Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: We've got some numbers for everybody to chew on. Ninety
Speaker 2: three percent of respondents said that they believe climate change
Speaker 2: poses a serious and imminent threat to the planets. Seventy
Speaker 2: one percent say the weather where they live has gotten
Speaker 2: more extreme over the past few years. We have certainly
Speaker 2: seen it this year, and eighty two percent worry that
Speaker 2: climate change will make life extremely difficult and unpleasant for
Speaker 2: all of us and our families.
Speaker 3: I can relate to a lot of this, given Carol,
Speaker 3: I'm in New York. I've lived through three once in
Speaker 3: a one hundred year storms, I know, and that's like,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be anomalized, not as much.
Speaker 3: Once in a century storms.
Speaker 2: Well, the figures we just talked about, right, I know,
Speaker 2: it's dramatic, but we're living it. The figures come from
Speaker 2: Edelman's twenty twenty three Trust Barometer special report Trust and
Speaker 2: Climate Change, released this month. Richard Edelman is in the house,
Speaker 2: he CEO of Edelman, the global public relations firm. Of course,
Speaker 2: behind the Trust Barometer. We've talked about it over the years.
Speaker 2: He's just back from COP twenty eight, the UN's annual
Speaker 2: Climate change Conference, which this year is being held in
Speaker 2: the UAE, and it's just about halfway over at this point.
Speaker 2: As we said, he's here in studio. How are you
Speaker 2: You are just back? Yeah, a little jet lagged a
Speaker 2: little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually feel good about the progress at COP twenty eight, Carol,
Speaker 1: because the importance of the finance unlock cannot be understated.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: So in a sense to have a remediation fund that
Speaker 1: was passed the first day by the assembled multitude is
Speaker 1: a big deal. And also that UAE and Bloomberg Philanthropy
Speaker 1: has announced a big fund thirty billion dollars to invest
Speaker 1: in climate technologies. That's making finance work for climate remediation.
Speaker 2: How has that not happened in the past, because I
Speaker 2: feel like in an ESG world, I think we thought
Speaker 2: all this money was coming in.
Speaker 3: It's called COP twenty eight, not COP one, but.
Speaker 1: The other twenty seven haven't come to these kinds of agreements.
Speaker 1: And so the five hundred million dollars already voted for
Speaker 1: remediation funds, they need a lot more. And also, let's
Speaker 1: face it the reality of fusion and hydrogen and all
Speaker 1: these things that need actually to be invested in and
Speaker 1: made available at a right price. And it's the key
Speaker 1: thing that binds the North and the South together. Think
Speaker 1: that before you always had this kind of well you
Speaker 1: Western guys have already had yours, and now we want ours.
Speaker 1: And so the remediation fund. So, for example, Lula of
Speaker 1: Brazil got up and said, listen, give me remediation so
Speaker 1: I can stop people cutting the forest and Amazon makes sense,
Speaker 1: we have to pay farmers not to do that. And
Speaker 1: so this remediation kind of thing, or the venture fund
Speaker 1: is part of we hear you South. We want to
Speaker 1: be helpful to you in supposed to opposing.
Speaker 3: In terms of technology, in terms of solutions. What moves
Speaker 3: the needle here?
Speaker 1: I think optimism And so our study, the Trust Study
Speaker 1: on sustainability, showed that people who believe that they actually
Speaker 1: the climate change can be dealt with will change their behavior.
Speaker 3: I was so interested in these numbers. They were so
Speaker 3: much higher than I thought, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 3: go do this in Congress and see what members of
Speaker 3: Congress actually But.
Speaker 1: A person who is optimistic is two and a half
Speaker 1: times more likely to change his behavior about shorter showers
Speaker 1: or evs or whatever else, as opposed to the half
Speaker 1: of the world that says, I give up, it's too late.
Speaker 1: What the hell I may as well, you know, drive
Speaker 1: a gas callsler.
Speaker 3: But is somebody who's coming out of an emerging economy,
Speaker 3: maybe they're the first generation to actually have running water
Speaker 3: and electricity. Do they care how that electricity is generated
Speaker 3: to the same extent that of you know, my neighbors
Speaker 3: who say, after the storm here in New York on
Speaker 3: September twenty ninth, they say, you know what, We're going
Speaker 3: to pay thirty thousand dollars for solar because we think
Speaker 3: it's a good investment and we need to do something.
Speaker 1: And we need to use Look, I think in developing
Speaker 1: world it's about the price, because it's a price and access.
Speaker 1: And if I don't have the ability to have a
Speaker 1: light so that my kid can read and get educated,
Speaker 1: then I want the light and I should feel like
Speaker 1: I should get it. But as to where it comes from,
Speaker 1: meaning whether it's oil or solar, they don't care. But
Speaker 1: it has to be affordable, and that's the key point
Speaker 1: of this. But I think another key point in this
Speaker 1: study is the relatively low trust in business. You know,
Speaker 1: we've always talked about how business is much more trusted
Speaker 1: than government, not unsustainability, because we're seen as having talked
Speaker 1: a lot and delivered a little. And so I really
Speaker 1: like that so many companies showed up to COP twenty
Speaker 1: eight and it's an agriculture, or it's an energy, or
Speaker 1: it's in tech.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's starting to you know, ESG right.
Speaker 2: The original idea, right was that these ESG elements would
Speaker 2: affect your business. And I feel like climate is now
Speaker 2: affecting people's business in other words, whether it either shuts
Speaker 2: it down or I mean, I think about the beer
Speaker 2: producers or you know, we talked to a lot of
Speaker 2: folks in the wine industry, the fires, the you know,
Speaker 2: soils changing it's dry or whatever. But I think in general,
Speaker 2: it's companies are really being hit and impacted by it,
Speaker 2: and so they've got to do something well. And that's fair.
Speaker 1: It's totally fair, Carol, that they want to be part
Speaker 1: of change because their supply chains are deeply disrupted otherwise.
Speaker 1: And so why regenerative agriculture for Unilever, because they're going
Speaker 1: to make the soybeans that going to the mayonnaise that,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're going to have to do it
Speaker 1: in a way that the soil is able to keep producing.
Speaker 1: And I heard something fascinating in in cop fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the farmers who own cattle are sixty five plus
Speaker 1: or something. There's a whole generation change and it's fifty
Speaker 1: percent of all farms are people who are fifty plus.
Speaker 3: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: So the youngers they.
Speaker 3: Want to move to the city, they don't want to
Speaker 3: be doing correct.
Speaker 1: But we have to get younger farmers. So there's a
Speaker 1: generation change possible. Who will want to do it differently,
Speaker 1: a differently approach, a different approach.
Speaker 2: Well, you know we always talk about well consumers they care,
Speaker 2: like we've had conversations my daughter, you know, or but
Speaker 2: is it true? Is that really moving the nut? That
Speaker 2: is somebody going to say, I'm going to buy this
Speaker 2: because that company stands for what I believe in. But
Speaker 2: it's going to cost me double the price. So will
Speaker 2: we do that?
Speaker 1: Consumers won't pay more? Yeah, And they told us. We
Speaker 1: did a study with NYU over the summer and if
Speaker 1: it's good for me and good for the planet, I'll
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: You know, I wrote this all the time, Like I
Speaker 3: think it's FedEx or ups or like even you know,
Speaker 3: buy tickets for an airline and they're like, do you
Speaker 3: want to pay a few more dollars to offset? I'm
Speaker 3: like no, Like why is that with uber? Like go
Speaker 3: for a green car, you know, yeah, but oftentimes that's
Speaker 3: like less expensive. You know when we were on the
Speaker 3: West Coast and every car.
Speaker 2: Was yeah, that's it was easy on the West.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so that that's so interesting to hear.
Speaker 1: But but a company like Hundai that has fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars EV, it's going to sell more than than ones
Speaker 1: that are for eighty or ninety or that's true. But
Speaker 1: because in a pyramid in the marketing business, we've got
Speaker 1: to get to the big middle. Yeah, and those are
Speaker 1: the people who we.
Speaker 2: Talk about it, right, we'd love to own EV's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we live in the city where we can't even
Speaker 3: get parking. Yeah, it's tough, but but look at over
Speaker 3: the last six months the way EV sales in the
Speaker 3: US have fallen off a cliff essentially, and in favor
Speaker 3: of internal combustion engines. I mean, as a year ago,
Speaker 3: hybrids are doing well, but they're still used.
Speaker 1: Gas well ev sales passed a million units this year
Speaker 1: out of seventeen million. And you know, again, the producers
Speaker 1: are anticipating it's going to be a quarter of the
Speaker 1: market in the two or three years. But they're going
Speaker 1: to have to have infrastructure such that it makes it
Speaker 1: easy for you to refill.
Speaker 2: Is the US of China doing enough? They're important in
Speaker 2: all of this, the biggest emitters right when it comes
Speaker 2: to the impact.
Speaker 1: So the Chinese continue to do coal plants, and yet
Speaker 1: they're also the biggest implementers of solar because their energy
Speaker 1: use is continuing to soar. So the hope is that
Speaker 1: the COP twenty eight will stimulate them to focus more
Speaker 1: on the solar than the coal because the coal is cheap.
Speaker 1: And again it's the price issue for developing markets. But
Speaker 1: if consumers start and this is where I think COP
Speaker 1: has to go to a next step in COP twenty
Speaker 1: nine or thirty and actually say to consumers, you know,
Speaker 1: we want you to affirmatively change your behavior and byproducts
Speaker 1: that are sustainably sourced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bonuses on all of us too, write.
Speaker 1: Correct shorter again, shorter showers called water wash. There are
Speaker 1: all sorts of small things that we need to do.
Speaker 1: But it's really interesting, Carol, that just quickly the source
Speaker 1: of information has to be scientists, but also people like you,
Speaker 1: somebody who's a friend and family. We've got to get
Speaker 1: to the pastor or other people informal sources because they
Speaker 1: don't just believe experts anymore.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting your community, right, It has to be
Speaker 2: kind of putting pressure on you. You well, so good
Speaker 2: to see you in studio.
Speaker 1: Happy holidays, Thank you so much, Happy holidays.
Speaker 2: Richard Edelman of course, CEO of Edelman joining us in studio.