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[Music] well mark maslin is a professor of earth system science at university college london he's a prolific writer of books and academic papers and his newest book
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how to save our planet the facts is out now i truly loved it professor maslin welcome to the climate pod oh thank you brock for having me on i absolutely adore your podcast so when you invited me it was like yes i've made
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it i've actually made it now hearing you say that makes us feel like we made it so that's so cool to hear look i want to go in depth on the book but first i just want to learn a little bit more about you as i mentioned you're a truly prolific writer you're one of
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our great thinkers and communicators in this space i've had i've literally wanted to have you on the show for years what made you want to devote your career to studying and explaining climate change
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um so it's really quite a slow burn so i started at school i started to really get involved in the environment and understanding how the earth system worked i absolutely adored geography at school
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went off to university and that was in the dark ages okay before climate change had really started to bite and it was only during my phd at cambridge when this whole worry about climate change
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was starting to occur and what was interesting is i was studying the past i was looking at how the ice ages occur what was actually driving all the mechanisms for that and that then
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blossomed into me being able to start to understand the whole earth system how the oceans the atmosphere the ice the vegetation and people all fit together and so that's become a theme of my whole
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career so when people ask me what do you do and i sort of shrug my shoulders and go well how do i describe this i said look i look at climate change in the past the present and the future and that means
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anything from trying to understand early human evolution in east africa all the way to trying to work out how we can solve future climate change and the crisis that we're now facing
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have you seen the role of the climate scientist just from your perception have you seen the role of the climate scientists change over the course of your career oh i think it definitely has i think scientists were
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surprised by the changing role so firstly when climate change started to be hinted at with jim hansen talking to the senate in 1988 the role of the scientist was like
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here we're presenting the facts we're telling you the facts you're now going to deal with it and in the early 1990s things started to move we had the earth summit you know rio that was incredible
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we had leaders of the world bush margaret thatch all saying we're going to save the planet and all of that happened and then there's this backlash and so we had this huge push back from
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lobbyists uh climate change uh deniers and suddenly climate change experts like myself were on the back foot and we're going we're having to defend our science and so what happened is then we started
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to become not activists but actually having to really promote that science works and actually what we were saying is real and so we've now come back and i think we've
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come back to a place where are now back to that equilibrium where the policy makers look to scientists for the facts and some
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way of looking at different policies and it's really true of covid that suddenly scientists have been elevated back to that look could you tell us what to do and then we'll work out what's best and how we can actually get society to do it
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so we've come full circle and i think we are and i'm hoping and i'm sure some of your listeners may disagree with me but i think we're in the post-denial stage of climate change and i do think that we've really you
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know sort of pre-pandemic we were really seeing a ramp up in attention on the climate crisis throughout the pandemic you saw um you know we've seen uh a lot of attention paid to the climate crisis as well but you know at two years into
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the pandemic i see the climate crisis you know in the news more being discussed more and that is encouraging you know i know you were featured in sir david attenborough's bbc documentary a couple years ago climate change the facts in america and i think elsewhere
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around the world the movie don't look up happening has really encouraged a lot of people to have more conversations about climate change has there ever been a time in your career when you thought this much attention was being paid on
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climate and climate science no i i think that in the early 90s we had that real focus and then it dissipated and also i think
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in the 2000s the actual financial crisis basically pushed it uh to the back of everybody's mind because hey we had to deal with money so for me i was deeply surprised by the
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reaction to the pandemic because i was expecting the global pandemic to just literally shut down any other debates all the other crisis but what's interesting is it's actually raised people's awareness it's people
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have realized that actually nature can bite back and also when we're in lockdown people are noticing that hey air pollution is gone oh the wild animals are
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hey this is amazing and suddenly i think all of that actually resonated with people to realize that we have a major effect on the environment and so yeah you're right i mean the ramping up of
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climate change discussions on the media even in the us you see it all the time it's being discussed and that's great because the solutions are not easy we have them all they're not easy and
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therefore we need to have these debates because we need to work out which is best for each individual society because different countries are going to have to solve their carbon footprint in different ways
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you know in how to save our planet you draw a critical outline of understanding the climate crisis it is both succinct and comprehensive you provide the scientific facts behind it which is amazing but you don't stop at climate
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science you're talking about economics global trade and agreements agriculture technology advocacy you name it it's all in there why did you want to write such a comprehensive book oh well i have to say
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the book started off as a struggle because all my dear colleagues okay so kathleen hayworth you know sort of um bill gates you know michael mann all these people that i sort of like look up to and
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respect have written worthy books and i have to admit i've also written a worthy book you know or two and the thing is those don't communicate with people i mean because the problem is the people that read those books
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already know and they're just actually adding to their stuff like echo chamber i wanted to write a book that was different and i had to remember i was thinking well how do i write a book that the guys that i
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play football with will pick it up be able to read and go oh that's what mark does oh i get it now and so i'm struggling and i'm a great person for listening to podcasts bit
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like your own and i was listening to in air time by the bbc and they were discussing one of my favorite books the art of war by sun soz and it's brilliant because written
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something like 3 000 years ago by a chinese general or generals we're not sure if it was a single or multiple people and really it's still used by the british army and the us marine corps and
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it's a brilliant book because it's gives you all the single facts about how to run a war things like do not put men on ridge with sun behind have more spies
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than the enemy do not attack unless you know you're going to win you know really homely single statements i thought why didn't i write a whole book like
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that and so i went away and thought how do i write it in single sentences single facts everything supported went to my agent and had to say she just looked to me this was pretty pandemic when you could
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actually meet people and she just looked at me and went i'm sorry what she said write me a chapter and it's like ah do i have to so i wrote your chapter and she went oh
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i see i said publishers aren't gonna like it you're gonna have to write three or four chapters before they even consider it and there's me going i am an author i do not write chapters what do you mean so i did i i did give in
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because she's really good nag did the three or four chapters and literally uh agents were coming and publishers were coming to bite my hand off which was brilliant so that's how it actually came about
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but i then had one of those epiphanies so i was reading it you know how to edit and edit and edit which i hate doing so i was reading one of the chapters and editing it and i had gone all the way through and i suddenly went oh
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this is just like a very long twitter thread and so there was there was a moment where i suddenly realized that there was me thinking i have packaged up the knowledge of the ancients and put it together and just
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written a social media book for the 21st century so yeah nice story but you know suddenly realizing that yeah okay i've just done big twitter book you can say sun tzu was like the original tweeter like a lot of people are saying that
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right oh again and people don't necessarily want long waffley paragraphs they just want fact fact fact and if you do it in the right way you can
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and something i struggled with was to try to get the rhythm try to actually get some sort of like coherency so it doesn't feel like fact bullet point fact bullet point it's like there's a sort of like rhythm and
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story that goes and every so often i mix it up when you go double sentence single so there is madness in the book that i try to actually put in there and you're right i literally threw
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everything into that book for the whole of the stuff that i've been studying for the last 20 25 years but you know as soon as i finish the book which i did in two sittings i
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immediately started checking the references because you start you reference so many great studies books it's all in there it kind of opens up a whole world of knowledge and what really struck you know me as someone who has
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these conversations every single week you underline as dr catherine hey ho does and many others do the importance of talking about climate change and one of the things that i got from this book is like oh i feel
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both more motivated and more informed to go and have better conversations having read this book so let me tell you let me talk to you about talking about climate change why do you see that as being such an essential part of this
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fight for climate action so i think there's two reasons why both catherine and i and many other of my colleagues say talk about it i think the first thing is because what we don't
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understand is there are so many people particularly young people that are suffering from climate anxiety they really are they understand the world they are so connected through their social media they can see all the bad
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things that we're doing collectively to our planet and they really worry and i think the second thing is i've seen so much evidence of when people actually talk the other person goes
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i feel exactly the same oh i didn't know you were worried about it we're both worried about it and i have seen people set up startup companies because of the conversation i've seen
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multi-billion dollar companies there's been a conversation in middle management where two people are worried and that suddenly spreads and i call them sort of like my green viruses it's probably not pc considering the pandemic
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but they sort of infect everybody around them and everybody goes oh yeah no we really should do this we should reduce our carbon footprint we should be more sustainable we should check our supply chain to see what are they doing you
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know and i've seen companies go from zero to heroes in less than five years and it makes them a better company it makes people really want to work for them it
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reduces their carbon footprint and it makes them more profitable and it's this win-win-win that i keep shouting about and my biggest frustration is companies
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get it when you actually get into the right place you talk to the right people they get it whatever their motivation is whether it's money whether it's people whether it's pride in the product or the ethics of
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the company they get it individuals you can get the one that i find frustrating is government because so many governments we can walk in there and go look if you do this you will make
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your population healthier you will make them safer you actually make them wealthier and you might make them vote for you why wouldn't you do this
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and again but there's that huge inertia particularly in policy making and in government because it's all driven by ideological uh viewpoints instead of just be practical
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yeah i mean you you talk a lot about the corporate sector you talk a lot about what individual actions can create you talk a lot about what organizing political action uh can create and you you say good governance is the greatest
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solution to the climate crisis this is really encompassing and again as i said earlier it's motivating why did you want to tackle sort of every area of human society in this book
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because i firmly believe that climate change and our environmental crisis is so large and it is global that we need to collectively deal with
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it and by that i mean we need government corporations and individuals all to be working in the right direction so firstly governments governments are a lot more powerful than
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they actually think they are they can incentivize they can tax they can subsidize they can regulate and most importantly they can lead corporations are really important companies are really important because
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they're incredibly dynamic they have entrepreneurs they can change rapidly they can actually evolve very very quickly so if they have the right incentives from individuals and governments they can suddenly change
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very very quickly and we need to use that and individuals collectively very very powerful through their pockets what do you buy how do you buy it you can actually
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influence governments by voting for the ones you want and also i have seen the power of activism i've seen normal people take to the streets because they are
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deeply worried about climate change in glasgow at cop 26 on the friday there was the school strike huge numbers of young people came out and basically paraded through the whole
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of glasgow absolutely amazing the energy is incredible if i could harness that i could probably fuel the world you know but what i didn't realize was that saturday
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was going to be even bigger so saturday it felt like the whole of glasgow came to a standstill and there were 80 year olds there were parents with young babies they were young people
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they were trade unionists they were conservative people you know all of these people basically saying it doesn't matter what badge what political badge you wear there are solutions to climate change on
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the left the middle the right we just need to do them now and we need to encourage countries all around the world to do it because it's going to improve everybody's lives and it people just look at it as a no-brainer and go why
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can't we just fix this we're humans we're really smart let's just do it yeah i know one of the things that was discussed in glasgow by activists and and frankly a lot of government leaders was fossil fuel subsidies eliminating
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fossil fuel subsidies and having an actual plan to do it i was so struck by what you write in the book writing quote economists suggest we could fix climate change now by spending one percent of world gdp this would cause this could be
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less if we count the cost savings due to improved human health and expansion over the global green economy if we don't act now by 2050 it will cost us over 20 percent of world gdp climate change is too expensive not to fix currently the
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fossil fuel industry receives 5.2 trillion dollars in subsidies the largest subsidizer for china united states european union russia and india this amounts to six percent of world gdp unquote is there in
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your mind any bigger issue global issue with climate change than just ending fossil fuel subsidies um i would say two things is one ending the fossil fuel subsidies and
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i think it's important to realize that we're talking about corporate subsidies so subsidies to the companies and the nationally owned companies because there's also you have to unpick things
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and be very careful because there are still subsidies around the world where countries subsidize individuals to be able to afford the energy now of course the energy if it only comes from fossil
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fuels you are inadvertently subsidizing fossil fuels but those poor people require that money to be able to live so you have to be very careful to separate those out but i think one of the things that people don't realize is if you take the
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25 largest fossil fuel companies in the world 19 of them are owned or part owned by countries so when people go guess what
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climate change is a failure of capitalism no because actually the other six companies we can influence by regulation tax you know we can do that but the state-owned
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ones are the ones that are getting states of like tax relief they are basically saying you can do this for free so that is a major issue and so basically it's a failure of the
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versailles states it's a failure of the nation states and how they are uh supporting and want to actually have the petrochemical dollar and so we need to try to unbreak that
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and again that's something that was supposed to be organized at glasgow because the hundred billion dollars that has been promised since 2009 ratified in
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2010 was literally from the rich countries to the very poorest countries to help them wean themselves off fossil fuels and actually build a renewable energy portfolio which
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is much better for their environment but also for the planet and we still haven't i mean you have to remember we've spent tens of trillions of dollars
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lifting the global economy out of the pandemic but we can't find a hundred billion which is literally loose change for sort of like developed countries to help the least developed countries lift
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themselves out of fossil fuel dependency and how much of a difference do we see in emissions between the richest countries uh and the global south
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oh so huge um disparities so the really interesting thing is everybody picks on china goes oh look china the biggest emitter um
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yes except they also have 1.2 billion people so if you do it per capita then it changes the order hugely and also if you do it by historic
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emissions i.e how much how much of countries emitted over the whole 150 years since the industrial revolution yeah there's only one country that comes out on top of
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that and of course that's the usa however just to give it a bit of balance about the same has been emitted by the whole of the eu and the uk together so those
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two because they've been emitting the longest and have actually benefited most from fossil fuels so i think that's really important but i'd also say that it isn't necessarily just countries
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i think people have to get their head around that it's actually particular groups of people within countries so for example oxfam did this beautiful study looking at who
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in countries emits most so if you look at lifestyle carbon emissions the top 50 percent so the 50 percent of all emissions are actually emitted by
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the top richest 10 of people in the world whereas the bottom 50 percent have only emitted about 10 of those emissions so what it tells us
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is even in the us most of the emissions are actually caused by the very richest in society in india most of the emissions are by the richest in society same in china and
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so what we have is climate change is about over consumption by the very wealthiest in our society the ones that actually can afford not to emit carbon and so therefore we have
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this whole interesting discussion about climate justice social justice and climate change that has to be mixed together because people just want to blame certain countries it's the us no
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it's just the really wealthy in the us that are causing the problems us has extreme poverty like every other country so i think we need to actually pick apart some of these big narratives
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and actually look underneath uh actually for uh american audience the hood or in the uh uk would be the bonnet and look underneath to see what's actually really going on you know there seemed like there was an
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opportunity during the pandemic because we had to have all of this stimulus spending you know to make it more green and more sustainable obviously the president president united states talking about build back better and you
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see uh similar efforts across the globe but what have you actually made of the post pandemic stimulus spinning that you've seen in the uk and elsewhere so the big problem is a lot of it is
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just business as usual and i think this is one of the things that we are not doing we're not educating our leaders to act okay so it's really interesting that sort of
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uh when we look at say the financial crash in 2008 obama and the other leaders of the world gordon brown particularly had the
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opportunity to rewrite history we could have rewritten how banks were managed how money flowed around the was it such a crisis that we were going to have whole of capitalism
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collapse they could have done anything and we would have said thank you but they didn't what they did was they shored up the original system put a little bit more regulation to try and keep the system going and i think that's a little bit like
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what's happening and with the pandemic and the recovery instead of actually saying okay we can do something different i mean there are lots of reason
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really exciting ways that you can think about our environment and our society for me one of the really interesting ones is of course universal basic income actually
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if you think about it everybody in your society and you not just the top 1 and so therefore why not guarantee everybody an income just enough that people can live and
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then they can make choices about that and actually every country can do that and then you suddenly get rid of this whole need for social welfare support unemployment benefits you suddenly make the system much easier and what's really
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interesting is the us came this close to actually having this during nixon's presidency and what's really upsetting is and it
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was just a payment to all families in america because you know there was no it was definitely not socialism because look at russia you know it was it was to support the british the american stuff like family
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great the democrats voted it down because it didn't go further enough and it never came back so again history could have been very different if we had that in place in some way like
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the us because other countries would have then copied it yeah we have this in the united states in alaska they've been doing it for years very successfully in a in a very conservative state uh now that's tied to fossil fuels we don't want that but yeah
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you know it does it does work and um but i'm curious you know in my just from my uh look at it didn't seem like the global financial crisis what happened after really changed certainly the united states didn't really change our
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relationship to government here in the united states uh we've been in this kind of neoliberal trend for four deck four plus decades now i'm curious if you think that through the experience of the pandemic that will
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impact people's relationship with their government around the world i am very hopeful that it will i mean i find it increasingly difficult to teach
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at universities um about differently because as we get further and further away from
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the 70s and the 80s the whole idea of social democracy um is slowly going into history and the whole neoliberalism is this is what capitalism is no
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capitalism is what happened after the second world war where government said we're going to set up controls to make sure the exchange rates work we're going to make sure the money flows have the
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international monetary fund and the world bank to make sure if states do get into an issue we can actually help them back me so we don't have collapsed economies because that's what
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led to the first and second world war and so we then decided and again i actually think that the economist that suggested it really thought
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that they were right and they said look we're doing great things and we're lifting lots of people out of poverty let's take the training reveals off okay let capitalism go you know stuff like stop this regulation because if we
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really go for it we can lift everybody out of poverty and this will be fantastic this is neoliberalism it's good for everybody however what they didn't realize is well what happens is it just concentrates money
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and so one of the most scary facts in the book and i think that's changed since i wrote the book is that if you look at the wealth of the bottom 3.9 billion people in the world
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that is the same wealth as the 14 richest billionaires in the world that sort of tells me that neoliberalism has failed why 14
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and they're mainly white males why 14 people have the same wealth as 3.9 billion there is something really wrong with our system now don't get me
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wrong i have no problem with people being wealthy i have no problem with people actually working really hard having a good living being able to support their kids push forward into stuff like new areas absolutely that's
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what drives humans but not having that extreme wealth i mean they're absolutely ridiculous i mean when the last time that happened in the u.s when we had standard oil and the rockefellers
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guess what the us government did they broke up the company and went it's we're going to fragment it we want competition we're going to fragment it into seven different companies which we all know and love like tess
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texaco and esso and things like that will fragment it and basically build competition and so we have evidence in the past when this in huge wealth has been concentrated in a
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few individuals governments have stepped in and gone yeah yeah that was wrong right we'll change the system but that's not happening at the moment and that's something i think we
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in democratic countries really have to get a grip about which is how do we redistribute money to everybody in a fair way while still incentivizing people to improve
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themselves and look there's been a tension especially like on climate twitter between climate scientists and econ and economists but you know just listening to you talk and reading the book you're
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really bullish on the new class of economists and a lot of new economic theory that is both being written about and talked about but also that it's increasingly popular so i'm curious when
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you look at uh the new economic class of what's what's possible like what gets you excited about the economics profession so i think it's people like
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kate ralworth whose book uh donut economics is absolutely oh beautiful brilliant because what she does she takes classic economics and it's about nine diagrams that she takes and she just
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proves to everybody that they're wrong so every economist is trained in something that is incorrect and i think people don't realize the power of economists because if you're looking to
00:31:08
say just government yes you have the finance or the treasury but actually in every other department in health you have health economist in transport you have the transport economies economists go into everything
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because of course you need money and you need incentives to actually change everything and policy so they're everywhere and they're all trained wrongly um i also get excited by uh sort of new
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economists like mariana matsucato who basically says do you realize that the main engine of innovation in countries is government and this blows everybody away no no no
00:31:45
it's companies it's companies it's like one actually no so why do we have vaccines for covid within 12 months because governments have been funding
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since the late 1940s medical research some of it's blue skies some of its dead ends etc but they have been investing in the infrastructure of science through decades
00:32:10
and suddenly it pays dividend because suddenly all of that effort meant just the right labs in the right places go hey look we've got something on the shelf that we can then help to actually
00:32:22
deal with covid and a global pandemic and that's true almost of every part of science also what's interesting about government is of course governments can change tax regulation they can change
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subsidies and they can just change the dial slightly and then companies go look there's the money ah they also provide grants for companies to work with different
00:32:47
organizations so there's lots of really interesting ways so that innovation so where is fusion going to come from it's not going to be from companies it's going to be government was it companies that actually put
00:33:01
somebody on the moon no as government i mean at the moment bless them all our billionaires are doing is oh look we can touch the edge of space and come back down it's like yep
00:33:12
but all the technology has been developed over the last 70 to 80 years by government grants so these are the economies that really excite me and i have to say i just want to end this section by saying
00:33:24
it was the international monetary fund okay which is not known for being particularly left-wing okay um who stated and i think it was three years ago in a report it is clear
00:33:37
that the economic policies of the last 30 years have been a complete failure if that is not the nail in neoliberalism what is and i think that's where we need
00:33:49
to step back and i think the biggest problem is we have politicians who are of the wrong generation so we want that wisdom of age but we want the enthusiasm and
00:34:01
the new views of economics that are in the new generation i think somehow we have to mix that up because actually we're getting policies that are 10 20 or 30 years out of date
00:34:14
and and yet we still have with you know and and the social democracy of um you know part of the the 20th century this was a a great time for entrepreneurs before we started uh
00:34:27
slashing taxes for the wealthiest people and and reducing regulations like you know some of our great entrepreneurs in the uk and in the united states were in that post world war ii period and you know in the
00:34:40
book you have a call for entrepreneurs and i think on this show you know it's very fighting the climate crisis can be really exciting but we want to be able to strike that balance between understanding where there's really the
00:34:53
really the chance for entrepreneurship but also it's not like we have a technocratic fix for every single thing and the climate crisis so when you have that call for entrepreneurs in the book what would you
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like to actually see happen so when i call for entrepreneurs it is across the board so it's not just uh setting up companies having new fixes
00:35:18
new technology absolutely we need that and as humans we will crave all of those new stuff like uh ways of living we also need entrepreneurs in the social arena how do we actually
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get people to work together in different ways how can you build social media platforms which actually support people in trying to do the right thing for the environment how do you get people to
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engage in conversations about their local environment caring for individuals and i think that's what we need we need a lot of that and i have to say one of the things that i'm always incredibly
00:35:58
impressed with is how entrepreneurs survive because the thing is neoliberalism does not support entrepreneurs okay because i'm sorry i actually started a company in
00:36:10
2012 it's doing really well we've never made a profit you know it employs 50 people and it's fantastic but i do not know how i could have done that if i did not have a day job so being an academic it's encouraged to
00:36:24
do odd things like hey could you just write a book could you just set up a company you know become an entrepreneur so that's why i love being an academic it's it's all things to all people but because i had a salary i could still
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feed my family i still had somewhere to live but if you are the entrepreneur and this is your dream and this is the only thing you're doing how do you feed yourself neoliberalism doesn't provide that support it goes oh well no no the rich
00:36:49
people can be entrepreneurs well no you want the brightest and you want the people from really old backgrounds who suddenly have that motivation and drive to actually push through and i
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think that's where we need to think about things like well if we had universal basic income then a person could go okay i have enough to actually live on i don't have to live with my parents i can
00:37:13
actually be an entrepreneur i'm going to try that or i can actually look after my aging parents and help them or i can set up an art commune and actually help people in my community engage with
00:37:26
nature or i can literally do anything i want to or i can go back to university at the age of like 60. you know and i think that's what we need to do we need to provide people with much more
00:37:38
opportunity because the thing that worries me is i study human evolution we are all incredibly socially smart but the one thing that we don't need to do is we don't all have to be geniuses we
00:37:51
don't all have to invent the mobile phone we don't all have to invent the internet we just need one person to so what worries me is if the next person who's going to radically change the world
00:38:03
is a poor kid in a slum in india how we're going to make sure that person actually radically changes the world and their ideas actually make it into
00:38:16
our society and i think that's something that really frustrates me is like just think of all those lost geniuses and opportunities that we have because we're not looking after
00:38:27
everybody and the thing is we generate 88 trillion dollars in the world every single year it's not like we don't have enough money to give everybody a good life
00:38:40
we have the resources to fight the world's biggest problems and what i love what you do in the book is you outline not only how we can solve the climate crisis and build healthier societies but
00:38:52
also how through doing that we can address many of the world's biggest issues at the same time so what gives you hope that we can actually build healthier societies across the globe through the climate fight
00:39:05
so for me the one thing that actually gives me hope is the younger generation i mean i am in the incredible fortunate position that i uh teach that new generation coming
00:39:19
through every single year through university but i also engage with incredible activists teenagers who are passionate and they think about the world in a different way
00:39:31
and it's partly because they have the internet they have the mobile phone they know that they are connected to almost everybody on the planet and so they have a different view so they see the planet
00:39:43
as a really quite small place they see it as a set of connections with all individuals being able to connect if they want to and they also have lots of trusted uh information sources that they
00:39:56
go to which old people don't understand whereby they actually get the information about climate change and the climate change deniers just can't access them because they're not trusted you know they have their own sort of like uh
00:40:10
heroes and their own sort of like uh ways of communicating but they understand how fragile the planet is but they also understand
00:40:22
how technology works and how many solutions we have and so whenever i go on a march or i'm lucky enough to be on a panel with one of those incredible activists um they give me energy because
00:40:35
they go right you old people why aren't you fixing me and i'm going i'm trying i really am i really am you know and so therefore what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to
00:40:47
get my generation to actually move start to the movement start the get over the inertia and start all these positive things because then what i'm hoping is in sweeps the next generation that goes
00:41:02
thank you for the good start because the worst thing will be if they come into power and they go what an absolute mess and then move on i mean greta talks about
00:41:13
our house being on fire but i think that's the wrong analogy i i think that what we're looking at is earth is our home and it's our house and what i'm seeing is different people in different rooms are just kicking the
00:41:27
out of it i mean they're literally going oh this is a nice bedroom i'm just going to rip up the sheets and i'm going to soil the walls etc and i'm i'm there with you and everybody else
00:41:39
screaming and going could you just look after our house because the kids are coming along and they're not going to like what they've been left with so i think that's really the motivation and so actually
00:41:51
weirdly enough it's that new generation that gives me hope that whatever i can do whatever you can do whatever my generation can do to leave
00:42:03
this place it's slightly better and you know give all the levers for the next generation to come in then we might have some hope of having a much better world
00:42:15
by the end of this century well i tell you one of the things that i think is so impressive about young activists is they're not only getting that message out like you talked about they're not only focused on many of the right things
00:42:28
but they're focused on the institutions that can make actual changes well you're talking about marches at cop26 we saw so many great activists there at cop26 organizing giving speeches at the event
00:42:40
itself you know putting pressure on world leaders and it made me think about something you wrote in the book which is we really have to see some evolutions in our international institutions so how would you like to see some of our
00:42:54
biggest international institutions change over the coming years oh so this is a huge issue where so let's set the scene
00:43:05
our current international institutions were set up post-second world war okay they were set up by the allies so there is of course an inbuilt uh bias there but they are
00:43:18
also set up with a view of trying to actually build the global economy so you have the world bank international monetary fund and the united nations and so again i think there are ways of
00:43:31
actually changing these organizations so the world bank really we should be thinking of this as the sustainability bank you know change the actual remit of it to say look your job now is to use
00:43:46
money to actually improve the environment around the world and to deal with climate change international monetary fund absolutely we need money to flow around the world
00:43:57
we need to lift our people out of extreme poverty so the international monetary fund you go right okay yeah loan money but you have to have some real clear rules which is
00:44:09
does it make things worse no okay tick does it actually reduce the carbon footprint of the country tick okay does it improve the lives of the very poorest people in your car in that country yes tick so i think we need structural
00:44:23
change there i also think that we need to rethink the united nations itself how do we actually get clear representation and we can't do it per person
00:44:36
because if we did it per capita then you just have india and china basically deciding everything and again geopolitically that isn't going to be acceptable so how do you build in
00:44:49
systems to actually allow people to have a voice and for me one of the biggest concerns is the security council which can block anything so what you really want to do is open that up and have a
00:45:01
lot more seats that rotate so countries come in and go oh we're at the top table now how can we actually help and change things so i think there are lots of things we can do also at the united nations the uh
00:45:16
environment agency at the united nations is a second-tier organization uh the world health organization has a budget that's four times that of environment and so what we need is a
00:45:28
world environment organization so top tier and have that right up there the problem is that that of course has been suggested many times but has been blocked by certain countries
00:45:41
so we sort of need to think about how you can actually have majority uh votes in things like the united nations instead of complete agreement
00:45:55
this is also one of the problems with the cop meetings which is you need all 192 countries to agree to anything before it then becomes part of the treaty so can we go with majority can we go with
00:46:07
90 percent we need something that uh stops individual countries from blackmailing the others hey it's a bit like the us when certain senators can start going no no no i want some special treatment because i'm the last one
00:46:21
standing and you really need to actually give me some special treatment before i vote for my party hmm so yes but you can see how little countries or big countries can block a lot of
00:46:32
really important things including the us i'm curious what you made of the results of cop26 you know what were your expectations and what do you think of what actually came out of the conference
00:46:46
so i think we have to gently push back from the media so my view of cop 26 was it was a small step forward and there was no backsliding which is amazing okay
00:46:59
so we have to set the scene firstly the 2015 paris agreement was awesome absolutely amazing and despite being english i am going to compliment the
00:47:11
french okay the way they did the diplomacy the way they were machiavellian or the way they manipulated countries how they got presidents to talk to other presidents behind the scenes etc
00:47:23
incredible to get that agreement what glasgow was was hmm we have a brilliant agreement how do we actually make it work what's the practical stuff this is the nuts and bolts
00:47:35
and so what was in glasgow was countries for submitting the ndc's nationally defined contributions to you and me that pledge of what i'm going to cut for my
00:47:48
carbon budget okay and these were submitted and that was brilliant because it started ball rolling to say well hang on what sort of policies you're going to put in so there are some great outcomes from uh
00:48:00
sort of cop 26 so firstly in the glasgow climate pact as it's called one and a half degrees there's three strong statements about we are still aiming for one and a half degrees warming
00:48:14
then there is a section that actually mentions coal and fossil fuel subsidies now a lot was made about changing the wording but what people forgot in the
00:48:26
media is this is the first time that fossil fuels have been mentioned in a climate change agreement ever yes some of your listeners are going don't be so stupid of course fossil fuels no
00:48:39
they haven't they really really haven't so this was a major step forward even if the wordings were slightly changed so these all these positive things also what was interesting is paris said
00:48:51
that the ndc should be submitted every five years except in glasgow it's like hang on even if we do everything in the ndc's we're still aiming for
00:49:02
2.4 to 2.8 degrees warming nowhere near the 2 degrees and certainly nowhere near 1.5 degrees so there's an agreement to call for new ndc's for
00:49:15
egypt in the end of this year in december 2022 so this is interesting because what we might be doing is ramping up ambition and asking for ndcs
00:49:28
every single year instead of delaying it for five years and then panicking so we may be moving into that system there were some failures so loss and damage which was something that
00:49:40
has been discussed endlessly wasn't agreed it was blocked by the eu and the us who do not want to be culpable for damage in the poorest countries
00:49:53
and the hundred billion i've mentioned before still did not turn up even though this is sort of a chump change for sort of like the very richest countries um
00:50:04
the other things that were interesting is underneath there other things that were going on so there were agreements on coal phasing out coal finance getting rid of that methane and trying to reduce that and
00:50:18
also what was interesting is that there was a great announcement no idea what this means on the thursday before the weekend the last weekend when their the pact was
00:50:30
actually signed from china and the us so supposedly there have been about 30 secret meetings and they really were secret and i'll tell you why um about saying the us
00:50:42
and china will work together in the 20s to deal with climate change that's amazing because that's 43 of global emissions just from those two countries so if the two of them work
00:50:56
together that would be amazing and the reason why i know that they had kept it really secret is colleagues of mine were in the pavilions and were weirdly just outside the russian pavilion in cop 26 in the heart of
00:51:11
glasgow and this announcement uh uh there was that announcement by john kerry et cetera about the agreement the russians rushed into the back where they
00:51:25
had their little kitchenette started shouting at each other in russian because they didn't know about the actual agreement so yeah china and us have kept that really secret the problem is that we have no idea what
00:51:38
that means because there wasn't really much extra paperwork on it it's like okay you've agreed what are you going to do so i think that's something that could be really pivotal a pivot talk pivot
00:51:50
love it pivotal in the future if we can actually get us and china working together for that exactly we have to get the united states and china we have to get all world actors working together to solve
00:52:02
this problem at the near the conclusion of the book you say the challenge of the 21st century is that we must learn to think and act as a global species at the same time we see international agreements and cooperations happening we
00:52:15
obviously see the rise of nationalism happening throughout the globe as well we're in this kind of weird position where global you know liberal democracy around the globe is certainly under threat in in many areas
00:52:29
so what is going to happen over the course of the 21st century so much is yet to be seen what are you going to be watching for as we see how global cooperation is going to pan out over the coming years
00:52:44
so i think the first thing to say is when exciting and interesting things happen in the world politics gets more extreme both left and right so we know we're on for
00:52:58
a exciting ride as they say the chinese proverb may you live in interesting times we really do so the more desperate and dispersed and difficult politics get
00:53:11
the more you know you're coming to one of those thresholds where things are going to change and i think that given the push and the sort of support particularly for
00:53:23
the new generation coming through i'm pretty convinced we're going to go in the right direction but we have to have these huge arguments first before we can go in that sort of direction the things i'm looking for
00:53:37
uh into the future is how the countries of the world are going to actually try to stop trying to get one up on each other but start trying to work together
00:53:49
um it was really interesting that a brilliant professor of philosophy uh professor chattabachi once said to me he said i was reading one of your books and i was struck by something you said
00:54:03
he said i hadn't realized the only reason why the countries of the world regularly talk to each other or 192 of them is because they're trying to deal with
00:54:16
climate change he said this suddenly struck me which is if we didn't have this global issue and we weren't having all these countries having to work together at least once a year to meet each other
00:54:30
things could be a lot worse because of course the g8 the g20 doesn't bring all those countries together the un doesn't really bring all those countries together in the same way so it's odd
00:54:41
that actually by having this common problem common issue that we all have to deal with it's actually may and i use the word may very strongly bring those countries together i mean
00:54:54
think i cannot imagine anything else that would get the us and china agreeing on something but climate change does so again it's one of those things that can
00:55:06
we actually use the love of our home the planet earth the importance of keeping it as healthy as possible for all of us
00:55:19
let's be selfish this is about us you know let's keep the planet good and going so we can all have a nice place to live you know again is that something that's going to drive global politics forward and allow
00:55:31
countries an excuse to work together collectively and that's something i really hope goes forward because we really do need them to actually start to work together
00:55:44
in a concerted way to actually deal with not just climate change but also the environmental degradation that we're occurring all around the world [Music]
00:55:59
lifting people out of extreme pov global security because it's no good if we have a beautiful planet and we're fighting walls all the time let's get as nerdy as you want to get
00:56:11
the clothes out here you have this brilliant book out people are going to love it you're talking about the book what are you going to be working on in 2022 in the climate space oh what am i going to be working on i am
00:56:25
going to be working on ways of actually operationalizing the book because the problem is writing a book is easy you know telling
00:56:37
people what to do is easy but actually then engaging and so i'm spending a whole year engaging with activists other scientists politicians
00:56:48
uh going to music festivals and talking to people to try to but that she give people practical things that they can do to
00:57:05
actually say look we can all do this now and i think that's something that people really need they need people to actually go out there like greta that says look we can do this you know there is no
00:57:17
reason why we can't deal with this issue there is nothing stopping us apart from bad politics and so therefore it's something about trying to empower people and i think
00:57:30
people have seen that politics really matters and i think the pandemic has been really interesting because people have realized that the only people that actually care
00:57:42
about everybody is government and people have looked around the world and gone oh but that government cares more than that one can i have one of those instead of one of those and so it's really interesting that we know
00:57:55
that companies aren't ever going to look after us okay literally they went to government somewhere please sir could i have a handout you know that's not anger individuals can't look after each other because some of them didn't had lost
00:58:07
their jobs the only group or organization that was going to ultimately look after you is government by the people for the people to look after people and so that's fantastic but
00:58:20
again we also saw that there are different flavors and actually i think a lot of people doing the pandemic went i really wanted a nice flavor i want a nice flavor of government that i know that i will be looked after from cradle
00:58:34
to grave absolutely look you've written the reason i love this book you know we wouldn't have anyone on the show if their book was bad and we didn't think it was worthwhile we're talking about but what i will say the difference in
00:58:47
this book is i think for so many people the one to listen that listen to this show they'll want to buy it for themselves because it really as i mentioned it gives you facts that you didn't know already um but also a lot of
00:58:59
motivation and ways really actual ways to act now the difference is i think people will want to buy this for friends and family members as well because i think you have so many people in your life that do care about the climate
00:59:12
crisis they just don't have their entry point into understanding the conversation they want to learn more and they want to do and they want to act and and make a greater impact and i feel like how to save our planet the facts
00:59:24
really gives you that i cannot recommend it enough professor maslin it's been such a pleasure talking to you i'm so glad we got to connect and have this conversation thank you again for joining the climate pod thank you for having me on one of the
00:59:35
great uh podcasts i absolutely love listening to everybody else and actually i'm jealous because yeah all your wonderful uh guests i just go oh i really wish i'd written that book i really wish i'd done that so you know
00:59:48
we're all jealous of our heroes
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