Instant Genius - Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac: Has climate change determined our future?

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Christiana Figueres is the former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was her work that led to its members signing the 2015 Paris agreement. Together with Tom Rivett-Carnac, she created Global Optimism, an organization focused on bringing about environmental and social change. Their book, The Future We Choose (£12.99, Bonnier), reveals that we are on the precipice of two futures: one where net-zero emissions is achieved, and one where it is not, and this week they’re talking to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about the Paris Climate Agreement, why we need to reduce carbon emissions, and how we all have a role to play in combating climate change. Read the edited interview –"We stand at the fulcrum between two worlds. It really is a question of choosing what future we wan"t Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Why you should subscribe to BBC Science Focus Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Toby Ord: What are the odds civilisation will survive the century? Mark Miodownik: Are biodegradable plastics really better than traditional plastic? Samantha Alger: What can we do to save the bees? Chris Lintott: Can members of the public do real science? John Higgs: Are Generation Z our only hope for the future? Andrew Blum: How accurately can we predict the weather? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio. com to learn more. The wisdom was emissions have to be 5% lower by Glasgow. Wow. For us to be on track. It's not that we need to be in a certain place in 10 years or 30 years.

If we're to be on that track, they need to have dropped by 5% by Glasgow. Now, for coronavirus reasons, maybe they will. But that's not actually a sustained reduction. That's not what we need, right? That's just a drop of activity, which probably will change. Although we may get used to things like remote working and not travel. so much through coronavirus, not to say remotely that that makes up for the loss of life and what's happening. But it may normalise other types of behaviour. But that aside, this is a everyday

counts now. Every day really does count. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com, all account for us in your app store. Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Alexander McNamara, online editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. And before we get stuck in, I just wanted to say a quick hello and thank you to all our new listeners out there for joining us.

We know things are a little unusual at the moment, so we really do appreciate you taking your time to listen. And if you haven't already checked out our extensive back catalogue of more than 100 episodes, then please do have a look and let us know what you think with a rating or review. So back to this week's episode, Christiana Figueras is the former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was her work that led to its members signing the 2015 Paris Agreement. Together with Tom Rivett Karnak, she created global optimism, an organisation focused on bringing about environmental change and social change.

Their book, The Future We Choose, reveals that we are on the precipice of two futures, one where net zero emissions is achieved, and one where it is not. And this week, they're talking to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about the Paris Climate Agreement, why we need to reduce carbon emissions and how we all have a role to play in combating climate change. And for anyone listening that doesn't quite know the detail, what was achieved? What was the agreement? What was the goal? So the Paris Agreement was structured in an unusual way and in a way that was a real breakthrough, right? Because for a long time, there'd been this breakdown in negotiations

around the issue of fairness. So developing countries would say for many years to developing, let me get this right. Developing countries would say to develop countries, you caused this problem, and what's more you said you'd sort it out in the early 90s. So go away and make real progress, and then we'll talk about a global agreement

because we still need to develop, right? And that was right. And it is factually true. And it's factually true. And it's a logically consistent argument, and they're correct. And developed countries would say to developing countries, well, that's all in the past,

but the future, most of the emissions might come from you, and so we can't solve this on our own. We need to do it together. And you can also defend that from a logical perspective, even though the issue of fairness is clearly still there. So for years, I mean, with a lot of complexity and detail, those two sides sort of created a schism in the negotiations. Now, the way that that was ultimately resolved was by saying, we need to have a two-part agreement. One is a shared goal as to where we'll get to in the end, but they're nationally determined steps to get there. So there was a shared goal to limit climate change to well under two degrees and best efforts to 1.5 to get to net zero by 2050.

And most countries came forward with their first five-year plan, which was the first five years of the commitment period. Now, the first test of that structure of like a long-term goal with successive steps towards that long-term goal is this year in Glasgow, which is why 2020 is so important on the road towards that ultimate outcome. Thank you. And looking back now with sort of hindsight, you can see that the climate agreements are synonymous now with countries failing to meet them, is the term that he's used. Some people have come in to say, you know, well, if the countries have pulled out or we've not met the targets, is there anything that we could have changed now to stop any other countries? Obviously the US is leaving the end of the year. Is there anything we could be doing now to prevent that spiraling into something bigger?

First of all. That angle of Christiana's eyebrows, my far friend, Paul Dickinson says that's how 195 countries agree. This is very excited. To say that assuming responsibility for the future of the planet is synonymous with failing to do so is a total and dramatic lack of understanding of what we're dealing with here. Secondly, if the question is, whether anyone, any person or any institution, has the right to force a sovereign country

to do something different than what it chooses to do. There's also a total lack of understanding. Thirdly, if the question is, would we change anything in the Paris Agreement? The answer is no. For the following reason, the Paris Agreement is not punitive. It is actually much more based on an incentive basis that we happen to think is more powerful.

When the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, industrialized countries assumed a legally binding reduction, each of them. And it was based on a punitive measure that actually imposed very high financial fines. And at the time, Canada was under different political views and administration and was not on track with meeting its reductions under the CUNA Protocol. So 24 hours before the high fine would have been imposed on Canada, I received a very cordial note from the Prime Minister saying, Dear Executive Secretary, Canada hereby withdraws from the Guter Protocol.

Because every country is sovereign. And that should be pretty clear in this country, in which the country has actually decided to do something that most of the world doesn't think is a good idea, but this country decided it. You're referring to Brexit? Yes, I'm referring to Brexit. So, you know, the sovereignty of a country should never be questioned, cannot be questioned, because every country has to do what it deems the best.

So given the experience from a completely inadequate punitive measure that we had under the Cura Protocol, the Paris Agreement was very deliberately right from the start in 2010. we decided we are not going to have the same logic under the next agreement, and we didn't know, we can recall the Paris agreement, but under the next agreement, because we had painfully learned our lesson.

Furthermore, we also understood that the next agreement could not be a short-term framework as the Kyoto Protocol had been, but rather it had to be a multi-decadal effort, Because what was at stake now was not just a small incremental reduction of emissions, but rather those emissions that was set forth by science, which is to get to net zero by 2050. And we certainly knew that if we had the chance, which we then built up, but if we had the chance to get all countries to agree to a framework, that would probably be the one in a lifetime opportunity.

And that was not one that we could count on going for five or ten years and then bringing countries back again. And that has proven to be right. So the logic that is probably more than you ever wanted to know. But, you know, when there is such a lack of understanding of the facts, then I feel compelled to correct the things. So the logic that is built, that is upon which the Paris Agreement is built. is not anything that in any way, shape, or form questions the sovereignty of any country, but rather quite the opposite. It is built on the sovereign right of any country to decide what is in their best interest.

We actually asked each country to go home, do their homework, and do consultations with all of their sectors and come back and tell us, what they could contribute that was consistent with their view of sustainable development for their own country. Lay out the vision that you want for your country over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years and then come back and tell us what is consistent with that that at the same time contributes to the global need. And so that becomes the starting line for every country. At the same time, under the Paris Agreement, although you have different starting lines for everyone, you have one collective agreed legally binding target, which is zero net emissions by 2050. So you have different starting lines, but you have one collective end point.

And as Tom has just explained, this year in Glasgow is the first time, that each of those countries will compare, will review where they are with respect to their 2015 starting line, and then go to what I would call the next checkpoint. And are you too involved in that at all in Glasgow? Will you have any role in those? Neither of us have formal roles. I mean, we help and advise friends who are working there and clearly involved, but we don't have formal roles, no. Right, okay.

And it's interesting because we've talked a lot about kind of countries coming together and pledging to make action. The book, though, turns to individual change. Obviously, it's the future we choose. It feels like quite a choice. But can individual changes really make a difference? So it's a good question. So what we...

We don't draw a distinction between those types of actions at different levels of the system. Okay. Right? So if you look at other examples in history, you know, if people said if I'm not able to personally solve this massive systemic global problem entirely on my own, then I'm not getting out of bed and having a go.

It would have been insane, right? Down to fighting, needed conflicts, engaging in great shared projects, etc. You know, we all play partial roles in great endeavours that we try and achieve to improve the world. If we're lucky, right? That's a privilege to play a role where you're a part of a whole. And the narrative that, you know, we need to have this direct power. to do all of it ourselves is sort of nuts and has not been applied to any other issue in quite that way. So we, in the book, we suggest three levels of engagement as individuals, right?

So the first is how we show up. We are facing a once-in-humanity opportunity to get on top of this issue. It's not once-in-generators, once-in-humanity. In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and to not go down the road of these really very, very, natural feedback loops and tipping points, our first task is to reduce emissions by at least 50% in 10 years. Right. So that's 7.6% reduction every year, which is unprecedented. It's in excess of anything humanity is achieved. And when you say that to people, they sort of get this tightness in their chest and they sort of, oh my God, we're not going to do it. We're not going to make it.

And they sort of get stuck by that. Now, where we start in the book is how do we show up in the face of that challenge. Because what we say is actually, you know, it's not an option to just sort of like roll over and say it too hard. We don't have to believe that we're going to be successful or even that it's going well to make a commitment to meet this challenge with a sense of gritty, determined, stubborn optimism that we will be part of this major transition and we refuse to accept this awful breakdown of natural systems on our watch. The result of four and a half billion years of evolution unique in the universe as far as we know right so that's the first part how do we show up the second part is what can we do as individuals in our lives so we all have a footprint

on this planet right it's only you know just our bit um but what do we do about that how do we take responsibility for that so we what we say is we all have to be commensurate to the scale the problem how do we reduce our emissions by at least half in the next 10 years as individuals the truth is that we overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. If you look at the next 10 years of your life and say, I need to reduce my impact on the climate by half, that's enough time. That's enough time to replace the capital-intensive items in your life that probably are causing most of the emissions. It's even enough time to sort of rethink, what do I want to do in the world? Do I want to retrain in some way that can contribute more, right?

How do I change my diet? How do I change my boiler? Do I change my car? Do I try and evolve, like Christiana and I, for example, have started a podcast called Outrage and Optimism. In part, we started that so we don't have to get on a plane so much and go around the world because we've got time to invest in that, right? So that's an example of that kind of lateral thinking. And then the third thing is, how do we engage with power? So it's true. Just engaging with our own emissions on our own footprint won't solve the problem. It's really important because it is significant.

And also it'll make us feel better. It'll feel a bigger sense of control and participation for doing that. But we also have to engage with power. So that means raising our voices, pushing corporations to go further and faster, and pushing governments at all levels. And that's an area where we're now seeing major breakthroughs. So, you know, the people on the streets, Greta Thunberg, who was in Bristol recently, Extinction Rebellion, these are amazingly positive developments.

And history shows us that once we get to 3.5% of a population, actively and consistently engaged in these things, they tend to be successful. that's not impossible, right, that we're going to get to that point. So we talk about those different levels of engagement, and we completely reject the narrative that we're powerless. We no longer afford the luxury and the indulgence of feeling powerless. There are those amazing people you've mentioned, Greta, Existrian, out there campaigning,

but there are also, you know, climate deniers who are trying to campaign themselves, which seems a bit of a strange thing to say. But how do we tackle that, all the misinformation, all the kind of, of the nastiness that's come out, especially around Greta when she came to visit, that's almost focusing our energy on that, kind of distract from the actions that we should be doing, but what can we do? Not focus on it. Not focus on it.

Do we not need to change their minds? No. Three and a half percent. No. Statistically, well, first of all, three and a half percent tips the balance. But also, we know that any societal change. or political or economic change, follows a natural distribution curve.

And so you always have 5% of the universe, whatever it is, the relevant universe, that actually are the leaders in the change that needs to take place. You then have about 5% to 10% following that that are early adopters. Then you have about 70% of people in the middle that is sort of looking both ways and not knowing what to do.

And then at the end of that curve, you again have about 5 to 15% of people who will never move. And that doesn't matter because it has always been like that in humanity. It probably always will be. And, you know, they play a certain role in change systems. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They are irrelevant to the change. And the more we focus on those people, the more, as you well said,

the more we're distracting ourselves from the work that needs to be done. So, you know, I mean, to me, a person who is a climate denier who says, I don't believe in climate, is as ridiculous as a person who says, I don't believe in gravity. It doesn't matter that you don't believe in gravity. It is completely irrelevant. It still keeps you solidly on the ground, whether you believe in it or not. Same thing with climate change.

So just forget about those people. Just ignore them and carry on and do what you need to do. And just to add to that. Stay calm and carry on. Stay calm and carry on. It's still good advice after all these years. It is. When Christiana joined the UNFCCC, right, it was six months after Copenhagen,

and everyone thought that it was impossible to reach a global climate agreement, There was thousands of people who could explain in intricate detail all of the reasons why it would be completely impossible ever to achieve that breakthrough. And so the bit that I was privileged to observe, but first from the outside and then coming in was Christiana's refusal to collude with that narrative of impossibility, right? And the way that it changed. And then once you change a bit, you begin to inject a bit of possibility and space into that. And then it changes again and then other people get on board. And countries come forward with commitments. Unexpected things happen.

And by the end, all of those people who said it was. impossible are saying oh well I always thought it was possible all along right you know they end up becoming the biggest supporters and that's great you know maybe not the climate deniers but you know they'll be an irrelevant footnote to history but you know you yourself at one point said I watched a few interviews with you saying that you kind of slipped up right at that beginning and then said that you didn't think it would happen in your lifetime how do you stay optimistic now how do you stay, what gives you hope that things will change by 2050?

I actually, I'm not sure if I slipped up. That's an interesting way of saying it. I don't think I slipped up. I think I was voicing the mood at that time. I didn't think anyone would have disagreed with me. So this was my very first press conference where I was asked many questions. And then one journalist asked me, Ms. Figueres, do you think this was after,

six months after the debacle in Copenhagen, where all countries came together and tried to reach a global agreement and failed miserably in the lights of all cameras of the world. And it was just an incredibly demoralizing event to everyone who had worked for years on it. including all heads of state, President Obama being there in person, etc., etc., all heads of state.

So I took over the negotiations six months after that, and I was asked at the first press conference with years, do you think that a global agreement will ever be possible? And without thinking about it at all, I said not in my lifetime. And I think that was a very powerful expression of what everyone was feeling. Everyone who knew anything about climate change or about the negotiations would have agreed with me, or in fact did agree, with the sentiment that it was completely impossible after that disaster.

But I am actually quite grateful to have gotten that question. And I recently think that I've found, finally, after all these years, the journalist who asked that question. And if we can confirm that he was the one, because I spoke to him and he said, I don't remember if it was me. So we're trying to confirm if it was him. Because if it is the person that I think, I really want to thank him truly deeply. Because I walked out of that room, a changed person. I walked out realizing that if I accepted that the global agreement was impossible, I was actually condemning current and future generations for hundreds of years to misery.

And that is not something that I could accept. And so I decided right then and there, well, so the first thing that we have to change here is, first of all, I have to change my attitude. And then I have to change the world's attitude to this. and we have to move away from the box of impossibility, open that, and move over to make the impossible, not just possible, but actually delivered. And that was the work of the next five years. And you talked about subjecting.

And it is, sorry, but it is not far away from where we are now, right? We are not very far away now because we think that this is the first time that we have a head of state or two or three that are against doing something on climate. But that is not so. You know, we will always have some, some in, you know, smaller economies or some in larger economies that don't want to be on the right side of history. That does not mean that history stops. That just means that they don't contribute to the amounts of history.

But the decarbonization of the economy. is completely unstoppable, independently of who is elected, where, because the forces of decarbonization are much greater than a political cycle of one person. And what we have to understand is that it is our responsibility, our collective responsibility, and that's why the print of this cover of this book says the future we choose, And we is the largest word there because this is not a single person that is deciding this. This is collective decision and a collective choice. And what we have to understand is that it is our now collective responsibility not to ensure that we're going to get decarbonized.

That's going to happen anyway. Because if you look at the history of energy throughout humanity's life on this planet, we are on a path of decreasing intensity of carbon in our energy, in our energy evolution. So that's going to happen anyway. It's the pace of that that we're determining now. It is how quickly do we decarbonize, not if we're going to decarbonize. That is incontrovertible. What we do have still to decide collectively and choose collectively is how,

quickly does happen. And on the speed of that depends the quality of life on this planet. And you've mentioned the misery that we would subject future generations to you. What does that planet look like? But if we don't reach our target by net zero by 2050, what future are we choosing by that? So that's where we start in the book. And we only have about 10 to 15, 15 pages in a book of 170 pages that we dedicate to that scenario. But we feel it's important, right? I mean, you know, fear does play a role in waking us up and there's a lot of complacency about.

So what we do in the book is we go on a kind of immersive journey to that world in 2050. And we base it on the science of what will the world look like if we don't make any more emissions, any more efforts to cut emissions than what we have already, which takes makes us on the pathway to a 3.8 degree world, warming world, by the end of the century. And the world that we depict is 2050. So my children will be younger than I am now in 2050. It's really not that far away, right? We think of it as a long way away.

It's really not. And, you know, we go through different things like the way, how the air will be. It's entirely possible with additional decades of burning fossil fuels that, you know, masks will be prevalent and common things we would wear to protect our lungs in most cities around the world, that the radiation will be greatly incredible, the heat of the different locations, that vector-borne diseases would expand their range and that more and more people will be subject to West Nile virus, to dengue, to malaria. And of course, also that rather than tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people being on the move and leaving their homes trying to find somewhere that they can make a life, that could be

tens of millions or hundreds of millions. And that's completely different, because that's not a temporary conflict in a particular location that will presumably at some point resolve and they can return home. There'll be no going home. So writing that section of the book, and as we did, was actually a sort of strangely cathartic exercise because I think many of us are sort of like have a dim sense of that world, but we don't really have it in sharp relief. And bringing it into sharp relief was sort of a weirdly sort of like brought me

a kind of calm resolve. It's like, okay, well, now I see it. And I know that I will work the rest of my life to avoid my children living in that world. But it's sort of taken the fear out. I just made it more real. There's no point panicking about that. We now know what it is. Once we've really absorbed that, now's our time to work. But while we still have the chance to do something about it. But here's the underlying alarming fact about that, which Tom has just described. It's not that we will determine that by 2050. We will determine that by 2030. Because it is either over the next 10 years that we're able to cut emissions in half

and avoid the world that Tom has just described, or by 2030, we will already have loaded the atmosphere so much that we will actually overflow emissions. onto completely uncontrollable tipping points, not of several ecosystems that will act like a domino on each other and will so destabilize nature that we will never be able to pull it back. And what that actually means is that we will be in the world

that Thomas just described. But that is not a world that is going, that we have 30 years to decide. We have 10 years to decide the future of humanity. And I actually saw someone shot me a tweet yesterday which really brought into sharp relief

where they pointed out that you know because that annualized reduction of 7.6%. Wisdom by tweets. Wisdom by tweets. When did we finally? When did we descend into that? Exactly. What was the wisdom? The wisdom was emissions have to be 5% lower

by Glasgow. Wow. For us to be on track. It's not that we need to be in a certain place in 10 years or 30 years. if we're to be on that track, they need to have dropped by 5% by Glasgow. Now, for coronavirus reasons, maybe they will. But that's not actually a sustained reduction.

That's not what we need, right? That's just a drop of activity, which probably will change. Although we may get used to things like remote working and not traveling so much through coronavirus, not to say remotely that that makes up for the loss of life and what's happening. But it may normalize other types of behavior. But that aside, this is a everyday counselor. No, every day really does count.

And you set out two futures. There's two options. So we've described the choice we are making if we don't make active decisions to reduce our carbon footprint. But what is the alternative? Yeah. That world is best described by Christiana. That is actually quite an exciting world because it's the world that we really want our children and grandchildren. to live in.

And it's a world where we have actually gotten controlled over air pollution in cities. So you walk out of your house and the air is moist and fresh. And it feels like you're walking in a forest because most cities will actually be heavily forested. And we will have returned fertility to the soil

and life to the oceans. We will be living, if you're living in a city, we'll be living in buildings that are on their rooftop producing either flowers or vegetables or they have solar panels. And the size of the buildings will also either be absorbing solar energy to produce energy for the building or they will be covered in green vines because we want to absorb the CO2. And all the buildings will actually be self-contained with risk. to energy. All buildings will produce their own energy. They will recycle their own water.

Cities will largely produce their own food. We will have many, many fewer cars, much less congestion. And a lot of the space that is currently dedicated to transit of cars or parking of cars will be dedicated to either charging batteries or even more exciting to green spaces. And that's a very different world. That's a very, very different world. To say nothing of the fact that many of the low-lying islands that are currently threatened with disappearing might have a very real chance of existing and and being home to those populations.

And to say nothing of the fact that we would be able to provide energy to the 800 million people who live in extreme poverty right now and who don't even have access to energy, which is the basis of development and of getting out of extreme poverty. So it's a fairer world. It's a healthier world.

It's definitely a more stable world. global, it's a more prosperous world. But it's not a utopia, is it? There's still, I mean, we've still taken actions that will, you know, which we can't stop. It's not a utopia, and in fact, many of the technologies that are inherent in that, you know, vision of a world are actually already being implemented. So, you know, we already have, obviously, we already have solar energy, and we already

have wind energy, 25% of all the electricity produced in the world is already clean energy and renewal on track for 50% over the next 10 years. And we know that we can substitute this dirty internal combustion engine with electrification of transport and that transport can be more efficient and cleaner and smarter and interconnected and even driverless. So, you know, yeah, most of it is actually already in operation. We actually already have a fully electrified and unmanned container ship that is cruising around the world as a pilot experiment. And we know that there's already been one airplane that went all the way around the planet completely solar, admittedly with only one pilot on board.

But these technologies are coming forward. I think what's interesting about what Christian is saying is, I can't remember who said that lovely quote, that the future's already here, it's just unevenly distributed. And actually, both of those worlds are present in our world now, which is what makes this moment in history amazing, right? At a certain point, we will set our path

and it will be much more difficult to change it. But at the moment, we stand at the fulcrum between those two worlds which are present here. And it really is a question of choosing which future we want. And because there's evidence of both, right, that's what makes the difference between where do you set your attention? If you set your attention on the pollution and on inefficient and disgustingly polluting transportation, well, then that's what you see.

You don't see the alternative. Whereas if you set your attention on the progress in just in the transport or many other areas as well, then you can see evidence of that world. So as Tom says, there's evidence of both worlds right now, and they're buying clearly against each other. And that is why the main message in the book is we have to choose. Both are possible right now, and we have to make one of them much more.

likely, but both are possible now. It's a matter of choice. So if there's one thing that you hope a reader to take away from your book, what is that, what is that message that you want to communicate to a reader? So I think one of the problems with climate change is we feel powerless. So I think that it's tough to pick one thing. But I would say coming over the book with a sense of what's at stake, how you can engage with it. what's at stake, how to show up and what you can do and that you feel that you are an active participant

in creating the future. And finally, you both have children, you've mentioned your young children. Do you talk to them about these things? How do they feel? Because it's their future, really, isn't it? Yeah. What's the message among your children

that they've got about the future? Well, it's a great question and I think that, you know, there's lots of evidence to say, suggest that there is huge amounts of anxiety now around this issue with young people being, you know, really affecting their quality of life and their sense of their own future. So my kids are younger than would normally be associated with that, so they're six and eight. And so I do talk to them about it. But I talked about it quite gently. And I sort of explain the transition

that we're going through. And I think the things which help is number one, when you actually do things around the house to connect you to that and you talk about the importance of small actions and how that connects to big outcomes. And also, you know, and we also do talk about even at that young age what meaningful lives we can live at this point in history. I mean, there's never been in time in history where we can have more of an impact on the future of the planet. And actually, that should be motivating rather than terrifying. And my daughters are in their early 30s and they have been having climate change for dinner every night since they were born. Both the threats and the opportunities, both because I have been very transparent with them about

both sides of this. And although they have cycled and circled through different professional opportunities. They seem to have ended up today, at least for now, and they may go on to something else, in two activities that are quite, for me, very impressively responsive to both the threat and the opportunity of climate change. So one daughter works on impact investment. And, um, has the responsibility for her firm of finding those investments that have the highest decarbonization impact. And she started her life off in public health. So, you know, here she is, back into climate. And the other daughter devotes her life to, in general, healing the grief around climate change.

and especially the pain that women carry. There is an extraordinary amount of literature around the fact that women are disproportionately affected by climate change, especially in developing countries, not so much in industrialized countries, but especially in developing countries where women carry the responsibility of providing food, energy and water for their families. And food, energy, and water are highly threatened by climate change. And when it is the woman's responsibility to ensure that, and that becomes an activity that is every day more difficult because of the distance to wood or because of the lack of rainfall for water, or because of the increasing infertility of the soil,

that means that food is more difficult than there is extraordinary pressure on women, self-imposed pressure because we want to tend for our children, but also very, very unfair pressure from the males in the family, the adult males in the family, who expect, of course, the same performance under very, very dramatic changed conditions. So women are disproportionately affected by climate change.

They're also disproportionately affected at times of climate disasters because in many developing countries, women are not even allowed their independence of movement without the permission or with the presence of men. And when you have an emergency, it's usually the woman who's at home with the children, and she's not allowed to leave or go or save herself or save her children. So the reality of climate change is not one that is felt and understood in industrialized countries

the way it is in developing countries. And the impact of climate on women in developing countries is quite severe. So, yes, two daughters. who are full adults and I think very indicative of where that generation is going to go. Because if there is anything that is very clear, is that that generation and Tom's children's generation that is the next generation is already living in and will continue to live in a world that is forever changed. And they will have to respond and adapt to and make the very best of this very changed world.

It can be a much, much better world, especially if we all do our job over the next 10 years. That was Christina Fuggeras and Tom Rivet Karnak discussing climate change. Tom and Christiana's book, The Future We Choose, is out now, and you can also listen to their discussions on their podcast, outrage and optimism. In BBC Science Focus magazine this month, we look at the race to find the vaccine for COVID-19,

find out from a botanist how to keep houseplants happy, how to work from home according to science. As always, there's loads more science stories inside and on sciencefocus.com. And if you like what you hear, let us know with a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Finally, be sure to check out our brand new bonus podcast everything you wanted to know about, where we get the brightest minds in their fields to explain, well, everything they know about it. It's in our feed, so make sure you subscribe and listen to them as soon as they come out.

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