Global News Podcast - Climate change: Your questions answered

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

We've teamed up with the The Climate Question to answer your questions about climate change. We learn how far nations are from meeting their targets, how people are coping with the impact, and about possible solutions.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. How are we going to unravel this all? From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Search for world of secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Global News podcast. We've teamed up with the Climate Question podcast to answer listeners

questions about climate change. I'm Nick Miles. Coming up, we'll discover how far nations are from meeting their climate change commitments, how developing nations are from meeting their climate change commitments, how developing nations are coping with the effects of increasingly intense hurricanes, droughts and heat waves, and look at some of the solutions being found by local communities to mitigate the risks and develop new careers in the process. In a world of conflicts, pandemics and political upheavals, there is one issue that looms above

them all and affects us all. Climate change. Indeed, there's a new warning from the EU's top scientists that 2024 was the warmest year on record. As world leaders gather in Azerbaijan for the 29th annual UN climate change meeting. We're here to answer questions our listeners have sent in to us about our changing world and what nations and individuals are doing about it. I say we, but the answers will come from two of the BBC's top scientific minds, our climate editor, Justin Rowlatt and Graier Jackson, presenter of the climate question. Hi guys. Hi, I'm not sure I'm a top scientific mind. Well there you go. Thank you. Thank you. But before we start, let's take a look at what's at

stake. It's been another year in which we're feeling the impact of our changing climate more strongly than ever. Emergency services in the United States have rescued thousands of people from flooded parts of Florida after Hurricane Milton crashed through the state yesterday. The Amazon has had its worst forest fires in two decades. More than 62,000 square kilometres have been burned this year already, an area bigger than countries like Sri Lanka. Right, we're going to head to Greece now.

Thousands of people in towns and villages outside the capital, Athens, have been ordered to move to safer areas as wildfires are raging. Let's talk more now about what is happening in India, recording its highest ever temperatures, Delhi, hitting 52.3 degrees Celsius. The government's weather bureau reported severe... Let's hear from some people affected by our changing climate now, starting with a Pacific Islander who's losing his home in Fiji to the rising seas. Unfortunately, I don't have a village to go back to anymore because in my lifetime, we've lost up to 55 meters of land. And at a different, you're talking meters, you know, you're talking

two, three meters inside a year. It's just going, it's going. And I think it's escalating as time goes on. Well, my mum's determined to stay, but she will have nowhere to stay if she stays there because every five weeks, whenever we have spring tides, the water comes right up to the house. So I told the mummy, why don't you just move down back to your village, you know? And she's like, this is where I brought you kids up, you know. To India now, where Sandhya lost her baby during record temperatures.

I used to work the whole day when I was pregnant. I wouldn't take much rest. My legs would get so swollen and painful. I remember being thirsty all the time and out of breath. One day I was cutting the crops in the paddy fields. I had felt some pain in my abdomen in the morning but I came to work anyway. I tied up the bags of paddy and tried lifting them onto my head and I suddenly felt an intense pain in my stomach. I started bleeding heavily. I went to see the doctor in the evening and they told me my baby had died. And now to America where these people's homes

were hit by some of the strongest and fastest developing hurricanes in US history. It was very scary, you know, all of a sudden we heard a big bang in the garage door, caved in and all the water came rushing into the house like a giant stream. So grab the dogs and ran as quickly as we could. Even before the officer got to me, the water was all the way up to my chest inside my car. And it happened so fast to me and scared the life out of me. I've never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community. This is the third storm in a year. I

don't know how much more we can take and then they're telling us there's another one out there. You can't go buy nothing. Of course there's nothing open right now but it all depends on these gas stations. It's just a scary feeling. So that's a situation that a lot of people are facing. So what's being done about it? Justin Roller, let's start with some basics. Tell us what are these UN climate change conferences and what they've achieved so far? These climate change conferences are a gathering of the world under the auspices of the UN. There are countries of the world coming together to try and agree progress. What they've achieved, I mean, first of all, is to get the world coming together to try and agree progress. What they've achieved,

I mean, first of all, is to get the world together talking about this issue. That in itself is important. I think that's sometimes neglected. This is the biggest gathering of the countries of the world every year, almost always the biggest gathering of world leaders. It's significant in that sense. The pivotal moment perhaps of this process was the Paris agreement, COP21 back in 2015. That was, and listeners may be surprised by this, the first time all the countries of the world agreed they need to work together to tackle climate change. Before that, rich countries were going to do the heavy lifting, other countries weren't going to do anything. So that was a really important moment.

The agreement then was to try and keep the temperature well below two degrees and try and pursue efforts to limit it to one and a half degrees. Since then, the idea has been to get countries to raise their ambition, their individual commitments to cutting climate change, nationally determined contributions, they're called in UN speak, and that's where the focus has been. And Greya, what's on the agenda this year? Money. It is all about the money.

In fact, it's been dubbed the money cop. And that's because they've got to agree on this new collective quantifiable goal. That's a big pot of money that's going to be released annually and the idea is richer polluting countries pay in, poorer countries who have historically contributed much less to climate change get to draw that money out. There's been lots of discussions on this in the buildup and progress has been really slow, disagreements on the amount, who pays in, who gets the money, should it be loans, should it be grants. So it will be a really big success if they manage to get that agreement over the line in a couple of weeks time. Indeed. Well, last year COP was held in Dubai, this year it's Azerbaijan, both big oil producers,

gas producers. We've got a listener joining us now live. Who's got a question for you both? Hi, my name is Emil and I'm from Germany. First, I want to ask how the decision is being made where the COP takes place. And secondly, what effect does the whole country have on the negotiations and the final agreements that come from them? Thank you. Okay, Justin, let's take this one at a time. How's the decision made? How's the decision made about where it is? It's a conference of the parties, the parties of the countries. The countries decide. It's basically rotated around six regions of the world.

They put forward a candidate and then the parties, the countries vote on whether that country is an appropriate place. So that's how it's decided. And it's why it moves to all these sometimes kind of rather bizarre, crazy locations around the world. So it's not necessarily indicative of. And it's why it moves to all these sometimes kind of rather bizarre, crazy locations around the world. So it's not necessarily indicative of wanting to go to an oil producer so that they perhaps put pressure on other oil producers.

There's nothing like that. Can they have an impact on the agenda though? The host country definitely has an impact. I mean, in fact, look at last year, the UAE held it, COP28. They put a huge amount of effort into going around the world, rallying support for the kind of changes they want to see and could kind of deliver agreements right from the beginning. This year you know Azerbaijan doesn't have as much money, they came to the party late, they only agreed to take

the conference on this time last year so they had less time to prepare the ground. Well at last year's meeting in Dubai an agreement emphasized the importance at least of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. Here's a question related to that from Ali Mahmoud in Dubai. For net zero to be achieved by 2050, would the world stop increasing its temperature and how much would it cost in total to achieve that? That's one for you, Grahameet. What do you think?

Let's start with what net zero actually means. This is the idea that we get zero or as close as we possibly can to zero carbon emissions as possible. There may be some industries that we can't get all the way down to zero. For those industries, we will offset that carbon. What do I mean by that? Drawing down the carbon out of the atmosphere. We can do that with machines, but we can also do that with trees and plants and soil. So when we get to net zero, yes, temperatures stop rising. I mean, these are the findings of the IPCC and many other papers, but there is some uncertainty around what happens around non-carbon greenhouse gases. So methane methane for instance, and also long-term feedback loops. So let me just explain what I mean by that. A really good

example of this is in the Arctic where there's lots of permafrost. As that permafrost melts it releases methane and then it keeps more warming which creates more permafrost melt which creates more methane. Those are the kind of feedback loops we're talking about. So it continues regardless of how much we're putting into the atmosphere or taking out for the foreseeable future, for a number of years anyway? Temperature stabilises but there may be some uncertainty around these feedback loops. I should also add it's really hard to reverse temperatures which is why it's really important

to get temperatures down as quickly as we can. To do that we would need carbon offsetting on a huge scale, I mean unimaginable scale and most people think that will not be possible. So the quicker we get to net zero, the quicker we stabilise our temperatures. Justin, a couple of people asked what's being achieved by these meetings given that the temperatures continue to increase. We've kind of got a bit of an answer to that from Greyer there. What would have been the rise in temperatures by now if we'd done nothing? Well, it's difficult to say what people would have done if they hadn't done the things that they'd done. So it's quite hard to say. What we can say is like look back 10 years before the Paris Agreement, before 2015, for example, people were saying like then there was a

one in 10 chance that the world would warm by the end of the century, by 2100, that it would warm by six degrees. And last year the UN did a stock take by 2100, that it would warm by six degrees. And last year, the UN did a stock take. It's exactly what it sounds on the book. They looked at the changes that everybody had committed to make and tried to calculate what effect that would have on the climate. They said before the Paris Agreement, they reckon we were on track broadly towards four degrees centigrade with all the changes people have said they're going to do. We're more like 2.1 to 2.8 degrees centigrade, so significantly lower, but, and it's a really big but, carbon emissions have continued to rise. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued

to rise. So we are not doing what we're supposed to do. We are not reversing the trend increase. We need to cut emissions, as I said, by 42% by 2030. And at the moment it looks like we'll only reach peak fossil fuels by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, a kind of world watchdog on energy. So we are off track. Graier, you were mentioning this offsetting system. A lot of the cuts are not necessarily by people actually making cuts themselves. It's planting trees, it's helping developing nations develop greener mechanisms and modes of production themselves. A lot of people are quite sceptical about that system though, aren't they? Here's a question from Mazna Mansour from Glasgow in Scotland.

He said he wants to know how COP29 can move beyond what he calls a potentially flawed framework, talking about this offsetting system, to establish more direct and verifiable emissions reduction mechanisms. So, Justin, what do you think? Why might Masnur suggest that there's a flawed system? Look, there are different kinds of offsetting. There's offsetting where you get somebody to actually draw carbon out of the atmosphere using a machine. Now that really does take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. If you pay somebody not to cut down their forest or to plant trees,

you've got to ask yourself what happens to the trees? Are you going to burn the trees and release the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere? In which case you've made no saving. You're not actually offsetting. So and then there are questions, for for example about how long it takes a tree to absorb carbon. Trees start off very small and they get big over time. So it takes about 20, 30 years depending on the species of tree before it starts to take up lots of carbon. So if you're saying I'm going to offset my flight, planting a

tree now will only start helping in about 15 years depending again on the species. So there are real questions about how effective all of these things are. And the other question is, if I'm paying you to change to renewable energy in your country, there's a question about, well, you might want to have done that anyway, because it's now cheaper than other forms of energy. In which case, in what way am I actually helping save emissions? So lots and lots of really tricky questions about whether this offsetting as it's sometimes called works. And what about the monitoring system for all that offsetting? How does it work? Is it rigorous? The kind of

private sector offsetting has private sector companies that audit offsets and there are lots of questions about whether or not those are accurate and how useful and how valuable those offsets are. Often offsets for a tonne of carbon can cost a dollar, two dollars. And realistically, come on, if you want to take it out of the atmosphere with a machine, we're talking $600, $700. So how come it's so cheap? But you've got to ask yourself, is it really doing what it's supposed to do? Let's take another look at these broader commitments from the countries to reduce their emissions.

They've set their targets. We all know that governments keep their promises once the glare of a spotlight is on the world. Well, not really in this world, do they? Here is a question from Karen Shevlin in Ireland. My question is, are there any penalties for countries that have signed up to emissions targets that do not meet them or disregard them? And are there any incentives for countries to help them reach these targets? Greya, are there any penalties? Officially no. And there's reasons for that, right? It would be very hard to get 190 plus countries to sign up to agreement if there was going to be a penalty. Some might also argue that

it would dampen down ambition because they might not commit to as much if they knew they were going to get a penalty at the end. But it doesn't mean that they can disregard these plans. Some of them are ratified. What do I mean by that? They're made legally binding. Other cases, citizens have actually held their governments to account by taking them to court over their pledges. I mean, you can also risk being geopolitically isolated or possibly barred from climate finance in future. And I would also add that actually, by sticking to your emission targets, which ultimately means burning less fossil fuels and building more renewables and clean technology, you have an economic opportunity there. Jobs, green growth.

Well, that brings me on to the next, I suppose it's an elephant in the room, if you like, in terms of climate change, a change of government. I'm talking about the recent US election. Well, back in 2021, President Joe Biden introduced an order freezing new oil and gas leases on public lands and doubling offshore wind produced energy by 2030. But now that Donald Trump is heading back to the White House, the same Donald Trump who's called efforts to boost green energy one of the great scams, he's also pledged to pull the US out of the UN Paris climate accord and to ramp up fossil fuel production.

Here he is at a rally a couple of weeks ago. Well, the result of the election came a little bit too late to get any listeners' questions on this, but here are a few for you, Justin and Greg. First of all, Justin, what impact is Donald Trump's victory likely to have on US climate change policy? It undoubtedly will make a very big difference to US climate policy. He said he wants to ditch President Biden's kind of very bold and ambitious climate policies, notably the Inflation Reduction Act, which has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with green energy which mandates kind of like it's about 470 billion dollars of funds to green technology. He wants to roll that back There's a real question about how easy that's going to be for him because loads of the cash flows into Republican states deliberately

They designed it that way and Republican lawmakers are already saying hold on a second I quite like some of those tax credits and subsidies coming my way. But he has said he's going to block new grants made under it, he's going to stop loan funding from it. So very likely there will be big changes in that huge bit of legislation. Greg, if Donald Trump does pull out of the 2015 Paris Accord, what difference does that make in terms of emissions targets for America? Does it mean it's sort of free to do whatever it likes again?

In theory, yes. And there have actually been lots of analysis about what will happen to the US's emissions. One from Carbon Brief thinks about four billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the years up until now, until 2030. That is a lot. That's about double what Russia puts out in a year. So it is significant. I would add though, if we look back at Trump's previous history, yes, he was very aggressive and we might expect swifter attacks on climate policy and environmental institutions. But actually, solar soared under Trump last time, it doubled, more than doubled in capacity. Wind, we saw about 50% increase. And that's because the economics of green technology is working, right? Solar and wind is so much cheaper than oil and gas. And that's where

I think money talks, right? That's where things speak. So I think he can absolutely slow things down but whether he can stop it entirely is another question. Last time around he said, I'm going to support the coal industry and coal plants continue to close. So there definitely is a limit to what he can do, but there's no question he will have an impact. And then there's what we heard, drill baby drill, drill baby drill, he's going to go all out. He is going to go all out.

He said he's going to do it. He's going to lift federal restrictions on drilling. He's going to issue new licenses to oil companies. I mean, again, there's a question about regulation. The government policy is one element in an oil company's decision about whether to drill. The other point is oil is booming in America already. So under Biden, it grew to be the biggest oil producer

the world has ever seen. It produces 13 million barrels of oil a day. So it's a huge producer already. And there is a question whether oil companies would want to produce more now because they can keep it in the ground and maybe sell it for more later. One other question I've got for you, Graeer, on this is with America pulling back, Joe Biden's representatives will be there in Azerbaijan but they can't agree to whether they're a lamed-up president in the last couple of months. Will that have an

impact, you think, on other big emitters like China and the commitments that they are willing to make? So I think the US has always been a bit of a reluctant delegate in those negotiations. It's EU that really has been driving forward a lot of the climate action that we see. China's really interesting because I think the US is wanting China to contribute

to this new collective quantifiable goal, that big pot of money I was talking about earlier. And actually that may not happen now. It's going to be very hard to get China to pay into that. But I think the other thing is that this comes at a time when if emissions do increase under Trump, the world really needs to step up its action to mitigate those effects and reduce the effects of climate change, i.e. faster emission cuts. And I know I read many tweets and many bits on social media from the climate community, really despairing actually about what was going to happen. But I think if we want to avoid the worst effects, actually action is the antidote here. A Trump presidency.

Justin, you want to come in? effects. Actually, action is the antidote here. A Trump presidency. Justin, you want to come in? I just wanted to jump in to say, look, I think there are always real doubts about whether China wanted to contribute to the goal. China is playing this really interesting game where it is funding climate action abroad, but it's doing it unilaterally because it wants to use it and tie it to its own kind of power and authority. China is in many ways the most progressive country in the world in terms of climate change, investing more in green technologies than anybody ever has, expanding the base of green technologies in their country more than anybody has. So, you know, it is playing in its way, a really, really important role.

Yeah, and I would say this is what I was kind of talking about in that with the economics of the green transition, there's a real opportunity here for power and progress. And if you look at what China is doing with solar, it controls something like 90% of the supply chain, wind is similar, something like 70, 80%. So they have huge geopolitical control over these sorts of renewable systems as well, at home and abroad. As you've both been saying, these COP meetings are more than just about emissions targets. As we've heard this year, it's about money, money for developing nations, for greening their economies, if you like, moving from coal-powered fire stations to renewable energy

systems. It's also about wealthy nations agreeing how to help those countries most vulnerable to climate change. Well, some parts of the world are experiencing far more dramatic weather events than others, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts and floods. The cruel irony is that those events are often happening in nations that have contributed least to climate change themselves. Here's Kalpej Bossal from India.

Changing weather pattern, particularly unseasonal rains, has forced several farmers, third in India, to abandon cultivation of conventional crops. Does this trend seem to continue and intensify due to global climate change in future? Well that brings us on to how those most at risk can be helped. Here's Anthony from New York. One of the demands countries in the global south have when it comes to wealthy nations and corporations responsible for fueling the climate crisis, making reparations to Global South for the damage that these wealthy few have done.

So Justin, where do we stand with reparations? Is that how they're referred to? No, it's not how they're referred to. The subtext of all of these international negotiations is money. So originally, as I said, developing countries said, we're not even gonna start tackling climate change. You've gotta do it and you've gotta pay for it. There was a commitment then to pay $100 billion a year to developing countries, which was due in 2020 and was finally paid in full by 2022.

So we've been very slow even to pay that 100 billion. But the kind of money that we've been talking about in this new goal, we're talking about like a trillion dollars is what they're asking for. Not all of it kind of hard cash, not all of it transfers of cash, but kind of loans to make it easier for them to borrow money on international markets and that kind of thing. But this is the whole process is all about transferring resources from developed countries to developing countries, although nobody uses the language of reparations because it has kind of legal implications which they'd be uncomfortable to acknowledge. Graeer, one of the parts of the world that is most at risk for climate change,

an existential threat for many, are these low-lying Pacific Islands. Here's a question about that from Manuel Nunes, who's from Panama City. How is the world helping small island nations that might disappear due to the rising water levels due to the climate change? Grae, is there any hard information on that? Not a huge amount. I think many would argue that the help has been fairly minimal and nowhere near at the scale that's been needed. That said, there has been done. You know, we talked about finance and the flow of money from richer countries to

poorer countries. Fiji has been a recipient of some of that money and it's been moving, relocating villages on the coast up into higher land. That said, the minister has said that funding is minimal and nowhere near covers the cost. There's been other help in the forms of like migration lottery. So we see that between New Zealand and Kiribati and also Australia offers like a program where people from Kiribati can come over and train and get knowledge and go back for, well, when they do eventually have to leave for good, they go with skills and a desirable rather than, and I'm quoting the president here, a hopeless refugee. Some people are buying land, some countries are buying land on other countries' land. There's a lot of

questions about that. Do they become citizens of that land? Is it their own state? There's a lot of unanswered questions about how this is going to work. One more issue comes from Jackson, who's a student from Ohio in the US. As carbon dioxide emissions of developing nations rise, he wants to know this. What are some appropriate avenues to mitigating these countries' emissions while not hindering the development of their respective nations? Interesting one, and a quite controversial one, isn't it, Justin?

It's a really good question and it's a real challenge. So part of the idea of this transfer of funds that we talk about is to have funds available for them to build renewable power stations instead of using, you know, old fossil fuel technologies. But it's really tricky and there isn't that much money available. So it's really interesting at COP. I was talking to the Iraqi Energy Minister and he was saying, look, the only resource we've got, the only kind of resource we've got is oil and gas. And we're selling oil and gas, that's the only way we're going to get the finance we need to transition to a green economy unless you cough up. So they're kind of, in a way, it's kind of, they're kind

of holding the world to ransom. But they're saying, look, we've got no choice. And you can see their point. They said, look, our country has been wrecked by war. We've absolutely got no choice but to sell this stuff. And it's interesting, look at Azerbaijan, 90% of its export revenues are gas and oil. It's mostly a gas producer. Again, what does it do if it's not allowed to sell that stuff? And how can it possibly affect a green transition without that cash? Again, coming back to that thing about flows of cash from developed nations to poorer countries. Stay with us, because in the second half of the podcast,

we're going to be looking at how trustworthy the information about climate change actually is. How can we distinguish fact from fiction? Still to come. I'm Myra Anubi, the host of People Fixing the World. And I'll be bringing you some stories of how people around the world are finding ways to reduce greenhouse emissions and deal with the impact of climate change. My talent as an athlete is swimming long halls over the curvature of the earth. Life's Less Ordinary is the podcast with astonishing personal stories from across the globe.

My past is very bad and I survived. You have to tell the story. Expect the unexpected. All of a sudden the car exploded. Lives Less Ordinary from the BBC World Service. Here's a thing that happened to me. Welcome back to this extended edition of the Global News Podcast. Now there was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, when for every mainstream climate scientist a media organisation spoke to they would feel the need to interview climate change denialists who said there was no link between human activity

and climate change. That idea of equivalence giving equal weight to those opposing views is largely a thing of the past now but the question which information can you trust is still widely debated. Julian Aguilar-Gathier from Seville emailed us to ask this. How can anyone be sure of the reliability of the data and of the conclusions voiced by different experts? I put that question to our misinformation reporter Marco Silva. When people try to explain the world around them, they sometimes turn to theories that aren't based on fact,

especially if they're not sure they can trust scientists. But the way science works makes it more reliable and trustworthy than any bogus or misleading claim you may come across on social media. Scientists come up with hypotheses, they test them out, they scrutinise each other's work and unless evidence backs their ideas, well, those theories won't go very far. What we know about climate change is the result of generations of scientists building on each other's work to explain as accurately as possible what's happening to the planet. Unlike some dodgy claims online, what scientists say about the climate can be tested and backed by data. But what happens when the dubious claims come from a

self-described scientist? Then you need to ask yourself, is this person really an expert in climate change? If so, what are their qualifications? What institution are they representing? And more importantly, do other scientists agree with them? Has their work been reviewed by their peers? By asking these questions, you'll be able to better assess how credible a source this person may or may not be. Justin, you wanted to come in on that. Well, I want to come in on that because Marco's absolutely right when we're talking about climate science. Obviously you want to be a scientist, hopefully a published scientist with a record of experience behind you. It is a bit different when we talk about climate action and the appropriate things for a society to do to tackle

the problem. That is more, I mean you could argue the science is objective, how you deal with the problem is more subjective and more open to discussion, I suppose. I just think that's worth bearing in mind when we look in the round at the debate. Here's another related question from Carmen Mendez-Naya. I wanted to ask to what extent misinformation is affecting the scientific knowledge we have about climate change. My concern is we have all the information at hand nowadays, which didn't happen in the past. So is there too much information around?

And the things about climate are not so different from 50 years before. Let's go back to Marco for this one too. are not so different from 50 years before. Let's go back to Marco for this one too. Governments and scientists around the world agree man-made climate change is already happening and getting worse. What should be done to tackle the problem is where the debate actually is. As Carmen says, today there's no shortage of information out there about climate change. But it's thanks to decades of thorough scientific research that we now have a better understanding of climate change and its impacts.

Still, just go through your social media feed and you might find it difficult to separate fact from falsehood. What misinformation does is muddy the waters. It confuses people making it more difficult for them to make informed decisions. It divides them too, making it harder to debate and agree on what to do next. That's why experts say climate misinformation is a big deal. It delays important decisions when there's little time to lose. One example of that level of academic scrutiny that Marga was talking about is in the era of

attributing individual extreme weather events to climate change and when you can do that. Grae, you've been delving into this. Who's deciding whether it's climate change related? There are many scientists around the world but but the most well-known one is probably the World Weather Attribution. They're a group of scientists at Imperial College London and it's run by a wonderful woman, and I know Justin agrees, Dr. Freddie Otto. And you know, before this, we were saying, you know, climate change might have made this hurricane more likely, this drought more likely, more intense likely likely likely. What her work enables us to do is to say this was caused by climate change, it was made this much more worse, 20 to 30 percent more intense rainfall and the way she does that is really interesting. You know you build this as

science, well experts, nerds I'm going to go with. How she does it, they run a model with a world that's not warmed by anthropogenic emissions and sees how often this event happens. And then she runs it in a warmer world and sees how many times it happens within that period. You subtract the difference and you get, hey, this was made three times more likely because of climate change. And Justin, why is it, it might sound like an obvious question, but why is it important that we attribute these things correctly? If you can attribute a weather event to climate change, you can really drive home for audiences the impact that climate change is having right now. It really does make a huge difference to communicating the issue that we face.

Let's move on now. We were talking about misinformation over climate change. It's a real concern for many people, but so is corporate sleight of hand. Several of our listeners seem to be worried about whether companies that say they're becoming greener than green are really that. Hello, I'm Thanh Yamai from Bangkok, Thailand. I've noticed that a hundred of nations and thousands of companies have announced their net zero targets. But what happens if they fail to meet those targets on time? Will there be enough pressure to ensure it's not just another marketing campaign? Hi, I'm Anthony from New York City. How are governments and leaders planning to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable

for fueling the climate crisis and making the largest polluting corporations pay what they owe to communities for the damage they've done. First of all we decided to ask our business correspondent to take a look at this. His name is Theo Leggett. A number of big firms have certainly rode back on their climate targets in recent years and one reason for this may be that impressive targets are really easy to sign up to when they're decades away, but as time passes and those deadlines become closer and more pressing and the costs of meeting them become clearer, ambitions do get reigned

in. So we've seen the likes of BP, Shell, Total, Unilever, many others modifying their targets over the past couple of years at the very least giving themselves more time. Of course it's not always 100% the individual company's fault. Sometimes they are relying on support from governments that doesn't happen, for example, or infrastructure developments which aren't made. Now, when it comes to holding them to account, one way in which that can be done is through climate litigation, and over the past few years there's also been a steep rise in the number of climate-based lawsuits, for example where companies have misrepresented their progress in cutting emissions.

And also there's the role of activist investors. They can buy shares in polluting companies in an effort to question and influence their climate policies. Justin, there are a couple of real world examples there about how companies that say they're doing what they want their customers to hear are not actually doing it and they're coming unstuck really aren't they? They're being fined, adverts are being pulled. Do you think this is bringing companies into line more? No, I would say more often than not they're not held to account for the things they do.

I would like to make a wider point though, which is, you know, we talk about the responsibility of companies to change their behavior, but we as consumers are part of this transaction. You know, fossil fuel companies have legal rights to produce fossil fuels and they're allowed to sell it to us and effectively as consumers, we are the ones who are burning that fossil fuel and putting it into the atmosphere

when we put it into our car or get on a plane or whatever. So we are responsible and it's very easy to demonise the fossil fuel companies, say well it's all there for why aren't they doing something. You've also got to look at your own actions and say well what am I doing to contribute this and how am I complicit in a world in which we use fossil fuels and what can I do to change that world if you want to change it? Greg, do you want to add something? I was also just struck when Theo was talking about polluter pays and how difficult this sort of concept is to get off the ground and the mechanisms. But something I learned about recently, which I found really interesting, was something called the Oil Pollution Fund.

Basically, there was a big oil spill in the 50s and lots of oil washed up in Cornwall in the UK and in Brittany over in France. Within three years, the UK and French government had managed to create a fund whereby there was a small tax. I can't remember the exact figure but a small tax paid on boats departing, oil tankers departing, that goes into a fund and that helps pay for the oil pollution spills. And it's not dissimilar to something perhaps we might need in order to get big polluters to pay. We're going to stay with, I suppose, the area of commerce, climate change and sponsorship now. Here's a question from Kira Adurn in Brazil.

I don't quite understand why fossil fuel companies which are destroying the planet and don't seem to care aren't banned from advertising freely even at the Olympic Games on competitors' helmets. These companies for sure should be blacklisted from advertising like tobacco companies. Is it something being discussed somewhere? Can it be done? Theo Leggett gave us his response to that. Well there is certainly a precedent for this. Many sports, including motor racing, football, baseball, tennis and golf, used to be saturated with tobacco company logos. The tobacco industry for many years saw sport both as a way to draw in new generations of smokers and to

promote particular brands. But as health concerns grew over several decades, governments and sporting bodies did introduce a patchwork of restrictions. However, it wasn't until the early 2000s that the drive to ban tobacco sponsorship altogether gained momentum with the signing of a major international treaty on tobacco control. So to ban oil company sponsorship would probably require a similar level of international cooperation and consent. But it would be difficult. Firstly, energy firms are powerful lobbies.

But also, many of them could point to their non-oil activities in order to legitimise their sponsorship. Involvement in clean energy, wind power for example. So a more effective way of clamping down on polluting companies might be for individual sports to decide unilaterally not to take money from particular companies rather than trying to get all the agreement together to impose a blanket ban. That was Theo Leggett. Well, a lot of companies, as Justin was mentioning that, are making some efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. And despite what may be their best intentions

of businesses, nations undergo devastating events and priorities change. One of the most traumatic is, of course, conflict. And a number of you have got in contact to ask this. Hi, my name is Connor and I'm from New Mexico. My question is, how does war affect climate change? We had similar questions from listeners in India, Dubai, Greece and elsewhere. Greya, in a very, very practical sense, what impact does a conflict have in terms of the bombs used,

the buildings destroyed and how to go about reconstructing? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of things to take into account here. There's the direct emissions from the fuel in the tanks and the boats and the planes, plus the energy used to manufacture the guns and munitions. And there's also lots of indirect emissions. So common military tactic is to target energy sources, so power plants and that infrastructure makes countries really vulnerable. That also means people turn to other more dirty polluting fuels like coal and wood. Now, we don't really know what the

emissions are from wars and militaries, but we do have estimates. The reason we don't know why is because countries don't have to disclose it. It's part of the Paris agreement. We don't have to disclose it. And the reason they say is for security reasons. But the most recent estimate we have puts the military's contribution to climate change at 5.5%. That's from a study from the scientists for global responsibility and the conflict and environment observatory. That is significant 5.5%. That's more than aviation. If it were a country it would be fourth ahead of Russia. Well I was not expecting that figure at all. Well I suppose you've got to add to that Justin, the fact that priorities change as well. A country that is at war

or that's under attack is not going to be thinking about ways of reducing its carbon dioxide emissions? No, absolutely not. And actually, I'm very surprised at that figure. But there's another impact which we've got to take into account. When you see a rise in conflict in the world, countries respond. And it's very interesting, for example, to see NATO countries spending far more money on armaments than they were before. That's money taken out of other budgets, as you say, money not available for other stuff, and money normally quite carbon intensive products, you know, big trucks and stuff to take stuff around. Once you bought it, you've got to use it, you've got to drive it around.

The soldiers need to know how to use their equipment. So there is definitely a carbon cost to all of that. And all of this, I mean, you, as you said, you were in Somalia recently, we had another question in from somebody in northern Nigeria and he was saying look Boko Haram, the militant group there, they were driven if you like by the climactic problems in that part of Nigeria and we've seen civil wars in parts of Darfur in western Sudan driven by climate change. It is a huge problem, it's a vicious circle isn't it? It is a vicious circle, it drives conflict, it makes resources locally more scarce. And when you've got underlying conflicts anyway, it exacerbates those and therefore can make conflict much worse, make it harder to solve. Of course, then the other thing it does, it drives people who are living on the land off the land.

They become refugees. They're unemployed. They're looking for work. They're ready fodder for, you know, insurgent groups or militias that are formed and therefore there's a ready supply of people to fight. So it's a really terrible problem. It was really evident when I went to Somalia that climate change was playing this role and it's something that often isn't acknowledged as a feature of climate change. No and I would add, you know, there's no such thing as a climate refugee. So you know, you say you're a refugee but actually if someone were to turn up on the border and say, hey, I'm here because of climate change, that wouldn't be recognised necessarily and

you might be sent back as a result. So there's also lots of sort of legal and logistical things that don't have answers yet. Yeah, and more and more people will be forced from their homes and be in that predicament of having no legal recourse to claim asylum perhaps. Exactly right, yeah. I suppose when you see the conflicts adding to global emissions at the same time eroding the will of nations to address global warming as a priority, it's easy to become pretty disheartened. If you add to that the fact that most nations are way off meeting their carbon dioxide emission

targets, it can seem a pretty insurmountable challenge. But there are many, many people who aren't put off and are pushing ahead with their own climate change projects and the like. Here's Myra Anubi from the BBC's People Fixing the World podcast. Floods, earthquakes, heat waves, people around the world are starting to directly experience the effects of climate change. And of course, international policy is crucial, people around the world are starting to directly experience the effects of climate change. And of course international policy is crucial, but on the ground people need immediate solutions that can help before all the big ideas start to trickle down. So on

people fixing the world, we're seeing all sorts of projects that are making a difference and empowering communities to fight against climate change. For example, in countries like India, groups of women, young and old, even grandmothers, have become solar power superheroes in their communities and they have a name. They're called solar mamas. Many of these women are illiterate but they've received some training to become solar engineers and to help set up solar power to communities that don't often have electricity. Our reporter, Chavy Sachdev went down to meet one of these solar mamas. In the desert state of Rajasthan, about two hours from the state capital, is a village called Telonia,

where I'm visiting the Barefoot College. The college hosts various programs for women with little or no education to get vocational training and one of those programs is called Solar Mamas. My name is Leela. I've been here since 2003. I'm 55 years old. Leela was trained as a solar engineer nearly 20 years ago. She started as a seamstress,

but then heard about this program and decided to apply. I have only studied until third grade. When I saw what's involved, I thought, I won't be able to do this. I got frightened. But the other women here counseled me and said, don't worry, you'll learn. Leela is now herself a trainer at the Solar Women Training Center, otherwise known as the Solar Mama Workshop. Every year, women like Leela teach other women from around the world to become solar engineers. These women are not just helping people transition to solar power, but also getting people to embrace clean energy.

Speaking about women, in the Indonesian part of Borneo, one woman is changing the lives of communities and helping to save the forest. Dr. Kinari Webb set up a clinic where people can get affordable healthcare if they stop cutting down trees. At the Alam Sehat Lestari Hospital, people pay for a good chunk of their health care with saplings and all those young trees are then used to regrow the forest. Our reporter Adi Marjati went to see exactly how it works.

The clinic is set in the foothills of the Gunung Palung National Park. There are around 30 people waiting to be seen by a doctor, mothers with their babies, young children and also the elderly. One of Dr. Sari's patients today is Mat Jais, who is being treated for chest pains. being treated for chest pains. When Asri visited our village, they told us that they would give a different rate if no logging takes place. I used to work as a logger when I was young to cover the cost of living. We used to have a buyer that collected wood from us.

Now we don't do that anymore. Nobody in our village cuts down trees anymore. It's an idea that saving people's lives and giving them an incentive to save the rainforest or to stop cutting down trees, trees that are crucial in the fight against climate change. Also, I have to introduce you to Francis Carre, a man on a mission to build a cooler future. As the world is getting hotter, the need to stay cooler is also growing. And Francis is one man who understands this well, because he grew up in one of the hottest countries in the world, Burkina Faso. But Francis, who's now a renowned architect, is blending his training and combining that with

traditional knowledge to design modern buildings that can keep people cool in extreme heat. And many of them are built from clay. Our reporter Sirki Dramme visited a hospital called Dr. Sego Go's Surgical Medical Center in Burkina Faso to hear how it's helping people there. The buildings here are built with bricks made from locally sourced clay and there are no air conditioners but despite that you can sleep comfortably. Omar Wedrago is the head of the hospital. The design is beautiful and ecological, and when you are here, you feel it's a natural microclimate.

That's all down to the special touch of Francis. It's so simple, but it works. And that's what I love to do with my knowledge, my architecture, you know, to contribute, to create buildings that are cooling, that are serving the community and inspiring for the world. All of these ideas are just a lovely reminder that however big or small, we can all make a difference in the fight against climate change. Myra Anubi there, giving us just a few examples about how people are, I suppose, finding new careers in a difficult situation, get involved in climate change projects. A lot of our listeners

are keen to play their part too. Micah from Germany sent in this question. Hi, this is Micah. I am 32 years old and I am from Germany. It seems to be an unfathomably huge issue and I have a problem figuring out where to start. Can you give me a hint, three things that I can implement today to help slow down climate change? Okay, personal goals. Greya, what could she do?

I'm going to be annoying and I'm not going to give her three things. I would advise there are lots of surveys online that you can take. They take a few minutes to answer and they will tell you where your carbon emissions are and you can go from there and work out what's going to be good for you to do and where your biggest set of emissions are. I mean, generally in the West, it tends to be around flying. That is a huge carbon cost for people's personal emissions. Eating red meat is also a big carbon cost. But what I would like to put to Micah is what is your agency? What can you do? What do you feel good about? And I will quickly, if I may give you the story of someone who I was really inspired by, a dentist in Borneo, her name is Hotland. And she noticed that people were cutting down the trees in the

rainforest and selling them in order to pay for dentistry. She thought, well, I need to do something about that. What did she do? She basically gave subsidized dental care to people who said they wouldn't cut down the forest. But also if they couldn't afford it, she would ask for their time instead and give them free dental care. And with their time, she would help them plant trees or she'd train them in new avenues of income. And actually, as a result, deforestation in that area has significantly declined along with things like child deaths. So what is your agency? What do you feel strongly about? What can you do in your day-to-day life

to make a difference? That is what I would put to her. So not necessarily just what you can do in terms of what you consume, but what you can do in terms of your impact on your wider community. Justin, would you agree with that? I totally agree with that.

And we've got to remember that actually our personal emissions, the emissions we control are a part of a much wider emissions footprint, emissions that are emitted on our behalf by other people. We can't really affect those and if you want to get into that kind of more kind of systemic change, you do have to engage in kind of politics in one way or another and I'd absolutely echo what Graer says and you should think well what do I like doing, what do I want to do and you should you know use your kind of talents and skills and things you're interested in to kind of

direct you towards the places you probably have most effect and you're probably most likely to enjoy taking part. So take action, get involved, I'd say. Now what you said at the beginning of that answer was very much along the lines of a question from Odina Neill in the United States. Hello, my name is O'Dean O'Neill and I'm calling from Chevrolet, Maryland. I'm wondering about the degree to which climate change is attributable to the decisions of individuals versus the decisions of corporations and governments. So, Justin, it is a mishmash. Everything is intertwined, isn't it? It is so complicated. It comes back to something I said earlier about the fossil fuel companies.

And, you know, they're obviously responsible. They produce the stuff, but we burn it. So who's ultimately responsible there? It's a kind of network of choices. Society has evolved over time to permit certain things and not permit other things and we need to work together as communities to begin to change some of the choices that we've made if we're going to make the deep systemic changes that we need. We are helped as Graer said earlier by the changing economics of energy, by the fact that renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. That means people are more likely to use it, they're going to do it of their own free will without having to worry about the impact it's having on the world. So hopefully that process begins and there's a momentum behind there.

But the scale of what we need to do is absolutely enormous. I mean renewable energy is about electricity, 20% of our total energy use. The other 80% is fossil fuels, largely fossil fuels. That's going to be even harder to tackle than switching to renewable electricity. And one of the other things is making your voice heard. I can't help noticing that in the last couple of years, it seems that the VIM seems to have gone out of these big marches that we saw just before the pandemic. Am I wrong to say that? Are people raising their voices out on the streets less than they used to about climate change?

I think there is a sense of that, and that's because we've seen a real big tightening on protest laws across the world, UK included, and that means people are less inclined to go out if they fear they might have a criminal record at the end of it. But to just come back to something that Justin said earlier, because I totally agree with everything he said, you know, there's a whole really complicated network that we need to change But the IPCC finds that something like 40 to 70 percent of the reductions by 2050 come from individuals So individuals do have a really big responsibility here But where the governments and corporations really come in is they've got to make the green decisions Easy, and they've got to make them cheap and attractive

Let me give you an example. If I want to ditch my car, I need to make sure that I can get the bus. They need to be regular. They need to be cheap. I need cycle lanes where I feel safe. I can't really control that. The governments can. It's the same with green pensions.

Companies can put green pensions as the automatic default and that then changes things, so corporations, governments, yes, but also individuals. We all have to take action, whether we're a dentist, a journalist, a politician, a parent, you name it. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. Before we go, I wanted to say thanks to my two colleagues, Justin and Greer, and to all the people who sent in the questions. We didn't have nearly enough time to answer them all.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global Newspot. This edition was mixed by James Piper and the producers were Anna Murphy and Osman Iqbal. The editors were Karen Martin and Simon Watts. I'm Nick Miles and from Accra, Ghana. I'll be looking at the battle to save endangered languages in Africa.

These are languages that have not received documentation. These are languages that are not even taught in schools. That's tongue and talk, keeping languages alive in Africa. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.