know, 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:11.760 like we need to wake up to the fact that 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.080 we're just largely thinking about this the wrong way. 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.200 Yeah, we'll come back to the obsession, you might say, 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:25.080 with cooperation among the elite standard setters and other organizations 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.680 who have been leading the global charge on a lot 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:30.360 of the stuff you write about in the book. But 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:32.400 before we get there, I wanted to ask if you 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.440 could define what existential politics are and then talk about 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.960 how they differ from regular politics if they do it all. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:41.280 Yeah. 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:46.360 So I define existential politics in the book as Okay, 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:50.040 so I define existential politics as a political contest between 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.719 different kinds of asset owners. And I offer this sort 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.480 of very simple model of three kinds of asset owners 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:03.080 fossil asset ownersulnerable asset owners, and green asset owners. And 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:08.440 fossil asset owners are obviously like fossil fuel companies, mining companies, 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.159 heavy industry, all of the kind of foundations, the high 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:15.200 emitting industries that are the foundations of our economy. Green 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.680 asset owners are precisely what you would think they would be, 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:21.440 you know, the basically the engines of the decarbonized economy, 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:28.400 so producers of evs, solar PV cells, wind turbines, all 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.599 the infrastructure we need to run those. And then there 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:37.279 are vulnerable asseid owners, and vulnerable asset owners are those 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.440 whose assets will be destroyed by the effects of climate change. 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.200 And so the idea, the basic idea of the book 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.440 is that we have this profound asymmetry that fossil acid 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:53.039 owners are running the show. They have been for decades, 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.360 and saying that we're all in this together if we 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.679 just cooperate, is ignoring the elephant in the room, which 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:04.560 is these very powerful interests that have a vested interest 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.880 in maintaining the value of their assets. And the reason 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.839 that I say that it's existential is so we describe it, 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.480 as in the first article as distributional politics on steroids. 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.680 So it's not just about who gets what, but whose 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:25.400 assets become completely worthless, whose houses disappear, whose livelihoods disappear, 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.960 which countries disappear as a result of both climate policies 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.920 and the effects of climate change. So it's really about 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.200 the existence of many, many things, and unless we grapple 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:42.560 with the visceral reactions, so that that is going to 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.960 provoke in people, then we're not going to make much progress. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.680 The title of the first chapter, which is very direct, 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.520 we are not all in this together. And I think 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.760 that gets at the heart of what you're saying there, 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.720 which is that this is ultimately a question of power, 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.760 and the power asymmetries, as you mentioned between right now, 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.880 tilted very heavily in favor of the fossil asset owners 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:08.839 and against the vulnerable and the green asset owners. There 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:10.360 is this idea, and we're going to get into this 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:12.920 a little bit more, that there is a way that 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.440 tackling the climate crisis can be a win win, that 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.680 everyone can come out ahead if we just do this together. 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:22.080 And I think the thing that we are not all 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.840 in this together that message gets at is the fact 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.560 that no in order to tackle this crisis, someone has 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.520 to lose, and that someone is not just the fossil 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.280 fuel industry, but everyone invested in the fossil asset class 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:37.240 and the status quo. So can you talk about that 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.800 a little bit, The fact that as much as we 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:42.240 might like to think, and it makes us feel better 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:44.880 to think that there is a comfortable world in which 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.520 everybody wins, that's not the case. We've tried that and 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:49.280 it's not working. 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.360 Yeah. I mean, I think again, as long time observer 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.440 of climate politics, the UNF Triple C, the Framework Convention 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.320 on Climate Change, and then subsequently the Kyoto Protocol and 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:05.200 now the Paris Agreement. The UNF Triple C started, you know, assigned. 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.480 The Framework Convention was signed in nineteen ninety two. It 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.920 was the heyday of the liberal international order. We were 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:16.160 writing environmental treaties left and right. You know, humanitarian intervention 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:18.640 was a thing that we did for better or for worse. 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.480 The WTO was expanding and there was a lot of 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:27.880 international cooperation and that's when we started, you know, as 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:32.679 a global community working on climate and so I think 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:34.960 it began in this moment where it's like we can 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.640 all cooperate. You know, look, we're doing it in all 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.440 these ways, and it you know, ignored the fact that 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:44.840 as early as the nineteen nineties, when the before the 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.760 Framework Convention was even inked, you know, the fossil fuel 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:53.840 industry was already generating disinformation around the science of climate change. 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.200 And that's been well documented. So you know, there's the 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.040 argument here is that you cannot collaborate with obstructionists and 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:06.800 there is this very long tradition of obstructionism, and so 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:11.160 until we realize that we're just sort of fiddling at. 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.760 The margins, it seems like it describes sort of the 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:19.520 status quo approach of some of these elite global institutions 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:21.480 in some ways, fiddling at the margins in a way 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.680 that doesn't try to tackle the fundamental political dynamics. 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.240 Look, I think it's worth saying that the world has 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.040 changed a lot, like right, and the climate crisis has 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.800 changed a lot. So like in nineteen ninety two, you know, 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.120 I don't know the exact number, but it's one hundred 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:36.880 somewhere between one hundred and eighty and one hundred and 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.880 ninety countries quickly signed the Framework Convention, which is, you know, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:46.880 it's not very highly It doesn't require a huge amount 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.000 from countries other than sort of starting to take stock 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.840 of what their emissions are and you know, cooperating on 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.240 science and these these kinds of things. But you know, 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.880 it seemed like there was some consensus. And also the 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.079 climate crisis was far away, so it was sort of like, okay, well, 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.760 probably you know, arguably some of the politics weren't existential. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.640 Then there could be you know, winners and losers, but 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.560 the losers maybe wouldn't lose as much or as quickly. 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.320 But now that we've just repeatedly kicked the can down 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.200 the road, we're in a sort of do or diet moment, 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:26.320 and those costs become much more precipitous, those changes become 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.720 more precipitous, the costs becomes steeper, and therefore the politics 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:30.520 more conflictual. 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:33.439 In one of the ways we've kicked the can down 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.880 the road is what you describe as measuring tons. Can 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:41.000 you give an overview of types of quote unquote solutions 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:42.839 that it encompasses. 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.679 So yeah, so I refer to it as actually managing tons. 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.400 And the idea is that we have this very narrow 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:54.439 construction of the climate problem as a technical problem of measuring, 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:59.880 managing or sorry, measuring, verifying, buying, and selling an account 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.280 for carbon emissions. So we're just it's just this focus, 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.120 this very narrow focus on measurement and buying and selling 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:13.880 and making claims about the level of emissions. And so 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.600 measuring emissions is actually, in many ways very difficult. Some 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.880 things are very straightforward, some are extremely difficult, Like we 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:22.960 know how much energy is embedded in a ton of 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.560 coal for you know, fossil fuels, so the direct combustion 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:28.480 of those we can measure. But when you get into 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:33.400 things like avoided emissions, how many emissions would there have 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.600 been if you know, the German government had not invested 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:41.000 in a cook stove project in Malawi. You know, that's 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:45.400 a very difficult set of calculations to make, which rely 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.960 on a hypothetical baseline like this is what the world 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.679 would have looked like if we hadn't done this. And 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:56.240 then we take that hypothetical and we commodify it and 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.000 we sell it and we say this is the you know, 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.240 this buy this absence of emissions, which you know, if 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.880 somebody came to your door and said, by this absence 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.800 of a I don't know a set of encyclopedias, you 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:10.640 wouldn't do it. 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.040 No matter how much I opposed encyclopedias. I would not 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.520 think that it was anti encyclopedia. 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.640 You know. So we're commodifying things that are very difficult 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:26.360 to measure, and then we are making them the foundation 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:30.600 of our climate policy. And you know it's I think 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.520 in many ways the book does not make very novel arguments, 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:35.480 in the sense that, of course climate change is a 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:39.040 political problem about winners and losers. But I think the 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.520 contribution is to say, as long as we are thinking 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.880 about it in this technocratic way, which is pervasive in 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.640 climate policy, then we're not going to make real progress. 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.320 I actually think the way that you articulate the pervasiveness 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.280 of it is pretty novel. The reason I say that 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.120 is because, yes, the root of the problem is the 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:02.120 fossil acid owners, and they're decades of obstructionism, But there 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:09.360 is also this consensus, this entire cottage industry of corporations, NGOs, 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.720 organizations that exist sort of in the space between those 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:16.960 two that are deeply, deeply invested in managing tons and 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:21.080 all of the verification and in validation and certification that 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:26.280 this really complicated technocratic approach demands and has created. Can 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.760 you just talk about that industry a little bit, because 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.200 I think it's really hard for people who have not 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:38.760 experienced it to appreciate just how broad it is, how 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.160 connected it is with positions of power, governments and corporations 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.720 and corporate trade groups and things like that, and also 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.560 how much they just have invested in continuing the inertia 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:49.560 of managing tons. 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:52.600 Yeah, so I'll talk about this in the context of 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:56.800 carbon offsets, and then I can talk about sort of 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:01.199 corporate corporate night zero as well. But carbon offset project 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:05.800 so very basic overview carbon offset project is party A 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.240 pays Party B to do a carbon reducing thing, and 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:13.160 Party B gets the money and Party A gets the 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:17.000 emissions reductions. But it doesn't just involve Party A and 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.880 Party B. Someone's got to design the project. Someone has 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.240 to make sure that the project conforms to whatever methodologies 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:30.840 are required. Then the project has to be validated, generally 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.200 by a third party that says, yeah, this looks good, 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:38.680 the methodology is sound, this is going to reduce approximately 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.520 as much as you know. The document estimates and the 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.840 calculations estimate, and we sign off on this. Then the 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.720 project is funded and that may involve a bunch of funders, 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:54.440 and then the credits are then generated and sold through 0:14:55.440 --> 0:15:00.400 usually through a registry or a platform like other comodities 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.200 are sold, and there are some that work on platforms 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.120 where other commodities are sold. And then at the end 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.320 of the project there's someone who are a third party, 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:14.160 a different third party that verifies yes, that verifies that 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.600 everything has happened right, so that the project actually took place. 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.560 That it generated the amount of reductions that it said 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.400 it would, so on and so forth. So there's this 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:30.040 big supply chain basically of actors involved in generating a 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:34.560 carbon offset, buying and selling those credits. And what I 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:36.600 show in the book, what I argue in the book 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.760 is that everybody who's involved in that project has a 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.160 vested interest in the numbers adding up, and they want 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.360 the biggest numbers possible for the least amount of money 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:50.880 so that they can put that on their ledger and say, 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.920 look how much we reduce because we pay for this project. 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:58.640 There's no constituency demanding high quality. Even though there have 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.680 been all of these efforts tom the offset market, particularly 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:06.480 the voluntary offset market, from a political perspective, it doesn't 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.000 seem that these will be successful because really nobody has 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.280 a vested interest in much deviation from the status quo, 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:16.200 and so the numbers all add up, but the reductions 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:17.040 aren't actually there. 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.000 Reductions and emissions, you mean, the. 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:20.800 Reductions and emissions are not actually there. 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.440 There was a recent study done by some folks in 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:28.040 California that reviewed twenty percent of all of the offsets 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:34.360 produced basically both in governmental programs and involuntary programs and 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.280 found that they represent actually sixteen percent of the. 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:43.400 Total amount of emissions reductions claimed, so that there's almost 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:47.480 an order like it's like shocking how little these are 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:53.120 actually reducing emissions or avoiding emissions. And you know, I 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.600 go through a lot of other problems with them besides 0:16:56.760 --> 0:17:01.640 just this number problem. But offsets are not only very 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:06.760 problematic for this reason, but they are everywhere in climate policy. 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:08.760 So it's not just I mean some of us, like 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.120 it's sort of like common knowledge in I would say 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:14.760 in climate policy circles that offsets are kind of bullshit, 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:19.160 but we use them everywhere anyway, all the time. So 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.600 there's this real disjuncture between like what we know about 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:24.439 how these work and how we actually use them as 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:25.400 a policy instrument. 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:28.560 I feel like they're also one of the climate again 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:32.080 quote unquote solutions that has broken through in sort of 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:34.520 a mainstream way. Like if you go to book an 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.680 airline ticket, most airlines now will say you can pay 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.520 us extra money to offset your emissions, which is such 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.320 a multi tiered scam that I can't. It's just PSA 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.360 to everyone listening, don't pay your airline or any other 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.800 company to offset whatever you're doing just to make yourself 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.119 feel better. They're just pocketing that money and it's not 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:54.360 doing anything correct. 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.879 Answer, absolutely, And it's also usually like four bucks, Like 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.880 how is four bucks set your flight across the country 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:03.919 or across the ocean? I don't know. 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.199 And they're pretty deeply entrenched in the Paris Agreement and 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:13.600 other global climate negotiations and climate agreements, right, Yeah. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:18.399 So offsets are there's an offset market created by the 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:23.040 Paris Agreement. It's called the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism. It's 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.680 the successor to the one in the Kyoto Protocol called 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.640 the Clean Development mechanism. So there's one there, a lot 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.240 of the credits, not all of them, but a lot 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.200 of the credits from the Kyoto Protocol are being grandfathered in, 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:37.360 even though we know that there's a lot of problems 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:41.719 with quality of those credits. There's also this huge a 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.240 reference for this huge voluntary market, right, which is basically 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.200 run by non state actors. I also call it the 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.320 unregulated market because a bunch of you know, NGOs and 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:55.040 private firms said, this is what constitutes a carbon offset 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:59.600 project in you know, afforestation or methane capture, or whatever right. 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.760 Or self regulation in their preferred euphemism. 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.760 Yes, it's self regulation. And they started selling those and 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.359 corporations started buying them, and then they started, you know, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.480 those purveyors of offsets started lobbing for them to be 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.320 used as compliance instruments. So in twenty fifteen, countries got 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.760 together through ECAL, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and created 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.159 an emissions agreement to manage aviation emissions because that's not 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:33.119 covered in the Paris Agreement, and that relies principally on offsets, right, 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:37.000 because we don't have fossil fuel free means of air transport. 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.639 So you know, it's going to create a demand for 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.800 between one and two billion credits between now and like 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.040 twenty thirty five, and voluntary credits generated on the voluntary 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.680 market are now going to be accepted as compliance grade. 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.160 So we have this self regulated market and now these 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.240 are going to these these offsets are going to be 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:01.840 used in an international inter governmental agree. So that's the problem. 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.400 Can you talk a bit about why fossil asset owners, 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:09.560 fossil fuel industry very much included, love this approach so much, 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:11.440 Why it serves their interests so well? 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:15.560 Yeah, because they can say that they're doing things. They say, look, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.119 we bought all of these offsets at like five bucks 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:23.359 a ton, or like, look here's our here's our really 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.720 shiny annual report that measure reports all of our emissions. 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.040 And now we know that shareholders have all the information 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.720 they need to make responsible decisions about climate risk. And 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.280 it's like, no, they don't. Nobody reads that, and even 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:37.920 if they did, they wouldn't understand it. It's I think 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.520 it provides a lot of political cover for the status 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:47.639 quo that these basically fossil asset owners can say that 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:52.360 they're doing something that doesn't really address the problem of 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:56.280 reducing the supply of fossil fuels. And indeed, if you 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.320 look at like carbon pricing, one of these so this 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.920 is the you know, the gnarling of economists and before 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.480 it became political poison of many governments as well. Carbon pricing, 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:09.840 if you look at the extent to which it is 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.920 driving reductions, it tends to be for things like efficiency 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:18.920 improvements or fuel switching. So these aren't really changes from 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.240 the perspective of a fossil acid owner. These aren't changes 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.919 that are fundamentally threatening their business model. Right, this is 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:27.879 just like Okay, we're doing some stuff on the margins 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.000 that's actually maybe that's good because it's cutting costs for 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.360 us a little bit, but it's not catalyzing real decision 0:21:35.400 --> 0:21:37.920 making about how we wind down the use of these 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:39.600 fossil assets. 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:42.920 Which is one of the reasons the entrenched interests love 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:44.679 it so much. And also the fact that, as you 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:48.000 point out in the book, Carbon Pricing, you know, carbon 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:50.800 tax or cap and trade type of system is so 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:54.840 politically unpopular. And I wrote a story about an organization 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.560 called the Climate Leadership Council a few years ago which 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:03.439 was exon BP other trade groups. Fossil fuel companies backed 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:08.120 organization that was advocating for a carbon tax. And one 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:09.800 of the reasons they love it is because it's so 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.200 politically unpopular that they can say, therefore something, and because 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:16.159 people hate it because it has all the costs upfront 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:18.679 and all the benefits down the road or diffuse you know, 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.320 throughout the world. It's never going to pass. It's never 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:22.920 going to go anywhere, so they don't have to worry 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.520 about the solution that they say therefore ever becoming law. 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.719 It's it's so insidious, or they will advocate for Airmission's 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.439 trading scheme and then lobby for free allowances, which is 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:35.919 basically like, okay, well, we're participating in this thing, but 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.159 we literally paid no costs because the government gave us 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.919 free a free right to pollute up to x amount, 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:44.400 you know, and once you start giving those away, it's 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:49.000 very hard, you know, to take them back. So yeah, 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:51.840 they're both pretty insidious because they look on the face 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.840 of them like something is happening, but in reality, very 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:55.679 little is happening. 0:22:56.200 --> 0:22:58.080 And then the last one I wanted to make sure 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.280 we touch on probably briefly, because it shared there's a 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:01.960 lot of the same flaws as what we've been talking 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:06.320 about is the obsession with net zero, which you describe 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:10.520 as an elaborate distraction. It's another thing that has obviously 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:14.200 broken through in sort of the mainstream discourse, the idea 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:17.920 of net zero. And you won't find a corporation or 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:22.000 a government that has not proclaimed except maybe America, that 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:24.639 has not proclaimed it's commitment to net zero. By some 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:27.200 far off distant point in the future. 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:31.920 Right It's like, so, you know, maybe thirty or forty 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:37.199 years ago, the rhetoric shifted from environment from like development too, 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:40.160 like sustainable development, it's sustainable development. Was this a great 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:42.920 thing because you can bele and developed at the same time, 0:23:43.040 --> 0:23:45.280 and you could sort of put whatever you want in 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:48.399 that conceptual basket. And I argued that net zero is 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:53.320 the same because because the math is so difficult, particularly 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.080 for firms, like for governments, it's a different issue. So 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.760