Mike Toffel:
Paul and Tom, thank you so much for joining us here on Climate Rising.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Delighted to be here
Paul Dickinson:
Always a pleasure, Mike. Always a pleasure. And I told Tom ages ago that you wrote that paper about private politics that Tom and I discussed at great lengths. Thank you for being the instigator of many interesting discussions we have had.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah, I think some of my research was some of the earliest plum CDP data. So thanks to you and your staff for providing the data way back when. And the whole cottage industry of CDP data analyses has emerged ever since. We could talk about that. one of the…
Paul Dickinson:
Really the great corporations providing the data, not us, but yes indeed.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah, that’s true. You provided access to it. So this brings us to how did we met, how did you meet? And certainly, Paul, you and I met through CDP and Tom back as well when you were at CDP. So let us begin with a brief intro into where you came from and where you sit now. Tom, you want to get us started.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
yeah, very happy to. So, so nice to see you again. I have not seen you for a very long time. So I am a founding partner at Global Optimism, which is an organization I started together with Cristiano Figueres when we left the UN in 2016, after we were there for several years, trying to steer the UN process towards what became the Paris Agreement. Prior to that, I was at CDP for about seven or eight years. So
Your listeners may or may not know that Paul and I actually co-host a podcast together with Christiana Figueres called Outrage and Optimism and Paul and Christiana are the only two bosses I’ve ever had so you know take that take from that what you will whether that’s a good position to be in with my two co-hosts.
Mike Toffel:
Great, I did not know that. All right, Paul, how about yourself?
Paul Dickinson:
Well, I’m going to introduce a third boss for Tom, which is Gaia or our planet, because actually this was just Monday, just a week ago, Tom and I were at the funeral of our beloved shared teacher, Stephen Harding, who got us both into climate change. But yeah, no, I saw I think Tom has basically introduced me. I founded CDP with some other people 24 years ago. And I’ve gone on to also do a podcast with Tom and got involved in various other
things looking at particular transition and how companies can profit from the transition to a low carbon society. But it is lovely to catch up with you in New York. Climate Week.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Is that your pitch of what our podcast is about? That is interesting. I haven’t heard you pitch it before. We probably describe it completely differently. I see. Tool for your new business.
Paul Dickinson:
That was what my new business is about, our new business podcast is just a marketing mechanism for Transition Value Finance, so just to be clear there. But lovely to catch up with you, in New York, and what a good time to discuss these fascinating issues.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah, so we’re coming, we’re recording this now in the, after a few weeks after New York Climate Week and a few weeks before COP in Baku. And I think what would be great for us to talk about is how business leaders should engage in COP or what they should know about COP. And so let’s begin with like a bit of background in COP 101. For those who may have heard of COP.
They know it’s something to do with the UN, something to do with climate change, but may not know much more beyond that. And so, you know, it’s really great to have you both because you worked at the UN supporting COP, as you mentioned. Paul, you have been working with businesses for decades on the climate change topic. So I feel like the two of you are ideal guests to talk about this topic. So take us back. How did COP get started and what are some key COP milestones in the ensuing 20 to 30 years that COP’s been around?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
All right, okay, I’m going to compress this into a tight timeframe and Paul will come in as well. So first bit of trivia, I always like to put Paul on the spot and ask him questions he doesn’t know the answers to in our podcast. So Paul, who, or both of you in fact, who was the president of COP1?
Paul Dickinson:
Some US something from way back.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
No, no, no, no, so the COP1 was hosted in Berlin and the president was Environment Minister Angela Merkel. So that takes you right back to how long these things have been going on. People may also know that this is the 29th COP happening this year. They happen once a year, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that actually these things have been going since the early 90s. And they were effectively the annual meetings of the Conference of the Parties.
Mike Toffel:
Wow.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So that was adopted back in 92 with the creation of a new convention under the United Nations to try and deal with the systemic threat of climate change with these annual meetings. So as I say, first one in Germany and a series of different attempts to try to get what is essentially short-term systems with political cycles to deal with long-term systemic problems with profound effects on how you plan an economy.
That is not easy. We knew it was not easy at the beginning, but we’ve discovered just how hard it is. And there have been various different attempts to work out how we best do that. So there’s basically two different philosophies that have been followed. And let me just set that out for you briefly. At the beginning, the intention was that the United Nations, the countries to the, the countries that are parties to the convention would come together in the annual cops and based on science, they would set trajectories and pathways that every country would reduce by a certain amount in order to manage the problem. We quickly discovered that climate change is a problem caused by one group of countries and the worst impacts are felt by a different group of countries. So that was unfair to expect everybody to do the same thing. So we split countries into what’s called annex one, which is developed countries and annex two with different expectations for both of them. We then went through a process of negotiating how much do we need to reduce by in order to solve the problem.
And the intention was to solve that at the level of the UN and then everyone goes back to their countries and puts it in place through national legislation. And the principal example of that philosophy was the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, where there was a collective agreement that Annex 1 countries would reduce by a collective amount. Now that has a slightly unhappy history for a couple of reasons. Not that it was not a significant breakthrough, which it was. Most famously, of course, Al Gore went there in 1997, committed to the US, came back home, and could never get it ratified by the US Senate. So therefore, because international treaties of that type need to be ratified, the US never really participated. The second was that the Canadians signed onto the Kyoto Protocol, but then it became clear they weren’t going to meet their commitments for which there was a penalty under the UNFCCC. And the day before, it was going to be clear that they weren’t going to meet it, they simply pulled out of the convention.
So those were two learnings that we got around; really how do you get countries to come together and make long-term plans for significant change and what’s the intersection between national sovereignty and collective action? So that was philosophy one. So I’ll then explain also, if it makes sense, I’m not talking too long, philosophy two, which is the Paris Agreement, is that right? Yeah.
Mike Toffel:
Before you do though, I mean, as I recall, at least as a US news consumer, that another complication of Kyoto, at least in the US context was, well, what about China? Which was at the time classified as a developing country, but rapidly growing and its emissions were overtaking the US in terms of the single largest emitting country. And folks were worried about the competitive implications of imposing potentially costly legislation in the US or in Europe,
Mike Toffel:
but not on China. That seems to me also part of the complexity of that approach.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
100 % knows a very good catch which is of course if you freeze time in 1992 and then assign who has responsibility based on where we were then of course the world changed fundamentally even to 97 but then beyond that, you know in a way that makes it unrecognizable
So you are exactly right. There was another kind of injustice there Which is China is now one of the world’s largest emitters at least today if not historically and so therefore You need to keep up with that challenge so fast forward then to the years that led up to the Paris Agreement and there was a different philosophy that was adopted in the years ahead, which was a realization that you can’t get all countries together because of all the problems associated with that. So instead of what you do, and this is a new kind of international agreement, you have a collective goal to say we will be net zero by the middle of the century. The long term objective is to solve this, and we will get there by a series of five yearly steps. And every five years we will come back together, and we’ll make a commitment for the next five years. A bit like me saying, I want to lose a stone in weight and my target by the end of this month is to lose two pounds. And at the end of a month, I’ll come back and say, now I’m going to set the target for the next month. Theoretically after the first month, I’ve lost a bit of weight, I’m feeling healthier, I’ve got up off the couch and I started going running so I can be, you can be a bit more ambitious as you get towards the end of that curve. That was the philosophy behind the Paris Agreement of 2015.
Mike Toffel:
Great. And two big changes there, if I remember correctly. One is everyone was expected to make this target, this nationally determined contribution. And they were also, as you mentioned, customized to your context. So you got to declare your own piece of change. Those are two big changes from what the Kyoto Protocol was, which was a uniform target by only a small subset of the countries, the large emitters at the time. Is that right?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
A commitment. Precisely. That’s exactly right. Sorry, Paul.
Paul Dickinson:
I was just going to say like I think you know as having spent my life as a hammer everything looks like a nail to me
You know that having spent 22 years having corporations reporting annually on their progress on greenhouse gas emissions and their strategy I’ve always called the Paris agreement just CDP for countries I mean the difference frankly is that it’s every five years and not every one year and I think you know in an ideal world that countries would be coming back every one year, but the real reason I make this point is
The great power, I think, in geopolitics is what I would call peer group pressure and the court of public opinion. And so I do think the genius of the Paris Agreement was to essentially provide a mechanism for the better selves of nations to arise into a process where they were watching and competing with each other. And that also allows a new economy to jump in and fuel what’s going on.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Can I say an interesting observation, Paul, that Paris was CDP for countries, not that CDP was cops for business. Interesting way around, it’s an insight into your psychology that that’s the way around, we see the world. Anyway, yes. Fair enough.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah, I see.
Paul Dickinson:
I’m just speaking on behalf of the four-fits of the economy that is not the government. Please carry on, Tom.
Mike Toffel:
So this peer group pressure, I totally get that. But it’s interesting. That’s a bit of a double-edged sword, right? Because peer group pressure works when ambition is the pressure, when you’re ratcheting up. But in a world where people are worried about the cost implications, there’s also a potential flip side of this, which is a race to the bottom. So how do we ensure that the peer group pressure goes up and not down?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Hmm.
Paul Dickinson:
If you assume that zero carbon technologies are more expensive over the duration of their existence, which is a presumption in your statement, sorry to leap in and not correct you exactly, but raise a question.
Mike Toffel:
My question is just, it seems to me like the political rhetoric can turn this peer group pressure on its head and be a race to the bottom rather than a race for aspiration, which maybe is a little bit as to what happened with Canada after the US and maybe I think Australia also was in and then they were out. I think that was due to this perception that it’s costly, even in the short run for sure, maybe not in the long run, depending on the industry and the technology.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Yeah. Well.
Mike Toffel:
But the short run is the political cycle, right, with two or four year elections.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Well, don’t forget, under the Paris Agreement, every country has made a firm political commitment, but through a binding international agreement, to meet the long-term goal and to follow the five yearly objectives. So that’s already stated, and no country has said that they are not committed to the Paris Agreement now. I mean, obviously the US was the only one that was the case for a while and now is back in. So.
Yes, you’re right. And at the end of the day, these things are nationally determined. But in a world where sovereignty is paramount, as it should be under the UN process, there’s no world and I mean, you there are some people who think, well, the UN should just impose these ideas and make countries do something. That’s a complete misunderstanding of how this form of geopolitics and international agreement making works. It has to be done based on national interest, based on economic benefit to that country. That’s the only way we actually get sustained action towards shared goals. You have to align those objectives.
Paul Dickinson:
But if I could leap in and remind you, Mike, of your paper that you wrote about CDP, I think in 2008, what surprised you was that so many companies were coming forward and disclosing when they didn’t have a regulatory obligation to do so, but rather it was pressure from shareholders and pressure from society. So I do think we’re inventing a new kind of politics here for nations, but I think it does have its seeds in a new kind of politics for business as well. A new way for organizations to show up in the world and to engage with the public opinion which leads to the new industries and new investment opportunities.
Mike Toffel:
Totally agree. All right, so let’s talk about what COP actually looks like when you’re there. So now we have a bit of a background. So at COP, as I understand it, I have never been, as I understand it, there’s this… Well, let us see, maybe at the end of this conversation you’ll convince me. So I think of it as three concentric rings here in the center, and maybe that’s not the right way to think about it, but you tell me. So at the center are these actual intergovernmental…
negotiations and that is close to everyone but government bodies. And then surrounding that is a zone where you need a pass to get in and that’s businesses, NGOs, maybe some other government people who are let into these hallowed halls and have meetings and chit chats and there is some speakers and so on. And then surrounding that… is a publicly accessible space, which again has companies and NGOs, a little bit like a trade show or something like that. Is that the right way to think about what is going on when you show up?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
You want me to do that one?
Paul Dickinson:
Yeah, I mean, think that’s 100 % right, but Tom, you’ve been closer to the center of that onion. Is that an accurate description?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Well, I think what’s interesting about that is I would say historically, that’s absolutely true. And that there’s, you know, there’s the center and the core of government negotiations. And then outside, you have concentric rings of those who are not directly involved in that, but engaged in other activities. and those who can be led into the what’s called the blue zone, which is the UN zone, can be up to like 80 to 90,000. So they’re huge, and only eight to 10,000 are involved in negotiations. that, but those numbers reveal something, which is that actually, as the cops, as we have reached agreements on where we’re going, and as countries have put in place national legislation and collective plans, the objective on climate change has shifted from one of creating ambition to one of implementation.
And actually much more interesting now is not what do you say you’re going to do in 2035, but are you really making progress? Have you put legislation in place? Are you putting regulations in place? Are you moving forward? So the really interesting part of COP, I would argue, has now shifted from what governments are doing to all of the multi-stakeholder engagement that sits around that. What kinds of public-private partnerships, what kinds of international alliances can get created?
That would actually enable us to implement these objectives. So I think there’s been bit of an evolution now where the point of COP is no longer what it used to be, which is the international negotiation. It’s broader than that, which makes it a little bit less easy to understand, but ultimately more fit for purpose in terms of what we need now.
Paul Dickinson:
And let me just double click if that’s the phrase. Yuck. I hate it when I use jargon. But on a specific point you made there, Tom, which is something that I’ve heard Christiana say, if I’m not mistaken, which is that in many ways, the big agreement kind of was the Paris agreement and a great deal was agreed there. It was agreed there that nations would every five years report on their progress, and they agreed to this long-term goal. So you get a situation whereby, yeah, I said the private sector is four fifths of economy, which it is nine out of 10 people inside the blue zone, may well be from not government, should we say. And this is why, for example, Climate Week in New York was enormous. And there might even be less people going to Baku. You could even start to see a global infrastructure for the private sector emerge. What we do have is the UN system holds together the national conference of the parties. There isn’t actually a global business UN. I have registered the URL unitedcorporations.org, but I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day, but you know what I mean? How does business globally organize itself at the top of a mountain in Switzerland at Davos? I don’t know.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah. So what’s the role of business in each of these three circles, before, during, or after COP? Maybe we’ll start with the inner sanctum first. It seems like they are not allowed into the government negotiations, I’m guessing, but they might have some influence with lobbying and so on ahead of time. Is that the case?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
So I’m happy to hop into that. I think that, so it’s not necessarily true they won’t be allowed in there. much, many of the negotiations happen in public and certainly on the floor of the UN where countries are making formal statements, business can attend that if they have observer badges for the UN. There will be private negotiations in closed door, which will be a subset, but that’s where much of the most interesting grappling actually happens with the implementation of this. And I would say in that area, business needs to be really clear about what it will take to enable them to participate in the transition. And some of that happens at the COP, but much of it happens at home. A country will go to the COP with their negotiating lines well determined to say, this is where we’re coming in, and here’s our fallback position on any number of issues that are under negotiation in that particular COP. And they will be preparing that statement for the negotiators to go in.
for six months prior to a COP, once they know what the negotiation streams are, and the tracks are. And during that time, they will hold consultations, and they will certainly meet with businesses in their countries to get a sense of how business responds to those particular issues. And certainly it’s true that fossil fuel companies can be pretty active depending on the country, engaging with their national governments, trying to encourage them not to advance international policies that would be against their commercial interests.
That’s been true all along in the COP process. It’s somewhat difficult to determine how extensive that is, because it might happen in the capital before they come to the COP themselves. So what I would say is to business leaders who actually want to help create the environment in which they can make profitable decisions that are also beneficial to the transition, those six months ahead of important COPs are crucial to go and see the environment minister, go and see the minister of finance and the head of state if possible or their advisors and try to push them to actually take really ambitious lines of negotiation to a COP. Once they’re actually at the COP, then those lines of negotiation will largely be set, and a minister might be able to come in and be flexible to find an actual outcome or a final form of words. But those six months ahead of time are the critical time for progressive businesses to really encourage their government to be ambitious.
Paul Dickinson:
Yeah, I mean, just to add on that, you know, I’d love to draw on this very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very famous essay from Milton Friedman in 1970 when he said, the social responsibility of business is to make profits. And you can leave that statement there. You can say, OK, that’s fine.
But if you accept that statement, given the context climate change has got this disastrous impact on humanity, the social responsibility of government is to make decarbonization profitable. So just as Tom says, you want to go to your government, and you want to make the two most important questions. I’ve spent my career asking companies questions. To me, the two most important questions are what policies are stopping you from getting to net zero and what policies do you need to get to net zero? And that’s where I think business can actually help crowdsource the policy response for government to get this to happen in time. Because just to put this in a context, science is telling us we’ve got to reduce emissions at 5 % a year. Friends, we only ever achieved that once in the year of COVID. So we’ve got a huge mountain to climb and we are not climbing it. Yeah, but we have to.
Mike Toffel:
Now, bring your other world into this conversation of CDP or your prior world, Tom, in your case. So I recall maybe a decade ago or so, CDP expanded the questionnaire that it asked companies to say not only how climate is affecting your organization and what are you, what targets are you set, but then you bolted on some important questions about policy engagement. Are folks using that opportunity to describe how they are trying to influence? National policy and COP negotiations or are people a bit shy about being too explicit about that?
Paul Dickinson:
I think that. But we’ve got some maturity here to arrive at. There’s probably quite a long history of corporations engaging with government to maybe stop things. There have been, you know…
Corporations advising governments about tweaks to policy that would be advantageous. For example, arguing over how much tax to pay is pretty common for corporations trying to of maximize returns to shareholders, you would expect that. But the realm of corporations going to government and saying, well, actually, if we’re to decarbonize at 5 % a year, then we’re going to have to really think about linking our innovation function with our strategy function, with our public affairs function. That’s a really new area where we need brilliant academics from leading business schools to help guide us.
Mike Toffel:
Tom, any thoughts on this?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Well, I think that I hope and I don’t Paul knows better than me, but I hope this has changed a bit in the last years. But I remember when we were coming up with those questions that you describe and Paul and I went to see a few friendly, very progressive businesses in the UK to kind of road test some of these and say, well, how would this land and going to see one that I won’t name now, but they made the point all of their progressive positive credentials. And we’ve done our research ahead of time. So we said, well, how about the fact that you’re actually part of the British Chamber of Commerce, which is itself part of Business Europe, which is the biggest lobby group in Brussels. And they’re pushing for all of these different things that are counter to what you just said you were standing for. And actually, to his credit, this guy was appalled. And he hadn’t made that connection between these two different things. And I think there is a kind of shadow element of how, you know, the lag that’s in the system between the economic benefits, the public perception benefits, the public desire for real change, and yet this lag in the business system that still seems to be holding up a previous model of what we’re seeking that I think we need to play a better role in joining the dots on in order to try to accelerate that because it’s still slowing us down.
Mike Toffel:
I mean, it seems like the fundamental problem that we see in domestic politics is going to just be perpetuated here on the international stage, which is that there’s a small set of wealthy companies who have lots who perceive themselves as having lots to lose by more aggressive climate policy and lots and lots of companies that have some to gain and some have lots to gain. But a lot of them are startups or new entrants and do not have the political power to lobby at the same level that large established companies that feel themselves potentially at existential risk due to more aggressive climate policy. That seems like the collective action problem that we face at the local, national level and at the international level as well. Is that your perception as well?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Yeah, certainly. And I think that that goes deep in all kinds of ways. you mentioned climate week. So I was at various round tables with ministers and international organizations a couple of weeks ago, where everybody was talking about the next phase of the cops that maybe we’ll talk to a bit later about the need to step up ambition. And, and I think my takeaway is everyone was quite lost. And they didn’t really know how to make this next jump happen. And as you get under the skin of that,
Mike Toffel:
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
What I learned was that countries have put in place policies that have fundamentally shifted the economics of energy, right? Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of new power. Most countries around the world, more people are involved in renewable energy, employed in renewable energy in the United States, for example, than in historical coal mining or other jobs. And yet the politics hasn’t shifted. So you still find a situation where you don’t get rewarded politically for advancing the solutions that are economically beneficial and creating more jobs.
And so there’s a sense of like, well, how do we get the politics to catch up with reality to give us the political leeway to lead on the international stage? And there’s all these lags in the system and a big part of it, as you’ve described, is the relatively limited number of companies that are trying to prevent change from happening as quickly as it needs to.
Paul Dickinson:
Yeah, and I just would throw in a theme of Climate Week, Mission 2025, it’s time to unite. There’s a rather unfortunate, slightly rude phrase, which is polishing a turd. And the implication here is that you’re getting a sharper and sharper focus on the horrible block in front of you. But actually, it’s now time to.
You know roll sleeves up and just break through those and flatten those obstacles, you know, you’re right in your description of the problem mike, but the Stat that I find simply fascinating is that investment in clean energy exceeded investment in fossil fuel in 2016 And since then the gap has been widening and even though there’s been a bit of a recent increase in fossil fuel investment There’s been a far larger increase in in in clean investment. So the key is yes, These new industries don’t yet have the political power but let’s
Let’s bolt together whatever we need to bolt together so they do have that political power the sooner the better.
Mike Toffel:
Great. So that was all about influencing the government policy, which is enormously important to try and drive the system change we need. Let us talk about the 70,000 people in the Davos-like protected area, but not in the government negotiations, and also the public space. What are the roles of government, sorry, what are the roles of business in those spaces? And what makes it worthwhile for companies to show up?
Paul Dickinson:
I mean, really, you should speak to Tom, because I think it’s a good time to talk about mission 2025. But I think, broadly speaking, something I often say, which is a slightly bizarre comment, but intended to make people perk up in meetings when they’re falling asleep, is I would say that the political historians of 2100 would love to be with us now, because we really are inventing something entirely new. I’ll give you one example of that. We’ve had disclosure for a long time, which Christiana famously discussed this, the X-ray, then we’ve had science-based targets and net zero commitments, which are a bit like a diagnosis. But we now have a new bit of real estate coming to the corporation and to the investor, which is a transition plan. And these are fascinating documents. At one level, I would say people are getting together in the blue zone and they’re talking about the evolution of our movement. Because on the one hand, you can say, yeah, we’re stuck and it’s not moving too fast. And that’s true. But on the other hand, there’s like an enormous amount happening. And it’s strange and I think rather magical combination of planning, technology, finance and entrepreneurial spirit and at its best I think that’s what’s going on in the Blue Zone and at its worst there’s a whole bunch of people who were there and don’t really know what they’re doing and are probably wasting everybody’s time but it’s the form of that I find much more exciting.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a few different things. I mean, I think on a crude level, there’s a lot of people that you mean, why is Davos valuable? It’s valuable because everyone’s there. And if you go, that becomes entirely evident to you. But actually, I was speaking to the CEO of a very large investment bank who said that they’ve given up their membership because everyone’s a cop. So there’s a degree of actually everybody’s there with a mission and wanting to do something and showing up to try to form those alliances and do all kinds of business. So there’s some value to that for sure. I think that there is also some value to using the media moment to try to shape the outcome, which business leaders can do. We now know that we need to be on this exponential curve towards solutions. And for a while, the eyes of the world to some degree are focused on wherever the COP is based. And actually ambitious CEOs that want to be known for having a social and environmental conscience driving the world in a positive way can do that in a measured and useful way at a COP. And the third thing, I think that there is real commercial benefit to going to do deals. I mean, we’ve seen in recent years, there are these coalitions that get put together between countries, sometimes cities, investors and companies to do specific things, whether it’s to carve out nature-based solutions opportunities or to accelerate deployment of electric vehicles or to drive down cost of renewable energy or accelerate offshore wind. mean, there are always opportunities to do interesting and innovative deals between companies and other companies and investors and governments. And there’s lots of people there that want to do those deals. Often, they’re curated quite carefully ahead of time so that you can come in and find the role for the particular company. But I would say that’s an area where the partners that can do something innovative and interesting can often be found and that can be delivered.
Mike Toffel:
But it seems to me this probably takes a few times to figure out exactly how to navigate productively a large event with tens of thousands of people. How do people even get started? How do people get these passes to be able to go past the public domain into the Davos-like sanctum of 70,000 people?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I mean, I think that there are organizations that are set up that do this very well, right? So WBCSD is a great example, who companies who are members of WBCSD, then they get briefings ahead of time, they can enable themselves to work out how do they get a pass? How do they participate? How do they have a shared presence? The climate pledge, which is something Christiana and I have been involved in, also like coordinates and identifies those who’ve made a commitment to be Net Zero by 2040.
How do we collectively come together and really add value at a COP? And how do we get hold of badges and these sorts of questions? So that thing is navigated. So I do think that there are shared platforms that are well worth engaging with in order to make sense of it in the early days. And I’d also say it’s not necessary to go every year. I think that it can be a big distraction after a while. Pick the specific ones that really make sense, whether it’s New York Climate Week or COP.
and go with particular business to be delivered. It might be fun to go once or twice just to see it, but actually at the end of the day, you want to go with a particular plan and a strategy.
Paul Dickinson:
Yeah, I think that the last point is absolutely key. I worked for a long time with a lawyer called James Cameron and he said, it’s the world widget.” If you’re in the widget business, it’s the world widget convention, right? You know, before I was going to COPS, which I’ve been to a few, not many, I used to go to computer fairs because I was actually, I was fascinated by video communication, you know, before COVID put us all on video, right?
And clearly the internet has made these things smaller, so the giant computer fairs of the early noughties is been bit more online now. But the two mega trends of the 21st century, you could say a digitization and decarbonization. So you need to have a strategy, a digital strategy, you need to have a decarbonization strategy, and COP is a great place for you and your organization, either inside the blue zone or outside or both, to be able to engage with the changes that are happening in our society.
Mike Toffel:
Great. So let’s look, we’ve done a great job of laying out where we’ve come from and what it looks like. Let’s fast forward now and look ahead to COP29, as you mentioned, in Baku, Azerbaijan. And what should one expect? Like, I know there’s a bunch of things on the table from prior news coverage, like what’s the progress that we’re actually making with these National Determined Contributions, or NDCs. The funding question, like the wealthier countries funding poorer countries. There’s increasing attention to the loss and damage fund, which is about adaptation, not just decarbonization. And then finally, I know there’s this increasing focus on the biodiversity consequences of climate change. And there’s a whole other series of conferences of parties to the biodiversity domain, annoyingly also called COPs.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
There are also desertification cops if you want to get really confused about it, That’s right.
Mike Toffel:
I wish they could have some slightly different name. did it kill them to call them? Dops and bops? I do not know. So anyway, if you show up to COP and as a business person, you see this agenda and probably other things as well that I haven’t even articulated. Where does one get started in figuring out how to engage?
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Well, so I think that part of the cycle, so not all cops are equal, right? Some are bigger than others. They depend a little bit on where they’re hosted, the effort and the energy that the presidency, the people who are host the COP are called the presidency, and also where they fall in the cycle. So as I said, the Paris Agreement is based on five yearly goals, and every now and then a COP comes around where you have to set the next round of goals. And those are particularly consequential because they determine how ambitious.
The next period of implementation is going to be. So to take the two different COPs together, this year COP29 will be in Baku, Azerbaijan in the middle of November. And we’ve had varying reports of how large it will be. We’ve had reports from the Azerbaijanis that it could be as many as 60, 70,000 people. I suspect it will be somewhat smaller than that. And this is a very important COP inside the UNFCCC process.
And the reason, there’s lots of reasons for that, but one of the reasons is that it is the year in which we need to determine the next round of funding that flows from the wealthy countries who created the problem to those who are enduring the worst impacts, both to help them transition and also around adaptation. So that’s taken the form of what’s being called helpfully, the NCQG, the New Collective Quantified Goal. And this is around finance. You probably remember the number of $100 billion a year that was put together in Copenhagen that Hillary Clinton brought to the Copenhagen negotiations. This is what will the successor of that be? What is the target of financial flow from the north to the south? Now that’s important for various reasons. It’s important in and of itself because actually the impacts of climate change are very uneven, and the impacts of course are already being felt substantially in many parts of the global south. And there are all kinds of financial reasons why it can be difficult for those countries to really recover from disasters around how insurance works and around how loans work that mean that these things can be compounding, and they never get out of the cycle that they’re in. So some of those issues need to be addressed. Those are all issues of justice and equity and fairness, which are very important.
And because climate change is unfair, unless you have a platform whereby finance is deeply involved in the process, you cannot expect countries that have done relatively less to cause the problem to come back with a mitigation goal to also reduce their emissions unless they feel like they’re being fairly treated on finance. So next year in Belém, Brazil, COP 30, that is an ambition COP and is likely to attract much more attention as a result of that because that one, which sets the next five yearly round of NDCs, nationally determined commitments, if we don’t, we’re used to people saying if we don’t get back on track now, we’re going to not be able to do this.
But really, we’re a long way off track and unless these NDCs significantly close the gap towards 1.5, there is such a thing as being too late and time will pass, and we just won’t do what’s required of us. And that will lead to all of these devastating impacts around the world, and we’ll begin to lose control of the climatic system and all of these really alarming tipping points will begin to be breached and the future that we’ve all been working so hard to avoid will begin to appear.
But we cannot expect that countries will come back to the table in Berlin with new nationally determined commitments unless there’s meaningful finance in place. So that brings us back to this year, COP29. The reason why the new collective quantified goal is so important, is because it smooths the way to collective ambition next year in Berlin. Now, of course, much of this will be determined by what happens in the United States on the 5th of November, which we can either get into or not get into, depending on your preference.
Paul Dickinson:
That’s a big one, but I’m just going to say one little thing. I’m certainly no expert in the biodiversity cops, but in very, very simple terms, the largest exchange of greenhouse gas emissions each year is between nature and itself, if you will. And I would say, long story short, know, most people listen to this podcast, they probably spent 10 years measuring their greenhouse gas emissions going up, but.
Paul Dickinson:
We’re still in the kindergarten in terms of measuring our greenhouse gas emissions going down, which is essentially about nature or biodiversity. So this is a whole big new area, but the other side of the same coin is the climate change discussions.
Mike Toffel:
So, Tom, I will take your bait and ask you to lay out what you imagine or each of you imagine are the consequences of the U.S. election in terms of how that the implications actually go all the way to comp negotiations.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Well, so, I mean, obviously there’s a lot that goes far beyond what we can cover now, but I would say this, it’s very, having lived inside the UN process, it’s very difficult for the world to agree collectively on big ambitious goals without the US firmly behind it. And every ambitious climate breakthrough that’s happened at the COP has had as a precursor, a deal between the US and China. And that happened before Paris, it happened before Glasgow.
And actually behind closed doors in negotiations, we would often take specific language from that negotiation between the US and China and put it into draft decisions of the in the COP, because we know that it is acceptable to the US and China. And that was often a pathway by which we got agreement. Now, last time when Donald Trump was elected, he pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, and the world collectively said, we’re still in.
And there was this big ambitious agenda in the US where cities and states and businesses also were still in and not a single other country pulled out of the Paris Agreement. And as a result of that, we kept moving. But this time, what we have to see in Belem in 12 months’ time is a significant step up in national commitments. And if the US does not come forward, it’s unlikely that China would actually bring forward its peaking date unilaterally without the US.
They may do for other reasons, but they may not. If they don’t, it’s almost impossible for the world to get back on track to 1.5. So the fallout of the US not playing its role in international finance, not submitting a nationally determined contribution may well lead to a fracturing of that international alliance whereby China doesn’t play its role and lots of other countries therefore have an excuse not to be ambitious in their nationally determined commitments. The inverse, if we do see Kamala Harris engaged, maybe John Podesta stays on as the climate envoy, I would imagine then we would see a joint statement in February or March between the US and China that would bring forward China’s peaking date, that would have a range of activities that the US would take, that would be a precursor to the textual outcome in Belem, and would be a signal around the world that everybody can now step up and be more ambitious, and there’ll be this level of support. So it couldn’t be more important to the COP process.
Paul Dickinson:
And just to say I don’t think that certain industries are spectators in all of this, you know when Donald Trump missed the primary debate and he had an interview Anyway, he spent a lot of time just talking about how they’re coming for your gas stoves and windmills are a disaster and electric vehicles are terrible You know, and then there was this slightly extraordinary story about Trump addressing I think was 20 odd and gas chief executives and there were two sources in the Washington Post article saying that he’d said well, you know I could take all regulations off the oil and gas industry, but it might be sensible for you to give me a billion dollars to get elected. There’s always business messing with elections, but if a few million people die from tobacco or if hundreds of thousands of people die from asbestos, it’s not the end of the world. This is the end of the world. So I just wanted to draw that to people’s attention, the potential different vector betweena Trump win and a Harris win is significant in terms of climate change outcomes, and you know humans will be pondering that vector for a long time and very heavily.
Mike Toffel:
Terrific perspectives on our election. Thank you for sharing that with the link to COP, there’s a lot of responsibility, sometimes great, sometimes not so great in the US, in the perception of the US leadership or lack of leadership in this area. Okay, so we’re almost out of time. Let me turn to closing remarks or final thoughts, things you wish we had discussed. Any thoughts here again with the focus on
Paul Dickinson:
World selection mics, not just yours.
Mike Toffel:
COP and business and CDP and the other areas that you’re involved in. Here’s your free pass here.
Paul Dickinson:
I don’t mind kicking off by saying really to every business person listening to this. The best way to predict the weather is to make it yourself. I would really encourage everyone to listen to this podcast to just go out there and say okay It is understood we are going to decarbonize our societies. How can I maximize shareholder value in decarbonization? How can I make investments? How can I go into new business areas? You know marketing. I think Porter said is giving people what they want, and everyone’s got the memo about extreme weather Trust me billions of people now know we have a problem with climate change So how can you configure your enterprise to benefit from? Taking the right actions on climate change. That’s my message, Tom.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Yeah, I mean, I would just, would really, you know, I think it’s a tough time to be a progressive business leader. I think that actually what you have is the climate movement who are sometimes somewhat intolerant of people trying and not doing it perfectly. And then on the other side, you get the anti-woke movement who are criticizing people for doing anything at all. And I really feel for business leaders that are stuck in the middle of that. I would point out I’ve been involved in this now, quite as long as you Paul, but for a while and long enough to see these things come and go. And the underlying reality is the shift in economics, the emergence of extreme weather, you know, there’s no doubt about those other things. So there are ways of quietly getting on and doing the right thing. That includes engaging with governments and includes engaging with employees and customers and others. But there are ways of doing this that don’t trigger the ire of the culture wars in our society. And that’s clearly good for business, good for the future. And I meant what I said earlier, right? You know, again, we’ve become so used to seeing this red alarm light flashing that it’s almost like it’s not flashing anymore. But at some point, you know, we’re actually too late. And no one’s coming along to do this for us, right? Either we figure it out in the next few years, or we live to regret it.
Mike Toffel:
Yeah, I mean, my sense is when companies are individually worried about stepping out, but collectively would like everyone else to be stepping out, we would see some increased motivation for coalition building, where you’re going across the proverbial aisle, at least on the corporate side. But, you know, special interests are very targeted.
Mike Toffel:
Disinformation is rampant, at least in the U.S. I do not know how it is in the U.K. So there is lots of peril involved. So it will be very interesting to see how this all shakes out. But Tom and Paul, thank you both so much for joining us. Big fan of your podcast, Outrage and Optimism. It’s on my feed. I’m a regular listener. I feel like I visit with you guys every and Christiana every couple of weeks. And it is a real pleasure to actually get to have a back and forth with you. So thanks so much.
Tom Rivett-Carnac:
Thanks, Mike.
Paul Dickinson
Big fans of Climate Rising, lovely to be with you,
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