Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #42 "not enough land for renewables" with Tom Heap

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Bad Idea #42 "not enough land for renewables" with Tom Heap · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
There is definitely enough space.
0:01
Solar is extremely good at sharing space with other things.
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There is also quite a lot of space for floating solar.
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I do think there are some tensions in some places about
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food versus energy, and there are some places where I think
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solar panels are a really bad idea on the land because I care
0:19
about food production and I'm worried about exposing our
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demand for food production to other parts of the world.
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But broadly, there is space. I'm still not really sure how
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deep the cultural bit runs in environment.
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Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
0:38
I'm Mark Linus and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
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I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops, and I
0:44
also opposed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
0:47
science, I found I got it wrong. Oops.
0:50
I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
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time. So now I'm here to challenge the
0:54
assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
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the future depends on us getting it right.
0:59
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Saving the World from
1:02
Bad Ideas. I'm here with Tom Heap, who
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normally is the one running the audio.
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It's nice to have you on the other side of the microphone,
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Tom. Welcome very much to the
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podcast. I'm already slightly alarmed by
1:14
what's coming, as after that it's your chance for PayPal.
1:19
I do owe you a couple of yeah, the harsh comebacks, I think.
1:23
But let's, let's go through your bio quickly, as we, as we, as we
1:26
should. Just so to introduce you to
1:27
people. You're a regular presenter on
1:29
BBC One's Country File and you're also Co presenter of
1:34
Radio Force Rare Earth series and the anchor of the Climate
1:38
Show on Sky News. Is that still going on?
1:40
Very sadly, no. The climate show on Sky News no
1:43
longer exists, and certainly one of the reasons why it doesn't is
1:47
something I think we're going to come on to talk about later,
1:49
which is the fact that climate and environment policies and
1:52
news have rather dropped down the running order.
1:56
Let's say there isn't as much noise being made by government
1:59
or other people about climate and therefore they it wasn't as
2:02
important in the news. And you also did the 39 Ways to
2:07
Save the Planet podcast and accompanying book that's
2:10
finished now. You've done all 39, right?
2:12
Yeah, done them all the equivalent.
2:14
No, published the book and yeah, it's out.
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It's out there could be any number, but we settled on 39.
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Right. And you're also author of this
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book, which I'm holding up now for those who are watching a
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video called Land Smart, How to give people and nature the Space
2:29
to thrive. And given that this is a show
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about bad ideas, I thought we could possibly anchor the
2:35
conversation around land use because it's something which is
2:38
a great interest to our audience and is probably one of the most
2:42
important environmental issues, which is also one of the least
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talked about, which I think is what you're addressing in the
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book. So I thought the bad idea.
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Yeah, what a bad idea might be that there's not enough land for
2:52
renewables because it's something often happened,
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particularly from the pro nuclear crowds who say there's
2:56
not enough land out there for solar or wind or whatever it
2:59
happens to be. So let's start off with that, if
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you don't mind. How much land do we need for
3:05
solar? Is there enough land and is it
3:07
going to be good or bad for biodiversity?
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There is definitely enough space, I'm going to say for
3:13
solar rather than enough land. You can go from the often quoted
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figure. I, you know, I actually can't
3:19
remember what it is off the top of my head, but a tiny
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proportion of the Sahara or other deserts would give enough
3:24
money, give enough energy, excuse me, for the whole world.
3:27
So in that sense, there is enough.
3:29
There is also enough in the fact that solar is extremely good at
3:35
sharing space with other things. And that's something I'd I'd
3:39
like to talk about in more detail.
3:41
There is also quite a lot of space for floating solar, and
3:44
that's really interesting because it often matches very
3:48
well with water bodies that aren't used for other thing that
3:52
that are the surface of which rather isn't being used for
3:54
other things. And in the end, I do think there
3:58
are some tensions in some places about food versus energy.
4:03
And there are some places where I think solar panels are a
4:06
really bad idea on the land 'cause I care about food
4:09
production and I and I'm worried about exporting our demand for
4:13
food production to other parts of the world.
4:15
But broadly there is space. And if you look at these, and
4:17
I've got very few illustrations in that book, but one of which
4:21
is a, is a graph basically of land use per kilowatt or a meter
4:26
squared required per kilowatt. And it was funny you mentioned
4:28
in your introduction nuclear, because nuclear is probably the
4:31
smallest, depending on how you measure it.
4:34
Wind, arguably offshore wind has no land footprint apart of
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course from, you know, there are some Transformers, there are
4:41
some cables. So it's not quite true to say
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that it's 0 onshore wind, of course, hazard footprint, but
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it's very small. So those renewable energies are
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very small footprints. And the other things with solar,
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you can combine it with houses, with warehouses, with car parks,
4:56
with the side of buildings. And as solar gets cheaper, you
5:00
don't always have to put it in the optimum place.
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And that's very liberating in terms of land use as well.
5:06
Yeah, and what's really exciting is just how rapidly the solar
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revolution is taking place across the whole of the world
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now. I was just on a call today with
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Amber actually, who are energy consultants.
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I'm sure you you've covered them in your shows because they're
5:21
often media incredibly smart right across the latest data and
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they're looking at just how rapidly solar is going in now
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across developing countries. And one real flagship is
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Pakistan where you've got 10s of gigawatts.
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I didn't know the number. Nobody's able to count because
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it's all behind the meter where literally they're just people
5:41
are just importing solar panels, cheap solar panels from China
5:45
and basically plugging them in directly.
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They don't even have to get expensive electricians and go
5:50
through all the whole installation process.
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So the grid, the sort of legacy grid is falling over because.
5:55
They kind of grid death spiral, don't they?
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That term actually came up. And so I can't figure out
6:02
whether this is a sort of good or a bad thing in that it
6:05
enables countries which have very expensive electricity but
6:10
lots of solar resource and a lot of people not connected to the
6:12
grid to move rapidly into the electricity age.
6:15
How? How important do you think this
6:17
this shift is? I think it's immensely
6:19
important. I mean, I step back even further
6:23
and you can say that we're we're moving to a world for the first
6:26
time almost in human history where we can have more energy
6:28
while burning less stuff. I mean, you know, burning stuff
6:31
has been the underpinning of everything.
6:33
Pretty much every development from cooking food, which enables
6:36
have bigger brains and smaller jaws and through to, you know,
6:40
use of charcoal, smelting coal, gas, oil, etcetera, etcetera.
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And which has always been more, you know, underpinned by more
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and more burning stuff. The advance of solar and wind is
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extraordinarily important in moving away from that with
6:58
unforeseen consequences. And the other thing is
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geopolitically, it's very interesting because unlike those
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other energy resources that I've just mentioned, coal, oil, gas,
7:09
most renewables are fairly diffuse.
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I mean, you may know more about this than me, but I think there
7:14
are very few countries that actually lack sun or wind
7:19
because you tend to have a sunbelt, you know, at one point
7:21
of the world and a wind belt at the other.
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And so suddenly this whole idea of, you know, global power and
7:26
domination through control of energy begins to fall away.
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So that's another fascinating thing.
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That's before you get the whole price thing and the fact that
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people are doing it on their own home.
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So they're not even dependent, let alone be dependent on
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another country, and they're not necessarily dependent on their
7:39
own grid. So this is hugely exciting.
7:42
Yes. And they're even at the stage
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now where they're turning away fossil fuel imports.
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There's an LNG tanker which has been parked, is that right
7:50
offshore from Pakistan? And they haven't docked it
7:52
because they've got nowhere to put the LNG because they're not
7:54
burning it anymore. Same in Egypt and a number of
7:56
other countries. So you're getting to a situation
7:58
now where I think we're seeing peak fossil fuel use even in,
8:01
even in gas. And this is going to completely
8:05
transform the economics of, of, of energy worldwide.
8:09
And I used to be something of a renewable skeptic, which is why
8:13
I've invested 10 years of my reputation in, in supporting
8:16
nuclear. But what's really changed isn't
8:19
just the economics of wind and, and solar in particular, it's
8:22
also batteries. So you then can potentially have
8:25
solar as a 24/7 base load resource.
8:29
Just on nuclear as you, I mean, I know you used to be very much
8:32
an enthusiast. I've always thought it's not
8:34
either or it's and do you, do you share that view or have you
8:37
actually gone off nuclear? Well, first of all, I'm the one
8:41
asking the. Question.
8:43
Sorry, I'm interested, I had to ask.
8:47
Secondly, I think it has, I used to believe that nuclear was
8:51
essential to say to solve climate change.
8:54
I believe that less now. I think it's probably going to
8:57
remain as a part of the energy mix, if you like.
9:02
And, and diversity is, is generally a good thing.
9:06
And there will be niches in northern cold countries without
9:10
much which wind, where nuclear still has an important role, but
9:12
less and less, I think. And you see the same for these
9:15
other sectors where it was going to be impossible supposedly to
9:19
electrify them. You know, we used to.
9:21
You're old enough as I am to remember the days before
9:23
electric cars when it was all going to be biofuels and, you
9:26
know, think of the land implications of that.
9:29
Well, I've had my one question, so I'll try not to ask anymore.
9:32
But I mean, you mentioned biofuels, that actually is a
9:35
land use question. And this is one of the things
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that I, I, I do not think we have enough space for biofuels.
9:42
I do think we have enough space for renewables.
9:44
I mean and and even the most efficient biofuels are by
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factors of sort of 50 M to 100 less efficient per meter squared
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or per acre or per hectare ever. You want to make measure it than
10:00
a renewable than than than solar on on that space.
10:04
Just explain. Just explain why that is,
10:05
because it's about the energy efficiency differential of.
10:08
Photosynthesis and. Photovoltaics, which is actually
10:10
really which is really interesting and I don't think
10:12
people. Really appreciate it.
10:13
I think it is. I mean, you have to start by,
10:17
and this always feels rather rude in a way.
10:20
You have to start by dissing the fundamental equation of, of the
10:24
biology of this planet, which is photosynthesis, which turns out
10:27
not to be very efficient. I mean, it, it, it converts
10:30
about 1% of the, of the energy that falls on it into a
10:34
carbohydrate, A hydrocarbon, if you like, put the other way
10:37
around. So it's not terribly efficient
10:39
in and of itself. Whereas the solar panel will do
10:42
anything between sort of 15 and 28.
10:45
I mean, the, the new developments that might be up to
10:48
40 with perovskite solar and various things like that.
10:51
So you've got an immediate problem then then you've got the
10:53
other problem. Is it most biofuels they're not
10:56
using the whole plant anyway, so you're only using then the seed
10:59
of the plant or etcetera, etcetera.
11:00
So you then you've got your 1% and then you've you've cut it
11:03
again to 5% of that or whatever. So you know, it's really
11:08
difficult to make biofuels make sense in a land area case.
11:11
I think there are some marginal cases where it'd be very
11:14
difficult to do anything else or there's sort of waste biofuels
11:17
and things like that where I think there might be some
11:19
plausibility for them. But one of the most frightening
11:23
things I find is this idea that airlines particularly are
11:27
looking at biofuels as their get out of jail free card when it
11:32
comes to climate impact. They're not in terms of climate
11:36
and they're certainly not in terms of land.
11:37
I mean, what that would mean for the wildlands of the world is
11:43
absolutely terrifying because I mean, the, you probably know,
11:46
there are various different ways, there are various
11:48
different sort of frightening figures.
11:49
But one of the ones I use is, you know, the, the to power the
11:53
inland flights of America, that's the flight, you know,
11:57
within the borders of America on biofuels, you'd need the entire
11:59
land area of America. You know, it's just not, it's
12:03
just not a good idea. No, it probably isn't a good
12:05
idea if that's a correct figure, but what are the alternatives
12:09
for powering aviation? I mean, really.
12:10
Tricky. Really tricky.
12:12
I am an advocate actually of so I do think we're going to have
12:16
to fly a bit less. I think we're going to try and
12:18
arrest the rapid growth. And then you know, I do think
12:23
that there's more future in synthetic fuels than there is in
12:26
biofuels for the flights that will continue, will continue to
12:30
grow. But I think it's really tough.
12:33
I mean hydrogen and electricity both them look implausible for
12:36
big planes over long distances. So I think there might be, it's
12:41
difficult to say, less flying because as you and I know, there
12:44
are many parts of the world which are just becoming wealth,
12:47
wealthy enough to fly inhabitants.
12:49
And also also, last time I spoke to you, I was in Bali and I
12:51
didn't go there on a kayak. So yeah.
12:54
But I mean, a lot of the trips that we do take are not
12:57
necessarily 100% essential and and that's a difficult thing to
13:01
measure because. No one was obviously mine are it
13:04
wasn't a nobby. So, and, and, but I think there,
13:08
having said that, you know, I, I think there is a, there is a
13:11
rationale for making frequent flying less attractive, IE by
13:17
making it more expensive. And it's interestingly of
13:20
environmental options, certainly in the UK at least, that is
13:23
actually one that still has majority public support,
13:28
frequent flyer taxes because it has an element of sort of social
13:32
justice and, you know, getting on over on the rich about it.
13:36
Oh, I see. If it's on, if it's imposed on
13:37
rich people, yes it would have support.
13:39
If it was imposed on everyone, then I bet it definitely
13:41
wouldn't. Oh, I think no.
13:43
It's imposed on everyone, but by definition wealth or it's
13:46
considered that wealthy people fly more.
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And you know, whether you put it on over 1 flight or over two
13:52
flights or over three flights a year is is to be debated.
13:55
But it is notable that it does have to what to my mind is
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surprisingly high public support.
14:01
Well, I don't know what the solution will be, but it used to
14:03
be the same problem for shipping, but there was no
14:06
alternative potentially to biofuels or hydrogen for
14:09
shipping. And now I think, I'm not sure if
14:11
it's a Chinese, but there was a cargo ship running off batteries
14:15
that I saw just last week, which is, you know, going to be one of
14:20
the major shifts because and also, of course, if you're not
14:23
using fossil fuels, then you don't have to move them around
14:26
by ships. And apparently that's the third
14:27
of world shipping is fossil moving fossil fuels themselves.
14:30
But as you and I know, there is a huge difference shipping in
14:32
aircraft. Ships are very good at carrying
14:33
weight, aircraft or not. So there, there, there is a real
14:37
a real difficulty, a real difference there.
14:39
You also look at food production and livestock in particular, and
14:42
that's something we've devoted some time to on this podcast.
14:45
Yeah, Because I don't think people really appreciate just
14:49
how land intensive or land extensive potentially you could
14:52
say meat, meat and dairy is. It's something like a third of
14:55
the world's land, I think, or at least.
14:57
It's a third of the world's land and I think slightly more than
15:00
half of its agricultural land. It's between a half a third of
15:04
agricultural land and interesting in the UK that that
15:08
proportion is about the same. One of the pictures, one of the
15:12
maps I have in the book, is the proportion of the UK divided up
15:16
according to the amount of land used for each thing.
15:20
Not where those things happen, but the amount of land.
15:23
And it's clear that half to 2/3 are either actual grazing land
15:27
or land used to grow crops to feed animals.
15:31
And simply in terms of land use efficiency, it's not a great
15:38
idea because whether you measure it in terms of protein or in
15:42
terms of calories, you can get between 10 and six times as much
15:47
16, excuse me, times as much from the same land area by
15:51
growing a crop rather than by having something graze on it.
15:54
Having said that, I, I'm not in favour of, of completely
15:57
removing our, our livestock. And there are some areas where
16:01
it is difficult to grow stuff to eat.
16:03
And there are and there's increasingly in agriculture,
16:06
there are what seem to be fairly plausible arguments for having
16:10
some livestock in terms of soil quality, fertilization and
16:14
things like that. Yeah, up to a point.
16:16
I agree. I live in the Welsh borders and
16:19
we have a lot of so-called cheap wrecked.
16:22
Hills around that which? Look green, and people think
16:25
that they're environmentally good because they look green,
16:29
essentially, but they are ecological deserts.
16:32
I mean, did you look into this when you were?
16:33
Yeah, when you were working on the boat.
16:35
Yeah. So one of the areas I I did look
16:38
at was the the uplands or the Uplands of the UK and too often
16:45
I think, well, let me let that just let me wind back a little
16:49
bit. I sort of one of the spurs for
16:51
the book was to say that we now want land to do an awful lot of
16:56
things, perhaps more things than we did.
16:58
This whole talk of nature based solutions, a lot of them demand
17:01
land. So obviously you've got food and
17:04
housing and things like that. You've now got carbon storage,
17:07
water storage and degeneration that we've already touched on.
17:11
Obviously space for nature, things to do with mental health
17:15
and our own space. And then you've got, you know,
17:17
industry, transport, infrastructure, etcetera,
17:19
etcetera. And so one of my judgements is,
17:22
is to look at land and say, what is it?
17:24
Is it doing it, is it doing something well?
17:25
Or is it, is it often doing more than one thing at once?
17:28
And that's what I, I particularly like
17:30
multifunctional land. You know, we talked about how
17:32
panels, solar panels can mix with housing where they can also
17:35
mix with agriculture and done certain ways.
17:36
And, and you know, you can have land that's good for nature and
17:39
good for carbon storage and good for food production.
17:41
You can combine these these quite often.
17:44
So I think that's quite clever. Too much of our uplands.
17:47
When I look around, I think I'm not quite sure they're doing
17:51
anything very well. They're not growing a lot of
17:53
food, they're not storing a lot of carbon, they're not holding
17:56
back a lot of flood water, they're not generating a lot of
17:58
energy. What are they doing?
18:01
And I'm someone who go has been going to to Scotland a lot
18:05
throughout my life. And increasingly I've become
18:08
rather sort of upset by some of the sort of those barren, big,
18:12
barren hills because I'm thinking he is just not right.
18:15
You know, I spoke to a Forester lady up there who's a, a
18:19
brilliant woman who actually said, you know, I look at the
18:21
hills and describe them and I, they look to me, they look waxed
18:26
and I feel their pain, which was a nice turn of phrase.
18:29
But so whilst I'm I'm not in favour of wholesale rewilding,
18:34
but definitely a, a more patchwork approach with
18:37
different ways of using that land rather than the dominance
18:41
of of grazing animals that actually I think that is
18:44
happening in in beginning to happen in quite a lot of the UK.
18:48
I presume you've covered the rewilding debate quite a lot in
18:50
Countryfile. How, how has that evolved?
18:53
Because it used to be something that everyone seemed to agree
18:55
on. Yes, yes, we should do lots of
18:56
rewilding. But then perhaps when you
18:58
actually, when it actually starts to happen and it starts
19:00
to conflict with other land uses, then it's become more
19:02
controversial. What's your current?
19:04
What's your feeling? I think two things happened sort
19:08
of maybe simultaneously. 1 is that there was pushback because
19:13
almost by definition it is sort of seen as a sort of a denial
19:19
and it's like disrespect for the talent of farmers who farming is
19:23
the is is the opposite of rewilding.
19:26
You're not leaving it to nature, you are doing something else
19:29
with it and it and I think that feeling of disrespect, if you
19:34
like, did gain traction and I think some of it was merited.
19:39
I think in the background you have got this fact that we
19:43
already demand a lot of land from the rest of the world to
19:47
grow our food. Is it right that we should
19:50
demand more land from the rest of the world to grow our food?
19:53
And if we rewild, certainly if we end up rewilding, you know,
19:58
fertile areas, productive areas, are we just going to drive our
20:02
food footprint overseas? And if we do, what has been
20:05
gained in terms of nature loss or climate change?
20:08
I would argue not very much. So I do think we need to be
20:11
careful in that sense. The other thing was that people.
20:13
Evolved in rewilding began to evolve their message and say,
20:17
look, despite the fact that the term sounds absolute, it's not.
20:21
It's a sort of it's a direction of travel.
20:24
It's a spectrum of rewilding. And even they were saying, look,
20:30
in, in a lot of cases, this isn't the case of abandonment.
20:33
I mean, there's talk of managed rewilding, which always sounds
20:37
like a really nice conversation in terms, you know, it's dry
20:40
water, it's virginal pregnancy, It's, it's managed rewilding.
20:43
But their, their point was, look, this is, it's a, it's a
20:47
sort of, it's a sort of destination that tells us, tells
20:51
you something. It tells you something about
20:53
our, our objective or our ideals.
20:55
But we we know that not only does it take time to get there,
21:00
but sometimes it's not desirable a right to go all the way.
21:03
So I think it's been a bit sophisticated.
21:04
It has become one of those terms that some, a lot of people now
21:07
think is toxic, even those who support it and are a little bit
21:12
allergic to using it, which I mean, you know, that that's kind
21:16
of up to them. I think, I think it's still, I
21:18
think it had a useful role to play in sort of coming up with
21:22
new ideas of how to you, you know, and what we should
21:25
prioritize on land that wasn't doing a lot of the other things
21:28
I suggested very well. But, and of course livestock's
21:32
the main issue there. If you want to not export your
21:35
land footprint to Brazil and chop down lots of rainforests so
21:38
we can rewild our uplands, which would obviously be a bad trade
21:41
off and you need to eat less meat or you need to be able to
21:45
complement people's diets with alternative proteins.
21:48
And we've also covered this a lot.
21:49
We had Bruce Friedrich who's written this, this great book
21:52
called Meat, who's the director of the Good Food Institute.
21:55
So he was on a couple of couple of episodes ago.
21:57
And that's really, he's really tracking the rapid increase in
22:01
alternative proteins and that whole sector and also cultivated
22:05
meats and things like that, which obviously in land terms
22:09
they use very small amounts as some feedstocks coming in, maybe
22:12
some sugars and some some plant based stuff.
22:15
But if you compare it with the footprint of beef or lamb, it's
22:19
absolutely negligible. I think that's right.
22:21
I mean, I'm interested. I haven't looked at artificial
22:24
meats or lab grown meats or synthetics for a while.
22:28
I'm intrigued if they are really growing because there's one of
22:31
those ones. I wonder whether they had their
22:32
sort of attention bubble, but I wasn't quite sure how much
22:34
traction they were actually getting.
22:37
And you're right, certainly when I looked in the book, one of my
22:40
books, you mentioned 39 ways I looked at synthetic palm oil.
22:43
But actually, by the time, well, I was going to look at it, it's
22:46
not actually in the book because when I looked at I, the sort of
22:49
feedstocks though, of having to feed to make this synthetic palm
22:52
or a lot of them came from sugars and sugar cane and things
22:55
like that. And I was not immediately
22:57
convinced that there was going to be.
22:59
And that book wasn't primarily about land.
23:01
It was partially about land, but I wasn't immediately convinced I
23:04
was afraid of. But I agree with you.
23:05
I mean, in principle, it seems to be true that the artificial
23:10
beats demand less land. Yeah, a lot less land.
23:13
But I mean, I perhaps more than you, I am a little bit persuaded
23:17
by this idea of, you know, meat on leftovers or, or, you know,
23:21
meat that's that's doing other good things for the environment.
23:26
And I know there's a bit of a sort of an equity question here
23:29
because it's likely to make meat much more expensive.
23:32
So, you know, you'll hear a lot of people talk about less but
23:35
better. And that's perhaps easy to say
23:39
for people. Well, if I'm honest, like me, he
23:42
probably wouldn't struggle to afford occasional more expensive
23:45
meat, but I still think it's quite a good idea.
23:48
I mean, there are other things that we we know we put a higher
23:52
price on because for whatever reason, you know, we either
23:55
think they should be luxuries or, you know, they are harmful
23:59
in some way. So that in effect it's it's, it
24:02
has a price penalty. Yeah, I was talking to a
24:04
regenerative beef farmer down our way at the weekend and she
24:10
told me that the steak that she produced would be probably 4
24:17
times more expensive than the very low end supermarket.
24:20
Really. I mean, so it's a big price
24:22
differential and you know, when affordability is a huge issue
24:26
for so many people that of course it is.
24:28
That's not that's far from being negligible.
24:31
And also the land use issue is there as well.
24:34
The stocking densities are way below what most conventional
24:37
farmers would do. And so the the wildlife benefits
24:40
of that have to be substantial enough to make it worthwhile
24:42
doing right. Well, I was.
24:43
Going to say that's the, there's, there's double land
24:46
uses there. There's certainly a space for
24:48
wildlife. I I don't know whether their
24:50
grazing regime may actually be capturing carbon, probably not
24:53
enough to offset the methane, but I don't know.
24:56
But I mean there there are what, yeah, there are land use
25:00
advantages there in that, sorry, there are land use Co land uses
25:06
there. That's not about that Co.
25:07
Benefits. Yeah.
25:10
You're, you're very plugged into the farming community through
25:12
doing country fire. What's the, the direction of
25:15
travel on, on these issues? I mean, do people, do farmers
25:20
understand the concern about land use that's there in the
25:23
environmental community? And if so, do they appreciate
25:28
it? Are they trying to think more in
25:30
terms of some of these metrics or is it really just a case of
25:33
business as usual? I don't think it's business as
25:36
usual. I have to say I probably see a
25:39
slightly biased sample of farmers because by definition
25:43
they're often, you know, media friendly and, and so they might
25:47
be perhaps more progressive than some.
25:51
But one thing I've noticed, and I think I am pretty convinced by
25:54
this, and I've asked them, asked people who represent broader
25:56
groups of farmers about it, is that actually as a group,
26:00
despite what you might see from sort of protests or some of the
26:04
images of, of, of farming, they, they're not really denying
26:09
climate change. They know something is going on
26:12
because for them, they're not experiencing climate change
26:15
through social media. They're experiencing it through,
26:18
you know, their factory floor, which is their field.
26:21
And, and they can see that things are, you know, blockier
26:23
weather, but more extremes. All the things we know about
26:27
with the weather changes, They're, they're seeing it fit
26:29
it. So I think that's one thing that
26:31
does underpin the belief in a lot of them that we can't just
26:34
do business as usual. I think rightly they are
26:39
concerned about land use, but they say in a, in a different
26:43
way from some people in the environment space because,
26:46
because they say, look as, as we've touched on already, but
26:50
what is the point in turning Britain into a gorgeous National
26:53
Park full of, you know, wildlife and carbon storage?
26:56
If we've exported, we, we import all our food, we've exported our
27:00
demand for food to the rest of the world.
27:02
And I am pretty sympathetic to that argument, actually.
27:05
I, I, you know, I, I think there is a, a food security issue.
27:10
I think there's a, a climate issue, I think it's a nature
27:13
issue. And so one of the ways through
27:15
this is could be in, in many cases could be regenerative
27:21
farming, but it has to be regenerative farming that
27:25
doesn't have a massive yield penalty.
27:27
And some are achieving that, but it's hard and it's hard to do
27:32
immediately as well. So and there are all sorts of
27:35
interesting things like this like that make it hard like the
27:38
varieties of crops we grow. If you're a farmer of cereal
27:43
farmer that wants to grow in a more regenerative way, the
27:46
varieties of crops that are out there are either have either
27:50
been bred for very high chemical inputs, high fertilizer, high
27:54
pesticides, etcetera, etcetera. And that's, you know, if you're
27:58
trying you, you know, plant those in the regenerative
28:00
system. It's like trying to drive a
28:02
Ferrari on and off road track. You know, it doesn't really
28:04
work. Or you can have something that
28:06
would have been familiar to the Romans.
28:08
You know, there hasn't been a lot of crop science done yet in
28:13
terms of making crops that are more, you know, modern varieties
28:16
breeding for a more regenerative, more biological,
28:19
less chemical system. And that is critical work.
28:22
And, you know, it is beginning to happen.
28:25
And I think when it does, it will have an impact on the the
28:28
yield per acre of of more regenerative, more biological
28:31
systems. I agree that crop breeding's
28:34
important work and a technique of crop breeding was one of the
28:37
reasons why you and I first met a few when we talked about GMOs
28:41
back in whenever It was probably at least 15 years ago.
28:45
And one of the things that attracted me to, to genetic
28:48
engineering was the ability to, to generate varieties of crops
28:52
which didn't need pesticide because they'd have their own
28:55
insect repellent essentially, or they would be able to protect
28:59
themselves and in other ways which didn't need chemistry
29:02
because the biology of the plant itself would be activated.
29:06
Where, where there seems to be one of one of these debates
29:08
that's come and sort of also gone.
29:10
I've not had talked about GMO's with anyone for quite a long
29:13
time. Is this still?
29:14
Is this the live debate anywhere still?
29:16
Yeah, I think it is a live debate in places.
29:18
I mean, there was a chapter in my book where I went to the Crop
29:22
Science Centre in Cambridge and talk to the, the, the leader
29:26
that he's actually just gone to the states called Charles
29:28
Aldride, who's, you know, a bit of a, a leader in this space.
29:31
And I mean, he's, there are two, well, there are many more than
29:35
two strands, but I got to concentrate on 2 strands of the
29:37
work there. They're working on crops that,
29:40
that with conventional breeding techniques, but that will make a
29:45
better relationship with fungus. Why does that matter?
29:48
Well, in a, in a regenerative system, you actually have to
29:51
rely on fungus to help you provide some of your nitrogen
29:54
rather than just having it implied out of a bottle.
29:57
And so if you make a better relationship with fungus, you
30:00
get more nitrogen, you grow quicker.
30:01
And they're working on plants that are doing that.
30:03
They're also doing some gene editing on some of those
30:06
varieties as well. And Giles himself has been
30:09
working for years on this Holy Grail, if you like, of plant
30:14
science, which is to try and get cereal crops, that's things like
30:19
rice, maize, wheat, to fix their own nitrogen.
30:24
So to behave like legumes, like the bean family that can draw
30:28
nitrogen out of the air. And, you know, I, I, I, that is
30:32
a, you know, GM technique. It's something that, you know,
30:36
he that there is progress on. Doesn't surprise me that it's
30:39
taking decades because, you know, it would be a total game
30:42
changer. And he's not just doing that for
30:44
the to use less fertilizer. He's doing it so in parts of the
30:46
world where they can't afford fertilizer, they can actually
30:49
grow more food. So you're right, it's kind of
30:51
slipped out of the headlines. I think there is still some, you
30:54
know, interesting GM work on gene editing work being done.
30:58
You can't grow it or sell it in Europe, Raisley.
31:01
But the UK has changed its legislation, doesn't it?
31:03
Does it become more friendly to science in that way?
31:05
Yes, it has it's changes legislation, particularly for,
31:08
for, for gene editing or precision breeding as they
31:11
prefer to call it, to make that more doable and the field trials
31:14
more doable. And it's interesting, I went to
31:16
the, the level of opposition has definitely decreased.
31:19
I mean, I went to one of the places where they do a lot of
31:23
these trials and I looked at, you know, the fences they had to
31:27
put up 10 years ago, which were massive, covered in cameras.
31:31
And, you know, those kind of things was a bit Berlin Walley.
31:34
Whereas the fences they, they had to put up for the much more
31:37
recent trials were much basically hardly there at all.
31:41
And that that was a big change. So I think it's going on.
31:44
It's slipped out of the controversy headlines.
31:47
Well, I wonder if we might talk about other areas of
31:50
environmental debate. And you're doing a talk for
31:53
quite soon in Norwich. Is it in the UK?
31:56
Did I get that wrong? Tell me, tell me, tell me what
31:58
it is. No.
31:59
You're actually bang on. So March the 11th in Norwich,
32:03
I'm doing a talk which is entitled The Men of the World.
32:06
I was wondering whether The Men of the World is nigh.
32:08
Anyway, titles are always difficult.
32:09
You make a pile and then you think that's shocking.
32:11
Anyway, we've got it, The Men of the world and start with it now.
32:14
And really what this is reflecting on is saying, look,
32:17
I've been involved in environment journalism for 25 to
32:21
30 years, something like that. Now for most of that time, if
32:26
I'm honest, the political class that people that kind of
32:31
mattered, they weren't moving fast enough, but I could feel
32:35
that they were generally moving in in in the right direction,
32:38
that the wind was more or less at my back, that the world sort
32:43
of got it. They got the importance of doing
32:46
this stuff, whether it be to do with being better at preserving
32:49
nature or being better at, you know, thinking about the
32:53
understanding the dangers of of, of climate change and thinking
32:56
about how we wean ourselves off fossil fuels.
32:59
And now some people might scream at the at the radio, whatever
33:02
they're listening on scream at their phone.
33:03
Like, how can you say that when fossil fuel, you know, carried
33:06
on growing? But I think you could feel that
33:09
that this was the, this was the direction of travel until the
33:13
last two or three years where it really feels like suddenly I'm
33:18
those who are concerned about these issues are fighting into a
33:20
headwind. And we've kind of lost the, the
33:26
political momentum. We've lost the sort of media
33:29
momentum. And we're often told, although I
33:33
don't think it's true, that these things are losing public
33:36
support. And So what the talk is about is
33:39
kind of analysing what the Hell's happened and talking
33:43
about a few sort of, I haven't got sort of massive bold
33:47
strategies of how to, how to reverse it.
33:50
But you know, a bit of talk about how we can, how we can
33:54
kind of emerge from the shelter, if you like, emerge from the
33:57
hurricane shelter that it feels like we're in and, and get back
34:01
and on, on the front foot a bit. And I, you know, I've got a few
34:04
thoughts about how it's happened.
34:06
Well, I'd like to hear some of those sorts of it doesn't steal
34:08
your Thunder too much because you called me and we discussed a
34:10
bit whether this this vibe shift might be somewhat A backlash
34:15
against the environmental movements overreach perhaps.
34:19
And I wasn't sure whether that's the case or whether it's a fight
34:23
back by the, you know, the, the sort of the global elites who
34:27
stand to lose from this and who are clearly very powerful and
34:30
who are in power in the United States and in another number of
34:34
other countries. They're knocking at the door,
34:36
and the kind of culture war about climate change in net zero
34:41
is one of their key organizing principles, along with the
34:44
controversy over gender reassignment surgery and things
34:46
like that. But things that they found that
34:48
really rile people up and enable them to build a winning
34:52
coalition. And climate seems to be on the
34:54
wrong side of that. It does, and I think that that's
34:57
one of the things I was trying to get my head round.
34:59
Why particularly climate, but to a certain extent nature concern
35:02
have got themselves, if you like, on the wrong side of
35:04
populism. How has that happened?
35:07
And I think it's big partly because they became seen as
35:13
imperatives from above that were going to cost me.
35:17
And those are things which are very easy to.
35:20
To sort of elite, sort of elite project of the Davos set, you
35:23
mean? Yeah.
35:24
And and and also just I don't have much, you know, personal
35:27
investment or control over these things.
35:29
I won't see the immediate benefit myself and almost by
35:34
definition it, and this is really weird in a way, but it
35:38
became an anti establishment thing to be on the side of
35:44
fossil fuels. I mean, what the, you know, how
35:48
can that be the case when, you know, fossil fuels are still
35:52
hugely the, you know, the dominant power within our energy
35:55
economy? And therefore within a lot of
35:58
geopolitics for some reason, people who are fighting for
36:02
fossil fuels and, you know, cutting down cameras that
36:05
monitor, you know, traffic or whatever.
36:08
The Blade Runners have got them themselves a sort of, you know,
36:12
an anti establishment heroism to them.
36:14
I mean, it's just it kind of beyond belief really.
36:17
But I suppose it becomes because on the flip side of that, you
36:22
could argue when the Climate Change Act in the UK was passed
36:25
by whatever it was all but five of our 600 or so MPs and that's
36:31
all moving towards net 0. You could say, well by
36:35
definition that is an establishment move towards
36:38
towards net 0. And so if I'm fighting an anti
36:42
establishment case, I am anti those things.
36:45
I think you roll that in with what you've suggested, I think,
36:49
which is there is a lot of power and a lot of action and a lot of
36:55
lobbying from the fossil fuel, lot of fossil fuel companies
36:59
that were absolutely awash with money after the invasion of
37:04
Ukraine because of the what it did to the price of their
37:07
product. And so, you know, money is
37:09
power. Yeah.
37:10
Do you have any sense of how the politics are playing out
37:14
elsewhere in the world? I think you're absolutely right
37:18
that this is how things have evolved in the UK, probably
37:21
Australia, elsewhere in in Europe and and North America,
37:25
but I wonder whether it's the same in India or Brazil or
37:29
Indonesia or any other. It is a very good question.
37:32
I'm afraid I don't have to just come out and say no, I don't.
37:34
I mean there is one really interesting that there's a piece
37:38
of research that has been done throughout the world and in
37:41
individual countries, which says is basically a survey in support
37:45
for climate change, climate action.
37:48
And it also it includes the the question would you be prepared
37:51
to give 1% of your income to to fight climate change?
37:54
And pretty much across the global, there are two things
37:57
interesting about this. One that is fairly consistent
38:00
throughout the world, it's actually the proportion of
38:03
people that have prepared to give 1% of their income is
38:05
generally a little bit higher in the developing world, the global
38:08
S than it is in rich countries, but not a huge amount.
38:11
And what's interesting is so globally the figure that that
38:14
people, the proportion of people of Fair to give 1% of the income
38:18
is about 6066 percent, 69%, it's about 2/3.
38:23
But the really, the other really interesting question is when you
38:25
ask those people, what do you think the percentages, how many
38:28
of those people do you think support what, what's the
38:32
percentage? They believe that people who are
38:35
in favour of climate action are a minority.
38:37
They'll say about 40%. And so people who are in favour
38:42
of climate action, who are the majority, believe themselves to
38:46
be in a minority. This is goes by this rather
38:50
pompous term of pluralistic ignorance, this this fact.
38:53
But it's incredibly disempowering, especially on
38:58
something like climate change where it's not unreasonable to
39:01
say, why should I do this if blogs isn't?
39:05
And if you're being told all the time that blogs isn't, or in
39:08
this case, pick a Chinese name, pick an Indian name, big or
39:10
whatever, that that they're not doing it, then it actively
39:14
discourages you. And so I think this idea that
39:17
you see frequently reported in parts of the press in the UK and
39:21
the rest of the world, that the rest of the world isn't doing
39:24
anything, is A wrong but B quite potently disempowering to people
39:30
who want to do stuff here. Well, it's wrong and getting
39:33
wronger. It always used to be.
39:34
Always used to be China was building a new coal-fired power
39:37
station every week, or whatever the term was.
39:39
It would be endlessly trotted out by whoever it was that
39:42
didn't want to take climate change seriously.
39:44
And now, while China's still the world's largest consumer of
39:47
coal, its coal emissions, its coal use have probably peaked
39:51
this year. And of course, it's deploying
39:54
uncountable gigawatts of solar and when domestically and
39:57
exporting huge amounts of renewable and electrotech
40:01
technology to the rest of the world.
40:03
So it's kind of ironic that this vibe shift in the climate debate
40:08
and this sort of taking of the wind out of the sails of, of of
40:11
climate mitigation momentum, if you like, has occurred at just
40:15
the same time as these energy technologies have suddenly
40:18
become cheap enough for everyone to use them.
40:20
And I think there's a sort of race between these things going
40:24
on at the moment with, you know, certainly myself and I suspect
40:28
you, you, you would agree that you almost want to get it to the
40:31
case where the economic case for renewables is just so blindingly
40:38
obvious that the political case against them just begins to
40:43
corrode and fall away. Because it looks increasingly
40:47
implausible, just increasingly sort of against the physics,
40:51
against the, against the, the, the weather in, in, in, in, in
40:56
the metaphorical sense. And, and I think that is, is
41:00
beginning to happen because it's becoming increasingly sort of
41:04
absurd to refer to renewable and these alternative energies in
41:08
renewable. It's just energy.
41:09
It's where we get our power from.
41:11
And I do think that's interesting for, for parties in
41:14
the UK, some of whom are, seem to be positioning themselves as
41:19
opposed to renewables is, to my mind, if you're actually in, in
41:24
government, I, I don't think it makes a lot of sense in
41:26
opposition, but certainly if you're in government, that mean
41:28
you end up being against your energy, you're against you what
41:32
that makes you against British energy.
41:33
I, I just don't see how this computes in a, in a world where
41:37
renewables are dominant and cheaper and cleaner.
41:41
How does that make sense? Well, it doesn't make sense.
41:44
And you only have to look across the Atlantic to see how that
41:46
plays out, where the Trump administration has done its
41:49
utmost to cancel all offshore wind projects and, and roll back
41:55
any support for solar. And to the extent that they're
41:58
damaging America's economic interests.
42:00
And it's very clear that they are not going to be able to
42:04
compete with China in terms of energy geopolitical dominance
42:08
going going forward because they're exiting from these, all
42:11
of these new innovation sectors, which are going to be the
42:13
primary source of energy going forward.
42:15
So it's, it's it's cutting off your nose to spite your face and
42:20
or I don't know what the metaphor is, but it's clearly a
42:22
massive act of self harm based only as far as I can tell, it's
42:27
not based on any actual economics.
42:29
And I'm not even sure it's that that much based on over fossil
42:32
fuel lobbying. I think it's just about the
42:34
culture wars and it's it's a movement to own the lips.
42:38
I was very skeptical of the idea that environment was part of a
42:43
culture war because it just didn't seem to make sense to me.
42:47
And I'm still not quite sure how it has become part of a culture
42:55
war. I still sort of, I, I resisted,
42:57
always resisted sort of doing culture war type pieces on the
43:00
environment because I thought it sort of fed a narrative.
43:03
And it's a narrative that's enormously popular to my
43:06
profession, which is journalism. And it's a sort of easy catnip
43:10
because it, it riles people up on, on, on either side.
43:14
And I'm still not really sure how deep the culture war bit
43:19
runs in environment. I really, I'm, I'm not, but you
43:24
know, it's that I'm, I'm not allowed to ask you questions,
43:28
But it's, it's, you know, is it the associations that people on
43:35
the, who are concerned about climate, you know, the, the
43:38
intersectionality of them. They like to attach themselves
43:40
to other causes which are more clearly part of the culture.
43:44
Or is it that is it, or is it people on the, the anti side
43:48
sort of wanting to tar them with a sort of brush?
43:50
I I just don't know really. That's fine.
43:52
That's fine. You can ask me a rhetorical
43:53
questions. It's sort of well, I think it is
43:56
partly that it's something to do with the progressive Omni cause
44:00
as they call it. And you can see this with Greta
44:03
Tunberg moving on to Palestine activism, for example.
44:06
And I don't see why to be in favour of climate change action,
44:11
you have to also support the Palestinian 'cause you may
44:14
choose to. And I'm not making a comment on
44:16
the politics of that one or the other, but I think that linking
44:19
the linking together of all of these progressive causes, by
44:22
definition, is going to reduce the number of people who attach
44:26
to any one of them. And I think that's probably been
44:28
the case with climate. But to look on the bright side
44:32
here and going forward, what's your analysis that you're going
44:35
to present to your audience in terms of how we should move
44:38
beyond this and what we should learn from what's happened in
44:41
the past? First of all is, is don't, don't
44:44
lose confidence. And I mean, that sounds a bit
44:46
trite. So there's a bit of myth busting
44:47
going on. So we go through some of the
44:48
basics of, you know, climate science and why they are
44:50
absolutely fundamental and undeniable.
44:53
We go through the the myth of it's not popular, which I've
44:55
already talked about. We go through the myth of nobody
44:57
else is doing it. We go through the the myth
44:59
slightly less of a myth that it's expensive because there are
45:04
some upfront costs as well. But but but talk about these
45:07
things. But I suppose the last thing
45:10
that we, we, we talk about, you know, I want people to, to, to,
45:15
to carry on sort of, or to go back to normalising it, to
45:18
talking about it, to, to, to not being sort of shy that this is
45:22
a, a weird sort of elitist thing to go on about.
45:26
I mean, it's just such nonsense. I mean, and if it is expensive
45:32
up to a point, I would say it is the duty of people with wealth
45:36
to spend a bit more of their wealth on this subject.
45:39
I mean, that was something that really bugged me.
45:41
When electric cars are more expensive, they're not a more
45:44
expensive anymore. When they were, people would go
45:47
on about, oh, how it's all right for you, You can afford an
45:49
electric car. Well, A, yes, I could and I was
45:53
doing it and I didn't see anything wrong with that.
45:54
But B, plenty of people were still paying more than £40,000
45:59
for fossil fuel if chance, like just wanted to get that one off
46:03
my chest. So, you know, I, I, I think, you
46:05
know, don't be a afraid of talking about it because more,
46:08
you'll find more people are in support of this than you think,
46:11
but you've got to be careful about how you do it.
46:13
You don't want to be preachy, but but just kind of normal talk
46:16
about things that you're doing in your life.
46:18
I think the other thing is that perhaps we were unrealistic to
46:22
expect this change to happen quickly.
46:26
It is a massive change in the whole economy and Society of the
46:31
world. And if we look back at other
46:34
progressive causes and how long they took, and I think one of
46:37
the really interesting analogies is with the end of slavery.
46:42
Now there are not, I'm not claiming direct equivalents
46:45
here, but you know, you could argue one is the enslavement of
46:48
people, the other is the enslavement of our of our
46:51
natural world for one way or another.
46:53
And that took a very long time to change.
46:58
First of all, the end of the slave trade, which was the first
47:01
thing that became illegal. And then the illegality of
47:03
slavery itself. Even the banning of the slave
47:06
trade took decades. And really interestingly, there
47:09
was it was, it was going well in avert of commerce in in the UK.
47:16
And then we had the French Revolution.
47:18
And suddenly there was this big sort of, you know, quake in the
47:21
world and the world politics, fear of, you know, fear of
47:24
conflict, insecurity and the whole cause to the dropped off a
47:29
Cliff. It it, it, it, it took a step
47:32
and it took another forgive me, my, my year, my, my dates won't
47:35
be exact. But it took, you know, another
47:37
decade or so for it to come and, and be the progressive 'cause
47:42
that people wanted to back because at a time of insecurity,
47:46
people didn't want to sort of rock the boat or, or try
47:49
something new or these kind of things.
47:51
So I think that's very interesting.
47:52
Obviously analogous to the war in Ukraine and a sort of tremor
47:55
in the global system that we've got now.
47:58
The other way, of course, it's analogous, is that the the slave
48:02
trade was deeply embedded in the economy of the time with lots of
48:05
massive vested interests who didn't want it to change.
48:09
And obviously that's you, you know, in some ways equivalent or
48:14
perhaps equivalents, the wrong word.
48:16
You can see the echoes in in the power and embeddedness of our
48:20
fossil fuel industry today. Yeah, I think slavery isn't
48:24
entirely A bogus analogy because slaves as forced human labour,
48:29
were a source of energy in the plantations in the colonies and
48:32
elsewhere. And if anything, fossil fuels
48:36
are even more deeply embedded in that.
48:39
Modern civilisation has has been able to develop in the way that
48:42
it has thanks to the massive energy subsidy of the fossil
48:46
fuels, which is much more significant than slavery ever
48:48
was. So as you say, it's hardly
48:50
surprising that it's taking a long time to substitute, but
48:54
just just the moment when the substitution begins to look like
48:57
it's technically going to be possible, people are sort of
49:00
backing off from the the urgency of the moment, which I find
49:04
surprising. I wonder if by way of closing, I
49:08
might ask you how optimistic and pessimistic you feel.
49:10
This is a question that you've probably asked a lot of people
49:12
in the past and I always struggle to come up with come up
49:16
with an answer because it's not, you know, it is partly about the
49:20
world you're involved in trying to build.
49:22
And as an environmental journalist, you, you're
49:25
passionate about this as well. It's not just a case of being
49:29
entirely neutral about presumably whether we kill off
49:32
loads of species or we don't, or we destroy the, the, the, the
49:36
habitability of the planet, or we don't and so on.
49:38
And for me, I'm more optimistic and I'll put my cards on the
49:42
table before you even ask me the question.
49:44
I'm more obsessed about climate change than I have been in quite
49:46
a long time, even at this, even as the politics become less and
49:50
less favourable because the economics actually is more
49:52
important and the technology has shifted so far as well.
49:54
So I think now we're debating really which side of two degrees
49:58
we're going to end up on, whereas when I started out in
50:00
this game, it was like 4-5 or six degrees.
50:03
But maybe I'm maybe I'm just, you know, getting, getting
50:07
jaded. What do you think?
50:07
Well. It's very cheering to hear you
50:09
say that and to a certain extent you've nicked part of my answer.
50:13
So that I was going to say, look for most of the time when you
50:15
and I have been involved in this, the the greener energy
50:19
choice was more expensive. That is no longer the case and
50:23
that is a huge deal. The fact that it is often
50:27
cheaper, often easier, often more empowering to the people
50:30
who are generating it, you know, cleaner, etcetera, etcetera,
50:33
that penny is just beginning to drop and when that, you know,
50:38
when that does, that's a very big deal.
50:41
I think it's probably no coincidence that the fight back
50:45
from the those who want to continue using fossil fuels is
50:50
happening at the same time because they can see, they can
50:52
see this. So you think, yeah, they really
50:55
are digging their fingernails in at this moment and by any means
50:59
necessary to extend the profits and the dividends for as long as
51:04
they can. I mean, it's, I was thinking
51:07
about this, we use this phrase business as usual as if it's a
51:09
sort of neutral term. It actually betrays, you know,
51:12
it's about business as usual and business likes to carry on as
51:17
usual. So I think there is a moment
51:20
where these where these two things are fighting.
51:22
But in the end, I, I'd more or less share your view because of
51:24
that, that physics and economics that you just talked about, but
51:28
also because it, it, it must be a blip that we're in rather than
51:34
a trend, because it's not as if we have solved these, you know,
51:39
climate and nature problems. We can see, especially with, you
51:42
know, climate, I mean, just at the moment doesn't get much
51:45
coverage here in the UK, but you know what's been happening in
51:49
southern Europe with the extraordinary floods that
51:51
they've been having in in Spain and Portugal and and Italy, you
51:55
know, have have claimed lives, you know, had big effects there.
51:59
And you know, in America, obviously we've had lots of
52:02
weather related tragedies. Now, I know people are often
52:05
shocked by how these don't make people run to the nearest, you
52:09
know, climate campaign group, but they but overall, you know,
52:13
the, the simple facts of the way the nature of the world, the
52:20
climate and nature of the world is moving you Now combine that
52:24
with what we've achieved in the human world by our technology to
52:28
make the cleaner, less harmful version of energy now cheaper.
52:34
You put those two things together and I would argue that
52:37
fundamentally there has to be a change.
52:41
And I think that will be where the change comes from those two
52:44
things. And I, I, I think, and to a
52:48
certain extent, if I was a religious man, I'd pray that
52:51
what we're in now is a through, not a permanent downslide.
52:58
Do we need to go back to talking about climate change?
53:00
Then maybe that's a new bad idea that we should not stop talking
53:05
about climate change. Or, or, I'm not sure how to
53:07
phrase it exactly, but the bad idea might be that we can stop
53:11
talking about climate change. Well, I, I know you and I have
53:14
talked about a little this a little bit before and, and I
53:16
know to a certain extent you think, you know, the time to
53:18
talk is over. The time for action is now.
53:20
I think the problem is, you know, you when you stop talking
53:24
about it, then politicians think they can basically decide.
53:30
I mean, in effect, you could argue that acting on climate
53:32
change to some extent is paying a little bit of an insurance
53:34
premium to avoid a harm in the future.
53:37
You know, people say they don't need to pay the insurance
53:40
premium. Only the other day one of the
53:42
parties vying for power within one of the the principalities of
53:45
the UK Plaid Cymru, the Welsh National Party, decided to drop
53:48
their net zero. I've talked about your part of
53:51
the world. They decided to drop it.
53:53
Well, why are they feeling empowered to do that?
53:55
Because they think it's unpopular.
53:57
So I think the fact that it's not being talked about, that it
54:00
is perceived to be unpopular does matter, unfortunately,
54:04
because it it does enable politicians to take decisions
54:09
that I think slow the critical changes we need to make to, to,
54:18
to, to avoid heating the planet too much.
54:21
Well, I'll leave producer Rob to decide which of those two bad
54:23
ideas we're going to use when he's finished driving a track
54:26
through the streets of Brussels and has come back to his main
54:29
duty on the podcast. So we'll, we'll talk, talk about
54:32
it then. But anyway, Tom, it's been
54:34
fantastic having you here. And how have you enjoyed being
54:37
on the other side of the mic? Because I've, I've enjoyed
54:39
asking you questions rather than answering them.
54:41
I hope, I hope you realize now it's very tough to answer all
54:43
these questions. It is, no, it's a lesson for me
54:46
to be on the other side. Actually.
54:48
I like it. I mean, and I think you like
54:51
talking about what you think as well.
54:52
So I'm not entirely accepting that.
54:54
It's that it's a beastly moment being interviewed by me and
54:58
certainly it was a joy being it's by you.
54:59
So thanks very much. Yeah, OK, Busted, But thanks
55:03
again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it and look
55:05
forward to talking to you soon. Thanks so much for listening to
55:11
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