330: Inside COP: Al Gore on Fossil Fuel Lobbying and (In)convenient Truths

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:07:10] Um, but I think one of the things that Global Witness have struggled with and others who do this is they say, well, a lot of these organizations represent themselves through trade associations, and trade associations, pursue multiple different agendas at the same time. And you both want to take account for that influence, because Paul, as you know very well, that's how much of the most pernicious influence is exerted, but also because somebody representing a trade association that has a few fossil fuel members and a range of other members, it doesn't mean they're necessarily here trying to wreck the talks. So I think it's quite difficult to point to that number.

Paul Dickinson: [00:07:43] That trade associations name may be used, but the advocacy of the fossil fuel industry, they will pay for that advocacy. The text will pay for the tech advocacy, the pharmaceuticals will pay for the pharmaceutical advocacy. So the whole all the companies in the trade association, sort of their authority is used by each sector that's advocating.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:08:03] That's true. But I would suggest that if you had 100 hundred lobbyists or participants representing a trade association, I don't know that all of them would be there just to represent the fossil fuel interests, even if they had some fossil fuel members. So I appreciate this is difficult. I know it's hard to work on the methodology, but whenever I see those numbers, I'm slightly like, I think this is making an implication of a level of industry capture that I actually don't feel is really accurate, and I know that's an unpopular view.

Christiana Figueres: [00:08:36] Could I compliment that by asking why, if we're looking at this fossil fuel lobbying activity, does that mean we're underestimating the potentially very, very powerful action, not even lobbying of fossil fuel exporting countries 100%. Are we saying they're not capable of doing their own bidding? Is that what we're saying? I mean, I have honestly very rarely seen Saudi Arabia not be an excellent negotiator for all of their interests. So why are we thinking that they need a lot of help?

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:09:20] Well, that's a great point. That looks at it because, I mean, actually there's plenty of fossil fuel exporting countries who are here for particularly that objective. And they're doing, I think, far more damage than negotiations.

Christiana Figueres: [00:09:28] And they're sitting at the table. They're not just walking the halls.

Paul Dickinson: [00:09:31] We actually lost the biggest one, which was the US, because the US is the biggest oil producer, then Saudi Arabia, then Russia. Sorry, Christina.

Christiana Figueres: [00:09:37] No.

Paul Dickinson: [00:09:37] And there they didn't come.

Christiana Figueres: [00:09:39] Well, they clearly could be working through other countries who are here.

Paul Dickinson: [00:09:43] I mean, there was just one one little bit of hygiene I've seen around the world, and it is health ministries stories have passed, or governments have passed laws saying that tobacco companies must not be involved in setting health policy. And so they've been actually prohibited. So there is a there is a sort of history here of making a kind of a legislative intervention. But fossil fuels, of course, are very diffuse. And were Darren Woods from Exxon here, he'd say, I'm.

Paul Dickinson: [00:10:09] Just digging it up. It's you lot that's burning it.

Paul Dickinson: [00:10:11] Which is where it gets complicated.

Christiana Figueres: [00:10:12] That's exactly what he said.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:10:13] Yeah. What I have to say, I don't like about this report that comes out every year and says these places are completely corrupt. They're full of fossil fuel lobbyists.

Paul Dickinson: [00:10:21] It undermines the whole thing. Right.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:10:22] Everyone? I mean, there are so many people here doing their level best, pushing for the right thing. It's a really good point, really trying to drive.

Christiana Figueres: [00:10:28] Working 27 hours a day.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:10:29] And then when they go home, you know, everyone else will say, well, it's all corrupt. It's just fossil fuel lobbyists. And I just think that many of my friends have that complete sort of like view of the cop that is just fossil fuel lobbyists trying to destroy the future. And it's just not my experience.

Paul Dickinson: [00:10:44] Cells, human reasoning, rather short, I think.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:10:46] Yeah. Should we move on? Okay. The next question is Bianca Pitt asked. The process of choosing the host country has to be reformed. It is opaque, and Petro states seem to be getting the deal every single time. If we want cops to be successful, why not actually choose countries that have successfully decarbonised? That is a brilliant idea and Christiana is going to explain why that's not possible under the UN.

Christiana Figueres: [00:11:11] I think we've already gone through this, that the UN is divided into five regions, that they, uh, rotate the Cop presidency by region, and that it is only the countries of that region that have a say in who is going to host. Now, there is an irony here that because the cops have grown so much. How many do we have here? It was, I think 56,000. 56,000. It has been in the past 80,000, uh, in Dubai, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So because they have grown so much, there is a huge cost to the host country and the cost has to do with inclusivity. They could perfectly well say nope, this is going to be closed only to representatives of the governments and therefore is going to be a cop for, I don't know, 3000 people, let's say, and nobody else. Okay, that makes it very doable for many countries. But when you have to put together the infrastructure and have hotels and transport and food and, and exhibition space for 56 or 80,000 people, that makes it only a handful of countries that can actually afford it. So there is a tug of war here between inclusivity, which means cause and those countries that can afford it. The small countries cannot afford it.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:12:40] Yeah.

Paul Dickinson: [00:12:40] Is it about building infrastructure? Is that the challenge? I mean, do you have to be over a certain size because could a cop not bring money with people coming and hiring hotel rooms and stuff?

Christiana Figueres: [00:12:49] Oh, no. And at least while I was there. And I'm definitely out of date on many things, but at least while I was there, we did an analysis of how much the cop costs to the hosting government and how much it actually brings in for the hosting country. And it was always a positive net benefit that comes in later. So you need the upfront capital to do everything that is necessary. I mean, you have to see this infrastructure that was built here. Paul, this is this is not easy.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:13:27] I mean, it's good to get to infrastructure because actually we're not going to have time for maybe just one more question, but more green on Spotify asked us, do you have any comment on Brazil ripping a road through the middle of the rainforest to build a road to Belem? So that's a question there about infrastructure here as well. Who would like to answer that?

Paul Dickinson: [00:13:44] I think that there are all sorts of gigantic things. This road is eight miles long. Is that correct? It's probably very ill judged eight mile road and probably somebody shouldn't have dug it up or something. But I mean, it's entirely kind of trivial in the great scheme of things. There are like tens of thousands of hectares just chopped down all the time. Deforestation is a chronic problem, so it's symbolically very clumsy, but I think it's materially irrelevant. Now. Maybe the symbolically clumsy is the one we should focus on.

Christiana Figueres: [00:14:12] I think there's it is also symbolically very appropriate that this is the first cop that takes place in the heart of one of the tipping point elements of the planet. We have the Amazon rainforest, we have ocean currents. We have the ice sheets both in the north and in the south as being some of the most brittle and vulnerable tipping points. And this is the very first cop in the history of the climate convention that takes place in the middle of that tipping point. If this tipping point actually reaches which it could reaches the threshold and tips over the Amazon rainforest will become a savanna.

Paul Dickinson: [00:15:01] And that is spectacularly, more gigantically massively terrifying than you can imagine.

Christiana Figueres: [00:15:07] And more politically important to focus on that.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:15:10] Um, we should just say, before we close this, that the government of Peru has denied that actually that bit of road was constructed for Cop 30, and they claim that there has been, you know, a media misinterpretation of that and that the Cop funding wasn't to do with that. And these projects have been going on for years, but who knows? I mean, how do we tell the difference? Okay.

Paul Dickinson: [00:15:31] I mean, I find it fascinating that so many of these questions are about the suspicion people have, you know, with justification that this is not serving people and that there are these conflicting interests and we're all being sold down the river. And actually, that's part of a kind of modern spirit of just, oh, it's also kind of terrible and nothing can be done. And, you know, somebody's got to make a kind of intervention. And I understand that sort of scream from the heart, and it speaks to injustice. And it's also the sort of root of populism. But I don't think it's going to necessarily help us. We need to unpack it somewhat.

Christiana Figueres: [00:15:59] We really wanted a video of your facial expression while you were doing that.

Paul Dickinson: [00:16:03] Okay. There are cameras. I've never seen so many cameras in my life. I will never be able to escape this facial expression.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:16:11] It's a good point, Paul. It's a really good point, actually. I mean, that's just a selection of the questions we got, but they're all about how isn't the process corrupt, isn't what we're being told from. They're not accurate. And I think it's I think that that is two things. I think it's a misinterpretation of what's happening here. My experience is that actually there is a lot of really smart, really committed people doing their best. And it's hard and it should be going faster on all of those things are true, but the sort of sense of hypocrisy and all that is not my experience, actually. And I had a second point I've never forgotten.

Christiana Figueres: [00:16:40] Well, my my point to maybe which was your maybe it was your claim.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:16:45] It was. Anyway, when you say.

Christiana Figueres: [00:16:47] Is that whether we're all served by trying to pick at those aspects that are not perfect, or whether we're better served by honoring and respecting the enormous work and effort that goes into this, and being supportive of that, admitting that there is no perfection, there is no purity. There is no, it just isn't. We're all human, but much good can come out of this. So for me, it's very much of a is the glass full? Is it half full or is it half empty? It is definitely not full. But then is it half empty or is it half full? For me it is half full and filling up and I think I prefer for me personally, I prefer to put my energy and my focus on filling the glass up, rather than trying to find the hole at the bottom of the glass.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:17:49] I think that's a really good point. And I should also say that, um, I feel like it's completely understood. I think what's happening here is people are frightened. Yes. About what's very nervous. And actually you then look to say maybe there's some problem with the process, that if we correct it, then we can get back on track. And so I think it's a natural thing to look for those things.

Christiana Figueres: [00:18:09] It's very understandable.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:18:10] But actually us stepping back and trying to fill the glass is how we move forward. Yeah. All right. So, um, we probably shouldn't keep Vice President Gore waiting any longer. We actually.

Paul Dickinson: [00:18:21] He's getting really cross outside. I mean, he's like looking at his watch. And, you know, honestly, you don't want to mess with that guy.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:18:26] We should clarify so that we don't attract his ire, that he's not outside. We recorded this earlier. But thank you, folks.

Paul Dickinson: [00:18:31] Otherwise, I thought we could have had a little bit of fun with the listeners. Apparently not.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:18:34] Okay, fine. I didn't want the record to be outrageous. Optimism says al Gore gets very angry if he's kept waiting for two minutes. Uh.

Paul Dickinson: [00:18:41] I get very angry if I get waiting for two minutes. And I've never been vice president of anything.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:18:45] Uh, Christiana, you have been good friends with Vice President Gore for a very long time. And anything you want to say before we start?

Christiana Figueres: [00:18:51] Well, he hardly needs an introduction. Um, but but he does deserve a lot of credit for standing by this issue. Decade after decade after decade. And as a politician, he also well and now an entrepreneur. He also deserves a lot of credit for the amount of scientific research and study that he himself does.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:19:16] Oh my God, it's amazing.

Christiana Figueres: [00:19:17] And and he has this incredible elephant's memory that never forgets a piece of data and any information which, honestly, in a world in which there's so much disinformation, it's just so refreshing to have someone who has a very clear opinion based on data, based on facts. So for both of those reasons. I highly respect him.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:19:41] And I mean, it's not everyone who brings T.S. Eliot into interviews about climate change, so I thought that was good, too. Well, let's just go to the interview.

Christiana Figueres: [00:19:53] Vice President Al Gore, thank you so much for joining us here on Inside Cop, the official Cop 30 podcast.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:20:02] Fantastic. Being media people here, it's quite a new thing for us.

Christiana Figueres: [00:20:04] I know it's very.

Christiana Figueres: [00:20:05] Odd for us to walk around with a press badge.

Al Gore: [00:20:07] Oh, well, you've both been friends for so long and your your podcast has been such a fantastic success. Congratulations.

Christiana Figueres: [00:20:16] Well, we're still going.

Al Gore: [00:20:18] I'm honored to be a guest.

Christiana Figueres: [00:20:19] No, thank you so much. So let's start by talking about the price of, uh, let's call it political ideologies or partisan ideology. The price of political division has A very high price in the United States in climate change, because it has been such a partisan issue. There is barely any common ground across the aisle. It has actually been, uh, something that has caused in and out the United States was into the Paris Agreement first. Then it came out. Then it went back in. Then it came back out. You were one of the ones who or the main person who put the United States into the Kyoto Protocol. Then they stepped out. I mean, this in, out, in, out has actually been led by who is in the administration and who is not and who then comes in. But it also is not just about those moments. It's about a permanent divide that has become wider and wider over time. Why has climate become so politicized in the United States, and is there any possibility that that could change?

Al Gore: [00:21:44] Hmm. Well, there's an old saying in Tennessee that if you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be pretty sure it didn't get there by itself. And in the same way, this didn't happen by itself. It is one of the principal strategies that has been deployed by the large fossil fuel companies, particularly ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, in order to create a partisan divide on this issue. It started earlier, but it shifted into high gear with the creation of the Tea Party, which was chartered by the Koch brothers, the largest privately owned fossil fuel company in America. And one of the big funders from day one was ExxonMobil, and they intentionally created a partisan divide on climate in order to divide and conquer, and to try to stop the efforts to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which of course, is the principal cause of the climate crisis. It got even worse a few years later when the Supreme Court, with whose decisions I have not always agreed.

Christiana Figueres: [00:22:56] To put it mildly.

Al Gore: [00:22:58] Issued a famous decision in the so-called Citizens United case, which found that corporations can legally give unlimited amounts of money to politicians anonymously. As the old saying goes, what could go wrong? And my friends in the Congress who are Republicans, who are the ones who are still there, have told me that there was a break point after Citizens United. There had been bipartisan legislation introduced on climate For years I worked with many Republican senators and congressmen. And then it stopped completely. And all of a sudden, Republicans became afraid to join on the issue because the unlimited amounts of money could be given by the fossil fuel companies and their allies to primary opponents against them. And so it all it all stopped. It's tragic because, um, you know, the founders of the United States had a very clear understanding of so many humanist truths. And one of the great concerns they had was what they called faction, which is their word for what we now call partisanship. Uh, and we are wired as human beings, apparently to group up. And even the slightest difference can be a basis for a divide. We can get over that, but if it's constantly reinforced on an annual basis, then it becomes what it has become now. Another factor has been the ongoing revolution in the nature of the media ecosystem, which of course started with the printing press and all of the ways we were able to reason together, collectively. It cycled through broadcasting and now, with social media worsened by AI, the ability to reason together collectively has been harmed quite dramatically. And so it gets ever worse. And it's on many, many issues. It started with tobacco and then guns, but really it came into full flower on the on the climate issue.

Christiana Figueres: [00:25:24] But if that is so, um, then what I conclude from that is that it's going to be very difficult to change, and if it cannot be changed, then the question arises. So how can other countries trust the United States?

Al Gore: [00:25:40] I agree with you, but I'd like to respond by parsing your question into two parts. First of all, it may be possible to change this dynamic and looking back into the history of media ecosystems within which we live. The first century and a half after the introduction of the printing press 500 years ago was a mess. The religious wars with the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. But finally it settled into a new pattern. So there is precedent for waiting for the emergence of new ways to use the new media, and that is now beginning to happen with the digital media. If you look at the fantastic success of the No Kings movement in the United States. If you look at the incredible innovations of the Minister of Digital in Taiwan, Audrey Tang. If you look at Estonia, northern Italy, there are places around the world where there are new forms emerging. It turns out that our inherent love of freedom, of individual liberty, our desire to be free of strong men trying to impose their will, uh, people resist that, and they find ways to get around the restrictions that are preventing them. And so I have some optimism. And so when the world sees the US sidelined and become a kind of a rogue government under Donald Trump, then yes, uh, it really hurts the entire global community.

Al Gore: [00:27:27] China wants to take the US place as the leader of the world. But my guess is that because their values in China have evolved historically in a way they're very, very different from the values that most people in the world aspire to be governed by. I think it's unlikely the world will follow China. They're being pushed toward China by the US and of course, the new green technology in China. You may have seen the new statistic that the value of the exports of green technology from China to the rest of the world now are far larger than the total value of all the fossil fuels exported by the United States to the rest of the world. The latter is a depreciating asset, which may turn into a collection of so-called stranded assets. While the green tech is obviously the future solar, wind, batteries, EVs, Ves et-cetera. And so one of the great tragedies you've highlighted, the, the removal of the US as the world's leader. Uh, but the second is that Donald Trump has shot the US in both feet and hobbled the US's ability to profit from and have a sustainable growth in the green tech. We need to sharply reduce global warming pollution. Um.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:28:57] One of the things that we've observed as a result of that partisanship is a kind of critique in a way, of how we've all showed up over the last few decades. We've talked about climate. Maybe sometimes it's felt remote to people's lives. It's been in the future, and there's this sort of emerging consensus or view that we should instead talk much more about, about the economics, about the health benefits. Do you buy that? And do you think that actually that would make a difference in the US and make it more bipartisan if we change the narrative and centred people more, rather than talking about what some people see as abstract concepts.

Al Gore: [00:29:33] Yes, I agree with that. But I don't want to buy part of the premise that we haven't tried to do that. Many of us, including the three of us, have certainly tried to do that. But one of the new initiatives that we have just unveiled in Climate Trace is the linkage of the global warming pollution with the particulate Co pollution, sometimes called PM 2.5. Others call it soot, the same combustion process. You all know this when you burn fossil fuels, you simultaneously put the global warming pollution into the troposphere to trap all this heat. That's the cause of the crisis, 80% of it. But the same combustion process also results in massive local pollution, local pollution. So what we've done on the Climate Trace website, climate tracing is now to put the local co pollution. And we visualized, we visualized it as the plumes that give people an opportunity to see exactly where it's coming from and exactly where the plumes are going every, every day. Our aspiration is to have it for every city in the world. We have 9500 now, and to do it on a daily basis, the periodicity will require another year and a half to put that all in place. But my hope is that we're not long from the time where television weather forecasters every night and the weather apps that we see on our devices.

Al Gore: [00:31:08] When you look up, where is the cold front coming? Where is this storm approaching here? Here are the pollution plumes today, and we are collecting the health statistics on the areas under the plumes and comparing it to the areas on either side of the plumes in order to try to build a coalition between public health groups and climate groups, and budget conscious groups that are terrified of the rapidly rising health care costs. Because prevention is so much easier than cheaper than the cure and cheaper, and there is now a real focus now. Abraham Lincoln once said, public sentiment is everything. With it, everything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible. I want to see people have the information available to them, to form coalitions, to increase the pressure to shut down the combustion of fossil fuels. It will take some time. Of course. We have to phase it out as the world committed to do two years ago at Cop 28, and I think we have a better chance to do that when the public health groups can connect the combustion of fossil fuels with these lung and heart diseases. The estimates from the definitive Harvard study is that 8.7 million people are killed every year by breathing in the pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

Christiana Figueres: [00:32:36] All of them premature deaths.

Al Gore: [00:32:38] All of them premature deaths? Absolutely. That's a better way to say it. Thank you. And the World Health Organization has long since said the climate crisis is the number one health challenge in the world today. It's not only the pollution, of course. It's also tropical diseases and all of the other factors that are taken into account.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:32:58] And just on that, because, I mean, clearly the impact of that on politics could be enormous, right? Because it reflects back what's happening much more quickly into people's lives. But to go back to where you were a minute ago, how do we get people to believe that in today's world?

Christiana Figueres: [00:33:13] And is that a path to.

Christiana Figueres: [00:33:14] Depoliticising the issue?

Al Gore: [00:33:16] I think it can be, yes, because Republicans are concerned about their children and children's health, their family's health, the Same as Democrats and independents. So yes, I would also make one other point, though, in response to your original question here. Very often people say, well, you know, the real problem is you're not using the right language. You're not using the right metaphors. You need to upgrade your skills in communicating about this. And that's true, of course, but we shouldn't take all of that as climate advocates on our own backs, because above and beyond that are the power structures that create this massive asymmetry in communication about about climate, the virtually unlimited budgets being poured into misinformation about climate. This has all been documented, as you all know very well, and now it's being amplified by the use of these bots that repeat and slightly vary and flood the zone. Every article in a newspaper or a magazine or every digital communication. If you go to the comment section, invariably it is stuffed full of these bot driven misinformation posts that reinforce the the false narratives about climate. So we have to deal with that issue as well, even as we seek to improve our own skills and techniques in communicating well.

Christiana Figueres: [00:34:48] How would.

Christiana Figueres: [00:34:48] You compare and contrast this conversation that we're having about the fact that burning fossil fuels is both a local and a global pollution, and hence it is both a human and a planetary health issue. How would you compare and contrast that view with the view that was put out by our friend Bill gates in his recent memo?

Al Gore: [00:35:09] Well, I'm trying to hold back a little bit, but not very successfully. I loved your metaphor, which I saw immediately after his, uh, his unfortunate about-face on climate where you use the U. You said that some of these digital tycoons are binary in their focus because of the ones and zeros, and the idea that climate and health is a.

Christiana Figueres: [00:35:36] Was a little bit strong. But, you know.

Al Gore: [00:35:38] Binary it's not. They're they're completely interlinked, as I said, as the experts have told us, the climate crisis is the number one cause of health problems in the world today. And I think we should spend more money on health. I've long advocated that. But my advice to Bill gates would be that the best place to look for that money is to take it away from the massive subsidies for fossil fuels that taxpayers all around the world are being forced by their governments to, to shovel to the fossil fuel companies massive subsidies to support the destruction of the quality of humanity's future. That's the place to look for the money. Most of the new fossil fuel facilities that are in the planning stage are under construction now. Would never be economic, never recover the money spent except for the subsidies. There are a lot of countries that spend twice as much on subsidizing fossil fuel burning as they do on their health budgets, so that's where you get the money not to.

Christiana Figueres: [00:36:48] It makes a lot of sense.

Al Gore: [00:36:49] Not to take it away from efforts to solve the number one threat to humanity's future, the climate crisis. It was really it was really unfortunate. Of course, the only rave review he got was from Donald Trump.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:37:01] This is a year of nationally determined contributions. Do you see a pathway for real time emissions reporting to actually feed into more accurate NDCs that would improve the international process as well?

Al Gore: [00:37:13] Absolutely. I'm very excited about Climate Trace. My co-founder, Gavin McCormack, is a brilliant scientist and we co-founded it six years ago. We have these 165 coalition members all around the world, really some of the most distinguished institutions that exist in the world. And we do now have monthly reporting of all emissions from 745 million point source emission sites everywhere in the world. We we have 98, 99% of all the global warming pollution tracked to its source. We have 100% of the Co pollution tracked to its source. And we are increasing the periodicity we previewed just two days ago here, here in Berlin at Cop 30. The new partnership and how it is working. We had one of the ministers from Uganda. Uganda is one of the test cases that the UNF triple C has worked with us to create. We are creating detailed plans for every nation, every state and province, every city. We're working with C40. There's an old saying in business that everybody's heard you can only manage what you measure. I actually tracked down by looking at Google, who first said that it was Lord Kelvin 140 years ago, and he said that if you can express something precisely in numbers, then you can understand it. If you just have a general idea of what you're trying to accomplish, then that may be the beginning of knowledge. But if you cannot express it in numbers, you have hardly advanced toward the state of science. It's a great old quote, but I.

Al Gore: [00:39:02] But from that came the saying, you can only manage what you measure. We now measure it very precisely. We monitor 300 satellites from six countries and the EU and all of the major commercial Satellites. Planet. By the way, Will Marshall's great company gives us more images than anyone else, and we fuse it together with artificial intelligence, not generative AI. By the way, the energy consumption of our entire project is less than what comes from the flight that we took from the US here to Brazil. And we are now providing it not only for the cities and states and governments, but in nations, but also to asset managers who have portfolios, any asset manager or asset owner that wants to decarbonize their portfolio. We can rank all of the emissions of all the companies in their portfolio and rank them by how expensive would it be? And many of them are cost of cost plus positive. And how difficult it would be and where to start. You know, I think that it can make a difference when you see exactly where it's coming from. You know, T.S. Eliot famously wrote a long time ago, between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the deed. Falls the shadow. The shadow in this metaphor would be not knowing what you're trying to manage. We're trying to shed light into that shadow and make it more possible for people to act with more boldness and precision.

Christiana Figueres: [00:40:47] There's another level of the not knowing that I think that you're helping us understand. And it is. Yes, certainly. Point source, company by company, city by city, country, but also the aggregate at planetary level.

Christiana Figueres: [00:41:00] Yes.

Christiana Figueres: [00:41:00] And so the fact that we think perhaps that we are plateauing or beginning the decrease of emissions globally is something that honestly is still a little bit of a guesswork.

Al Gore: [00:41:15] Not for us.

Christiana Figueres: [00:41:16] Not for us. That's what I was going to.

Al Gore: [00:41:18] Invite.

Christiana Figueres: [00:41:18] You to go into.

Al Gore: [00:41:19] We have yet to call a peak in in emissions. But we're getting we're getting close. We do have the entire aggregate.

Christiana Figueres: [00:41:28] And what is your sense that we're not peaking yet? We have not peaked.

Al Gore: [00:41:31] I think we're we look at it month by month. We have had something of a plateau. China's role is so large, China has plateaued. China is probably, we think, going to see a emissions reduction begin this year. Um, you know, they have been installing so much solar and wind and batteries and transmission lines. They have continued to build new fossil fuel plants, unfortunately. But one of the things we've found is that the new coal plants they've built over the last several years are operating at less than 50% utilization rates, which is very unusual. And here is the explanation many of the experts are sharing with us the the repeated record breaking droughts in China have cut their hydroelectric power quite significantly. This is happening in a lot of other areas too, including in Brazil here and many other countries and some of the regional governors in China, closely linked to their businesses and industries, became really concerned because the number one priority for the Chinese Communist Party is to maintain stability. And so they're actually building these coal plants, the experts believe, partly as standby peaker plants, instead of using gas as peaker plants the way the US does, they're using these coal plants as and they've changed the design so they can fire them up and take them back down, which used to be the problem.

Christiana Figueres: [00:43:08] That's why they were used to be baseload.

Al Gore: [00:43:10] Correct. But now at the beginning of this year, and it was reinforced in September by President XI. They used to insist in China that the world judged them not by their overall emissions and whether they're going up or not, but by their reduction of the intensity of emissions. Well, they just made a huge change. They said, no, we no longer want to be judged on intensity. We now want to be judged on absolute emissions. And we all know China never sets a bar that it doesn't already know. It can clear and.

Christiana Figueres: [00:43:45] Or supersede.

Al Gore: [00:43:46] Or supersede. Yeah, they set these goals, but they already know that they can exceed them by a lot. So I think that they are preparing to match their exports of green tech with credentials for leadership in the world in reducing emissions. Now, it hasn't happened yet, but they have plateaued. And we believe there's a real likelihood that they will begin reducing emissions this year.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:44:09] Amazing. I have just one other question for you. You are the second person I've heard here this week talking about how we need to reimagine carbon accounting. And the first was Darren Woods and ExxonMobil are very strident in their attempts to intervene.

Christiana Figueres: [00:44:25] That's not a comparison that I would put my name to.

Al Gore: [00:44:28] No, no, I'm happy. I'm I'm happy to do I'm happy to deal with it. Yeah. The reduction in intensity can be useful for we have a lot of corporates, corporate executives using climate trace data in order to make changes in their supply chains, in order to swap out high intensity emitters for low intensity emitters. Steel, for example, a blast furnace operation will have emissions per tonne 80 to 85% higher than emissions per tonne from an electric arc furnace. But to try to use that as the overall standard, it's another scam. It's another scam. Mckenzie. Mckenzie. Mckenzie has worked with. The two clients are ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I was there when they first announced this and I said, look, this is a scam. At the same time, China is going in the opposite direction. You're just trying to come up with another excuse for not reducing your absolute emissions. Listen, the fossil fuel industry is so powerful in the world. As I've often said, they're way better at capturing politicians than capturing emissions. And they have become hegemonic in every policy vertical that is relevant to the long term future of their business models. They're trying to attenuate and extend their business models as long as they can. They're losing their number one customer electricity generation. They're beginning to lose because transport, as you know, last.

Christiana Figueres: [00:46:05] Year, transport.

Al Gore: [00:46:05] 93% of all the electricity generation installed last year worldwide was renewable, and they're beginning to lose their second biggest customer. You've got it. In September, 30% of all new car sales in the world were EVs. 58% in China, 98.9% in Norway. They can check that box for the full year of 2024. Ethiopia had 60% of their new car sales. They're going to 100%. And the remaining big third market is petrochemicals, 75% of which are plastics. They're projecting a tripling of plastics production in the next 35 years. They're telling Wall Street, we know we're losing these first two markets, but we're going to make it all up by tripling the amount of plastics.

Christiana Figueres: [00:46:53] Which is why they kill the plastics treaty.

Al Gore: [00:46:55] Which is why they killed the plastics treaty. Absolutely. And in league with Trump and with Saudi Arabia, they killed the the shipping. I don't want to blame the fossil fuel industry for killing the shipping treaty. I think they were emboldened by Trump. I don't think Saudi Arabia has killed it.

Christiana Figueres: [00:47:13] Except.

Al Gore: [00:47:14] Trump pushed them to do it. But yes, they they have blocked action on anything that might hurt their business model to the to the great harm of everyone else. But I want to say that one good thing that could come out of a new focus on on health was the head of the WEF, Doctor Tedros, made a proposal a few days ago that I strongly support, and that is to have a health track in the cops every year. There should be a new, intense focus on the health consequences of human health, human health. And of course, we have to save nature as well. And the extinction crisis doesn't get as much attention as it should. The separate Cop process on biodiversity is also struggling, but we need equal attention to that.

Christiana Figueres: [00:48:07] Um, I have four rapid fire because we have run out of time. Okay. So I'm just going to give you one word. And what is the 1 or 2 words that come up?

Al Gore: [00:48:17] Oh my God.

Christiana Figueres: [00:48:18] Nashville.

Al Gore: [00:48:20] Country music. Music music city. My home.

Christiana Figueres: [00:48:26] Convenient truth.

Al Gore: [00:48:28] Well, the convenient truth is that we have the solutions we need. The opponents of action to solve the climate crisis always like to divert everyone's attention to a few of the relatively small, hard to abate cases like international airline travel, like.

Christiana Figueres: [00:48:48] Or maritime.

Al Gore: [00:48:49] Or maritime or cement or whatever. But for the vast majority of the pollution, we know how to reduce it. Right now, it is beginning to be reduced. These people like gates who say, well, we just need to wait for a technological miracle breakthrough, and you leave it to me. Ten, ten, ten, 15 years from now, I'll be there for you. Well, we've already had the breakthrough. We've already had the miracle. Solar is the cheapest source of quite a few of them, especially solar. And so we have what we need. Now.

Christiana Figueres: [00:49:22] The year 2028.

Al Gore: [00:49:25] Well, you've triggered me to think about the American election which comes that year. And, uh, you know, I think that we have crossed peak Trump. And I say that not just because of the landslide defeat of all of Trump's candidates a week ago Tuesday, but also because he's now finally acknowledged fully that the fantasy of a third Trump term is never going to happen. So he's become we're hearing the lame duck talk now quite a bit. The positioning for who the Republican nominee is going to be in 2028 is already beginning to diminish Trump's power. We're seeing Republican senators begin to break with him on the tariff issue and on some others, we're going to likely see the pundits say a big landslide vote next week. On the one issue that Trump has been focused on the release of those files that he seems to be very scared about. And we also saw a significant change in the US Supreme Court, which has been unfortunately quite obsequious toward Trump in his first year. But I think that we are now seeing a significant change. And he of course, his popularity levels are at an all time low. I have to pause and make note of the fact that there have been quite a few other occasions when people said, oh well, he's done for now and he never is. He's like the monster in a horror movie that jumps out of the closet as the credits are rolling or something. But I do think, I do think that because of the inherent nature of American democracy, we have reached peak Trump.

Christiana Figueres: [00:51:04] Last and most difficult question of the whole conversation. Can you come up with one positive word about Trump?

Al Gore: [00:51:11] I think that he, um, uh, was, uh, skillful in immediately recognizing the new head of Syria and, uh, having a meeting with him when he went to the Middle East on his first trip. Recognizing what the normal, uh, white paper review procedures would have taken a long time to do, I think that was a smart move. And I think that he recognized in a way that I wish others had. The rising anger in among the electorate. Of course, his proposed remedies are nonsensical and harmful. Uh, but I think that there was a there's some good in having a wake up call to try to force a reexamination of some of the things that we've always taken for granted, and tune up our own understanding of how we can best serve the people whose lives we're trying to improve, along with so many others. But that's the best I can do.

Christiana Figueres: [00:52:18] Vice President Al Gore, thank you so much for your time.

Al Gore: [00:52:20] Thank you. And thank you again for doing this great podcast.

Speaker11: [00:52:23] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:52:26] What a privilege to have Vice President Gore on the podcast again. Um, uh, Fiona, you were sitting here in the studio with us. How was it listening to that interview? What did you take from it?

Fiona McRaith: [00:52:34] Okay, the first thing I take is I need to wear a cowboy boots everywhere. There's nowhere that they're inappropriate. And that was proven to me by VP Gore. The second thing is, I really, really appreciated the way in which he contextualized. We talk a lot about the politicization in the US and elsewhere about climate and how we're losing the narrative battle. And I really appreciated the way in which he brought in some of the history of why that's happened and how it's been at play for a long time due to fossil fuel companies like Exxon. Due to the Koch brothers in the US who continue to fund disinformation campaigns. And I found that incredibly clear and useful.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:53:18] I mean, what a what a privilege to have him here. And I have to say, you know, there are relatively few people who can combine, you know, minute detail on the numbers of satellites, the type of recording of greenhouse gas emissions data with not only a sort of political analysis of how this affects our world and changes things, but also this sort of soaring rhetoric about the progress of humanity and how that then translates into long term change. So, I mean, just like he is able to operate at every level of the system from, you know, the philosophical to the political and eloquently to the political to the administrative and then into the technical. And when he goes into the technical, it's like, wow, he knows more than me on every single one of these levels because he just is able to like, draw. And I think that's what makes him such a compelling communicator, because he seems to most people will gravitate to one of those levels of communication, but he seems to love all of them, which is why it's so satisfying to have those conversations.

Christiana Figueres: [00:54:14] And because he's fluent in all of them, he can actually bring them all together to support each other. I totally agree with that part of my admiration for him specifically. I am really excited about this trace.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:54:28] Yeah, really.

Christiana Figueres: [00:54:29] I am so excited because it it really just cuts through disinformation. It cuts through necessarily soft, squishy average numbers that we put out there about emissions per country, per year, etc. it just it just brings a robustness to the question that is on everyone's mind. Are we peaking and if so, at what speed. And I think they're going to be able to answer that. Yeah. And it is such an important question to which we have to have a non politicized. Yeah. Squishy is my term my politicized answer just a numeric answer that is credible that they can trace and that they can prove. And it's just it is just so refreshing to be able to have that information. And the fact that they can do it on a monthly basis, that just.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:55:35] Blows my.

Christiana Figueres: [00:55:36] Mind.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:55:36] They're aiming for daily.

Christiana Figueres: [00:55:37] And aiming for it just blows my mind.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:55:40] Okay, anything else anyone wants? I mean, this is very sad moment. This is the last time four of us are recording together in.

Christiana Figueres: [00:55:46] The same session.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:55:48] Good luck. We will be, you know, right behind you. 6000 miles behind. We'll be around. We'll be nowhere.

Speaker13: [00:55:55] We'll be right there.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:55:57] We'll Goodbye.

Christiana Figueres: [00:55:59] Please don't have too much fun without us.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:56:01] And great to cover the negotiations. But also, I think, great. Paul. You're here. I mean, with your huge experience in the intersection of climate and business, and that's going to be, you know, a lot of next week.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:10] There are a few. We'll be dropping some fascinating business related stuff, uh, here and there when there's no one to stop us.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:56:17] Exactly. You haven't told us. Okay.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:18] Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying.

Christiana Figueres: [00:56:21] We're going to have more than three episodes on fiduciary duty.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:24] We're going to have another episode, a 24 hour omnibus podcast, which has never been done before on fiduciary duty.

Fiona McRaith: [00:56:29] Wow. I'm feeling more excited by the minute.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:32] And, you know.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:56:33] The live.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:33] Stream, the extraordinary ability to actually sell the slices of the podcast. You know, personally that I've done that you'll be hearing announcements that are going to make me rich, frankly. So they are.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:56:45] Well, watch this space for next week.

Paul Dickinson: [00:56:47] All right.

Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:56:47] We'll see. We will be around, but you'll hear from some of us next week. Thanks for listening this week. See you on Monday.