Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I'm Oscar Boyd. On Monday, yet another
Speaker 1: dire climate report was published, and yet again it was
Speaker 1: published in the middle of a whole set of crises
Speaker 1: that have dominated the new cycle. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: take a moment to recognize the importance of this report
Speaker 1: that's come out from the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change,
Speaker 1: better known as the IPCC. I'm here with Acharati, our
Speaker 1: usual host, late in our podcast studio in London, to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Actually, let's start with the basics. What
Speaker 1: is the IPCC and what are these reports it producers.
Speaker 1: The IPCC was created under the United Nations and it
Speaker 1: was mandated as a body made up of scientists to
Speaker 1: produce regular reports that will tell the world about the
Speaker 1: state of our understanding of climate change. As these reports
Speaker 1: have come every seven years or so, our understanding has improved,
Speaker 1: has become firmer. We know better than ever what causes
Speaker 1: climate change, what kind of impacts climate change is going
Speaker 1: to have at a very granular level, and what we
Speaker 1: need to do to address this problem so that we
Speaker 1: can minimize the impacts and even adapt to the warming
Speaker 1: that has already occurred. As a result, these reports have
Speaker 1: gotten longer and longer and longer. Right in today's report
Speaker 1: is the culmination of the sixth Sense of Reports. It's
Speaker 1: called the Synthesis Report, and it's built upon this wealth
Speaker 1: of knowledge that you're talking about. How much scientific knowledge
Speaker 1: has gone into this report. Well, today's report is only
Speaker 1: thirty seven pages long, but that's because it's a summary
Speaker 1: of the entire sixth Assessment Report, which is about ten
Speaker 1: thousand pages long. That in itself is based on nearly
Speaker 1: fifty thousand scientific studies. So one way to think about
Speaker 1: what the IPCC does is it creates the most established
Speaker 1: and rigorously fact checked body of knowledge that exists on
Speaker 1: climate change, and it gets signed off at least the summary,
Speaker 1: by every country on the planet. So today's report, every
Speaker 1: country has come together, looked at it, read it over.
Speaker 1: Their delegates have gone through the details and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we agree, we understand, and we're happy to publish this
Speaker 1: with our names on it. Indeed, and that is unique
Speaker 1: in the history of modern science, going hundreds of years back.
Speaker 1: There is no other topic or science that countries of
Speaker 1: the world come together and approve that this is what
Speaker 1: is happening to the world, and this is what we
Speaker 1: must do to address the problems. Aside from being unique,
Speaker 1: why is this report actually important? What kind of real
Speaker 1: world impacts did these reports have? These are reports of
Speaker 1: such length and depth that they play a role in
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, big and small. One clear example
Speaker 1: is an IPCC report that was published in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It was a report, again commissioned by the United Nations
Speaker 1: after the Paris Agreement was signed, that asked scientists to
Speaker 1: tell the world what needs to be done to keep
Speaker 1: global warming below one point five degree celsius, which is
Speaker 1: one of the two goals in the Paris Agreement. And
Speaker 1: what did it say? It is a bit academic, I'll
Speaker 1: give you that, but to paraphrase, it basically said that
Speaker 1: if the world is to keep global warming below one
Speaker 1: point five degree celsius, it needs to reach net zero
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide emissions by twenty fifty And that has become
Speaker 1: a rallying cry where every major economy has now set
Speaker 1: a net zero target, and every major corporation is working
Speaker 1: towards a net zero target, and it's an everyday use
Speaker 1: to the extent where of course, this climate podcast is
Speaker 1: named after that very important sentence published in an IPCC report.
Speaker 1: So today's report. What are the key takeaways? The biggest
Speaker 1: takeaway is a blunt message, which is that burning fossil
Speaker 1: fuels without trapping its emissions is threatening human well being
Speaker 1: and the stability of much of life on Earth. And
Speaker 1: the scale of the problem is massive. Already, ACC says
Speaker 1: that three billion people are highly vulnerable to climate impacts.
Speaker 1: That's nearly half the population of the planet, and that's
Speaker 1: just at one point one degree celsius. However, it's not
Speaker 1: just the dire stuff that these IPCC reports point out.
Speaker 1: They also say that there is a real chance to
Speaker 1: try and tackle this problem. Michaelleague Eric Croston says to
Speaker 1: be able to solve climate change, we need a million miracles,
Speaker 1: but the fact is over the past decade we've got
Speaker 1: at least a few thousand. All kinds of green technologies
Speaker 1: have become cheaper, are becoming more widely accessible. Of course,
Speaker 1: on policy level, we've seen things like the Inflation Reduction
Speaker 1: Act from the US and the Green Deal from Europe,
Speaker 1: and all that can be leveraged because the faster we
Speaker 1: cut emissions, the less pain the planet will suffer. Right,
Speaker 1: And this really comes through in this report because as
Speaker 1: we talked about it, is a synthesis of three other longer,
Speaker 1: bigger reports. The first one that came out back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, was all about the physical science basis
Speaker 1: behind climate change. The second was about impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability,
Speaker 1: but the third was all about mitigation of climate change,
Speaker 1: which goes into these issues what mitigation means, and the
Speaker 1: more recent IPCC reports have also started to go beyond
Speaker 1: just explaining what climate science says. Tackling climate change requires
Speaker 1: appending and moving to an energy system that does not
Speaker 1: cause global warming, and that level of change requires understanding
Speaker 1: how the messy geopolitics of the energy transition will work out,
Speaker 1: how humans will react to rapid changes, and it requires
Speaker 1: sociologists and political scientists and all kinds of other fields
Speaker 1: to weigh in on what will be a difficult transition.
Speaker 1: Do all those things, and what the IPCC reports find
Speaker 1: is that many of these solutions that address climate change
Speaker 1: also have co benefits in improving health outcomes for people
Speaker 1: and for biodiversity on the planet. What picture does the
Speaker 1: report paint in terms of the levels of jeopardy the
Speaker 1: climate change is currently posing humanity? I mean, clearly, if
Speaker 1: you read it with a cold rational head, you will
Speaker 1: walk away with your hair on fire, because that is
Speaker 1: how urgent the situation is, you walk away with your
Speaker 1: hair on fire, that you must do something about it.
Speaker 1: Because it says there are many, many possible pathways still
Speaker 1: available for humans to act on the problem before it's
Speaker 1: too late. However, that doesn't always translate into policy at
Speaker 1: the government level because there is usually a big upfront
Speaker 1: effort and cost involved in deploying many of these solutions,
Speaker 1: and for some governments that is too big a leap
Speaker 1: to dig even today. So with that in mind, who
Speaker 1: uses this report. Is it just the biggest, best, most
Speaker 1: well fact checked body of scientific knowledge gathering dust in
Speaker 1: a library somewhere, or is this being translated into usable
Speaker 1: effective policies. Given the scale of the report and how
Speaker 1: many things it touches on, it is being used and widely.
Speaker 1: We talked about how IPCC reports have translated into net
Speaker 1: zero goals. Now these are decades out, but there are
Speaker 1: others who use it for immediate purposes. Corporations, for example,
Speaker 1: take Unilever, a global company that produces food on one
Speaker 1: part of the planet, processes it somewhere else, and then
Speaker 1: sells it another place. That chain of events only works
Speaker 1: because of the stability of the climate as it has
Speaker 1: existed for the vast amount of human existence. Unilever has
Speaker 1: been around for about one hundred years, and as a corporation,
Speaker 1: would like to be around for another hundred years. So
Speaker 1: Unilever looks at climate reports to understand the risks that
Speaker 1: climate impacts are going to cost to its supply chain.
Speaker 1: And that's just one of hundreds of thousands of corporations
Speaker 1: that are making use of IPCC analysis. Then there are
Speaker 1: investors who use IPCC reports because they use those models
Speaker 1: to understand where to put money that would produce decent returns,
Speaker 1: to put it in companies that are going to worsen
Speaker 1: the climate crisis and make their entire portfolio unstable, or
Speaker 1: to invest in companies that would solve this problem and
Speaker 1: help the rest of the portfolio. Yeah, and it's not
Speaker 1: just corporations investors looking at these reports either. It also
Speaker 1: feeds into the work of NGOs, climate activists political campaigners
Speaker 1: who are hoping to translate the messages of these big
Speaker 1: impactful climate reports into something that can be understood by
Speaker 1: the wider public, and they show up at public events
Speaker 1: like the Annual Climate Conference. Again that happens under the
Speaker 1: ages of the United Nations, where all these countries meet
Speaker 1: to set policies on how to address all things climate change,
Speaker 1: which go from not just how we cut emissions, but
Speaker 1: also what investments do we need to make to adapt
Speaker 1: to a warming planet and what do we need to
Speaker 1: do if we are to compensate for the damages that
Speaker 1: climate change is causing. That is all informed by this
Speaker 1: underlying solid piece of science that the inter Governmental Panel
Speaker 1: on Climate Change produces every seven years. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much a chat for explaining today's IPCC report, and
Speaker 1: thanks for staying up late to record this with me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Zero. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: please take a moment to rate and review the show
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This is the first time
Speaker 1: we tried one of these bonus episodes, so let us
Speaker 1: know what you think. You can email us at Zero
Speaker 1: pod at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer is me Oscar
Speaker 1: Boyd and our senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Wanderley Special Thanks to Kirabnjam and
Speaker 1: Eric Roston for their help on this episode. We've linked
Speaker 1: to Eric's reporting on the latest IPCC report in the
Speaker 1: show notes. We'll be back with the regular episode of
Speaker 1: Zero on Thursday. You want to be to