Podcast: Man-made crisis: how do we survive on the planet we warmed? UN environment chief explains

TRANSCRIPT: Man-made crisis: how do we survive on the planet we warmed? UN environment chief explains

Inger Andersen:

Do I think we started too late? Yes, of course. This is COP26, it's actually 27 years. That's more than a quarter of a century. That's completely not okay.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we look at the global response to climate change. Will anything substantive actually come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, or will we see more the same, big commitments and little action from our world leaders? I speak to Inger Andersen, she's the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, to find out if a GZERO world can also become a net zero world. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant, and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

This podcast is also brought to you by Walmart. Walmart has spent over 15 years working to reduce emissions in our operations, and collaborating with suppliers, scientists, and community leaders to reduce emissions across the global supply chain. In response to the growing climate crisis, we're targeting zero emissions across our global operations by 2040 without carbon offsets. Learn more at walmart.com/sustainability.

Ian Bremmer:

Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, Inger Anderson, thank you so much for joining me today.

Inger Andersen:

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting.

Ian Bremmer:

So I want to start a little more personal, because this is a topic that affects us all so directly. There has been enormous progress, there is all incredible peril, you're devoting your life to climate and our environment. How do you feel about where we are right now personally? How does it affect you as a human being?

Inger Andersen:

Well, thank you for asking, because normally that's not what people ask, but here is what I'll say. Look, we have very little time to get something very big done. So there are days when I'm overwhelmed, but then I see that these issues that I work on, nature, pollution, and yes, climate, that they are ever more central to everyone's agenda.

They're on the front pages of the newspapers, they are in the voting booths, they are in the school cafeterias, they're in the prime minister's offices, they are on CEO's agendas, and they are certainly on activists and scientists agenda. And you know what? That gives me a bit of lift and a bit of hope because it has not always been like that.

So yeah, I think that it's not always easy, and there are interests that feel squeezed, and we have to make sure that this becomes a just transition, and that there's equity and all of that as part and parcel of the transformation, but we have no choice. So I retain a stubborn optimism, and pick myself up when I get a little deflated.

Ian Bremmer:

So what's your earliest memory that something was wrong, seriously wrong with our global environment?

Inger Andersen:

In the 80s, and this will date me, I'm afraid, I lived and worked in Sudan, it was my first job after I finished university. And I was working in drought, and the drought... Yeah, in the big, you will remember, sort of We Are The World, and that drought emergency in Sudan. And I was speaking just with ordinary people, and they had never experienced this. This was where six years of really not a harvest, and six years of barely rains and people having to move. So hearing, and people remembering that in this or that areas when their grandfathers had been children there were zebras, and now there was open desert. That was probably when I saw first what nature's wrath can do.

Ian Bremmer:

You can talk about these things and you can put them out graphically, but you need to see and experience them, and see and experience people that are going through it before it really has an impact on you as a human being.

Inger Andersen:

I think you're right, and I think that opportunity, I'd say, that my first ever job offered me working in Sudan allowed me to see that. And I think having seen it so early on in my career, just became something that I realized I could devote my life to one way or the other.

Ian Bremmer:

Leaders around the world now, not all of them, but a lot of them are certainly talking as if responding to our environmental emergency is the top priority they have. What's the gap? How are they actually acting in your view right now?

Inger Andersen:

Well, I mean the leaders of these 193 UN member states, but I'm just going to focus on 20 of them. The G20 is exactly the largest 20 economies are responsible for 78% of all carbon emissions. So if these 20 countries make the requisite shifts, frankly we are out of the climate crisis, provided we provide fair finance to those where many countries, and as you know, UNEP, and my headquarters, I'm on the road right now, but my headquarters is in Nairobi.

We have many neighboring countries where you have 20, 30, 40% access to energy. So they need to expand their energy, productivity and network, and they need to do it with a non-polluting energy source. So also financing need to be on the table. But, so you are asking, what is the gap between fine words and fine deeds? When we add all of this up, as you will have seen in the news, we are heading towards a 2.7 degree temperature increase centigrade by the end of the century 2100.

That is a situation we cannot fathom. And so therefore, taking action is needed, and that is what we are pushing for. If we include what is called the conditional elements of these, i.e. where poorer countries saying, "okay, yeah, we can do that, if we have the technology or if we have the financing that was promised," actually then it will take us down to, I think it's 2.3 or thereabouts. So still not where we want to be. In the IPCC, which is the International Panel on Climate Change, which we host-

Ian Bremmer:

They put out this massive report saying here's where we are right now, here's where we're going.

Inger Andersen:

Five scenarios, one takes us way out to 7, 8 degrees, so that's... And the most optimistic scenario takes us, yes, past 1.5, hitting 1.7 at around 2070, at which point we bend the curve because we have made this stretch. We've dealt with the three big sectors, transport, energy and buildings and construction, and we brought down our energy and CO2 emissions. So that's where we need to get to, and that's what the climate COP26 will be focused in on.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, right now there are a lot of headlines around gas prices in the US are as high as they've been in a decade, rolling blackouts, Lebanon, out of electricity, the Chinese with shortages everywhere and saying, as a consequence, "Okay, we need to produce more coal right now." Can we have capitalism, as it exists today, is it compatible with an optimistic path in how we respond to climate?

Inger Andersen:

Two things. We cannot have capitalism in a collapsed world, first of all. In a world where fires, inundations, floods, droughts, mass movements of people that will cause huge disturbance, that's actually the scenario we need to avoid. And so that's just the first point. That's not, then you would need to have not a free market economy because it wouldn't work anymore, because of the huge disturbance that we would see on food production, on water, on our coastlines, on our infrastructure, and the burden it would have on the public in terms of the economy. We've just come through COVID and we've seen the burden when we borrowed to inject into the economy for health and for sustaining the economy. That's quite a small overture compared to what we would need to do for climate change. So that's the first point.

Second point, yes, absolutely. And the early birds, get the worm here. There are smaller economies, admittedly, that have made significant transitions already, and frankly, they're sitting pretty well. But it's important to recognize that coal-dependent countries, oil dependent countries, that's not easy, but it will be about being smart about that transition. And we are seeing even some big hydrocarbon producers making those moves into that next economy that we need to reach.

And frankly, innovation is going so fast. If we had had this conversation five, six years ago, no one would've thought that concentrated solar or PV would be at the prices that we have today. So it's amazing. And now in fact, these technologies are beginning to compete very well. I'm right now sitting in Denmark where, because of the high windmill investments that we have, there are many days where we have more energy than we can use because of the wind velocity in this country. So I think it is about making smart investment, and it is about, yes, industry leaning in, but also government setting the guardrails to ensure that industry will lean in.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, there's a lot of talk whenever we talk about climate change of 1.5 degrees centigrade. And again, we're not on a pathway to that, we're not close. The most optimistic scenarios don't get us there, but what was the magic behind 1.5? Why was that such a significant place for the world to try to coalesce?

Inger Andersen:

I think because over 30 years, the IPCC, this panel of climate scientists, have told us with ever-greater precision what we, most of us, can survive at in terms of the world as we know it. And when we look at 1.5 even, we are beginning to understand, because right now we are 1.2, isn't it? And when we look at 1.5, we are beginning to understand that actually our world will change. The fires we are seeing in California, the fires we saw in Southern Europe, et cetera, this is not normal. This is a new normal.

But also understanding then at which point, because sea level rise will happen, but happen slowly as the ice cap melts, as the sea ice melts. So therefore understanding, at what point do countries as we know them and coastlines as we know them, no longer retain the shape that we know, and therefore we need to understand that much of the economic mite of the world is actually coastal based.

Think the US, think Europe, think Asia, where do we have our economic muscle? It is obviously harbor of ocean facing cities. So understanding that that is something that we need to take into account. And then small lying, especially atoll states in the Pacific and in the Caribbean and elsewhere... Well not atolls in the Caribbean, but atolls in the Pacific, these countries disappear at below 1.5. And so that has been the moral tone that was set since Copenhagen by the small island developing states, that they may be small in size and terrestrial size, they're massive in terms of ocean size, but the moral lever of ensuring that that civilization does not disappear is very real too.

Ian Bremmer:

Now when we look around the world, the global economy is increasingly tilting towards Asia. The world's population is already tilted in Asia. It's where most of that 78% of the carbon emissions that you're talking about is increasingly coming from. And most of these are not the wealthiest countries in the world. Talk about how all of that coming together changes the challenge, changes the way we need to think about this crisis, where over the last 40 years, it's primarily been something we think about in terms of the advanced industrial democracies.

Inger Andersen:

Well, actually I'll push a little gently against you here, because I think that the countries that are on the receiving end of climate change have been discussing this for quite some time, and they are in Africa and they are in Asia, they are the Sri Lankas, they are the Bangladeshes of this world. So I think the conversation has been very much on those who get socked by climate change, if I may say, who really get hit hard, that there's a huge awareness around this.

But you're right, of course, that Asia is rising, the economies and the populations are moving forward, and that significant emissions projected could very much come from that part of the world. But I think also that this is where we can see many of the solutions, to be honest. I'm not wanting to be naive, and I'm not wanting to say that this is going to be done in a day, but you do have a technological might, you do have an economic mite, and you have a clearer, within sight in a number of the Asian countries, that this is critical.

Now, is everybody on board? No, not necessarily. Is it easy? No. Especially because if you take an economy like India, it is very coal-dependent. You take Mongolia, it is very coal-dependent, and turning that on a dime is not going to be easy. But there is an engagement with the issues in many of the countries, and I think if we then look at the awareness in a country like Indonesia or in a country like Japan or Korea, and obviously what China has committed to by 2060, reaching net zero, not easy for a country that still has poverty. With all of the complexities that we understand, I think that we are beginning to see something here, but it's going to be hard for all countries, including the Asian economies.

But frankly, the alternative is not one we would want to contemplate. Then we would just be the orchestra playing on the sinking Titanic, frankly. So we have to take these steps, but we have to take them together, in a firm grip on multilateral commitments, and that's what I try to encourage states to do. On climate, but also on another convention, the biodiversity convention that deals with nature and nature's services to us, where we are having the COP that just opened today, as well as on the pollution. We in UNEP, we speak about these three planetary crises, climate, nature loss and pollution and waste. And we need to get at all three to get to a longer-term sustainable planetary existence on planet Earth.

Ian Bremmer:

Let me turn to those now, and on biodiversity, we of course continue to see talk of this sixth great extinction, the first that is manmade, fully manmade. One of the most depressing statistics I ever saw was that since I was born, I'll date myself now, back in 1969, about half of all of the species we know on the planet in terms of biomass, are no longer with us. That's kind of astonishing to think about, and it obviously is speeding up. So I wonder, most of the world's media attention has been on what we've been talking about so far, which is carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Very little is about the rest of the species on the planet that don't have a voice, don't get a vote. Talk to me a little bit about your view of that part of your remit.

Inger Andersen:

Well, here's the thing, right? On the climate change issue, it hits us more visually and more real in our economy, our jobs, if you're a farmer or whatever, you are a fisherman, you see that things are changing. The fish are no longer where they used to be, they're further north or further south depending on their climatic conditions. And obviously with all the floods, fires, et cetera, droughts, et cetera. So, it's more visual. And I think in the US, Katrina, Sandy, some of these big, big storms were part of many people in the US realizing that this is very real. And of course now the California, and the west coast fires, I should say. So that's more visible. Whereas biodiversity, first of all is a technical, difficult word. It's nature, right? It's nature. And nature gives us the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and most of the housing in which we live.

So understanding that is harder because one bird or one butterfly or one insect, how does this affect me? But nature is this amazing system where a species nests in one, eats another, migrates to live in a third, et cetera. It's very interdependent, each piece is woven in to the web of life, to the rest, and we take it for granted. It pollinates our crops. The massive hydrological cycle through which water is getting into the skies is because of what happened down in the biomass and how it evaporated back up. These things where we assume that rain will follow, season will follow season, rains will come when they're supposed to be, and harvest will follow harvest, and the birds and the bees will do their job; this is not something we can assume is there. And when we are interfering with nature, we have altered 76% of the terrestrial surface, the land surface of our planet, and 80 some percent of the sea bottom, if you like, by our activities, by our fishing and by our agriculture.

Now, we all need to eat, so don't get me wrong, but we need to make sure that our interaction in agriculture is nature-positive. We have fragmented and converted so much land, that nature is being squeezed into little corners. So that's the story. What does that solution look like?

It looks like, rather than subsidizing the things that are nature destroying, we should subsidize nature-positive agriculture. We are often subsidizing efficiency, but under the false assumption that nature will just get us what we need, the water and the butterflies and the bees that will pollinate, et cetera, but that's not how it works. And so we need to begin to think about having the kind of agricultural subsidies, because let us never blame the farmer.

Many farmers are struggling, they're hardworking, et cetera. But let's talk about the systems that can enable farmers to be nature's stewards, as they have always been. And so I think that's what we need to get at. And also of course, big ag beginning to lean in, but needs to lean in more on this. We need to have a conversation about agrochemicals, and nutrient rich agriculture, where we are using over-fertilizing in many places in the world, causing dead zones in the seas, et cetera. So all of that is part of it. That's on the nature side. And then of course, we need to talk about pollution too.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you optimistic with the technological fixes that are starting to come into play when we talk about biodiversity, about the genetically modified crops, about sort of gene mapping and tweaking of some of the species that are on the planet.

Inger Andersen:

Some of these are indeed part of the negotiations under the convention that the US has yet to ratify, but most countries have done so. And technology clearly will form a part of this, but as will just smart farming methods. We can do a lot. The 2 billion hectares of degraded land, do we need to continue to encroach into tropical forest areas, or should we invest in the degraded lands to make them part of the working landscapes that feeds us?

Let's talk about food waste. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of CO2. So let's be clear about how our supply chains work in poor countries, it's largely from farm to fork, or it's in the supply chain from the farm, but in richer countries, it's from the refrigerator to the waste basket, the rubbish can.

And so we need to also be clear about how we price our food in terms of the externalities that we are not taking into account, as well as how we waste our food. And all of this, and of course, how we produce it. We don't need necessarily spatial expansion, we can do vertical expansion, and thereby use technology. There are many, many solutions that are abound, and it is entirely possible to feed this world with good diets, while still ensuring that nature provides us what we expect it to provide, and what we will need for it to provide.

Ian Bremmer:

When I was a kid, I also remember the hole in the ozone, and it was very immediate, it was very targeted, it wasn't a huge part of the global economy. And in relatively short order, everybody mobilized, did something about it, we don't talk about it anymore. And part of the challenge with climate is as we've been discussing today, it's everything, it's interconnected, it's hard to know even where to start.

Inger Andersen:

It is hard to know where to start, but I think we have started. Do I think we started too late? Yes, of course. This is COP26. It's actually 27 years. That's more than a quarter of a century. That's completely not okay. And I'll tell you in the early COPs because I was there, I was one of the voices that I don't talk about adaptation. I don't want to talk about adaptation in any way. Why? Because we knew what to be done. So to adapt was to accept that it was going to happen, right? Now, I'm on the forefront of saying, we need financing for adaptation. So yes, we are too late, but at least it is happening, and at least we are moving, and so we are on that climate effort now, and we just have no alternative but success.

Ian Bremmer:

Inger Andersen, thank you so much for joining us on GZERO World.

Inger Andersen:

It's a pleasure.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com, and sign up for our newsletter, Signal.

Announcer:

The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant, and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

This podcast is also brought to you by Walmart. Walmart has spent over 15 years working to reduce emissions in our operations, and collaborating with suppliers, scientists, and community leaders to reduce emissions across the global supply chain. In response to the growing climate crisis, we're targeting zero emissions across our global operations by 2040, without carbon offsets. Learn more at walmart.com/sustainability.

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