Speaker 1: Hi, It's suckshat as the year comes to a close
Speaker 1: and zero takes a break for the holiday. This week,
Speaker 1: there's a special holiday Vonus. I wanted to share with
Speaker 1: you an episode of Ted Talks Daily which featured my
Speaker 1: Ted Talk. It came out of the work I did
Speaker 1: on my book Climate Capitalism, which by the way, would
Speaker 1: make for a great gift if you're doing any last
Speaker 1: minute holiday shopping. I finished writing the book two years ago,
Speaker 1: but in today's politics, where the issue of climate is
Speaker 1: hardly front and center, the thesis of the book feels
Speaker 1: even more relevant because for climate solutions to last in
Speaker 1: the long run, they need to make money. They need
Speaker 1: to be profitable. Enjoy the tech Talk. Next week we'll
Speaker 1: be revisiting my conversation with Nicola Twilly, author of Frostbite,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back in the new year with fresh episodes,
Speaker 1: including a conversation with science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson
Speaker 1: on what to expect for the climate in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Ted Talks Daily, where we bring you
Speaker 2: new ideas to spark your curiosity. Every day. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Elise Hugh. Could the market forces of capitalism help combat
Speaker 2: climate change, or was capitalism the very cause of the
Speaker 2: global climate crisis in the first place. Climate reporter uckshut
Speaker 2: Rathi says the answers are complex and offers solutions for
Speaker 2: how capitalism can be used for climate solutions the world needs.
Speaker 1: I was at a climate protest and I saw a
Speaker 1: poster that said, in big letters, burn capitalism, not coal.
Speaker 1: How many of you agree that to tackle climate change
Speaker 1: we should stop burning coal? Raise your hands, almost all
Speaker 1: of you, And how many of you agree that to
Speaker 1: tackle climate change we should burn capitalism? There are a
Speaker 1: few hands, but not as many. I'm a journalist and
Speaker 1: I write about climate solutions, and when I ask this
Speaker 1: question of people, I get the full range of answers,
Speaker 1: from those who say that the system that got us
Speaker 1: into this mess can never get us out of it,
Speaker 1: to those who say that the only answer is to
Speaker 1: unleash market forces for the innovations we need. But who
Speaker 1: is right? I wanted to find the answer for myself,
Speaker 1: so I started on the rooftop of my childhood home
Speaker 1: in India. I wanted to get solar panels for my parents.
Speaker 1: It took two days to get quotes, two weeks to
Speaker 1: have those shiny devices up on the roof, ready to
Speaker 1: capture the sun's energy. The payback was quick. Electricity bills
Speaker 1: fell and my parents have recovered the investment in five years.
Speaker 1: For the next fifteen years they can enjoy solar power
Speaker 1: for free. So what has capitalism got to do with it? Well,
Speaker 1: India did not invent the technologies that go into solar panels.
Speaker 1: Even today, India manufactures only a small fraction of what
Speaker 1: it deploys, and yet a country with less than three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars of income per person per year is able
Speaker 1: to benefit from what is now one of the world's
Speaker 1: cheapest sources of energy. This has happened because profit seeking
Speaker 1: companies want to sell all of us more and more
Speaker 1: solar panels. But it has happened because governments created that
Speaker 1: market through subsidies and regulations. We know the more we build,
Speaker 1: the cheaper it gets. And it's not just the story
Speaker 1: of solar. Between twenty nine and twenty nineteen, the price
Speaker 1: of solar fell ninety percent, win seventy percent, lithemian batteries
Speaker 1: eighty five percent. This is what I call climate capitalism.
Speaker 1: Climate emergency is forcing governments and businesses to change how
Speaker 1: capitalism works, to use its forces for creating the solutions
Speaker 1: we need, rather than making the problem worse. And look,
Speaker 1: it's not happening everywhere or at the pace which we need.
Speaker 1: There are still companies that are profiting from pollution. However,
Speaker 1: in country after country where I've had a chance to report,
Speaker 1: I've found that a combination of people, policy, and technology,
Speaker 1: when they come together, climate solutions do work. Now, the
Speaker 1: primary motivation to deploy these solutions does not have to
Speaker 1: be tackling climate change. Other pressing issues such as air pollution,
Speaker 1: or energy security or global competitiveness can garner even more support.
Speaker 1: How exactly, let me tell you the story of Wangam.
Speaker 1: You've probably never heard of him, but he has done
Speaker 1: more for the global rise of electric cars than Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Juan was born in China. He trained as an auto
Speaker 1: engineer before moving to Germany and working for Audi. There,
Speaker 1: he saw the lifestyle the Germans lived and realized that
Speaker 1: perhaps Chinese people may never be able to experience it.
Speaker 1: That's because in two thousand, China burned about one barrel
Speaker 1: of oil per person per year. Germans burned twelve times
Speaker 1: as much. So he made the case to the Chinese
Speaker 1: leadership that the country needed to work on an alternative,
Speaker 1: and that he was willing to lead the charge. So
Speaker 1: he was given a chance to work on a government program.
Speaker 1: One's team, in a period of eight years, built hundreds
Speaker 1: of electric cars and buses that were used at the
Speaker 1: Beijing Olympics. In those same eight years, the country's oil
Speaker 1: built ballooned and its cities became globally infamous for air pollution.
Speaker 1: But One had shown that an alternative could work. If
Speaker 1: China could scale the manufacturing of electric cars, air pollution
Speaker 1: would be cut, all import would be cut, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: China would create a new industry that could compete with
Speaker 1: other countries. So One was made the science minister and
Speaker 1: the government started giving out tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in subsidies for the manufacturing of electric cars and lithemian batteries.
Speaker 1: The government also started putting regulations to make it harder
Speaker 1: to buy fossil fuel cars. Even today, if you're in
Speaker 1: Shanghai and you want to buy a gasoline power car,
Speaker 1: you have to enter a lottery and win it. If
Speaker 1: you want an electric car, you can just go to
Speaker 1: a showroom and buy one. The Chinese government provided direction,
Speaker 1: but it was the practitioners of capitalism that made a
Speaker 1: small electric car industry into the global giant that it
Speaker 1: is today. One of those investors was Warren Buffett. He
Speaker 1: invested in a little known company then called BYD. Today
Speaker 1: BYD sells more electric cars than Tesla. Now you might
Speaker 1: think what China did cannot be replicated by democracies, but
Speaker 1: as it happens, China took inspiration from the paragon of capitalism,
Speaker 1: the USA. Throughout the previous century, the US has used
Speaker 1: the instruments of government to redirect investments toward national priorities.
Speaker 1: Take the semiconductor industry the reason why California is home
Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley. It was created with generous contracts from
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. It's also a similar case for biotech,
Speaker 1: for airlines, for the Internet. All of them have fingerprints
Speaker 1: of the government from its birth. In fact, China's electric
Speaker 1: vehicle policy is a modified version of California's zero emissions
Speaker 1: vehicle mandate. That policy was crucial in keeping Tesla afloat
Speaker 1: by providing subsidies. But that China has a lead on
Speaker 1: all sorts of green technologies, the US is being forced
Speaker 1: to catch up. The inflation reduction Act, passed in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, is one response. It will see the US
Speaker 1: government provide hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies towards
Speaker 1: all kinds of solutions, from green hydrogen to heat pounds
Speaker 1: that will be multiplied by matching private investment. But climate
Speaker 1: capitalism isn't just about putting government subsidies to work. That's
Speaker 1: because the climate crisis is the greatest market failure of
Speaker 1: all time. Governments around the world have allowed corporations to
Speaker 1: pollute for free, and all that pollution is causing damages
Speaker 1: to all of us in the form of climate impacts, health, inequalities,
Speaker 1: dislocation of communities. In some parts of the world, leaders
Speaker 1: are starting to correct that mistake. Europe has put a
Speaker 1: price on pollution and created legally binding targets that has
Speaker 1: helped the continent cut its carbon footprint faster than any other.
Speaker 1: It's also changed how businesses operate in Europe. The Danish
Speaker 1: Island Natural Gas Company was founded in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: For forty years, it dug up fossil fuels. Then Denmark
Speaker 1: adopted a carbon price and a climate law, and suddenly
Speaker 1: its business model became implausible. Today, you know that company
Speaker 1: has orstered. It transitioned away from fossil fuels starting in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and it has become the largest
Speaker 1: developer of offshore wind power. This hasn't been a smooth ride.
Speaker 1: There just aren't as many success stories as the world needs.
Speaker 1: That's because the climate challenge is really complicated. India has
Speaker 1: an ambitious renewables goal, but it's falling behind. Europe has
Speaker 1: seen job losses because its carbon price has been too high.
Speaker 1: That has caused some industries to shut down and move
Speaker 1: to other parts where there isn't a carbon price, and
Speaker 1: China's emissions last year rose despite a record clean energy
Speaker 1: build out. For climate capitalism to work, governments and businesses
Speaker 1: need to be flexible. They need to recognize when there
Speaker 1: are policies that require certainty, but if they're not working,
Speaker 1: then they must be changed. India is now doubling down
Speaker 1: on solar with batteries because it's seeing rise in electricity demand.
Speaker 1: Europe has introduced a carbon tariff that's going to put
Speaker 1: a price on pollution on imports that will level the
Speaker 1: playing field for domestic industry and stem job losses. And
Speaker 1: some experts think that if China can continue its clean
Speaker 1: energy build out at the same pace its emissions may
Speaker 1: have peaked last year. Now what's remarkable is that some
Speaker 1: businesses are saying that it's in their self interest to
Speaker 1: act on climate change with or without regulations. So far,
Speaker 1: we've looked at big economy wide changes. Now let's think
Speaker 1: about something as simple as ice cream. You would think
Speaker 1: that during a heat wave and an ice cream maker
Speaker 1: will turn big profits selling lots and lots of ice cream.
Speaker 1: But heat waves are becoming so extreme that people are
Speaker 1: choosing to stay at home instead. At the same time,
Speaker 1: small hold of farmers that are the supply chain of
Speaker 1: ice cream makers are seeing their productivity fall. That's because
Speaker 1: of intense heat, drought, floods. It means the cost of
Speaker 1: making ice cream is going up. It's a double whammy,
Speaker 1: lower sales, higher costs. Increasingly, businesses are recognizing that there
Speaker 1: are fewer profits to be made on a planet on fire.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to that poster. Is the answer
Speaker 1: to tackle climate change to burn capitalism, not coal. I
Speaker 1: hope the examples I've shared show that the problem is
Speaker 1: in capitalism, but how it's been allowed to run. We
Speaker 1: only have a few decades left to get to zero emissions.
Speaker 1: The fastest way to get there is to change capitalism.
Speaker 1: How to do it through a combination of people, policy
Speaker 1: and technology. Dedicated people, smarter policies and cheaper technologies. That
Speaker 1: is how you'll get businesses to focus on the solutions
Speaker 1: the world needs. That is how people like my parents
Speaker 1: in India and all of us around the world will
Speaker 1: get access to those solutions. And that is how the
Speaker 1: world will finally stop burning coal and all other fossil fuelds.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That was Ukshatrathi at Ted's Countdown Bloomberg Green Festival in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find
Speaker 2: out more at ted dot com slash curation guidelines. And
Speaker 2: that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of
Speaker 2: the Ted Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited
Speaker 2: by our team Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson,
Speaker 2: and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan
Speaker 2: additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniella Balaaiso. I'm Elise Hugh.
Speaker 2: I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed,
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming to my ted Talk, and thanks
Speaker 1: to Elise Hugh and the Ted Talk's daily podcast team.
Speaker 1: Do check out their daily feed. Each day the show
Speaker 1: brings you a new idea that might just change the future,
Speaker 1: and it's all under fifteen minutes. I am Akshatrati. Back soon.