Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Christine, one of the producers on Zero. Today I'm
Speaker 2: sharing an episode from another climate podcast that you might like.
Speaker 2: It's called Drilled. Zero's host okshot ROTHI was a guest
Speaker 2: on Drilled earlier this year talking about his book Climate
Speaker 2: Capitalism and how climate solutions and capitalism might coexist. We're
Speaker 2: dropping that episode in the feed today. If you like
Speaker 2: what you hear, you can follow Drilled wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Enjoy.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today
Speaker 3: we have the second episode in a mini series i'm
Speaker 3: calling Messy Conversations. These are episodes where we're going to
Speaker 3: tackle some of the thornier questions around how to approach
Speaker 3: the climate crisis. This time around, my guest is a journalist.
Speaker 3: I respect a lot O shot ROTHI at Bloomberg. Akshat
Speaker 3: wrote a book recently called Climate Capitalism, title I initially
Speaker 3: found a little bit off putting. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: Unfettered capitalism has been a major fuel to the fire
Speaker 3: of global warming for years, so I tend to be
Speaker 3: a little bit skeptical about suggestions that capitalism is going
Speaker 3: to solve the climate crisis. But in both his book
Speaker 3: and in this interview, actually injected some nuance into that
Speaker 3: conversation that's kind of been missing for a while, and
Speaker 3: I felt like it was important to share. I hope
Speaker 3: you find our conversation interesting. That's coming right up after
Speaker 3: this quick break.
Speaker 1: My name is Akshatrati and I'm a senior reporter for
Speaker 1: climate at Bloomberg News. I'm also the author of Climate Capitalism,
Speaker 1: Winning the Global Race to Zero.
Speaker 4: Emissions and is the book out now.
Speaker 1: It is out everywhere except US and Canada, where it
Speaker 1: has come out in March.
Speaker 4: In March. Okay, March twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Four, Yes, twelfth March.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, awesome, that's exciting. So have you been doing
Speaker 4: book tours and whatnot in the UK?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's been quite nice. I've done a few
Speaker 1: book events now and there've been a nice mix. I've
Speaker 1: done one at a university, one at a consultancy, one
Speaker 1: at a conference, and every time I've been quite amazed
Speaker 1: by the sophisticated level of questions that people have about
Speaker 1: the energy transition. You know, any of these audiences are
Speaker 1: kind of a bubble, but even despite being different bubbles,
Speaker 1: there is a good level of understanding that I was
Speaker 1: a little bit surprised about. That's encouraging to hear exactly right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, what's your favorite question that you've gotten that
Speaker 4: you were like, oh, smart people, thank you for coming
Speaker 4: to my talk.
Speaker 1: Well, the favorite question is essentially alrighty, you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of success stories in the book. That's great. What
Speaker 1: do you not have in the book? And it's actually
Speaker 1: favorite in the sense that it's a long laundry list
Speaker 1: of things I don't have in the book, because there's
Speaker 1: just so many things that we don't have success stories
Speaker 1: for that we need success stories for. But I try
Speaker 1: and pick one that I feel like we really need
Speaker 1: to get on very quickly, is how can we move
Speaker 1: billions and trillions of dollars into developing countries for climate
Speaker 1: solutions that we know work, are scalable, and they desperately
Speaker 1: want them.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think this is like the biggest blocker actually
Speaker 4: to transition.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, this is now completely the bottleneck that'll determine whether
Speaker 1: we meet our climate goals or not yet.
Speaker 4: So actually I wanted to talk to you a little
Speaker 4: bit about that and the other solution piece that you
Speaker 4: know I always obsess about, which is we know that
Speaker 4: these companies have done all these things, and by these
Speaker 4: companies I mean fossil fuel companies and some other actors
Speaker 4: as well. I've done all this to sort of warp
Speaker 4: the markets. What are the solutions to making sure that
Speaker 4: that doesn't continue, because you know, there are these success
Speaker 4: stories in renewables and other types of technologies, but there's
Speaker 4: also kind of continued work to try to block that success.
Speaker 4: So I'm curious what you think about that as well.
Speaker 4: But first let's talk about the development funding thing. Is
Speaker 4: there anything that you've seen that makes you think that
Speaker 4: people have a good plan in place, Like, you know,
Speaker 4: do you think what Barbados is doing is potentially the way.
Speaker 1: Forward or yeah. So if we look at the history
Speaker 1: of this a little bit, the place where climate finance
Speaker 1: as a phrase probably was first used was to try
Speaker 1: and essentially fund this movement of money from developed countries
Speaker 1: to developing countries through carbon offsets. Right the Kyoto Protocols,
Speaker 1: signed up to in nineteen ninety seven but really came
Speaker 1: into force in two thousand and five. Was predicated on
Speaker 1: the fact that rich countries will reduce their emissions and
Speaker 1: what they can't reduce, they'll buy offsets. From developing countries
Speaker 1: and that'll transfer funds that developing countries need to be
Speaker 1: able to make that transition happen themselves. Of course, we
Speaker 1: know what happened. Offsets have been a failure in both
Speaker 1: what they deliver on the common savings as they promise,
Speaker 1: but also on the amount of money that actually got
Speaker 1: transferred to developing countries. A lot of it was taken
Speaker 1: up by middlemen, and if any projects did take off,
Speaker 1: it's unclear how much of a difference they have really made.
Speaker 1: So the modern iteration of climate finance is only really
Speaker 1: starting in the last few years. The earliest example of
Speaker 1: it is this wonky term the Just Energy Transition Partnership,
Speaker 1: where G seven countries mostly are coming together and trying
Speaker 1: to make deals with countries like South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and then there's a whole host of other countries in
Speaker 1: the waiting list where they want to try and provide funds,
Speaker 1: both government funds but also private funds to help these
Speaker 1: countries transition away from coal. And again it's a good
Speaker 1: bet to make to try and help these countries that
Speaker 1: do want to move away from coal, but it's messy
Speaker 1: because each of the country has very different politics. Each
Speaker 1: of the country has different reliance on coal, and we
Speaker 1: don't know whether it's going to work, but at least
Speaker 1: that's one large scale attempt right now that is in process.
Speaker 1: Then there's a third one which is more theoretical and
Speaker 1: yet has a number of people who are pushing towards it,
Speaker 1: which is the Bridge Doown initiative. And again it's a
Speaker 1: very complicated thing. They've gone through two iterations of making
Speaker 1: this much bigger than what it was in the first iteration.
Speaker 1: But it comes down to trying to reform international financial
Speaker 1: institutions so that they can actually use that money that
Speaker 1: they do have toward climate purposes and also increase the
Speaker 1: amount of money that they can give towards climate purposes.
Speaker 1: One example that I've found quite interesting is again a
Speaker 1: bit won key, but quite crucial, is to provide currency
Speaker 1: risk hedging, which is basically to say, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're investing in South Africa and you're investing in a
Speaker 1: country that is not operated on the dollar, then you're
Speaker 1: going to have some risk, especially if it's an emerging economy,
Speaker 1: that their currency might fall, it might be volatile, it
Speaker 1: might change value more frequently than the dollar. Changes value.
Speaker 1: But if you are an international investor who wants the
Speaker 1: return in dollars, you want some form of guarantee that
Speaker 1: that currency exchange will be more stable than it typically is,
Speaker 1: and international financial institutions can really enable that. But again,
Speaker 1: these are just proposals right now, so that's why it's
Speaker 1: not there in the book.
Speaker 4: I really want to have you talk through the example
Speaker 4: of solar in India because I feel like this is
Speaker 4: something that doesn't get a lot of coverage. The thing
Speaker 4: that we hear in the US all the time is, oh,
Speaker 4: Indian coal. And yes, there is still quite a strong
Speaker 4: coal industry in India, and there are some people working
Speaker 4: to obstruct progress on other things. But what you show
Speaker 4: here is how solar is breaking through.
Speaker 1: So we think about solar as this source of energy
Speaker 1: now that is cheapest form of energy that you can
Speaker 1: get almost anywhere in the world, and that's been true
Speaker 1: for now a few years. But India's solar journey began
Speaker 1: in the early to mid two thousands when the country
Speaker 1: started to recognize that there is this technology that is clean,
Speaker 1: that is distributed, that can be quite easily used in
Speaker 1: India given it its own solar resources, and so India
Speaker 1: started to copy some of the policies that had been
Speaker 1: invented in the West, where it said we'll provide a
Speaker 1: feed in tariff, which is basically, we'll provide you payment
Speaker 1: if you install solar on your roof, and that way,
Speaker 1: even though solar panels in the mid two thousand and
Speaker 1: early twenty tens are a little more expensive than they
Speaker 1: should be, you'll be able to make that money back
Speaker 1: because we'll pay you for generating that solar power. However,
Speaker 1: India as a country is quite capital restricted, which is
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that much money to be able to
Speaker 1: build huge amount of solar, and even individuals trying to
Speaker 1: build rooftop solar don't have the kind of capital needed
Speaker 1: to really make solar work. But despite that, the country
Speaker 1: was keen on trying to set a target. So what
Speaker 1: it did in twenty fourteen in the run up to
Speaker 1: the Paris Agreement is set a target for a twenty
Speaker 1: gigawatt deployment by twenty twenty two, thinking that's a good
Speaker 1: ambitious goal and we should try and meet it. In
Speaker 1: the process, it gave the signal to a lot of
Speaker 1: market players to get ready to try and grab onto
Speaker 1: the opportunity that presents itself because the government has put
Speaker 1: a mandate. And one of the companies that a profile
Speaker 1: in the book is renew Power, which is now just
Speaker 1: called renew And it started with this guy who had
Speaker 1: worked in the West, who'd worked in the financial industry
Speaker 1: in America, but his Indian by birth, and he comes
Speaker 1: back to India, has worked in the wind energy industry,
Speaker 1: looking at how renewables can work in India and recognize
Speaker 1: that solar is the opportunity I should grab onto and
Speaker 1: creates this company. And what he recognizes is that if
Speaker 1: you want to scale technologies in a country like India,
Speaker 1: you really do require capital. And he uses some of
Speaker 1: his own expertise from working in the finance industry in
Speaker 1: the US to try and raise money from the likes
Speaker 1: of Goldman Sachs eventually from the Canadian Pension Fund, and
Speaker 1: then marries it to trying to work in a country
Speaker 1: where governance's weak, corruption is high, where things don't happen
Speaker 1: as quickly as businesses would be pretty used to happening
Speaker 1: in Europe or America. And at every step he's figuring
Speaker 1: out what in Hindi would call jugaad or what we
Speaker 1: would refer to in the West as hustling. Every step
Speaker 1: where there is a blockage, they hustle. They find a
Speaker 1: solution that allows them to open it up a little
Speaker 1: bit and allows them to grow their company, and slowly
Speaker 1: but surely, through that process, Renew goes on to become
Speaker 1: the largest solar developer in the country. And even since
Speaker 1: I've written the chapter, there have been so many other
Speaker 1: players that are trying to catch up to what Renew
Speaker 1: is doing, and now some of them are even succeeding
Speaker 1: despite not having capital being raised from abroad, because the
Speaker 1: market has proven itself and solar is a solution that
Speaker 1: people can see works and actually makes money. So you
Speaker 1: do need these initial injections of that may come from abroad.
Speaker 1: But once you get the engine going, the capitalist engine,
Speaker 1: so to speak, with the government direction, obviously, you can
Speaker 1: see that success can be scaled in other places.
Speaker 4: We talked about sort of availability of finance, and I
Speaker 4: feel like another thing that comes up a lot is
Speaker 4: availability of technology. And you mentioned this in the book too,
Speaker 4: that there's a pretty prevalent inaccuracy. I guess in the
Speaker 4: climate movement, this is like, oh, we have all the
Speaker 4: tech we need and it's all cheap enough to deploy now,
Speaker 4: and that's not quite true. But it's also the case
Speaker 4: that getting that technology to global south countries has tended
Speaker 4: to move a lot more slowly.
Speaker 1: A very good example of this is what happened with
Speaker 1: COVID vaccines. Right we faced a pandemic. Fortunately, by that
Speaker 1: time there was a technology called mRNA which won a
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize earlier this year, that could be used to
Speaker 1: make vaccines, but it was pretty advanced and not all
Speaker 1: countries had it. It was mostly sitting in America and
Speaker 1: in Europe, and there was a human cry about how
Speaker 1: if we're able to develop a vaccine using this technology,
Speaker 1: that technology and that vaccine should be made available worldwide,
Speaker 1: globally without patents, so that we can solve this problem quickly.
Speaker 1: And of course we didn't do that. Patterns still remained,
Speaker 1: and yes, eventually we did get the vaccine to most places,
Speaker 1: but in the process we did lose probably millions of
Speaker 1: lives that could have been saved had we not had
Speaker 1: our world where technology transfer is so complicated with green technologies,
Speaker 1: there is a risk of that happening, But I would
Speaker 1: suggest that because the climate emergency isn't at quite the
Speaker 1: concentrated scale that a pandemic is, and that it's not
Speaker 1: one technology that's going to tackle all problems. We need
Speaker 1: all sorts of technologies that we actually have more room
Speaker 1: to be able to make technology transfer work across countries.
Speaker 1: A very good example is solar panels. They were invented
Speaker 1: in America, they were really scaled up as an industry
Speaker 1: for climate purposes in Europe where Germany and then eventually
Speaker 1: Spain gave lots and lots of subsidies to deploy solar panels.
Speaker 1: It was really China that made it absolutely cheap. It's
Speaker 1: China that is now responsible for the solar boom that
Speaker 1: the rest of the world is experiencing, and of course
Speaker 1: that's come with risks of trying to raise trade barriers
Speaker 1: so that you know, countries like America or parts of
Speaker 1: India also have their own capacity to be able to
Speaker 1: make solar panels. But what we do know is, unlike
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, which have to be mined and then transported
Speaker 1: from one specific place, once you provide a solar panel,
Speaker 1: you don't also have to provide the sun that's already there.
Speaker 1: So there is a distributive nature in green technologies that
Speaker 1: we can use to acceleate the energy transition, and so far,
Speaker 1: fortunately technology transfer hasn't been a barrier for progress. But
Speaker 1: in a world where we are starting to put up
Speaker 1: more trade barriers and where future technologies like hydrogen or
Speaker 1: carbon capture or carbon removal, which is a growing technology
Speaker 1: that we eventually will need a lot of, it is
Speaker 1: a risk that we will slow down the energy transition,
Speaker 1: that we will slow down our ability to be able
Speaker 1: to reach net zero to stop warming, and it's a
Speaker 1: risk that we all should be aware of and working
Speaker 1: to avoid.
Speaker 4: I'd love to have you talk about this streaming that
Speaker 4: you have in the book, which I think is really
Speaker 4: helpful that there's been a lot of discussion about. Hey, look,
Speaker 4: Evennom Chomsky himself is like, there's not enough time to
Speaker 4: replace the entire economic system and deal with climate change
Speaker 4: in time. So what do we do? And you sort
Speaker 4: of suggest we can reform capitalism and we can use
Speaker 4: it in better ways. So yeah, i'd love to hear
Speaker 4: you talk about that a little bit, and also about
Speaker 4: the governance that's needed to enable that to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I started writing this book, what I was
Speaker 1: seeing was that there were all these solutions that were
Speaker 1: scaling in different contexts globally. But there's this large narrative
Speaker 1: that there are blockers in the system, whether it's business,
Speaker 1: whether it's politics, whether it's global diplomacy, that are stopping
Speaker 1: any progress from happening. And so one reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to write the book was to try and see if
Speaker 1: that is true, if progress is not happening at all,
Speaker 1: And very quickly I found out that's not the case.
Speaker 1: So through the book, I have these examples of how
Speaker 1: solar scaled in India, how windscale scaled in Denmark, how
Speaker 1: batteries and electric cars scaled up in China. But alongside it,
Speaker 1: I also recognized very quickly that there are very crucial
Speaker 1: enabling factors that allowed these technologies to get to scale,
Speaker 1: and those are policy, finance, global diplomacy, shareholder activism. All
Speaker 1: of these things are also starting to play out in
Speaker 1: their own way at scale in different countries. And so
Speaker 1: it is possible, even in the economic system that we
Speaker 1: sit and that we must recognize has contributed to worsening
Speaker 1: climate change, that it's possible to tweak it to work
Speaker 1: for tackling climate change. And we have many examples of it.
Speaker 1: We don't have to look at one. The American capitalistic system,
Speaker 1: with what's happening with the Inflation Reduction Act, is trying
Speaker 1: to use whatever political agreement there can be in one
Speaker 1: party to try and push for subsidies for green technologies.
Speaker 1: The European capitalism is quite different. There is actually broad
Speaker 1: political agreement in Europe to do something about climate change,
Speaker 1: but they do not have quite the capital capacity of America,
Speaker 1: so they are not going down the huge subsidies route.
Speaker 1: They are providing some subsidies, but mostly they're providing direction.
Speaker 1: They're laying out a clear plan for when we need
Speaker 1: to get to net zero, what each sector in the
Speaker 1: economy must do. They are taxing emissions, which incentivizes people
Speaker 1: to pollute less, and they're laying down very strict rules
Speaker 1: around what a green investment would be, and that's allowing
Speaker 1: for people to put money in the right places. Chinese
Speaker 1: capitalism is very different. It doesn't start with the place
Speaker 1: of we want to tackle climate change, although they do
Speaker 1: because they recognize China is going to be affected. It
Speaker 1: starts with we want to provide our people the kind
Speaker 1: of lifestyle that people in the West have, but we
Speaker 1: recognize fossil fuels are limited, energy resources are limited, and
Speaker 1: we as an economy need to grow while we do that.
Speaker 1: So their solution has been to try and basically build
Speaker 1: huge industries that do green technology probably better than anybody
Speaker 1: else does in the world right now, and then just
Speaker 1: export all that green technology while earning money. And it's
Speaker 1: a little bit jingoistic. It's driven by a lot of subsidies,
Speaker 1: but there is clearly a market for these companies because
Speaker 1: even as they start off heavily subsidized by state, eventually
Speaker 1: they become private enterprises, they consolidate, and there are some
Speaker 1: champions that remain that then go on to build factories
Speaker 1: outside China. A very good example is what's happening with
Speaker 1: batteries and how China is using its lead in batteries
Speaker 1: to go out and build factories in Germany, in Hungary,
Speaker 1: eventually in the US and in Mexico. So you get
Speaker 1: these different forms of capitalism that are showing you that
Speaker 1: within the political context that is available, you can start
Speaker 1: to tweak the rules such that they will help reduce
Speaker 1: emissions while addressing global competitiveness, economic growth, all things that
Speaker 1: the capitalist system requires for you to be able to
Speaker 1: push these solutions forward.
Speaker 4: Do you get a sense that in places like the US,
Speaker 4: for example, where there really hasn't been sort of guardrails
Speaker 4: put in place, that it's possible to grain in the
Speaker 4: more out of control aspects of capitalism that example, So
Speaker 4: with the fossil fuel industry, for example, in the US,
Speaker 4: what you see when regulation is put in place, or
Speaker 4: even when demand goes down for fossil fuels is a
Speaker 4: really really well funded effort to get around regulation and
Speaker 4: to sort of artificially increase demand. You see in the
Speaker 4: tracking context is like the most obvious right where you
Speaker 4: had kind of unfettered development of that resource, then a glut.
Speaker 4: They pushed for a lift on the export band to
Speaker 4: deal with that glut, and they got it. Then they
Speaker 4: pushed to basically use one of the byproducts of tracking
Speaker 4: for plastic that nobody wanted. That didn't stop them from
Speaker 4: building out a massive number of petrochemical plants that are
Speaker 4: just dumping simply use plastics on the market, and everyone
Speaker 4: is saying they're projections for demand for that are off,
Speaker 4: but that hasn't actually impacted the supply side yet. And
Speaker 4: you know, you see it with sympeic fabrics and stuff too, right,
Speaker 4: So this thing that's happened where certain industries, for sure
Speaker 4: in the US are sort of allowed to just tinker
Speaker 4: with the market to suit their needs.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the US context, I think it's
Speaker 1: worth taking a step back and just recognizing, and I
Speaker 1: think we don't do that enough, is the fact that
Speaker 1: almost all the progress that has happened so far on
Speaker 1: trying to reduce emissions has happened despite the social industries
Speaker 1: heavy attempts to try in derail progress. And so I
Speaker 1: think we should take hope is probably not the right word,
Speaker 1: but we should take some hope that despite the level
Speaker 1: of barriers that are in front of us to try
Speaker 1: and deal with this problem, progress can be made. Now
Speaker 1: coming to the specific problem of American capitalism and how
Speaker 1: much of it is tied to essentially corporate greed, because
Speaker 1: your ability as a company to lobby politicians to just
Speaker 1: do your bidding very strong in America, not to say
Speaker 1: it's not there in other countries. That exists in almost
Speaker 1: all resource intensive countries. Canada has it, Norway has it,
Speaker 1: Australia has it, and to some extent countries like India
Speaker 1: where there's a big base of coal jobs, even as
Speaker 1: most of the coal industry is state owned, has that
Speaker 1: lobbying power because those are state owned industries that are
Speaker 1: talking into the years of the very politics who are
Speaker 1: making these decisions. But one thing to recognize is that
Speaker 1: climate progress is sort of two steps forward, one step back.
Speaker 1: You know, all the curves that we see on climate
Speaker 1: models that say to reach one point five degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: here's a smooth path that you must take to reach zero,
Speaker 1: is likely to be pretty jagged because we are going
Speaker 1: to get these swings between politicians who care about climate
Speaker 1: and politicians who don't. And it's again not just an
Speaker 1: America problem. We're starting to see that here in the
Speaker 1: UK with the Conservative government that was responsible for a
Speaker 1: net zero target now sort of turning its back on
Speaker 1: green policies. But what happens here is that now we'
Speaker 1: vented this period where there is recognition that climate change
Speaker 1: and climate impacts are very real, very intense, and they
Speaker 1: are going to hurt not just people but economies. Right
Speaker 1: from a capitalistic perspective, is it going to hurt growth, yes?
Speaker 1: Is it going to hurt companies yes. Even if you
Speaker 1: don't care about people, you're going to have to care
Speaker 1: about these other forces that capitalism forces you to think about.
Speaker 1: If you have any amount of long term thinking in
Speaker 1: your political mindset, in your company mindset, you recognize that
Speaker 1: the future is going to have green technologies in abundance,
Speaker 1: and if you don't get ahead of the game, you're
Speaker 1: going to be lost behind. You know, a very good
Speaker 1: example is Tesla for all the problems that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is for social media and for political views, we do
Speaker 1: know that Tesla has allowed lots of other auto manufacturers
Speaker 1: to start focusing on electric cars, and we are going
Speaker 1: to get that across different domains and across different industrial sectors.
Speaker 1: Will we do it fast enough? Is the question? Whether
Speaker 1: we'll do it or not is no longer the question.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting.
Speaker 4: You mentioned that there's this low list of things in
Speaker 4: the book and that the thing that you sort of
Speaker 4: think is most necessary is the development finance piece. I
Speaker 4: think this is such a big thing going into cop
Speaker 4: and I keep seeing a lot of a lot of
Speaker 4: talk around the thing that you also mentioned the book,
Speaker 4: which is like, look, yes, some global salt countries are
Speaker 4: going to need to use fossil fuels for longer in
Speaker 4: order to sort of catch up on development and to
Speaker 4: unlock some of the capital needed for the energy transition
Speaker 4: and for climate adaptation and all of that stuff. And
Speaker 4: I'm wondering if you could just like break that down
Speaker 4: a little bit, because I feel like this is another
Speaker 4: thing that becomes very black and white in climate conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll do it in two ways. Right. If
Speaker 1: we take just climate finance, now that's a very big
Speaker 1: broad term. It takes into consideration all kinds of money.
Speaker 1: So the best way in which I've been able to
Speaker 1: make sense of climate finance is to put it in
Speaker 1: three buckets that Avinash Pursud, who is the economic advisor
Speaker 1: to the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Motley, told me.
Speaker 1: The first bucket is the biggest bucket. It's the bucket
Speaker 1: of money that needs to be invested into solutions that
Speaker 1: will make more money. So building a solar plant is
Speaker 1: going to make more money because we know solar plants
Speaker 1: can be profitable, but there is an upfront cost for
Speaker 1: it and that needs to be met and developing countries
Speaker 1: require that help. But because at the end of it
Speaker 1: you're going to make money, the difficulty of actually moving
Speaker 1: that money is less. There's a second bucket, which we
Speaker 1: can class as adaptation, but it's essentially a bucket where
Speaker 1: governments have to pay for it now so that they
Speaker 1: avoid future costs. If you're able to avoid if you're
Speaker 1: able to adapt to a certain level of warming, if
Speaker 1: you're able to adapt to a certain level of sea
Speaker 1: level rise, then you will avoid costs from the damages
Speaker 1: that may come if you don't adapt to it. So
Speaker 1: that is something that governments can are capable of doing
Speaker 1: because they have the ability to be able to think
Speaker 1: a little more long term and to be able to
Speaker 1: sort of borrow from the future to pay for current expenses.
Speaker 1: And then there's the last bucket, which is the smallest
Speaker 1: bucket should be the smallest bucket, which is loss in damage,
Speaker 1: which is paying for impacts that developing countries are suffering
Speaker 1: will suffer at greater scale in the future, for damages
Speaker 1: that are being caused because of rich countries emissions that
Speaker 1: have warmed the planet. So mitigation, adaptation, compensation could be
Speaker 1: the three ways in which you understand it. But because
Speaker 1: the buckets have money doing different things and can be
Speaker 1: paid for for in different things, it's much better to
Speaker 1: think about what that money does. So now take it
Speaker 1: to what cop twenty eight is all about It's about
Speaker 1: global diplomacy. It's about trying to mostly now get developing
Speaker 1: countries the money from developed countries that they deserve. But
Speaker 1: that money has to be split into these three buckets
Speaker 1: and has to be fought over with that clarity, because
Speaker 1: if you're going to ask for one hundred million dollar
Speaker 1: climate finance fund, which is going to help you build
Speaker 1: solar panels, that's actually a much easier fight to have
Speaker 1: now because that solar panel is going to make money.
Speaker 1: But if you're fighting for compensation for loss and damage
Speaker 1: from climate impacts, it's a much harder fight because no
Speaker 1: rich country just wants to give money to developing countries.
Speaker 1: We are living in a world where foreign aid is
Speaker 1: being cut not just for climate, but for all kinds
Speaker 1: of purposes, and so you have to come with a
Speaker 1: different negotiation tactic, a different motivation to try and fight
Speaker 1: for lost and damage funds. I think what's happening now
Speaker 1: is trying to put it all together muddels of the conversation,
Speaker 1: both for people but also for the various parties that
Speaker 1: need to sort this out. And money is the bottleneck
Speaker 1: right now for enabling the transition to go at the
Speaker 1: speed at it to go at the speed as it must.
Speaker 1: There is enough money in developed countries being put into
Speaker 1: climate solutions. There is nowhere enough money being put into
Speaker 1: climate solutions in developing countries.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like that also really kind of puts
Speaker 4: the lie to this framing that a lot of fossil
Speaker 4: fuel spokespeople and their friends have been saying and the
Speaker 4: lead up to cop which is that, you know, the
Speaker 4: fossil fuel industry is going to help the global South
Speaker 4: out of poverty, out of energy poverty in particular, and
Speaker 4: unlock funding and all of these things. Just I feel
Speaker 4: like if that were the case, then more money would
Speaker 4: have been going into the grid in general, distribution networks,
Speaker 4: all of that, which would also help with the energy transition,
Speaker 4: and none of that has really happened. Can I have
Speaker 4: you talk about the risk of repeating some of the
Speaker 4: less savory aspects of capitalism as the transition gets underway.
Speaker 1: So there's definitely a big risk that within trying to
Speaker 1: use capitalistic systems to try and solve this problem, we
Speaker 1: forget hard woron lessons from the past. A very good
Speaker 1: example is around mining. China currently has essentially a strangled
Speaker 1: hold on battery metals, not because they're all mined in China,
Speaker 1: but because China has got long term contracts or their
Speaker 1: own companies mining materials in Congo or in other countries
Speaker 1: where you get cobalt and nickel and manganese and lithium
Speaker 1: to be able to build batteries, and then they are
Speaker 1: processed in China, and then those batteries have that material
Speaker 1: regardless of whether they are manufactured in China or not,
Speaker 1: because that's where the material processing is happening. And of
Speaker 1: course we are living in the twenty first century where
Speaker 1: many of the developing countries are really developing countries because
Speaker 1: of colonialism and the amount of wealth transfer that happened
Speaker 1: in that period. There is a risk that rich developed
Speaker 1: countries with democracies fall for the sort of green colonialism
Speaker 1: trap where they do the same thing that China is
Speaker 1: doing by going to a country and essentially owning portions
Speaker 1: of that country to be able to satisfy their own needs.
Speaker 1: We are starting to see some of that happen in
Speaker 1: the carbon offset market. There have been recent announcements of
Speaker 1: a Dubai company signing up memorandums of understanding with countries
Speaker 1: like Zimbabwe, and Liberia essentially taking up as much as
Speaker 1: five or ten percent of the entire country to be
Speaker 1: able to generate carbon credits. But there are better ways
Speaker 1: to actually solve this problem because it is true that
Speaker 1: some of these metals are just in other countries, but
Speaker 1: you could be much more responsible in tapping into that resource.
Speaker 1: One example that I am following is looking at what
Speaker 1: the European Union is doing with trying to get access
Speaker 1: to lithium and copper in South America, where it is
Speaker 1: going out and working with governments in those regions to say, look,
Speaker 1: we recognize you have these resources. The world needs resources,
Speaker 1: but we will also want to take on these resources
Speaker 1: only if we are able to provide you something in return,
Speaker 1: not just money. And so they are working to try
Speaker 1: and get technology transferred. So they want electric bus manufacturing
Speaker 1: happening in those regions where European companies can set up shop,
Speaker 1: will have local manufacturing, will create both batteries and electric cars. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we'll create both batteries and electric buses in those regions
Speaker 1: which require those buses, while also being able to have
Speaker 1: deals where they can access metals like copper and lithium
Speaker 1: for the energy transition. There are ways in which we
Speaker 1: can do it right, and we should really seek solutions
Speaker 1: where they are working, because this is a global problem
Speaker 1: and if we are going to try and tackle it,
Speaker 1: then we need countries to work together as much as possible.
Speaker 1: And if you go down the green colonialism route, the
Speaker 1: risk of fracturing what is already a pretty fractured world
Speaker 1: only grows. Capitalism has become this big thing which people
Speaker 1: basically just lump all the problems that are there in
Speaker 1: the world under one word. At its core, capitalism is
Speaker 1: private ownership in a competitive market. And the only way
Speaker 1: in which capitalism can ever survive on the planet is
Speaker 1: if it's working for the people it is serving. And
Speaker 1: we know that none of these markets have ever been free, right,
Speaker 1: They're always regulated, whether they're regulated by governments or they're
Speaker 1: regulated by nature. And so what we just need to
Speaker 1: understand is that as an incentivizing mechanism, capitalism has its problems,
Speaker 1: but those problems can be managed and can be harnessed
Speaker 1: to do our bidding, and I mean ours in humanity's bidding.
Speaker 1: And so rather than thinking of it as something foreign
Speaker 1: that somebody else is operating with fingers in the back,
Speaker 1: as some global conspiracy. It's much simpler to recognize it
Speaker 1: as a four that is available to be harnessed and
Speaker 1: that needs to be honest through collective action. That's why
Speaker 1: I think capitalism gets the bad framing, and yes, it
Speaker 1: has its problems, but we also know we can use
Speaker 1: it for good.
Speaker 4: So we've had this season going on for a while now,
Speaker 4: and it's just going to continue for months because there's
Speaker 4: so many stories around this sort of global crackdown on
Speaker 4: environmental protests, which really has me thinking about the need
Speaker 4: to shore up democracy and democratic governance as a really
Speaker 4: key piece to this whole reformation of capitalism and making
Speaker 4: capitalism work for us. And I'm curious what you've seen
Speaker 4: on that.
Speaker 1: So while I was writing this book, another book landed
Speaker 1: that sort of clarified the situation for me very clearly.
Speaker 1: And it's a book called A Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
Speaker 1: by a Financial Times columnist named Martin Wolf and the
Speaker 1: title kind of says it all, but basically Martin makes
Speaker 1: this case, which I think is absolutely true, that the
Speaker 1: only way capitalism can survive on this planet is if
Speaker 1: democracies are able to tackle its successes. And he sort
Speaker 1: of makes an extra case which is democracies can only
Speaker 1: survive if they're able to use capitalism well. But leaving
Speaker 1: the second step apart, the first step is absolutely crucial.
Speaker 1: The places where capitalism has thrived have been places where
Speaker 1: democracy has thrived, and the places where democracies have struggled
Speaker 1: capitalism has run rough shot and caused problems. So I
Speaker 1: think in the series that you point out where democracies
Speaker 1: are cracking down on human rights, on fundamental ability to protest,
Speaker 1: on fundamental restrictions, on being able to make their voice heard,
Speaker 1: to ensure that excesses of capitalism do not run roughshot,
Speaker 1: is going to end up causing a lot of harm. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not capitalism alone at fault, but flawed democracies that
Speaker 1: are at fault. So when we think of the problems
Speaker 1: that we face, you know, a, it's obviously always much
Speaker 1: more nuanced than pointing to one thing as the problem,
Speaker 1: but also recognizing that there is agency. I feel like
Speaker 1: what the series showed to me as I've listened to
Speaker 1: it is that despite these draconian laws coming into place,
Speaker 1: people aren't losing hope yet. If anything, they are more
Speaker 1: charged up. If anything, they are doubling down and trying
Speaker 1: to overcome these problems. And yes, it's a dark turn
Speaker 1: to be in a place where protests in a country
Speaker 1: like the UK, which is supposed to be a paragonautic democracy,
Speaker 1: are being crushed for pretty unreasonable reasons. But it's also
Speaker 1: true that at the same time you have all these
Speaker 1: people committed and doubly committed to try and make it
Speaker 1: work despite it