Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I'm Kira Bendram, editor of Bloomberg's Greener
Speaker 1: Living section and a good friend of the Pod. Today
Speaker 1: is a special day on Zero because today is a
Speaker 1: day your usual host has been waiting on for months.
Speaker 1: Climate Capitalism, a new book by Akshat Rapi, is now
Speaker 1: on sale. Climate Capitalism sets out to answer an important question.
Speaker 1: If capitalist systems are set up to maximize profits, how
Speaker 1: can they also prioritize the planet. Over twelve chapters, Akshot
Speaker 1: introduces a dozen people who are already making climate capitalism work,
Speaker 1: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies, to
Speaker 1: the politician who helped make net zero a UK law,
Speaker 1: to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so
Speaker 1: you could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat and I
Speaker 1: have known each other for almost seven years now, and
Speaker 1: what comes across in his book is what comes across
Speaker 1: every time I talk to him. A lot of very
Speaker 1: smart and very interesting people are working on climate problems.
Speaker 1: Many of them are proof positive that the capitalist framework
Speaker 1: can be effective. As Akshot writes in the book's very
Speaker 1: first line, it's now cheaper to save the world than
Speaker 1: destroy it. I also know how much work Ashot has
Speaker 1: put into this book, so after reading it, I thought
Speaker 1: it might be fun to put him on the hot
Speaker 1: seat for once, because I wanted to ask aksha if
Speaker 1: climate capitalism is so doable, why does it seem so difficult? Akshat,
Speaker 1: Welcome to your podcast. How are you feeling nervous?
Speaker 2: Because I don't usually get interviewed, I'm not on this
Speaker 2: side of the screen.
Speaker 1: I'll try to be gentle. The underpinning of the book,
Speaker 1: I would say, and you can correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: is that capitalism and climate progress are compatible because they
Speaker 1: have to be. You say in the intro, changing our
Speaker 1: entire economic system and our entire energy system in the
Speaker 1: time that we need to do it to affect change
Speaker 1: with the climate is just really not feasible. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious whether you think most people would agree, Like if
Speaker 1: you sort of set out with these two things are compatible,
Speaker 1: do you think of that as a statement of fact
Speaker 1: an article of faith? Do you think you're making a
Speaker 1: provocative argument? Where do you think most people land on
Speaker 1: this question of whether these two ideas can work together?
Speaker 2: Sadly, the answer is that most people haven't thought about it.
Speaker 2: The trouble with climate is that there are very loud voices,
Speaker 2: very few of them on opposite side of the political spectrum. Yes,
Speaker 2: there's a whole range of voices in the middle, but
Speaker 2: that's also a small population. Most people aren't thinking about
Speaker 2: climate solutions. But if we speak to the climate crowd,
Speaker 2: I think most people will not agree that capitalism can
Speaker 2: be a solution. And that's because the root of environmentalism,
Speaker 2: or the root of most people who are trying to
Speaker 2: work on solutions, has been to try and overcome this
Speaker 2: economic system that we must accept has been a part
Speaker 2: of the problem, has been driving force of profit maximization
Speaker 2: over making sure all the impacts of that process are
Speaker 2: taken into consideration. And so there is no doubt it's
Speaker 2: a provocation. That is how the publisher pitched it to me,
Speaker 2: which is, if you're going to give people something they
Speaker 2: will read, you have to be a little provocative. But
Speaker 2: as I wrote the book, and as I tried to
Speaker 2: tell the stories, it actually became easier because I wasn't
Speaker 2: trying to create something that wasn't happening. I wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to make a case for something that should happen. I
Speaker 2: ended up writing a series of stories of things that
Speaker 2: are already happening.
Speaker 1: So the way you've structured the book, as you're alluding to,
Speaker 1: is each chapter you give us a person who is
Speaker 1: working towards climate campus is not just one person, but
Speaker 1: there is sort of an anchor person in most of
Speaker 1: the chapters. So for example, we've got Wan Gang, who
Speaker 1: is not a household name the way Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: in terms of electric cars, but has plays a huge
Speaker 1: role in ev development in China. Or we've got Brian E. Worthington,
Speaker 1: who was actually the very first guest on Zero, who
Speaker 1: was the lead author of the two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: Climate Change Act in the UK. I'm curious what made
Speaker 1: you want to approach the book in this way where
Speaker 1: it's centered around people, instead of maybe looking at a
Speaker 1: different technology in each chapter, or even a company, or
Speaker 1: even just telling the story linearly over time.
Speaker 2: Our driving force for the kind of journalism that I've
Speaker 2: kind of learned with Yukira, starting at Qurts and then
Speaker 2: now at Bloombergreen has been to try and tell stories
Speaker 2: that have not already been told, or tell them in
Speaker 2: a way that has not already been done. Take Bill
Speaker 2: Gates's How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Really good book
Speaker 2: makes the case for what needs to be done with
Speaker 2: some small case studies of what's already being done. Or
Speaker 2: This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, which is in the
Speaker 2: subtitle The Climate Versus Capitalism, which is a rhetorical powerful
Speaker 2: exposition of what's wrong with the system and why we
Speaker 2: must break it down. I wanted to take the journalistic
Speaker 2: instincts of taking the story of I, really one individual,
Speaker 2: but then building out the context in which and the
Speaker 2: decades over which some of these stories play out. And
Speaker 2: my hope was that having the anchor person will allow
Speaker 2: people to read those stories in a way that they
Speaker 2: won't get lost in the abstract ideas that are all
Speaker 2: around us to deal with the climate problem.
Speaker 1: It almost reminds me of when you're a kid and
Speaker 1: you think politicians are just like such adults and like
Speaker 1: these people that make all these huge decisions, and the
Speaker 1: older you get, you're like, right, they're just we're just humans.
Speaker 1: I'll try to figure it out, and they're just people
Speaker 1: now my age, with my level of expertise shaping policy,
Speaker 1: and there's something a little terrifying about that, but there's
Speaker 1: just some comforting that These are human beings actively working
Speaker 1: to solve these problems, who are really applying themselves to it,
Speaker 1: and they are turning the abstract into something quite tangible.
Speaker 1: Or you can affect change.
Speaker 2: And that their actions are directed but are also shaped
Speaker 2: by the chance encounters and the chance events that they
Speaker 2: live through.
Speaker 1: Is there anyone in your mix of people? I know
Speaker 1: you don't want to choose a favorite child, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious of the people you spoke with or focused on
Speaker 1: in the book, is there anyone you think about the
Speaker 1: most often or you find yourself relaying their story the
Speaker 1: most often when you're talking to other people.
Speaker 2: You already mentioned his name. It's One Gang really, because
Speaker 2: it's sort of a character as a Chinese bureaucrat you
Speaker 2: rarely hear about. You know, you probably are aware Hi
Speaker 2: Jinping as the leader of the country, but you're unlikely
Speaker 2: to know very much beyond that as a general news reader.
Speaker 2: And also One Gang doesn't own a social media platform,
Speaker 2: so you get this place where this individual within a
Speaker 2: system has made a huge impact on the ev transition,
Speaker 2: getting the Chinese state to spend tens of billions of
Speaker 2: dollars in a decade to move the technology, which we
Speaker 2: are all benefiting from but people don't know who was
Speaker 2: the driving force, what are the policies, what are the
Speaker 2: massive changes that have allowed this to happen. So it's
Speaker 2: the story I bring up very often. The other one
Speaker 2: that I don't bring up that often, but I think
Speaker 2: about quite often is the story of Fati Birol. Fatti
Speaker 2: Birol is the head of the International Energy Agency, and
Speaker 2: in the set of seven year period that I have
Speaker 2: been a climate journalist, he's gone from being the character
Speaker 2: who was hated by the climate movement to being the
Speaker 2: character that is loved by the climate movement. That is
Speaker 2: reflected in how he approaches the problem, even though you
Speaker 2: know he runs an international organization, you can see he
Speaker 2: has really understood the climate problem and gone from this
Speaker 2: energy agency that was built as an organization that was
Speaker 2: very fossil fuel oriented to being this organization that really
Speaker 2: wants to drive the energy transition.
Speaker 1: For me reading that chapter, and he was also a
Speaker 1: guest on the pod, we have another person who was
Speaker 1: a former zero guest. You're struck almost by how recent
Speaker 1: a lot of this evolution is happening, that it's all
Speaker 1: moving quite quickly, and that one agency is a good
Speaker 1: sort of stand in for how quickly the conversation changes.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about. What I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: is like the thumbs that capitalism allows to be put
Speaker 1: on the scale outside of market forces. So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about regulations, I'm thinking about subsidies, and as we've heard
Speaker 1: on the podcast very recently, I'm thinking about tools like
Speaker 1: shareholder activism, things you can do to affect change within
Speaker 1: a company. In your view, and having done all this reporting,
Speaker 1: do you think that those tools are sufficient to sort
Speaker 1: of check capitalism's most profit driven in individualism driven instincts.
Speaker 2: We can answer that in multiple ways. Right There is
Speaker 2: actually no one form of capitalism in the world. The
Speaker 2: American capitalism is very different from the Indian capitalism, very
Speaker 2: different from the Nordic capitalism, to being very different from
Speaker 2: the Chinese capitalism, and each of those at the core
Speaker 2: of it have two tenets profit maximization driven in a
Speaker 2: competitive market. However, a market is never free. It's always
Speaker 2: regulated in some form if you want a market to
Speaker 2: function and do the job it needs to do for society.
Speaker 2: And to what level that is regulated is different in
Speaker 2: different countries, and we can see there are benefits to
Speaker 2: the level of regulation that may exist in a particular
Speaker 2: ccumstance versus another one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like you're saying that you have
Speaker 1: to shape the tools of capitalism to the society and
Speaker 1: like the system you're in, and it's all about the execution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we probably will never have the perfect way of
Speaker 2: making capitalism work for the planet. But what we do
Speaker 2: have is a series of experiments currently happening in different
Speaker 2: parts of the world. And what we can see is
Speaker 2: things that are working well in one part work well
Speaker 2: because of a certain mix of those tools. And something
Speaker 2: I try and do in the book is to learn
Speaker 2: from the successes that are enabled in that context and
Speaker 2: whether we can translate those successes in other places where
Speaker 2: maybe there is a different form of capitalism.
Speaker 1: So I think I agree with you that adjusting a
Speaker 1: capitalist system at the margins, or sort of finessing the
Speaker 1: nuance of it, versus trying to overthrow it, is the
Speaker 1: logical move. But for fun, just for fun, I wonder
Speaker 1: what you'd say if we found out tomorrow that we
Speaker 1: actually have another century to deal with climate change. In
Speaker 1: other words, if we could somehow remodel our econom system
Speaker 1: and energy system at the same time, would you change
Speaker 1: your answer.
Speaker 2: In a way. We already ran that experiment, right, We
Speaker 2: knew the science was pretty certain. Early nineties, mid nineties,
Speaker 2: the latest didn't really do very much. So as a
Speaker 2: society we chose not to. And sure you can blame
Speaker 2: certain actors in society directing this, but the end result
Speaker 2: is we kind of choose. But if we do have
Speaker 2: another one hundred years and suddenly that is a possibility,
Speaker 2: I think there are a few things we could do.
Speaker 2: One is we should not try and slow down the
Speaker 2: transition in the sectors that are already on the move.
Speaker 2: The move to electric cars is a really good one. Yes,
Speaker 2: we're going to need more metals and that's a thing
Speaker 2: that we need to deal with, but we will cut
Speaker 2: air pollution in cities everywhere in the world, and that's
Speaker 2: a good thing. And you could do that for renewables.
Speaker 2: It would be a much better world to have sources
Speaker 2: of energy distributed across the world, rather than being concentrated
Speaker 2: in some places where you have to take a pipe,
Speaker 2: drill it down, get some black go out, ship it
Speaker 2: to a refinery, put in tons of energy to try
Speaker 2: and draw out energy. It's just not a good system.
Speaker 2: But the biggest advantage we will get with time is
Speaker 2: not really to slow down the fossil fuel transition. It
Speaker 2: is more that we'll have more time to do diplomacy, right,
Speaker 2: that we'll have more time for countries to actually come
Speaker 2: together and agree on something, or we'll have more time
Speaker 2: to find a way in which countries that are going
Speaker 2: to struggle can be uplifted and be brought along for
Speaker 2: the transition, rather than what is a reality for some
Speaker 2: countries getting drowned at sea levels rise.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you one more question in the
Speaker 1: sort of high level macro capitalism conversation, and I don't
Speaker 1: want this question to come out wrong, so I hope
Speaker 1: you know that I love you and I respect you,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean anything by this, But do you
Speaker 1: think sometimes that you are too much of an up missed?
Speaker 1: Which I asked because I said in the beginning, And
Speaker 1: I think it's true, you, more than anyone I know
Speaker 1: or have worked with, have really helped me see that
Speaker 1: it is possible to reach net zero technically, scientifically, like
Speaker 1: all of those things can fall in place, but we
Speaker 1: are off track to meet net zero by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: We are still in a place where the wealthiest one
Speaker 1: percent of humanity is responsible for as many emissions as
Speaker 1: the poorest fifty percent. We are not really succeeding at
Speaker 1: the level that we need to. So if, as you
Speaker 1: argue in the book, capitalism can solve the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: the biggest question is why does it seem to be
Speaker 1: failing at it.
Speaker 2: It might be to do with something in my brain
Speaker 2: chemistry that I prefer to think this way, but I
Speaker 2: can also justify it, right. It's not that I have
Speaker 2: an ideological stance of only writing about optimistic solutions, right.
Speaker 2: You know, as a journalist, I do all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: I write about problems, I write investigations exposing all the
Speaker 2: flaws that companies have and people have. But I also
Speaker 2: think one aspect of journalism that is less celebrated, is
Speaker 2: less pursued, is to look at successes and what we
Speaker 2: can learn from them. So the optimism is kind of
Speaker 2: baked into doing the book because I wanted to focus
Speaker 2: on the successes. If I wanted to focus on the problems,
Speaker 2: that book's already been written. It's called The Uninhabitable Earth,
Speaker 2: And so I wanted to provide a narrative that would
Speaker 2: be more corrective to where we sit where it feels
Speaker 2: like this problem is so big that we will not
Speaker 2: be able to fight it, that we will not be
Speaker 2: able to solve it. And yet if you just look
Speaker 2: at the numbers, we are not on track for five
Speaker 2: or six degrees celsius of warming, which was within the
Speaker 2: realm of possibility as recently as twenty fifteen. And then
Speaker 2: we sign the Paris Agreement and now we're on track
Speaker 2: for three degrees celsius. It's not enough, but at least
Speaker 2: we may progress.
Speaker 1: After the break. How exactly is climate capitalism supposed to work?
Speaker 1: I want to dig into some of the mechanics here
Speaker 1: of marrying capitalism and climate progress, and I'll start with
Speaker 1: a big question, which is we have seen arguably a
Speaker 1: recent example of capitalism succeeding and failing at the same time,
Speaker 1: which is the COVID vaccine. So, with state support, we
Speaker 1: had private companies that were able to develop vaccines extremely quickly,
Speaker 1: but the distribution was very, very unequal around the world,
Speaker 1: and we see that with all kinds of tech, where
Speaker 1: poorer countries that would benefit from a quicker access ultimately
Speaker 1: don't get it. Is it possible to address that type
Speaker 1: of inequality within the capitalist framework.
Speaker 2: The COVID example is such a good one. It's one
Speaker 2: that we taught about as climate journalists at large as
Speaker 2: a good parallel. Shouldn't we think of what happened with
Speaker 2: COVID and apply it to climate And there are parallels
Speaker 2: to be drawn, but they are not one to one.
Speaker 2: The COVID vaccine was created to deal with an emergency
Speaker 2: in the human timescale we think of emergencies. Right, climate
Speaker 2: emergency is also an emergency, but it's not on the
Speaker 2: same time scale as a COVID vaccine. Did science and
Speaker 2: technology help us avoid what could have been an even
Speaker 2: worse disaster? One hundred percent? Right? Take any other global
Speaker 2: panamic of this kind. When you didn't have an mRNA vaccine,
Speaker 2: which just won the Nobel Prize earlier this month, we
Speaker 2: would not have been able to create a vaccine at
Speaker 2: the pace at which we did. So you could take
Speaker 2: some lessons, which is technology can help, and that global
Speaker 2: diplomacy is crucial in making a global problem solvable. But
Speaker 2: then with climate change, we have time, not to say
Speaker 2: if you have plenty of time or we have infinite time,
Speaker 2: but we have decades and that allows you to think
Speaker 2: about that problem differently. In COVID, you kind of needed
Speaker 2: one silver bullet solution, You needed a vaccine. In climate,
Speaker 2: you don't have that shortcut. You need all kinds of
Speaker 2: solutions to work. And that's a much harder problem in
Speaker 2: a way than the COVID vaccine. In some cases, we
Speaker 2: also don't kind of have the technology at scale for
Speaker 2: some of these problems to be solved. So the parallels exist,
Speaker 2: but not enough. And I don't think the failure that
Speaker 2: was COVID or the success that was COVID, because you
Speaker 2: can slice and dize it either way, will determine whether
Speaker 2: we solve the climate problem or not.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you fin I mean, obviously it's different timeframes,
Speaker 1: but pandemic was three four years and the next ten
Speaker 1: twenty years are like pretty important. You write in the
Speaker 1: book about how research and development responds to like a
Speaker 1: brute force strategy that like something so important happens, that
Speaker 1: everybody mobilizes around something with such urgency that just like
Speaker 1: makes it happen, And that is generally what happened with
Speaker 1: mRNA vaccines. Don't we need a brute force moment for climate?
Speaker 1: Like it does feel like if we could take a
Speaker 1: little of urgency. See that was implied by the pandemic.
Speaker 1: It would be more effective because, as you say, that
Speaker 1: is the thing that tends to move the ball forward
Speaker 1: on technology.
Speaker 2: And we kind of have the brute force method in
Speaker 2: different places. A ban on selling fossil fuel cars by
Speaker 2: twenty thirty five, which now exists in more than twenty
Speaker 2: countries around the world, including most of the major car markets,
Speaker 2: is a brute force strategy, especially if you ask a motorist,
Speaker 2: especially if you ask somebody who loves their gasoline car.
Speaker 2: At some point, we're going to have to talk about
Speaker 2: eating less meat. That's going to sound like a brute
Speaker 2: force strategy. And so yes, there are uncomfortable choices that
Speaker 2: we have to make, and policy will have to play
Speaker 2: a role there. If you talk to utilities, they're going
Speaker 2: to tell you in the two thousands and twenty tens,
Speaker 2: it was a brute force strategy to come in and
Speaker 2: say you need to have ten percent renewables in your
Speaker 2: mix by this date. Now they look back and they're like,
Speaker 2: of course, duh, it was so easy. But at the
Speaker 2: time they also have but their lobby groups coming around
Speaker 2: and saying that's not good. We are not going to
Speaker 2: be able to make that transition work. So yes, it's
Speaker 2: not a brute for strategy in the sense of a
Speaker 2: COVID vaccine that there will be a silver bullet solution,
Speaker 2: but we are starting to apply some of those in
Speaker 2: many different parts of the transition. You could very well
Speaker 2: argue not enough parts of the transition.
Speaker 1: Let's keep talking about timescale for a second. So also
Speaker 1: in the book, you write about how clean tech development
Speaker 1: basically operates on a longer timescale than most venture capital
Speaker 1: and one of the chapters you go in depth on
Speaker 1: Bill Gates breakthrough Energy ventures, which decided to work in
Speaker 1: a twenty year timeframe instead of the typical ten years.
Speaker 1: What other aspects of traditional investing do you think need
Speaker 1: to be rethought here or are being rethought in an
Speaker 1: era of clean tech being instead of Internet companies. The
Speaker 1: dominant thing that is getting a lot of investment.
Speaker 2: A big missing one that I could not have written
Speaker 2: a chapter on because there isn't a successful story around
Speaker 2: is how do you move large amounts of cap We're
Speaker 2: talking tens to one hundreds of billions of dollars from
Speaker 2: developed country markets to developing country markets. If you look
Speaker 2: at the energy transition today, You can slice the numbers
Speaker 2: many ways, but one way in which you can do
Speaker 2: it is see that develop countries are actually spending as
Speaker 2: much as is needed on an zero transition. They're not
Speaker 2: spending it in the right way, not in the right places,
Speaker 2: they don't have the right policy mix available. But in
Speaker 2: terms of pure capital that money is starting to flow
Speaker 2: in developed countries. The gap with developing countries is massive, three,
Speaker 2: four or five times as much more money is needed
Speaker 2: in developing countries, in the places where energy is not
Speaker 2: accessible to hundreds of millions of people, in places where
Speaker 2: energy demand is growing, and in places where you can't
Speaker 2: tell them not to use the fossil fuels that they
Speaker 2: have in their ground. But you can enable them to
Speaker 2: transition faster if you allow for money to flow to
Speaker 2: places where solar is already the cheapest source of electricity.
Speaker 2: Except that all these cash bottlenecks and other bottlenecks, but
Speaker 2: definitely cash as one bottleneck that needs to be sorted,
Speaker 2: and there isn't a good solution. We're currently in that
Speaker 2: place where some experiments are happening. There's the Just Energy
Speaker 2: Transition Partnership, which many of the G seven countries are
Speaker 2: trying with South Africa, with Indonesia, with Vietnam. They're messy.
Speaker 2: It's not kind of working right now, but it's at
Speaker 2: least one experiment in moving tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 2: to these countries. We'll need many more of those.
Speaker 1: When I was trying to think about to answer this
Speaker 1: question for myself, are there aspects of the investing mindset
Speaker 1: that we would need to change for clean tech? One
Speaker 1: of the things that came to mind for me is failure.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking here of Cylindro, which, for the listener,
Speaker 1: Cylindro went bankrupt in twenty eleven, and it had received
Speaker 1: this five hundred and thirty five million dollar loan from
Speaker 1: the US Department of Energy, and it became this huge
Speaker 1: talking point for why the Department of Energy should not
Speaker 1: give out loans, even though the Department of Energy also
Speaker 1: gave Tesla a big loan which worked out quite well.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there's a lower tolerance for failure
Speaker 1: when it comes to clean tech, or at least a
Speaker 1: quicker mindset to use a failure as emblematic of like
Speaker 1: why this whole thing isn't worth doing.
Speaker 2: I think the lower tolerance for failure exists because it
Speaker 2: is easy to use that as a political wedge. It
Speaker 2: is easy to point to a failure and say the
Speaker 2: entire project is not working, even though if you actually
Speaker 2: analyze the US Department of Energy's loan program, it's been
Speaker 2: pretty successful. And so it is easy to turn the
Speaker 2: failure of a clean tech company into a talking point.
Speaker 2: What we do know just from entrepreneurialism one oh one
Speaker 2: is that failure is baked into trying to solve a
Speaker 2: hard problem, and so while politics can make it hard,
Speaker 2: we should try and make space for more failure, both
Speaker 2: on technology but also on policy. We need many more
Speaker 2: experiments around the world trying different models for how to
Speaker 2: rein in the excesses of capitalism so it can work
Speaker 2: to tackle climate change.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you for a second about entrepreneurs. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the people that are starting these
Speaker 1: companies and developing these technologies. In reading the book, I
Speaker 1: found it kind of striking how many of the people
Speaker 1: we met who did not necessarily start out focused on
Speaker 1: climate change or start out focused on solving for emissions.
Speaker 1: They wanted to hedge against oil price spikes in the seventies,
Speaker 1: or maybe they just thought like that's going to be
Speaker 1: a big industry and I could make money in it.
Speaker 1: I guess my first question is do you think this
Speaker 1: is a feature or a bug? Like, does it matter
Speaker 1: if most of the entrepreneurs out there right now aren't
Speaker 1: actually motivated by climate change specifically.
Speaker 2: It's a feature of the moment in which we are
Speaker 2: in the transition. I wasn't a climate journalist till twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen seventeen, and I am a climate journalist now. This
Speaker 2: is a story that I've heard again and again over
Speaker 2: the past decade, where people realize how big a problem
Speaker 2: this is, want to do something about it, and finally
Speaker 2: find a place in the energy trend in the future.
Speaker 2: That may not be the case, because we already have
Speaker 2: teenagers in schools going out to strike wanting to work
Speaker 2: on solutions. But is it a feature of a bug?
Speaker 2: I think it doesn't matter. I think for entrepreneurs, they
Speaker 2: need to go out and solve a problem that they
Speaker 2: are really passionate about. And currently, it turns out society
Speaker 2: is making more entrepreneurs care about the climate problem. That's
Speaker 2: a good place to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're also someone that has written another book
Speaker 1: with youth climate activists and has spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking to them, and it sounds like you're saying,
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty years, we will look back and see
Speaker 1: that actually a greater share of people who got into
Speaker 1: this space did it explicitly because they wanted to solve
Speaker 1: the problem of climate change.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, rather than the transition that many of the
Speaker 2: people I know today have made, which is they didn't
Speaker 2: start working on climate now they are working on climate.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me bring this all back around to one
Speaker 1: question for you, which is, let's come back to capitalism.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves to hear that. As we talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit, China. Is this really fascinating case study because
Speaker 1: it is dominant in several aspect of clean energy, including
Speaker 1: solar manufacturing and electric cars. And it is both communists
Speaker 1: and capitalistic, which Beijing artfully refers to as capitalism with
Speaker 1: Chinese characteristics. So if we roll with this idea, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you to invent what I'm calling capitalism
Speaker 1: with climate characteristics. If we had a system that was
Speaker 1: backed up by the larger motivations of the planet, but
Speaker 1: was capitalist, what would that look like to you.
Speaker 2: It's never a good idea to make me dictator of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Just one country, okay, aach take over the world or
Speaker 1: dictator of a country.
Speaker 2: In a way, the answer is that we are already
Speaker 2: in that place where there is capitalism with climate characteristics
Speaker 2: in different parts of the world kind of forced upon you, right,
Speaker 2: Like climate ippacts are here, you got to deal with them.
Speaker 2: And in the US you're getting an Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 2: which is a subsidy driven injection of capital into green solutions.
Speaker 2: In Europe you're getting the Green Deal, which is a
Speaker 2: little bit of so but mostly direction and regulation and
Speaker 2: clarity on where the money needs to be spent. And
Speaker 2: in China you're getting a jingoistic to some extent, version
Speaker 2: of climate capitalism, where China wants to build these green
Speaker 2: technologies as a way of being a leader in the world,
Speaker 2: taking advantage of it to provide the solutions that the
Speaker 2: world needs. That's why we have Chinese solar panels dotted
Speaker 2: all around the world. So is there one form of
Speaker 2: capitalism or one set of solutions that will enable us
Speaker 2: to make this work. I'm not so sure. I think
Speaker 2: nobody currently has the solution, the perfect solution, And even
Speaker 2: if we did have the perfect solution, as we did
Speaker 2: during the COVID vaccine. We are not going to be
Speaker 2: able to deploy it correctly because we're humans and refight
Speaker 2: and we gossip, and we don't do the things that
Speaker 2: may seem the most economically rational thing to do. But
Speaker 2: in that messyness of being human, I think we are
Speaker 2: starting to move in a direction which is acknowledging the
Speaker 2: problem that is climate change, acknowledging the opportunities that it
Speaker 2: presents in creating a world that will not just deal
Speaker 2: with the climate impacts coming our way, but also be
Speaker 2: a better world. Getting rid of your fossil fuel car, yes,
Speaker 2: cuts down to your two emissions, but also cuts air pollution.
Speaker 2: It's a really good thing. You should do it even
Speaker 2: if there was no climate problem. And so there are
Speaker 2: all these solutions that are going to just make the
Speaker 2: world a better place, and it's starting to happen again,
Speaker 2: not at pace, but at least there are people working
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: You also have this great sort of through line in
Speaker 1: the book that we sort of have decoupled in our
Speaker 1: mind the economic forces and the climate forces, instead of
Speaker 1: saying that the planetary motivations and the economic motivations are
Speaker 1: the same. One of the chapters you talk about London
Speaker 1: developing its sewer system, which is fantastic history. And you
Speaker 1: have this quote from someone saying, un till people have
Speaker 1: the idea that throwing CO two in the air is
Speaker 1: like throwing poop in the street, we're not going to
Speaker 1: spend what it costs. So until we see that, we
Speaker 1: are compromising ourselves our health. But certainly like our economies
Speaker 1: with climate change, we're not going to put the money
Speaker 1: that we need to solve the problem. So if we
Speaker 1: could just put these ideas together, that capitalism with climate
Speaker 1: characteristics is just capitalism if you really think about the
Speaker 1: climate as a representation or something that has an impact
Speaker 1: on the economy, we could do the mental math a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Better, yes, but we'll always have people opportunistic enough to
Speaker 2: try and take advantage and break that consensus. The UK
Speaker 2: is a very good example of that. In the chapter,
Speaker 2: I go through the creation of the Climate Change Act
Speaker 2: as this thing that has driven the country to become
Speaker 2: a climate leader around the world, cut the most emissions
Speaker 2: amongst G seven and G twenty countries. And yet today
Speaker 2: we are led by a prime minister and a party
Speaker 2: that is trying to water down, that is trying to
Speaker 2: find vedge issues to create false narratives around a meat
Speaker 2: tax or trying to tell you not to have a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute liveable city. It's just a way for politicians
Speaker 2: to try and get some words here or there. And
Speaker 2: that's going to happen, right if it can happen in
Speaker 2: the UK, a country where people understand climate change, where
Speaker 2: there's a political consensus on trying to do something about it,
Speaker 2: and yet some politicians in powerful places are going to
Speaker 2: do things to try and slow down climate action. We
Speaker 2: are in for a messy transition.
Speaker 1: The book is out. You've been working on it forever.
Speaker 1: How does it feel. How do you feel having this
Speaker 1: finally out in the world.
Speaker 2: It's such a long process, a really nice one, but
Speaker 2: also you just never know whether it land by the
Speaker 2: time it comes. So I didn't know what it would
Speaker 2: be like. When I actually held a copy in my hand,
Speaker 2: and I will not lie, it did feel really satisfying.
Speaker 2: I sat down then I was like, huh, it's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I made this. I want to throw to you
Speaker 1: the questions, which is, if you could put a billboard
Speaker 1: outside of your house, what would it say. You've given
Speaker 1: this thought, You've asked it like twenty times.
Speaker 2: No, I've given it no thought. I always go back
Speaker 2: to what my dad told me. There is good in
Speaker 2: every person in the world.
Speaker 1: That's nice. Do you wanna know what mine is?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 1: I would do my favorite line from your book. The
Speaker 1: robots did their jobs naked. No no additional continent. Just
Speaker 1: get people thinking, you know, while they're driving. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Zero. If you'd like to order a
Speaker 1: copy of Oxshot's book, there's a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: It will make you rethink where we're at on the
Speaker 1: climate fight, and the book also makes for a great
Speaker 1: stocking stuffer. If you liked this episode, please take a
Speaker 1: moment to rate and review it, Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or Spotify. Send it to a friend or a budding
Speaker 1: climate capitalist. Get in touch at Zero pod at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot Net. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer
Speaker 1: is Christine driscoll Our. Theme music is composed by Wonderly
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Anna Maserakas and Gilda de Carly. I'm
Speaker 1: Kira Bendram and Zero will be back next week.