The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Kevin Anderson: "The Uncomfortable Link between Climate and Equity"

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

On this episode, Nate is joined by climate scientist Kevin Anderson to discuss the possible paths of averting severe climate outcomes and how this is interconnected with equity. As nations plan their climate goals and coordinate with each other, it's clear that extreme actions would be needed from everyone to meet the goal of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2ºC - if this is even possible. At the same time, there are wide disparities in the greenhouse gas emissions between the materially wealthiest and poorest within and across countries. How are past inequities already affecting people in presently climate impacted zones? How can concerned individuals begin incorporating changes and communicating with others in their own lives - and is it even worth it to do so? How can we attempt to balance the equity in standards of living and create rapid reductions in emissions, all while grappling with growing geopolitical tensions, declining energy availability, and the multitude of other converging risks in this impending poly-crisis. About Kevin Anderson: Kevin is professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and visiting professor at the Universities of Uppsala (Sweden) and Bergen (Norway). Formerly he held the position of Zennström professor (in Uppsala) and was director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (UK). Kevin engages widely with governments, industry and civil society, and remains research active with publications in Climate policy, Nature and Science. He has a decade's industrial experience in the petrochemical industry, is a chartered engineer and fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/82-kevin-anderson To watch this video episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/aQzdK1uGhWA     

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. Today's guest is Kevin Anderson. Kevin is a professor of energy and climate change at the universities of Manchester, Uppsala, and Bergen in Norway. He's also the co-founder of Climate Uncensored, which is an educational organization,

focused on unflinching commentary and assessment on climate. Sounds like Kevin. He was also the formerly director of the Tindal Center for Climate Change, and he continues to engage widely with governments and remains active doing research in publications of climate policy, nature, and science. Kevin and I talked about the emission and difference between the global north and the global south, our carbon budget, and is there any way to remain under one and a half degrees Celsius or even two degrees Celsius? Please welcome Kevin Anderson. Kevin Anderson, welcome to the program.

It's nice to be with you. Among the other things we have in common, like caring about climate change and the future of the biosphere, we also are avid bicyclers. And I am exhausted today because I biked 100 miles this weekend, which for an old overweight guy is pretty good. Yeah, 100 miles. Well, I mean, cycling 10 miles is still worth doing.

100 miles is a significant distance. In over three days, I did 40, 30 and 30, and I'm hurting today, to be honest. So I have followed your work over the years. You are a scientist and an eloquent communicator on the issue, one of the issues of our time, which is climate change. and I have a ton of questions for you. I look forward to this discussion. To be blunt, I'm a little anxious about this discussion.

And I'll tell you why. It's because when I invite guests like you that are experts in another area than I am, it always seems to be that I learn from you and you learn from me. And the aggregate of our understanding makes our situation seem much more daunting and worse. And that's probably because most of the time, I think, the tendency is for us, as humans, as parents, as people who value our society, is facing the consequences of where we're heading is very challenging. So I think we tend to, even for ourselves, sweeten the pill a little. And so I think when we get together and discuss just how things are almost all pointing in the wrong direction, not everything, but almost all and often accelerating in the wrong direction, it's hard to draw anything other than an even more depressing conclusion that you start with. And of course, you leave those conversations and you have to live your life day to day.

And so you start to, again, I think, try to find coping strategies, which often is to slightly adjust the reality that we know from our sort of more close. cognitive engagement, if you like. Yeah, that's well stated. That makes any sense. Yeah. So we're going to get into it, but for those that don't know you or your work, what is your background in climate science? And how has that over years or decades led to your recent work and your conclusions about

the state of the climate system? Well, unlike. a lot of academics. I've got a slightly different background. I left school at 16. I did my apprenticeship as an engineer in the engine rooms of ships, oil tankers, containers, ships and so forth, travelling around the world. Later on, I went to university, did an engineering degree, mechanical engineering. Then I went offshore to design, well, went into the oil industry to design offshore oil and gas platforms, which I did for quite a lot of years. And so I have at least sort of 10 years practical design engineering experience, mostly in the petrochemical industry.

So I have that engineering background, but right from being a kid, I've always been interested in environmental issues. I mean, climate change was not an issue back in the late 60s and 70s. At least it wasn't something that was that we voiced commonly. It was more discussed about nature and environment and sort of that way of thinking of the world. And that certainly influenced me, but I was also very interested in engineering. Right from being young, my dad worked at a nuclear power station as a mechanic, as what we call a fitter. And he used to talk about energy and engineering issues. And we lived by the sea. So it felt quite nice to combine the Navy and engineering. And right throughout all my time, even on the rigs, I was always very aware of the environmental

challenges we faced and tried to improve things in terms of capturing the CFCs that we used in our refrigeration systems at a time when those own issue was a big challenge. It still is to some degree, but much of that has been resolved. And also recording spills for the other platform and recording my reporting my own company to the relevant authorities. That was on top of my day job. So I always had that other sort of environmental or maybe just a fairness conscience that went alongside my work. And then whilst it was offshore, climate change became a big issue in the press, if you like. And it seemed to me it was an area I didn't know so much about. So I went back to university to the masters, looking at climate change and broadly environmental issues,

and also how we might resolve them mostly with economics, which I was deeply disillusioned by. And I then went on to do a PhD and then pretty much an academic career since those days. But I think having that engineering background, a particularly one when they've been involved in energy and petrochemicals, really provides me with a certain set of insights that not all academics actually have. And I found that very helpful in trying to think about the challenges we face today. So I think we're going to jump all over the place with this because I have a lot of questions for you. Let me start with this. It's all over the news that last week was two consecutive days of the hottest temperature that we're aware of for the last 100,000 years is what I'm reading in the

media. Could you just expand on that? How do we know that? What? We're aware of? What? We're what are the implications of that? And, you know, why is that relevant? I think that's kind of obvious, but can you unpack this for me? Yes. How do we know it? Well, we have been measuring temperature around the globe for many, many years now, going right the way back to even when we were doing it in the dates of sailing ships,

for instance, when they would monitor different parts of the oceans. And we know what types of thermometers they use, so we can replicate those measurements. a day, the few measurements we had. But of course, as times progressed, we've got more or more measurements. And now we can both more precisely and more widely measure temperature around the globe. So we have a very good historical record, which has got better and better as time's gone on, but because of the instruments we can use, and more importantly, the frequency and the geographical spread of those measurements. And we are very confident now when we give these temperature

figures where we're heading. For me personally, it's another sort of very bad sign when I hear about some high temperatures somewhere or whatever that may or levels of rainfall that are way outside the margins. And we're certainly seeing these things happening more often. But it doesn't trigger anything in me other than one of, you know, this is exactly what we expected. It's not, oh, well, what a shock. This is what we've been doing. This is what happens when you think that you can rule physics, when you think that your ephemeral economics and your short-term politics in short-term economics can somehow trump how the atmosphere sees the rise in CO2 molecules

and greenhouse gas molecules. Inevitably, we will start to see these records broken and we'll start to see the implications, more importantly see the implications of that in how that changes basically all systems around the planet that are then trying to deal with the significant variation we're seeing now in temperature, in rainfall, in floods, in droughts, and fires and all the other repercussions of putting huge quantities of energy into the atmosphere.

We're putting unprecedented quantities of energy into the atmosphere, and somehow our politics and economics expects business as usual. Well, the physics will play out a different story. The physics always trumps the short-term economics. Building on that, and this is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, is I think we have three systems, and there's an implicit assumption that they're all overlapping,

but they're really not. We have the climate system, and you could call it a broader ecological biogeochemical system, but for simplicity, we'll just say the climate system. We have the socioeconomic system, including geopolitics and elections and power and all that. And then there's the energy system, coal, oil, natural gas, solar, renewables, geothermal. And it seems like those three systems, actually, the overlap of them is this tiny sliver of the current net zero narrative. But for us to really do something, those three systems have to be, have a heavy amount of overlap. And they do not right now.

So those listeners of this podcast that are deeply aware of climate change, probably nothing. you say is going to educate them or surprise them but a lot of people who are focused on poverty or the energy or biodiversity or other things they don't know what you know about

climate change and it it really feels to me like a slow motion unfolding of the movie don't look up because these camps of people are talking to each other looking at the same map. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, I would agree with that. I would be slightly sympathetic, less, sorry, slightly less sympathetic. In fact, probably go as far as say, often quite critical

of the group you started off by saying that we buy into this narrative, we understand the broad sort of framing of the physics and where we're heading. But I think we have, and I've often used this language, one repeatedly used the language of we're not science deniers, but we are mitigation deniers. We're the people that have denied the scale of the challenge and the implications of that for our system. And in that, I very much include the expert group. That could be the NGOs, it could be a lot of the senior people in academia, for instance. So those people who have often worked on and accept the science are simply unprepared to accept what the implications of that science mean for modern.

society. So I think in some respects, that increasingly, for the last few years, I felt that that's the group we really need to get to, our own group. Because when we describe the narratives about what needs to be done, I don't think they in any way align with what our own physics or what our own science is telling us. So we are sweetening the pill, we are deluding, not just other people, but the real skill, I think, we've successfully managed here, is to delude ourselves. We've deluded ourselves that somehow we can significantly shift business as usual. And in that, I think equity is an absolute key concern. We can shift business as usual to align with what our science says is necessary to deliver on our political commitments, which in themselves are, I think, quite weak.

But really, scratch beneath the skin of us experts, and I think we're fully aware that that is a delusion. That the repercussions now of how late we have left things mean that the changes to business usual are nothing within, they're not, they don't exist in the current paradigm. We're talking about a fundamental reshaping almost every facet of modern society. And we don't describe it like that because we don't want it to be like that because we have done remarkably well out of the system. So we don't really like the idea of thinking about what would be necessary now because it would be very uncomfortable for us. I kind of agree with that, but I'm not so sure that it's delusion. And I just, this is what I meant by the three different circles. I don't think the, the socioeconomic circle is overlapping with the climate system.

Because what would we have to do? I mean, I don't think democracies or capitalism are commensurate with the true changes that would be needed to happen to, I mean, there's no solving climate to avoid the worst and to mitigate. um the the the current trajectory i just i this is what i meant at the start that um i mean i'm looking at social systems and energy systems and i i think what would be required to cut our emissions to the levels that are needed is is going to be politically and actually physically impossible given the momentum of of our current uh energy and metabolic needs so I really, I struggle with it. I think you're probably going to turn out to be, I think your conclusions will turn out to be

right. But I don't think necessarily that they are the right conclusions of exactly where we are today. I think we'll continue to choose to fail. But I, to me, that that thin gap, if you're like, in the old days, it says a scrap paper, but whatever you'd call it now, that there's a small opportunity for driving significant change. And I would tend to agree with you. I don't think it can be aligned with whatever capitalism is, the modern structure of our economies.

I think that is completely counter to what would be necessary, anything like what would be necessary. But I'm not so sure about the democracy one. I think because we don't really have democracy, we have a very partial democracy, and that partial democracy supports the status quo. If we had something that was actually more what most of us think of democracy in a simplistic form where people have their say,

then maybe that could be aligned, but we don't of course have that. What we have are highly biased power systems which manipulate democracy to serve the benefits of those powers. And so I don't want to privilege that system with what we might call democracy. I mean, the United States barely has a functioning democracy.

The UK has one, but it's rapidly trying to break it down. Some degree the EU has one. So I think there are different interpretations of what democracy might look. look like, and some might be a much better or less worse than others. But I wouldn't go as far as to say yet that a properly functioning democracy is incompatible with the scale and the rates of change that we need. I think the power structures that have abused democratic systems are incompatible with the changes that we need. And in fact, not only incompatible, they deliberately

are trying to counter the changes. It's not as if it's just coincidently incompatible. They don't want to bring about the changes because they like the power systems that we currently have that we benefit for. I just don't see humans globally in India or China or anywhere voluntarily using less energy because that's what this is really about. I just don't see a mechanism for that. Certainly from 2007 onwards and in quite a large swathes of the global north, we have seen significant swathes of our population put up with.

and sometimes have to endure actually reductions in material well-being and lower energy consumption. Now, let's be clear, of course our societies, this has very seldom been the case. The wealthy of us have done remarkably well, and we somehow think that we deserve it. But I think it's not as if society or many people in population would be completely opposed to less material well-being. That's what's happened to them under a spurious economic system that has served this other group very well. Now, if arguments can be made that society as a whole should change its material use and energy use,

either less than those, for the well-being of society's own children, the own future, and of course, that of its intertwined other species as well, if that argument can be made without being twisted, then I think you can bring a large way of the population with us, because it would not mean for those, they would necessarily have to use less energy or less material. And in the end, of course, for most people, it's not even the energy they care about. It's the services that energy provides. And there are lots of ways to provide those services without using lots of energy.

And if you are going to use some energy for it, to actually have much lower carbon, greener, whatever language you want to use, much more sustainable energy systems. So I don't like the idea of seeing the populace as one mass. I think, and in some ways, I think, the soon we break up some sort of collective view of or fellow. ship around climate change, the better start. We need to drive wedges in there because those separations exist and have been deliberately manipulated by those of us who've done very well out of the system. So I would like to almost, to some degree, I realize this language is quite provocative. I almost want to open up a class warfare. Maybe warfare is not the right language, but as a metaphor. because I think that that might help us understand

where the changes need to be, need to really focus, which is why I think people in positions of power, people, positions of influence, and I don't just mean in this to billionaires, I often mean people like myself, like the professors, like the so-called elites in our society, that why we are reluctant to open up that Pandora's box

about equity, because we know if we do, it looks incredibly uncomfortable for people like, oh, it will be incredibly uncomfortable for people like us who have done disproportionately well out of the system over the last 30, 40, 50 years, if not longer. So I think there is scope for a new narrative with much, much greater appeal than the one where we see universal we on climate change. Could you unpack that with data and statistics on who's emitting so much.

much and consuming so much, I assume you have those figures. Yeah, I've got some of the headline numbers are just, I mean, they're just obscene. And what's interesting about, they're not produced by left-wing think tanks. I mean, the sort of work that came out in 2015 from Lucas Chanson and Thomas Piccatee, which fell in just before Paris about carbon inequality, just demonstrated then this huge inequality, even within wealthy parts of the world, between those who are responsible for the lion's share of the emissions and those who really just are having. No agencies have changed their emissions. They're locked structurally into the systems that are around them,

poor quality housing, rubbish, public transport and so forth, and don't have the wherewithal to change those things. So they demonstrated that the sort of famous thing that came out of that was that 50% half of the world's carbon dioxide emissions broadly came from the activities of just 10% of the world's population. And then more recently we've seen work from various people, Sivan Cartha, the Stockholm Environment Institute, but I think most tellingly from the International Energy Agency,

was really being a bit of a laggard on many things climate related slowly changing its tune not as fast as some people suggest it is but it's certainly improving I think but nevertheless early this year I think it was in February they had a report out pointing out and it was reiterating some of the other numbers that the top the lifestyles of the top 1% of global emitters produces much carbon dioxide as twice as much carbon dioxide as the bottom half of the world's population So we are not in this together in any way, shape or form. Emissions are dominated by a relative few in our societies, and that includes within wealthy societies as well.

It's not just the difference between poor and wealthy countries, but within wealthy and, of course, within poor countries, there are huge differences. That gives scope for rethinking what the policy realm might look like, but the problem is the people structuring the policy realm, informing the narratives, are almost without exception in the high emitting group

or desperately clamoring to get there. And so we are reluctant to introduce narratives that will be very uncomfortable for us. But I think the data makes us, you know, the data itself does suggest we need to open up the dialogue much more widely. And I think that there are very much, in that sense,

I think there are much more constructive, progressive, positive narratives that most people could buy into. But when I say most people, of course these people typically are not the ones with their hands so readily on the levers of power. It's not the structures that we have. The levers of power for them are probably the ones that normally our legal systems try and stop. This is why I think those three systems are not overlapping,

because I've done a lot of work on complexity and energy systems and the metabolism of our culture. and I totally agree with you. Well, it's not up for debate that the top 1% are using double the emissions of the bottom 50%. But how to change that is a Herculean task because I think you can't, each of those cultures, each of those states and nations has a built infrastructure that relies, on what it's built. And to change that instantaneously would collapse the entire system, which then feeds into the nitrogen fertilizer that's created from fossil fuels is feeding Africa, for an example.

We have 100 million people that live in the Southeast United States. If they had a ban on air conditioning or something, there would be a mass migration. So it's the incremental building of the, system that's got us here. And I think to just draconianly, even cut 10%, would have massive systemic implications for the global economy. What do you think about that? Well, first, I suppose going from the end of what you're saying, more towards the beginning, I don't know quite what the global economy is. I can see a sort of global North economy, and I think increasingly China is a different interpretation of that, but something quite similar

and probably India moving in that direction. But there are different, certainly the global economies have importantly different nuances to them, which maybe could be levered further apart. So you look at the US and then you look at Sweden, at least until the recent election anyway, you look at Sweden, I think there are significant differences there. Not sufficient differences to solve these problems, but I think ones that could be levered further apart. So I think that there are economic models that are less out of tune.

they are still all out of tune as far as I'm aware with what is necessary but there are ones that are more aligned and generally those are ones where we see greater levels of equity or less inequality but they're still not anywhere near what's necessary

but I mean the two examples you use then I think are interesting about feeding Africa about fossil fuel produced fertilizer well a huge proportion of the world's the world's fertiliser is used for putting into generating producing animal feed

So straight away there, it's not as if you're saying people have to starve. It might mean that you can still provide the calorie input for people around the world, but we could do that much, much, much more efficiently. Again, that's not going to solve all the problems, but it would mean that we could dramatically reduce the amount of fossil fuel use there and maybe find other alternatives to produce the relevant nitrogen's when they were necessary. And on the other side, I mean, I think it's a really simple, assessment I made a few years ago

and it's just a simple sort of calculation to get a handle on the levels of cuts we can make. If the top 10% of global emitters, which includes about one third of the people in the OECD, so about the top 10% of global emitters, reduce their carbon footprint to the level of the average European, which is still very high, about six tonnes per person for carbon dioxide at the moment. And the rest of the world, the other 90% of the world's population,

which, of course, does include two-thirds, the people in the OECD countries, made no changes to their current emissions. That would be a one-third cut in global CO2. Now, if this was a climate emergency, I think you could do that almost overnight. Well, it is a climate emergency, but it's not recognized as a climate emergency. Yeah, yeah. If we recognize it as a climate, we rhetorically recognize it as climate emergency, and lots of governments then do absolutely nothing about it.

It's even worse. I mean, I'd rather than just say we don't care. just let's have some honesty. We don't give a damn about future generations. We only care about the next five years. Then that's an honest position. We can argue with it. But I thought they pretend that they're concerned about climate change

and they declare climate emergencies then do absolutely nothing. But I just think what I'm saying there is that you could get a massive cut just by changing lifestyles of a relatively small group. I want to say changing lifestyles, that means the materials and the way they use things could be used for other purposes. So I've started to describe this more recently. And you talk about the collapse, what would be necessary would have to collapse the global system is a complete shift. But that's going to happen anyway.

So there are no radical, no non-radical ways out of this. We have chosen to leave it so late, a third of a century since the first IPCC report. So we've deliberately failed over those 30 years. In fact, we've not just failed. We've seen emissions rise by about 60%. So what the system is going to change either because we, have the wherewithal and the intellect and their compassion to do it in some sort of organized fashion, which will still be very problematic.

We actually try to do it in some way that we can muddle through that. Or alternatively, we just carry on with the lies and the rhetoric and will be hit by increasingly severe implications of rising temperatures. And that will mean a fundamental reshaping of the world anyway, but it won't be done in any organized, compassionate way. It will be sort of hell on earth type everyone out for themselves, mass migration, collapse of a lot of agricultural systems, other systems. We see all the sort of the work that people like Roxtrum and Tim Lenton and others

have done on the sort of tipping elements, tipping points, whatever language you want to use, those things starting to play out as well. I mean, that's an utter disaster. That will change the current global system. So there is no way, way out. The current global system will change. Either we do it in as best we can, organize fair fashion in a timely manner, or just carry on with lies in rhetoric and pass on to our kids say,

Hank, you sort out the chaotic mess that we've given you. So I don't think there's a way out of that. It will change one way or other. And I see the role of people like me to say, well, is there a way, you know, is option A, which I often refer to as like the Velvet Revolution, rather than the violent revolution, is there a way of us actually trying to open that up

as to what would that have to look like and how could we do that very rapidly? And I think the issue of equity does give us a lot more policy space, if you like, then the traditional way of just bolting on bits of technology and some sort of rubbish financial mechanisms to business as usual, which is what we've tried for 30 years

and it's fundamentally failed. And so you may be right. Maybe we are going to go to hell in a handcart and there's nothing we can do. But at the moment, I don't think you can come to that conclusion. I think there is that thin chance of us using our intellect for something slightly more worthwhile than we normally do.

and that that could open things up for rapid change. Whether it's rapid enough, who knows, but we are guaranteed to fail if we don't try. Yeah, I have so many thoughts, Kevin, on this. First of all, you and I care about the same things, but I've approached this from a metabolic standpoint. So I'm calling the climate change and ocean issues the next 30, 50 years, biggest issue.

in the world. Next 10 years, I think there are four more prominent issues. The lack of geopolitical agreement leading to potential nuclear war. This morning, Ukraine blew up another bridge and Russia pulled out of the wheat agreement and wheat is up like five or seven percent today and it's going to go higher. This also has an equity implication on the global south because Russia and Ukraine together are a quarter of the world's grain exports. The second thing is this financial overshoot is much of the global north is technically insolvent. And we're printing more money in order to maintain our current existence. We're borrowing money in order to use more energy today.

And that's totally unsustainable. The third thing is the complexity of our Sixth Continent supply chain. And the fourth thing is the social contract. I think all those things are going to be more prominent than climate from a leader government policy perspective. Those of us that care deeply about the environment want to say, no, let's incorporate this into our decisions. And I actually think your best role and people like you, and I'm about to get to this part of the interview, is to paint out, exactly what one and a half degrees, what two degrees, what two and a half degrees looks like, because I still think people are imagining this as numbers or temperatures and it doesn't

emotionally hit as to what this means in the future. I think overall we're agreeing there, but I think there are some important, potentially some important distinctions. the the issues you feel you were discussing and bringing to the fall for the next 10 years I think are all a are all symptoms as is climate change of of the economic I mean I'm not trying to pillory all economics but this this particular economic I mean for one of a better term I don't particularly warm to the term but sort of capitalist model that we have um So they're all symptoms of that, I think, in many respects. And in other respects, they're often quite self-reinforcing.

To provide an alternative, but within that, as I say before, I think there are very clear differences within between nations as to quite how that plays out. And I think that might be important. I think we can't, again, we mustn't sort of see the whole world as one place, even the global north that's just having one model. There are sufficiently significant differences. Social contract going back to the,

to the sort of 1920s in Sweden, that, you know, that is quite different from, well, actually, or maybe there were some similarities, some similarities with the Rusewelt's fireside speeches there, but anyway, certainly they've played out differently over the intervening 100 years. So I think there are important differences there. The other thing is I'm not sure how appropriate is

of people like me to be pointing out what this looks like. And also, as I agree completely, if we were going back to there again, we would not choose temperatures. Surely we wouldn't use temperatures. One and a half degrees centigrade of warming and a chilly day in the peak district. in Manchester, near Manchester, you know, you think about so what. That's what most people,

not unreasonably think. And so I don't think this is the best way to communicate these things, but I think we're locked into it to some degree now, you know, 30 years on. That's the sort of language we've been using. But to interpret that as to what that means for us, I think that we need a whole suite of other voices there. The people we trust in society, and I gather social science research demonstrates this, are typically people who are more local, have similar dialects to us, more sort of colloquial. They're using, they're discussing things down the road, the names of streets and places that other people are familiar with. And we often trust those. So local radio in the UK is often trust as much more than national radio, because there's a sense

of shared space and empathy and geography and all those other things. So I think we need to be getting these narratives about what the world might look like, but also the positive ones and the negative ones, get those much more from people who are culturally embedded in those societies and not using things like CO2 molecules or temperatures, but trying to use a better language that describes the world in a way that people are more familiar with and understand. And I mean, I like PowerPoint slides. I like graphs.

I like measuring CO2 molecules and spreadsheets. But that's not a way to communicate to most people. And people like me are pretty poor at going beyond that way of thinking. So I think there is real scope for bringing other people on board to discuss what these futures might look like and move it away from the so-called expert field. But that's an engagement with those people. And I know some people in the arts are trying to do this

in very constructive ways and other ways that always feel to be slightly more exotic and perhaps less helpful. But there are communities who are trying to do this now. Yeah, the role of philosophers, thinkers, storytellers, how they play out in our world. I think are also very important here. But we must make sure that we don't count all this in some sort of elitist fashion

that we are go right down to the, you know, what does it mean for the local boxing club in Hume, near where I am in Manchester now right to this moment? What does it mean for them? So, you know, they're probably not going to want to listen to a rich, white professor coming and talking about climate change. So I think there are ways we need to get a much richer, cultural dialogue on the issue of climate change.

But I say not just climate change, it's more the sort of systemic challenges, as you rightly pointed out, that many communities, often some of the poor communities in our society, are actually facing today. Climate change being one of those, but plays out in terms of food and particularly volatility of prices of food and energy which play out in terms of well-being and health for the children and all the rest of it. So I think there is scope for opening this dialogue up, but unfortunately the expert community, people like me are actively there trying to close it down because we do not want to do that

because it is too uncomfortable for the norms of our society. And by those norms, I mean, the norms that people like me have become accustomed to and bizarrely tell ourselves and others that we're worth it. I more meant not charts and graphs per se, but I think the public, including me at times, think one and a half C, 2C, 2.C, 2.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, it just seems like this linear story, um,

but the difference between one and a half and two and a half degrees Celsius, by the way, for the record, I think one and a half is gone. There's nothing we can do for that and probably two as well. And I am a peak oiler. I think oil is going to peak and decline now. So by the year 2050,

we'll probably have a half to 65% of the world's current oil production and that will change everything. But still, there's so much momentum built into the system already. And I just, I don't think people understand what a two and a half degrees Celsius world will look like yet. I think the majority of people. Not the one we live in today. Yeah.

Do you, can you, can you maybe spend a few minutes describing it? I think the best that we can often say is that it's going to look nothing like the world in which we live. We, modern humans have lived with a very, very, very stable temperature with very little variation. So all of modern human time has been spent with very little variation in the global temperature. In other words, the amount of energy we've got in the atmosphere. And overnight, literally overnight, we're changing that by a significant margin. And we call it one and a half degrees or two degrees or whatever. But these small numbers

represent massive shifts, massive increases in the amount of energy we put in the atmosphere, which means that plays out in terms of all systems around the world, human system, agricultural systems, energy systems, water flow, and temperature, all of the things that we have relied on for modern society literally get thrown in the air. And we don't know exactly how they're going to come down. But what we do know is when you, when you just, you know, almost collapse systems overnight, then there was a period of significant chaos. Now, okay, in a planetary level, that you know, some clever being may look back in a few million years and think, well, that looks quite unpleasant that 100,000 years or that 1,000 years or that 10,000 years.

But, hey, it was just a blip. Well, that blip is the one that we're living through. It's going to be, it's, you know, these sorts of changes we're seeing are going, as I use that language, you know, hell and a handker are going to be catastrophic at virtually every single level. And because it's not just the temperature, the sort of work that is coming out from these what are called planetary boundaries. Again, it's a expression that's fine for some of us to use, but not be helpful for others.

you're looking at the other ways that the world has maintained this very nice stable system, and how come they're all entwined, like how come the forests absorb and the excessive carbon dioxide, until some point they can't do that anymore, and the temperatures change, and they're no longer rainforests, and they now are much more susceptible to catching fire and becoming sources of emissions. So all the things that have allowed this wonderful planet to maintain some sort of stability, whereby humans, over a very short period of time, have become phenomenally successful. All of that balance is effectively being thrown in the air overnight, literally overnight. So you've gone to work, you've come home in the evening, you know, two of your kids are dead,

one of your parents is missing, the house is on fire and there's some flooding down the end of the street. It's chaos that's occurred overnight. Now, at the moment, we're just on the cusp of that, and in some parts of the world, that's already happening. Let's not be clear. Climate change is not a threat. It's a reality for many people around the world today. For others, it's still elements of it are playing out already, but, but for, particularly for those of us in more, in more sort of geographically insulated places in the world and probably slightly wealthier, we're just getting the early signs of it, but we can see it playing elsewhere, but our science tells us absolutely clearly where we're heading,

and that we have to do everything we can to avoid it. So there is, there is nothing out there that suggests that living with one and a half, two, two and a half three, three and a half four, wherever those temperatures might, might stop, that that is a good place to be. We know that in the short to medium term, and by that, I mean, over the next, you know, any sort of period of our own children's life, our grandchildren's life, our great-grandchildren's life, over that sort of time frame, we are locking in sort of horrendous lives for them and for all other species.

So there's nothing positive about that. There is every reason to change what we're doing today rapidly and very significantly. in a much more progressive fashion. I'm not giving you one by one accounts of exactly what will happen because we don't know exactly what that will be, simply because we're throwing the whole basket in the air and seeing how will it come down. And it will come down chaotically,

now exactly which way carefully we don't know, but they're not, chaotic, chaotic things are not things that we can live a satisfactory, good quality lives within. in in my materials for my college students, um,

I likened it to the, the earthquake scale, the logarithmic scale, the Richter scale. It's not exactly like that, but wherever the temperature ends up stopping 2.5 degrees is infinitely better for the planet than 2.6 or 2.7. I like every,

absolutely. Yeah. Every point one is a worth. Yeah. Yeah. Um, every, point one is worth fighting for, literally.

But in that, I don't want us to think, oh, okay, well, 1.6, it's not much more than 1.5. Yeah, we should be doing everything we can to stay nearer to 1.5. As you said, and I think many people will agree with you. I don't quite agree with you. But I think most people I know in the climate realm will do that we have no hope of 1.5 and probably are going to pass two. If I was putting any probability on it, I say, you know, we have, We have every reason to be deeply pessimistic that we will stay below 1.5 as a long-term temperature rise.

And I think that also holds for 2 degrees centigrade. But every reason to be pessimistic doesn't mean to say we're guaranteed. And again, it's that idea of is there enough of a sliver of hope in there to try? If we're lucky on how the climate responds to our emissions and if our policy makers get their heads out of their ass, my more more significantly I think the ones we have are by and large inequipped for the system system level challenges of the 21st century so it probably means you placing them if we could do that in some sort of way relatively quickly and then I think there are ways we could probably if we are

lucky on the on the sensitive climate what's called climate sensitivity we might still hold the 1.5 to 2 degrees centigrade the evidence suggests we are unlikely to be lucky on the climate sensitivity and so the temperatures is likely going to go way above that I'm going to have James Hay on to talk about his new paper once it's through peer review on the climate sensitivity, because that's quite a scary situation. So let's just focus on two degrees. Yeah, and let's be clear.

Just, I think people like James have made a really important contribution. His work is almost always very, very valid. And I think actually almost that that should be his sort of voice, and that end of the science spectrum should be the one that informs policy, because the consequences of failure are so utterly, potentially so utterly dire. And so I think we should be listening to people like James and this is how it might turn out. Now, we could be lucky and there are other people writing the other end of the sort of science spectrum. Both are valid from the science, which has elements of uncertainty inevitably in it.

But even the most optimistic interpretation of the science doesn't look good. That looks very, very bad. And then we've got Jameses, which looks really, well, I mean, it's just, it's completely a different planet, probably moving beyond our solar system in terms of what's happening. But it's just a different world altogether. And it's not that I disagree with James Hansen's work at all. I mean, I think it's a really important part of the debate. And from a policy of perspective, that should give a lot more impetus for why we need to do

everything we can today. All the things that we think aren't possible. Let's try and do them. So many ways to go with this. First of all, I want to ask you, let's set one and a half, because aside for the moment, because that would be a harder ask, but you think there's still a chance of remaining under two degrees. Can you explain what we would need to do? And you can say one and a half if you'd like.

What would we need to do? Yeah, well, yeah, let's, the reason I don't like, I think it's kind of unhelpful for a communication point of view, but nevertheless, as an academic works in this area, I think I have to hold to what the analysis tells us. as my interpretation of it. But isn't that interesting, Kevin, because you're wearing, you're wearing two hats, right? You are a climate scientist,

but also a communicator for policy. And that is a, you're wearing two hats simultaneously, and you constantly have to switch back and forth between them. It's difficult, isn't it? Well, actually, that's an interesting because I use that language

as a, in a critical way for a lot of others. my communication should communicate in an appropriate language exactly what my analysis tells me. Sorry, I should not sweeten the pill away from my analysis. So the language I use, the words I use, they may be the adjectives to describe the numbers, if you like, and they should be a fair reflection of those numbers, of the analysis. There are lots of colleagues I have, particularly senior ones,

who what they do is not, it's not that they just choose different adjectives. they will rewrite the story. The adjectives will not reflect the numbers. They will do when you're down the pub, having a pint with them or a glass of wine with them. They'll tell you what, you know, they'll use the language that reflects their work. But when they put a microphone in front of them,

put them in some sort of boardroom or somewhere, you know, it's been recorded, and they'll spin us sort of a cheery, not a cheery yarn, but a challenging but doable within the current paradigm within the business as usual, you know, view of the world. So I think that's two hats and that is very dangerous

because one of those hats is effectively dishonest. So the two hats, I would argue what you described for me there is actually I use a sort of language in a communication language which is not just the numbers and the graphs but that has to accurately reflect what comes out of the numbers and the graphs.

And so going back to this 1.5 and 2, what's important here to me is that from the IPCC we can, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, they give us a number, what we call a carbon budget. And in the words, how much how much fossil fuels can we burn and dump the CO2 in the atmosphere and how many other greenhouse gases, mostly from agriculture,

can be dumped in the atmosphere if you want to stay below 2 degrees centigrade. And it gives you a probability. What's a reasonable chance of it or not a good chance of staying below 2? And that's where there's some uncertainty, if you like. So the amount they tell us we can burn for fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases for a good chance of staying below 2 degree centigrade, also gives us an outside chance of staying below 1.5. I would say the analysis in the IPCC innately is very conservative.

That's not a criticism of them. That's the role of the discerning user of the intergovernmental panel on climate change data to recognize that the process of bringing the consensus amongst the scientists often means that it plays a slightly safer role. It won't push things perhaps as hard as it might do if you talk to the individuals separately. And so I think we have to choose, take the IBCC as the most optimistic interpretation. So I work from that and say, recognizing that it is, in my view, quite a conservative organization and say that's not criticism, that's a natural function of how it works.

Then I think we have to look at the budgets they have as being the most we can have. But then that tells us something. That tells us how much energy we can use, how much fossil fuels we can use. It gives us a timeline from where we are today to when we have to eliminate all fossil fuels. And that starts to feed into, well, okay, well, how would we do do that? What does that mean? So a timeline for a good chance of staying below 1.5, I can't see how you could write that future.

I don't know how you could do it. Maybe someone else could do it. I couldn't. I've tried it and I can't. The timeline, in other words, the amount of mission space we have for a good chance of staying below 2, I could sketch out what that world looks like.

And the headline things are firstly that whether we like for moral reasons or not, the equity part is absolutely key. you know, the part, how do you drive the emissions out of the system in the very near term? And the near term is the most important part because we're dumping the CO2 in the atmosphere at 42 billion tons a year at the moment. And then on top of that, another sort of 15 or so of other greenhouse gases. So the equity part tells you, if we're serious about our commitment, then the wealthy amongst us in society, and that's not just the billionaires.

We will have to have rapid, deep changes to how we live our lives. And that will have to come through. We won't do it through altruistic means. that means that our leaders will have to put in regulations and policies that drive our emissions down very rapidly. The repercussions of that are pretty significant. No, we won't be living in large homes. If it's 150 square meters, then that's as big as you ever build anything, probably much smaller than that. If it's a very large house, when it gets sold, it'll be split into two.

We won't be having the big SUVs. They'll be taken away materials used for making trams or wind turbine blades. So it's basically moving the productive capacity of our society from furnishing, the luxuries of people like me to actually improve in the public infrastructure, decarbonising our public infrastructure. You look at most of the homes across continental Europe, or indeed in the US, most of the homes are really inefficient. They're really poor quality in terms of what, in terms of energy use and keeping them either cool or warm. Certainly not fit for the 21st century. To make those homes fit for the 21st century is a massive

labour materials job as is improving public transport so that virtually all travel will be done by public transport and active travel. Now, these are massive infrastructural jobs. I align them with the sort of like the Marshall Plan, the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War, or the New Deal that came out of Roosevelt right back in the 30s. So that, I mean, they're analogies, and they sort of fall apart quite quickly, like all analogies,

but they give a feel for their sort of fundamental reshaping of the productive capacity of our society. The simple language I use is that we have to move from effectively private luxury for the relative few people, like me to private sufficiency for people like me. So I can still live a good life, but private sufficiency, but public luxury for all of us. So, you know, all of our public transport system works. We all live in reasonable, comfortable homes can afford the energy necessary for the homes, that we can eat reasonable diets, that we have, you know, public swimming pools and public parks

and those things that we can all share. Rather than the moment, we have this privatized world where pretty much what we've moved towards is relative public squalor for a lot of people and private, absolute private luxury for a relatively small group of us. So it's a shift in that productive capacity. And I think you can align that with the carbon budget for two degrees centigrade, just about. So that's the sort of shift I'm talking about. Do I think any of that's likely? No.

Do I think it's possible? Yes. Do I have any sense of how that could come about? Some inklings, but I think it's probably quite cultural, how we look in the States or Sweden or China, it would be quite different. So for the last 20 years, Kevin, I don't know how much you know about my work, but I liken humanity's explosion to a thousand times our population times our goods and services in the last 500 years on the backs of the carbon pulse, which is that we are

emitting this incredibly potent, using this incredibly potent, indistinguishable from magic on human time scales, 10 million times faster than it was sequestered. And all of our economy is based on that. So when you talk about a carbon pulse, have you ever mentally, I'm sorry, a carbon budget for the global economy, have you ever likened to that to like a cocaine budget? Because if people or nations or developing nations or insolvent rich nations run out of the energy needed to power what they recently had, they'll go to debt or crime or war in order to access it. I think that's what we're facing. That's sort of a dynamic and what's going on with

Russia and Ukraine is just a tiny tip of the iceberg. So again, I totally agree with the objective of limiting temperature, nothing to do with us, but to do with the next thousand years of humans and other creatures because there's an equity there too. There's the intergenerational fairness and there's interspecies fairness. And how many of the 10 million other species we share the planet with have absolutely no say and are not on a podcast with us discussing this? I share your views there. I mean, I think that's the way we're heading.

My sense, I feel my obligation. is to ask the question, is that inevitable? And if it isn't, however slim that chance may be, how do we discuss, how do we open that up? But I wouldn't disagree with what you're saying there. You're talking about cycling before. I've just come back from a lecture tour in Ireland. I did a thousand kilometers cycling in just over six days,

talking to different venues, including the governments and so forth. But what was interesting, probably one of the most interesting things about it, I was traveling through significant parts of rural island on smaller roads. And in all the time I was an island, the only mammals I saw were two seals in some rivers that just come up where the salmon are. One dead rabbit, one live rabbit, two dead hedgehogs, one dead badger, one dead fox. That's it. Why were they doing?

In 950 kilometres travelling around Ireland, they were dead killed by cars. and that's it. They are all the mammals that I saw that were not domesticated. I saw probably thousands of cattle and sheep, quite a few horses, a few dogs, four alive cats, one dead cat. I get a tally of everything with reasonable level. So, I mean, it was so evident. You went to an island, but the low population density,

we've killed everything. We've killed the natural world. Yeah. And it seems normal because that last year was kind of similar to that. but maybe when you and I were boys going in Ireland, that same situation would have been totally different. Yes. I mean,

what we've done in the last 20, 30, 40 years is just devastating to so much that has made our planet not only successful, but also in my view of them, a simple, you know, in the way I look at it, a beautiful as well, a beautiful, wonderful place. There were so few insects as I'm going around Ireland. The hedges were, you know, credit with credit. The hedges look quite much more diverse than the UK.

Not many trees. Very few insects. Almost no butterflies. Virtually no mammals. Very few birds. I didn't see one bird of prey. Yeah, it's not as if I'm travelling through an urban environment. I'm travelling through, well, compared to the US, a small country, but a relatively large

piece of land of Ireland with a relatively low population on it. And I'm still seeing, well, hang on, what's happened to the world that it evolved over the three billion years? It's gone. We wiped so much of it out. almost overnight. It's silent spring 60 years later,

but not only due to pesticides, but due to growth, basically. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, growth and its role in our economic facade are hugely problematic.

And I think it's one that we're going to have to grapple with. Many people are trying to grapple with it, but the incredibly powerful status quo is unprepared to have it questioned. That is at the core of this, Kevin, is we can talk about climate and biodiversity and emissions and net zero and renewable energy and all this. At the end of the day, all the problems that we face come down to governance. And my work says that there's a metabolism to the human system and we are not choosing. We don't have a choice.

There is downward causation from outsourcing the decisions in our world to the market. And the market has billionaires and politicians enthrall to it. So my question to you is, we need to do this for climate. Who is the we in that case? And what would be a governance structure that could potentially implement some of the changes that you, feel from a climate standpoint are necessary. Because I don't see would it have to be a global thing, or would it be the UK and the US taking the lead or the global south?

I mean, I just don't see who the we would be in that case. The United Nations. Yeah. I don't, well, okay. I'm asking you a lot of very, very difficult questions, so I realize that. No, it's fine. I have given some thought to these.

But it doesn't mean to say, of course, that one thing is in their way correct, but I have spent a lot of time sort of ponding over this. I don't think top down at some sort of global level. It can help and it can hinder, and by and large it normally hinders, but it could help. I think the structure is sort of that we have could help.

They don't at the moment really at all. But they can't solve or can't address the scale of the challenges that we're facing. even within nations, I think it is a struggle. So I see leadership, which is what we lack. I see leadership not as top down, but then I never really have. I see leadership as, and I know friends of mine who are colleagues in mine whose eyes will be rolling when I say this because they often hear me say,

so they use the same language. It is a messy relationship between bottom up and top down. Leaders don't, great leaders are not great people. they are people that have listened to other things around them and they have taken that on board. But the good ideas often have percolated through the system and been interpreted and changed and modified as they emerge through the system from an individual,

potentially, through to a family, to a household, to a sports club, to a local council, to a company, to a council, to whatever they might be in our churches, wherever that might be, they percolate through the system and they change and they emerge and each time they're modified. And then it may well be that that, that that informs someone who thinks about, well, how would you play that out in terms of policy

within the council, within the government? And then we get ideas that have come through the system that inform the policy agenda. Against that, which is a really positive thing, I think, and recognising that we all, in that sense, we all have a role, at least in places where we're able to do this, we all have a role to have our voice heard,

to change things, to inform the debate. Of course, there are massive powers rallyed against that, and in that I include, the status quo, the people who think, you know, many of the climate experts, certain the people that sort of dominate a lot of the higher profile events at the big climate jamborees every year, the cops and so forth.

You know, the people at the top of these things are generally part of the problem, not part of the solution space at all. But there are, see, I think there are increasing numbers of people engaging in the debate, not just the formal NGOs, some of the more informal NGOs involved now, wider populations are now just talking about these things

because they're seeing some of the effects around them, even when they're not mostly talking in a way that as academics, or it doesn't quite make sense, it's not really talking about things in a way that we would. Well, they're fine. At least they're debating these issues. They're starting to think about them and experimenting in their lives. That, in a sense, is a sense for,

is that a group, a constituency that's not neatly bounded that can have some sort of direction pointed, or helpful direction pointed towards it, coalesced, if you like. And could that be more, powerful than the relatively small groups that have completely dominated the global economy, certainly the global North economy, which I know more about, but even probably much the global South economy. I think the jury's out on that, how rapidly it could shift that balance.

Probably there have been times in history where it have, if we look in someone like the UK, look at a national level, the rise of the labour movements from the industrial revolution, from the, from the depravities of the industrial revolution, starting to say, well, how do we make it's a more, you know, how do we make the success of the injustice revolution, environmentally catastrophic in many respects, but the social successes of it, how do you make them play out more widely in our society? So eventually we get a welfare system, a national health system.

We see those things emerge that start to, start to provide some equality in our society, which then is broken down in probably more recent decades. So I think there is scope for that sort of change and that dialogue. Again, I'm not saying I think it's likely to be successful, but I think feeding into it without some overarching view as to quite which direction it will go

feeding into it honestly, directly, bluntly, mostly courteously, but perhaps not always. Some people will engage with it physically. They'll put their bodies in front of things. Some people will argue in courts. There are multiple ways where you can engage in these sorts of debates.

As I say, I don't think they'll succeed, but I don't know they will fail. but I think that's much more where I see this governance change coming from not some benevolent you know great and good bringing about the changes I just don't think that's the case I didn't happen with the suffragette movement didn't happen with the race movement it didn't happen with multiple things throughout the history of sort of modern and global north societies you know they were forced to bring about significant change by by groundswell movements in the end that included of course if you like the

middle classes. It wasn't just if it was all the very poor people. It was other people engaging as well. That is what we need now on speed, if you like. That's the sad. They don't think it's likely, but I can imagine that it could succeed. And some early signs of it, I think, are actually there. The dialogue we are seeing on climate change has changed not because of the professors, not because of the great and good, not because of all the people we would like to think, or I've had some contribution, you know, some mild way we might have done. It's changed because of the voices of civil society. getting up and saying enough is enough.

Now, there's not everyone saying that, but those voices have changed the mood music in the last few years in the way that the establishment, including the expert, has not. Yes, but 2023, all-time emissions and all-time highs and temperatures.

So let me ask you this. If, imagine this scenario that there's some positive movement in the things you just talked about, Not huge, but some. Oil peaks and we have an end of economic growth, a reduction in complexity, hopefully not a resurgence of coal around the world because I think that's a real risk as people become poor is we're going to try to, you know, get every scrap of thing to burn as we can. But leaving that aside, say that emissions peak but decline more gradually than you would like in your. two-degree scenario than you would require in your two-degree scenario.

What is the hope or what is the latest on regenerative agriculture in a way to sequester some of the built-up emissions or the emissions in the future and or geoengineering? Is there any solid amount of emissions reductions in those two camps or, that mostly fantasy? At this moment, it's, they're fledgling industries or, um, early ideas.

So I think to rely on them as, and to assume as virtually all models do in terms of, certainly in terms of some of the technologies to suck CO2 at the atmosphere, or indeed massive tree planting screams without really thinking through the implications. Um, that, the things are played out in every single IPCC scenario about what we need to do. about climate change, including, of course, all the ones that come from the energy companies

and most governments, I think is deeply problematic and shows this the huge systemic bias by the expert community towards business as usual. That's not to say that we shouldn't try and pursue these things and research them, but let's not rely on them because they are in their infancy. Everyone will tell me about some regenerative agricultural schemes that they've got that somehow can be rolled out around the globe. Well, they haven't been played out at scale yet, as far as I'm aware. I'm less afraid with the agricultural side now with the energy side. On the side, on the emission side, these technologies are just literally in the infancy. Let's talking about storing a few thousand tons, maybe the odd million of tons.

We're putting out 42 billion tons every single year, and these things would need to be able to do something significant in almost no time frame. So, yes, let's research them. Let's not rely on them in any way, shape or form. And it's also worth pointing out in the carbon budgets, in there was, about CO2 we can dump in the atmosphere, about fossil fuels we can burn in the IPCC scenarios. they anyway assume lots of massive, really big improvements in agriculture

and other greenhouse gas emissions and they assume lots of improvements in forestry and so forth. So they're embedded into the budget, so you can't double count them. So we should not be relying on these sorts of technologies, but that does not mean just dispense them, ignore them, and do not use the language. They're not an insurance policy.

You take an insurance policy, if something unfortunately goes wrong, it pays out. In this case, the chances of it paying out to me are incredibly slim. So it is not an insurance policy and that's the wrong language to use. But it doesn't mean to say that we shouldn't be putting some funds, some resources aside to try and research these things because anything else that can help is worth having. But there are plenty of things that we know would work today. I'm slightly not, I mean, you're, you used, I think you used to use the language of 50 to 60% of oil, because of peak oil by 2050. If that's

case then we're stuffed. I mean, we're blown through any budget for through much higher temperatures. We, we, if you do the IPCC scenario is down to zero, and from a straight line from where we are today, for 50, 50, 50 chance of 1.5, we need to be zero emissions by about 2040 to be, give us a good chance of staying below 2 degrees centigrade. We'd need to be, it would be somewhere near a 2055, something like that. So this idea that we have a whole load of fossil fuels in the system in 2050, that that is, means we have failed. We have failed. So we have to eliminate fossil fuels much, much faster than that. And that's if you do a straight line from today, of course you're not going to draw a straight line from day.

Even if we imagined that our leaders suddenly became more enlightened and really tried to drive an agenda, you're still talking quite a sort of political and technical lag of one, two, three, four, five years as you roll over from where we are today. and that means actually that the emissions to be zero would need to be about 2035 probably for 1.5, good chance of 1.5 and near about 2050 at the very outside probably 2045 for 2 degrees. So, yeah, I'm not worried about peak oil because we haven't got any space for it.

I don't even really think it's such anything because we're very good at getting more oil out of each well and there's a lot of unconventional that we're still exploring. And we are very good at reductionist technologies. Engineers are great at that. That's one of the part of engineering I loved, and we will find new ways to get the fossil fuels out of the ground. Fortunately, the renewables, by and large, are far, far cheaper, cleaner.

We always need to implement and give us more energy independence. You know, they're almost win-win on every category of the renewables, except for, of course, they only work in terms of climate change if they substitute for the fossil fuels. And the renewables industry doesn't really quite grasp that, at least a lot of people don't necessarily grasp, yet, that the climate doesn't care about your renewables. It doesn't care about energy efficiency. It only cares about how much CO2 you dump in the atmosphere, which basically means how much fossil fuels are burning. Renewables are irrelevant unless they substitute for fossil fuels. And the reason they're not substituting, they're adding right now isn't because of renewables.

It's because the GDP is the goal. I was just going to come back on the point earlier, which touches on that a little bit about the GDP is the goal. I think there's another thing of, we'll be aware of all the work, you know, great work on it from ecological economics, which is an economics that actually makes some sense. An ecological, an economics that broadly works within the physical boundaries of the planet. I mean, everyone must think that economics does that. But most people who aren't aware necessarily that modern market-based economics doesn't think that we have a round planet and physical limits, it just has some sort of, it's some sort of mythical world that they've

generated. And just by adding some maths to it, they made it look, they made it look like it's scientific. I mean, I often refer to modern economics as little more than astrology with calculus. But ecological economics, which there are many people work on that. I mean, they are providing much more useful insights. But I also think in economics and our economy, used the word earlier of economy. When my mom was looking after my grandparents, that part of the economy was never factored in. So there were all these things that are very familiar with. I think the sort of discussions around, particularly often the caring communities. And often it's the role of women, not always, often as to the role of women in our society.

These things aren't valued in our society. So we'll quite happen to measure an accident, a road accident or a tanker accident, and how that improves GDP by all activity. But we're not going to measure the things that are looking after, you know, parents or caring for our community in one way or another. Those sorts of things aren't valued in our economy. And that tells us something, again,

about how inappropriate GDP is as a measure. And indeed, the fact that people that came up with GDP would never have dreamt it been used in the way it is today. So the current form of economics is an aberration really and it's not something that can be modified. It literally needs to be buried and we can all pay our respects and then we can get on with something more functional like ecological economics, which is a much better way to start to sort of frame our world.

And it's not as if we're starting from scratch there. There's lots of work that's been done on that over many years. I have my PhD in ecological economics. Kevin. Good. Yeah. I liked your reference in the paper to, was it, apes getting their hands into the cookie jar?

Ah, so you have read my paper. Okay. So do you think it's necessary for leaders, including climate scientists, to demonstrate the changes they'd like to see in the world by lifestyle changes in their own lives as a way of leading by example. I know you have stopped flying and other things.

How do you implement this view in your own life as a climate activist? And why do you think that's important? Yeah, I don't see myself as a climate activist. I think climate activism is really important. I don't see myself as one of them. And I can unpick that a little bit. But this is a question that is asked all the time. It's ongoing debate about it.

it really matter what individuals do? Well, my key comment is, in terms of emissions, perhaps with a few exceptions out there, the emissions don't really matter. The point about it is, is that there are a number of things that we absolutely know clearly from all the sort of psychology research around this, that if you try to make some changes yourself, even if you're successful or not successful, you can talk about it with others. People will give your arguments our lent credibility. It doesn't make your arguments more or less valid, but people take more notice of what you have to say. And this is, I mean, this isn't rocket science. If you go to the doctor and they're smoking away and they're telling you should stop smoking,

you're not going to take as much notice as someone else said, well, I've managed to give up. It was really hard, but I managed it. And so it's, yeah, from a sort of a popular view of this, of course that's the case. But the research demonstrates that repeatedly as well. So trying to do things ourselves gives much more credibility to our arguments. And it also is part of the learning. curve about how we do things differently. You know, try, what are the problems when you try to install a heat pump?

What are the problems when you're in a really poor community and you're trying to get retrofrey, you get your street retrofitted from some limited budget from the council? What are the problems and the challenges there that opening this thing up, discussing it with our friends and so forth is experimental. It's changing the, it's changing the ten of the debate. It's making us think differently about how to do things with the resources that we have. And so I think it's absolutely key. that we stand up and make,

and we will be accused every time of being hypocrites, some pathetic low life out there, and there are plenty of them, we'll make some comment, oh, look, they drove their car there, so it means they didn't care about climate change. So by standing up to be counted to some extent with their own actions,

we will be inately and accused of being hypocrites, because of course we are. But we're hypocrites within the system that's still trying to change it. So I still think it is our role, if we think climate change is that important, to demonstrate it personally, as well as just arguing it for others. But it isn't as if these are separate things.

They're two sides of the same coin. System change and individual change are two sides of the same coin. Let's also be clear. I don't want to put pressure on everyone to think they've got to try and drive emissions down personally. Because for a lot of people in our society, I'm particularly talking about wealthy societies. I know more about society, wealthy societies collectively, like somewhere like the UK or indeed the US. There are huge swathes of people in our society who are absolutely struggling.

today, they're living in rubbish houses, often rented them. There's no way they could actually afford to do anything to make them much more efficient. They've got a rubbish car that they drive to work with because the public transport system is hopeless. They can't afford an electric car. These people have no physical, financial wherewithal to make dramatic changes to their lives. They still have political agency, and including in the last few years, they've demonstrated in voting for idiots like Trump, pathological lies like Johnson, or a number of other sort of fairly extreme views. I personally have welcomed their vote, welcomed hearing their voice. And I've had a lot of criticism of my colleagues. I've seen myself as sort of being on the,

what I like to think it was the progressive left. But I think the reason that a lot of these people are voting for these extreme views is because the progressive left has been neither progressive nor left or cared about these communities for years. The Democrats haven't cared about the dust belt. The Labour Party in the UK hasn't cared about the industrial areas of the UK that have been decimated in the last 20, 30 or 40 years. And so, these people are now getting their voices heard. And often these people are the poorer people in our society who are locked into the system.

So the role of the rest of us then is to say, well, how do we, how we do we bring these people, get much better quality lives that are low carbon, where they actually can start to retrofit their homes and have good quality opportunities for and prove health, which is good for their kids, which improves their educational attainment,

all of those things. This is for large swathes of society in rich countries. That's why I'm saying, I think there are things we can do, because I think there is a huge sway of people people who are voting now at last having their voices heard in my view sadly for the wrong sorts of framings of society but nevertheless they having their voices heard

and I think their voices would be much more supportive of a good world for them, their communities and their families and it's the job of those of us who are in fortunate positions of influence and power and so forth to start to describe those futures and put in the wherewithal to change those communities for the better. So all of this comes together

that I think there are ways to change things and even the fear that I hear a lot of so-called progressive say is, look, these people are voting for people on the right. They're not voting. I don't see them voting for anyone on the right. I see them voting against the establishment. The establishment has not cared about them for years

and not surprisingly in the end, they'll vote for any nutter. You put an orangutank up and they'll vote for them. Yeah, that's what Trump is, or Johnson are people like that. a few people like them. By and lines, people are voting for them holding their nose because they know that the establishment hasn't cared. I think that actually is quite a positive thing from a climate point of view

or from a sustainability point of view because we're talking about a better society for all, a more equal society for all, a more progressive version of the view of the future. And so I think in this, this changing how we as individuals who are the high emitters with the physical wherewithal agency

and making the arguments politically gives us much more legitimacy when we talk to these other communities and trying to get them to come on board with us rather than they'll just turn around to say, well, look, why don't you do these things then? Quite reasonably they say that. And I hear that all the time.

What about you? You're not making these changes. So I think there is something in that those of us who want to bring about progressive change to demonstrate that we recognize it's important and applies to us as much it applies to other people. I want to segue into my closing question.

questions because I promised you that we would finish in time for you to go see your PhD student graduate. Do you have any personal advice to the watchers of this video, the listeners of this program, who are tuning in because they're aware of the climate risk, the global upheaval and anxiety with many of the things we discuss, what you'd call the polycrisis. Do you have personal advice to the listeners of this show? The most obvious thing would be just to pinch your phrase from Greta is that hope comes out of action. So acting is absolutely key here.

And now what exactly your action is, I think that will depend on your skills, your interests, what you're comfortable doing, and sometimes what you're not comfortable doing. But identify things that you can do to try and drive change. Don't always look for an immediate response to success from that. The process of actually driving change. The system is far too emergent to see a one-for-one. You know, you put some effort in, you see an output. That's not how complex, as you well know. It's not how complex systems work.

So hope, if it resides anywhere, it resides in action, trying to do something. The other thing I would say that we, all of us have agency. And my point about this is often to say, identify the areas of our own life where there's a high carbon or unstable activity and try and change them. And I'll say, I'm not particularly interested in the emissions, but it's not easy for some because they don't have that opportunity. But try and change them. But then the change is less important.

The point then is talk about it. We have engaged in a friendly, constructive, or vociferous way with other people around you. To start that dialogue and debate, engage with your councils, with your churches, with your schools, with your places of work, your companies and so forth. And also engage at the national policy level. And we can do that much more easily than we used to be able to do because I think social media has opened up a media space for far more people to engage. Unfortunately, at the moment it's been significantly dominated by a particular groups of people are often, not all of them, but some are quite unpleasant. But I think it is there for the rest of us to engage with them. The more positive people will engage and try to engage constructively and courteously.

And that does mean to put your fingers in your ears to some of the nasty comments that are made, I think that can really help and be supportive of each other. Even if we don't agree with each other, be supportive of us, be supportive of others who are trying to get their voices heard in a cogent, thoughtful, compassionate, decent way. So we support each other and trying to change the framing of our society. And in all of that, I think hope emerges from all those things. Now, whether we succeed and not, we don't know. And this is my sort of thing on this.

We don't know whether we'll succeed. The chances don't look very good, but that we absolutely can guarantee we won't succeed if we don't try. So trying action is really what we need. And quite what colours that action, I think, is personal to you. your community, your local circumstances. So I don't think it's appropriate for someone like me to say,

you should do this or you should do that. And how would you expand that advice to a young human 15 to 25 years old listening to this, understanding the difficulty of the climate and economic and other scenarios? What sort of advice do you have for young humans? Well, as an older human, but it doesn't feel very long ago that I was a young human. I think I would say engage in the system

in a how the systems are around you constructively pushing as hard as you can but also push against the system often is necessary and the voices of young and the younger people and the energy that they have and the diamondism they have in their imagination

as we get older we get more more locked into status quo we like to call it wisdom and all the sort of language we use patronising sort of language we use as older people Well, actually, what we need is more innovative ways of thinking. And that is, on average, that resides more in the younger generation.

So stand up for what you think is important. Make good, strong, cogent arguments where you reasonably can. And that may sometimes mean that you have to put your body in the line of things. So certainly in democracies, I think that's one good thing we still have. I know some of our governments are trying to curtail that with laws and so forth. But by and large, our families and us and our families and friends aren't killed if we stand up physically. I think what we've seen with some of the younger people and then the other generations joining them

in some of the protest movements has been really important and successful social change has required protest throughout history and history tells us that it will be an absolutely key part it's not the only part but absolutely key part of being about rapid social change to make a fairer low carbon and sustainable progressive world to live in

and that would be my recommendation for a lot of younger people. But more importantly, I say, people of my generation need to hear your recommendations because what we've tried has failed. And I think sometimes we have to stop and reflect on that. We have failed for 30 years. So we need other voices. And I'm very happy to hear from others as to what they think we should be doing. Tomorrow I have a this week's podcast. will be a 28-year-old Pakistani man who came across my podcast and he shares his his opinions. It's quite interesting. Final question, Kevin, if you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decision,

what is one thing that you would do to improve human and planetary futures? If it was the wand that was a characteristic I could instill in everyone, it would be courage and integrity, or honesty, whichever language you want to use. But oddly enough, yeah, I think they're so important and undervalued virtues. Yeah, courage and integrity. Or maybe you should go around integrity and courage, perhaps.

That's a better way to put it. I think they don't have to agree with everyone, but people standing up for what they believe and have thought through, which is what I see is integrity and honesty. and then having the courage to stand up for it. And if you were to add a third one to that, it would be some humility. I totally agree with that. And from what I know of you and this conversation,

you are exhibiting both courage and integrity. Well, thanks very much. Others can make that judgment. I'm sure many other people would disagree with you. Well, like I said at the beginning of this conversation, I'm in a worse mood because of this, because I don't see us going. to that draconian.

I think carbon is the economy at this point. So my conclusion is that we are not likely to stay below two or even two and a half unless some black swan occurs. But I agree with you, we have to try to save the wonder and the functioning of the natural ecosystems of this world. because at the end of the day, you know, you and I will be, and everyone listening to this show 100 years from now will no longer be here, but Earth and its ecosystems and its species and denizens and web of life still will be.

And I think that is the prize. That is the goal. But our economic system doesn't account for that now. We agree. They would say that what we do without ever knowing it, might end up being that black black swan event there's emergence and that's why i'm doing this podcast Kevin is we don't know what's going to happen and we have to pass the baton of understanding and caring for our situation to more humans full stop and and hope that something unique and and good happens

away from the default trajectory that's my work that's your work i think yes yes certainly yeah anyways it's very nice to engage with you and thanks for the questions i always like this this process is quite cathartic. So it's good to make, I'll go away now and think a lot more about things in a slightly different way. So thank you. To be continued, Kevin.

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