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281: Confused about climate? The essential terms you need to know

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson break down the climate acronyms and buzzwords you need to know in 2025.

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About this episode

What’s an NDC? What does El Niño tell us about global temperatures this year? And why could a landmark ICJ ruling unlock a wave of climate legal cases? Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson break down the climate acronyms and buzzwords you need to know in 2025.

With a crucial year ahead for climate action, this podcast is your essential guide to the key terms shaping global discussions. From breaking down BRICS to how President Donald Trump’s return to the White House will change the climate conversation. Plus, Paul finally decodes the ultimate acronym soup of climate finance jargon and the hosts discuss whether scrapping acronyms altogether could make the climate conversation more accessible. 

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Producer: Nina Pullman

Video Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

Commissioning Editor: Sarah Thomas 

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Full Transcript

Tom: [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac


Christiana: [00:00:05] I'm still Christiana.


Paul Dickinson: [00:00:07] And I'm Paul Dickinson.


Tom: [00:00:08] This week we are all together, and we are talking about the acronyms that you are going to need to understand in order to make sense of climate news in 2025. Thanks for being here. Okay, friends. So I have been thrilled that we're going to be recorded because I love acronyms. So I've been so looking.


Paul Dickinson: [00:00:24] Forward to L.A., I love acronyms.


Tom: [00:00:27] No I don't. I think acronyms are the worst part of the climate movement. It is ridiculous. It's almost impossible to have any sense of what's going on most of the time, unless you're playing really close attention. Because not only are there a lot of acronyms in the climate space, but they evolve so quickly, you sort of don't even pay attention for three weeks, and they've proliferated and there's thousands.


Christiana: [00:00:45] We as part of the climate community, we do invent acronyms. And the whole point of inventing acronyms is just to figure out who's up to speed and who's not. Yeah. So you throw an acronym in, and if somebody picks it up and runs with it, then they're up to speed. And if somebody says, huh? Yeah, then you're like, oh man, you are. So five minutes.


Paul Dickinson: [00:01:07] Ago. Yeah. Well, two points here. First of all, you should just say to people, what's that acronym stand for? It's perfectly reasonable.


Tom: [00:01:12] That's how we always know you're not in the loop, though. Okay, well.


Paul Dickinson: [00:01:15] I'm proudly out of the loop. But also, anyone who's ever edited any kind of document that other people have written. And you find this acronym and they've saved themselves a few seconds of typing, and they've caused you to have to stay up at two in the morning for 40 minutes on Google trying to work out what on earth they're talking about. So before we explain the acronyms, I just want to explain there's no possible excuse for them.


Tom: [00:01:35] I don't know if there's no possible excuse, but I would definitely say the point you just made, Christiana, about how it's like a sort of, are you in or are you out is actually quite a serious and difficult point, because climate change is a difficult enough issue to get your mind around and your arms around, then when it's alienating, because there are all these acronyms and you kind of feel a bit stupid if you don't know what's going on. I think it's a really major problem to getting more and more people involved in what we're doing.


Christiana: [00:01:59] Totally agree. But I have to say, we're not the only ones that do this right.


Tom: [00:02:03] Well, the financial sector is at least as active.


Christiana: [00:02:05] Inflation is actually something that happens in most fields in most industries. So it's pretty bad anyway. We are going to help our listeners, probably with about 1% of the acronyms and the climate language. But what we do want to do, I'm going to warn the two of you, is if you pick an acronym, yeah, that you want to explain. I'm going to be breathing down your neck, because the only justification for you picking an acronym is to tell us why is it relevant in 2025? If you just pick an acronym like generally, forget it. So you lose the point. You only win an acronym Brownie Point today if you can convince the other two of us. Okay, that is relevant. Meaning 2025.


Paul Dickinson: [00:02:54] Okay, who's gonna go first?


Tom: [00:02:55] Well, so we should just explain to listeners exactly what you just said. It's going to be relevant to this year. There's going to be a small percentage of the total. And also thank the listeners, because some of these that we're going to now go through were provided by our listeners when we did a call out on social media. Correct. So thank you very much. And I think Christiana should go first.


Christiana: [00:03:10] I'm going to start by a non acronym. Oh.


Tom: [00:03:14] I don't think you get the point. A non acronym that's not relevant to this year.


Christiana: [00:03:18] No. I'm going to start with a non acronym. Two terms that are relevant to this year.


Paul Dickinson: [00:03:23] Okay.


Christiana: [00:03:23] I know it's not an acronym okay. But we have to know what it is.


Paul Dickinson: [00:03:28] Okay. Well what is.


Christiana: [00:03:29] It. It is El Nino and La Nina now. Okay. It actually means the little boy child and the little girl child in Spanish. Now, do you know why it's called?


Tom: [00:03:42] I think I know what it is it's to do with heating and cooling in the Pacific. But I actually don't know why. It is called El Nino and La Nina.


Christiana: [00:03:49] So El Nino, as was educated by Doctor Melanie Guerra, our friend, who's staying with us for a few days and who's an oceanographer? She told us the story that it was actually the Peruvian fisherman who in 1972, realized that they had been catching fish very happily for many years. And then all of a sudden, in 1972, they came back without any fish, and they noticed warmer waters, and they noticed that the waters and the wind were very similar to the conditions that happen usually around Christmas, on that side of the continent of America. So they named it El Nino, having nothing to do with the baby boy but El Nino. Jesus, which is baby Jesus. That's why it's called El Nino. So El Nino, which happens more or less every seven years, is when the trade winds and the warmer waters of the Pacific. It only happens in the Pacific, although it affects the entire world. Flow or blow or both, from Asia over toward the continent of America and brings much warmer temperature. Last year was a very, very hot year, in part because of permanent increase of climate change, but also because we had a La Nina this year. And that is why it is relevant to 2025. Before you even ask me.


Tom: [00:05:14] I was beginning to wonder.


Christiana: [00:05:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew it. I could see it coming in your eyes. Okay. This year we will have La Nina, which is the opposite. When those winds actually blow and the warmer water from the continent of America over to Asia. And what that causes is an up well of the colder and deeper waters that come up, and therefore we have a cooling effect. So this year we can look forward to a little bit of cooling from La Nina, which doesn't mean that we're not going to have temperature increases due to climate change.


Tom: [00:05:49] But that's interesting. So because the last few years we've had record heat every summer, that's not necessarily there's a what you're saying is we may not see that in 2025. And that doesn't mean climate change has stopped. It means we've flipped into a different cyclical pattern, La Nina. Exactly.


Christiana: [00:06:01] Yeah, I mean, that's a seven year cycle. Yeah, yeah. Okay. El Nino and La Nina is a seven year cycle.


Tom: [00:06:06] Okay. Got it.


Paul Dickinson: [00:06:07] Well explained.


Tom: [00:06:07] Thank you. And that's relevant because what that means we're going to hear is a lot of people saying, oh this year wasn't a record heat year. It has climate.


Christiana: [00:06:13] Change. Yeah. It's cooling.


Tom: [00:06:14] It's cooling. Trump's back in the white House.


Christiana: [00:06:16] Trump's back.


Tom: [00:06:17] He's cooling the planet okay.


Christiana: [00:06:18] The planet. Okay.


Tom: [00:06:19] All right. Well, thank you for preempting explaining that wasn't the case. You might have gotten confused.


Christiana: [00:06:23] Indeed.


Tom: [00:06:23] Yeah. All right. Well, I am going to come out with a classic that's probably some listeners know already, but it's going to be relevant. And that is NDC. Ah, that is nationally determined contributions. And Christiane, I think you don't need me to explain this to you. This is the mainstay of the Paris Agreement that the Paris Agreement is a combination of a long term goal to deal with the climate crisis by the middle of the century, with a series of five yearly commitments to get us towards that long term goal.


Christiana: [00:06:49] Otherwise known as the ratchet mechanism.


Tom: [00:06:51] Otherwise known as the ratchet mechanism, or as I sometimes like to explain it, like me saying I'm going to lose two stone in weight in the next year. That's my long term goal, and my first NDC is my first commitment in the next month to lose £2. Now to get going.


Christiana: [00:07:03] Yeah.


Christiana: [00:07:03] Okay. For non Brits what is the stone.


Tom: [00:07:05] Oh yes. Well a stone is £14. All right. So the reason I think Nationally determined contribution is relevant to this year is because this is what is called a ratchet year under the UNF triple C, which is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So countries will meet in Belém in Brazil in December this year. But before that, in February, all countries are expected to come back with their next round of nationally determined contributions. These are the 2035 targets. And the reason this is so important, and you've been hearing about this already, is that unless these contributions add up to a collective commitment that gets us back on track to 1.5 degrees, then the window to actually make that change will begin to have passed, we'll begin to get to a point where the national commitments are just not good enough to deal with the climate crisis and keep us to 1.5 degrees by the time the next round come about. We've probably missed our chance, so we're used to there just being a few months to save the planet. But eventually you are too late. And actually, this round of commitments is going to be really critical.


Christiana: [00:08:10] This is the third round. That's why they're called NDC 3.0.


Christiana: [00:08:13] Ndc.


Christiana: [00:08:14] 3.0. The third round, the third time that we have done this, and as you say, each round does shave off some temperature increase in the future, but not enough. Yeah, right. We are not yet protecting the ceiling of 1.5. And as you say, this is the first time this 3.0 is the first time that the NDCs will have a shelf life of ten years. Right? Up until now, they had a shelf life of five. That's why it's so important to get this right, because honestly, we know that technology is going to improve, that finance is going to shift, that policy is going to increase. And so if we underestimate what we can do in the next ten years. Then we are actually not protecting 1.5.


Tom: [00:09:03] So we're going to need some real political courage. And people who listen to this podcast will know that's tough, right? I mean, the kind of Goldilocks landscape of the Paris mixture of political leaders at the time, with Obama and Merkel and all these others, has now really changed. And we're going to have Trump. We're going to have Lula potentially unwell. Trudeau gone, Macron weakened. It's going to be a tough ask, but it's so important.


Paul Dickinson: [00:09:23] Okay. Well you've set this up beautifully. Go for it. Tcfd the task force on climate related financial disclosures. And in talking about this, I'm going to give you about 100 other acronyms in one explanation.


Tom: [00:09:35] You're going to give us other acronyms to explain your acronyms.


Christiana: [00:09:38] Oh my gosh. Put on your seatbelt acronym Seatbelt.


Paul Dickinson: [00:09:40] Okay, so the reason I said it was linked is because that's about what countries are going to need to do. Nations and tcfd is about what companies are going to have to do. And actually, you know, many companies, as we've often discussed, are much larger than nations in terms of their scale. So a little bit of history leading to Tcfd. The NGO I started a long time ago. Cdp got companies reporting to investors.


Tom: [00:10:02] To give us that acronym if you're going.


Paul Dickinson: [00:10:04] To. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Well, back in the day, it was Carbon Disclosure Project, but we changed our name 14 years ago and no one noticed anyway. We are now. Definitely. Cdp and companies.


Christiana: [00:10:12] Are just.


Christiana: [00:10:12] Cdp.


Paul Dickinson: [00:10:13] Just CDP, just CDP.


Tom: [00:10:15] You actually become an acronym.


Christiana: [00:10:16] I thought you were criticising acronyms.


Paul Dickinson: [00:10:17] We had to apply to the International Acronym authority, but they allowed us to.


Tom: [00:10:21] Now that you've done it, do you have to now say CDP? And we used to be known as the Carbon Disclosure Project.


Paul Dickinson: [00:10:25] Can we please not have that? Because the media have been saying that for 14 years and it's not working for us. Okay, here's the story. Sorry, sorry. So companies reporting through CDP to their investors for 22 years now. And that carries on. We also work with accountants to develop a framework for how companies should report to their investors through their annual report, which is their formal document, the legal annual filing. Because by law, in every country, big companies have to report to their investors. That then developed under the leadership of Mark Carney in 2014 into Tcfd, the Task Force on Climate related financial Disclosure, and this was a brilliant initiative. Private sector got very, very formal and it went actually eventually into something called the Esrb. But that's easy to explain.


Tom: [00:11:07] You're going to have to.


Paul Dickinson: [00:11:08] It's the International Sustainability Standards Board, and the best way to explain it is to say that it's part of the IFRS Foundation, which is the International Financial Reporting Standards Board. But the good news is they set the accounting standards for all the companies in the world. So it's a very, very happy ending. I've got a bit more to say on this, but I'm going to just leave it with two things. Sec. You asked me to explain this is the US Securities and Exchange Commission. They were going to require this kind of reporting. And this is like how companies what their greenhouse gas emissions are, what their strategies are. There is a fear in the US under Trump that won't happen. But the good news is that California probably will push something forward. And the EU are real leaders in this area with the CSS coming in. Very last thing.


Tom: [00:11:55] You got to tell us what the CSR is you can't.


Paul Dickinson: [00:11:57] Do.


Christiana: [00:11:58] Oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God.


Paul Dickinson: [00:11:59] The Corporate Sustainability Reporting directive. That's the EU coming up with a slightly broader version. European Union.


Tom: [00:12:06] Thank you.


Paul Dickinson: [00:12:07] Because I never get out of there. I'm locked in here. It's never going to end. We're almost there. Listeners, we're almost there.


Christiana: [00:12:13] You guys have a glass of water. I think I need something much stronger than a glass of water to deal with this.


Paul Dickinson: [00:12:18] I'm going to conclude on us measuring all these greenhouse gas emissions going up into the air. And actually, what about measuring emissions coming back down into nature? That's the TNFD, a very exciting new initiative, the task force for nature related financial disclosure. And I'm going to leave it there for a minute. I might have a couple more for you later. We might talk about SBT, but I'm going to take a break.


Tom: [00:12:38] Oh, that's a little teaser for something.


Paul Dickinson: [00:12:40] That teaser.


Christiana: [00:12:40] Sbt or SBTI.


Paul Dickinson: [00:12:42] Actually that you can use them interchangeably, but SBTI is more formally correct. Christiana, thank you for correcting.


Christiana: [00:12:47] No, I just didn't know if there was.


Tom: [00:12:49] Well, so you formally collect an acronym without yet still explaining it. I guess that's coming later.


Paul Dickinson: [00:12:52] We need bingo. We need marks. I need a break. One of you guys gotta come in with one.


Tom: [00:12:59] So, Paul, what you're saying is that emissions reporting via the TCFD, which is the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures, has been going through CDP, the Carbon Disclosure Project. And we were hoping that the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, was going to create a legal filing rule so that you provided that in the United States. But that doesn't matter so much because California and the European Union, the EU, via the corporate. What's that one? The CSRD.


Paul Dickinson: [00:13:25] Corporate Sustainability Reporting director.


Tom: [00:13:26] Corporate sustainability reporting director is still requiring companies to report their climate related information, even if the Trump administration no longer requires or doesn't require reporting through. I've made a complete message.


Paul Dickinson: [00:13:38] It's not a bad job, but you just did this whole cake and I'm going to put the cherry on top. The International Financial Reporting Standards for IFRS, the accountants of the world. In a certain sense they say this data is required. And so the good news is the accountants have stepped in now, and they will be able to deal with the vicissitudes of certain governments.


Christiana: [00:13:58] You know, I am old enough to remember when you used to be able to go to the store and buy alphabet soup. You are. You two are way too young to remember that, but you used to literally have a bowl of letters in your soup, and you could take them out and make little acronyms on your name.


Paul Dickinson: [00:14:19] I'm going to tell you, the honest truth is that every single article about these issues for the last ten years has said it's alphabet soup. And the really, really good news is a lot of us work together, and we're very excited that the whole.


Christiana: [00:14:31] Thing.


Paul Dickinson: [00:14:31] Is that the whole thing has ended up with the accountants, now the international financial.


Christiana: [00:14:36] Now you're getting serious.


Paul Dickinson: [00:14:37] The accountants. I'm not going to say an acronym. The global accountants are making sure this gets into the annual report, and that's what the listener needs to remember from this madness.


Christiana: [00:14:45] Very good. Wait, pop, before you have a drink of water, you have to tell us. Why is that all? I'm not even sure what to call respectfully called alphabet soup. Why is that relevant to 2025? You haven't told us that. Therefore you do not get brownie points or alphabet points.


Paul Dickinson: [00:15:03] The most important thing about 2025 is the nature related financial disclosure. That is fast growing. And we know we're in postgraduate level reporting emissions going up, but we're still in the kindergarten about emissions coming down. The great global business system is now turning its attention to nature accounting. And that's important.


Christiana: [00:15:23] Okay.


Tom: [00:15:24] So I know it's your turn, but I actually have one that relates directly to that. So can I hop in with a different acronym.


Christiana: [00:15:29] You can. And I have one that relates indirectly. So you go first okay.


Tom: [00:15:33] So mine sounds like a rerun of last year and it's CBD. So regular listeners will remember that the convention on biological.


Christiana: [00:15:39] Cbd is that the.


Tom: [00:15:41] Conventional.


Christiana: [00:15:42] Substance that is now.


Paul Dickinson: [00:15:45] Becoming.


Christiana: [00:15:46] Something legal in some states?


Tom: [00:15:49] No, it's not CBD oil is different to that. Interesting. That's where your mind went. So interesting that that was your initial instinct.


Christiana: [00:15:54] So relieved.


Tom: [00:15:55] The CBD is the convention on biological diversity. Indeed. But interesting. I wonder if they were actually deliberately connected those two different acronyms. Now, people will remember that the Convention on Biological Diversity, the CBD, met in Colombia at the end of last year to try to reach an agreement on the 30 by 30 commitment on financing for nature. And this connects to what you just heard, Paul, about TNF. And it ended with some agreement. And we had various people on the podcast to talk about this. But there was also in the end, a loss of quorum country started going home. They couldn't reach the key agenda points to talk about climate. And the reason it's relevant to this year is that the CBD are going to have another go at this. So in February, those countries are going to meet again in Rome to make an attempt to then actually reach the agreement that they tried to reach last year on financing for 30 by 30.


Christiana: [00:16:44] And may they reach agreement.


Tom: [00:16:47] Godspeed to them all.


Christiana: [00:16:48] Yeah. Speak to them all. Yeah. So I wanted to bring an acronym that is sort of related to your alphabet soup, because it also has to do with carbon sequestration. Your alphabet soup is very importantly and very critically, the carbon sequestration. That is possible by nature, because nature actually absorbs, right CO2 and sequesters carbon in its trunk. If it's a tree or its leaves and in the soil, very importantly, now that is natural carbon sequestration. There is on the side of that, another whole process that is receiving quite a bit of investment, which is industrialized carbon capture. So it's not what nature does. It is what humans try to do to capture CO2 out of the air. And there we have two different types. So one is. Here comes the acronym CC, US Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage. And that is where CO2 is captured from industrial sources like power plants and factories etc. etc.. The reason why it is important in 2025, before you ask me, is because this has for a long time been a very, very expensive technology. I would say prohibitively expensive, where nature captures carbon much more effectively and efficiently.


Paul Dickinson: [00:18:21] Trees appear to be. Load More

Christiana: [00:18:22] Free, and it is a completely tested technology for thousands and thousands and millions of years. Now, what is very interesting is that apparently there are about 200 projects of CCS us that are going to receive, or at least are very seriously being considered for direct investment in 2025. If that happens.


Tom: [00:18:46] Private investment.


Christiana: [00:18:46] Or private investment.


Tom: [00:18:47] Interesting. Okay.


Christiana: [00:18:48] Yeah. And if that happens, that really is a game changer, because that means that that technology with that kind of of different projects, that technology would be able to advance, perhaps to better competitive prices. Now, related to CC us is something called the DRC now competing with Paul for the alphabet soup. And the DAC is direct air capture. And that is when you're capturing CO2 directly from the air and then used as a feedstock for building materials like concrete and bricks. So it's not out of a power plant, it's just directly from.


Tom: [00:19:27] They just pump air through.


Christiana: [00:19:28] It. Well, they pump air through these CO2 retainers. Let's say that is still incredibly expensive. So we see that CCS is coming down in price a little bit. And direct air capture could be a technology that is still very expensive. It's very interesting that the closer we get to not being able to protect the 1.5 degrees ceiling, the more panic comes into our system and the more interest there is in these two technologies. Mhm. Because so many people come to the conclusion we can't do this by substituting fossil fuel energy for renewable energy, or in fact, even by accelerating carbon capture by nature, we actually have to put in these other technologies in order to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. So is that going to happen? Is that going to be competitive as a technology? We don't know, but there will likely be a huge push this year.


Paul Dickinson: [00:20:31] One thing I just want to push back on one point, which is this idea of pumping CO2 underground, has been around for decades, as we all know. The key point is when you pump CO2 underground, you don't really deliver anything useful for anyone. It's not like a solar panel that delivers electricity, so there hasn't been the money to do it so far. And it's going to require really complicated financial engineering to get that money. But if we get the money to do it, then it absolutely works.


Tom: [00:20:56] Mhm. What you just said made me think of something which I have heard as a phrase regularly in recent meetings with governments in particular, and that is hedge against failure. Yeah. I think that it's going to be a term that people become much more familiar with this year, because that's what you're talking about. If we are unable to reduce emissions, that's our hedge against failure. It's solar radiation management. It's sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. That's really interesting. That's going to get to that point okay.


Christiana: [00:21:22] Yeah I wouldn't say that this is geoengineering yet.


Tom: [00:21:24] No, but it's still a hedge against failure.


Christiana: [00:21:25] But it's a hedge against failure. The next step up.


Paul Dickinson: [00:21:28] Is I've got to throw in just biomass carbon capture and storage, which is where you burn, you know, trees and stuff and pump that underground. That really does have a sort of double benefit. But yeah, they're all hedging strategies I agree.


Christiana: [00:21:39] Okay. The other thing that it makes me think of actually is the importance of location for carbon. So carbon in the soil is a friend. Carbon in biomass is a friend. Carbon underground is a friend. Carbon in the Air Force, which is CO2. Is no longer a friend. It used to be a friend. But we've gone beyond the concentration. So let us not fall into the simplicity that carbon is the enemy. It's the location. It's like real estate location, location, location. Right? Where is the carbon? And that determines whether it's a friend or an enemy.


Tom: [00:22:15] Okay. We're going to have to get back to acronyms. We will be back in a minute and we will talk more about acronyms.


Christiana: [00:22:28] Okay. So in the acronym world we have a new president in the dark House. You know why I think it's the dark house now for the next four years anyway. What acronyms are relevant for this new US administration in 2025.


Tom: [00:22:45] Well, I mean, there's a lot, right? That's going to be affected by him being there. And I would just pick out a couple that I think are going to be really relevant for people to think about. I mean, the first, which I don't know if you have heard this ACC and ACC two. Any relevance to you?


Christiana: [00:22:58] Ac is usually air conditioner.


Tom: [00:23:00] It's not air conditioner. No. Not heard of okay. Right. Great okay a new acronym. So ACC and ACC two are the Advanced Clean Cars program and the second Advanced Clean Cars program. And I know that sounds very exciting. That is a California piece of legislation. And for those who aren't paying attention or have other things to do with their lives, one of the interesting things about the US is that regulations for the efficiency of vehicles is often set at the state level. Hallelujah, Hallelujah. And California leads the way and sets targets that are much more ambitious than the federal targets, for example.


Christiana: [00:23:33] Has always done.


Tom: [00:23:33] And will.


Christiana: [00:23:34] Continue to do.


Tom: [00:23:35] Yeah, always has done so. 100% of new passenger vehicles sold in California must be zero emission by 2035 under ACC two. And the reason that this is relevant to Trump is that we know from some of the statements that have been made by his cabinet picks and others around him, that he wants to remove what's called the California exception. So therefore, he's going to try and remove the ability of California to set its own vehicle efficiency standards.


Christiana: [00:24:01] To set any standards, set anything.


Tom: [00:24:03] Right. Any stands on anything. Now, the reason this is important is that if California sets a very ambitious standard, then most manufacturers will just meet that standard for all their cars.


Christiana: [00:24:12] That's what they've always done.


Tom: [00:24:13] So that's what drives it, right. And that's what makes vehicles be more efficient in the United States. If they remove that exception and water down the federal requirements to make vehicles more efficient, polluting more, make them more polluting to introduce electric vehicles, then we will see a real shift in the industry. Interestingly, the industry does not want this at all. They've invested heavily in electric vehicles. So what will happen.


Paul Dickinson: [00:24:35] To the industry referring to the auto industry rather than the oil and gas industry.


Tom: [00:24:39] Which would be like, yeah, we'll give you $1 billion. I think they said.


Paul Dickinson: [00:24:44] I think.


Tom: [00:24:44] They did what.


Christiana: [00:24:45] We want. Well, what's the path to removing the California exemption?


Tom: [00:24:48] That is a great question. I mean, I think it must be a legislative path. I don't know what it requires.


Paul Dickinson: [00:24:53] As Christiana looks terrible, I'm going to just remind you of MAGA, Make America Great Again and my new One More, which is make the world habitable again. So I'm just going to get elected to somewhere. And with.


Tom: [00:25:03] That, there should be more.


Tom: [00:25:06] I've got one more on Trump. So US NCA I don't know if either of you ever heard of that. So this is a landmark piece of work that happens every five years. The US National Climate Assessment that looks at the climate change impacts the risks and responses that happen across the US. And it's incredibly important because it sets the tone from a policy perspective around what the US can expect and what the response should be. It looks at impacts. It looks at solutions and technologies. There's a man called Russell Vought who has come in as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, appointed by Trump, of course, and he is very worried that this report could limit Trump's authority to To remove all climate related legislation and regulation from the federal government. And he specifically said he wants more diverse viewpoints in the US national climate assessment, which means bringing in people who are more skeptical about climate change so.


Christiana: [00:25:56] That oil and gas.


Tom: [00:25:57] The oil and gas, I mean, they would represent diversity. So that's another one, US NCA, that I think will be important this year.


Christiana: [00:26:03] And the SEC.


Tom: [00:26:04] Pulls down the SEC.


Paul Dickinson: [00:26:05] I did the SEC.


Christiana: [00:26:05] Oh, you had such an alphabet soup that I just like.


Paul Dickinson: [00:26:09] Okay, well, excuse me. Look, we're doing a program about acronyms. You know, it's going to be a little bit difficult to avoid the alphabet soup. Christiane.


Christiana: [00:26:14] I'm sorry. Okay, okay, okay, okay.


Tom: [00:26:15] I think we should do BRICs because that's going to be relevant.


Paul Dickinson: [00:26:17] From the very.


Tom: [00:26:18] Right. Who wants to do BRICs?


Paul Dickinson: [00:26:20] Well, I'll tell you the little story about where it comes from.


Christiana: [00:26:22] Um, B R I C S.


Speaker7: [00:26:24] B r.


Christiana: [00:26:25] K.


Speaker7: [00:26:25] S.


Paul Dickinson: [00:26:26] Jim O'Neill, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, wrote a paper called why the BRICS are important and he invented this acronym. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and actually South Africa was added later making it BRICS. And he was talking about them being the most populous countries in some regards and therefore having very bright economic futures. But what's completely crazy is from writing this research report, you actually now have these countries calling themselves that. And so I've seen a photo, I think, in South Africa of XI Jinping, the president of China, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, Lavrov, representing Russia and the president of South Africa, and Lula representing Brazil. Yes. The heads of these countries now gather under this name. Now, what's important is.


Tom: [00:27:13] You just add Indonesia has joined.


Tom: [00:27:15] There you go.


Christiana: [00:27:16] No, wait wait, wait. Iran. Egypt. Ethiopia, right. Uae have all joined.


Tom: [00:27:23] 45% of global GDP, compared to 30% for the G7. And that's a stunning statistic that shows the shift of power in the world. 


Christiana: [00:27:31] Stunning.And I would say what binds them is their anti-U.S. attitude.


Paul Dickinson: [00:27:36] What binds them is their anti-US attitude. And, you know, kind of when you look what the US is doing, who can blame them in many regards. I mean, I'm not a friend of whatever, you know, non-democratic regimes because I think democracy is a way of changing governments without a civil war. And I think that's important. But I do recognize that there is a growing sense that the leadership, the old, you know, the G7 we were listening to in Bremner recently, this incredibly smart geopolitical activist saying the biggest risk in 2024 was the United States versus itself. And he now calls it the G0. There is no leadership from the democratic capitalist countries. And so the BRICs, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. And this is a real coming together of countries.


Tom: [00:28:17] And I think the reason BRICs is such a relevant term to this year, Paul, to your point, is that Trump, now in the white House, has been threatening all of these different tariff measures against all kinds of trading partners, and we can expect that those will be introduced more and more as the year goes on. Those countries are going to be forced even closer together as a result of the US positioning itself in opposition to them. And of course, within that group you just mentioned, there are ample oil and gas supplies. There's ample critical minerals and we will see. I think most of the global growth will be residing in those countries that represent the BRICs. And it's not a Western agenda. It is far from that. And it will. 2025 will be a really interesting year to see how that shift goes from.


Paul Dickinson: [00:28:55] Yeah. Just before you get to doom laden about it while saying, you know, I've told you I don't like the politics, but China selling gigantic numbers of electric vehicles and, you know, a solar power solar, you know.


Christiana: [00:29:06] Wind.


Paul Dickinson: [00:29:07] Is actually long term bad for oil and gas. And so, you know, go for.


Tom: [00:29:10] It. I mean We're not doing so very well under a sort of Western agenda to do with this crisis. So where this goes, I'm not sure. But there's a lot more autocracy and a lot less democracy in that future.


Paul Dickinson: [00:29:20] In a lower carbon, more scary world.


Christiana: [00:29:22] Well, yes. Well, the other acronym that is related to the BRICS is CBDR, right? That that has been an acronym in the climate space from the very get go definition.


Christiana: [00:29:34] Common but differentiated responsibilities and what it actually Meant originally is that all countries have a responsibility to protect the planet and protect the climate, but differentiate it. So it referred to the historical responsibility of industrialized countries versus the future. But now already pulled into the present responsibility of many developing countries or in fact, emerging countries. And probably the most important principle within climate, and I think other environmental negotiations, is you do not cross the border line. And that is something that really divides industrialized countries from developing countries. And however, in the absence of any leadership from the United States, and honestly, it's going to be difficult for Europe to pull this off. It's very likely that the BRICs, especially because they're now getting so many more into their group, are actually going to move into a leadership position. And and the question then is going to be what are they going to be leading? Are they going to be leading decarbonization because they can they have the technologies, they can do it, or are they going to be actually pulling the handbrake on this? I would say negotiations are going to be much more influenced now by the BRICs than by developed countries. The BRICs are no longer seeing themselves as the victims. They are now seeing themselves as the most powerful agents of change. The question is change toward what?


Tom: [00:31:19] Well, I saw some analysis recently that suggested that 80% of the emissions that have to be mitigated over the next 30 years to keep us to 1.5 degrees are going to happen in BRICs countries or a limited number of other economies. So that's where this lives or dies, right? The US, I mean, God bless him. But John Kerry going around the world to tell those countries what they should do, which he has done for all the right reasons for many years, has gotten us to the point where it's not leading us to the outcome we want. So this feels high risk. This big shift of leadership. But how do you feel when you look at that Christianity? Do you think that there's a chance we'll look back in ten years and see this shift away from US leadership as the beginning of a different kind of process that actually was more effective in the end.


Christiana: [00:32:00] Well, you know me, right? The die hard optimists, right? That's what I would love to see. Yeah, I would love to see a completely different interpretation, both politically, financially, economically, socially of what decarbonization means. Yeah, that's what I'm honestly hungry for, because how decarbonization has been defined and implemented by the global North is not working for the global South.


Christiana: [00:32:28] So so the question is do we throw decarbonisation out or do they reinterpret what decarbonization is to their advantage. And if they do that it's to the planetary advantage.


Paul Dickinson: [00:32:40] And I think that China will drive that. And do you know what China's ultimately selling with renewable energy and electric vehicles is free energy. You know, there's a big capital cost and you've got to set up this infrastructure. And then after that it's free. And that is a very powerful technology. And I see the, you know, free energy superpowers emerging and competing with the Petro states. We already have kind of electro states, free energy electro states are future proofed in a way that the US, unfortunately, and others are going to put themselves in the back seat. But there's so much catching up to do. Southeast Asia is like 4.5% renewable energy, whereas the US is 15%. So there's so much opportunity to grow.


Tom: [00:33:19] That's a fascinating shift that we're observing. And I think that what you've just put your finger on there, Christiana, in terms of the BRICs, could really be the thing we look back on 20, 25, in ten years time and realize that, you know, this is a trend that's been going on for a while, but this was the year of the decisive shift. So it's hard to identify these things as you're living through them. But it feels like that moment is now upon us. One more that I would like to bring before we we end this episode is ICJ. So ICJ refers to the International Court of Justice and this speaks to a trend.


Christiana: [00:33:49] Are you sure? It's not that I see the blue jay in my garden.


Tom: [00:33:52] I mean, if you can say it that way as well as you like, but it's not really an acronym. It's not really relevant to this year. It's relevant to this moment. ICJ, the International Court of Justice, and the reason that it is relevant to this year is, of course.


Christiana: [00:34:04] In the Hague.


Tom: [00:34:04] In The Hague. We've talked a lot about the.


Christiana: [00:34:07] A lot about.


Speaker7: [00:34:07] The ICJ.


Tom: [00:34:07] Of litigation as a tool to try and drive climate action. But there is. Last year, Vanuatu introduced a motion supported subsequently by 130 countries that led to a process that will then create an ICJ ruling on what obligations states have to address climate damages. Now, this ruling is expected to come out in the course of the next 2 to 3 months, and it would provide a non-binding advisory ruling that sets the legal framework that determines how states should respond to this issue. Now you can say it's advisory. It might not be consequential, but this is an international court of law that countries have signed up to. Telling them that they need to deal with this issue in a timely manner. And I think that that will lead this year and beyond. If we get the ruling, we think we'll get to a floodgate opening of increased litigation, where people in countries take their national government to court through their national legal system, to push them to go further on climate.


Christiana: [00:35:06] This is a huge topic, and I think we should devote an entire episode to this. What is what is absolutely clear is that jurisprudence is actually being built on climate change, right? We haven't had it. And there is at all levels of the international and national judiciary system, there is jurisprudence being built, and that is going to be one of the most powerful levers of change, with or without geopolitics.


Paul Dickinson: [00:35:36] Well, I think geopolitics, oddly enough. Well, also very much national politics pushes that. Because one of the things that really got, for example, tobacco in the past was health authorities wanting recompense for having to look after people made sick by smoking. Right. As more and more governments are having to foot higher and higher bills for adaptation, they are starting to look around for corporate actors who may be responsible or found to be responsible, and then they will use their pressure. So you have the jurisprudence, the kind of legal principles, and you have the power of states combining to squeeze damage payments out, to pay for adaptation. That could be extremely bad news for oil and gas industry in countries that move forward. With this. I particularly think of the EU and many parts of the world.


Tom: [00:36:25] Okay. I mean, that's a that's a lot of acronyms to understand, to make sense of 2025. That's pretty easy. I think we started off by being pretty rude about acronyms in general, and I don't think that this episode has really changed my view, but I do think that they point to something that lies underneath them, which is remarkable momentum towards change in all kinds of ways. However, I would for myself end where we started and say, I wish we didn't use so many of them because people shouldn't feel so excluded from the climate movement. All these concepts we've talked about are actually pretty straightforward, and if we use language that was inclusive and brought people in. So a plea to our friends in the climate community, we understand acronyms are necessary, but let's not use them to exclude others. And let's always be mindful about how we use them to try to ensure that people don't feel excluded from our conversation including ourselves.


Christiana: [00:37:11] Exactly. A commitment to the three of us that if we ever use an acronym, we will immediately explain it, or we will stop the other person and say, and what do you mean by that?


Tom: [00:37:23] Okay, friends, thanks so much for joining us this week. We really appreciate you listening to the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.


Christiana: [00:37:31] Bye bye bye.

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