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E183 James Cameron: The Lawyer Who Changed Climate · Second Nature

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm actually quite nervous about your episode because I think we could do six episodes for your life.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, even I had a four-hour dinner.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: I know it's a good one.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: It was an absolute trick.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: I brought my Chicago bear scarf with me because you know I might get cold on the way home.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad it reached you.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad it reached you.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um so on which basis I I think I'm gonna try I'm gonna try and be quite disciplined in making sure we pick up and cover some of your incredibly unique background through the law chapter, the environment chapter, into the finance chapter of it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I also want to talk to you about leadership and learning and the future.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna try and bring us through everything and we could go like forever.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: However, I do have one story to share with you that was the most remarkable thing.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: So we we had a guest on the podcast called Asgar Olsen.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Strange, as Asgar Strange Olsen.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Danish um renaissance man who'd done everything from finance to tech to working at the UN to he's now a leading forestry investor in Denmark.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: He said his life changed one day when he walked in, he was he was he was working at the venue, right?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: He was working at this um small music venue in Denmark as a teenager.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: He walked downstairs and found himself sat for two hours at the bar with David Bowie.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: And and I couldn't help but think of you when he told that story because you never got to yeah, and he did, and he said it was the most incredible experience, and he just constructed thoughts and ideas that were just like real down-to-earth guy, but just had a completely different way of viewing the world.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I just that and um I told him about you and how you were gonna be coming on the podcast, and it was just an unbelievable connection of experiences and worlds.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Powerful.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Talk to us about um the influence Bowie had on you when you were growing up.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very important to me as uh even pre-teen, given the timings of things.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember vividly listening to Life on Mars when it first came out, and I was pretty young then.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it was more, it got more and more significant as a teenager, especially in a period where you're forming yourself through relationships with others and trying to get a grip on what you look like, and and and I looked very feminine in those periods, and I and I was very conscious of being very slim and uh and partly because of a relationship that I had with my father, very masculine.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was conscious of looking very much like a girl and being very interested in clothes and fashion and music, and he he represented so much of what I felt connected to in my mind.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: But he also gave permission, in a sense, to look like I did, and how I felt when I wore certain clothes.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it stayed with me, and it and it became it became a part of how I presented myself to the world, even then as a young teenager.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it stayed.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So as he went through his various changes, uh, I felt able in some way to not exactly mimic, but to reference.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I I've got some extraordinary pictures that I look back now, I wonder how on earth I got away with traveling across America in a in a fedora with a cream band and an ankle-length coat.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: How did I do that on a greyhound bus?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or hitchhiking across Australia, which I did do in that gear, um, with aviator glasses and and you know, hair looking, looking a lot like uh certainly with a look that was like Bowie at various stages, the thin white Duke face, definitely.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then it led into other types of fashion and then music that emerged in the late 70s, early 80s.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But but formatively, yeah, he was very important.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the music has been enduring all the way through, literally to the end, with with Black Star and music he did at the very end.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Profoundly important to me.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: So keep us in the early stage.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Talk to us about a young James, talk to us about the formative sections of your childhood, and then particularly about education and the role that played.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, part of my education was growing up where I did.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in in London, and my mother was very definitely an English woman.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: My father was Australian and very conscious of being uh distinctive Australian type, and I'm pilot and of that generation that that that fought the first sort of work of their adult lives was fighting a war.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly had a profound effect on him, not not much which was ever discussed or talked through.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's the pity?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But he he was uh uh I guess of that generation that built airlines too, as a pilot as opposed to an administrator, or that one stage chief pilot.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I grew up in Lebanon, and uh his life there revolved around the formative years of Middle East Airlines, and then they were there in the late 50s, uh the place was remarkable, uh blended cultural, you know, mixed community of francophones speaking French, um every possible trading culture, all concentrated in a place that had been functioning for us 6,000 years or so, you know.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was a remarkable place to grow up.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that came with that experience of being a young person in a place like that is how fragile civilization is.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I remember vividly the Six-Day War being evacuated as in a sort of loose sense, my parents being very connected to what was going on, and and they had met doing Secret Service missions for the Ministry of Defense.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there was something, there was there was a community that that knew by being observant professionally what was going on, and we so we had to leave eventually when the civil war broke out.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had already moved to Singapore, not safer place.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the the connection with Lebanon stayed.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still there, I suppose.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, you spend the first ten years of your life.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then partly because of the culture of educating children by way of long-distance boarding, I was sent to school.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go to school in in Bay.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I did to the British Community School for a while, but I was I was sent to boarding school at seven years old.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And was the school in Singapore?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was and that was in in the UK.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I we went I went from Lebanon, from Beirut to school in England, and I didn't see my parents at all during term time.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then we when we moved to Singapore, at the same pattern, I I stayed travelling back and forth to school like like many of my friends did.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: People tend to speak of boarding school having loved it or hated it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: Where in the spectrum did you land?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Neither, both.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um much depends on how the school is run, culture of the school, or whether the the sort of in-loco parentis idea has any real value because of how the school behaved towards you and how you fit it in or coped, perhaps.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So my my prep school was in Sussex, a place called Windlesham House, run by a husband and wife team where the family were quite visible.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very liberal, open school mixed, uh usual at the time.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would say a good school.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: What was your favourite part of that chapter?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, to be able to do everything that interested me in that particular environment.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So playing sport, being in plays, uh having fun outdoors, it was a very the school was very tuned into play, outdoor play.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was a beautiful place.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think on the whole, that educational experience was good enough to help me enjoy the learning, which I did.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was always a curious child, and I was always interested in knowing about things, but also not terribly interested in the routines and disciplines for school, always edge.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always the kind of child that, you know, we had these, like all schools, you know, reward systems, you know, various things that were positive and then negative, and they were all put up on a board.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to have lots of both.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I had respect for the leadership of that school.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went to my next school, which was in a very beautiful place, very grand, the buildings were remarkable.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was in six or six hundred acres of land.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was equally amazing to be able to grow up in that place, but not such a good school.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And a place that eventually I just fell out of.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: The more I wanted not to conform, the more difficult it was to thrive, and the more it became uncomfortable being in such a strangely artificial environment.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he was also caught up with it, but my parents were going through a pretty ugly, very unhappy breakup.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the the in-loco parentis piece completely failed.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And me many years later, um I'm sure partly because of personal relationships, but also partly because the leadership of that school changed dramatically to a much younger person who knew people I knew, the headmaster, came to see me in my offices in London with an apology.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, they were appalling.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: The school had fundamentally misunderstood what was going on.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And in the end, um I was expelled once and then again, spelled, recalled, expelled again.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Just proved that things had gone horribly wrong.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: The second time I was expelled, I was expelled into a kind of nothingness.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, you know, my parents weren't in the country, I was in London on my own.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just aged 17.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: I turned uh 18 during that term.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd have bumped into 17-year-old James at that point and said, So what does the future look like?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: What's it gonna be?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: What would he have said?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had no career sense.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the falling out with my father in particular, I was fighting against my sort of creative instincts.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I had a sense I I I knew that things were going to get hard at that moment and that that I need to figure out how I was going to cope with that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds crazy but true that in the bust up I had to steal my passport back in order to be able to agree to move initially to come back to England from Singapore to do my Oxford exams.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: In those days, it was seventh term.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And my parents were still emotionally together at that stage, but soon thereafter not.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went back to Singapore to try and make peace with him.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It did not work out.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: The net result of which he gave me a one-way ticket to Western Australia, to Perth, where he had connections and family.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I I took the view that I would take that as an opportunity and and just go and figure out what to do next.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I had no clear career path.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I wrote this letter saying that I was going to go to Oxford then, I thought in my mind.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was going to do something practical, which at that stage meant weirdly moving from English to PPE.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds so stupid.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, but it was an attempt to figure out how I would deal with a slightly harsher world.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that didn't work out at all.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I finished up staying in Australia, going to the University of Western Australia, where I knew I could use my Australian nationality and get a grant and survive on my own.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: That was the key to it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was an attempt to go my own way away from breakup as a family.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't choose to do it sensibly, you would not choose to do that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I did.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: One of the uh elements of commonality we you and I both share is the interesting relationships with our fathers.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I often get asked a lot if I had the choice over would I want a better relationship and would I want to change it?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: What's your take on that?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted a relationship with my father.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've grieved over the loss of that relationship, and I never gave up on it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent the rest of my life trying to keep that relationship when there were many opportunities not to.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And my sister absolutely didn't.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I put a lot of effort in trying to repair their relationship, and eventually that worked out, but only at literally at his death.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I did want a relationship, but I I I was probably aware all the way along that there was sufficient love there for that to be worthwhile.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: But my word, there was a lot of hate and hurt and damage.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he he he did not discharge the basic duties of being a father at times of loss and crisis, particularly when my mother died of motor neuron disease early uh in early adulthood for me.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he didn't play much of a role at all after that and sort of took himself away to Australia very remote uh from the rest of us.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to concede, no doubt this has been in your mind too, that it produced a friction and a tension and a challenge that enabled me to display a kind of responsibility for myself, for my younger sister, five years younger.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but but I think mostly in learning that I could could cope with adversity and manage.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: I um I wouldn't change it for a second.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't be sat here if I'd have had a better one.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting, isn't it?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I think I can argue the same.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we can't choose, so it's probably good I wouldn't change it.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um of all the incredible minds and characters and famous people that have walked through the doors of Oxford, how many had been expelled twice before getting there?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, funny enough, I never went to Oxford.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed in Australia.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's crazy, right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's partly because because my I basically didn't get in at the time.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was there were lots of reasons for this, but essentially I was told to try again later when when things had the situation had improved.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to the University of Western Australia, and then when I came back to look after my mother with motor neuron disease, um, I had to be with her in London.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very, very lucky that I was what's the right word?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I was taken care of by someone who I didn't even know, but who who had understood that they could do something for me, who was a sub-dean at the law school at University College London, UCL, Stephen Guest, remember him vividly now, thank you, Stephen, who um who basically found a way for me to to go to UCL to study law.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I I'd started in Western Australia at UWA, but uh there was no credit given for that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I had to begin again.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I got in and I was able to study just about whilst looking after her until I couldn't with my sister.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And but at that, at that time, I mean it's a fantastic faculty, one of the best law faculties in the world.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there's nothing, there was no real loss when it came to studying law, studying law there.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the moment where I really did see and enjoy the oddity of my situation was when I went up to Cambridge to do my master's, and I met a guy from my school who had also been expelled.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we had we had some very big nights out in Cambridge.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, honestly, I I think there were so few people that um the school was poor at cultivating people with intellectual ambition at that time.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a lot better now.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Mine was very similar.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things we really did enjoy, Tom and I, was that we both got firsts.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that was highly unusual at my school.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we enjoyed that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: We enjoyed that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it all ended up.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: One of the um most significant characters in your story is your wife.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: When did she appear?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: She appeared again in one of these wonderful moments of chance or fate or whatever.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I I had become an academic at Cambridge.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Director of Studies in Law at Clare Hall, um, research fellow at the Research Centre for International Law.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Just pause there a sec, James.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Had you fundamentally become more intelligent, more applied?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Was the what element of the reinvention unlocked that?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because that is a stratospheric jump from the person who just got in the door at UCL through others' generosity and kindness and help.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's a leap.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I and also I I I did not thrive in the study of law at undergraduate level.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I found it really difficult and dull by comparison to the things I was I knew I was good at, like English literature.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the the I'm I'm not looking like a top-class student after two years of undergraduate UCL.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I I will argue that I got just good enough grades to warrant going to Cambridge to do a master's in international law, because in that final year, which is a highly difficult time, I studied with my girlfriend and another guy who had a good brain, and we helped each other through that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Year and international law and legal philosophy connected with me.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about my upbringing in Lebanon and Singapore, the fact that I'd, you know, literally grown up listening to the BBC World Service, I could understand the events.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was interested in the porosity of the legal order to politics and geopolitics, things I understood.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I found international law compelling and it fed some kind of idealistic component of me that wanted to argue for the relevance of international law for peace and it was the interesting thing.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was the interesting I think I think initially at undergraduate level.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then when by again by incredible good fortune, I got into Queen's Cambridge, uh, partly because of my study mate at uh Mark at UCL, who had places at both Oxford and Cambridge.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how this actually happened, but he encouraged me to say, well, why don't you apply to where I'm not gonna go, I'm gonna go to Oxford to do the BCL.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go see if you can take my place at Cambridge?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, you don't actually do that, really, but something clicked in my mind, and I did.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And funny enough, just to go back in a loop of a previous conversation, at that point, I was thinking, I don't really want, I don't think I'm really gonna make it as a as a lawyer.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: What I really want to do is write film scripts and novels, things like that.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I had this period of time when my in the last stages of my mother's life, I was living with a friend who was a musician in Earl's Court, and I was writing film scripts.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a film script, and we were working from the the uh beautiful Holland Park House, a very famous musical musician, writer of film scores.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the payment for being able to use this place was to take his dogs for a walk in Holland Park, including this enormous Great Dane.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And one day coming, coming back from the my friend was playing the piano and composing songs, and I was writing my film script.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: His wife, Bigita, was there.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What do you you know, what are you writing?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I told her.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, what do you what are you planning to do?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, I want to do this.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Do you do you know anything about the film industry?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, not very much.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hard.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: You said, Have you got any other options?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, I've got a place at Cambridge to study international law.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I think you should do that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting about the um I think young people now, we expect them to know exactly what they want to do immediately.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: And also know how to use their brain.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, what what I hear when you share the story about that study group is you you were better in a group, in a team.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: And and you figured out how to apply your mind.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: My undergrad was very similar.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of went like 50%, 60%, 80% in my undergrad.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: And by year three, I knew how to use my brain.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: And by the time I'd finished my PhD, I knew how to write and communicate it and apply it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um we some of our team who have got amazing academics, they refused to believe I was no good until I was like 20.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: I know you've always been like some.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: I really wasn't.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: I had to learn how because I had a terrible school, rough childhood.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't develop the ability to apply myself and use it in that way until I'd had a certain amount of experience.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: So very much a late developer in that regard.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think I was in some respects.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I I had I was always good at some things that I enjoyed and that that appealed to the creative part of me, and not good at the things that required a certain type of rigor and discipline and that uh and modes of thinking and doing.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've struggled there.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: The challenge- you were also having to use a huge amount of bandwidth for support of the family, emotional intelligence, managing all that thing, which if you know those muscles I developed, right?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ditto.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they're still there, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in truth, the the the the later learning was facilitated by working with others who I could connect with and do more.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: It reflects the real world.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of my challenges around academia, is it's like, no, no, do it yourself with no tools, no technique.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't work in the room, that's not how the world works.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I found I I learned a lot more by talking things through and by by the connections between the people and the ideas, which I got.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an awfully long way of getting around to your question about my rather incredible wife.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: When I met her, um, again by again by pure chance, no mutual friends, no other connection, it was signing the the book that you sign when you join the inner temple or other inns of court, which you have to when you become a barrister.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because we still have, less, perhaps less significant now than it was in past history.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the sort of educational pathway to becoming a barrister includes joining an inn of court, becoming part of that community, and learning some of the ethics and principles of the profession that way.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to pick one of the four.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I had no connections in the world of law.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I chose it largely on grounds of walking around all four of them and liking the look of it and the connection with the river.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that said, I'll I'll choose this one.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I went to sign in and I'd missed a couple of appointments.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just come down from Cambridge because I'd got this amazing case to work on through a professor at Cambridge who is a practicing barrister, brilliant man called Eddie Lauterpacht.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I was a fellow at his research center or the research center that he ran, and he got me involved in an amazing case, and I came down to London to speak to the to join in the consultations with the other lawyers.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I turned up at the Inatember to sign in the book, and Juliet came in straight in front of me, I mean, ignoring my existence entirely, and started to write her name in the book.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I looked over her shoulder and she wrote her name.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I liked her name, Juliet May.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then we both asked this question, uh, we had to fit in what your degree was.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we both asked, at the same time, what if there's more than one, you write the last one down.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: So she wrote down M.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Phil Psych.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um all I did was follow her, and then we were moved down the corridor to meet the student officer.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only after about a minute of conversation when the student officer looked down and said, I'm sorry, I just assumed you two were together.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, I've never met her in my life.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just walked in there.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's remarkable.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to have awkward conversations about money and scholarships, because I didn't have any and needed one.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether you it's a bit a long time ago and we don't really have them anymore, but we used to have these great fat phyllofaxes.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember those or heard about them?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had a huge one, full of photographs and maps and God knows what diary.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she said, Well, if you have a really hard up, you could always pawn your phyllofax.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wait.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Who are you?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: But that okay.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we went and had tea.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: We talked for so long that I missed my train to Cambridge.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: My first day of as director of studies in law at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and I missed the train.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking to Juliet.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: It just it was just something immediate.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then at night, after four more hall, I went to see a friend.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Pete sat and drank whiskey in his room and declared late into the bottle that I'd met the woman I was going to marry.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Only I couldn't remember.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had no contact details.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Absolute fool.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: As I had to go walk around and around with my glass of whiskey around his student room, thinking what was the connection?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the connection was in language, it was that she worked in the inner temple bar.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we were became you know, we were becoming embarrassed as we were going to be called to the bar, and it's like that that was just a connection.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I went back next week with a friend of mine, lifelong friend now, who uh was appalled at how uncool it was to go and have a drink at the Inner Temple Bar and she wasn't there, but having worked in bars, I said have you got a roster in the bar?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Any chance is anyone called Juliet on that roster?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: When does Juliet when's Juliet next in?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was a this was a Tuesday and she said next Tuesday.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I came back next.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: She was and she was sort of expecting.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: How many years married?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thirty-eight.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right, we've been together longer than that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Probably that was an o an October day and we went on holiday, went on a date, went on holiday to France, Paris.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I proposed on New Year's Day in Notre Dame, which required her to say, Are you sure it's not the music?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had to ask her again in the rain on on the bridge.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been a real it's been yeah, a very central part of life thereafter.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Incredible.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking of central parts of life, what would you describe as the sort of defining element of your legal career?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it was um the formative period where I combined teaching and practice in a specialist area of international law, namely climate change.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, it was an open space, unoccupied by more experienced people.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote the first law review article on state responsibility for climate change.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I did with my longtime friend and colleague, Derwid Zelke, to try and get that combined transatlantic element.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: How year would that have been, James?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote it it came in stages.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote an opinion for Greenpeace first on whether you could go to the International Court of Justice to bring a claim against the United States of America for failure to act on climate change in 1988.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote that opinion without any background in the science.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had to, I had to treat it purely as evidence, which was the best way to approach it, frankly, as a as a lawyer.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't come to the subject via campaigning, I didn't have a, I hadn't prejudged what the answer might be, I just looked at it fresh.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's true that I had already started working with my friend Philippe Sands at Cambridge.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was a couple of years ahead of me, he was he had taught me at Cambridge, and he had written about Chernobyl.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I had learned a lot about the, if you like, the both the potential and the requirement of international law to respond to transboundary environmental harm through working with him on the consequences of Chernobyl.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and the fact that we could see via satellite pictures the radioactive plume traveling across the globe.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really important moment, I think, for opening up the possibilities of international environmental law.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: We'd had a previous generation looking at acid rain.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: There were various other transboundary problems that international law was dealing with.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, the the key moment was connecting there with the climate change issue, writing about state responsibility, having it published in a journal, but it became the law review article over the year.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it I don't think it actually came out until 1990.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: But in between times, we formed the Centre for International Environmental Law in London, but c but at the but with a um a dual base in Washington.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Seal, as it's called anyway, continues from an Washington base.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we we the founding four, Philippe and I and Derwood and Wendy, we decided that we would launch it in London rather than in Washington.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we did.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we did in in 1989.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: Can you then take us to the portionary principle?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that I did then and loved doing was combining theory and practice.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: So writing something in the academic literature that I was working on in practice and advocating for.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: That intersection between theory and practice was key, is key.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: But for me genuine creativity and innovation.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was advocating for something that I wanted to make real, but required some intellectual contribution first and some opportunity to apply it in practice.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: But but really in a very formative state.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so negotiated into, I mean, we we I took the precautionary principle into lots of different places.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't invent the term.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: It already existed in in German law or Sorgen princip.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it was already being applied by others.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't the only person advocating for it.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what I did do was deliberately blur what is and what ought to be in the way the theory and practice was connected.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I advocated for it to be a principle of international law, even though I knew full well I could argue the counter.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I wrote quite a few of the academic articles that made the case for it becoming part of a body of law.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And at three levels all at once, because it was international, European, and domestic.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the cases I took did not were not successful using the principle.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: But but but actually we did manage we and I mean, obviously not just me, many others too were involved, but I felt like I did put a lot of effort into making the case.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the case is for the precautionary principle is an interesting one because it has edges that you need to be very aware of.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I gave a lecture tour in Australia once, I was I had a a heckler that followed me from the I think it was from the mining industry, but his his basic argument, you can call it that, was the precautionary principle was against progress.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I could do his accent or justice, but he would stand up and make that point.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say to him, you know, the principle challenges you to make arguments for action on the environment in circumstances where there is serious or irreversible harm at risk.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you treat that as a as a challenge to innovation, then clearly it's not against progress.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if you accept that the creation of a risk that might be irreversible or or have serious consequences for our natural system, is a challenge worth rising to, and that there's a possibility of finding solutions, either technological solutions or new behavioral solutions.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would argue that that is progress.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so those exchanges were quite interesting.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um how would you view the application of the um precautionary principle to the development of AI?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, isn't it?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because the precautionary principle sets up a threshold before you can use it.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it says you've got to establish that there would be serious or irreversible harm.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because you because the precautionary principle switches the burden of proof.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of having to prove a causal connection between this activity and this harm, you only have to raise the risk that you face serious or irreversible harm.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: In those circumstances, the burden shifts, but not before.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in a way, you've the the the challenge, whether it's for AI or other areas, sometimes the precautionary principle simply says, okay, here's the threshold, but actually we're not dealing with serious or irreversible harm, so you don't get the benefit of the shift of the burden.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: You've still you've then you've got to prove a causal connection between this activity and this harm.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then the state or another actor will intervene to prevent that harm occurring or the risk of that harm occurring.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Could apply to AI.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think AI presents a serious and irreversible risk?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: In this circumstance, does it?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be Yeah, that's uh that's a threshold.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to you've got to be pretty good at arguing that that that that the burden of proof should shift.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I um I'm a m well, as you know, I'm a massive pro-tech opponent, and I'm an optimist about the impact of AI on the world, but I do think it still presents a very real threat and risk.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: The chance of it being fundamentally bad is not zero.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now, a 99% chance, maybe I think it'll be very, very positive, but it's definitely not zero.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that because it's a technology that has multiple forms.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to apply the precaution principle, you have to be disciplined about its application.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've really got to be careful not to just assume that somehow all use of AI has to get over that precautionary threshold.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: That I think would be against progress.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: Have you um you've been in a Waymo, James?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: What did you think?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm I'm okay with it.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: We we went we were in Semfron for Climate Week a couple of weeks ago, and we hadn't been in them.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're like, right, we need to try this, see what it's like.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm sold.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: I felt so much safer in the Waymo than I and he's nodding behind camera than we did with the taxi drivers.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: They were beeping and switching lanes and throwing whereas the Waymo was just like measured, yeah, and then you sort of think, oh, well, I get on planes with autopilot, of course this makes sense.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really there are going to be some really interesting consequences from the widespread use of those.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I we are going to reinvent everything.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Urban landscapes.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this there's clearly ample opportunity for human society to make an absolute hash of this technology, right?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bring up that aren't we?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think and it's getting it's it's useful to use the precautionary principle because you can misuse the precautionary principle and stifle innovation.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can apply it as a discipline and innovate better to find solutions.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think I I think if for those who want one of the reasons why I I did advocate the use of the precautionary principle in the climate change context is because it did make a difference.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, of course, that's why it was resisted.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: We certainly got resistance.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think we held on.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was also a rallying.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Principle for the small island states that the coalition that we built, the Alliance of Small Island States.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: When you um so when you reflect some 30 plus years back on that, um has on balance have the environmental laws and systems that are developed followed been a catalyst for positive change?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you think it has been a barrier to positive progress?
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: I can't really answer that in a single weak raise.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'll I'll try this way.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was absolutely necessary to use the law and to draw upon the principles of the rule of law that allows weak to protect interest against strong.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: We are able to address a series of environmental problems that way.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: And for climate change, there wasn't a better way of addressing the problem than through international agreement, however flawed and difficult and slow.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: I also would argue that in many instances law was necessary to shape markets, redirect interests, provide incentives for things that were in the public interest that would not have just happened if space was left to purely economic or other interests that were not in some way framed by the law.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I've done enough of other things and worked in other domains apart from the law to know that even when you settle something in law, you have not settled it in the real world.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if the if the space for innovation and creativity is shut down by excessive use of the law, by over-regulation, by by institutions getting in the way of people running experiments as to what works and what doesn't work, then you actually slow progress.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very difficult dance.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: In a liberal democracy, it's doubly difficult because of changing changing governments, changing types of government, and because the climate change problem is so large and so complex and so diverse.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't claim that the the world of law that I certainly occupied in the past has provided enough of the answers to problems like climate change or biodiversity loss.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's been reasonably uh good at dealing with I would say more obvious illegality.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think we've done a pretty good job over the years in things like wildlife trade, and I think CITES and the various agreements and the ability to use the criminal law.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think it's been certainly not been certainly not solved the problem of wildlife trade or those sort of areas, but it but it's definitely helped to have clarity in right and wrong.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: If we were um we were having this conversation in the mid to late 90s, even early 2000.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: Try and give people a a sort of flavor and a feel of how public perception on climate change would be and what would that debate look like then?
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like all big ideas and complex problems of interest.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a linear progression.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Life's not a linear progression, let's face it.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's messy.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's messy, circular, you know, it ebbs and flows.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are eddies, there are periods of time when things don't move at all, and then suddenly there's acceleration.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that having done this for a very long time, you have to keep winning arguments over and over and over again.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot believe how much you have to travel down the same road or make the same arguments to a different set of actors.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Where does the resilience and patience to keep doing that come from?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think it's well it well, first of all, it is absolutely essential.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um secondly, I think there is just solid conviction in the set of ideas with which one started.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the it's not that you don't learn and figure out you know, some ideas are better than others over time and you're perfectly at liberty to drop them when they're not when they've proven to be bad ones.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's like um it's like a tree shedding leaves though, right?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's still a tree.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the the the tree good good analogy, the tree is still in the the the the science of climate change the solid understanding of the of the physical problem of climate change.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and now perhaps after lots of experience of trying to solve that problem, the confidence that there are solutions.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that provides some encouragement to persevere.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I would simply say back to your original question that we had moments of very high levels of awareness and understanding and action, and then other things became more pressing or more immune.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this classic problem that human beings have, we all have, which is figuring out what risks we respond to and why.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and our and our hard genetic wiring to respond to fight or flight risk, immediate risk, as opposed to risk that is coming from afar over a long period of time and widely distributed and dissipated, which climate change is.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: So at a period when you are, you know, and there's umpteen other chapters of your legal career that we could do a whole episode on, but the point in time when you are one of the most famous practicing lawyers in the UK, uh, in academia, in pro practice as well, absolutely flying, you decide to start one of the world's first climate change-focused investment bank or funds.
• 51:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: And never having done a day's work in finance.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I uh so why?
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why, in a sense, is simple.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm of a generation whose whole professional life has experienced a uh a shift in power towards first economics and then finance.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want if you want a lever to pull to get things done, you've got to either know that language or work with that language or just deal with that shift in power.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: So at first I had to learn fast about when did you first see that?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: When was your first recognition of, oh, okay, law might not be the fundamental vehicle of change I need?
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: It it starts in the law.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm made sure that I understood international economic law as well as international environmental law, and I taught both.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I spent a lot of time at the intersection of trade and environment.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because before we got actually almost simultaneously with all the climate negotiations, there were all the negotiations around the World Trade Organization, the creation of the WTO, and the intersection between the trade and environment regimes was fraught.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it but it echoed or mirrored all of the conversations that were happening in in domestic politics as well.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: The trade-offs, economy versus environment.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was absolutely there all the way through my career.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, fine.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I need to know, I need to learn that language, I need to understand more.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I I mean, it's not an attractive language to me.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, neither economics nor finance are attractive languages to me.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: I preferred the language of law and philosophy and politics and other languages that we have to marshal to get stuff done in the real world.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that power had moved that way pretty early on.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was counseled to Baker and Mackenzie and building that practice in a big American law firm, I stayed being a barrister, and I still had my academic connections to teaching, and which I loved.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: But building that practice inside, like an entrepreneurial, an intrapreneurial uh development inside a big, then I certainly was the biggest law firm then in the world, Chicago-based.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: But my team was everywhere and and they were great.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just got so fed off of pitching to financial services enterprises, one kind or another, banks and funds and like, and having to make the case for doing something about climate change, having done all the negotiations and worked on the incentives, like carbon pricing and the various other things that were designed to facilitate capital flow into the solutions.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just got fed up of apathy and inertia and short-sightedness, all the obvious cliche things that we know about.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in the end, it was really a case of, well, I just I'm gonna do it myself.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: But even then, I didn't think I'd be in it.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to create it.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and Climate Change Capital was I you know, I was the founder, but I couldn't have done any of it without the other founders, and I didn't have I didn't have a special skill to offer other than having thought of it.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: What year did you found?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: So formally I think we I think we launched in 2002.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I do have strong memories of putting the band together, as it were, in that time.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly around the Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I I took a group of people to the European Investment Bank.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: I had this an original version, funny enough, the original version of climate change capital was a was a a big idea I thought I would take to the European Investment Bank of creating an institution focused on sustainable development that had funds and could provide other forms of capital to enable a response across several sectors.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I put together a team, I took them to the EIB.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: I remember having, we thought we were doing very well.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: We went and had lunch, very fine lunch at the EIB.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: Chateau Peugeot, I remember.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Very grand.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually, afterwards, uh they just said, Oh, but this is, of course, it's completely impossible.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can't, we can't do this.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like a fish riding a bicycle, race.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I was so embarrassed that I had brought these people there.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember I sent cases of Chateau Peugeot as an apology to people who had traveled afar.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't stop.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: We had another go, and we thought, okay, so these institutions are not ready to do this, public institutions.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we better do this with private capital, better raise some money.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: I always get incredibly excited when people tell me something's impossible.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was a stimulus.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: No question.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: So uh slight, slight digression because you'll enjoy this story.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: So one of our estates, we're looking at a large-scale tree planting opportunity.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: Based on the composition of the estate where it is, the the complexities locally, um, you you've got to love the government.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: They desperately want tree planting, but they want to do everything to stop you being able to plant trees.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, okay.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I said, okay, if they don't like fencing in this part of the world, what would it take to do an entire several thousand-acre tree planting scheme in the absence of fencing of any kind?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: Or we can't possibly do it.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, cool.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: I've had a life of being told things are impossible, and they're generally not.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, what if we did this?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, can't possibly do it.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: What if we did this?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, that'd be very expensive.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got some movement.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: How would we then make that bit cheaper?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so this played on at our management team meeting.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_03: And by the afternoon, I got, yeah, actually, we could do that quite easily without changing anything.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like you just have to open the parameters of people's minds, right?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: What I love about the that's impossible, we can't do it.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: And and our head of operations, Dave, is the best at this.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: He just smiles and goes, fantastic.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_03: That means there's an opportunity because no one else has got there yet.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's completely right, isn't it?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it does depend very much on what your instinctive reaction is because you can't really you can't really pretend at that moment.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or you if you don't have that instinctive reaction, it's just really hard to get over the hurdles.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think we've talked about this before, I think there's a certain it depends on where you are when these opportunities come along.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think naivety helps.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not knowing why not.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: Naive enough to start, stubborn enough to continue.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was unquestionably how we did the formation of the Alliance of Small Island States.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's not supposed to be possible.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're not supposed to be able to form a coalition of 43 governments in the climate negotiations, where not only do you not come from any of those places, but you're also in in your twenties and and and you're idealistic young lawyers at Cambridge.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just is not supposed to be possible.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: And with no money either.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not spot.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had we had a research grant from the Ford Foundation.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's not supposed to be possible, right?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: But we did it.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we did it for them, but also we showed it could be done by others.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: And others have followed.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: There have been other attempts since then to build these interesting coalitions of forces.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think naivety helps, perseverance obviously helps once you've got started.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and the sense that uh almost all the things that really matter that are hard to do feature the same levels of resistance, anyways.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, everything's hard, so you may as well try and solve a problem that's worth solving.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:24
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: So you went from an idea and no experience in finance, investment, banking, world at all, to how much undermanagement at its peak?
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: The climate change capital had about it depending on how you count the managed accounts.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I always think it was somewhere around 1.7 billion.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we found when researching.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it and it was they were all first of a kind.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just pause there a second.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's astonishing.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't it from concept to that?
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: In the early 2000s, when half your audience would be going, This doesn't exist, it's not real, what are you talking about?
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: We're focused on the millennium bug.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: And for young people out there, everyone thought all the computers were going to stop and the planes were gonna fall out of the sky on the 1st of January 2000.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: James, that's a yeah.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, your career and life is a list of astonishing things, but that is astonishing.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was amazing that we were able to do that, and we attracted some really good people.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the money was pretty conservative money, apart from the very, very early stages.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the money that filled those funds was big Dutch pension funds mostly.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and I would say, why are they putting money in this completely unproven strategy?
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: What we didn't realize, nobody did, is that we were at the top end of a bull run, and these were alternative alternatives.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: And people who had money to place in those categories in the big pension funds were essentially backing our knowledge of a change in a regulatory environment.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if you if you if you just take away climate change completely and all the motivations we had, and we were, you know, a mission-driven enterprise, those characteristics enable people who didn't necessarily share that mission to be attracted to investing in us.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that was quite an I probably wasn't aware of that at the time.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking back, I realized that we got that money.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: We were lucky to get that money at that time, and then and then we were unlucky to hit the financial crisis when we did, when we were at maximum walk speed growth and miles away from exits.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_03: So experiencing that arc and that curve, James, the up and the down, where are we now in terms of a curve in your mind?
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, we're in a period of time where the the the whole field is contested and and full of very polarized political views, but where the underlying facts are the same and the evidence stronger, and the solutions are more available and better and at lower cost.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this is one of those occasions where uh the the dip or the quietness of the main protagonists and the risk involved in being visible, especially in the States.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a risky business being out of climate in many parts of the US, especially in Washington at the moment.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the fundamentals are good, and the set of solutions are not just good, but they're better than the source of the problem.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the transition away from fossil fuels is well underway, and although it is still highly contested politically, the economic and financial case for the transition is strong, even without proper valuation of the consequences of inaction, which we still haven't got.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a Zurich Climate Week last week.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, this week.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um really amazing.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I articulated that for me, New York Climate Week was all about capital.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, San Fran was all about tech, Zurich was actually all about the environment and impact.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost like a uh a sort of purist version of what that offered.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: And in one of the discussions and debates, there was someone who asked for, well, what have we actually achieved in the environment sector?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: And um a group at the back of the room said, hold on a second.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_03: When I was growing up, acid rain was the problem.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not hole in the ozone layer.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: We've moved past that one.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_03: Someone else cited the rebounding whale numbers globally as being a big positive.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_03: From your perspective, are they the ones we can point to in terms of the sort of biggest environmental wins and progress?
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all good.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: Those were all good.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those were all I mean, I didn't work so much on the acid rain issue, but yeah, I mean, put put in a lot of hours doing negotiations on whales and dolphins, and and actually loved it, loved doing that work, and and it has been very successful.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it remarkably so.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you include the uh large areas of Antarctic that allowed the breeding grounds of the great whales to recover, um, which it should, that was also a legal agreement whether it holds in uh you know there's still a lot of pressure to take those restrictions away but it has been a success.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_03: And the other example quoted was the growth of renewables and the acceleration and especially in China.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah with um because I think you often find the divide where people oh what about China?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then someone pipes up with what do you mean what about China?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: Are you aware and I was oh no wow in terms of the growth of renewables.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah largest renewables market in the world by far.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're number one in pretty much everything that is a solution in the electrification of the economy.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: So they're number one in wind, solar, batteries, electric vehicles, inverters that the means by which they're all brought together you um China gives us a unique case study of cost.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think you you hold a very unique perspective having observed the UK and the UK economy in terms of your your mindset can you recall each of the chapters of 60s 70s 80s 90s like in terms of yeah I don't know I I don't think I'm very probably not very accurately but I no I have I've definitely experienced these waves and and felt what it really feels like to have a wave just crash and and you find that you've just lost totally lost momentum.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and you've got to build it up again.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I that's happened a lot.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_03: When did the UK economy feel the most vibrant not necessarily not just the economy but the UK when did it feel the most particular point not just one where was there excitement and momentum I want to tell you that in many instances those are periods where there's still quite a lot of conflict right there are very it's then they're not the the productive periods are not everybody's all happy and everything is smooth and it's all easy and that that doesn't exist.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there were some very contentious periods of of the 90s were extremely polarized points of view, but there was on the whole a positive energy produced by that.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I mean they're classically associated with particular governments although in some times that's a little bit wrong way around, you know, because the governments also feed off an energy they don't necessarily create it.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the the first Blair government would be an example of that.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there were periods of time where for the subjects the the subject matter I worked on there was the the energy was constructive and positive and it generally coincided with a period where people felt that they had the if you like them space in their minds and their to to to think to look ahead to feel confident about the future.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is an interesting characteristic and you certainly have it in countries like China where that confidence is expressed in you know in long-term vision.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: At a various stages economies feel positive about a long-term future that's a very good place for for innovating creating and getting stuff done as soon as people lose that confidence they they withdraw they risk less uh there's less scope for doing things differently and people tend to hunker down and try and ride stuff out and that's those are those are not good periods those are negative periods.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_03: And do you think we're at the bottom of a wave yet?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: Have we got somewhere to go?
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_03: What does it feel like just intuitively for you?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like there's those there's this too ready acceptance of a of an inevitable decline.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that feeling and there's a lot of anxiety about a future that's less good than a past that's poor state of mind.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Equally a depressive state of mind is not productive fatalism is not productive nostalgia is really not productive and I do have concerns about uh a kind of fatalistic drift towards uh autocratic government I see that in many parts of the world and there's obviously risk of it happening that partly from that experience of growing up in Lebanon I know how quickly you can go from a from a very from a thriving political economy to one that descends into something that is anarchic and facilitates tribal division that's that is a real risk even in a country like this that has a long history of managing those sorts of conflicts pretty well however I would I do I do feel as if the the the desire to fix these big systemic problems has not gone away and and I'm actually quite confident in the generation behind me or generations behind me that would like to let go of some of the orthodoxies for sure and and hopefully make use of some of these incredibly powerful technologies emerging in the AI space to reinvigorate and recalibrate what our economy looks like.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I genuinely think that the main challenges are not in the technology and economic space but they're essentially philosophical and and they do require us to rethink our relationship with the natural world for sure but also with with others who are you know sharing a planet that's very very definitely at risk from our from the way we run our economies.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_03: And if you were if you were sat there ready to go again into the financial world where do you see the opportunities now?
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Where would you be looking for that sort of same level of disruptive innovation that you exhibited with climate change capital?
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well they're they're they're in they're in two broad categories for me.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean obviously many but for me they're there are in two broad categories one is is pushing on with the suite of technologies we already have that are ready to win big to use a phrase that's used by others.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they are in the convergence between renewables storage digital management of electrons electric vehicles and the electrification of the economy as a whole that's underway but that mission is not complete.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it's a really interesting perspective because I think people too quickly write an industry off as being sort of saturated and unable to be disrupted.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you look at Octopus energy so everyone's like there is no room for innovation this is full and it's done and Greg Jackson and Simon Rogerson said we'll see.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah and then you look at probably the you know one of the most successful UK um entrepreneurial and um business stories of the last few years and that's business you know quite well yeah yeah I I I like being part of the octopus story very much and I like their attitude I like the fact that they came into the energy sector without a background in energy but a background in technology and said actually this is a system we have we understand systems we understand how to make six systems work better and making electrons is very different from burning fossil fuels so yeah I do I do really like being part of the octopus story and I I think that so that space is not done.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they are not done there's way more to go and the the convergence between these technologies is essentially a chemistry and software problem and it's being solved now much of the barrier to it being solved more rapidly is politics, policy law.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the the frameworks that we've got do not enable those technologies to flourish.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: They've done pretty well despite being disadvantaged by a system that favors previous technologies and then that that job that reform job is not done.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_03: So as well as the the beauty of having you is the such such varied perspectives as well because so if you take those areas of opportunity you described the intersection of uh modernisation tech uh the electric grid the planet if you were starting that business now in those sectors would you try and start it in the UK knowing what you know or are there other jurisdictions that you would say do you know what that's the place to be I think that depends very much on other sort of real life situations as opposed to the theory because you don't have a completely open blank space for that right so I used to go to China with climate change capital we had lots of investments in many different provinces and I I would set off very excited and convinced limited partner investment and projects.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah we had we had a quite a big office in Beijing we had investments I think in nine different provinces and you know we and we also worked on um you know public policy ideas you know with uh you know with professors at Qinghua University and researcher trying to figure out how to incentivize investment in solutions in China and it would be exhilarating and halfway through the trip I think this is just where I've got to be you know if I want to work on climate change I've just got to be in China because this is this is going to be the fulcrum and then by the end of the trip I really couldn't wait to get home because how I feel about the US Yeah because home is different right ho home is a home is a word that resonates in your it's physical it resonates in your chest right and so the real answer to your question is no I still do it here because this is where home is and I've got reasons to be here family and friends and reasons to be here but the places where there are the biggest levers to fix these systemic problems are are China and I would say now to a lesser extent the US my my hypothesis is um there's never been a better time to buy land and if you look up in five years.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_03: We will we will see a similar thing where do you remember about five or six years ago all the people who had benefited from the flip in 2008 suddenly were atop of every rich list you could find.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was like oh they'd taken the short in 2008 etc I think we're going to see a very similar thing that Because it can't persist yes this is a a moment a digression a chapter of difference that Trump is leading and and don't get I'm not I'm not taking this from a sort of moralistic ethical perspective.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_03: My commentary of this particular is the economic opportunity presented by do I want him to be drilling everywhere?
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_03: No of course I don't but does him drilling create a counter opportunity to your chessboard there's a pro and con to every move on it I think the opportunity that comes is acquisition of land in the US right now.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah interesting because that that that's the other area so if I if I were I mean going again I would put real effort into the suite of technologies that pull together the parts that we know work but will work brilliantly when combined I think octopus will do very well in that space too but if I if I was I I I think that's fantastic territory and it's got to be global.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I I'm already working in those spaces in in renewables businesses that are also digital infrastructure businesses in Africa and South Asia I would keep going in that space.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the other one would be land restoration of land the commitment to restore if you like to try and find that combination of multiple usage of land with regeneration in its fullest sense including social sense because there are places that are still if you like with the new technologies capable of being regenerated that have multiple functions and have been neglected or have been or in some cases have been developed in an agricultural economy that's been uh wasteful of the of the environmental resources that they that they were bestowed with.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I have actually been spending some time advising a a a US conservation organization has a very particular specialist role of financing the acquisition of land that has high conservation value.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And but it's been difficult to get people here in Europe to be interested now for all these reasons that we know about in the States in land.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I agree with you that I I don't think it's just the states too I think it's the it's the idea that now is a good moment to be taking these fundamentals and applying them it's not it's not just the sort of buying the dip idea although that's definitely there but this is a moment when serious people get serious about doing this work.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_03: So let me let me give you my working hypothesis um James I I think the more obsessive we become about the digitalization of the world the more reliant we are on nature so um every single one of the huge AI tech companies hyperscalers the infrastructure providers they need space energy water and an environmental and social license to operate.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_03: So you've already got 10 states in the US banning the use of data centers.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_03: You have got more money being raised than ever before I heard the last quarter described as the most aggressive quarter in US capitalism which means the most aggressive quarter in capitalism.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yep and at the same time the sentiment outside of Silicon Valley about AI is the worst it's possible to have so if you fast forward if these companies cannot find the energy they need which goes back to your octopus example and the need to do that and if they cannot secure the social environmental license to operate which will require them as a bare minimum to show that they are having a net positive effect on climate and environment and socially in terms of jobs if they don't do that they won't be able to operate and they are all committed into the trillions of stack trillions of dollars.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I think and it's why we spent so much time in San Francisco I've I've just talked about because I do not see a world if we fast forward 10 however many years where there is not a suite of privately developed national parks and nature reserves owned by Anthropic and OpenAI and Nvidia and Microsoft.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because in the absence of that they won't be able to deliver the fundamental elements of their business model.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So here's here's where strong strong fun enough in in my podcast that I do with my goddaughter Daisy in Fossil vs Future we had a conversation about data centers that I had a couple actually that have emphasized exactly this the fundamental connection between energy obvious the real risk to water also equally obvious but the social license is actually now linked to both those things in a very obvious way.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we've now got actual stories of revolt in some parts of the states in particular and the scale of these operations is so big that you know the resistance will get very uncomfortable and the capital will get nervous because the deployment's so huge.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even even putting that amount of money in the hands of these large corporations in order to build these if if you get stuck in the process and it gets uncomfortable too.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think people realize the bet these companies are making so they're having to project growth patterns two years ahead and write checks in the hundreds of billion to deploy the infrastructure to run these models and these AI systems.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_03: If they don't deploy enough their model will fail because the service they provide will be terrible if they overdeploy they will be unable to service the debt associated with those we may see an OpenAI and anthropic uh um a meta go bust in months yeah this won't be like the decline of Enron or businesses like that who over a couple of years faded away or even even the Yahoos of this world who limped their way through and popped after five years or so these could be instantaneous.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah these are going to be multi-billion dollar organizations that could just disappear yeah I know well when when you look at it it's quite possible that you know one or other them is probably quite close already.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I don't know I don't know enough I don't so be careful and not to not to exaggerate uh but the the feeling is that that incredibly high risk game of capital accumulation obviously at a cost most of it is debt actually means that there may well be someone in that group who who loses that game and they go down hard.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_03: When you look at the search engines like Google with a 21st search engine which means 20 of them we don't remember anymore.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah so Alta Vista Ask Jeeves Yahoo all those things that that came beforehand um we're gonna see it but it'll just be at such a but it's kind of indicative of society in general we're at a pace and a ferocity that we've we've not seen before.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well that is something we should when you asked me before how do I feel having been through these waves you know where are we now that's actually a good cue for where are we now because I did I wasn't willing to go down the inevitable decline route although I know there's a lot of that feeling about and there's a lot of evidence hard evidence that I genuinely don't feel that but I mean I'm an optimist.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: No and so am I so I I don't mind confessing that that is a bias.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I I would argue I I tried to offer some optimism associated with the use of these technologies and a sort of attitude of mind that I happen to like in a younger generation and I'm attracted to their way of looking at the world if I could generalize.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think that we are in a phenomenally creative moment where these tensions are high, the risks are high that we get this horribly wrong as a society.
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But those are good moments to feel like the pace, the incredible pace of change which we are definitely experiencing could lead us out of a malaise, a sense of decline that we just could simply might not be able to afford the moment to feel as if we are in decline because everything is changing so fast.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_03: That I think is stimulating in a good way without whether people's argument is that it's positive or negative, no one can argue there's no energy around.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_03: It is not inertia no you know post immediately post two thousand eight eight nine ten it was just Nothing was happening, good or bad, like everything was done.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_03: It was just stopped.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas now at least, AI, technology, climate change, biodiversity collapse, whether you view those as good or bad, they are forces that are at play.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got some force, if let's go to a cricket analogy, a topic you and I both love, um, it's a hell of a lot easier to score if there's pace on the ball.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's true.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you and you see that now in the way the game is played.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's also it's also why it's exciting.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I do love the game, as you know.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also experiencing extraordinary change right now.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's somehow mimics, or you know, it does actually come from some of the same forces, you know, where power is shifting in the world.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who's interested in the game now?
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who's playing the game now?
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_00: How are they playing the game?
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the T20.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_03: Every dot ball, they plant 19 trees.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_03: What what a connectivity of our respective worlds in terms of that.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um uh so Chris Winter and all anti-cricket people can turn off now because this is about to get very crickety.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_03: But I and um niche audience, this analogy, but I just think the environment sector and natural capital is is the equivalent is test to T20 cricket.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_03: We've gone from a slow labored purview of the elite, the environment owner will do that gently and quietly in the NGO space.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_03: Test cricket, everything stays the same, nice and slow, accumulate improvement over time, don't change a thing, to the natural capital sector, which is T20.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_03: Run rate matters because people want a return on investment now.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just do things slowly.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_03: We need to have a brand and a reach, and we need to attract talent and people.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I just think it's playing out in lifetime.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite a stretch, Rich, but I like it.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one thing that I I will say, and for the benefit of the audience, I'm they're all cricket fans.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm I'm chair of the Professional Cricketers Association.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the best job.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good job, yeah.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great role.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and my yeah, I need my responsibility is to to represent the interests of the players.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there are more professional cricketers than have ever been, largely because of the women's game is now a professional game.
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's it's brilliant that there are new people playing, there are new audiences for those new people playing, but there's also a new take on the game that has had to market to new audiences in order to refresh it and to have something to sell that is both connected to the past, but very different.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you could see it with the Indian Premier League, with the franchises that are growing up, um, is largely dominated by very wealthy Indians or Americans of Indian origin.
• 1:31:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's certainly the love of the game there and the sheer size of it.
• 1:31:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you you you would know that probably the most watched games of cricket are in India, or they are between India and Pakistan where you can guarantee an audience of over a billion.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Have you um have you listened to the acquired podcast on this?
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_03: There is a five-hour background of the entire development, the IPL podcast from concept to where it was like six months ago.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um I I have given that as mandatory listening to like half our leadership team who don't like cricket, and without a shadow of a doubt, they've come back and gone, that was incredible.
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because it is such a story in business development and strategy, and and and knowing who your new audience is and how you get to them, and the sociodynamics of what informs that.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite things was the realization that the female of the household controls the viewing that the zapper, they gave franchises to famous Bollywood celebrities to start with because you could see them in the crowd and how and the and the meteoric rise gone from a concept to one of the top two or three most valuable leagues in the world in the space of like 10 years.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's an incredible story.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is, and it and but it also tells a story of where power in the world has moved.
• 1:32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I, and partly in conversation with octopus and and and and others who I would love it, love it if we could do more to connect the world of sport and climate and nature.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not straightforward because you can't.
• 1:32:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes they're quite complex, complex messages and and it, and they're not necessarily best delivered by well-known personalities in in sport or previously in the movies, but but there's a lot you can do with the with with sport to a communicate, but also to organize the doing.
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think what you can do with Stadia, but also ground cricket happens to be particularly useful for communicating the value of green space.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know that I I hope this is not just my sort of desire to pull together interests.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or your passions.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I but I I'm trying.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it leads to good things.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are more and more examples of people working at this intersection between sport and climate and nature, and I and I I like it.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, James, I could and do love talking to you for hours.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_03: You have um a wholly unique perspective on the world we live in, and I value you for sharing it.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I am not gonna um take up more of your time than you've been generous to give, but um I like to end the podcast with the same question each time.
• 1:34:04
  SPEAKER_03: What's the one question I haven't asked you but you wish I had?
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we s we got close, but not into how you balance lives lived simultaneously working lives, family lives, friendship lives, reflective lives on your own in quiet spaces.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not offering an answer that is but I'll try because I often when I do have a younger colleague, for example, who's fallen in love and wants to get married or or wants to have that sort of conversation between generations about how to live life I like it if we if we go a couple of rungs into deeper the sort of search for balance in life that matters beyond, especially if, as you know, you have a you have a drive and a and a and a desire to achieve that is strong.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_00: How do you find a way of working out how to live well and to be open to support a partner who might have a similar drive?
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_02: That has been an experience I have had and have now.
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned a lot about female leadership from my wife, um, and I've tried hard not to get in her way as she rises to the top of the legal profession, our court of appeal judge, and chairman of the sentencing council, and you know, at the end of time, I mean just unbelievable overachievement.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_00: But no, we've just had a very lovely wedding of our youngest daughter, and we have worked hard at trying to be good for each other, good for good as parents, close as parents.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that our kids are uh three girls, they're a they're a sisterhood.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, they're a family within a family, they're strong.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_02: But boys are hard work and haven't always got it right.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I very much like the answer to the question, what about how you balance these lives has got to be based at some level in in the humility to accept that it isn't all about your career and that there are aspirations that you might have to live well, live joyously, live a life full of love, that are very often in conflict with an aggressive pursuit of a certain type of success.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, that's the question.
• 1:37:38
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a um We started with Bowie and we'll end with and I and I wanted to do that because of the clear amount of reinventions that you had throughout your life so far.
• 1:37:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:37:52
  SPEAKER_03: Are you are you happy in content, James?
• 1:37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Or is there another one or two definitive reinventions and chapters left?
• 1:38:05
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 1:38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I'm I although I do occasionally crave the uh a sense of quiet fulfillment, uh sort of lower energy enjoyment of things done, I'm not going to lose uh desire to do or rethink or reimagine something that matters to me.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I I know that I mean it's a great it's a it's one of Socrates' great observations about how one knows oneself and it is in conversation with others about the things that matter.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know myself well enough that in those conversations there will be an awareness of something else to do that I would like to be a part of.
• 1:39:01
  SPEAKER_00: More often than not now, in support of someone else's, if I don't quite have the energy to construct the thing that gets that job done, I could help someone else to do it and feel of use.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think you've got a couple more.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh James, I've adored part one of the podcast.
• 1:39:22
  SPEAKER_03: We we have to do this again because there's so many more stories to share.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um thank you.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've loved every minute.
• 1:39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, bless you.
• 1:39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks very much.