We need to green the economy while restarting it Nigel Topping

and

our next guest is nigel topping his

official title is

uk high level climate action champion

for the united nations climate

conference the cop 26 which was

planned to take place in november 2020

in glasgow uk and it has been postponed

to 2021.

now 2020 was to be the year of

climate uh in a way the comet of climate

action uh

really five years after the paris uh

agreement when not the moment when the

world would come together and take stock

of

uh whether there is there has been

progress or or not and what kind of

progress

uh and maybe even uh up the level of

ambition

uh towards uh you know reaching the

targets set in the paris agreement

towards 2030 and uh

2050. and then the koit 19 pandemic

arrived and

shook that that momentum it did not

distinguished it

but but in the minds of some the health

crisis

and the economic crisis are reasons for

pushing the pause button

on climate others instead

seem to think that or the the

pandemic has actually shown the

fragility of the basis of our

uh economic system and of our society

and therefore we should not

try to go back to a pre-pandemic world

but we should

try to accelerate the transition towards

a cleaner and

better future and that’s what we’re

going to talk about

about climate change and system change

with our guest

nigel topping welcome to ted 2020

hi bruno nice to join you uh

i think that we need to start from a cop

this is the the centerpiece of the

international construct

uh when it comes to the discussion about

uh

climate change but it’s definitely an

institution uh that’s not very familiar

to too many so tell us

briefly uh what it is and especially why

the glasgow cop 26

uh is so important first of all to

explain what cop stands for right

because

it’s not obvious it stands for the

conference of the parties which means

it’s the

conference of all of the parties to the

un climate convention

um and and as we all know paris was

a real breakthrough because paris was

the the moment when

all the countries of the world and and

the the the un process for climate has a

very high

consensus threshold everyone has to

agree so it’s very

almost it’s basically every country has

individual veto right so it’s a very

high consensus

so paris was the real breakthrough when

everybody agreed on the long-term goal

and the mechanism

um the reason that glasgow’s so

important is that it’s really the first

the first real test of the paris

agreement like will the paris agreement

work

is it working because what what the

paris agreement did was it

did a couple of things it it gave up on

the idea that nearly 200 countries can

agree everybody’s targets

imagine the number of combinations

that’s just it’s kind of ridiculously

complex

and that had been the process before and

paris kind of gave up on that

idea but instead empowered every country

to set their most ambitious targets

but realize that you won’t get enough

ambition first time around

so the second thing that paris did was

said and every five years we’ll

review everybody’s targets and everybody

will come back with a new

plan so this is what’s happening right

now as the first countries are starting

to come up with their their revised plan

chili’s

um submitted their south korea’s made a

commitment we’re starting to see

them come in so paris will be the first

real test have we

as an international community been able

to ratchet our ambition that’s what

we’ll find out in glasgow

uh your job high level climate action

champion that’s not exactly a mainstream

job title so what’s your role in there

so in

the other thing that was special about

paris was that for the first time in the

international process

there’d been a recognition that not just

national governments but businesses

investors

cities um states and regions remember

california is the fifth biggest economy

in the world

and cities like new york and london have

much bigger economies and populations in

many smaller countries

so all these big real economy actors

have a real role in the politics

and in the economics of action on

climate change so they were invited in

not into the legal process

but into the informal process to lend

their voices um

as as the un system recognized that

those all those actions were going to be

needed

so in paris as well as the paris

agreement this role of the high-level

climate action champion was created

to work with those communities of

businesses investors cities states and

regions

to keep driving ambition alongside the

national

process so there’s a kind of feedback

loop between the two

but in terms of the legal aspects of the

discussions those are still national

uh it’s the political aspect that is

more all-incompetent

the legal agreements are entirely

between national governments so my my

job is to work with what are

sometimes called non-state actors or

non-party stakeholders

in the in the un system but of course

who all we all know that politicians

look to

citizens they look to investors they

look to um

businesses they don’t want to get too

far away from them um

and of course cities and states and

regions have a lot of power in

in many countries as well so yeah number

one the people i work with

don’t have a formal role but they have a

big political voice

yeah but that that puts you in a

position where you have you know one

foot

close to government and another one

close to the many people working on

asking for action on climate or pushing

back on action on climate

how do you create productive meaningful

dialogue

um i mean i think first first of all i’m

meeting everybody where they

are right it’s very easy i mean i spent

the first part of my career in

private sector it’s very easy in the

private sector to think that um

politicians don’t understand

the real world because you know they

don’t understand the private sector but

when you actually work with elected

politicians you realize that’s a

different kind of real world right

actually having to go around and get

votes raise money be elected maintain

your position so that you can have power

to

change the system that’s very i think

first of all it’s being

um realistic in meeting people

where they are and then i think i spend

a lot of my time acting as a kind of

translator or

or a bridge between different worlds

particularly

particularly paying attention to early

signals of change because

both incumbent businesses and incumbent

politicians

are very wary of moving too soon to

change so they tend to look at what the

majority are thinking all the time

which means they’re kind of cognitively

blinded to early signals of change so i

spend a lot of my time

searching for and amplifying and

pointing to early evidence of the kind

of change which we know is inevitable it

has to happen

but the politicians and business leaders

have not necessarily been paying enough

attention to

let’s let’s go back in a second to those

early signals but uh

you know when people from the outside

look at the multilateral effort around

climate they may have the impression

that it’s something a bit uh

dysfunctional stuck it’s a stock process

uh you know and there is maybe little

hope to

to to make progress uh we think of you

know the cop 25 in madrid

last last november where in any case if

we followed it through the media

it looked like uh at least a partial

disappointment

but when you offered when you were

offered this job you you took it so i

guess you have a different

opinion on that well i didn’t tell you

because i thought it was a slam dunk i

mean it’s a real challenge right we are

talking about the complete

re-engineering of the global social and

economic system

because energy’s at the heart of

everything we do so it’s not but i do

think that um

you know the media there’s a phrase in

the media that

that refers to a cognitive bias that we

have to look at negatives we get more

excited and pay more attention to

negatives

the media have a phrase that if it

bleeds it leads and i think that’s the

story of madrid

you know in madrid um just a year after

the

ipcc that’s international paddle on

climate change the the panel of

scientists

and published their report on the uh on

the difference between a 1.5 degree

warming and 2 degree warming which

basically said that

it’s a massive difference and for every

fraction of a degree we have

significant human and economic damage so

let’s it really

reset all of our thinking to we’ve got

to go for 1.5 degrees which means

getting to zero

by 2050 in the one year between

that being reported and madrid suddenly

we had

hundreds of businesses and cities and

states and regions and lots of countries

saying okay we’re gonna so we had a

massive ratchet in ambition

during the madrid conference

the continent of europe the entire

trading block one of the biggest

trading economies in the world committed

to net zero by 2050

and yet the media coverage was dominated

by protests on the street

which which are real and which reflects

real

discomfort unease anger right on the

street and

the failure to negotiate some small bits

of the paris rule book because that’s

mostly what’s being left to negotiate

they’re important politically because

that reflects our ability to agree

but they’re not as material as the

entire european economy to kick

out to net zero so i think there’s

always it is a very complicated process

right it does require collective action

that’s difficult to achieve

but it’s not black and white and it’s

not failing we have a significant

increase in ambition since paris and

it’s still not enough

and by the way the science is kind of

running away from us as well because

every time we look at the science

it gets worse and in fact next year now

with the delayed cop we’ll have the next

the sixth

set of reports start to come out from

the ipcc and i think we all know that

that’s going to raise the

level of risk again so i’ll put more

pressure on to ratchet ambition

before glasgow so before

the pandemic there was a growing

momentum around climate

from politics to business to citizen

youth activists in the streets and and

so on

but now the world is going you know he’s

exiting the acute phase of the pandemic

possibly but entering an economic shock

a global economic shock

uh and and and at the same time the need

for radical cuts in greenhouse gas

emissions is not going away but

now many people are basically saying

let’s postpone talking about climate

let’s you know roll back regulations we

need to restart the economy

we can think of climate uh later and

restarting economy of course it’s an

urgency so how do we restart the economy

without forgetting the the urgency

of of the climate crisis

i i think i think there is a i mean

there is there is a

i mean you know there is a sort of truth

to the

sense that one must concentrate on the

most immediate problem first right so i

think

it is true and understandable that

ministers and leaders

have focused more on the immediate

health immediate health crisis and less

on the long-term climate crisis because

nobody wants to be told that their

long-term health is being secured whilst

their short-term health is

well people are literally dying um so

the real issue is how how do we come out

of this um and i there’s a couple of

things i think

i i think that that we’ve learned

generally there are some people who are

head in the sand on this that we really

should take the science of risk very

seriously

um and we we understand the science of

the risk of climate change very

very well and it doesn’t get better

right we already have locked in a lot

more temperature right so we have

locked in more floods more droughts more

wildfires

more typhoons so it’s not a problem

coming somewhere else

in another generation it’s coming to us

now in our communities all around the

world

and it’s getting worse but we also know

economically that the solution

to climate change is a driver of

economic

growth and a driver of jobs so so it

would be real folly now to

ignore the science of risk and to take

stupid

economic decisions to invest in the jobs

that are dying anyway

instead of accelerating the transition

to

the jobs which will last which will

build wealth and which will deliver a

cleaner and healthier

world for us all to live in so that so

yes that ideological battle is being

fought now i mean

it seems to me that most countries i

think we’ll hear um

you know shortly from the european union

on some of the details of their green

new deal

um are very much looking to invest in

cleaning

the economy rather than taking a step

backwards if you

take you know one one sort of example of

a political folly of trying to revive a

dying industry would be the

um you know coal mining in the united

states you know president trump’s

famously invested

by saying he’s going to bring back coal

he hasn’t

because it’s no one will invest in coal

because it’s not healthy and because

it’s dying economically so actually

we’ve seen coal-fired power stations

shutting under trump just as fast as

under his predecessor who had a very

different

ideology so i think the combination of

the health and the technology and the

economics means that there’s only one

direction of travel

and those those countries that invest in

the past

will end up wasting their money and

being uncompetitive

and so they’ll lose jobs in the future

as well i think i think there’s

generally a sense of that although

that’s still being uh

contested in in in some countries but

not in many

uh i’m curious when was the first time

that

you yourself realized that climate

change was real

i mean viscerally in 1987 i

in in in greenland i was in a i was a

21 year old mountaineer and on an

expedition

and we were um

doing some scientific research on the

snout the end of a glacier where the

glacier

carves into the sea it’s in the east

coast of green and the cirmulic fjord

it’s a very big glaciers one of the main

ones draining the east

coast ice sheet um and we got to where

we were supposed to be doing the science

which is

where on the map the end of the glacier

was and all we could see

is it’s a big glacier all we could see

was like two kilometers of

open water with bits of ice floating out

to see him this is before digital maps

right so you know the map was the truth

so this was

a real we were like really shocked

through like something’s we thought we

must have made a terrible

navigation there it took us a while to

realize that we were in exactly the

right place but the glacier had just

moved back 20 kilometers

so it was really shocking um that’s

really

stuck with me there’s never been any

doubt in my mind that

um climate change is real because i’ve

once you’ve seen something

physically up front like that something

yeah

yeah i answered the question because i i

i guess that many of us

uh uh know and acknowledge that climate

comic crisis is real and and we need to

change but we’re also

you know embedded in really complex big

uh uh

systems the one that run our life the

the the economy and thinking about

changing system is really

uh sometimes it’s hard and sometimes can

be overwhelming

now you you mentioned before you have

been in the private sector

you weren’t just you’re a system

engineer so in the past you’ve worked on

large-scale manufacturing systems and

optimizing factories optimizing supply

chains and so

and i know that in your current role

you’ve actually set up your teams

to work on systemic change so can you

give us a specific example but

you know in some details about how do

you think about that how do

how do we think about changing complex

big overwhelming systems

yeah um i mean it is hard because it can

be overwhelming right because big

complex

systems are big and complex so and most

of our life we

break things down into small chunks and

work on one

part of a system and that’s how we can

get that’s how we get stuff done right

you can’t you can’t work at the level of

the whole system you’ve got to choose

you know one direction to work and and

do that but when you’re when

when we’re confronted with the need to

transform systems i think the first

thing is to have a sense of the hole so

to have a sort of map of the hole so

um so with with my team we look at what

all the different

levers are so we take something like the

the system that produces

cars which leads to a lot of pollution

um

in cities and a lot of co2 through as we

drive cars and burn

gasoline and look at all the different

levers that are influencing that system

so it’s not just

the the technology and the policy though

those are important

but also what are in how are investors

thinking about that how are

how’s the next generation thinking about

that um how

are um cities thinking about that so we

see

um and then we look particularly look

for for early signals of

of change so um you know the kind of

the evidence that cities are starting to

create um carbon-free zones or banning

combustion engine

or the or that some companies who exist

by

leasing cars are starting to commit to

go 100 lease plans my favorite example

is

nearly 2 million cars in europe they’ve

committed them all being electric

by 2030 way before most policymakers

have said

um and way before most car companies

have committed but they’re in

an early adopter because they see that

so so i think

seeing the whole system and looking for

all those different um

not being too precious about knowing

exactly what the future is because

you’re always surprised i mean most

people working in climate change i’d say

we’re very surprised by the

sudden upswing of youth voice through

the the school strike

movement which has massively changed the

politics but no one was predicting it

so so being aware of things that as they

pop up and and

and scanning and then looking at the way

they they um they interact with each

other

so so for example young people becoming

more aware of climate change

um starts to really affect the

employment contract so you find the

smartest engineers now

don’t want to work for companies that

haven’t got the house in order on

climate change because they want to be

solving problems

not contributing to them so we keep

hearing now that the best young

engineers are interviewing the companies

that they’re applying to

to make sure that they’re purposeful

enough to want to commit their

their skills and their intellect to them

so you’re looking for those kind of

feedback loops

um that shift the whole system over time

so what you’re saying also is that the

future is not something that’s that and

we walk into it right the

the signposts or the future kind of

keeps shifting because

every time one of those decisions that

you mentioned from cities from companies

etc

uh uh is taken then it gives permission

to others to

be more ambitious or to change their

practices or also

is that what you’re suggesting this kind

of dynamics

yeah and this sort of dynamic way of

thinking about the future is really

important because mostly we think very

linearly and incrementally and so we’re

always surprised at how fast things

even when we know we’re always surprised

we’re still surprised so the way i

describe it i

live on the street with 10 houses the

way that most

thinkers about the future try to predict

how many

people on my street will have an

electric vehicle in 2030

is they look for public commitments to

buy an electric vehicle and they find

out that nigel and tracy down the street

so they say two people out of ten have

committed

so it will be 20 they completely ignore

the fact that the cost is coming down

that when nigel buys his tesla um people

are going to look at it and say oh can i

have a drive and then that’s going to

encourage them to buy it so actually by

the time we get to 2030

eight or nine out of 10 are gonna have

bought so we’re so

we were very bad at you know this idea

that just adding up what people

think today tells you what they’re gonna

do in the future it’s kind of it’s kind

of silly but it is

it’s quite prevalent i always think also

that um

the the way that we think about the

future really really matters and my

favorite example is i just read the

um history of the moon landing and you

know when jfk said that we’re going to

land on the moon

lots of people said it’s not possible in

particular some of the best

mathematicians in mit said but we don’t

even have

the mathematics to calculate the orbital

trajectories to land a vehicle

on the moon so that’s quite common

that’s quite often the

response of experts actually when that

when a bold target is put

there is to say why it can’t be done

whereas what jfk did was say

i don’t care we’re going to the moon and

eventually those same

um mathematicians said okay well if

we’re going to go to the moon we better

figure out those

orbital dynamics and they did and we

went to the moon so

i think this there’s some you know

experts sometimes are very good at

saying why we can’t do things we need to

insist on the future being the one that

we want so that we

unlock some of the creative juices of

experts and engineers around the world

so we when we met for the first time a

few months ago you

told me a story about shipping and how

now the trajectory of global shipping

may change because of this dynamics of

one decision or this to another is

another can you can you elaborate on

that

yeah it’s until fairly recently like say

a couple of years ago

um there were a series of sectors that

were collectively known as the hard to

abate sectors

in other words the ones that we haven’t

figured out or got round to yet so it

was steel

cement shipping aviation

heavy heavy heavy trucking so we’re

making good progress on renewable energy

and

cars but pretty much everything else

we’re saying it’s hard to abate

and then about two years ago the energy

transitions commission published a

report

showing how we can get to zero in all

those and and the report

mostly i was one of the commissioners

but most of the commissioners were ceos

of energy or

heavy energy using companies so as soon

as that report was published it changed

the perception and around about the same

time mask the biggest container shipping

company in the world said okay we commit

to being a net zero shipping company by

no one really believed that it was

possible until that report and that

now we’ve had daimler the inventor of

the combustion engine commit to net zero

2039 we’ve had

steel and cement companies commit to net

zero um

and then so then you start planning

battlefield if we’ve got to get to net

zero shipping by 2050

maersk realized they’re going to have to

have a zero carbon ship on the water by

that’s a long lifetime asset right

you’ve got to you can’t

flip that the capital base very quickly

so now we have a coalition called the

getting to zero coalition which is

shipping companies fuel companies ports

countries

who’ve realized that if we have to get

to zero by 2050 we have to have the

new ships on the water by 2030 and then

you kind of go well we have to

have them built by 2027 because they’ve

got to be tested you have to have them

ordered by 2025 designed by 2023 so you

you kind of got to know what you’re

going to build pretty much next year

is it going to be hydrogen ammonia fuel

cell so

you that really puts pressure on getting

the some of those decisions some of the

investment done now so 2050

in many sectors is not a 30-year luxury

it’s what we do in the next five years

it will dictate it

absolutely one of the

one of the silver linings possible

silver linings of cop36 being postponed

to

to next year is that is not going to be

caught into the vortex of the u.s

presidential election campaign of

november

2020. talk to us about the us and the

role of

u.s politics in the climate discussion

maybe maybe we can put it this way

is us going to succeed in slowing down

action for the rest of the world

well yes i mean yes is a

key player in terms of the economy and

its emissions and um

and was one of the key actors in getting

us to paris

the relationship between the usa and

china who came out early with a joint

statement and then the usa working with

india was was really crucial

so um the decision of the current u.s

administration to withdraw from paris is

really

it’s damaging it damages the

multilateral system it

it kind of legitimizes

bad behavior in the multilateral sense

so it’s definitely not

helpful but i think um i think the

jury’s still out on whether

um that really has the negative effect

that it sounds like on the surface

because remember america

has two redeeming features in the sense

of climate ambition one is it’s a

federal

system so a lot of power is is delegated

um so we have many many states and

cities

and um and companies and universities

have all created an alliance actually

called we are still in so they said

you know the u.s federal government

might be saying we’re out but we’re all

still in so they’re really building

momentum and that’s that’s growing all

the time

and the other thing of course is the

market economy and as i said you know

the market really is

voting with it with its dollars i think

the really damaging thing for the usa is

most likely to be its own

competitiveness i mean i really worry

for the health of the us

automotive industry the us detroit

famously

got um the first oil prices badly wrong

in the early 70s

and continue to invest in

heavy inefficient cars

and as a result a lot of americans are

driving small light efficient european

japanese korean cars today

i fear for detroit that if if detroit

doesn’t stop colluding with the current

administration and rolling back

um uh fuel efficiency standards then by

2030 the rest of the american market

will be

electric um chinese and european cars

and they’ll be

you know with this possible exception of

tesla um the detroit

um will just not exist as a car

manufacturing centre because they’re

just strategically getting it so badly

wrong now

china’s the biggest market in the world

europe similar size

to america america can’t dictate the

technological trajectory for personal

mobility it’s being decided

elsewhere and it’s going electric and

it’s going really fast and so american

companies are

missing out so i think i think american

politics at the federal level is not the

only

game in town you look at look at the

distributed um

uh politics at the state and city level

and i say california is the fifth

biggest economy in the world and has

got one of the most ambitious plans to

to clean up its economy so

the jury’s out and um of course but

you’re right i think you are right that

it will be helpful that the

cop will not be the week after a

presidential election because that would

kind of suck all of the

media attention out of what goes on in

glasgow

let’s let’s hear from whitney if there

are questions from the audience

we we have one question from uh shahani

ghost does the world have a

responsibility to help rebuild after

catastrophic climate change consequences

such as the recent cyclone in india and

why is that not happening in a more

global

globally coordinated way

well that’s a really good question um i

mean in a way

the the inequalities

um around the around climate change are

at the heart of the political

difficulties of getting agreement over

the years

i mean there’s a there’s a phrase that

all negotiators know in the climate

negotiations called common but

differentiated responsibility

it says that um yes it’s a collective

responsibility but some countries cause

the problem much more and some are

suffering

from it much more so some so and it’s

the same within countries right we have

vulnerable communities within well

within within

um wealthy countries as well

so does the world have responsibility i

mean i think i think i think the world

has a responsibility to

um do the best job it can to prevent

catastrophic climate change and that

feeling of collective responsibility was

very much in the room in paris when the

gavel came down it was a sense that

actually collectively we had risen to

our better we were being our better

selves we were not being

driven by um

factional fighting but we were actually

doing what was right for the whole

it’s hard to maintain that right i mean

you look at the i understand the world

health organization has a budget that’s

equivalent of

of of one hospital in the states so we

haven’t created a multilateral system

that is very well resourced

to deal with situations like that um

so that’s the main reason that it

doesn’t happen in a coordinated way is

because it’s really hard because the

world

is set up dominated by individual

sovereign states and getting people to

agree to do things multinational is very

difficult

that’s why the parish agreement’s so

important one of the things that was

being negotiated in the run-up to

glasgow is

is the the provisions for what’s called

um loss and damage which talked to

exactly the kind of issue around

how does the world collectively support

countries that are going through

crises like the the the cyclone in india

right now

that sounds great and um i’ll continue

to monitor the questions behind the

scenes and i’ll be back with some more

thank you whitney uh you mentioned china

uh

nigel uh it’s an interesting case

because

it’s a leader on solar for example but

at the same time it’s building

coal plants you know week after after

week week it kind of embodies the

paradox of energy which is that

significant expansion of renewable on

one side but it doesn’t really flatten

the curve on

on on carbon uh on the other on the

other side

why so and what can be done

well it’s it’s complex right i mean it’s

a very big

complex country um and

um it really has led in um

solar wind electrification i mean you

know the the

the the buses which marcela was talking

about the um

running on the streets of santiago are

built by byd

big chinese electric bus

company um so the the um

leading the way in many of those

industrial transitions but it’s also you

know a huge economy with a huge

um energy need um they have been

significantly reducing the

um carbon intensity of their economy and

they’ve committed to doing that by 2030

and must

think that they will have turned the

corner by then

um i think that the

ultimately that the market will take

care of coal in china i mean coal in

china if you actually look at the stats

coal fired power stations in china

are running at very low utilization

levels because they’re also built such a

lot of renewable power

and the renewable power has zero

marginal cost basically whereas the coal

power has

it’s it’s complicated by the politics of

employment right because

china has employs a lot of people mining

coal and a lot of those communities

don’t know what they do i mean we’ve

seen them we’ve seen that social

dislocation in

in the states in virginia in my country

in the north of england and south of

wales where coal mining communities

have been through very painful

transitions so a lot of the work that’s

at the heart of the

energy transition now is to think about

what we call just transition like how do

we actually take

manage the transition from a human point

of view it’s not just about getting the

technology

right if you have a whole community

where every you know where half of

people work in coal mining

you can’t just say to that community

coal mine

coal is bad you have to do something you

can’t do

so i think that’s what that’s what

china’s grappling with it’s also

grappling with the

the risk of social unrest from dirty air

in cities which is pushing in the

in the clean direction um so so

my sense is that we might see some

knee-jerk reaction

in terms of keeping people working of

building some qualified power stations

in china that we had thought were going

to be off the books but that quite

quickly

that that will that will change

interestingly you might have seen that

china’s just said it’s not going to use

gdp growth as its main

planning indicator of success because at

least for a short term yes

exactly yeah so so be very interesting

to see so i i think that um

you know china is on a trajectory to

wean itself

off coal remember even in europe germany

one of the most sophisticated economies

in the world has said it will keep

burning coal until 2038.

similar drivers right they have they

have a they they they

mine and burn brown coal it’s the

dirtiest form of coal

so they’ve had to negotiate with the

communities and with the unions a time

frame which most of us think is

woefully long i mean i would like to see

germany get off call by 2030 but also

understand it’s

politically very difficult again if

you’re a politician in

in in that community where most of the

jobs are cold you can’t just turn up and

say you’re all out of a job

in three years you have to manage a

process absolutely

nigel let me ask you one more question

and then we bring in whitney and then

there is a final question but uh

uh i want to go back to those early

signals of change that you mentioned at

the

at the beginning you know because if you

look at the media and film and social

media and

and uh books there is a lot of doom and

gloom about climate

uh but then there are a lot of good news

in a way that go

almost unnoticed uh give us maybe a

couple of examples of of

of those early signals of change or

those good news and why do you think

they’re important and how to think about

that

well first thing that says don’t spend

too much time reading all those gloomy

books

right it’s really important because you

once you’ve read one you’ve read them

all

right if we don’t tackle climate change

it’s

really bad right read it read a little

bit of science read the ipcc summary

report for policy makers

right satisfy yourself that the science

has been done rigorously but don’t then

because because from the bad news

alone no solutions come right you have

to turn that in their motivation to

to act and so you have to go from

despair to hope right you have to choose

to act in the belief that we can

um avoid the worst of climate change we

can’t avoid everything it’s already in

trying we’re already seeing it

and if when you start looking there’s

there’s evidence

all over the place that we are waking up

that we are getting more ambitious the

technology costs are going down

millions of young people striking is a

positive sign right that’s young people

saying

we’re holding our parents generation to

account and you know that that makes a

difference i’ve seen policy makers say

this has changed the politics forever

i’ve seen ceos being asked by their 14

year old daughter what are you doing

about it

daddy that’s a that’s a very powerful

signal um the cost of renewables

continue to plummet you know solar costs

come down 80 the last 10 years

battery storage coming down 17 every

year within a few years

electric vehicles are going to be

cheaper than i don’t know why anyone

would buy a combustion engine car by

2030 i think

that even the oil companies who’ve been

in denial for a long time are now

starting to make net zero commitments

south korea has been financing um

coal fired power stations overseas um is

still doing so but has just had a

government elected on a net zero 2050

platform and they’ve committed to ending

so if you start looking if every country

every

community every sector you can see signs

that um

we’re starting to see exponential change

and the pace

is growing and i think that by the time

it gets to glasgow really the case will

have been made that this is inevitable

and it’s

accelerating and if you don’t want to

miss out then you better you better get

it get with the program pretty quickly

let’s see what whitney has from the

audience

sure we have a number of questions

coming in from the audience um our first

one here is from al gore

what do you think is the most likely cop

26 at this point wouldn’t it be better

to have it during the heat of the

northern hemisphere summer going forward

hi al thanks for the the question um

i don’t know um i’ve i’ve been working

with my team on the contingency of

somewhere between may and november next

year

i think we’ll find out very soon the

decision is made by a body called the

cop

bureau which is a subset about i think

11 members

of different countries representing the

different blocks of countries

the moment i’d say i think it’s looking

more likely to be later in the year

um we have local elections in the uk in

may that makes it difficult

june is the european football

championships which means

and glasgow is one of the host cities so

the the policing two major events like

that i think is impossible

so so we’re starting to look later july

might be possible august

you know nobody nobody in europe works

in august so that’s impossible then we

start running into the un

program in september and we’ve got to

fit a g7 and a g20 and so

i think the smart money’s probably on on

the autumn um

but we’ll know i think within a week

i’ll

and then we can all plan concretely and

stop speculating

and uh we have a ton of other questions

and just uh

in the interest of time we’ll just ask i

will test one more um we’re having a

little bit of a tech glitch with showing

some of the questions so i’m going to

actually read this one out it’s from our

community member

judita eisler um how can we meaningfully

connect grassroots efforts and these

large-scale system approaches how do we

engage

both meaningfully well so i think i

think

grassroots is part of the system right

and they are connected you can’t be not

connected to systems change

so everything that grassroots movements

are doing when when people take to the

street and say we want

more climate action that systems change

right

when when when a 15 year old asks um his

or her

father or mother who’s the ceo of an oil

company what are they doing about

climate change that system’s changed

so never underestimate um what small

actions can do it could be

it could be 10 million kids on the on on

the streets

um or it could be you know one student

asking their university why they’re

still investing in

companies that aren’t taking climate

change seriously all of those have

ramifications um and and

so never think that because you’re only

one small person or your grassroots that

you don’t have systems impact

those those noises um when they’re heard

that’s the trick to breakthrough often

have a disproportionate impact when ceos

start realizing that

young people that university students

don’t like the trajectory their

company’s going in so they won’t buy

their products or they won’t work for

them

that has a profound effect so yeah you

are a systems change agent if you’re

if you’re a grassroots activist so keep

it up

nigel let’s maybe end on a question that

has to do with uh

the individuals who feel overwhelmed by

this

uh necessity to change big systems uh

because people do wonder now what can it

do as an individual

can you share maybe one of two ideas

about you know what what what is the

individual action plan to contribute

meaningfully to

fighting climate change i mean first of

all it’s entirely normal to feel

overwhelmed right i mean i i i i first

knew that i was probably going to be

going into this job

just before the madrid cop and i got

formally appointed at the beginning of

february this year

but i do remember walking around madrid

with like 30

000 people there all trying to solve

this interactive problem and feeling

extremely overwhelmed

um and i have a lot of agency and i at

the heart of this process so

i’d say don’t feel bad if you feel

overwhelmed but just don’t get stuck

being overwhelmed right there’s lots of

books and with ideas of what to do i i

think

there’s two levels you can think about

this one is your own footprint

and remember we need to halve in 10

years so just don’t think about it as

tomorrow

in 10 years you can shift your

electricity supply to being fully

renewable you can actually do that in a

few days

um if you do own a car you can decide

you’re never going to buy another car or

your next car will be

a shared electric car would be an

electric car so the combination of

renewable

electricity and electric car that’s

taken a massive chunk

you can shift anytime you upgrade any

big piece of capital equipment like a

boiler or a stove you can shift from

gas to electric so you’re going from

fossil to now renewable

power um you can look at your diet i

mean you know

um intensively farmed meat is is is a

big part of the problem so you can look

at your diet again there’s lots of you

can you can read a lot about how diet

you don’t have to go off meat completely

um sustainably farmed meat but a lot of

you know a lot of red meat is bad for

your health and it’s bad for the health

of the planet

um so there’s a there’s a you know if

you’re if you fly a lot you can use this

technology more maybe say i’m going to

have my flights in the next

five years right so you have you have

individual power over all sorts of

things

the other thing is you’re a member of

all sorts of groups if you’re if you’re

a student you’re in a school or a

university

ask the question about the school

university’s plan to get to net zero

what it does with its

investments if you have a pension ask

your pension fund how are they working

on this

if you’re if you’re an employee in a

company ask the company where it’s net

zero

plan is and i know that a lot of the the

the educational tools and the work of

ted countdown will be helping people to

engage more grantly but there’s always

something you can do and there’s always

people who want to do it

with you and you and never give up right

because you never know when one

one more question is the one that

finally gets the head office and has a

change of policy so

keep keep prodding away

nigel thank you thank you for being with

us for this hour and sharing your

knowledge and uh

your uh uh your challenge really

with uh with us uh good luck for that

love to you and your team it’s

reassuring to know that

there are people like you and your team

working on this

thank you nigel thank you very much

thank you pleasure