62: Taking Dirty Energy To Court with James Thornton and Dr. Tara Shine

Full Transcript

Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version

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Christiana Figueres: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Christiana Figueres.

 

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Paul Dickinson: I'm Paul Dickinson.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Tom is still away this week, so we are delighted to be joined by another surprise co-host.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Hi, I'm Tara Shine.

 

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Clay (podcast producer): Yay!

 

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Christiana Figueres: This week, we talk about climate change litigation, and we speak to James Thornton, CEO of ClientEarth. We will also enjoy a musical performance from Mystery Jets. Thanks for being here. So, Tara, how wonderful to have you on as our co-host today. Tara, you've been a good friend and a warrior in the battle of many negotiation topics throughout many, many years. I'm almost going to say for... I don't even want to put a number. Can you put a number on that?

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Ooh, well, it's over 20 years in this world, Christiana.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I was going to say 20 years, exactly. I thought 20 years. And then I thought, maybe that's an exaggeration. But it is 20 years. Amazing.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): But really, no, I'm still young because my first cop was in 2003 in Milan. And yeah, so I don't go right back to the very beginning. I think you might.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Sadly, that is true.

 

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Paul Dickinson: What year was that? What year was that? What was your first cop, Christiana? I've never asked you that.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Well, actually, I started before the cops, before cop one.

 

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Paul Dickinson: What?

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yes. There were several meetings before cop one and I started then. Anyway, we don't have to dig so deeply into ancient history here. Tara, it is so wonderful to have you on, especially because you have been one of the true thinkers and worker bees, not just thinking, but really working on the intersection of climate change and human rights, which is the topic that we would like to discuss today. However, Tara, before we go into that very serious topic, I actually wanted to invite you to say a little bit about your book, which already has a fantastic title, right? How To Save Our Planet, Comma, One Object At A Time. And it's such a fun book because it is, yes, how to save our planet. But what you do brilliantly is you go through everyday objects, tasks and habits that we have either at home or at office. And you just lead us through how we can reduce our emissions. So I very much recommend the book. It's just fun and easy to read and easy to follow, more importantly. But I would love you to tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea and where are you now? I know that you've already launched it. You were so brave and launched it during COVID. How did you come up with the idea of the book? And where is it now?

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Thanks. And thanks for having me. I'm so pleased and excited. It's so exciting to go from being on the listening side of this to being on the talking side of it. So yeah, it's a real honor, a real honor. And I love the energy that you bring to this subject that has us all so excited and energized so often.

 

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Paul Dickinson: The honor is ours, Tara, we're planning to go around every single listener over time and get them on. But thank you so much for being that. I'm going to listen to myself to the podcast sometime, which I've never done. So we've got all trading places. That's what we're doing.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Very good. Yeah. So after, you know, many, many years, as you're saying, Christiana, almost 20 years working at the international level on climate change and very much top down where we make, you know, amazing progress and we get secure, amazing agreements. But it takes a very long time then to trickle down into, you know, normal people's everyday lives. And so I always had this problem in that nobody ever understood what I did for a job and never. And what they wanted when they did talk to them about climate change was they just wanted to know, well, what can I do? Yeah. Tell me what I can do, Tara. I don't care what the global emissions picture is. Tell me what I can do. And so a few years ago, when I was finishing up working with the Mary Robinson Foundation, Climate Justice, I said, right, this could be the moment to see, could I write a book for everyday people about everyday things? Because I really want to democratize our conversation on climate change and bring it to more people. I want people to stop thinking you have to be perfect to be green or that you have to be green to be green. You could be purple, orange, blue. Like, let's move away from the color distinction. And so I thought, well, if I write a book through the lens of the most everyday objects that are in our house, our office, our garden shed, the bottom of your gym bag.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Give us a couple of examples, Tara, so we know.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): So listen, this talks about everything from saucepans to tins of paint, from yoga mats to glitter. The entire gamut of everyday things is almost 100 objects in there. And what I've done is I've done a load of really boring research and read a load of technical papers to tell you what the environmental impact of all of those things are. And then I've switched that part of my head off and I've switched on my practical head and I've give you a list of suggestions of things you can actually do in your own life that will make a difference. Small things if you need a small start, bigger things if you're ready for a bigger start. And the whole idea is just try something. Try one, try two things. If you like it, try another. Tell people though. Grow the conversation. Just get started and grow the conversation. And for me, I absolutely know that we need systemic change. I am committed to systemic change, but I just don't see how we can get there without the conversation on climate belonging to more people. So at the moment, it belongs to too few of us. So this book is an attempt to make the climate conversation and the whole green conversation belong to more people so that they feel part of it and they feel empowered. And they're not scared by a big global problem, but rather say, well, look, there is stuff I can do. And that will enable them then in time to vote differently and to get behind systemic change. The other thing that's important about the book is in the title. And you got it wrong, Christiana, but I will forgive you because you wrote me an awesome, awesome four words. Ouch! Ouch!

 

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Christiana Figueres: Go for it. Correct me.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): It's How To Save Your Planet One Object At A Time.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Even better. Thank you, Tara.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Yeah. The Your Planet is because this is all about personalizing it. None of us can like take on saving the whole planet. Yeah, not even you, not even me. So, but what we can do is we can make a difference in our realm of influence. And so this is about focusing on you and your little planet and what you have control over and how you can then be part of making change for greater good. Yeah. And it was an awful time to launch a book in the middle of a pandemic, but people were really kind and got involved and we did all kinds of online things. And, yeah, people found actually that did get the book at that time, that it was really relevant to them because these were all things they could do even while stuck at home and showed them that even while they felt quite perilous in the face of a global pandemic, there were actually things of a planetary scale that they could start to do from their own kitchen.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Well, I think it's a lovely book. I saw you talking about Pete and I think it's a fun book. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person who has glitter as an everyday part of my life and other people do. And that's actually, you know, paying attention to ourselves and how we live and how we spend our money and how we buy is actually at the very heart of empowering yourself to not feel like you're some kind of victim of this, but you're the driver of your own little world.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Yeah. And I mean, that's just my whole theory. And in my business, Change By Degrees, we apply the same theory to working with businesses, including like small and medium sized enterprises that haven't yet really got their head around sustainability. The STGs are Paris. We help them as well to kind of go this one step at a time. It won't be perfect, but it will be good and will be better than what you were doing last year. And so that's really exciting, helping them step by step along the way too.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah. Constant improvement.

 

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Paul Dickinson: And just one more little thought, sorry, is that actually in a certain sense, you're looking at this about how people spend their money, but it's actually a great guide for people who have businesses to see how they can change what they produce, what they sell, the goods and services. So it's for both sides. Sorry, Christiana.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Good. No. Tara, thank you for correcting me, because honestly, I think Save Your Planet is so much better of a title. And titles are really important, as Tom and I know. And so I can imagine that you spent a lot of time thinking about that. In any event, we very much recommend you're buying, reading and practicing the book. How To Save Your Planet One Object At A Time. So now, however, we do have to move over to the larger topic that we would like to devote this episode to, which is the intersection of climate change and human rights, using litigation as a tool, of which there is actually already quite a few years of experience. Because, would you believe it, that climate change litigation actually started in the United States in the late 1980s, early 1990s. The number of litigation cases has grown to a point where litigation is considered by many as either a governance mechanism or a, I would say, a potential governance mechanism, because we will discuss what the current weaknesses are. But the majority of the litigation cases have come, not surprisingly, over the last ten years, and in fact, mostly over the last two years. I think the Paris Agreement was one of the factors that opened the floodgates of litigation. And also, not surprisingly, the majority of the cases are still being filed in the United States. We have something between 1,200 and 1,300 cases in the United States alone, and then more than 300 cases in 36 other countries. So, you know, very, very skewed toward the United States, unsurprisingly, unsurprisingly. And a very interesting, I would say, array of cases, because they're being brought against oil majors, and we can discuss that. They're being brought against governments. A very successful case there that we will discuss. And they're being brought by sometimes even attorney generals, as in the United States, and recently by young people, which I think is so exciting that this whole youth movement lately has not just taken to the streets, but they've actually moved up into the legal framework and are now bringing cases to protect their own future. So a very exciting, and I would say still, despite the fact that it started 20 years ago, I would say still a very incipient area, very incipient. I thought maybe we could start, Tara and Paul, by discussing a little bit the lawsuits that have been brought against the carbon majors, the oil and gas companies, because at least sequentially, those were the first lawsuits that came about. I believe the first very famous one was 2015, where the New York Attorney General issued a subpoena against Exxon. And after that, there have been many cases, most of them not one, by the way. But we have nine cities and counties, all the way from New York to San Francisco, that have sued major fossil fuel companies, seeking compensation. So Tara, I would love to know from you, where do you see the impact of these lawsuits against the companies?

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Yeah, so I think this is all really interesting. So a company can be litigated against for different misdemeanours. So I think in the past, it was largely things like inadequate environmental impact assessment of projects, for example, was a common thing, or projects being built without adequate attention to the rights of people who lived in the local area. But whether it's that, or interestingly now, I think cases taken against companies for greenwashing, which is, I think, really powerful. I think the strength of them, whether they win or lose, is the fact that companies know that they can no longer get away with the practices of the past. And in some cases, it's showing them that, A, they need to practice due diligence, which is like making sure you have your environmental impact assessments, etc. in place. But secondly, that due diligence isn't enough, that you have to go further than that. So you can't just be doing due diligence and saying that you're great, and using that at the basis for a little bit of greenwashing, in terms of your advertising or your branding story, that you actually have to go beyond that. People want you to be authentic and legitimate in your efforts, to be a sustainable, clean, green company. And I think what these lawsuits show is, they show the interest of stakeholders, shareholders, customers and clients to what companies are doing. And so I think they inevitably force companies to pull up their socks and work a bit harder at doing the right thing. And as I say, doing more than not doing harm, actually looking at how are they going to do the right thing? How can they invest, act, produce and manufacture for the greater good? And I think that's really exciting.

 

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Paul Dickinson: I mean, if I can just sort of chip in something is changing in that sort of underlying structure of the way the world views climate change. And there are so many different lawsuits, but one that I pay particular attention to is from the city of San Francisco and other cities suing major oil companies in the US over sea level rise and the cost of building sea walls around San Francisco. I mean, the city could face a $2 billion sea wall cost. Actually, putting one around at the airport could cost considerably more than $5 billion. And it's actually as recently as the 28th of May, that recently the case is back on, that the appeal court has said, yes, they will look at that case. And when you've got such significant entities as the very city of San Francisco and others combining in powerful lawsuits, seeking real reparations for the real cost of building sea walls now, you know that it's getting close to happening and it's getting close to changing the way we think about climate change completely.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Absolutely. And I think looking at the cost of climate impacts, that's a change. So we're not just even using the law to say enough isn't being done to reduce emissions and you're not keeping us safe to that, but also these impacts are going to have costs. And that conversation in the past lived very much as a sort of developed versus developing world conversation. We always assumed it would be developing countries suing other countries for the fact that they were being impacted by climate change. And that gave a lot of fear around kind of big compensation claims. But now in that case in San Francisco, it's actually from within a country in its own country and in a developed country where climate impacts are actually right now costly enough that people are saying, right, we're going to have to sue because these costs are out of control.

 

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Paul Dickinson: It's actually an amazing lawsuit if you read it. The story of misinformation spread by the oil and gas companies is incredible. Christiana.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah. You know, that misinformation, I think that's sort of where this started. And I'm so interested in seeing where it's going. But I think where it started originally was the defrauding of shareholders that were given false information, that the public was given false information about the impacts of climate change, et cetera. I mean, what Tara calls greenwashing. But I think, Tara, this goes beyond our normal greenwashing, right? This is very deliberate misinformation to both shareholders and to the public in general, having the information in hand of what these emissions were doing to the planet, and yet completely denying that they had that information and sort of, you know, sticking that information way down at the bottom of the drawer so that nobody had access to that. Isn't that sort of the genesis of all of this litigation?

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): I think so. That's certainly been at the heart of the Exxon case. And that's been really shocking, I think, to see the extent to which the truth was hidden. And for me, it really helps us to focus on what is the power of the rule of law. And so to test that, I think, is fascinating. And when I started to work with Mary Robinson, it was a great meeting of minds between me as an environmental scientist and her as a human rights lawyer and a lawyer with this strong law background. And for me, that was my chance to actually fundamentally understand the power of the rule of law. And that when we have these laws in place and then we use them when we need to, from a legal justice perspective, how powerful that is. And I think it's something that's overlooked by a lot of us in the environmental field. We work away in our little world around policies and perhaps narrow laws, environmental laws. But there are so many other laws that we can call on to hold people to account, hold companies, hold governments to account. And so I have just had this awakening about the power of the rule of law and how it, whether that law sits in human rights or environment or in labor law or investor law, it is all there for us to call on to hold those who seek to do wrong, who seek to cause injustice to account. And that way, environmentalists working with clever lawyers can really do amazing things to scale up the ambition, but also to hold people to account and to ensure that we're not told any more lies.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Let's delve in a little bit into one of those bodies of law, Tara, that are the human rights, because the current commissioner, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, she has underlined the relationship between climate change and human rights. But am I correct in remembering that it actually was Mary Robinson, with whom you, Tara, worked so closely for so many years. When she was UN High Commissioner of Human Rights way back in 1997, I believe she was the first to recognize and really focus on the relationship between climate change and human rights. I believe her position on that opened up a huge space of first of understanding that these two things belong together, but also the space for where we are now, which is that most litigation on climate change is actually moving toward human rights and using human rights laws as the basis for the litigation cases.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Yeah, so you're dead right. Mary has been a fantastic leader in creating a bridge between climate change and human rights. She actually started to do it after she was high commissioner for human rights. She actually calls herself to account and says she didn't do enough of it while she held that role because it just wasn't understood well enough at that time. But it was actually after that and when she was working on the ground in places like in Africa, where she saw the impact of climate change and human rights, that she said, my goodness, this is the biggest human rights issue of our time. Climate change. Wow, I didn't think about this. And that led her, and then she was shocked when she found that the climate change people never spoke to the human rights people. So a lot of the work that we did in the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice was to bring the human rights and climate change communities together to talk to each other. When we did that, oh my goodness, hey Presto, they had so much that they needed to talk about, so much in common, so many ways they could help each other. And so I think one of the reasons that we've seen progress in human rights law being used to further climate change objectives is because now these two communities have actually found each other. So it's one of these all time examples of where we just sometimes sit in our silos and those who can help us most, we haven't found them yet. So a real call on us all to always talk to someone with a different discipline to yours. And I would say to the people working, people listening to this podcast, that if you care about the environment, learn how to use the law to find out how it can help you.

 

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Christiana Figueres: And so many different bodies of law that are at our disposal.

 

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Tara Shine (guest co-host, filling in for Tom): Exactly. From human rights law to investor and shareholder law, straight up environmental law, all of these things apply. We can use them all. And it's just about being clever. And as I think people committed to the environment and climate action, being humble enough to ask for help. And what lawyers always said to me when I was working as a climate change negotiator was, you don't have to work out the legal how to. Tell me what you want to do and I will tell you what the legal construct is. And so in that way too, tell the lawyer what you're trying to do, what your objective is, what your goal is, and then use them to help you figure out the right way to get there using the law.

 

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Paul Dickinson: And you know, the law has been created over hundreds, thousands of years to protect us, to protect people. You know, I do genuinely believe that the threat represented by climate change is a threat to national security. And, you know, there's long histories of all sorts of people concerned about national security. I was looking the other day, I mentioned this before, on the MI5 website, our security services, but they have a big section on the threat of subversion. They show a photo they took of the head of the Communist Party in 1969. They thought the state was going to be undermined by communists. But my point is, is it the case that disinformation about climate change is undermining our states and threatening our national security? I don't know, but all eyes need to be upon protecting the public and making sure that we have an honest and transparent legal and public system to protect the people of today and the children of tomorrow.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Well, on that note, we might have to move on to introduce our guest today.

 

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Paul Dickinson: An expert, someone like Tara, who knows what they're talking about, which I can't claim to, but that's never stopped me.

 

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Christiana Figueres: And we are delighted to bring our listeners an interview with James Thornton today. James is an environmental lawyer and writer. He is the founding CEO of ClientEarth, which has been called by the International Bar Association. And I quote, a public interest law firm. It's very interesting that they call it a public interest law firm. When James was very explicit when he founded ClientEarth, to found it as a global nonprofit environmental law organization. But it's interesting that it is perceived by his peers as a law firm, I think probably because of the impact that they have been having. Now, ClientEarth has offices in London, Brussels, Warsaw, New York and Beijing. They operate globally and they use advocacy, litigation and research to address many issues, actually the greatest challenges, including biodiversity loss, toxic chemicals and climate change. So let's move to the interview, which was actually recorded a few weeks ago, including Tom, while he was still with us. And in the interview, we invite James to focus on his work on climate change, specifically, including his groundbreaking work in China.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Great, let's hear it.

 

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Christiana Figueres: James, thank you so much for joining us here on Outrage and Optimism. We have been on the air for over a year, and all of a sudden we looked at each other and we went, wait, wait, wait, wait, we haven't covered litigation at all, which clearly was a hole that we had to fill very quickly. And so of course, you are the person that first came to mind on this because you have made such a remarkable name for yourself on I would say earth sciences or earth litigation in general and so many issues. But we wanted to today, if it's possible, and if you think it's fair, but you can also stray away from it, we wanted to focus on climate litigation just because that is the focus of the podcast. But we did want to start with something more personal because we think it's actually fascinating that your passion really as a young person was biology. And you then had an aha moment, which we would love you to share with us. So how do you go from biology to law and then to setting up ClientEarth in 2007?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Well, first let me say how pleased I am to be with you all. And as I told you at a lunch one time, my Christiana, you're one of my heroes. There aren't many heroes left, you know. But you are one. And I, as a kid, most environmentalists maybe would say that as a child, they fell in love with nature. I mean, really fell in love with nature. It's a heart experience, you know. It's a mental experience, it's an emotional experience. So I had that and then I wanted to be a biologist. One of my great early teachers was a woman when I was a teenager, who is an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York. She was a great teacher for me. And so and then I went to university and I studied lots of things, including biology, and it was a natural thing to want to keep studying what I loved. And then it became clear that it was beginning to suffer and potentially die. And I could spend the rest of my life studying what I loved and watching it die, or I could try and do something about it. Now, the reason I then went to become a lawyer, went to law school was I didn't know what it would do because environmental law kind of was being born in those days. I went to law school in 1976 and the big American environmental laws, where I went to law school in America, just come out around 1970. So it was very, very new. So I didn't know how I was going to use it. But my father was a law professor and there were four sons. All of the sons wound up becoming lawyers, even though some of them tried other careers first. It was inevitable sort of.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Was that fed in the dinner table?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): That's a very good question. So what happened around the dinner table was that our discussions, we were five years apart. So I was number three. And around the dinner table, we would have discussions about topics, things that were going on in the world or what we'd seen that day. And I didn't realize until many years later that my father was teaching us the Socratic method and was teaching us to be lawyers because you would say something that you were passionate about as a kid. And he would say, hmm, how do you know that that is true?

 

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Christiana Figueres: Oh dear. Is that with the main course or with dessert?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): It depended on the discussion. But happily, my mother was also there to support us completely. And so for my father, I got this analytic tradition. And for my mother, I got a deep spiritual path. And those two have been my, have come together.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Nice pillars. Yeah.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Yeah.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Now, James, I wonder whether the two, let's say, worldviews that you got from your two parents explain a phrase that is on the ClientEarth website that we were all quite taken with. Because you say ClientEarth uses law as a tool to mend the relationship between human societies and the Earth. And we would love to unpack that because usually when people think of law or litigation, the last thing they think about is mending any relationship. In fact, they think quite to the contrary. So we're just quite taken with that. And I'm wondering, does this have anything to do with on the one hand, a spiritual practice, and on the other hand, law from your father?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Well, I'm sure it does. So the way we use law, and we'll talk about litigation today, but about half of what we do is litigation. And the other half of what we do is writing laws. So in parliaments, you know, so we work with citizen groups, we work with legislators, we work with companies when possible to create new and better legal systems. So I have this idea that if we create environmental law 2.0, we're at 1.0 now, and even if you enforce it, the Paris Agreement that we all love and that you worked on so hard, and everything else, that doesn't completely solve our problems. That's environmental law 1.0. If we create a perfect environmental law, environmental law 2.0, then people will have the right set of rules and they will have agreed to the right set of rules to live well on the planet and live in a way that creates a resilient society and a sustainable society. So there is, in law, you could say, law captures the vision of whatever the people in a country think about themselves at the time. So-

 

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Christiana Figueres: At the time.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): At the time. It's a postcard in a way of where a people is with respect to their relationship, in this case, with the earth. And it can change over time. So our idea is that if we move law in the right direction and then hold people to the law so that everyone behaves, then indeed, if you have the right vision and you're moving it in the right direction, then you can heal that relationship.

 

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Paul Dickinson: I love that, that you work on both of those elements, and that both the constructing of the new laws, as well as the implementing of the laws that we should be adhering to.

 

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Clay (podcast producer): How far along on that road are we?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): How close are we to having the laws that we would need for this conversation to solve the climate crisis?

 

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Paul Dickinson: How much more new law writing do we need?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): And how much do we just need to implement what's there? We need both. So for example, going back to the Paris Agreement, Paris Agreement is very beautiful and it hasn't yet fully cascaded down into national laws. So it hasn't fully cascaded into the laws of every country. That needs to happen. And those laws in every country need to also then apply to every sizable company in the country so that every company needs to have a Paris compliant business plan and then that needs to be enforceable. So there's a lot of cascading that hasn't happened yet. So there's a lot of law that hasn't come about. So the Paris Agreement is hard to enforce right now. In fact, it is occasionally enforceable in court, which is incredibly important. But a lot of detail needs to come under it as well as enforcing existing laws.

 

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Christiana Figueres: That's a complex and long process. Do you have any sense, James, an overview of if that process, to its point of completion, if there is such a thing, is 100%? Are we at 10? Are we at 20? Globally, 10, 20, 30? Where are we? Can you more or less quantify a guesstimate?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): I've never thought about that. That's a really great question. Maybe let's put it at 20% with intentions to get up to... But 20% is pretty good in the few years. But the intentions and the things that are being worked on now would move you all the way up. So, for example, to take Europe and China as examples, because they're leaders at the moment. And I hope we get leadership out of the United States in a few months. But Europe and China now are leaders on this. And Europe is looking at its Green Deal. And the Green Deal that's contemplated in Europe is a miracle, really, that is being thought of and is being adhered to as the legislative agenda of the Commission, even after COVID. But that would fundamentally bring every area of legislation within the EU into line with Paris Agreement targets. So that's remarkable. In China, we're working with the Chinese government on greening its Belt and Road Initiative. So the Belt and Road Initiative is a vast infrastructure project that would link 100 countries roughly to China, well more than a trillion in investment, and its roads, ports, energy projects. And whether those are done green or brown has a lot to do with whether we reach Paris targets or not. And there was no framework for deciding between green and brown investments in Belt and Road decisions. We and many others have been working with the Ministry of Environment. And very excitingly, there is now a framework that the Ministry of Environment in China has, and it's a traffic light system where every Belt and Road project would get a green light, yellow light or red light, and therefore it would be easier or more difficult to fund. And it's...

 

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Christiana Figueres: According to what? According to what? What's the traffic system?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Well, good question. So what you're looking at then is climate impact and biodiversity impact. Wow. Amazing, right? No, this is beautiful. This is a beautiful thing.

 

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Christiana Figueres: That's amazing.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Yeah, this is totally cool. And so if you then were a company proposing to build a solar power system in Indonesia under the Belt and Road, you get a green light. But if you were proposing to build a coal-fired power station in Indonesia, you'd get a red light. Now that wouldn't under the current, we were saying that then everything that's red-lighted or some of the things like coal would just be on a no-go list. I don't know if we'll win that argument, but at least it would be easier or more difficult to finance. Now as you'll know, in no country is the Ministry of Environment the strongest ministry. However, the president of China, Xi Jinping, By far? Yes. If we could switch a button from one to the other, that would be ideal. Anyway, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has given a number of speeches recently saying, we must green the Belt and Road Initiative. So the Ministry of Environment is now working with us and many foreign advisors and a vast number of Chinese intellectuals to perfect this traffic light system. And the hope is then, because Xi Jinping is so interested in it, that other ministries will get on board. And I'm pretty sure that will happen. So at that point, what you begin to get, to go back to your question, is Europe with this beautiful idea of a green deal, aligning all of its legislation with achieving Paris Agreement targets and China greening the Belt and Road, in which case, if this works, as I hope it does, then you get a trillion of investment in green infrastructure rather than in brown infrastructure, and you begin to move global society much, much more quickly towards Paris.

 

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Paul Dickinson: So can I ask a question, James, so just about Europe particularly, because what I found fascinating is, the way you're talking about working with the government, it sounds like it's not like a party political thing. I mean, does ClientEarth try and work with the green parliamentarians, or how do you integrate with the party process to get laws passed? And I mention that just because we got thousands of people listening who are very effective climate activists, what's the secret of your interaction?

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Well, anyone is my friend who wants to improve the climate. 100%. So we work with a green party, we work with conservatives in every country. Wow, that's good. And many people would say, why are you working in China at all? Because someone might say, I'm not a fan of their human rights policies, how can you work in China? And the answer is, because they are deeply and honestly seeking to do good things for the environment. So on that, they're my friends.

 

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Christiana Figueres: I wanted to take you, Paul, if I may, I wanted to take you back a little bit to China, because it's so fascinating. The fact that they have now a traffic like system for Belt and Road is an incredible achievement, James. It's something that many activists have been tearing their hair out about. So that's excellent news. But I am sure that this did not come lightly. I would love to hear a little more about the process, the work with whom. Is it with the legislative system? Is it with the legal system? Is it with the justice system? Is it city level, state level, national? Just a little. I'm sorry that we don't have the time to get into all of the specifics. But if you can give us a flavor, because that work of ClientEarth in basically the one country that holds in their hand the capacity to truly design and define the future, it's just fantastic. It's amazing.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Well, yeah. And the way it started was I was invited in in 2014 to advise members of the Supreme Court and senior lawmakers on a law that they were working on. And they were writing a law to allow Chinese NGOs to sue polluting companies, including companies that are owned by the state. Amazing, right? That's pretty cool. That's 2014. So I arrive in Beijing, and they've asked me to give them a seminar. And they say, look, you're the only guy we know who's done this type of work, NGO work against companies in both Europe and the United States. So what should a system look like that's going to deliver this? And I said, well, before we get there, I just want to say how great this change that you're making is. I think it's revolutionary. And the senior Supreme Court judge said, James, revolutionary is a big word for us. And we had a good laugh. And I said, I could love these people and work with them. And that's exactly what happened. So I gave them advice. I went back in a few months and they said, well, all of your advice was so valuable, we wrote it directly into the Chinese law. And I said, in the Supreme Court, I'm in the Supreme Court across the table from the judges. And I put my hand on my heart and said, your honor, not every meeting begins like this for me. This is pretty amazing. And the Supreme Court judge said, okay, what do you want to do next for China?

 

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Christiana Figueres: Wow.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): What a wonderful question, right?

 

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Christiana Figueres: What an honor for you to be asked that question.

 

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James Thornton (guest, CEO of ClientEarth): Indeed. I mean, biggest honor ever at that point in my life, for sure.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Absolutely.

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