Latest / Trumponomics / John Kerry Explains Why the Glasgow Climate Deal Matters
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the
- 0:10Speaker 1: global economy to you. You probably feel like you've already
- 0:13Speaker 1: heard plenty about the COP twenty six climate change conference
- 0:17Speaker 1: in Glasgow the other day. If you've been paying attention,
- 0:20Speaker 1: you may also remember some of the other COP meetings
- 0:23Speaker 1: COP twenty one in Paris, and I'll bet you know
- 0:27Speaker 1: that one. Also memorable for some was COP fifteen in
- 0:31Speaker 1: Copenhagen a few years before. That considered a bit of
- 0:34Speaker 1: a flop. But President Biden's Special Envoy on Climate, John Kerry,
- 0:40Speaker 1: has been at this game so long. He was at
- 0:42Speaker 1: the Earth Summit in Rio in which led to the
- 0:46Speaker 1: COP process in the first place. So I was fascinated
- 0:49Speaker 1: to get his long view on COPY when I spoke
- 0:53Speaker 1: to him on the last day of the New Economy
- 0:55Speaker 1: Forum last week. I also watched to find out what
- 0:58Speaker 1: that much trumpeted US China statement on climate cooperation was
- 1:03Speaker 1: actually going to achieve. He negotiated it, after all. We
- 1:07Speaker 1: have an edited version of that conversation in a little while.
- 1:10Speaker 1: I'll also be asking our Eurozone economist may VERA. Kusa,
- 1:14Speaker 1: why decarbonizing the economy could be a recipe for higher inflation.
- 1:19Speaker 1: But first something very different and important and thoughtful report
- 1:24Speaker 1: from Frankfurt based economy reporter Carolyn look on a subject
- 1:28Speaker 1: we haven't touched on before here on stephanomics, the economic
- 1:32Speaker 1: impact of violence against women. I should warn you this
- 1:36Speaker 1: piece does discuss experiences of domestic violence, medicraft, and I
- 1:49Speaker 1: don't have the energy and courage I once had, even
- 1:54Speaker 1: after a thousand therapies. It's broken and it's horrible because
- 1:59Speaker 1: that's something to have to live with. You can't change it.
- 2:04Speaker 1: Tanya is vivacious, adventurous, has an infectious laugh. In her
- 2:09Speaker 1: own words, She's a tough woman, one who worked many
- 2:12Speaker 1: different jobs when she was younger, first as a medical assistant,
- 2:16Speaker 1: than as an alternative medical practitioner, and later organizing events
- 2:20Speaker 1: and concerts in her native Hamburg. She always dreamed of
- 2:24Speaker 1: leaving Germany and moving abroad, and, like many of us,
- 2:28Speaker 1: of being cared for. She thought she found that when
- 2:32Speaker 1: she met her ex boyfriend about two decades ago. He
- 2:35Speaker 1: was eight years her senior and seemed like the first
- 2:38Speaker 1: man who really loved her. Now fifty two, Tanya realizes
- 2:43Speaker 1: it wasn't all that it seemed. Though. Tanya is not
- 2:46Speaker 1: her real name, which we've changed for her protection. In
- 2:53Speaker 1: I wasn't the first woman he beat up or was
- 2:56Speaker 1: violent against. There were apparently a few before me, and
- 3:00Speaker 1: he tell people in advance that I was mentally ill
- 3:03Speaker 1: and hysterical, just so that when he beat me up
- 3:07Speaker 1: he could say, yeah, I told you she's crazy. The
- 3:18Speaker 1: abuse began early in their relationship. Tanya broke up with
- 3:22Speaker 1: him at one point, but gave him a second chance.
- 3:25Speaker 1: They eventually decided to leave Germany and live in a
- 3:28Speaker 1: mobile home on the Greek island of Crete, which for
- 3:31Speaker 1: many would seem like a romantic adventure, but while there,
- 3:35Speaker 1: he locked her up, beat her, and later abandoned her
- 3:38Speaker 1: on a beach, leaving her desperate and helpless in a
- 3:41Speaker 1: foreign country with few avenues for support. She felt she
- 3:46Speaker 1: had no choice but to return to Germany with him,
- 3:49Speaker 1: and it was only there that she managed to end
- 3:51Speaker 1: the two year nightmare when a colleague gave her a
- 3:54Speaker 1: place to stay. The violence Tanya had to experience is
- 3:59Speaker 1: unfortunately far from rare. One in three women experienced some
- 4:04Speaker 1: form of physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner
- 4:07Speaker 1: or non partner, according to the World Health Organization. While
- 4:12Speaker 1: the issue is sometimes framed as a personal issue and
- 4:15Speaker 1: one that's more common in developing countries, It's actually pervasive
- 4:18Speaker 1: across countries and carries deep emotional and economic costs, both
- 4:23Speaker 1: for victims and for wider society. Companies have started waking
- 4:27Speaker 1: up to this fact after a number of studies showed
- 4:29Speaker 1: how domestic abuse incurs both direct and indirect costs for
- 4:33Speaker 1: the economy, beyond the already substantial legal bills, health and
- 4:38Speaker 1: shelter costs. Victims naturally lose productivity when they suffer domestic abuse,
- 4:43Speaker 1: or might miss work altogether. In two thousand nineteen, Vodafone
- 4:48Speaker 1: became the first company to offer ten days of paid
- 4:50Speaker 1: leave to victims, and this year Facebook followed with twenty
- 4:54Speaker 1: days of paid leave. Here's chief operating officer Cheryl Sandberg
- 4:58Speaker 1: speaking on the day the policy was announced. This is
- 5:01Speaker 1: something that affects everyone, including our employees. It's a situation
- 5:06Speaker 1: where you need paid time off, and not just for yourself,
- 5:10Speaker 1: but for a loved one. And we're hoping, we're hoping that,
- 5:14Speaker 1: um this is a problem other companies will start tackling
- 5:17Speaker 1: as well. A huge part of the problem, as Tanya's
- 5:23Speaker 1: case showed, is that attitudes in the workplace are often
- 5:25Speaker 1: a huge deterrent to getting support in the first place.
- 5:29Speaker 1: When she left her violent partner, several of her male
- 5:32Speaker 1: colleagues initially took turns driving her to and from work
- 5:36Speaker 1: to keep her safe, but none of them actually talked
- 5:38Speaker 1: to her, she says, or seemed to care very much. Eventually,
- 5:42Speaker 1: her boss began harassing her and she had to quit
- 5:45Speaker 1: her job. After my experience with domestic violence, I wanted
- 5:53Speaker 1: to make decisions for myself. I didn't want to be
- 5:56Speaker 1: an employee somewhere and let someone have power over Nowadays,
- 6:05Speaker 1: Tanya as a freelance designer. It doesn't pay much, but
- 6:08Speaker 1: she'd rather do that than share control with a workplace
- 6:11Speaker 1: that doesn't have her best interests in mind. Employers could
- 6:16Speaker 1: actually do a lot to help victims. After all, where
- 6:19Speaker 1: we work is where we spend one of the largest
- 6:21Speaker 1: portions of our time. That's according to Jane Pillinger, an
- 6:25Speaker 1: independent gender expert who worked with the u N and
- 6:29Speaker 1: it's International Labor organization on domestic violence policy. One of
- 6:33Speaker 1: the really interesting things from the work that I've been
- 6:36Speaker 1: involved in with trade unions and with companies across the
- 6:40Speaker 1: world is just how relevant it is to be doing
- 6:44Speaker 1: awareness raising in the workplace, giving people the tools to
- 6:49Speaker 1: spot the signs, to communicate with somebody who's who's experiencing
- 6:52Speaker 1: domestic abuse, because you might not be able to solve
- 6:55Speaker 1: the problem, but you can open the door to helping
- 6:59Speaker 1: somebody take the first step to surviving to mystic abuse.
- 7:05Speaker 1: In Germany, where Tanya is from, flawed attitudes about partner
- 7:09Speaker 1: violence run deep. A recent study by an organization called
- 7:13Speaker 1: front Line one hundred surveyed hundreds of business owners, managers,
- 7:17Speaker 1: and executives and showed that one in four believed that
- 7:20Speaker 1: there are reasons that can justify physical violence against a partner.
- 7:25Speaker 1: The survey respondents, who were mostly men, most often selected
- 7:30Speaker 1: reasons such as not completing one's housework or refusing to
- 7:34Speaker 1: have sex with the other as justifying such violence. German
- 7:39Speaker 1: women's attitudes are just as concerning. Nearly twenty of women
- 7:44Speaker 1: consider a husband to be justified in hitting or beating
- 7:47Speaker 1: his wife, according to a two thousan c D report.
- 7:52Speaker 1: That's more than in any other country in Europe. The
- 7:56Speaker 1: bottom line of all this is that blindness towards the
- 7:59Speaker 1: troubling in sequences of domestic abuse is costing economies billions.
- 8:04Speaker 1: The European Institute for Gender Equality estimates that the cost
- 8:08Speaker 1: of gender based violence across the European Union is three
- 8:12Speaker 1: hundred sixty six billion euros a year. Sylvia Sako, a
- 8:16Speaker 1: professor at the Brandenburg University of Technology, has studied the
- 8:20Speaker 1: cost of domestic violence in Germany and says that companies
- 8:23Speaker 1: need to do much more to stand up for victims.
- 8:27Speaker 1: Here she is discussing one case she was involved in
- 8:30Speaker 1: in which a female stalking victim spent years trying unsuccessfully
- 8:34Speaker 1: to get help. You have done on She already exhausted
- 8:41Speaker 1: all sorts of police measures and everything was unsuccessful. She
- 8:45Speaker 1: then lost her job. She became chronically ill for a
- 8:47Speaker 1: long time, and then years later turned to the employer
- 8:51Speaker 1: of the stalker. I eat the perpetrator and asked him
- 8:55Speaker 1: for a conversation. The perpetrator's boss ended up confronting his
- 9:03Speaker 1: employee about his actions, and it was only then that
- 9:06Speaker 1: the starking finally stopped after years of trying to get help.
- 9:10Speaker 1: Here's Jane Pillinger again. I suppose you know a lot
- 9:13Speaker 1: of employers have said, why is it my responsibility, it's
- 9:17Speaker 1: a private issue in the home. Well, it's it is
- 9:20Speaker 1: a private issue in the home, but you know it
- 9:23Speaker 1: spills over into the workplace, and that's the issue for
- 9:28Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. I'm Caroline luck Are now as advertised, here's
- 9:44Speaker 1: that conversation with Presidential Special Envoy on Climate Change John
- 9:48Speaker 1: Kerry for the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. One of the
- 9:52Speaker 1: I guess relatively few positive surprises out of the Glasgow
- 9:58Speaker 1: Summit was the US China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Climate
- 10:05Speaker 1: enormous symbolic significance. Clearly there haven't been a lot of
- 10:08Speaker 1: joint US China or anything for a while. But what
- 10:12Speaker 1: practical difference when we look at the words in that document,
- 10:15Speaker 1: what practical difference are they going to make to the
- 10:18Speaker 1: battle to contain climate change? Stephanie, the China Agreement is,
- 10:24Speaker 1: in fact, I think significant. I'm not saying that because
- 10:29Speaker 1: negotiated it with Shia Jama, who is a long time
- 10:34Speaker 1: associate and friend. He and I know each other quite
- 10:37Speaker 1: well over twenty plus years UM and we've worked at this, uh,
- 10:42Speaker 1: this issue. UH. The agreement is five pages that lay
- 10:48Speaker 1: out our cooperative effort not just on methane and CEO two,
- 10:54Speaker 1: but also on deforestation and the creation of a working
- 10:59Speaker 1: group between our two countries which we are now immediately
- 11:04Speaker 1: going to begin to activate. And I hope that our
- 11:07Speaker 1: working together will increase the sharing of data, increase the
- 11:12Speaker 1: sharing of of options, and begin to engage us in
- 11:17Speaker 1: a very important dialogue with the top leadership of both
- 11:20Speaker 1: of our countries. UM And and that's our hope. But importantly,
- 11:26Speaker 1: the agreement is quite specific in addressing methane with a
- 11:32Speaker 1: specific date for action. And the pledge is that we
- 11:36Speaker 1: will reduce methane by on a global basis, which doesn't
- 11:41Speaker 1: mean any individual country is doing the percent, but in
- 11:44Speaker 1: contributed global aggregation we will get a thirty percent reduction
- 11:49Speaker 1: on a global basis. And and trying to agreed UM
- 11:55Speaker 1: to work with us to lay out an ambitious these
- 11:58Speaker 1: these are the words AMBITI a national action plan which
- 12:03Speaker 1: China must submit and and begin acting on by copy
- 12:07Speaker 1: seven a year from now in uh in Charmel Shake.
- 12:12Speaker 1: So if we were to do the thirty percent reduction
- 12:16Speaker 1: of methane on a global basis by as Fati Birol
- 12:22Speaker 1: of the I e A has made clear to us,
- 12:24Speaker 1: that is the equivalent of taking all the cars of
- 12:28Speaker 1: the world, all the trucks of the world, all the
- 12:31Speaker 1: ships of the world, all the planes of the world
- 12:34Speaker 1: to zero emissions. By so you can get a sentence
- 12:39Speaker 1: of the enormity of what the reduction of methane can mean.
- 12:42Speaker 1: It's about a point to degree reduction in the rise
- 12:46Speaker 1: of the Earth's temperature and it's the single biggest, fastest
- 12:51Speaker 1: grab that we can make for dealing with this problem.
- 12:54Speaker 1: The third thing that the agreement does is sets a
- 12:59Speaker 1: date currently for when China, in the commencement of its
- 13:05Speaker 1: fifteen five year plant, begins to phase down the consumption
- 13:12Speaker 1: of coal and does so with an agreement with us
- 13:17Speaker 1: that together we will work to make best efforts to
- 13:21Speaker 1: accelerate the reduction the phase out of coal. So all
- 13:27Speaker 1: of what we do in Glasgow, or did in Glasgow
- 13:30Speaker 1: obviously results in words reduced to paper, but that is
- 13:35Speaker 1: what brought us to Glasgow, that is what resulted in
- 13:38Speaker 1: the submission of a National Determined Contributions or n d
- 13:43Speaker 1: c s the production of emissions. It's the words translated
- 13:47Speaker 1: into actions that actually resulted in our committing to additional
- 13:54Speaker 1: funds forty a doubling of the amount of money that
- 13:58Speaker 1: goes into adaptation of significant recognition of the challenge of
- 14:02Speaker 1: loss and damages with the beginning of a dialogue that
- 14:06Speaker 1: will take place over the next year to figure out
- 14:09Speaker 1: how we deal with that. You mentioned the sums for
- 14:19Speaker 1: adaptation and mitigation for the developing countries. That was one
- 14:24Speaker 1: aspect of this agreement that certainly felt short and for
- 14:28Speaker 1: many who were there through all of the negotiations left
- 14:32Speaker 1: a kind of bitter taste in their in their mouths,
- 14:34Speaker 1: because it felt that it seemed too many that very
- 14:39Speaker 1: little progress have been made in really offering developing countries
- 14:43Speaker 1: a path two develop as well as be part of
- 14:48Speaker 1: this climate action. Do you understand those who felt disappointed
- 14:53Speaker 1: by what came out of it, the lack of actual
- 14:56Speaker 1: money on the loss and damage and the failure to
- 14:58Speaker 1: even meet the hundred billion dollar target, which you've admitted
- 15:01Speaker 1: was is nothing in the scheme of things of what's
- 15:04Speaker 1: going to be needed. Well, look, let me let me
- 15:06Speaker 1: be more Stephanie. I'm glad you asked the question because
- 15:09Speaker 1: I really wanted to tackle that. You know, the hundred
- 15:12Speaker 1: billion was a goal. It's become a target, but it
- 15:16Speaker 1: was a goal. It was pulled out of the air
- 15:18Speaker 1: by Gordon Brown. I think in Copenhagen Uh. Where they
- 15:22Speaker 1: were trying to find agreement and and they decided to
- 15:26Speaker 1: be a hundred billion. We accepted that in Paris when
- 15:30Speaker 1: we negotiated it. But as I said, it was the
- 15:33Speaker 1: goal of a hundred billion. When I took this job on,
- 15:37Speaker 1: we were at sixty seven billion for the year. Uh
- 15:44Speaker 1: excuse me, And um, that's the first year the Biden
- 15:48Speaker 1: administration could step up, Folks. A guy named Donald Trump
- 15:52Speaker 1: cut all the funding, and a guy named Donald Trump
- 15:55Speaker 1: pulled out of the agreement. And so when Joe Biden
- 15:58Speaker 1: became president, the first budget he is in front of
- 16:00Speaker 1: them is that budget we're working on right now. And
- 16:03Speaker 1: we put eleven point four billion into that, doubling the
- 16:07Speaker 1: already doubling that Joe Biden had engaged in. Even as
- 16:11Speaker 1: we're trying to get our own country back on track
- 16:14Speaker 1: and do the things we need to do to get
- 16:15Speaker 1: the job done. We've had, we've accepted a fifty production.
- 16:21Speaker 1: We are legitimately on track to keep one point five
- 16:24Speaker 1: degrees alive. And I personally which more energy was spent
- 16:29Speaker 1: focusing on some of the countries that didn't submit in
- 16:32Speaker 1: d c s or folks and big countries, and focusing
- 16:36Speaker 1: on the countries that are not on a one point
- 16:38Speaker 1: five track, but indeed are going to be uh, you know,
- 16:43Speaker 1: putting more emissions into the into the atmosphere over the
- 16:46Speaker 1: course of the next number of years. So the reality
- 16:50Speaker 1: is we got up to nine to ninety seven billion
- 16:55Speaker 1: according to the o E c D for next year,
- 16:58Speaker 1: and if we can come pleat the budget that we
- 17:01Speaker 1: have coming in, then we'll be over the hundred billion
- 17:04Speaker 1: for next year. So we are making good in the
- 17:07Speaker 1: first year that we have an opportunity need to do
- 17:09Speaker 1: something with the budget. In addition, loss and damage does
- 17:13Speaker 1: not even have been accepted at a major part of
- 17:16Speaker 1: the agreement that we accepted the idea that it is
- 17:18Speaker 1: important to deal with and that we do have to
- 17:21Speaker 1: have a dialogue. But look, if we don't want to
- 17:24Speaker 1: shut the entire United States Congress down on putting money
- 17:27Speaker 1: into climate, we can't accept the opening of the liability
- 17:32Speaker 1: which is going to tie up the courts and the
- 17:34Speaker 1: structure and not get the money we need for adaptation
- 17:37Speaker 1: and resilience. So we really ought to be putting more
- 17:40Speaker 1: effort into adaptation and resilience where we are doubling the money.
- 17:45Speaker 1: But the bigger issue, folks, is not a hundred billion dollars.
- 17:50Speaker 1: That's peanuts compared to what we have to be doing here.
- 17:54Speaker 1: And the fact is that we went to the top
- 17:56Speaker 1: banks in the United States. I personally engage with Goldman Acts, Morgan, Stanley,
- 18:01Speaker 1: well Spargo, City, uh JP, Morgan, Bank of America, and
- 18:07Speaker 1: those six banks have committed that over the next ten
- 18:10Speaker 1: years they're prepared and will invest four point one six
- 18:15Speaker 1: trillion dollars in this transition. In addition, Larry Fink at
- 18:20Speaker 1: black Rock says he's going to put at least a
- 18:22Speaker 1: trillion in and and others will. And there's a Global
- 18:26Speaker 1: Finance Alliance which Mark Karney has has been working with,
- 18:30Speaker 1: which has tens of trillions allegedly of additional money. We
- 18:34Speaker 1: have to find a way to deploy that money. That
- 18:37Speaker 1: money is not giveaway, it's not concessionaire, it's ready to invest.
- 18:42Speaker 1: So countries bear responsibility to also step up and make
- 18:46Speaker 1: sure that they have the transparency and the contracting and
- 18:50Speaker 1: the p p a s and the ability to be
- 18:54Speaker 1: able to make those trillions into deployable investment bankable money.
- 19:00Speaker 1: You know as well as I do that a lot
- 19:01Speaker 1: of the money that's needed is needed in developing countries,
- 19:04Speaker 1: and there's no commitment from those big financial institutions to
- 19:09Speaker 1: take the money to where it's going to be really needed.
- 19:11Speaker 1: If you're if you were Prime Minister Modi, we had
- 19:13Speaker 1: a rather probably what you would consider a minimum commitment
- 19:18Speaker 1: from India at the cop But if you were Prime
- 19:21Speaker 1: Minister of India, would you have said anything different? Have
- 19:24Speaker 1: you been given any reason by the rest of the
- 19:27Speaker 1: world to be more ambitious in your domestic target when
- 19:31Speaker 1: you're also looking at a new to developing I understand
- 19:35Speaker 1: Prime Minister Money. I've met with them several times this year.
- 19:38Speaker 1: We formed a partnership to help India be able to
- 19:41Speaker 1: deploy at four hundred and fifty gigawatts of renewable power,
- 19:45Speaker 1: and we've agreed to bring finance and technology to the table.
- 19:51Speaker 1: We will need India's governmental help to be able to
- 19:55Speaker 1: make sure that the land is available either lease or sale,
- 19:59Speaker 1: that the transmit lines can move across one state to
- 20:02Speaker 1: another UH and obviously this is a two way street
- 20:06Speaker 1: to some degree. But in addition to that, yeah, we
- 20:10Speaker 1: have foreign assistance programs. We have the Development Finance Corporation,
- 20:15Speaker 1: which will have several billions of dollars that it is
- 20:18Speaker 1: already currently financing projects in less developed countries around the world.
- 20:23Speaker 1: But the real fight here, folks, let's we're gonna be
- 20:27Speaker 1: real about this. We we have been a leading nation
- 20:31Speaker 1: in consistently assisting other countries to develop. But figure, please
- 20:38Speaker 1: focus on this. Twenty countries equal of all the emissions.
- 20:45Speaker 1: They're basically your g twenty though not exclusively those those
- 20:50Speaker 1: twenty countries, they're the greatest responsibility for helping to solve
- 20:54Speaker 1: this crisis right now. And the fact is that no
- 20:58Speaker 1: country really accepted as included that this was a genuine
- 21:02Speaker 1: crisis until when we all went to Rio and formed
- 21:08Speaker 1: the process by which we now meet every year for
- 21:11Speaker 1: twenty six years. But the truth is a lot of
- 21:15Speaker 1: countries decided to grow with coal, not with nuclear, not
- 21:19Speaker 1: with gas, not with other alternatives. And coal is the
- 21:23Speaker 1: primary culprit today in warming the planet and in polluting
- 21:28Speaker 1: the air, and in creating the intensity of the storms
- 21:32Speaker 1: that comes with the increased moisture that rises from the oceans.
- 21:36Speaker 1: And we have to start where the greatest amount of
- 21:38Speaker 1: emissions are if we're going to win the battle. So
- 21:43Speaker 1: if more than of those twenty countries are now committed
- 21:48Speaker 1: to a one point five degree track. And what we
- 21:51Speaker 1: have to do is go to the countries where the
- 21:53Speaker 1: greatest amount of emissions are and begin to reduce the
- 21:57Speaker 1: greatest amount of missions the fastest we can, as fast
- 22:00Speaker 1: as we can, and and that means China, Russia, India, Mexico,
- 22:07Speaker 1: South Africa, Brazil. You know a group of country Indonesia,
- 22:11Speaker 1: and those are the countries we've been doing climate diplomacy with.
- 22:16Speaker 1: South Africa has accepted a new plan. But we have
- 22:20Speaker 1: to all of us be able to put the deals
- 22:22Speaker 1: together that will that will phase out their coal fast
- 22:27Speaker 1: and provide the alternative renewable energy. The truth is that
- 22:31Speaker 1: if India were to deploy the fifty gigawatts of renewable energy,
- 22:36Speaker 1: then India's in compliance with one point five degrees. So
- 22:40Speaker 1: this can happen. It will take all of us working together.
- 22:51Speaker 1: You talked about the importance of US leadership here, which
- 22:54Speaker 1: is clear. Commitments to this agenda didn't used to be
- 22:59Speaker 1: a partisan issue in the US, but it sure is now.
- 23:02Speaker 1: If you looked at the polls, if you look at
- 23:06Speaker 1: the recent election results in Virginia and elsewhere, you would
- 23:10Speaker 1: say the Democrats are overwhelming underdogs for next year's election,
- 23:16Speaker 1: and at this point for the next presidential election. Why
- 23:20Speaker 1: should the rest of the world believe this leadership is
- 23:22Speaker 1: going to continue beyond the next two or three years
- 23:25Speaker 1: in this crucial period for the very simple reason that
- 23:28Speaker 1: the marketplace is going there, whether the government does or not.
- 23:32Speaker 1: This is going to be a global revolution, and I
- 23:35Speaker 1: believe that transformation is going to be so far. Look,
- 23:39Speaker 1: General Motors and Ford Motor Company have already announced they're
- 23:41Speaker 1: gonna only produce electric cars by by They're gonna have
- 23:46Speaker 1: fifty of their cars are going to be produced our elector.
- 23:51Speaker 1: So I'm just telling you you think they're going to
- 23:53Speaker 1: spend hundreds of millions of dollars retooling those plants for
- 23:56Speaker 1: electric and then turn around because some politician comes in
- 24:00Speaker 1: and wants to deny science. Again. No, what we're doing
- 24:04Speaker 1: in the United States has nothing to do with politics
- 24:07Speaker 1: and ideology. It has everything to do with mathematics and physics.
- 24:11Speaker 1: And if you understand mathematics and physics and you believe
- 24:15Speaker 1: the science, this is gonna happen because it's gonna happen
- 24:18Speaker 1: in all the rest of the world, and the United
- 24:21Speaker 1: States is not stepping up to say, hey, we're the
- 24:23Speaker 1: leader here. This is everybody's got to be leaders here.
- 24:27Speaker 1: Everybody's gonna step in together. But we are here to
- 24:30Speaker 1: make up for the deficit of a guy who didn't
- 24:32Speaker 1: understand science and didn't have any economic rationale and who
- 24:36Speaker 1: pulled out of the Paris Agreement and hurt the world
- 24:38Speaker 1: in doing that. And we don't have any time for that.
- 24:41Speaker 1: So we're gonna come back. We're gonna do everything in
- 24:44Speaker 1: our power because our citizens are as exposed as citizens
- 24:47Speaker 1: everywhere else in the world. I mean, if, if, if,
- 24:50Speaker 1: if leaders don't grab onto this baton, they're gonna get
- 24:55Speaker 1: thrown out because the public understands what's happening and they're
- 24:59Speaker 1: demanding action from all of us. So I believe no
- 25:03Speaker 1: politician in four is going to step up. And besides,
- 25:08Speaker 1: it's way too premature to be making any speculations about
- 25:12Speaker 1: I can't believe what's going on. Prison Biden is going
- 25:16Speaker 1: to pass his next piece of legislation, and together with
- 25:21Speaker 1: his infrastructure bill, that's gonna put about two trillion plus dollars,
- 25:25Speaker 1: much of which is going to go to climate action
- 25:27Speaker 1: in the United States. And even while Donald Trump pulled
- 25:31Speaker 1: out of the agreement, the vast majority. Thirty seven governors
- 25:35Speaker 1: in the United States, Republican, the Democratic like continued to
- 25:39Speaker 1: stay in the Paris Agreement. Over a thousand mayors continued
- 25:42Speaker 1: to stay in the Paris Agreement. And they you know,
- 25:47Speaker 1: as I say, America's stayed in that agreement. And and
- 25:50Speaker 1: fully ninety of the new energy being brought online around
- 25:55Speaker 1: the world today is online because of renewables. This is
- 26:00Speaker 1: happening without government. It's happening because the marketplace has made
- 26:04Speaker 1: a decision. That's where we have to go. And with
- 26:07Speaker 1: disclosure and and trading mechanisms and pricing of carbon and
- 26:12Speaker 1: see bam coming at us. Believe me, folks, Uh, no
- 26:16Speaker 1: one politician can undo what is about to happen. Well,
- 26:20Speaker 1: that's an emphatic note on which to begin our final
- 26:24Speaker 1: day of deliberations. John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate,
- 26:28Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. I have to
- 26:30Speaker 1: do really so I wanted to stick with the same
- 26:42Speaker 1: theme to pick up on some work that Bloomberg Economists
- 26:45Speaker 1: have done on the economic implications of climate change, with
- 26:48Speaker 1: one of the authors, Eurozone economist Mayva Kuza, friend of
- 26:52Speaker 1: the podcast Neva. So you're basically thinking through you know
- 26:58Speaker 1: what the kinds of things that we hear about. It's
- 27:01Speaker 1: a cop tow any six in Glasgow. Where countries are
- 27:05Speaker 1: making commitments very close short term or longer term commitments
- 27:10Speaker 1: to decarbonize, you know, inherent in that commitment is the
- 27:13Speaker 1: idea that carbon prices carbon, the price of carbon in
- 27:17Speaker 1: the economy is going to get higher, that we're going
- 27:19Speaker 1: to stop subsidizing all these fossil fuels. And what you're
- 27:23Speaker 1: looking at is the these various estimates of how that
- 27:28Speaker 1: rise in the carbon price is going to feed through
- 27:30Speaker 1: to the general level of prices and certainly the general
- 27:33Speaker 1: um rate of inflation. So when when you step back
- 27:38Speaker 1: from that research, do you think that the kind of
- 27:42Speaker 1: price hikes and mad variation in the cost of energy
- 27:46Speaker 1: that we've seen recently that's going to be much more
- 27:49Speaker 1: common in the future as we have these various different
- 27:53Speaker 1: rates of carbon. That's going to get much more common
- 27:56Speaker 1: as we have these efforts to decarbonize. So it will already,
- 28:01Speaker 1: I would say that it really depends on how old
- 28:04Speaker 1: only old disorder transition is. First, if you can imagine
- 28:09Speaker 1: a case where globally we um countries and policy makers
- 28:13Speaker 1: agree on a relatively well settled price for carbon. Then
- 28:18Speaker 1: it's easier for producers to plan ahead. It's probably easier
- 28:22Speaker 1: for inflation expectations to adjust as well, and you would
- 28:26Speaker 1: have this initial potential increase in producer prices, but it's
- 28:31Speaker 1: probably going to be much smoother if, in contrast, you
- 28:36Speaker 1: have something where from one year to the next we
- 28:38Speaker 1: can have very large changes in um carbon taxis, carbon prices,
- 28:43Speaker 1: carbon regulations, and there's less time to adapt than I
- 28:47Speaker 1: think the impact on prices is going to be bigger.
- 28:51Speaker 1: And in addition, it's also a question of how prepared
- 28:55Speaker 1: the energy system is to the new regulations. We know that,
- 28:59Speaker 1: for instance, renewable energy tend to be maybe more volatile
- 29:03Speaker 1: volatile in their production, and as long as there is
- 29:07Speaker 1: this sort of backup coming from more higher fuel intensive,
- 29:13Speaker 1: in emission intensive products they call, for instance, which would
- 29:17Speaker 1: cost a lot in the world with higher carbon prices,
- 29:20Speaker 1: then it would increase massively the cost of production if
- 29:23Speaker 1: renewable drops for a temperate period, and that will increase
- 29:28Speaker 1: sort of volatility of energy inflation. And I think one
- 29:31Speaker 1: thing that is important to consider as well is that
- 29:34Speaker 1: not only it will affect inflation, it would increase inflation,
- 29:37Speaker 1: but it's also as a place, so it would reduce growth,
- 29:41Speaker 1: it would reduce economic activity. And so for central box
- 29:44Speaker 1: you can have this sort of um much more volatile inflation,
- 29:49Speaker 1: higher on average, and the trade off with supporting the economy,
- 29:54Speaker 1: and different sample box will probably see this trade off differently.
- 29:58Speaker 1: Some may look fruit the pacing crazies and we have
- 30:02Speaker 1: higher inflation and mostly brought for crave. Some may actually
- 30:07Speaker 1: decide that they need to takeen policy to high in
- 30:10Speaker 1: inflation at the expense of the could activity. I guess
- 30:14Speaker 1: you've seen a little sort of dry run for some
- 30:17Speaker 1: of this where people are blaming efforts to combat climate
- 30:22Speaker 1: change for the spike in energy prices that we've seen.
- 30:27Speaker 1: And if we get the kind of variability of inflation,
- 30:31Speaker 1: the impact on growth that you've just talked about coming
- 30:35Speaker 1: down the track causing challenges for central bankers also as
- 30:39Speaker 1: a result of combating climate change, you know that could
- 30:43Speaker 1: that could make for some quite difficult politics as well
- 30:46Speaker 1: as decisions for central bankers. Yes, definity, and we've seen
- 30:51Speaker 1: that even increasing um energitects. For instance, we've seen in
- 30:56Speaker 1: France the religion par days that it's actually difficult. It's
- 30:59Speaker 1: so it tends to be energic, existance to be regressive,
- 31:04Speaker 1: so they tend to affect poor people more, and that's
- 31:07Speaker 1: always a very difficult political um political choice to make.
- 31:13Speaker 1: The recent increase we've seen in energy prices is a
- 31:17Speaker 1: combination of some very unusual renewable poor production from renewable
- 31:23Speaker 1: which we may see the wind not blowing exactly as
- 31:27Speaker 1: the remaking more if we rely more on renewable, plus
- 31:31Speaker 1: potentially if the climate system becomes more unusual as well.
- 31:36Speaker 1: But it's also a direct impact from the supplying negg.
- 31:39Speaker 1: It's supply bottom example, you sink for the pandemics, so
- 31:42Speaker 1: it's some of them. It's a bit of both. But
- 31:45Speaker 1: in any case, it's clear that the policy choices that
- 31:48Speaker 1: we have to be made in terms of UM, both
- 31:51Speaker 1: at the same time driving the tradition but also making
- 31:56Speaker 1: the adjustments UM and supporting the parts of the go
- 32:00Speaker 1: to mean that needs to body will be quite a
- 32:03Speaker 1: difficult challenge for for policymakers. And it's not a part
- 32:06Speaker 1: that part of the money UM from the Yobian Union
- 32:11Speaker 1: as part of their Andrew beck Age is on the
- 32:14Speaker 1: just position from for instance, because that's some things that
- 32:18Speaker 1: are already very aware. Yeah, the just transition, so making
- 32:21Speaker 1: sure that it doesn't just involve hiking the price of
- 32:24Speaker 1: energy and having it effect lower income households worse worse
- 32:28Speaker 1: than others. Um that's clearly is a very important piece
- 32:31Speaker 1: of that, maybe, Causina, thanks so much. Thank you. That's
- 32:41Speaker 1: it for this episode of Stephanomics, but do follow at
- 32:44Speaker 1: Economics on Twitter for a lot more news and analysis
- 32:47Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Economics. This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson,
- 32:51Speaker 1: with special thanks to John Kerry Maybel Cuzin, Karen and Look,
- 32:56Speaker 1: Claudia Madler, and Catherine Bosley. Mike Sasso as executive producer
- 33:01Speaker 1: of Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesco
- 33:04Speaker 1: Levy m h M.