Pod Save the World - Climate Special: A Look Ahead At COP28

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

In a special episode, Tommy and Ben discuss the upcoming COP28 conference in the United Arab Emirates. They speak about the climate summit’s importance, hear from activists from the Pacific Asian community, break down the science behind a 1.5 degree celsius warming, and the cynicism around the large presence of fossil fuel lobbyists and the host country’s oil rich economy. Then, Ben speaks with John Kerry, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate from the US, about what’s on the agenda this year and the challenges of securing funding to follow through on the global commitments made towards mitigating climate change.We end the show with a Q&A segment for subscribers. To hear that segment in future episodes, and to get ad-free Pod Save The World, subscribe to Crooked's Friend of the Pod service at crooked.com/friends  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, good to see you. We're recording this on a Friday. Friday, Friday fun day. Because it's Thanksgiving week. We just recorded something for social where you're talking about all the turkey pardons and the writing of the corneous jokes possible and seeing who could get Barack Obama to say the corniest thing possible at those pardons is very fun. I think I avoided that speech-reading task for all eight years. You just wanted out of that thing? Yeah, it was a very particular kind of humor that Dad joke. I did not excel at at the time. Maybe I'd be good at it now that I'm a dad. I think you would be great at it. I think you slowed yourself short by backing out of that. So we're recording this Friday, November 17th, because next week is a holiday and Quirk Media will be closed.

But we wanted to focus on a big, important issue coming up, which is the COP Climate Change Summit. Where do you rank cops in your hierarchy of summit faves? Cops against one another or cops against other summits, you know? Cops against other summits. Okay, so I'm actually going to put cops at or near the top. Oh. And here's why. Because everybody comes to a cop, right?

So it's not like a G20 or G7 or G8 or NATO or even like, you know. Now, I will say my kind of personal favorite was the East Asia Summit, like the ASEAN East Asia Summit because it was always in some like cool Southeast Asian country. Yeah, that's your vibe. It's kind of my vibe and the food's really good. And you and I also hung out in like a casino in Phnom Penh where you could like smoke and play slots before crushing a press briefing. We were talking about this last week.

The weirdest 24 hours of my life was going from Aung San Suu Kyi's house to just a smoke-filled, disgusting casino hotel in Cambodia. I had to walk through the heavily carpeted, disgusting casino to reach the press briefing room where I announced that Hillary Clinton was flying to the Middle East to... help broker a ceasefire in Gaza. So that's been on the brain. But the thing about cop is everybody comes, right?

So there's like 200 countries there. I mean, you're never in a room with representatives from that many places. And it can be quite chaotic. And you're just kind of wandering around. And oh, there's that world leader. And here's, you know, I've never met the leader of, you know, this island country or, you know. And it could break down. I mean, the Copenhagen cop, right, which is the first one in 2009.

We flew there and it had fallen apart. And when I say it had fallen apart, I mean, our staff office, including for the President of United States, was in a mall where there were like mannequins in the office, like literally mannequins in the office, were meeting like with like Dmitri Medvedev amidst some mannequins. The leader's room had been like invaded by staff. And so all these world leaders and just staff like roaming and rummaging around and leaders kind of like looking over their shoulders. Then that's the one where Barack Obama figured out that the Chinese were holding the whole

thing up and that they were meeting with all the leaders that we wanted to meet. They were meeting with the BRICS leaders at the time, right? So Brazil, India, Russia, China, South Africa. And literally, I got pummeled by Chinese security as Barack Obama, like, stormed into this meeting and yelled, like, are you ready for me when to win Joe Bao? This is a better time. You had a coming. This is a better time in geopolitical relations that that was, like, funny. And when Joe Ba'ao was like, hey, Barack, like, come on in, you know. But meanwhile, I was getting literally. pummeled by the Chinese secretaries. Well, they've been reading your emails. So let me, let me back up a little bit. So the COP summits are the United Nations annual international meetings about climate change. Cop stands for

conference of parties. Fun, exciting name, because the people meeting our party to the broader UN treaty on climate change. So COP 28 kicks off on November 30th. It's in the obvious place for a climate change conference to be the United Arab Emirates. It's in Dubai. President Biden is not expected to attend this year, but he did go to the last two cop meetings in Egypt and Scotland. So, Ben, I think you were getting at the point that, like, historically, these summits can be hit or miss. I think the first one was in Berlin in 95. They basically just agreed to keep meeting. They agreed to have cops.

97 led to the Kyoto Protocol, which made certain countries commit to limiting or reducing greenhouse gases. You just mentioned COP15 in Copenhagen. That was a pretty significant one. Yeah, I mean, the thing about COP15 in Copenhagen is it was seen as this giant failure, because I think what people hoped is that Barack Obama had been elected and the U.S. would come and join the Kyoto Protocol. That wasn't going to happen for a couple reasons. One, the U.S. wasn't going to join a international agreement if China and India and these other

major emitters didn't also join it. And they were not going to do that. And also the Kyoto Protocol was a binding treaty. They would have required Senate ratification, which also was not going to happen. But as much as it felt like a failure at the time, at Copenhagen, we kind of sketched the outlines of what became the Paris Agreement, which was these kind of shared commitments through emissions reductions, financing for transition and for mitigation, for countries dealing with the effects of climate change, and this kind of mechanism to review each year that progress.

And so fast forward to Paris, the most successful COP 21, the most important cop, you get the Paris agreement, you get everybody on board, you get the 1.5 degrees Celsius objective, you get every single country in the world making commitments around emissions reductions and around financing. And so we're living in a post-Paris cop world. And you mentioned this earlier. I think COP 27 led to the creation of something called the Loss and Damage Fund where rich nations are supposed to help compensate developing nations for the impact of climate change. Actually, pulling together that money is a different story.

I think you talk about that with John Kerry later in an interview. But, I mean, what do you, what should we make of Joe Biden not going this year? How important or unimportant is it to have the president attending? I mean, look, Obama didn't go over here. year. You know, they're bigger cops and other cops, you know. I do think it would be good, frankly, if it was generally accepted. You know, the president of the United States goes every year to the NATO summit, to the G20 summit. There's these things he goes to every year. I do think it would send a good signal for a president to go to this every year. I get why not. I mean, like, as I said,

we didn't. But essentially, you have all these different lines of effort. You know, you have the emissions reductions by governments that are constantly being negotiated and revised and hopefully becoming more ambitious. You have this effort to mobilize massive amounts of private sector financing for a clean energy transition around the world. You have this effort to try to generate funding. It was a green climate fund. Now it's the Lost and Damages Fund. This is financing not just to help with clean energy transition, but to help deal with the effects of climate change now, which we're going to hear from some of our guests about. And oftentimes there are pledges that are not fulfilled. And it's just one place where you get leaders, private sector, activists,

you know, and you, everybody's all together in one place. And there's a kind of accountability to it. You know, you have to show up and show your work and then try to raise the ambition. Yeah. And I guess, you know, like the values of these cops, summits can be hit or miss. The U.S. role can be constructive or not. Yeah. Yeah. Trump famously pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords when he took office. And Biden won election, he got us back into the Paris Climate Accords. The U.S. also passed the IRA, which is the largest investment in clean energy technology ever. It's worth saying, though, big picture, we're not doing enough. as a planet to cut emissions to avoid catastrophic temperature increases and weather. Scientists believe that carbon emissions need to fall below 43% by 2030 to prevent the planet from

warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. So again, Ben, COP 28 is in Dubai. The leader of the conference is Sultan Al Jaber, who's the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which pumps about 4 million barrels of oil a day, and they're looking to expand to 5. You can kind of see why people are a little skeptical about this one, a little cynical? Yeah, there's a cynicism creeping in, and I think there's a sense, I mean, look, the arguments some will make for why this is okay, so I should state that as someone who's going to be cynical about it, is that ultimately you need everybody in on this deal. You have, you know, cash-rich countries like their Maraudis, if they can commit significant amounts of money or redirect significant amounts of investment

to clean energy, that's a good thing. Ultimately, you've got to phase out fossil fuels, so that's got to be part of the conversation. But I think that's, big butt here is there's a greenwashing vibe, you know, to, hey, we're like, we're basically a fossil fuel cash empire, but we can have a climate change summit and, you know, that looks good. And we get to, you know, get a feather in our cap for that. And if you're, you know, the biggest thing, and you hear this from some of the activists we talked to later, like, there's a lot of frustration that, yes, there are commitments around developing clean energy.

Yes, there's commitments on this piece of the transition that is where we want to go, which is renewable energy sources, but there's not really this effort to end fossil fuels, you know, to phase out fossil fuels. There's some, there's some commitments to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels and obviously there are commitments to try to shut down coal plants, but we're still pumping more oil and gas out of the ground. And unless and until we stopped doing that, we're not really going to solve this problem. And so I think, you know, there's a few things that have become headwinds to climate action. One is, I think, again, this kind of sense of cynicism, and the fossil fuel energy is capturing this process.

I think the cop in Glasgow, I think more people went from like fossil fuel companies and from like, you know, most governments. They kind of descend on it and lobby it and, you know. So that's one problem. Another is that within advanced economies, there's kind of this weird backlash against climate action. You know, I think it's because of the cost of living crisis.

People are like, you know what? It's too fast, too soon. It's hurting working class in these countries. That's a problem. And then, you know, the governments themselves are not coordinating their actions in the same way. U.S. massive leadership, a massive positive stuff with the IRA. But it's also like a very nationalist piece of legislation. It's basically like, we're going to make all the stuff here, the supply chains have to come here, all the subsidies come here.

And that's like not a coordinated approach. And that may be the only approach that can work politically. But you have China and the U.S. kind of not working together in the same way that they did before the Paris Agreement. And so there's a lot of, you know, skepticism that the cop process is, you know, losing momentum when it needs to be gaining momentum. Yeah. And there's also just, I think, like a fundamental structural challenge, which is that climate change, even though we're feeling the effects now, is still like a long-term threat in issue, right? And there were all these near-term political challenges that pop up for leaders and they end up tackling those first and, you know, climate change is left behind. For example, when Russia invades Ukraine and energy prices spike, all efforts to kind of right-size the U.S. relationship with the Saudis, for example, goes out the window.

And you have all these leaders from the U.K., from the U.S., others like going to Saudi Arabia, kissing the ring and trying to get them to pump more and not thinking about, okay, what can we do in the near term to maybe increase the cost of burning fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions. Yeah, another example that is tied to the war in Ukraine is that there's a huge need, and I talked to John Kerry about this, for financing for Africa to develop clean energy because Africa is going to have a huge share of the world's population in a couple of decades. And if Africa develops the same way we all did with coal and dirtier forms of energy, like we're screwed. We're not going to be able to deal with this. Now, Europe, after they lost a bunch of Russian oil and gas, they started turning to

Africa to like pump more gas, natural gas, you know. So like whenever you have a geopolitical crisis that creates a demand for more energy, often the first impulse is to just try to find that energy in the ground and not to, you know, turn to the renewable sources that are like, have more complicated supply chains and harder to get at. So ultimately that balance is going to have to tip. But like, you know, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine right now, both of those risk driving up oil prices, which adds incentive to pump more oil and gas out of the ground, make more money. Now, the good news, despite all these structural challenges, we all have agency here, which is why we really want to talk to climate activists for the show for this episode, especially people from

the places where the impacts of climate change are being felt most acutely now. We spoke with two women from Pacific Island nations where rising sea levels and rising sea temperatures and extreme weather like cyclones already wreak in havoc. And then, Ben, you know, the devastating thing, for these island nations is that while we don't know when it will happen, climate change modeling basically tells us that by the end of this century, like life there will be untenable. And so, you know, another aspect that's important to note is in reference to COP28 in the question of responsibility from the biggest emitters, is that carbon emissions combined across the entirety of these specific islands amount to less than 0.03% of the world's total.

So the folks who are not creating the problem are suffering the most. Yeah. It's just horrible. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So first, let's take a listen to an interview. Our producers conducted with Tina Yonotostiki, the climate envoy from the Marshall Islands.

Here's what she had to say about the way that climate change is already affecting life for her community. We're looking at sort of transformational changes to how we live. We likely have to consolidate populations on certain atolls. We have to build those atolls up, which means we're going to lose lands. Livelihoods will change. We know that tuna, which is a main. source to our economy. It will probably migrate. We have the studies that show that it is going to migrate as seas warm and no longer be the benefit that it is now to our economy or even to, you know,

what's what we put on the table for food. We know that if we have to leave certain places, we lose the stories associated places. We lose that, that link to our culture and our heritage. And certainly if we're forced to leave entirely, all of that is potentially lost. You know, our top priority is not to have to leave. Like, that's, nobody, nobody wants to leave their home. And the National Adaptation Plans guiding principle is, you know, two things. One, the right to remain and another is self-determination. So if you had to leave, at least you have some say and where you can go and how that will

look. And I think those need to continue to guide us because basically this is going to have to be an ongoing conversation. We will need to continue to look at, you know, based on the science, but also on traditional knowledge and people's family ties. What makes the most sense in terms of if an entire community has to leave their island, which is the place that they have to go? And how do we then decide where we can consolidate sort of services to best provide what people need. So as you were saying earlier, you know, it's easy to feel cynical about the non-binding pledges made a cop and how much sometimes domestic politics prevents a lack of follow-through. But here's why Tina said she feels like it's important for her to attend.

While the process is flawed and while it hasn't delivered the change that we actually need to respond to climate change, so it's incremental, versus transformative, which is what we need. The cop is a place where we, as Marshall Islands, get to sit next to countries that are far larger, with far more resources, and I have a voice and be at the table, right? So I can sit next to Secretary Kerry from the United States

and, you know, explain why adaptation for the Marshall Islands is an existential issue, while it might not be for the United States. We need to be able to reaffirm that particularly on climate, you know, we can't go it alone. No one can. And then, Ben, you spoke with Elizabeth Kiti, a climate activist from Tonka, right? Yeah, and, you know, Elizabeth builds on what we just heard representing a different island perspective as well. that really gets it, I think, both the stakes of what she's facing and the people of Tonga and Pacific Islands are facing,

but also the role that younger activists like her play at comp. We are already seeing in the capital of Tonga and Nguolofa, our government offices moving inland, and this is because this whole area, which is right by the ocean, will be underwater in the next 50 or so years. I think as well a really good example is to talk about Tuvalu what's recently happened with their deal with Australia Australia because of how fast Tuvalu is going underwater Australia has struck a deal with them to give them land and permanent residency.

So Tuvalu is leading the way in this and Tonga, I hope our government's already looking into seeing what we can do for our people. I know my family, we already are looking into, you know, what country do we move to? Is it Australia? Is it New Zealand? Do we go as far out as America? We need to start now for our future. My mom has her first grandson and it's going to affect his life.

I believe my grandchildren won't even know what Tonga is. And that's very sad. But this is the reality that not just my family are facing, but our whole country and our entire region, all due to the superpowers of this world who are responsible for the crisis that we are facing. What would you do if someone, actually, if a group of very powerful people came to your home,

and started damaging your home and putting your family's life at risk, I think you would do anything in your power to fight those people away. So this isn't a thing that I chose to do. It's what I have to do. It's my duty to my country and my people. And unfortunately, it's a duty of every Tongan. It's what we are facing. We have no choice but to fight.

So as we mentioned at the top, you know, it's not ideal that this cop is in the UAE, an oil-rich country, and it's not ideal that the president of COP28 is literally the CEO of an oil company. And then, you know, you sort of alluded to this earlier, Ben, but last year's COP, there were close to 400 people in attendance that were in some way connected to the fossil fuel industries. So that's a little gross. It can make you feel outgunned as an activist, but we spoke with Emily Atkins. a climate journalist who writes the newsletter he did to explain to us or what the impact is of having all those fossil fuel interests there.

You don't just send delegates from country governments to these cops. You send people are allowed to go who have an interest in the process. And so delegates from fossil fuel companies, hundreds have been present at each cop, influencing the process, influencing what comes out at the very end. And this year is not only no different, but almost way, way, worse because the big game, quote unquote, game changing new development that is going to happen because Sultan Algebra, the head of Adnach is going to be in charge of it. He's like, my game changing idea is that we're going to have more influence from oil and gas companies at this cop this

time. And we're all going to be really focused on solving climate change this time. It's almost like having a guy who's been really crappy to you for decades be in charge of the conference about how to treat you better because you're just like, well, I guess he could, he knows me really well, right? Like, he could treat me better. And I guess I could ignore the last 30 years of how he has treated me, but I really don't know if that's like something I want to do. That doesn't sound like the best setup. Not the best relationship, yeah. No. I mean, look, I think what you can take away from that is, first of all, the stakes, you know, are existential. And we hear from the island activists and negotiator that their lives are already changing

to the point that they're literally planning to have to maybe leave their homelands en masse. Just the mass displacement of indigenous populations and people because of the way in which superpowers and the rest of us have developed over the last particularly 150 years. But that should be a warning because that's coming for like the rest of us too.

Yeah, hey Miami. Yeah, exactly. It's easy to be like, oh, that's terrible, but that's some distant island. No, like this, that just shows Is it like the nature is not going to like be kind, you know, to some people, not others. Like there's going to be, there already are massive climate effects that are hurting innocent people who didn't create the problem. But it's coming for everybody and it already is.

And then I think what you hear in that, you know, in terms of the cynicism, the fossil fuel industry is that this is what needs to be overcome. Like this is the barrier to truly treating this like the emergency that it is. Yes, there's a lot of investment happening, a lot of actions happening. There are things that are happening that are worthwhile that could limit this damage and mitigate this damage, or at least create funding mechanisms to help those people in the Pacific Islands, either limit the effect of climate change or tragically relocate. But ultimately, if you're not breaking through the fossil fuel wall here to the other side of climate action, you know, there's just only so much we can do.

Yeah, and we asked Emily to elaborate a little more on the fossil fuel industries. how their presence impacts the efficacy of these cop summits. The argument from UAE and from a lot of nations that have deep ties to oil companies is that we need those people at the table because they're the ones who are going to be most affected by these policies to slow climate change because climate change is caused primarily by fossil fuels. So we need the people who are at the head of these corporations to be involved. The problem is that every single time oil and gas corporations have been involved is that we have come out with a watered down agreement. This happened last year right at the end of COP 27.

Countries were approaching an agreement to phase down fossil fuels. The agreement was written. Right at the end of COP 27, that was taken out. it was because of the opposition of nations like China, Russia, Egypt, oil-producing nations. We don't know exactly what the influence of oil and gas corporations were. We can't know because so many of those negotiations happened behind closed doors. What we know is that there were more delegates from the fossil fuel industry last year than there were from any country except for two.

So one small reform at COP 28 is for the first time fossil fuel lobbyists who attend will actually have to identify themselves as fossil flu lobbyists when they register for the event. That seems like it should have been the case since the first cop, but it wasn't a requirement. So now we'll actually know for sure exactly how many fossil fuel lobbyists are there. Yeah. Progress transparency. Good to know that. I mean, you'd like to think by COP 20, whatever.

this is, we would be a little further along. But I mean, you know, to use a dad expression, you know, this is a bit like asking the Fox being charged of security that now is here, you know, to put these people in charge of hosting the summit and, you know, you know. We should cover them. If you're a phosphate lawyer, you should get covered with oil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, you could have a future as a climate activist. Thank you. That's my pitch. Yeah. They're like, give us some ideas. Throw soup on a Monet or something. That's actually better than throwing soup on a Monet.

Yeah. Don't actually do that, anyoneless thing. Emily did sort of want to warn us, though, that sometimes press releases come out from these events or joint statements, and they can sound hopeful and impressive. But there's some weasel words in there that you got to keep an eye out for. And one thing she told us to look out for this year was the phrase, unabated fossil fuels. I think that this year we're going to see a really big push from. from UAE, from oil producing nations, from even the U.S. to make this big claim. This is the year that they are all going to make a commitment to phase out fossil fuels,

but they're going to use this word unabated before it. The word unabated fossil fuels means a fossil fuel whose emission doesn't have a plan eventually to be captured by carbon capture technology. That means nothing, right? There's no technical definition for what that means. That could mean we have a plan in 40 years to capture the carbon that was once released by this oil refinery, right? That's what it could mean.

So watch out for the word unabated because you can already see it sort of happening in the news that countries are saying, we are good with a plan to phase out unabated fossil fuels. And that does not really mean anything, unless. there is a definition of it that says it means the emissions have to be captured right away and 100% of them. I think this is the first time I've heard the word unabated and I already hate it. So I was going to say, you know, I have like a bit of a hobby horse about like the language of foreign policy and diplo speak.

And one general rule of thumb is if there is a word that is like central to the phraseology that you have either never heard or would literally never. ever use in a conversation. You know, like, I'm never like, how was your day? Like, it was pretty good until I had that unabated sandwich, you know, for lunch or something. It's a pretty good, it's like a put your bullshit meter up, you know. Big time. And I did, there are all these ways to kind of create wiggle room around not doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. And usually it's like some legalese that that doesn't. Yeah, there's a lot of, the sort of gist of it is, there's a lot of conversations about carbon capture down the road and getting carbon out of the air, which is great

and something we'll need to do. But that doesn't mean we don't have to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we're burning in the short term. That's critical. Yeah. And there's a lot of these formulations, they're still worthwhile doing these things. Carbon capture, like you said, is important. You know, carbon offsets that people do are important. Technology is important to figuring out carbon capture. These are not insignificant things. I think that the basic issue though that needs to be confronted is

the disconnect between the urgency and these types of approaches that kind of envision like a runway of time that we don't have anymore, you know? Yes, exactly. I mean, there was actually like we've gotten in the bad habit of like

referencing the daily on this podcast, but it is occasionally very good. They had a good show recently on the EV push in this country and the challenge of getting people to buy EVs. That's a great episode. And, you know, I think the most, you know, I think the thing that really stuck with me in that conversation was that, you know, like about a million EVs were sold or projected to sell this year, which is a lot, but it's nowhere near.

It's like a fraction of non-EV cars. And the problem with that is, is not that, you know, sure, that's going to go up each year and that's great. The problem with that is that every car that's going on the road now that is not an is likely still going to be on the road in like 10 years, you know. And it's the same thing with developing new, you know, fossil fuels and, you know, permits for new drilling. And once you start doing that, there's like a life cycle to this.

And so what they're doing with the son of beta thing is saying, sure, we're doing all this new drilling. We're creating all this new emissions. But we're going to promise you that we're going to figure out a way to offset that. And oftentimes it's not even like a concrete promise. It's kind of like we're committing to plan a bunch of trees. Yeah, we're going to commit to deploy new technologies. We're commit to plan a bunch of trees.

We commit to these kinds of offsets. And that's good. That's much better than where we were 10 or 20 years ago. But that progress isn't happening fast enough given where the climate already is. Yeah. I'm Tommy Vitor. And this is Pod Save the World. Do you think that whenever Barbaro does the very smart thing in radio where someone says something to you and you summarize and repeat it?

Do you ever think the journalist's ever like, yeah, man, I just fucking said that? Well, there's this thing. What if I just repeated back to you everything you said? The journalist, there's two things that now that we plugged the daily, there are two things that I'm going to say that erksome or humorous at least. One is that he does that thing. And the journalist is always like, that's exactly right. God damn right, Barbaro. He's fucking summed it up.

He's being an advocate for the listener who, you know, sometimes you want something to summarize. But the other interesting thing is like Sabrina Tavernisi, who's a great journalist. And, I mean, I have a huge respect for her. Don't you knock Sabrina in my presence. Well, I'm just going to. Don't you do it. Somehow she sounds more and more like Michael Barbaro. Someone's telling them to talk like that.

Sometimes I'll like turn it on and it'll take me like a minute to be like, oh, wait, that's Sabrina. Because she's developed the like low throat. This is the daily. Daily. Just talk normal. Yeah. It's cool to talk normal. Yeah. Before we take a break, we are so excited to announce a new show. It's called Inside 2024. It's our new monthly podcast series available exclusively to the friends of the pod subscribers. It is a fun show. It is a chance to hear from, you know, White House alumni. Talk about what really goes on behind the scenes of a presidential campaign. Everything from debate prep to convention

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why climate change is a problem and why we need to address it. But to your point, Ben, I mean, the science keeps getting worse. It's not getting better. Every time I read a big report about, like, you know, ice sheets melting. It's never like, oh, we got a great report from the climate scientist today. Like, it's like, hey, we are in big trouble. So we went to an expert. Alyssa Akko, she's the senior climate scientist and Barbara Streisand chair of Environmental Studies at the Environmental Defense Fund. Ben, one of the things you might have noticed is that these goddamn scientists keep shifting the goalposts on us. It's the scientist.

I know. They used to always talk about not letting global temperatures rise by two degrees Celsius. These days, they're saying we can't let it rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius. So we asked Dr. Acoe to explain why. The reason for these long-term average temperature goals like 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius is because large scale changes in the climate system that could dramatically change life as we know it. I mean, we're talking about landscapes changing from grasslands to deserts and losing parts of the rainforest and ocean circulation patterns changing so that less heat is carried to Europe to keep it at the moderate temperatures that it's at, even though it has a really high latitude. You know, all of those changes respond to changes in the long-term temperature.

So 2 degrees Celsius used to be the main target, in part because that was considered the temperature increase in which modern human civilization has never experienced before. Once we breached that level, it was like this unknown territory outside of our comfort zone, and that alone was scary. But now scientists have done a lot of research on what the climate consequences are of a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise and a 1.1. 1.5 degrees Celsius rise. And what researchers have found is that a half a degree of warming makes an enormous difference in terms of people at risk from things like sea level rise, poverty, water stress, severe heat, and many other impacts. And so because of all of the additional consequences from going from 1.5 to 2C, the new global target

It became 1.5 Celsius because we could save that many more lives if we're able to achieve it. She also cautioned, though, that we shouldn't just frame things in the context of averting absolute disaster because, as Obama said, and everyone yelled at him for it, every little bit of change in our climate has some effect on human life. So every step we take to limit emissions will help us in the long run. Every increment of warming matters, and it will matter in ways that will assess. the warmer it gets. And the warmer it gets, we also risk hitting these tipping points that are really uncertain, but really terrifying if we do hit them. We're talking about losing all of the land ice on Greenland, for example, which would have an enormous impact on sea

level rise and really wipe out communities in coastal parts of the world. Those are kind of like the worst-case scenarios that we're really afraid of. But every tenth of a degree that it gets warmer will see more devastating consequences and it will kind of compound over time. It's hard enough for a community to recover after, let's say, an extreme event like a massive tropical cyclone. And imagine those happening more frequently. You don't have time to recover before your hit again. So as the temperatures increase, we could just see more and more of those, what they're called compounded events where they just keep happening one on top of the other and just escalate the problem and amplify the problem. So, Ben, as we mentioned at the top of the show, former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator, current Special Presidential Climate Envoy, John Kerry, is heading to COP 28, and you talked to him beforehand. I did. And look, it's a good transition out of that last point because, you know, people can listen to this series of conversations and feel what's the point.

As we're all screwed, you know. But the point is that we still have the capacity to deal with this, maybe not to solve the entire problem, but each action that we take really matters. One voice can change a room. Yeah. Yeah, if it can change a room, it can change a cop, right? And seriously, like, it makes a difference how bad this gets, you know? It really does. How many people are displaced, like, what, how, you know, how livable the planet is, right? And so what I'd say about John Kerry is, like, this guy, like, I got, you know,

if I'm still, like working the hours, he is at his age, like, you know, he is tireless. If I had a sweet in Tucket House, I'd be sitting on my ass at that thing. to give him credit. I wouldn't be flying to fucking Abu Dhabi to yell at oil CEO to produce climate change. I don't sound fun. I just want to preface this for saying, like, I do have a great deal of admiration for John Kerry. Like, you've heard people have heard us be cynical about certain political leaders. But these guys just trying.

He's trying really hard. So we talk about, you know, what the expectations are for cop. And then, you know, I raised some of this cynicism about, you know, is this loss and damage fund for real or these kind of empty promises, you know, how are we actually going to finance a clean energy transition in a place like sub-Saharan Africa when people don't see it as a money-making opportunity? You know, the question about, like, you know, the UA hosting this and what are the role of younger activists who are frustrated?

And, you know, he walks us through, I think, I think with a degree of realism, but also his kind of irrepressible, can-do spirit, you know, why this banner is and what he's going there to do. And just for everyone listening who feels like this feels a little bit out of control, a little bit out of our hands. Again, just remember that the one thing that we can do as Americans is real like Joe Biden. You don't have to love him. Maybe he frustrates you on a lot of other issues. When you compare Joe Biden's record and policy proposals on climate change to Donald Trump's, it's a no-brainer.

Like Donald Trump is going to unravel every single thing Joe Biden did, whether it's rejoining the Paris Climate Accords or trying to strip away all the tax breaks and subsidies for clean energy. in the IRA. They're going to gut all regulations that are supposed to reduce emissions. They'll probably get rid of the EPA. They would if they could. They really would if they could. So it's like it is existential. This election in 2024 is existential when it comes to climate change. I feel like climate change is like enough of a reason to basically, you know, to vote. Absolutely. You know, like whatever, whatever, Whatever anger you or misgivings or disappointment or you'd rather somebody younger, whatever, the climate issue is not when you can undo. And if we had elected, and this is not that Democrats have done everything right on this issue. We have not.

We've not done enough. But I would ask you if you had Al Gore and, you know, you didn't have Donald Trump and the world would literally be less warm today, you know. I mean, that's how much these elections matter because if the U.S. sits it out, we're totally screwed. Yeah. All right. Let's listen to John Kerry. I do want to note here that we recorded this a few days ago with John Kerry. And so when he references an interview, the U.S. and China working together, I just want to update

to what was announced. The U.S. and China after the Biden-Chu Jinping meeting, announced that they would resume a working group on climate cooperation. It was proposed in 2021. It been on hold since August of 2022 when things got a little scratchy with the Chinese. They also promised to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, including wind, solar, and battery storage until the end of 2030, specifically to determine. take the place of planet warming fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. And they pledge to support

efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030. So that's progress. That's U.S. and China agree to work together again. Biden's like, I'll work with that dictator. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll do some renewables with this dictator. What we need more of from China, just to people know, is they're still building a bunch of coal plants. Yeah. And you're using a bunch of coal in China and they're building a bunch of coal plants around the world. So that'd be the next step, but it's good that we're doing this. Yeah. I am very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the world, the special presidential envoy for climate change, former Secretary of State, Senator, and really global statesman John Kerry. So good to see you, Secretary Kerry. Good to be with you, Ben.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. So we're talking here because, you know, at the end of this month, you'll be going to the UAE for COP, the annual climate change summit. And I want to get into kind of some of the questions that people have around the current state of the international climate negotiations and action. But I just wanted to start. by asking you, for people that aren't following this that closely but care a lot about this issue, what are you trying to achieve and what would be a successful outcome at this upcoming summit? Well, the summit has preordained three mandated outcomes. One is the loss and damage fund. The other is the adaptation report, which is going to demand greater expenditure and focus on adaptation for

particular parts of the world. And then, you know, the third is the whole question of admissions and raising ambition in the Paris, the stock take, as it's called, the horrible name, but it's called the stock take, which is the first assessment since the Paris Agreement, which President Obama presided over in 2015. And that analysis will look at where we've been, the road we traveled up until now, the gaps that exist today, and where do we go forward? If it's done right, it will contain those three components. And our job is to try to make sure it is done right, that it has credibility, that the decision the cop makes is actually one that will excite people around the world, that they're

being realistic, and that we now have achievable goals. So there are two other things, though, that I think have to come out of this cop. Those are already mandated. The other, one of the things that has to come out is an increase of ambition, that we have to get more people behaving with greater urgency, ready to raise their goals and try to move faster to do what we need to do. Because frankly, you know, we're in serious trouble. I mean, we just really are. And if we don't address this faster and bringing new technologies to scale quicker, then we're going to have a hard time keeping 1.5 degrees alive. And the other component of that is finance.

To do what I just said, we need to liberate the trillions of dollars that are in private hands. No government has enough money to possibly affect this transition. We can create structure. We can provide incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act. But in the end, we're going to have to find a way to get money to make the deals in various parts of the world that will deploy the renewables, deploy the new technologies and win the battle. Well, that's a really good summary. And now I want to kind of drill into like a few of the areas where, you know,

I think people want to see more results and see some challenges that I know you're seeking to address. So I'm going to start with the finance one since you ended on that because that's so critical and there's been this increasing focus, particularly as governments have less resources to put into this in mobilizing global finance around a clean energy transition. And just to take one piece of the world, Africa, you know, one of the things you hear all the time is that there's no solution to climate that doesn't involve a really rapid transition in Africa to clean energy resources, renewable resources. At the same time, you know, if you

talk to people in finance, you know, a lot of these people are reluctant to invest in Africa because they can't, they don't see an immediate return, you know, if you're just looking at profit and bottom line, it doesn't seem like a good enough bet. And so there's been not as much money flowing into an Africa transition as people would like. What do you, what can be done to kind of unlock that money so that even though you can't necessarily go to some big investor and say, I guarantee you a return on your investment, is there something that can be done to get this money out the door faster

so that people aren't just waiting for airtight deals and developed countries but are willing to get into these parts of the world that we really need to accelerate? Well, it's a great question, Ben. It's right on target, no surprise. And the answer is yes. There are a number of things that we can do and that we are doing and have to do.

One is to excite the capacity of the multilateral development banks of the world so that they will make more concessionary funding available and make more overall lending available. And that's part of the reason why President Biden sought a replacement at the World Bank and put Ajay Banga, you know, terrific business person in charge, where we have now, through the meetings that took place in Washington, in the spring and then in Marrakesh just a couple weeks ago, those meetings have resulted in change at the World Bank and the MDB so that their mission statement is now one that permits them to actually lend more money. And so we're going to go upwards of 150 billion maybe available through the World Bank, which is, you know, three times where we were last year or so, somewhere in that vicinity. So that's very significant, but there's more to it. You still need to deploy the trillions of dollars.

The UN finance report and other reports tell us that we need somewhere around, what, two and a half to $4.8 trillion a year for the next 30 years. Well, obviously no government in the world has that kind of money. So we have to find the way to address the concern that you just raised. You said, well, some of these people are reluctant because they want to make money. They got to make the money back on them. And particularly if you have a fiduciary responsibility and the people who actually own the money are saying, you got to go out there and make money for me. So we have to create bankable deals.

That's the trick. Now, how do you create a bankable deal? There are a number of different financial tools you could bring to the table. You can have blended finance where you have the World Bank or a development bank. You have philanthropy. You have the private sector. and you leverage the lending by putting, by derisking the deal. Yeah.

And particularly the philanthropies, as well as a couple of other tools that we're trying to put to use, could help create concessionary funding that greases the skins, makes a deal happen. Let me be very quickly, be precise with you. We're proposing something called the ETA, the energy, transition accelerator. And it is a form of an offset. Now, some people hate offsets and say, boy, that's just a way of avoiding responsibility. And greenwash is, the answer is, historically, some of the worst did greenwash and some of the worst did exploit. But what we're doing is working with the NGO community, with the folks who sort of create the guardrails for

what is a deal with environmental integrity. And we're working with them with the SBTI, the Science-BTA-BTA, the Science-Based Targets initiative, and the VCMI and others. And we've been working now for months to get the standards and guardrails in place. So you won't run into this greenwash. And you'll only provide an offset, which, by the way, has to be bought. And the money which it is bought with, we will use. as the derisking money, as the money that can be the concessionary funding that excites the deal to be

bankable. And then we believe that we'll be in a position to be able to do this in a responsible way where people who are deeply and appropriately concerned about nobody playing games, they'll have confidence that the standards are high and we're only going to grant a credit, Ben, when a coal plant is closed where it's additional, where it's not, would have been closed anyway, a coal plant that wouldn't have been closed, is closed, and renewables are deployed. Both of which events are highly measurable. It's not the immeasurable forest that you're protecting, that nobody knows really whether it's protected. This is real coal plant, real renewables.

You can touch them, feel them, see them. and our feeling is that could really excite the deployment of some of the capital. And moreover, I think that we now have a way to check this so effectively, because with digital, with technology and satellite technology, we have, you know, 365 days a year. We are able to measure methane leaks, measure CO2 levels. We're really able to track the footprints of people involved. in this. So there's no running away. There's no escaping responsibility. Well, like, I mean, people should know that this is kind of core to the whole project. It sounds

kind of technical, but if you can't unlock this money flowing in to places like Africa, so they're closing coal plants and using renewables, you know, there's no solution to this. So it's a really important piece of the puzzle. Another piece that you referenced is the loss and damage fund. You know, this is perennially a source of great tension, this issue around how do you compensate poorer nations that are dealing with extreme weather events that are dealing with climate effects now, population displacement, all manner of climate mitigation. On this same episode we'll hear from an activist

from Tonga in the Pacific Islands. They're already obviously dealing with climate effects. And the issue is, you know, this is both an issue of mitigation. It's also an issue of justice, right? I think a sense in the developing world that wealthy nations created this problem and therefore have an obligation to pay into a fund to support people that are already dealing with these effects.

because it's a voluntary fund, I think there's a lot of skepticism about whether commitments are made and then money doesn't get out the door. I know there's been efforts to address that the World Bank, but I also know that, you know, the U.S. Congress with a House-controlled Republican House unlikely to be putting, you know, U.S. money into this. I mean, how do you address the skepticism that you're going to be hearing, I'm sure, a cop about whether this is real money, whether like these commitments can reach the ambition necessary on the time frame necessary? Well, let me begin by just making it clear to any listeners that this loss and damage fund is specifically, and the language could not be more clear, it's not compensation for,

it's not expressing any potential for liability for damage or loss. it is a humanitarian fund voluntarily put together in order to address the needs of less developed countries, of poor and vulnerable countries, of island states, of indigenous peoples. And that's where the justice part comes in. There's no way to do what we're going to do with any hope of durability, of long-term capacity to do these things, unless it is fair, unless, you know, folks are being listened to. locally in their communities and indigenous peoples and so forth. So I'm excited by it.

I think that it can be real. The rules have to be put together for it. It will be stood up at this cop. It will be a real entity at the end of this meeting. But it will not be at this point fully funded because you've got to have the rules. You've got to have where is it being deposited? Who's managing it? How's it being managed?

Those components of it will be defined over the course of this next. next year. What's important is that we're ready and prepared to help some folks who really need some help through this crisis. And I'm proud to say, as you well know, Ben, from your years working with President Obama, the United States is the largest humanitarian donor in the world. And we're proud of the fact that our sense of global responsibility means that we share opportunity with people in other parts of the world. And President Obama did that with Ebola, where we fought back against Ebola potential scourge. And we've done it with the AIDS program in Africa. We've done it with food. And I think this is in that vein. This is the kind of thing

we feel it needs to be done because there are impacts from the developed world on other parts of the world. And just take a look, by the way, in sub-Sahara Africa, there are 48 nation states all of whom together equal 0.55% of the emissions of the world. On the other end of the spectrum, there are 20 large economies in the world. We are one of them. Russia, China, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, European countries like Germany and France and Italy, etc. Those 20 top economies make up 80% of almost 80%. of all the emissions in the world. So justice will only come by having some sort of balanced

sense of responsibility in how you address dealing with this crisis. And you think you can get the adequate funding in the months and years to come to make this. Well, I know that the world can afford to do that. I'm not going to predict the politics of it. But can we afford to do it? Sure. And then, you know, another issue that people are watching is obviously the U.S.-China relationship. You've been to China, try to resume climate cooperation that was so essential to the Paris Agreement and obviously is essential going forward with China building coal plants around the world and obviously still having significant coal consumption in China. What should the world be looking for at COP in terms of a signal that the U.S. and China are prepared

to resume some collaboration in addressing the climate crisis? Well, we have just finished four days in the desert of Palm Springs at Sunnylands, a place you know well, Ben, because you were there with President Xi a number of years ago with President Obama. And we spent four days with our counterparts from China working on whether or not we could find ways to cooperate going into this cop and whether or not we could help make a difference globally. on this issue. We did come to some agreement. We have some sense of the way forward. Don't shoot me, Ben. I know this is going to hurt.

I'm, you know, literally in hours, we hope that this is going to be released publicly. I can't jump the gun. But let me just say that I think we reached some groundbreaking initiatives that will change. the capacity for cooperation going forward. And since China and the United States are the two largest emitters in the world, our cooperation is really important to getting the job done.

President Obama first did this back in 2015, started in 2014. We worked for a year to pull together what we could do. And it was different. Each country kind of did its thing. But the fact that Trina in the United States, President Xi, and President Obama stood up in the great hall of the people and announced what they were going to do. That act created momentum for the agreement to come together in Paris. I think the same thing could happen here on Dubai, on the UAE, and hopefully we will have some measurable steps that we're going to take each of us to try to address this crisis. thing I'd say on it. China is definitely well aware of the threat to China from this now, much more so than we had heard previously. And President Xi and China are the largest

clean energy, renewable energy manufacturers and deployers in the world. And they're deploying more solar and wind today than all of the rest of the world put together. So if we can work together and make things happen over these next months, that will be one of the biggest impacts we could look for and could have a profound impact in our ability to win the battle. Yeah. No, well, you've been central to these efforts for so long and there's no solution without that piece of the puzzle either. One more thing I wanted to ask you, you know, we have a lot of, you know, a relatively young audience and I know, you know, a lot of people in climate activism. What do you say to people that might be getting a little cynical, right? They look at this summit

that is so important. The COP summit is such an essential meeting each year. You know, it's at the UAE, a major fossil fuel producer being chaired by, you know, someone who's also a fossil fuel executive. You know, you get all these bankers now shown up at COP, you know, you get corporations making announcements and and it can feel a little cynical like, you know, some of it's greenwashing, some of its, you know, kind of the global conference circuit. What would you say to activists who are like, I don't know how I feel about how this all looks from the outside? Well, the first thing I'd say to activists is thank you. I mean, thank you, thank you for being activists and for being engaged. I come out of some of that tradition myself when I was a lot younger.

opposing a war and working on the women's movement and trying to pass the ERA and creating the environment movement with Earth Day and so forth. So I have nothing but respect for people who are willing to take their beliefs out and even engage in civil disobedience on occasion, recognizing that you have to accept the consequences, but standing up for what you believe. And we don't have space for cynicism. We just don't have room for that. You know, it's a luxury, in a sense, but it clouds, you know, it obscures the real mission.

And the real mission is to be part of the generation that's going to change the world and change the United States. And that's doable, absolutely doable. That's not poppycock talk. That is absolutely a reality in every great movement in our country's history, particularly going back to the anti-war movement in the 1960s in the early days of, you know, Rachel Carson's book, The Silent Spring that inspired the environmental movement, and then the passage of the creation of the EPA, which came out of Earth Day, and the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection,

coastal zone management, endangered species, all of those things came from young folks who were out there organizing politically, making their voices heard, and rebelling against the pollution that covered the skies of New York and Los Angeles and other places in our country. And so we made progress. We did amazing things. And then everybody went home and went to sleep and said, okay, we did that. Let's go on something else. But we can't afford that now.

We, you know, on the one hand, yeah, there are these huge challenges, but they're man-made, human-made, and they're subject to human solution. and the best way that is going to get solved is through a democracy where people go out and organize themselves and determine you get the leadership, not that you get, but you get the leadership that you want. And that battle is going to be joined in so many ways in 2024 because our democracy is at risk and there's real cause to be mobilized and to go out and fight. and, you know, I just think that that, what are your options? I mean, you can't, but you can't responsibly just hold up and not get out of bed and, you know, play video games or do whatever the hell it is you want to choose to do to avoid the reality. That's not going to get it done.

Well, you know, yeah, it's a stool, right? You need activism to press governments and companies. You need governments to take action, and you do need, you do need to have that mobilization of resources. Well, look, we wish you the best of luck and take care. Thank you, man. Take care. Thank you very much. So Ben, just to round out the show here, we wanted to leave you guys with a couple more clips from some of our activists today. The first is a response from Elizabeth Kite from Tonga. We asked her if she felt that young activists were being taken seriously enough.

Here's what she had to say. I don't think youth activists are taken seriously enough. And I also think it's such a shame that leaders tend to always look to youth activists. for hope. Don't look to us for hope. You guys should be the ones providing youth activists hope. We are also not your answer to solutions. And this is what your responsibility is as these leaders.

And so it's such a shame that youth activists have had this rise in them to fight this challenge. But it's come because our leaders are not, our leaders' actions are not reflective of what we are wanting. I also like that Elizabeth made a point that it's not just leaders. They're obviously the most important ones in this question. There are things that we can all do to make this just a little bit better. I think what's really important is knowing that every little bit of action does really collectively help our cause. So I know a lot of people out here feel like the problem's too big.

It's out of their control. Even if they caught the train instead of a flight, it wouldn't actually contribute to helping us. it actually, it will. It does. And then finally, Dr. Aiko did leave us with another positive note. So she's focused a lot of her research on what are called short-lived climate pollutants. They don't stay in the atmosphere indefinitely. And there's been a change in acknowledging that targeting these pollutants could be an effective strategy for mitigating a portion of the effects of climate change.

What a lot of people don't know is that only around half of today's warming is caused by carbon dioxide emissions and other long-lived climate pollutants. The other half of today's warming is from short-lived climate pollutants, mostly methane, which comes from agriculture, energy production, and waste. And climate policy has not historically focused on reducing their emissions, even though there are a lot of cost-effective solutions available. So over the past 10 years, a lot of scientists and environmental organizations really tried to elevate the awareness of, how important methane is, not just to the climate problem, but to the climate solution.

And finally, we had a breakthrough in 2021 with the Global Methane Pledge. Now, that is a voluntary pledge, so it's not binding, but it's a major step in the right direction in terms of us taking the actions we need to take in order to slow down the rate of warming in the near term. And so there could be more progress on methane at this year's COP, and we'll see what happens. But I think we're finally getting to a point where we are looking at the full problem and the full set of solutions. So that's it for this cop-focused Pod Save the World episode. Makes Pod Save the World feel like an apt title for once.

My God. We all need to get on this one. It's a real problem. Although, don't add us pitches for Pottae the Planet because we've already gotten this. Heard them all. Heard them all. And listen, the title is not a show. Anyway, we are going to stick around.

We're going to answer some subscriber questions, so to hear those and to get Potts of the World episodes ad-free. Go to Cricket.com slash friends to subscribe and talk to you guys next week. Happy Thanksgiving. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski, an associate producer, is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seglan and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls. Thanks to our digital team,

Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.