Ex Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE | Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson

We are richer as a country virtually every single year. Yet we still talk about a cost of living crisis which is deliberately fabricated. That is a choice of how we hand out society's resources. That is an active choice of our politics. We're what what between the sixth and the 10th richest country in the world and we've got what84% of the world's population. So we're an incredibly wealthy country but that wealth has been privatized to relatively small groups of people and we mustn't ask questions about that. Well, we must from a climate point of view. You have no choice because that's where the lion's share of resources. And when I say resources, what I mean is materials means labor, the skilled labor in our society. But unless we ask these deeply fundamental questions, we are going to fail on climate change. If we fail on climate change, then society fails. [music] I don't know where you are right now, but in Britain, it's very hot. I'm not talking about the metaphorical political temperature. I'm talking about the literal climate. On the south coast where I live, it last rained on the 26th of June. Right now, the Met Office is saying it might rain on August the 5th. It might. That's 40 days without rain. Clearly, something is changing with our planets or weather systems, not just in Britain. Uh you also see wildfires across much of continental Europe, too. Even people previously skeptical of climate change and what it might mean are, forgive the pun, warming up to the idea. Uh, I want to talk today about climate change, where we're going, what's likely, and fundamentally the scops that the media and actually much of academia too feed to us. Is 1.5° warming possible? Are we heading for two degrees warming in all likelihood or where still could we go beyond it? Three, four, and five. And what would that mean for human civilization? Who are the people holding back meaningful action on climate change and who can be at the heart of resolving it? My guest today has had a number of careers. He started his working life, I believe, as a engineer in the merchant navy. He worked in the offshore oil industry, but then there was some sort of conversion because he is now a professor of climate science at Manchester University. Also does some work too in Sweden. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Uh, Professor Kevin Anderson, welcome to Downstream. >> It's nice to be here. >> I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Uh, but I'm not looking forward to the context it pertains to, which is to say the rest of the 21st century. We're talking about climate change. >> Right now, we're living through a pretty important um significant weather event in Britain. I live on the South Coast. I think it last rained in Portsmouth on June the 26th. >> It might not rain again till August the 5th, which is about 40 days. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Why has that happened? In all probability, I know, you know. Okay. Yeah. >> This is when people say, well, you know, it happened once in 1896. >> Yes. Yeah. And you can never say climate change causes one particular event, but if you remove yourself from all of that, I mean, it's it's basic physics. And we're putting a lot more energy into the atmosphere. And if you do that, you change climate, you change weather patterns. And we've been knowingly doing this for a long time. And this is nothing new. Um, so if you go back to Forier working on it in 1827 or Ununisfoot in 1849 and Tindle in the early 1850s and Aenus at the end of 1800s, there's no there's nothing particularly new. I think some people think that this new thing called climate science. It's just physics. It's just chemistry. It's biology. It's what we've been doing post enlightenment and people have been working on climate change for 150 or more years. Um, so we have a really good understanding which improves as time goes on of of how the science underpinning the climate and the weather works. Um, and we're putting we know we're putting a lot more heat into the atmosphere. So there's a lot more energy in the atmosphere and that means we get a lot more unpredictable um, sort of weather patterns and extreme climate situations which is what we're witnessing already witnessing around the globe. But I think it's worth pointing out a lot of people refer to this as the new normal. This is a This really misunderstands where we are. This is not a new normal. On average, this is the least extreme weather that I, you, and anyone else listening to this will ever live through. It's going to get worse and worse every single year until we stop burning fossil fuels. Not reduce burning fossil fuels, stop burning fossil fuels. So, celebrate this as our least extreme weather year that we we're going to live through. It's going to get worse. We'll reflect back on the uh the inclement and chilly days of uh 32 degrees in London, you know, before we were growing mangoes and bananas. >> But to be just to be clear, we I mean weather is what happens on top of a long-term climate signal. So we might still get a you know a cold winter or next summer could be back to what we typically used to, but on average we are definitely seeing this significant trend now um at a global level. Can you put some numbers in terms of you said right at the top of the answer we're putting lots of energy into the atmosphere. So can you put some numbers on that? >> Well >> in [clears throat] terms of CO2 emissions CO2 emissions right >> parts per million etc. >> Yeah. Okay. So the reason we're how we're warming the climate primarily how we're warming the climate is we're significantly increasing the amount of carbon dioxide but also other greenhouse gases from agriculture and so forth and and and industry. We're increasing those in the atmosphere. And for those who like to play around with numbers, um, since the industrial revolution, we at the industrial revolution, before we started burning fossil fuels, we were at the unit we use is parts per million. Um, we were at about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. And now we're at about 430 parts per million. That's happened almost overnight. And I think what's also important there if you if you were to plot out um the last 10,000 years or so, which is the time when human societies really flourished, if you like, so it's when modern society has really developed. During that time, we've had an incredibly stable climate um and temperature and carbon dioxide level. So hardly any fluctuation at all. About 20 parts per million fluctuation in 10,000 years overnight. And imagine in 10,000 years end that little plot you put 1850 was when we started burning fossil fuels between there and now which would be basically a straight line up and we've gone from 280 to 430 parts per million. And the physics tells us the scientists I was mentioning before the physics tells us as we put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we track more warmth in the atmosphere and I say other greenhouse gases as well. Um and so that's that's what we're doing. We've we've increased this blanket, if you like, of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the concentration of it that's chopping in trapping in more warmth. And until we actually stop burning fossil fuels and pumping the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, till we stop um the levels of meat consumption, because that has a major um greenhouse gas implication in terms of methane primarily. Until we stop those things or at least stop fossil fuels and significantly reduce meat consumption, then the temperature will just keep going up. the parts per million will keep going up and we'll get warmer and warmer and warmer. >> And methane is a is a greenhouse gas. >> That's another very very powerful greenhouse gas. It doesn't last so long in the atmosphere. Nowhere near as long as carbon dioxide. Um but it's very powerful. So in the short term it's actually much more powerful per molecule than carbon dioxide. Um but it doesn't last as long. But if you're talking about this, we probably come on to this later. you're talking about this the agreements that we have about what temperatures we want to hold below because we think above that is too dangerous then methane plays a really important part in that time frame because th those temperatures we're we're reaching already. So the short term is so important from a climate perspective. So methane methane emissions need to dramatically reduce and we need to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions which is basically fossil fuels >> and methane obviously as you said comes from animal agriculture but also it's a big part of fracking which is one of the arguments >> against yeah there's a lot of it from fracking from the oil and gas industry more generally from I mean also from coal as well so the oil industry has a lot of methane it puts a lot of methane emissions into the atmosphere fracking is particularly bad amongst the fossil fuels but also there's a lot of methane that is produced naturally and as you warm up the climate you increased the amount of what we might call natural um production of methane. So, you know, so there are other issues. As you warm up the, you know, the pete and the and the tundra in in in um in Russia and so forth, you're going to see large quantities, very very large quantities of methane increasingly put into the atmosphere. And also, as you heat up the oceans, the oceans have far more carbon dioxide in them than the atmosphere. as you warm the oceans, it's just again level physics will tell you that you can't hold as much carbon dioxide in it and in the oceans and they will start putting that into the atmosphere. So at the moment the oceans are a really important carbon dioxide sink, but that's looking that we're getting towards the point where those could turn from being a a sink to a source of carbon dioxide. >> Yeah. >> Which is almost too disturbing to contemplate. >> So there are people like Nigel Farage or or the median reform voter and I hope they're watching this and they'd be saying these people are catastrophists. But what you're saying is if we get to two degrees or three degrees and this is very well documented, there is a very decent chance of this cascade of feedbacks where methane is emitted from Siberia, methane hydrate from the world's oceans and all of a sudden go from four to five to six. >> Well, certainly significant increases in temperature and um I mean I wouldn't say when you get to I mean that some scientists saying that's we think that's occurring already. So we're starting to see, you know, there's some thought that we might be seeing early dieback in some parts of the Amazon, possibly in some parts of the Congo, but the data is really poor on the Congo. So we're starting to see certain sort of collapses of key um uh sink structures around the planet, which are really really important for keeping a balance. So we're starting to see that now. Um and some scientists think we've probably crossed some of those what people refer to as tipping points, nonlinearities in our fancy climate language, but tipping points, we're starting to cross those now. Well, the problem with this is that um though science is is very clear on the on the on the causes for all of this, the actual exact time frames are always you mustn't put too much precision on them. >> Um and so some scientists think we're we're just getting to that point now. Others think it'll be it's a few more years away, but by and large none of them are disagreeing. We are we are putting this energy in the atmosphere which is going to have which is going to bring about these natural sets of feedbacks which in the end make whatever we do almost irrelevant. you know, the the system will will move to a new equilibrium. It might move to new equilibrium that we're not in and probably a damn site better without us in some respects. We've we've caused at least in post enlightenment, we've caused a lot of climate issues, but also broader ecological issues. We haven't found a way yet post enlightenment of large populations of humans living in any sort of harmony with with the sort of um the natural processes of the planet. And we are deeply reliant on those natural processes. We're we're destroying our own home. >> People say 1.5 to stay alive, but you're saying that already we're getting those feedbacks and we actually haven't hit 1.5 in so much as we have. There are certain years where we're at 1.5 already. >> But as I understand it, you basically need 20 years of 1.5 and then the IPCC will say, well, we hit 1.5. Some people say 11 years, but yes, but the capernicus European capernicus project said the last few years we've been at at really pretty much 1.5. But I think it's also worth bearing in mind that's a 1.5 temperature, but it takes a while for the for everything else to absorb that heat. Yeah. So even if you So not all the impacts of 1.5 are currently visible, and we're going to go above that anyway because we're not going to stop burning fossil fuels for some time, unfortunately. Um and so if you just hit a year of 1.5, you don't think, well, this is these are the impacts you're going to get. That's not not not the case. It takes a while off for some of those impacts to percolate through the system. Particularly if you look at things like the oceans, it takes the oceans take a lot longer to warm up. So they're bit like, you know, you know, you have put a lot of energy into a kettle to heat up a kettle of water. Um, and that's the same with oceans. You got to put a lot of energy into the oceans and that takes time. Um, and so I don't think we should just sit there and think this is this is what 1.5 looks like. But as I say, we're not holding at 1.5. We're going to go to 1.6 1.7. My personal take is and this is really the area I work in is is what we can do about it. I I don't know how we would hold to less than two. So my colleagues don't like me saying that but I think it's important that I you know I I go by what my conclusions are and and say them clearly however uncomfortable they may be. I don't I don't know how at a global level we can reduce emissions fast enough to align with the science that says we we get a hold below two degrees centiggrade of warming. I think two degrees centiggrade is is about doable. We'll come we'll come on to this later, I'm sure, but that would require revolutionary changes in so many facets of modern society. >> You've actually got some data on that and we'll go to it in a minute and it ain't happening if I'm totally honest. >> Well, no, it isn't. No, it happens >> in terms you're saying it's revolutionary. I mean, it's >> it absolutely isn't happening and and and I'm I'm someone who thinks it will not happen, but I think it will not happen. I don't know it won't happen. History is a wash with people who who claim they knew what was going to happen. Um, and they're almost always wrong. So, I think we have to sort of step back. There's a bit too much hubris, a bit too much arrogance that we know what's going to happen. We know what's likely. >> We don't know it certain. If we knew it was certain, I'd just go off cycling and rock climbing and saying, "Well, I'm not going to work on this issue. I don't particularly enjoy working on it. I might as enjoy myself, make hay while the sun shines." Um but but whilst there is a thin thread of possibility that we could actually pull back from the brink then it's worth pursuing. >> See I don't know if these are your own personal sort of calculations but basically this is from a a presentation you gave. >> Okay. Yeah. >> And it's saying interpretation of Paris agreement 83% uh chance of 2°. >> Yeah. >> Uh real zero CO2 date with linear >> 83% chance of staying below not not exceeding two degrees >> as in as in Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Two two degrees or below. >> Yeah. um real zero CO2 date with linear CO2 reductions. So we would need annual emission reductions of 13%. >> For the UK it would be for for not just for the UK for the wealthier parts of the world it would be something like 13 let's say 10 to 15% depending on which country you were reductions every year. I think the global figure is almost slightly more concerning there. Globally you've got to bring emissions down about 8% just below 8% every single year and you've got to do a lot on the methane emissions as well. It's not as if you just do that. You've also got to do the things on the other greenhouse gases. You've got to stop the deforestation. So, you have to do those other things as well. All the the carbon budget, if you like, the carbon emission space that we have is even smaller. So, that's being pretty optimistic. 8% globally is optimistic on all of the other things we do as well. 8% every year. >> I I get that. But I think because we're in the UK and people sort of familiar with these dates, they'll say, "Well, 2050, >> if we can just decarbonize by 2050, you're saying 2039. It's almost 2027, right? >> Yeah. >> That's not that far away. >> Oh, no, it's not. But >> there are professional footballers playing today who will be playing in 2039, right? >> I'm not sure they will. Depends on the temperature. >> Well, maybe the football pitches won't look like that anymore. But that's very soon. >> Oh, no. It's ridiculously soon. But this is this is nothing new. I mean, physic physics doesn't care about our, you know, political sensibilities and our, you know, other machinations. These are these are irrelevant. The physics just does what it does. If we keep spewing CO2 in the atmosphere, I'll just keep warming the climate. And we knew this in 1992 when we signed the big the first of the big Earth summit agreements on climate change, which is the third of century ago. Some people listen to this. Their parents wouldn't have met then. And we've basically lied and fudged the story line and the narrative. People, some people have tried very hard, others have deliberately undermined that story line, but collectively as a society, global community, we have fundamentally failed for over a third of a century. And climate change is a cumulative issue. The carbon dioxide we put up there, at least half of it stays there every year, building on the previous year and the following year and the year again. And because it's a cumulative problem, every year you fail, the following year you have to do a lot more. And if you fail that year, the year after that is even harder still. It's just the physics. We may not like that. Tough. We have to, you know, we have to wake up and smell the coffee if you like. We we are in this position we're in and we have to deal with the consequences of that. We can't we can't just swallow we have done we swallow blue pills and hope that somehow you know some some magic isn't going to solve this for us someone else is going to solve this for us you know we're playing with the physics and the physics will win um as it always does and so those dates come out the fact is we've got commitments to hold to 1.5 to two degrees centiggrade of warming the evidence from the science who work on that side of things on the impacts 2 degrees centigrade looks pretty dangerous in so many respects and so those are People like myself and others who look at this then well how how do we let stay below two degrees centiggrade come up with these sorts of levels of reduction which are phenomenally fast and cannot be dealt with and cannot be delivered either in the cozy narratives that the expert community pretty much tells the public and the policy makers. Um well certainly not not in those sort of narratives but also um with it with any sort of business as usual framing of contemporary society. It's complete and utly incompatible. And if you talk to the Faras and others and I'm not, you know, okay, I have my own views on on FAR and some of the other senior people in reform, but like all political parties, I'm sure there are good people voting for reform and there probably are some good MPs in reform. I mean, I don't know any of them individually. Um, but we have to somehow convince people from the science that civilizations have collapsed in the past and they all thought they weren't going to until they did. M [clears throat] if you just look at the CO2 plot for us today, if you look at our population today, if you look at our levels of consumption, everything you would plot, microphone consumption, television consumption, population, um emissions, car ownership, tarmac on roads, number of buildings, every single thing would be pretty much exponential. Any other species out there, you look at it and said it's going to die out. And we're so arrogant. We think we're not going to. despite the fact that we we can look at all previous civilizations how much the wall eventually collapsed some of them quite a few of them because of some climate related issue as well >> but we we're so arrogant we're just going to carry on um and I think it's you know we we have everything we need intellectually from a reductionist point of view to chart with exquisite precision now our own demise we seem to lack completely any any ability to step step back and look at the system so we're wonderfully clever look, you know, looking at at the small parts of something, but the collective of the small parts, the system, the ecosystem, we're appalling at that. And I would argue that's true in economics as well. I think it's one one of the reasons we're failing on climate change is because we have a reductionist form of economics that parrots physics and it's not physics. Um, we don't we have not stepped back from it and look at this sort of system, the political economy if you like. >> In terms of collapse, one of the sort of great historical episodes for me which really helps clarify all of this is the Bronze Age collapse. All sounds very dramatic. >> Yeah. >> Are you familiar [laughter] with the Bronze Age collapse? >> Not in great deal. I wasn't there even at my age. But um Yeah. So I'm familiar with how these things the climate signal that fed fed in the localized climate signal that often fed into part of the picture with the Bronze Age collapse. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so same with the Egyptians as well, a big big movement in um with Egyptian civilization because they how they how they used the Nile, how that changed their local weather, their local climate. And these climate signals are remember these are very from a population point of view these are very small numbers of people and from a consumption point of view it's hardly anything. Now we've got what eight heading for 8.5 billion people and on average very very high levels of consumption which is deeply in in unequal but a lot of the poor people are rightly now expecting to have levels of consumption of of the average person and so so nothing is pointing in the right direction. nothing >> on the bronze age collapse. You know, I've spoken to Joe Quinn about this who I think is she's the um professor of ancient civilization at Cambridge. Also very charismatic, interesting, funny person. It's very rare you put all of that in one line, isn't it? [snorts] Um I [clears throat] hope she doesn't mind me saying that about >> it. Usually gets batted out of us as academics, >> historians of antiquity. Yeah. But it sounds very dry, but she makes it really come to life and you know, she talks about how all these civilizations before the Bronze Age collapse all shared as a court language. Aadian. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> From parts of Greece, the Mcinian civilization, the high tites all the way through to modern day sort of Iraq, Iran, they have a shared courtly language. And this collapse is so bad that Greek civilization or Greek speaking civilization. >> They forget to learn how to write for 500 years where you get this break between linear A and linear B. >> You have a civilization that stops writing for several centuries. That's how bad it is. Now, there are different reads on this. Some people say well actually it's because there was a complete collapse um in the social relations and actually poorer people didn't want to write because that meant they were taxed. It meant that they were administered by you know people they didn't want to be administered by. So actually was they didn't want these these technologies. >> But I think that's a really good way of just seeing how bad things can get that you can have a very advanced civilization that literally forgets how to write as a social act. For about half a millennium >> that didn't happen. And you know I wonder what what the equivalent would be in the 21st or 22nd century. I mean it doesn't bear thinking about frankly but this this this hubris like you say of well it can't happen. It has happened. I mean that's a shocking thing to >> has happened repeatedly to previous civilizations. >> Yeah. >> So it's you know almost all major civilizations have come to some collapse in the end. Um and I think most of them were sufficiently arrogant they thought it wasn't going to happen beforehand but they didn't. I I would and maybe this is my only hubris here. I don't think they understood their collapse as well as we understand ours. No. So I think that was something about post-enlightenment. It's allowed us to understand to say and chart with exquisite precision our own collapse. >> But it hasn't given us um well we don't appear to have the the intellectual capacity to look at it from a system perspective. And that's why I'm I remain and I hope I'm wrong on this but I I wonder whether we will literally be a genetic cult. We will be that little blip in the fossil records and you'll see us because of lots of things will have occurred, lots of plastics and pollution and so forth and you'll spot that quite important in the fossil record or in the ice cores and so forth. You'll see where we were. But I at the moment I'm not convinced that we have the ability to step back identify what we've what we can measure and see and witness and live through and do anything about it. M >> now I hope we can and that's why people like me and lots of other people work on these issues because perhaps we can but there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that we can we as I say if you plot almost everything you plot for us goes in the wrong direction >> and we still think we can just carry on and you know and we sold this just look how dominant astrologologists are in our our government economists whatever you call them and they're the same thing in my view they're astrolog you you look how dominant they are in the discourse on almost whatever it happens to be this hasn't always been the case. You almost they've sort of taken over to some degree. Um and they kind of they can always you can always have growth. You can carry on forever. The physics doesn't see that. The physics just gives us a round planet >> with certain constraints on it. But in the modeled world that that contemporary society seems to be influenced by it's it's complete abstract from the real world in which we live the physical real world in which we live. So there's an economic world out here. At least a modern form of economic world. I mean political economy has a lot to offer. Modern form of economics I think neocclassical economics has nothing. I would go as far as to say I think has nothing to offer. And I think it's been really it has misguided society and the longer that we have it and the larger our populations get the more it misguided. I think >> there are some good things happening and I don't think it's technology but we will we'll talk about those in a minute. We'll talk about those a little later on because there's not many of them but we we'll talk about those and you can challenge them and whatnot and we can talk about also population plateaus etc. Yes. Which come with their own challenges obviously. >> I will just make very clear I'm not saying you get a lot of older usually older white men who say it's all about population once they've usually had their kids. Um and they never think it's about consumption basically because they're consuming a lot. We're consuming a lot. So I'm not one of those people that think that No, but I'm just making it absolutely clear. But things like you know there are for instance there are parts of the world where reforestation is happening etc you know but these are tiny stories and a much bigger one which is that things are getting worse and >> there are there are the world is absolutely a wash with wonderful little things happening absolutely full of those in day-to-day level in in our own lives and little bits of technology and how societies are doing things and communities in fact I think at that side you can you can talk a very positive story >> but unfortunately the the sort of umbrella within which all of that works is going in the completely the wrong direction so the trend line towards hell is is very very clear and on it there's a bit of noise and that noise is the good stuff. >> Yeah. >> Um yes that's true but the it's not it's not changing the trend line and the reason we work on it is because we think we might be able to help it change the trend line. >> Yeah. As you were talking a moment ago I just checked my phone and it was to to check a certain bit of information that I wanted to raise now. So I hope you don't think I was being rude [laughter] because it's an amazing statistic and I had to check it and it's this yesterday. So, we're recording this now at the end of what's this the 30th of July. Yesterday, 29th of July was the 24th day um in London of of temperatures higher than 30°. >> Is it that it's great? >> Allegedly. >> Yeah. >> Apparently, in the 1980s, there were fewer days across the whole decade of days above 30° in London than just this year, which I find quite extraordinary. We'll check it and if it's right, it's going to stay in. But that would I mean that would that would fit with everything we we see when you look at when you look at the hottest years. Those hottest years are always in the very near period that we have now. The odd outlier >> there's one from like 1906 or something. >> Yeah. So yeah. So if you look at the odd little spike earlier but basically it's all in in modern modern modern times in the last handful of years. >> The reason why I raised that uh data point is because obviously like I said at the start of this conversation where I live it's not going to have rain for 40 days. I I come in from the south coast and I go via Woking and I think that's the the national hockey stadium is there in Woking and I just noticed this the other day because we're going past the train and it's yellow. Now of course all the grass everywhere is yellow >> but this is the national stadium for a big sport. >> Now I know football's got lots of money and whatnot but it did really make me get, you know, get me thinking Sunday league will start again in August, mid August. >> BS are going to be playing on football pitches like concrete essentially. And I do think it's going to be a sort of moment of realization for quite a few people. That's never happened before. I mean, you get hard pictures in August. Of course you do, >> but nothing nothing like this. And so I suppose the question I want to ask is, you know, you're prepared for things to get worse. And you put it very pitifully. This may feel like the climax of something, but actually it's it's it's much more pleasant and less warm than, you know, the future is going to be, >> but you know, looking at all this now, not just in this country, but also on the continent as well with what's going on with wildfires and the heat, >> did you did you expect 2026 to be like this in Britain? Because I think some people are shocked, especially climate deniers. I think they're kind of shocked. I mean, I've spoken to some of them. M >> they're actually they're shocked at, you know, 40° plus in London a few years ago. They're shocked at all these days above 30 in London. Now in in in in Pompy where I live in Portsmouth 24° C is a normal day. >> Yeah. >> You know, until 2 minutes ago that was a very hot summer's day on South Coast. >> Yeah, >> I'm not particularly surprised. No, I mean I think the physics is basically right. I'm I'm not there are all little nuances and tweaks and so forth in terms of what we can learn and there are bits and some holes in some parts of our analysis but by and large the physics the the blunt part of the physics is is clear. So, so these things aren't a surprise to me. You know, any particular event I might find it, you know, surprising, I don't even surprising is not really the right word. I mean, I I I was just just recently I was out cycling just the other day and I saw a fire in Macklesfield forest, but at that same time, we've got the Dovestones fire. We've got the fire over the back of Glossup and these fires were coming together, putting smoke over the city of Manchester. So, our university is recommending anyone with any health conditions not go to university, not go to not go to work. Um, so that's it's not a shock to see it. I mean, I think probably it's depressing. I mean, that's probably how I do how I see that it's deeply depressing to see my own community really struggling with the fires that we've had and the moors around us and knowing that they're just going to get worse >> and worse and that we know what we can do about this, but we are choosing not to do it. and very quickly we'll have forgotten this particular the media will have moved on we'll be talking about something else altogether >> well what I find interesting with the media is that we had you know Ed Milliban was being touted as a potential chancer >> and the entire London Westminster press pack basically Ed Milliban's been you know he's been discredited because of his positions on climate change and I'm thinking it's not rain for 3 weeks >> this guy this that should be an advert for the guy to be the But it's almost like they're living in a parallel reality. Now, that doesn't mean you have to agree with absolutely everything you're saying on climate change and what we have to do about it. But it it it is sort of weird and wild actually that so many people with influence in the media refuse to accept it even as a salient issue. >> Yeah. I mean actually the way Ed Milliban talks about these things indeed his advisers and other people on this one I'm deeply critical not particularly of Ed because he's a political figure but certainly a lot of the advisers he gets a lot of my academic colleagues is that >> we're selling a soft story we're not selling it as it is and privately I hear that all the time I mean they we can't scare the public an arrogant view that is how about just telling the public what we what we judge and what we say prepare to say in private say in public let the public they're adults let them make up their own Um, so I think the situation is much much worse than say than than Milliband is really putting across here. But surprisingly, well, is it unsurprisingly the elites in our society are kicking a back against something they they know would question the position that they're in? Is that isn't isn't history a wash with that? They're protecting themselves. If you're serious about climate change, you have to do all sorts of things that the people who are seen to be the movers and shakers in our society will not like because it'll change how they live their life. It'll change their value structures. It will change how other people see them. And in that, I'm talking about not, you know, my own community. So, lots of climate academic professors who are desperate to get a an MB, an OBO or a gong or whatever or to receive more funding or to get called into events in in parliament and um and with the Today program. The prestige part is hugely important there. And if we sell a story that aligns with our analysis, you're not going to get called into those things because it's deeply depressing and it does not fit with the status quo. That's changed the funding mechanisms that we get. So, the funding bodies are the people doing the research. We might do objective research, but the you that that what we research on has been deeply influenced by um by a status quo that is unprepared to accept the the the climate situation we're in today. The media, this the media barons certainly don't want any questions raised about this because that will raise absolutely fundamental questions about how they live their lives, their norms, how they see society, the world views that they have held for a long time. So I think climate change is asking us um and I don't think it's just climate change. I mean climate change amongst a suite of other ecological challenges that we face >> is asking really deep searching questions about contemporary society and contemporary society is saying we don't want those questions asked. They're uncomfortable. Um we like the the deep in deep inequalities we have now. We like the elite structures we have today. We want them to to continue. And climate change basically says they can't but they're kicking tooth and nail. Um now in things like oil and gas industry it's the sort of death throws of an industry is is going to go. Um but the problem is will it go and take us all with it or can we shut it down earlier? So that's on the production side for the oil and gas industry. But on the on the demand side on on where society's resources are going where our energy is used where those fossil fuel emissions are coming from we know where they're coming from. They're not coming from the from the normal people that vote reform. They're not the people that need to make the major changes here. And that's why I think they've been sold a sold a pup really sold a lie. Um I I I personally go further and say actually I want this we may come to this but I mean I because because inequality is a deep part of the maths of climate change regardless of your moral position. You can't squeeze the emissions out of people that hardly emit and you can't squeeze emissions out of people who are structurally locked into those because they live in a poor quality house and got a rubbish car and the public transport is not very good and they can't afford the insulation or solar panels or an EV or whatever it might be. They can't afford those things. Those people are not responsible for most emissions and there's very little they can do about it financially with their own wherewithal. They can engage politically and that's really important. Most emissions come from a relatively small proportion of us. These what I refer to as discretionary emissions. And the reason that the media will fight against it because we're the ones with the discretionary emissions. We're the ones that will have to have those removed from how we live our lives. That means we won't be able to have our second homes and our, you know, 200 square meter gate gated ghettos that we live in. We won't be able to drive around in huge four-wheel drives. We won't be able to fly business and first class five times or six times a year if not 10 times a year. So all of the things that we've normalized and we like to think say something about us that we're good people. We're part of the solution. No, we're we are the problem. And the trick is to sell it that we're all in this together. Well, we're not all in this together. huge sways of the UK probably what 50 60% of them are locked into infrastructures and norms not well not norms physical infrastructures they can do almost nothing about in the very near term without very significant amounts of of society's productive resources being spent in retrofitting their homes in putting public transport place in or um reabling streets to to use renewable power to power things you know this is a I think I've used that language repeatedly on previous presentations it's like a Marshall plan on speed so the Marshall plan been the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War. But it's like that on speed we require from a physical infrastructure point of view. But you can only do that if you move society's productive resources from um from extending our bathrooms and all the other nice things us middle class people like to do. We improve our kitchens every time we move somewhere. All those other things where the society's resources, its labor, its skills are spent doing that rather than retrofitting people's homes rather than putting in the tram lines, you know, building the buses. So >> you're the second guest in a couple of weeks to talk about retrofitting kitchens. We had we had Gary Stevenson on and he said, "You are not going to get that kitchen extension. Get it in your head, you know, in terms of talking about um rewiring the economy." It is really extraordinary, isn't it? And you don't really get it till you're a homeowner. I mean, I I'm 42. I bought we bought our first house when I was 37, which is increasing the experience of of people in this country. If you get on the housing ladder at all, and I recommend it because it means housing security. You're not at plus one. If you own a house, you're at zero. You're at >> in our system. I mean lots of content Europe don't don't run it like that >> within our within our system. Exactly. And also we can talk all day about housing. We talked about this with Peter Raps in terms of you know our elderly care system effectively based upon whether or not you have an asset but anyway >> park that for a moment. >> You know you can access more credit if you have a valuable asset and if you don't have a valuable asset you can't access any credit. Bloody mad. >> You know this is actually when you need the credit to do things like maybe invest in your skills or to to start a business. But anyway, um you talked about the oil and gas industry and how, you know, it needs to go. It's dying industry. It's, you know, it's just a question of whether it takes us down with it. >> You speak from experience because you used to work in that industry. You were a prochemical um industry engineer. Yes. Is that right? >> Yeah. >> And now you're a climate scientist saying all these things. So, was that a damisine conversion? >> Um did you always have your sort of suspicions, but you wanted to learn more about it and you want to make some money? You tell me cuz it's an interesting interesting pivot. >> Yeah, there was there was no great moment no lightning moment which people thought well when did that occur? It didn't really occur like that and without getting into any the long story I'd always been interested in nature from being a kid being brought up in East Anglia where dad worked at nuclear power station. We lived right in the countryside and used to as a kid we could play out and there's lots of common land. Then we used to regularly go up to Scotland where my uncle was a coffter up in the aisle of Aaron so we used to mess around there. So I loved I I was brought up with a lot of nature around me and absolutely loved it. Um so that bit was always part of how I saw the world. It was a deeply important part to me and I didn't see engineering as something separate from that. So I left school at 16 went to work in on ships because I loved I loved being by the sea. I love being at sea. I loved engineering. My dad was a was a fitter in a power station and I loved talking with him about things to do with engineering. And so that was it was a lovely blend those those two in shipping you know being at sea and and do engineering. Right from an early days, I was always, you know, I wouldn't pump the sewage over the side of the ship. I said, "We've got to treat it." And that caused real issues. So my my time as an engineer had, you know, there were I tried to do the best I could in what I was doing. So when I was working offshore, I got in some real trouble from recording the spills that we were having to department of energy and department of environment. That, you know, that created a big stink on the platform. I've been recording it openly for a long time. Um, I did quite a bit about trying to make sure we weren't dumping CFCs in the atmosphere, which you regularly used to do when we were cleaning our refrigeration systems, which are huge on sh on the oil platforms. >> Was that after they were regulated? Was that happening illegally then or >> Well, CFCs was a huge thing about the ozone layer. >> No, it was a huge thing at that time, but there was nothing. No, it wasn't illegal. We were so we have these huge refrigeration systems. We're not about for food. It's for for the process of producing gas condensate. But so we had these huge refrigeration systems and we used to vent them every so often if something went wrong and then refill them. But when you vented them, you saw these clouds of literally because you could see the condensation around them. So huge quantities. So whilst we're worrying about hairsprays in bloody boots, the rigs were merily sort of pewing the spear stuff off every time I had to do any maintenance. And so >> as by the way, asthma pumps, >> the pumps that we can't have asthma pumps because of CFCs, >> all those sorts of things. So um I was talking about how can we how can we rather than dump it, can we not just store it and put it back in? And as is often the case, oh look, you can. It's tricky and it was challenging to do. So I was involved in those things which are sort of outside my work but I was interested in I wasn't prepared to do things I thought was wrong. So what I'm really getting at from this is that there are good people working in the oil and gas industry. Most people working in the oil and gas industry like most people in the world they're good people. I wouldn't trust the executives as far as you could throw them. But the people working there I think they'd be just as happy to work on renewables or something else if there was if there were decent jobs there. They're not wedded to the oil and gas industry or to oil and gas. They're wedded to a decent job. Um and so I was on the rigs at the time and then climate change became quite a big issue. Um when was this in the early 90s >> and I decided to go back to go to university and back to university then um do a masters and then on to do a PhD and then during my PhD I did go back in the industry for one year to um mixture of reasons but I went back in for one year and then back to finish my PhD and then I've been in in in the in academia ever since. But having that engineering background is really helpful to to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of the technical utopias that a lot of lot of academics and other people postulate to avoid us having to do anything about um business as usual. So engineers or pseudo engineers in my view and probably never built anything um postulate all sorts of miracle technologies in miracle in terms of their um timeline of delivery um to to to avoid us doing anything serious about climate change. And unfortunately, you know, the status quo, the the elites of our society like those sorts of narratives because they're ones that mean we can carry on as we are today. We can just tweak the system. We can green business as usual. All this other sort of nonsense that we've been having along for a long time, which was valid in 1992. As I come back, as I said before, it's a cumulative problem. Valid in '92, just about valid in 2000. 2010, not really valid valid anymore. 2026, we've got a whisper of carbon budget left. We're going through 1.5 now. We're seeing the impacts globally on this. We're going to head towards two degrees centigrade by the middle of the century, but we're locking that in. Effectively, we'll lock in two degrees centiggrade of warming in the next within the next 5 to 10 years. We'll have locked in that much warming. Um, I don't think we're going to suddenly stop at two. I mean, unless we, you know, unless we do take notice of the physics, we we're going to see the temperatures just keep going up. We're going to carry on. And when people talk about we're going to have to burn, we're going to still be using lots and lots of gas in 2050. Yeah, that's a climate denial argument because that's assuming that the climate will just allow us to keep using lots and lots of gas. It won't. It will keep warming and it will warm to a point where we start to see big issues on food production, on water, um on on on the climatic um on the local weather brought about by changes in the climate um in in different regions that might affect all sorts of things that we're, you know, we're culturally embedded to our norms. Like in the UK, where I live in the north of England, we we've got a culture. We've got an infrastructure that's embedded drizzle that works for our our homes, our sewage systems, our water systems. It doesn't doesn't cope with monsoon conditions. So what do you do when you get monsoon conditions? Well, you get flooded. The sewage keeps coming out of the system. So you know, you unless we can radically change that almost overnight, we are going to be suffering the impacts. And so this idea that somehow we can carry on like this till 2050 and beyond. And remember when people talk about 2050 net zero 2050 they do not mean zero fossil fuel emissions you know the the committee on climate change in the UK the government's committee it's not independent the government's committee and the government net zero 2050 policies if you look at the spreadsheets which I'm not suggest everyone does if you look at the spreadsheets it still sees the UK missing about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide every year from 2050 onwards from things like aviation >> so it carries on >> let's stick with this for a minute so let's say by let's say and you know this would be an extraordinary accomplishment let's say by 2050 globally. >> Yeah. >> 95% of CO2 emissions have disappeared. >> Yeah. >> But we still have 5% from things like aviation. Not, you know, we've replaced some aviation but not all of it or most maritime but not all of it. >> And then, you know, >> COP says, well, we've rewed this part of the world and we have this carbon sequestration technology and we're allowing the whales to return to the oceans of the world, which are themselves quite interesting, carbon, sequesters, etc. That wouldn't be good enough. >> Well, the temperature if you keep If the overall amount of emissions keeps going up and we're not sucking it in somewhere else, then no, it won't be the >> That is their strategy, isn't it? They're saying, "Well, we can still have some." I mean, you're >> I say at the at the moment, it's not a strategy, it's a rhetoric, >> right? >> A strate strategy requires delivery. >> So, it's a dream or a rhetoric. And I think this is really important this that we've we've normalized that to a point where as it you know, like the language you use, it's a strategy. >> If you have a strategy, you can backcast the strategy. So, what are you doing about it? >> And Have you done the calculations about well what would that level of you know what would 5% of current emissions you know is we were emitting 42 billion tons of CO2 every year 42 billion tons we were um if you went back to just the just this the start of this millennium we were emitting 25 to 28 billion tons you know a huge increase in just very little time and so 5% of that is still a lot of emissions so you've got to do a hell of a lot of sequestration to to hold that temperature to stop you know to stop emissions keep going up so I would either at the moment have a strategy which is to eliminate fossil fuel use and that to beyond that I actually think well why on earth would you carry on producing fossil fuels if you're not producing if you're only producing 5% of what you're producing today the cost of that will be really high >> the cost of fossil fuels is really high despite the myths around it it's incredibly expensive form of energy renewables are far far cheaper and the reason we use them is because they're normalized in the in the system and the power structure likes them it's not because they're it's not because they're cheap for >> they're convenient because they're energy dense right so you can store a tremendous amount of energy and quite compressed amount of space which obviously for aviation is useful >> for aviation particularly it's useful but then for avi what do we mean by aviation >> mean >> so so for instance let's say that >> you mean flyers >> that's not most of the population 50% of our our population doesn't fly in any year so so for aviation an energetic fuel is important for the frequent flyers who also live in the big homes and drive the big four so >> but I'm g let me give another example which is a tiny percentage of that first stage booster rockets right we like to use satellites we like to use telecommunication We like to use GPS. That is a technology which which clearly I'm sure you agree that clearly is going to require hydrocarbons for a long time. The idea that you can launch a mass of that scale beyond the Earth's gravitational pull is clearly going to be on it's going to be beyond the possibility of decarbonization for a pretty long time. >> Well, I I I have to say I it's not an era known thing, but I think >> I don't know they're using hydrocarbons for that. I'm not I think they're using other things that are much richer in hydrogen oxygen than than hydrocarbons. I'm not the shame it's I don't think it's just pumping it full of petrol and bang off it goes into space. I think >> petrol but it's it can be a mix, can't it? >> Well, I it's oxygen and there's often a gas. >> Well, there will be I mean there'll be something that's combusted in there. A lot of it will be hydrogen. I say I don't want to get into too much detail there because I don't know the don't know the detail of what they use to launch these things into space, but I'd be surprised if it's if it's our conventional forms of hydrocarbons. Um and at the moment those are very small quantities anyway but but which is the which is the point partly you're making but I think there will be alternatives to those sorts of things. You will have to combust something. I don't think at the moment we have any way to fire them into space via um you know some electrical means don't as I understand it but I don't also don't think you have to be necessarily combusting hydrocarbons to do that. I mean the hydrogen part is probably very important. The oxygen part is very important. I'm not sure the seab bit really adds a huge amount to it. >> So I think >> that's fair. So, so, so if we want to do those things, I don't think those sort of niche things, even if they were hydrocarbons, I probably much less of an issue, but I don't think they have to be hydrocarbons. So, aviation is one of the ones by 2050, there probably other things that we can we can do. But the but remember that it's a cumulative issue. So, it's what we do now that is is most important. So, if we find some great way to fly in 2050, 2060, 2070 that's not pumping out CO2 in the atmosphere, then fine. But let's not use that to distract from detract from where we are today. You know, because climate change is a cumulative issue, we will lock in two degrees centiggrade of warming in the next 5 to 10 years in terms of our emissions and and the infrastructure we've put in place. So we are locking in these high temperatures. So I would argue staying below 1.5 degrees centiggrade now is simply impossible. What we call the carbon budget, the space we have is simply not achievable. By the time you get to the early 2030s, two degrees centiggrade of warming then the carbon budget for that will be like the 1.5 is today. So by the early 2030s, in other words, just around the corner, we'll have locked out 2° centigrade as well. So although the temperature takes a little bit longer to hit, the actual emissions we have to put in the atmosphere to bring that about are going to occur in the next basically in any meaningful sense in the next 10 years. >> If we don't if we haven't fundamentally changed our infrastructure then then we have failed. And yet what we talking about aviation in 2050. This is like a it's another world and it's a great way to distract from the fact to detract from what do we need to do today? And it's bloody obvious what we need to do today. And we're doing just the opposite. >> But somebody like Bill Gates, for instance, he was he wrote a whole book about this, right? And he would say, look, let's have an engineers mindset. Let's break down the sources of CO2 emissions. Which the book is actually quite it's quite informative in terms of you, oh, I didn't know it came from this and that and that, right? So 10% of global CO2 emissions are concrete or whatever you know 8% is >> roughly 8%. Yeah. 4% process emissions 4% AG. >> Exactly. Right. And it's really interesting and so you actually transportation you work actually but actually that's we could electrify that tomorrow if we wanted to. Right. So and that's quite interesting and someone like Bill Gates might say well actually look >> Kevin I agree with you to a certain point. We can electrify 80% of our CO2 emissions tomorrow right if we want to. It's political will. But there are other things like concrete or steel. We have Green Steel. It's not quite there yet. >> No. >> You think that's just purely delaying rhetoric? You don't think that's serious? >> No, no, no, no, no. Well, firstly, I'm I'm not I don't know why we brought Bill Gates into this. I don't know what Bill Gates knows about Midwiffery. I'm guessing about the same about he knows about climate change. So, why >> we wrote a book about it actually. >> Yeah. No, no, we need a book. Someone else wrote the book which he put his name to. Um so so he gets some sort of passing interest in it and because it's Bill Gates we all sort oh Bill Gates has written a book on something and the media you know it was radio for book of the week I think which I turned off every day. I do not want to know I would be not interested in what he says about midwiffery. I wouldn't be interested in what he what he says about how strikers should play football either. If if I want to know how to abuse my monopoly powers in a in a in a Microsoft fos software industry I'll go to Bill Gates. He's the man that knows that. Why do we have these interest in when these people who are are um who are actually a significant part of the problem in in many respects not only their personal emissions but actually the the the norms that they bring about in our society the aspirations they bring in our society why has the media all flocks around them and talks about them I have absolutely zero interest in what Gates has to say about climate change now if you stop someone on the street out here I might be interested in what they've got to say people living in the appalling block of flats opposite here what they've got to about climate change. I'm not interested in what Bill Gates has got to say about climate change. >> I can hear the people watching this now going, "Get him, Kevin. >> I'm not going to get him. I'm just not me. Get him." Aaron defending Bill Gates. No, because >> I knew you weren't defending him, but >> No, because these are the people I I look I agree with you, but ultimately these are the people that shape the the the global and the national. >> No, no, no, no. We we choose them to shape it. So, I have a diff So, we we may have very different views on this. >> No, no. I mean, I'm interviewing you, not Bill Gates, but >> No, no, but I but I don't think these people have power unless we allow them to have power. So, this is a this is a slightly different issue to what I'm working on on climate change. It's something I think about. I'm no more of an expert than anyone else, you know, so you shouldn't interview this me particularly on this anymore than you should interview Bill Gates on climate change. But I think the real skill of the gates of this world and that whole let's let's for whatever I don't whether people like that language or not but the sort of neoliberal agenda is to break the world into individual components as individuals. We have very little power as collectives. We have far far more power than Gates Musk Bezos the PM. So the trick of those people who want to maintain power is to make sure the rest of us just uh continue as individuals not as collectives. We just saw that recently by the first the first minister to resign in Mod's government forced by what was it the cockroach movement a bunch of youths complaining about basically incompetence and corruption in the education department in India they get the minister to resign the first one in modes government I think that's ever resigned um we we go back to the suffragettes we go back to the race movements you know we we can see where collectives come together and they they are far more powerful than gates they are far more powerful than than Bezos so these sorts of people try to maintain the status quo because they've done remarkably well out of it and one of the tricks that they use is to make sure everyone else seees themselves as a competing individual rather than a citizen in a in a collective in a community in a society in a country. So I do not hold that they have the power we have allowed them to have the power by by being by allowing them to reduce us to individuals. We can take that power back anytime we want to do. That's exactly what what Farage is relying on. That's he has mobilized that power within significant groups in society who have been completely disenfranchised and let down by the socalled progressives in our society. So um I don't hold to the well I'm not saying you believe this but the way you're putting this across that these are the people of power. We are bequeaf them to power and we can take it away if we choose to. It's interesting when you say about Farage because I went to Makerfield, the constituency who was the bi-election recently and I think it was Ashton Makerfield is this site where you have um it's one of the biggest examples of illegal fly tipping in recent British history. I think it's about 26 27,000 tons of rubbish um and it burnt for days last year which you know was so bad that local schools were closed. And if you walk down this it's at the end of a road and you got some metal scrap merchants who apparently turned a blind eye because you know organized criminal activity. Um, and the house right at the top of this road nearest the fly tipping site had Robert Kenyon and a reform placard outside. And to me, it's perfectly obvious why you would have disdain for the political establishment when something like this is allowed to happen and there are no consequences for anybody. >> Yeah. >> But the way that, you know, reform are covered and of course I'm, you know, I voted Green in the last general election, but the way that reform are covered often by progressive media in this country, they have no explanation as to why that person would feel the way they do. >> Yeah. Completely reasonably in my view. Yeah. It's the same. Again, we're getting off off track a bit, but it does link back to climate change. The reason I think people voted lots of people hold their nose and they voted for Trump, but you think, well, why would you vote for Democrats? And a lot of the dust belts in they've done nothing for the or virtually nothing for these communities. It's like we haven't we've done, you know, we destroyed the industrial heartland of our of our society, but we didn't provide an alternative. We destroyed them the mining communities. We didn't provide an alternative. So generations later, they still, if you look at all the main metrics of them, they've got poor health, poor educational attainment, all of those other things, they're still there. So why will they keep are they going to keep voting for parties that don't care for them, that claim to care about them? And so some other idiot comes along from reform, and you think, well, I'll vote for anything. I mean, I'll vote just I'll give me an orangutang, I'll vote for them instead. Don't just don't give me the the normal. But so I I turn around and say that I think we have to blame if you like those of us who claim to be pro progressives not really caring about these communities and then we also allow in the climate realm we allow allow it to come across as if they're going to have to sacrifice give up something. No, no, no, no. Climate change for them should be for for the large swades of people in the UK who live in poor quality housing often rented and as I said before can't afford the electric car have a lowquality probably inefficient car can't afford the insulation can't afford the solar panels for those people addressing climate change means they will have to live in a house that's broadly comfortable and affordable because we can't keep them they can't keep burning gas and oil in them to keep the inefficient saves that their houses are um warm. They're going to have to have a decent public transport transport system because they can't keep driving around in inefficient cars. So, climate change means that they have better transport, better better homes, which improves the well-being of people in the homes because it means you got less bronco conditions because they've got less funguses in their low quality houses, which improves the educational attainment of their children. So, you know, this is winwinw win-win for those communities, but we've sold them that they're the ones going to have to sacrifice. No, no, no, no. I'm going to have to sacrifice. You're going to have to sacrifice. You're probably going to have to sacrifice as well. You know, those of us that have done remarkably well out of the system and somehow think we're worth it for a very long time are going to have to forgo some of the luxuries that we have normalized to allow us to retrofit the homes of the of the flats directly opposite here. I mean, I just walked around here before coming in, looked at the appalling quality of those of those flats. They during co they must have been a nightmare to live in those houses. During the heat wave, it must have been a nightmare to live in those properties. What were we doing about them? What are we doing for them? So climate change, I think, tells us a lot of what what we're going to try and do for them. Not only make it so it doesn't get too much hotter, so it's very hard to live there, but do something about the places they live, about the transport system that they've got to make those low carbon. So for them, I think responding to climate change is good. And the reason Farage and lots of other wealthy people don't like it is because we are going to have to forgo some of our wherewithal, the productive capacity of our society to allow their lives to be made much better. So I think this is really interesting because my my view >> and that is I'm saying that's not that is not a political view. I would argue that comes out of the maths. >> No, I I probably agree that technically everything that you propose we should do we should do. I agree with all of that. Um I'm perfectly happy to say that. But I suppose the big story for me of the last 18 years of politics after the glo financial crisis in this country is basically the non-reproduction of the middle class. Right? So we've got downward mobility of the middle class. We've got proletarianization of the middle class. unmet expectations for large cohorts of people now. So I think basically everybody under 4550 or most people graduates basically everybody under 50 >> is kind of disappointed in terms of how life turned out for them. Not everybody but large numbers of them >> because of housing insecurity they couldn't afford to have kids they just don't have the life they have >> and we're sold aspirations that aren't achievable. I think that's also important in there. >> That's also that's that's also definitely part of it. Right. So, when you say that we're going to have to forgo certain things, I think of somebody who's probably doing quite well. Let's say it's a couple, they live in Sussex. I love Sussex. And let's say they're both earning 45 grand. They've got two kids. Uh they've got a mortgage, nice mortgage, nice car. But actually, if you take in their student loans, you take in what they're paying in tax, actually they're paying an effective rate already of say 45%. Because you got the national insurance contributions, they're paying the pension contributions. They might be only children, so they've got to worry about their parents as well. They haven't got brothers and sisters to share that burden with. They're worried about their kids opportunities for all the reasons we're talking about. And they don't live in a society really with, you know, a sense of collective solidarity. And what we're saying to those people is you need to pay more tax. And by the way, they will have to pay more tax. But politically, that just seems seems really difficult because already already the middle class has been smashed. I don't mean the upper middle class. I mean I don't mean people on more than 125 grand. I mean people on 45 grand a year. >> They've had a they have had a difficult 25 years. Now that was masked for a long period of time by basically 0% interest rates, right? Their mortgages were basically free >> but that's gone now. And so I think it's going to be and by the way generationally many of those people agree with all all the things you're saying about climate change but there's going to be so many competing demands for money demographic aging elderly care right building um highspeed um transit in this country the housing crisis and my worry is that climate goes beneath all of those. I know I know climate is tied up with some of those policy issues. I think I think I think it absolutely is but I think there's a lot there's a lot in what you're saying there but so is it they'll have to pay more tax and that's what we how we view it in this country tax we call it tax it's not tax that tax is a carer or pay more carers pay more bin people pay more swimming pools but we call it tax is seen as a bad thing >> but where does most tax go >> where does most tax goes into the government who then spend it on what they what they choose to spend onions okay a lot of it goes onions lock triple lock >> yeah there's a lot goes on pensions but there's Also I mean if you look at we've got 3 trillion GDP roughly roughly 50%. >> The number one source of government expenditure is pensions and I think for instance I would get rid of the triple lock. So for inance let me quickly I've spoken a lot but say this quickly I'd get rid of the triple lock. That doesn't mean we reduce pensions. It means they stop growing at the same rate. Now we have record numbers of pensioners and elderly people who rent and that means they are screwed in terms of housing security. I would rather redirect that money to social housing to help those guys out. But if you say scrap the triple lock people go crazy. Kevin, >> I think you sound rightwing. >> But I think that's how we describe these things. >> So quite a few years ago now, I remember walking out when I was going to work at Piccadilly station, railway station in Manchester, there was this big sign saying tax pan tax man tax man. It was tax man zero U2 and it was someone jumping in the air with hands in the air like a football game. What if it said nurses nil U2 bin emptying nil U2? That would be viewed differently. But we view tax in this this country and it's sold by the media media like this, this is a bad thing. Tax is a good thing. And that middle class family you were talking about living in Sussex, if they're if they're um going to pay more tax, maybe it means they haven't got to drive their kids to school in the morning, the kids get picked up by a bus or there's a walking whatever with some other system that is put in place through their taxes which makes their lives easier. So tax isn't something you just pay and it is it is of no benefit. tax is massively of benefit and have collectively always say, "Oh, it's ridiculous paying all this tax, but when you're when you're my stepdad was recently um sadly before he died, but he was being wonderfully looked after by some carers in a in a hospital and the care and attention they took and these people are on minimum pay, you know, hardly any holiday benefit and all that and probably no long-term security either." Um, when you see that, you think wonderful, they should be paid more during CO. Everybody says that, by the way, even the right wingers who don't. They all say that >> when we're all banging our pans during bloody COVID for these people, the key workers. Why don't we pay them? I don't give a damn about banging a bloody pan for them. They can't get a mortgage by recording the sound of pans being banged. They can get a mortgage if they're paid more. But but in any particular year, and I would even with economic growth think it's the same thing. You've got a a cake of resources. And it so if someone takes a bigger slice, everyone else has to have or other people on average have to have a smaller slice. And so if we're going to give more pe more money to these key workers to these carers as we as you say we all think they should have some who are the ones that are going to forgo something in this perhaps we should teach some bloody maths in our schools and and not to the schools to the adults because you know if some people takes more and in this case you argue that almost all of us I suggest that a lot of those key workers should have been paid significant should be paid significantly more someone's got to give give for that who it's a reasonable question to ask society if we all collectively think they should get more this big group persuade the people. So when it's that cover back in Sussex, I would I think we need to turn that argument round. We need to open it up. It has to become one you have in the cafe, the pub, with your family, down the sports club, in the church, in the community or wherever it happens to be. We need to have these much more much richer discussions, which is the purpose of your your channel, as far as I can tell. These much richer discussions and the public are not stupid, nothing like it. Um they once they once they've given time and a bit of information, they're actually quite good if you just let them run to start to discuss these issues. And I think we might get some really really quite uplifting conclusions from what the public, you know, the ideas the public would come up with. And perhaps this couple in Sussex on 45 grand each would start to think, yeah, actually living in a much better society means we wouldn't have to have all this private income to do everything privately. >> We could actually rely on the public services that are well funded. We could have some sort of civic pride. So, and and I don't think this is that far away. And this this is a discussion that feels like it's a long way from the climate realm, but I don't think it is. No, I think the climate realm can catalyze these. In fact, I was saying the Paris agreement, which we haven't discussed, but our commitments we've made on climate change, not the net zero nonsense, the real commitments we've made about temperature, those commit commitments that we've made, I think if you downscale them, they come to the sorts of arguments that we're making now. So if you think we should try to hold temperatures at say no more than 2 degrees centiggrade of warming and if you think there should be some sort of fairness in there which we've which embedded in all the agreements we've made then I think the arguments with the discussions we're having now are ones that fit within that agenda. So the climate agenda is not something that is separate. The climate agenda is about schools, it's about swimming pools, it's about libraries, it's about care. All those things are part of the climate agenda as well as of course the climate is massively important for those. If your p place where your elderly relatives are being cared for can't actually keep it keep it cool and can't access water then the people in there will die at a much faster rate um particularly in the evenings when they can't cool down. So the climate impacts on both things. One it tells us we have to restructure society in a way that I think my political views would say that's a fairer and more just and valuable society to live in much richer society to live in. Um, but I also think it's one that allows us to carry on living reasonable lives within the relatively stable climate if we can if we can pull these things together. >> So, I think one So, we won't stick on this because it's tangentially related, but you've got really interesting things to say on things that directly related to climate change. I I think, you know, in terms of answering the question, who's going to pay more? I think everybody's going to have to pay more and obviously the rich are going to have to pay a hell of a lot more. So, if you look at someone like Sweden, >> not those flat, let me be clear. I don't want to those flats opposite. I do not want them to pay a penny more. I want their emissions to go up in the short term and I want me to be paying for them to to be using more car, more gas and more oil in the short term. >> But you look at Sweden. Sweden in terms of the threshold at which you start paying income tax about £3,000. Here it's £12,250. People want Nordic Scandinavian levels of social welfare, but they don't want a tax system which in any way reflects what's going on in Scandinavia. So I would say something like the triple lock has to go. You're going to have to have a lower threshold on tax which happening anyway by the way because they're keeping they're going to keep it they're going to keep it the same to 20150. It's going to be 12 a half grand and we're going to have to have a wealth tax on centmillionaires and billionaires. We're clearly going to have to all these things. We're going to have to increase inheritance tax. We're going to have to increase the top rate of tax. But the the idea that I just think the idea that the median earner is not going to have to pay more. I just think given the paniply of challenges and I'm a socialist. I think we are going to have to raise hundreds of billions of pounds to do all the things we want to do. I just I don't think it's I just don't think it's realistic. And I think it's it's good populist politics and I'm a populist by inclination. I love the idea of saying it, but we're all going to have to pay more. That's the truth. And and those people are going to obviously get a lot more in return. It's a great calculation. >> Yeah. But that's why I think the language has to be quite careful about this. I don't I don't think for large persuasive our society they would be paying more particularly how they would how they would psychologically take that on board paying more. I think they will feel themselves better off that they will be able to, you know, they will get home and it will not be really really cold. their kids bathroom bedrooms in the winter won't have ice on the inside and and and they'll be not ridiculously hot in the in the in the summer. So, I think almost every facet for some of these people, if we're genuinely serious about climate change, I think their lives will be improved and they will not see that a consequence of paying more. But I think the couple you talked about in Sussex, possibly they will see themselves paying a bit more, but they will see the returns far far away in that. And and I think you know this idea we got taxing billionaires. I think again I would argue and I think this I would still think this is valid from a climate point of view and I'm trying as academics we have to be very careful and it's difficult to do and we all fail. But to draw a line between what our analysis tells us and what our worldview what our politics tells us and I have to be quite careful because mine are starting to come closer and closer. The more we fail on climate change the closer my political views are to my climate analysis. Um that's because it's a cumulative problem. >> Yeah. So when you're saying taxing billionaires, I'm thinking why on the earth are you saying taxing billionaires? You've normalized billionaires. >> You think it's normal to have billionaires. You think in the future we should have billionaires. We should just tax them. I don't think we should be having billionaires. And because a billionaires means that society's productive resources are held by those small groups of people to do what they want. My personal take is I prefer democracy to do that to choose where they will go. And we can vote our governments out. And I okay democracy has lots of failings but there are lots of benefits to it as well and it fails if we let it fail. So we need to be engaged in democracy rather than just voting every four years or not voting for a lot of people. So we need to actually wrestle democracy back to us in our in our communities our homes our discussions and so forth. Um and if we do that I don't think we should be taxing billionaires because there won't be any billionaires to tax because I want those resources that billions airs have today to be doing the things we need to be doing in our society. Now you can you probably think oh it's all pie in the sky and well I'm not saying you but some people may think it's all pie in the sky this comes down to physics if we don't do something about this we are richer as a country virtually every single year yet we still talk about a cost of living crisis which is deliberately fabricated you most people or significant sways of people rather have no sense of a cost of living crisis but in big sways of people do that is a choice of how we hand out society's resources that is an active choice of our politics is not dictated by the fact we have a very small economy and we're struggling to get by. We're what what depending how you measure these things between the sixth and the 10th richest country in the world and we've got what84% of the world's population. So we're an incredibly wealthy country. That wealth has been privatized to relatively small groups of people and we mustn't ask questions about that. Well, we must from a climate point of view. have no choice because that's where the lion's share of resources and when I say resources what I mean is materials means labor the skilled labor in our society rather than retrofitting the flats opposite rather than putting in the buses and the tram systems and the renewables and all that rather than doing that they are doing the the nice luxury things that this relatively small group of people want but unless we ask these deeply fundamental questions we are going to fail on climate change if we fail on climate change then society fails and so I don't think we have any choice choice but to ask those questions. So I would go back it's not about taxing millionaires. It's saying we want the resources of our society not to be privatized by a few but be for the benefit of everyone. That doesn't mean taking it from them and handing it to the people opposite. It means making sure the people living opposite here actually have infrastructure around them that that functions rather it's a squalid crumbling edifice that we have today. >> Well there was that great line wasn't there? Every billionaire is a policy failure but now of course we have trillionaires with Elon Musk. >> Yeah. And I think, you know, when I wrote a book about this stuff, you know, when people talk about, you know, no billionaires existing, that's pie in the sky or what we're talking about, you know, decarbonization by 2032 or something, maybe 2039, >> impossible. You know, people thought trillionaires were impossible not that long ago, but it's happened, hasn't it? >> Yeah. [snorts] I mean, that that's when that's one good thing about us as we the levels of ingenuity we have both technically and socially are you we we're very good at these things. We've we've we've honed those skills. We've honed them in directions that are completely counter to um what's going to be necessary to live a reasonable life for 8 and a half billion people on a round planet with you know finite resources. Um when you step back from that I think and start say well actually what how can we use our ingenuity? I think we can we can start to see ways we can use that ingenuity but we're failing on it. And you said before there are pock there are positive pockets but that's all they are. at the collective level we are going completely in the wrong direction. It doesn't mean to say that we can't identify the things that we need to do. The biggest obstacle is now political. It was technical. I mean and this is why I think why I don't want to dismiss the reform voter and even some of the reform MPs even though I have absolutely very very little time for the people at the top of these parties. I think by and large and I could be completely wrong about this but I think they have absolutely zero concern for the typical voter that votes for them. That's not true necessarily of all the MPs. A lot of MPs in all parties do genuinely care about their constituents. Um, and so I think our politics is redeemable. I don't think it has failed. And through a an enriched politics, I think we could start in a wealthy country like the UK to demonstrate how we can respond to the climate challenge and other challenges we face. And that that actually aligns with many of the many of the key issues that we that we face in our society today. I mean that the sort of language we use and is repeatedly used and it we we create a narrative by how it is particularly in the media how it is used. So the cost of living crisis the idea that Labour had a landfall landslide win last time. We it's really important for journalists not to make the news >> to report the news. >> And that means reporting the news accuracy accurately and with context. And as someone who an aid listener to radio for today program, I mean that's a it's little more than a Daily Mail with more more syllables. It's appalling the way that they the way that they report they make the news, the way that they use words, the the tone they use, the expression they use. You can hear that when they when they're talking about things each morning, they change the subject and there's no there's also no link between things. So you might get a short article on climate change followed by someone else talking about expanding aviation. There'll be no link between the two. And so our our key media outlets, the mainstream media is absolutely failing us on these issues. >> We know Andrew Mah was the political editor of the BBC and he he's also written novels. Yes, you find the time to write novels when you've got that important job, but whatever. >> Um and [snorts] the launch for the novel was at 10 Downing Street with David Cameron. And I think that's that's the moment I gave up on the BBC. I mean, I love I love BBC radio, but I thought if the political editor is launching their book at 10 Downing Street, this just the sick of fancy involved to do that. and the the complete lack of self-reflection. >> Well, that concerns me about this. Extraordinary. It is um and this is why I think I can understand why people are voting reform and voting for Trump. I mean, we had Rachel Reeves gets gets in there and I I find this incredible. She was became chancellor. It's a quite well paid position. She was pretty wealthy before. There were some questions about her expenses when she was it Bank of Scotland beforehand, I think. But there were questions there. But nevertheless, she gets in. She's off some Taylor Swift tickets. You think, well, I tell you what, I'll give them to a children's home. >> Yeah. >> Now, that to me, that was that was the first thing you would think. Well, I'm sorry. I can if my kids want to go to Taylor Swift, I can afford the tickets, but some kids in the children's home can't. How about we give them there or or somewhere like that? Now, not you know, not only is it the right thing to do, but politically if you're a Labour MP, I think that's you think, well, actually, that's quite good. You know, it's quite a good press thing to do as well. But that lack of political political acumen I find really disturbing for for for people who claim to some represent and I don't I don't I don't like the term normal average person but they you know >> but I think you're right the average person would do that if they're running 145 grand a year or whatever it was. >> Yeah. there something. But if you're trying to represent those people, then then live a life that that they that they can see that looks a bit like theirs, some crossover, not here's the free tickets, I'll go and have a jolly time with my kids there. And I think there's something about just to say like with Andrew Mah going to number 10. There's something about that. No wonder other people turn around. It's a it's just a big cabal of elite people that are just laughing all the way to the bank. Well, it's not far off true. Um and I think we do have to unpick that. And that comes back to the fact is we're not short of resources. I'm sure Andrew Mah's not short of resources. A typical radio 4 presenter gets paid what a third of a million pounds a year. Third of a million pounds. A load of after dinner talks as well get paid lots more than that. If you listen to them on radio 4, how often do you get someone on there that's on average income in the UK? >> I know. >> I bet what three three people a week is on there. Everyone else is on much higher. So they've completely normalized a news agenda which is got almost abstract from the average person in terms of income in the UK. So we create a narrative, we create a norm, we create a news which is not capturing the reality of the world in which we live and then in that we try to shoehorn in a climate agenda. There is there's a role for experts academia if you like in this to be not be co-opted to to disregard the sensibility of our of our funders of the policy makers and all the sensibilities and all the other stuff forget but disregard that there's a role for media to actually talk about the news not to manufacture the news and make the news um and I think if we that those two groups started to do their their job well and we had more scope for MPs to to speak rather than be sort of held back by whips and so forth if you so if you look at the select committees select committees do a great job I may disagree with what happens in some of them in terms of their conclusions but overall that's parliament working well the ministerial side I think less so but if we could somehow get more more um engagement across the MPs the backbenches the media and the academics the experts doing their job properly I think it would be much better place for society to make more informed decisions and to be less polarized in our views Um, and I think to to allow the the good in us as citizens to shine through how we are seen in the system as consumers. So I and I think this again this is the language we use. We talk about drivers. I've never have you ever met a car driver? I've [snorts] never met a car driver. >> I think you have to you have to own driving gloves if you're going to if you if you selfidentify as a driver. And I don't know anybody with driving gloves. >> No, but I don't know anyone who's a driver. I know mothers who drive. I know friends who drive. But they might ride a bike and they might do something else. But there but we but then when we want to do something about the road lobby but who's the road lobby? I mean we mean the people who make the cars might be the road lobby. We're not the people in the cars. The people in the cars are teachers who are driving to school because there's no decent public transport whatever it might be. So we the way the media talk about these things closes the debate down rather than opens the debate out. I'm not saying this is going to change in the time frame that we have to deal with climate change, but it is these sorts of emergent mechanisms, the structures that are there that have been shut down, I think, in modern society. If we can open those out, and that takes courageous politicians to start to to to allow power to be well, I mean, to some extent Bernie might be doing this. Let's see how this goes. to to allow power to be devolved, let's use his language, to be devolved, but not just to local officials, but devolved to us as citizens. It is our democracy. They work for us. If we can do that, then I think there was there's an outside chance that we might address climate change and the other huge social challenges that we face. >> So, you mentioned Burnham and surely before him you mentioned Rachel Reeves and uh whatever things they may agree on, they're clearly very different kinds of politicians. Yes. And you said that Rachel Reeves, you know, and you don't like to talk about normal people or whatever, but I think I think that's quite a reasonable thing to say that >> Kstar and Rachel Reeves, you know, they struggled to articulate themselves as as public figures in touch with even just the people that vote for them, let alone the wider sort of public sentiment. >> Andy Bernham is very good at that. >> Yes. As a mayor, he was ex I don't I when you're my age, I can remember him when he was briefly minister and shadow minister. I was very unimpressed with him when he had those roles. And when he became the mayor in Manchester, well, he's just another political figure that that plays politics rather than does politics if you like and plays politics with a big P rather than does politics with a small P. And I was wrong. I think he was a very good mayor. I may disagree with some of the things he did, but I think by and large he was a very good mayor. And I was quite concerned then we went went back into parliament and some of my colleagues said, "Well, perhaps he learned lessons as mayor." And that's what I'm hoping. And in fact, I would have to say after the week or two he's been in there now, at the moment, I think the the signs are good. I think he learned a lot as mayor. Um he hasn't been playing much politics with us with, you know, with a big P. He's been playing politics with a small P, proper politics. And um so let's see how he goes. But um I like the discussions he's having and about this even just the idea of devolving power which revitalizes democracy rather than sees democracy concentrated in a handful of folk in Westminster. >> So some people might be surprised to hear you say that because they might say I I love Burnham too. I think he's really good. I like the way he communicates. But I'm surprised somebody in sort of climate sector or climate scientist would say that given he's potentially opened the door to >> We don't know yet. I mean, I say open the door, but it's very ambiguous. >> Yeah. I mean, they say I think the media being >> North Oil, just to be clear. >> Yeah. North Oil. Yeah. So, um I wrote a letter to the to the PM last Friday um signed with by some of my colleagues. We were his effectively we did the provided the academic input to his climate agenda when he was the mayor. So, we were the academics that did the work for him and worked quite closely, some of my colleagues with him, but certainly with with the secretariat he had set up to look at climate change. So, we were the main people behind that. We wrote this letter and we signed the letter to him the other day about not opening up Rosebank, not opening up Jack door and and you can see it online and the Guardian covered it on Monday and so forth. Um, and I wrote that letter because I kept hearing the press kept saying Bernham's going to do this open up give go ahead to Jack Door and um and Rose um and Rosebank and Rosebank being the really big one of the two. These are oil and gas fields. And so I hunted around I couldn't find anywhere he' said this. And then so I looked at the the sort of political realm around him. I couldn't see anyone there that had said it either. So I sort of chased it up a little bit. It looks to me that it was some people in the I don't know whether it was Abedine or somewhere in the oil lobby maybe brought this up that this is this is what's going to happen. That got picked up by the press and very quickly it got turned into they're going to say this. >> Well, I thought hang on what by doing that you put pressure on the PM to actually say what has become normalized. >> Yeah. >> And that's I mean that's a that's a trick that people use to get what they want in in very many facets of life. So I just thought it was important to open up the other side say well hang on Mr. Burnham, when you were mayor of Manchester, you had a 2038 carbon neutrality time date. You you pointed out that as mayor of Manchester, you lacked some of the tools you would have liked to have, some of the levers you wanted to have to address climate change. Now the PM, you've got most of those levers. So, how about using them in line with what you said when you were the mayor. So, I'm hope trying to open up the debate the other side that makes it I think a fairer debate that maybe he's not going to open up Rosebank and and Jack Door. My suspicion is what he'll do is he'll let Jack door go ahead because he's very small and he won't let Rosebank. you know, let's see where he goes from a from a >> and then you get some brownie points from Trump. He might not sort of bat you on X or whatever, but >> but that's not as an academic, I'm not going to play that political game. He should not be opening up Jack door either. We we cannot open up No one could be opening up more more oil and gas fields. We've got more oil and gas fields than than we need to defy the planet as it is or you know, at least our existence on it. So, let's not be opening up anymore. If a really rich country like the UK with very high historical emissions and still pretty high emissions today looks to open up not only expand airports but but also when it's already a country that flies more than most countries around the world but also um expand its oil and gas industry when it's already incredibly wealthy and doesn't need to do that. Um you know that that's not a good signal to to send to the rest of the world. I can't a country who at least rhetorically claims to have done something significant on climate change. I would argue it hasn't but anyway that's another more nuanced debate. Um, so I think opening up those fields sends a really bad signal. Um, and is completely countered to what he stood for as mayor of Manchester. And I would say so far I think he is demonstrating integrity um, as mayor as as prime minister. Let's hope that continues and if it does then I think he has to hold out against the oil and gas lobby. >> I find this really interesting. So you've done the research and like you say there was that letter and it doesn't seem to have a a credible source. this idea that he's gonna sign both of these off and it you know there's a there's a term for this it was coined by the well there's a phrase coined by the Rand Institute after the Gulf War in you know information war >> so you just flood the sort of public sphere with these kinds of things and you might get a response a denial even the denial makes it that little bit more real >> and that is how we should look at lots of the media um we saw it with Shabbanmood his you know apparent chancellor widely briefed yes by people close to Shabban Mammud and the labor right it was so widely briefed a paper as as venerable and generally reliable as the Financial Times said Mimmude is going to be the chancellor checker because they've been told by three independent relatively reliable sources on the labor right and they they were made to look foolish and stupid because of course it was John Healey and this is this is about the media being a tool for people in politics people in business to basically get their way and I think you know people are not naive but it's good that you know somebody of your stature in this field can say I have a suspicion that may be at play here on the final question >> but just on that can I pull pull up something out of that that doesn't just happen in politics >> no >> in my realm I think that is one of the biggest concerns I have is that my academic lots of my academic colleagues not maybe my immediate ones in Manchester but certainly more widely yeah how many of those will postulate all sorts of future technologies and they and they they flood the climate space with carbon capture and storage negative emission technologies all these things that out in the future are going to solve climate change for us so can maintain business as usual today. you know that that agenda has not only flooded the discourse on climate change and there are huge numbers of papers on these things but if I go look at my colleagues what they work on far more people are working on carbon caption storage and negative negative emission technologies almost no one is working on radical emission reductions for climate emergency virtually no one I know works at that sort of level but at the other level all these technologies whole swavs of technical people social science people all sorts of people are working on those so you've normalized a narrative about technology that barely exists and literally I mean barely exists it's just out the laboratory most of this stuff >> um and we normalize it as if it will as if it exists. So when Labour Party had their conference a couple of years ago in um Albert Dock in Liverpool, I went along there. The biggest the biggest um stand there was for carbon capture storage by the oil and gas industries. You know they're they're selling snake oil again and because they're wearing suits and it looks like there's a few calculations involved there. The odd bit of kit they can show that somehow that that you know that we're going to deliver this in the time frame we have and I can give you the numbers on this. There is virtually no carbon capture storage globally. It's 0.03% of all fossil fuel emissions have been captured. After 30 years of the industry telling us it's just around the corner and it's affordable. Now we do need it on things like cement and we haven't got into that detail but there are things that where it would be useful on the oil and gas industry. It's a scam to maintain the oil and gas industry. And the academic community has fed into that by doing all this work on it, by pretending it's there, by creating these scenarios and narratives and the committee on climate change, the international um energy agency and all these other groups which then feeds into the global justice report, you know, following the IEA scenarios, all these scenarios that have wedded into technologies. Technologies, they're pseudo technologies. They're delaying technologies. They're designed to delay legislation. They're not designed to deliver. And so it's not just about the politics that sells that that floods the world with information. It's the the academic community on climate change, the bit I know about on the mitigation side about doing something about reducing emissions that is a wash with with pseudo technologies all designed to maintain the status quo and often you get get academics working quite objectively on these things but the boundaries within which they work within which they're funded are deeply subjective. So it's not just an issue of the media, it's a it's an issue of the expert class as well. And we've swallowed this hook hook line and sinker on the climate realm. And it's true for the committee on climate change. It's true for Ed Milliban's view on climate change as well and for his advisers on climate change. Um so I hold the academic community as culpable for this as I do the media. >> So you talk about these as um delay technologies and you put them in contrast to timely technologies. So let's return to that binary in a second. You can explain what technologies are. But this idea of um information war being in this space as well. I mean it's interesting people people know the word scop psychological operation you know but the idea that basically carbon capture is a psychological operation by the by the oil and gas industry seems obviously true. I mean I remember I remember Gordon Brown being the prime minister talking about this stuff. Yeah >> before 2010 and now we're in 2026. >> My colleagues have been working on it for over 20 years. Some of them almost now a quarter of a century. >> Wow. So been working on carbon caption storage for quarter of a century looking at what's been going on and the rest of it and now we still have almost none in 2026. That's a success story. >> It's a success story for the oil and gas industry. It has managed to delay legislation and deliver nothing. >> Last year Starman was giving money to this. >> Oh well hoping to give money to it. Yeah, I mean we weren't quite sure how that was going to work out but yeah it looked like >> a billion pounds. >> They were Yeah, it did look how that was going to go into into this. And there are I'm not saying that all CCS technologies are are are a scam but some of them are going to be necessary on things we talked about but cement before there are things you can do about cement we >> or bricks right but CO2 into bricks >> bricks so there are so so car capture storage for capturing the process emissions of cement which is about 4% globally mostly from countries that are rapidly developing and they definitely need these technologies to capture that CO2 >> so there are things we can do about it challenging but we can do something about it on the fossil fuel side there are alternatives and and they are way cheaper. >> Yeah. >> But they haven't got the same I mean there's there's a whole other story in this. The reason renewables are challenging for the incumbent energy companies there's no rent. >> If you've got if you've got fossil fuels you've got rent. You've got to produce the oil and gas every minute of every hour of every day of every day of the year for you know decade after decade to keep the car running. That's not true for renewables. Once you've actually built the bloody thing the wind pops in and the solar the sun hits in the panel and so there's no rent. And if you've got a model that's built on rent and your power is built on rent, your prestige is built on rent, everything you have is built on rent and comes someone comes along with another model with no rent in it, that's massively challenging for you, which is why BP went from, you know, remember for a while it went to beyond petroleum. Then it quickly realized that wasn't going to work. So it's gone back to as much oil and gas as it can get out the ground and forget the renewables. Um, never trust the executives in the oil and gas companies. Um and so that that shift from one to the other means that um we have to find ways that we can reconcile oil and gas industry with the challenges we have which is why we've been sold this pup of CCS on on energy. So whilst it might be important on cement on energy there are alternatives but those alternatives do not fit into the current economic financial and power model that is fossil fuels and so they will go down kicking and screaming because they've done so well and I don't mean the people working on the rigs I mean the executives and the senior shareholders have done so well out of these industries. Brett Christopher's wrote a great book um about actually renewable energy and you know he's saying that the the way to understand this in terms of its adoption within a market system is not about the price even I think price was in the name of the book it's about the rate of return and another thing besides rent is of course that um renewable energies are deflationary right that a lot of this stuff is getting cheaper every year it might not happen forever but it's it's happened for a long time it's called Swanson's law with regards to photovoltaic cells >> yes >> you know it's happened for a long time it's going to happen for a long time to Um and if you're trying to find a high reliable rate of return, you don't really want to be in a sector which is deflationary. So um yeah, this stuff is really touched on. I quickly wanted to get from you this um this binary of um delay technologies, these pseudo technologies you call which is basically they serve the purpose of of delaying meaningful action on climate change and timely technologies. So what are timely technologies? >> Yeah. So the timely technology the the less sexy end of the spectrum if you like. I mean retrofitting our houses and you say you just sit here having just strolled around where your office is here you can see the properties that are just crying out for retrofit. Um so these are all over our country and these sorts of property where I work in Manchester University. We're we're surrounded by um you know thousands of terrace houses that desperately need to be retrofitted just for the for the for the current climate and also just for to to allow the people to live in them well rather than living in them as damp and full of fungal spores and so is bad for everything. Um, so retrofitting houses, we know how to do that. We know how to build buses. So having buses and trams, we know how to do local planning. So there are all these things that we know how to do. None of them are particularly sexy. They're important. They require lots and lots of labor and quite a lot of technology. And doing retrofit well is really important. So you can anyone can build a lowquality house. Building a house that's going to be efficient is actually quite difficult. So there are the skills of the builders in this and the quality of the inspection are really important because if you get you get little cold spots which make it so that retrofitting can be quite challenging. Um but these sorts of technologies which are not big shiny things you can show at some Labor party event um and have lots of wealthy bloss around in suits showing you bits of kit. These are not that exciting. Oh, buses. Oh, trams. Oh, ebikes. I mean, ebikes to me might well be a gamecher in terms of localized transport. E-cars are, electric cars aren't. I'm not I'm not opposed to EVs, but the idea we're going to have one for one substitution for EVs. I mean, I just think that that's a good example again about this idea of thinking differently. So, and again, that's an industry that has that has come to dominate the discourse. So, we're all going to move to EVs. There are 30 roughly 35 million cars in the UK. 33 million are basically petrol and diesel and a few hybrids. rest the other two million are electric. We're going to swap them all to electric as the committee on climate change broadly. Say that's about another 33 million electric cars. Let's imagine they're£30,000 each, which is probably about an average for for new electric cars. And goodness, there aren't many secondhand ones. They're going to have to be new. That's roughly a trillion pounds we're going to spend if we're going to follow the government, the committee on climate change um local transport or sort of transport agenda. That's roughly a trillion pounds on new electric cars. And then if you look at how often the cars used about 96% of the time they're idle. So cars are used between four and 5% of the time. So society is going to spend 1 trillion pounds of its resources on a technology that is only going to be used for about 4% of the time. It could alternatively spend it on trams, buses, local planning, moving factories and industries to near where people worked. So all sorts of other things we could do. Instead, we've normalized business as usual and no one's questioning it. And EVs just seem to be good. I'm not against EVs. If you're going to buy a car, buy a EV, not a petrol or diesel one. But the idea you just swap them out one for one and the rest of the world tries to follow that is utter nonsense. And this is my point about system thinking. You got to step back from it. You know, the idea we spend one trillion on these cars is, you know, we this that's what's that four times what we spend in the NHS every year. Onethird of the current current um global UK GDP. And our plan is in the committee on climate change scenarios and the government scenarios is literally to spend that trillion on cars that are hardly ever used rather than rental cars, car pooling, all those sorts of things. We might have buses, trams, all those other things that we could have that could use the resources in a far more worthwhile way. In addition to that, of course, there's no constraint on the size of these things. You know, look at look how large they are. And the assumption that some that they're zero emissions um an electric car has roughly the same particullet as a diesel electric car. So if you're using them in the cities, you're still going to have the people there suffering from the particulates. And because they can accelerate so fast, electric cars are much faster to accelerate and can be. Then you've got much more tire wear, much more roadware wear, and actually you could have more particulates than if you had diesel well well-maintained diesel and electric. >> Also potholes, >> right? Because they accelerate. Yeah. Heavier. They accelerate very fast. Now hopefully the weight can come down. There are technology things you can do about this. You can drop the weight. And some of the new batteries that are coming out now look like they could have an energy density that's almost twice what the current ones are. But they only drop the weight if you're prepared to have a battery of the same range. If we then increase the range, the batteries go back up. And that's of course what we will do without regulation. And a lot of all much of what we've talked about here comes down to the idea government has to have the guts to put the regulation in place. My argument to ministers and MPs is when the financial directors of any organization come to you, put your fingers in your ear. Let them squeal and then let them go away. Just don't listen to them. listen to the engineers um and and by and large the engineers will deliver if you put the regulations in place. Everyone will moan at the time and then people afterwards will say um you know would you like to go back to what you had before? No, no, we like the level playing field. So regulations are always always opposed but often welcomed afterwards as long as they've been well thought through. So there's a real role for regulators, for policy makers to put regulations in place that drive society from a technical point of view towards these timely technologies, the ones that we know work and are affordable and actually are very good both for society but also from employment point of view as well. So that that's why I come back to I'm sounding too hopeful for myself here. Um there are things we know that we can do. We know how to do them. We have the time frame just about to put them in place. So what is it? What is it we're lacking to make us make that change? Now, as I said from the beginning, I'm not I'm not an optimist. I'm not pessimist either. I'm sort of argue a realist. I don't think we're going to do this. But I think I can see how we could do it. >> I just don't know why we aren't. And that's not my for other people who would know about those. I mean, you would know more about why we're not doing these things than I than I would. >> Well, you you might think so, but probably probably not. I mean, I think you're very knowledgeable about this by the sounds of it. Um, in terms of the political process, in terms of regulation, you know, I think of Barbara Castle. >> Oh, yeah. >> She introduced seat belts. They >> up north, Barbara Castle, I think it was. >> Castle. Yeah. A great sort of Labor hero of mine. >> Yes. Yeah. Her mind too actually. She introduced seat belts and breathalyzers and I think in the 12 months and of course when they introduced seat belts in new cars and they introduced breathalyzer tests this exact thing happened where you know organized car lobbies um and quite you know canankerous MPs who disagreed with her said this is ridiculous blah blah blah and of course road deaths fall by I think about 18% in the following 12 months. >> Yeah. No really really important. >> You're saving thousands of lives. >> Yeah. It's the same with lead in cars leading fuel. Yeah, I I live through all of that nonsense there and Catholic converters, but I would add we are saving thousands of lives, but I mean again it comes back to thinking about things differently. About 1,700 people are killed every year on UK roads. 1,700 people >> about 30,000 people are either killed or seriously injured on UK roads every year. Since, and I've just been checking the numbers on this, since the Second World War, since the Second World War, as many people have been killed in car accidents in the UK as combatants were killed, British combatants were killed in the Second World War. Roughly 350,000 people. So, we have normalized a form of transport that kills as many people as the last major war that we were involved with. Well, we've had a few other skirmishes as well in between, but the big war 300 350,000 people killed in the Second World War and roughly 360,000 people killed in cars since the Second World War. If you go to the global level, we kill about 1.2 million people a year in cars. 1.2 million a year. >> So, I think more people have been killed in cars since the car was invented than I think in war since 1800. >> It's extraordinary. >> We've normalized slaughter. what in in in our form of transport. And when you think about it, I'll be that surprised. I weigh what 82 kilo kilograms. Desperately trying to get to 80 82 as a cyclist. I weigh 82 kg. I might get in a car that weighs somewhere between 1,600 and 4,000 kg depending what sort of car I might have. And then drive a handful of kilometers to pick up some groceries. And we've normalized that that I everywhere I go, I carry, you know, 2,000 kg of metal with me called a car. It's just we don't question it that we got car parks taken up by our real estate that we have our huge roads everywhere that that destroy our cities that are our places our housing estates where kids can't go out and play football on the street anymore because of the bloody cars everywhere and so I'm not this is so the climate agenda again asks that question is that a normal is that a reasonable thing to do is that a reasonable use of society's resources to spend a trillion pounds on a technology we hardly ever use and when we do use it it kills huge numbers of people it does it does give us freedom and so forth, but a lot of that freedom is spent in cues. So, are there other ways we could we could organize a transport system? All we're thinking about with the committee on climate change and the government is no. No, we can just swap and carry on with more and more cars that are going to be bigger than the old cars and we're going to build more roads on an island that hasn't got any bigger. >> You talked about the terrorist streets in Manchester. I live in Portsmouth. The exact same problem. You've got, you know, you got terrorist streets from the 1860s onwards and they're rammed with SUVs and white vans. Now, I understand the white vans. These guys need to go to work. They need them for work. I get it. But we need to do something about we need to get rid of at least 20% of these vehicles in these places because it's you know it's insane certain parts of Portsmouth I'm sure it's seven bits of Manchester or Sulford or whatever you know people are driving around for 25 minutes because they can't find a parking spot waste of time >> and that's what but we've we've normalized a sort of madness and and I'm not say blaming anyone I don't I do think the oil and gas industry and the car law have pushed very hard for these things but nevertheless you know just by incremental change we've normalized utter madness and now think we can't do anything about here. So I use a photograph with a quote from Robert Dungger who's a Brazilian philosopher and politician and it is about having the clarity imagination to conceive that it could be different and it's a photograph of I think he's in the states I think might be in New York but it's a a road in the middle of a city just packed full of horses and cars. It's quite a sort of picture that's used quite often for these sorts of things. Yeah. And at that time no one could imagine anything different and within 10 years there weren't any. And and that clarity and imagination to conceive that the future could be different. Now I think on climate change see the future will be different either because we do something about it or we get keep getting hit by increasingly severe um impacts. So that clarity and imagination is really important and it's what I expect our policy makers to have and it's what I expect us as an expert community in academia to have um that imagination and clarity and I think we've by and large at the ministerial level at the academic level on climate change we've failed not on the science and what we need to do about it. we've locked into a business as usual, a greened business as usual mindset. And we all know privately that's not going to work. But but we don't we don't voice that publicly. >> Henry Ford had that great line, didn't he? Um you know, if I wanted to give consumers what they asked for, I would have given them a faster horse and cart, horse and carriage. Of course, he came up with a different paradigm. The final question, if there's if there's young people watching this in their late teens, early 20s, because you're somebody who's worked in industry, you've worked in the academy, you know, you it feels like you've had this relationship to nature basically your whole life. What would your advice be to them? Are there certain jobs that they could get involved in? You know, there might be somebody who wants to work in a trade, right? Is there a certain sort of trade that they should pursue? Certain industries they might think about being involved in that might be a little bit more resilient, for instance, to automation, etc. >> It's interesting. Any advice basically to young people? >> I get asked that question in various forms quite often. Um a lot of my academic younger academic colleagues ask me about career advice. I don't don't come for me to me for career advice. I never felt like I even had a career. Doesn't feel like to me it's not how I view view the world. No, I don't think I we need good people in every sphere. We need good builders, good turners, good welders, good people in care, good people in management. We need good journalists. We need good people do trying to do the work diligently and with the right mindset in every facet of life. And there there might be a few industries. I'm not a great fan of the defense industry. I'm not a great fan of, you know, don't go and work in the oil and gas industry. There's a few out there. But outside of of those few there, and there's no doubt at the moment people would argue about defense, but outside of those, by and large, I think it's much more about your philosophy. Whatever it is you do, do it well. Do it with care. Do it with thoughtfulness. Whatever that means. If you want to be an accountant, do that everywhere you go. Have the courage to stand up to your convictions, whatever your job happens to be. Point things out when you think that they are wrong. And you and these are all challenging things to do, but it's it's that mindset. It's about the sort of person you want to be in doing the thing that you want to do. And think that's much more important than saying, I think we need more of those and more of those. Society doesn't work on >> on just on these groups. It works because there's a collective group of people doing all sorts of things. So whether you're helping kids cross the road with a lollipop sign or whether you're whether you are a a welder, you know, building um uh the stands for wind turbines or whether you're a carer looking after my stepdad or whatever it might be, you know, all of those things. It's about good citizens recognizing that we are citizens, good citizens doing what they can well. And that's about a mindset and a philosophy and a way of looking at society and your role in society much more than about the particular position you're in. That sounds like a copout. I don't mean it to be. >> No, I love it Kevin. It's good. >> Yeah, >> it's good. And also people can have multiple careers, right? Like as as you have in your life, right? So >> yeah, I don't I've never thought of myself as having a career. I have to say that's I I've never gone for promotion. Um you know, it's not I'm not interested in it for the money. Um I mean sort of separate this you can cut it out but I went down to one and a half days a week about five or six years ago now which meant I get about I get maybe £28,000 a year now before tax and I did that partly because it gives me some freedom but I still work about I don't work anywhere near the hours I did but I probably still do a 35 hour week but it gives me a certain freedom but it also I think I was starting to get to the point where I thought that's just as a professor we get paid too much there's no way you can get paid less and so you can go part-time so there are merits to going hard time there. And also, I think it makes you stop and think a little bit about the resources you have to at your fingertips, which helps you think a little bit more about the challenges other people are facing. I'm not in the position most people are in. I've got savings. So, and I've got I've got my own flat. I live in a flat, lovely flat. So, I've got my own property. I've got some savings. But it's it does help me think about the a bit more than the average salary for um a professor is £85,000 a year, which is, you know, a very very high salary. Most of them wouldn't think they're on a very high salary, but what's the what's the UK average? about 35 isn't it? >> Yeah, something something like that. So a single person is getting two to three times a professor and then they're cont then they're pontificating about the world through a lens that they see which you know they've got the £85,000 lens they're looking out of. >> I'd like us to keep that. I hope you don't edit it out. Um because I think it's a really important point. Conditions determine consciousness. You know, if you start traveling business class and first class everywhere, you might read all the books, you might have all the undergraduate degrees in Marxist economics, but ultimately you start thinking you deserve that. Doesn't make you a bad person. That's just how it works. Conditions determine. >> Yeah. No, I think that's a really important point. We we have normalized the positions we're in and then they become the lenses through which we see the world, which is why I think we've basically failed in terms of that point I was saying before about clarity and imagination because we cannot see the world in a way that doesn't look through a lens of £85,000. Um, and so I think somehow we've got to try and escape that. And one way of escaping it is to take a take a substantial pay cut. And there's probably other ways of doing that as well. But it is a really important point to get across is that we if you want to look at the world in a different way, then we need to find other ways to take our lens off and put other ones on and see it see it through that. And also I would go slightly further is individualism or individual action and collective action are two sides of the same coin. I think people who who want to escape the idea that individual agency is important often say that they're it's not important because they just you know it's the system that matters. argue for that. When you argue for system change, you generally would argue people often argue that argue it from a position where they've tried to make changes themselves and they probably failed to some degree, but they're part of the same way of thinking. You make the changes yourself. You ask yourself questions about how easy it is, how hard it is. You learn lessons from that. You talk to your friends about it. Might say, "Have you tried this?" Oh, what a stupid idea that is. I could never do that. And you discuss it. So, you create a dialogue. And that dialogue then im through an emergent system of change brings about um a wider way of thinking about these issues. So I think individual change and talking about it is really important is a important part of catalyzing system change. They're not separate. So I do think individual action and collective action are are two sides of the same coin. And if you fail on individual action, I think we fail on the system change. And so, so I think there is incumbent on those of us who are who are very significantly part of the problem from a mathematical point of view. Our emissions are how what we consume for us to step into that agenda into that private agenda and say what can I do? But then the key thing is you've got to talk about it. >> Kevin Anderson, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on downstream. >> My pleasure.