279: LA fires and the top climate stories to watch in 2025

Full Transcript

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

Christiana: [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to 2025, 2025. I'm Christiana Figueres.

Paul: [00:00:10] And I'm Paul Dickinson in 2025.

Tom: [00:00:12] We are starting 2025. And today we are taking a look at a crucial year to come. Thanks for being here. So friends this is very exciting. 2025 we're back. We're kicking off a new season of outrage and optimism. And what's more, we're in person, which is very rare for us. Very great. So nice to see you both. So we are very lucky to be in Costa Rica at Christiana Home, where we come every now and then to do a retreat and get work done and record podcasts. And we've been here for a few days and we're just kicking off our recording. So it's lovely to be here in glorious Costa Rica. And we're also with our new production team, which is very exciting. Yeah, Ellie and Caitlin here. I should reveal to Ellie at this point that the way Paul remembers her name is by the acronym Extinction Level Event, which is one of the acronyms that we use inside Climate Change. But other than that, it's lovely to be here with the new production team, and we're going to kick off and look at the year and talk a bit about what's been going on. And I first want to hear a little bit about you and what you've been up to in the break. But before that, we cannot start without mentioning the terrible fires that are unfolding as we speak in California, the fires that are taking place in Palisades and in Eden and across Los Angeles, just the devastating loss of life, loss of property. It has been astonishing. Looking at these images, I'm sure all listeners feel the same. Anything you do want to come in with on that?

Christiana: [00:01:27] You know, I heard about them as they just started because Gianna, my daughter, lives on the coastline in California, outside of L.A., in Marina del Rey. And we were on the phone when she said, oh my God, oh my God, there is a huge fire going on visible to me. I never imagined.

Tom: [00:01:52] What it would then turn into.

Christiana: [00:01:53] What it would turn into. I thought it was, you know, a house burning, or if it had been in Costa Rica, it would have been garbage burning. Yeah, but this magnitude for days and days and days is something that. Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.

Paul: [00:02:09] You see the drone footage and it's just areas totally devastated. I've just not seen that. La has been around for a long time. So you know something pretty weird going on.

Christiana: [00:02:20] And and Paul I would say these are not shanty homes made out of rubbish. This is top architecture, top building called top building material, top cost homes that are just taken up in flames. Just unbelievable.

Tom: [00:02:37] So Keith Wasserman and this has been making the rounds on the internet. Some listeners may have seen it. I mean, this is just an indication of how money is no protection. And I should say he's getting quite a lot of heat for this because of the privilege, which is implied. But he said, does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning will pay any amount. Thank you. I mean, whatever you want to say about privilege or whatever else, it is chilling that that pay any amount, just the level of desperation. And that money is no protection.

Christiana: [00:03:08] And privilege is no protection.

Tom: [00:03:10] Privilege is no protection. And I mean, as you say, the Santa Ana wind, which has been what's fueling this fire, is an ancient phenomena. But if you look now at some of the media that's coming out, there is a lot of correlation between an incredibly dry summer and spring and autumn. And now what we are seeing and just the supercharging of this fire.

Christiana: [00:03:28] Now, you know, attribution science actually measures the magnification of climate change on what otherwise would have been natural weather events. And I happen to know that attribution reports take about 7 to 10 days.

Tom: [00:03:44] So it's.

Christiana: [00:03:45] Coming. So it's coming. Yeah. There will be an attribution report about these fires that will tell us. Yes, the fires would likely have occurred anyway, but because of climate change, they were x percent worse.

Paul: [00:04:00] Yeah. And so close to the inauguration, it's all already on this day. We've just been looking blown up into a kind of crazy firefight between everybody on all social media.

Christiana: [00:04:09] Now, that's at the local level and at the global level.

Tom: [00:04:12] Well, let's get into that in just a second. So I think we definitely need to spend time talking about the Copernicus report. It actually looks at the fact that we may have already come through 1.5 degrees. So we'll come back to that in a second. Just before we do, you know, we've not been together for a few weeks. It's actually lovely to see you. And I have to say, I was in London over the break and I was walking around Clerkenwell, which is your old stomping ground, Paul, and went past the pub that I remembered sitting in with you in 2019, where we got together and we said, you know, what we should potentially think about doing is we should maybe think about running a podcast. Do you think we could persuade Christiana to do this? You were living in London then. You were like four years out from having stepped down of running the UNF, triple C and having delivered the Paris negotiations and the Paris Agreement. And I remember it's a really interesting time because we were realizing that we were having this sprint to 2020 and the necessity to demonstrate to everybody that it was a front ending of emissions reductions that we had to deliver. We started Global Optimism. We were already running that. So that was a really interesting moment.

Christiana: [00:05:07] How do you envision 2020.

Tom: [00:05:08] And mission 2020? I mean, how do you think back now? I mean, that's sort of that moment was like halfway since the Paris Agreement was adopted. How do you think about those few years?

Christiana: [00:05:17] You know, honestly, I have to admit that I had a higher degree of levity then than I do now.

Tom: [00:05:25] Just in general in life or.

Christiana: [00:05:27] About our responsibility on climate. I really I was deeply convinced that we would turn the curve by 2020, and we didn't.

Tom: [00:05:40] No. That's true, that's true.

Paul: [00:05:42] So meanwhile, I was heartbroken because we'd been working together. When did we first work together?

Tom: [00:05:47] Oh, we started working together in 2006, something like that. Yeah. That's such a long time.

Paul: [00:05:51] So then we'd had like nine years working together and we were colleagues. We were having fun getting corporations to report on our greenhouse gas emissions. Again, the financial industry involved, cities and all this amazing stuff. And then you went to Christiana.

Tom: [00:06:04] One quick story that I remember going to a meeting with you, where we went to see a very large communications firm, and we were talking to them about climate lobbying and trying to persuade them that they should lend their power to preventing companies from lobbying. And as we were going in, we were standing in the elevator and you looked at me and said, I think it's possible that people were going to see might be pure evil if it turns out they're pure evil. Introduced the phrase Edinburgh Castle into the conversation, and we'll know we both have to get out of there right away. So it's fun having a job where you have to incorporate code words in what you do. But you're right. That was so fun. We worked together for all those years. And then Christiana, I had the privilege of coming and working with you, delivering the Paris Agreement. The moment where we met also, court was called to mind when I was in New York a few months ago.

Paul: [00:06:43] But you worked with like millions of private sector actors with me, you worked with hundreds of countries. With Christiana. You're the only one who's actually done both. What's the difference?

Tom: [00:06:50] Oh, that's a good question. Well, actually, really, the two things come together because actually what we're talking about is mobilization is the same thing.

Paul: [00:06:56] Clever answer, clever answer.

Tom: [00:06:57] But do you wanna tell?

Christiana: [00:06:58] Did you expect anything different?

Tom: [00:06:59] Do you want to tell a quick story of how.

Paul: [00:07:00] We got from Mr. Thomas.

Christiana: [00:07:02] Version is a much better.

Tom: [00:07:03] No, no, no, no, you got to tell your version.

Paul: [00:07:04] No no no no. Your version.

Tom: [00:07:06] So, Christiana, actually, you introduced us. Paul.

Christiana: [00:07:09] Yeah, I called you Paul, and I said, Paul, I need someone to come and work side by side with me here in the last stint toward the Paris Agreement, someone who really has good political analysis and insight.

Paul: [00:07:23] So how much trouble do you think I got in my organization for recommending the very best person we'd ever possibly had to go and work with you?

Tom: [00:07:31] So I remember when you first introduced me to Christiana and she got in touch and said, I'd love to meet. It has to be in a bar, a Costa Rican bar, at 10:00 in the morning. And I didn't make the connection about the fact that this was actually during the World Cup. And she was proposing we meet while Costa Rica play. So I turned up and there's.

Christiana: [00:07:46] I mean, you have to establish priorities. What do you really want and pay attention.

Tom: [00:07:49] So they was like, I don't know, like half of Costa Rica in this tiny bar in lower Manhattan, all.

Paul: [00:07:53] Going absolutely.

Tom: [00:07:54] Bonkers right at the front, Christiana leading the chance. And as time went on, I was like, should I stay? Am I needed in this situation? Should I should I maybe just back out as a sort of. But I stuck it out and at the end of it, I did get Christina's attention quite patiently, and we then spent the whole day we walked from the bottom of Manhattan right to the top. We talked about what the world had to do, how tough it was going to be to deliver the Paris Agreement, and at the end she looked at me and said, well, it's clear to me you have none of the skills or experience necessary for this job, but I think you'd be great to let's do it. And that was the beginning of my introduction to how intuitive Christiana Figueres is. Well, there's been a lovely little aside.

Christiana: [00:08:27] And was I.

Tom: [00:08:28] Right? And I well, you should tell me.

Christiana: [00:08:30] I was.

Tom: [00:08:30] Right. Oh, there you go. You are great.

Paul: [00:08:33] The Paris Agreement was delivered.

Christiana: [00:08:35] Delivered.

Tom: [00:08:36] Now, this has been a lovely. I didn't quite how we ended up going down this little side route here. Um, but, Christiana, you made a very interesting point earlier. You said you have less levity about where we are now. You had more confidence some years ago that we were just going to do this, and now you're a little less sure. Paul, how are you feeling?

Paul: [00:08:52] I'm basically always optimistic. There's some kind of unbelievably weird stuff. We're going to come on to the Copernicus report. Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated. I think the world is at peak irony right now. That is my analysis.

Christiana: [00:09:07] What does that mean?

Paul: [00:09:09] Well, it means that it's the you know, it's the best of times. The worst of times. It's the craziest of times. Yeah. You know, terrible fires, no doubt exacerbated by climate change. No one can have a sensible conversation in the United States. And I think one observation I have is that time and time again, the universe is telling us, don't think North America or the United States is going to solve this problem with some kind of world leadership. It's not. The spirit world helps those that help themselves. And we are being taught by the universe to allow the people of North America to try and defend their democracy in their open society for the next four years.

Tom: [00:09:42] Godspeed to them, those who are.

Paul: [00:09:44] And we shall look east, and we shall look in Europe, and we shall look at Africa and Latin America and Australasia, and everything will move ahead fast in other places and will lose our strange myopia with the United States. That's my view, and I feel very positive about that, actually do us good.

Tom: [00:09:59] I mean, I feel I am an unapologetic advocate for the role the US has played in the world over the last hundred years, or at least in the 70s. I feel like.

Paul: [00:10:07] So many times I can get whacked in the face before I'm kind of like, I'm not enjoying this anymore.

Tom: [00:10:11] I see what you mean. But I mean, nevertheless, we enter a more complicated world. And you're right. Leadership is coming from other places. We saw at the Cop at the end of last year, China made some very interesting announcements about their climate leadership. We might get into some of that, but I mean, now, as you've raised it, maybe we should just talk for a minute about Trump because we are just a few days away from the inauguration of Donald Trump 2.0. I mean, what can we say at this point? Is it going to be with us throughout the course of the year? He's not even in office yet, and we're talking about invading Greenland and all kinds of other bonkers stuff. I think at minimum, what we can expect is that he will pull the US out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Pull the US certainly out of the Paris Agreement. Defund many of the science bodies throw into chaos. Many of the international forum through which collaboration has to happen. It's going to be a tough year. Notwithstanding what you say, Paul, about the fact that leadership emerges from other places. I think that and other things is leading me to say that I'm with you, Christiana. We are on a knife edge. We're halfway through the decisive decade. We've not done the work we've needed to do to get here. We have to be honest about that. We can't give up. Of course, success failure is not guaranteed. Every fraction of a degree matters. But it is going to be a tough fight.

Christiana: [00:11:20] Yeah. When? When I say that, I have less levity. I'm actually not thinking even about leadership or geopolitics. I'm thinking about something else. I'm not thinking. I'm feeling something. I have a knot in my stomach because years ago, I swallowed an alarm clock. So for me, the factor is time. The clock is ticking. The alarm bell is ringing for me. The factor is we are wasting time with all of this nonsense. Nonsense, all of this nonsense. And so that's my concern. My concern is we're definitely walking in the right direction. We're decarbonizing the technologies, moving the finances ship. The direction does not concern me. In fact, not even Trump's. Whatever failings, they do not concern me except of the impact on time.

Tom: [00:12:19] Right?

Christiana: [00:12:20] Because winning the climate fight late is losing it.

Tom: [00:12:26] Totally.

Christiana: [00:12:27] Yeah, that's the difference.

Paul: [00:12:28] Yeah. Look, I hear you, Christiana, and I know you're right and I'm not going to disagree with you at all. And yet I just I do think that issue of leadership is important. You know the Trump won gave us Jacinda Ardern as a kind of anti-Trump. I wonder about this free energy world. You know, it's fossil energy against free energy. Who's going to be the leader of the free energy world? Are people going to emerge? Are they going to be these new global leaders? Is Keir Starmer or David Lammy going to be one? Is China going to show a different kind of leadership? What about Southeast Asia? What about Brazil? There are great many opportunities. We've got new geopolitical groupings going on. There is a race in the world, and yes, there is a tragedy in the way climate policy will change in the United States. And we know that. And I don't want to try and make light of it.

Christiana: [00:13:14] But at least at the federal level.

Paul: [00:13:16] At the federal level, at the state, city level.

Christiana: [00:13:18] State and.

Speaker5: [00:13:18] City.

Tom: [00:13:19] Level.

Christiana: [00:13:19] Corporate level, we don't know.

Tom: [00:13:21] We don't know because actually there's a lot of headwinds there as well. So I love the sense of optimism and possibility, the reality of where we are and the fact that this is halfway through the decisive decade. Something else happened, which is the release of the Copernicus report. And this is an enormous deal. This is a compendium of all of the most recent science that comes out on climate from the EU for across all the different EU research institutions. And what was revealed in this report is that for the first time, we have actually moved through 1.5 degrees of warming and we're now experiencing a world beyond that. Christiana, do you want to give us a summary of what's in there?

Christiana: [00:13:57] Yeah, it's it's the first year, right. Because the year 2024 is the first year because the year before that, there were a few months that we had gone over. But the concerning piece here is that it's the whole year that on average, would take us to above 1.5 by 2100. I mean, it's it's it's a very strange, complicated scientific projection that scientists have to make about what the concentrations of greenhouse gases are today that would then affect long term temperatures. So it is it is concerning in the sense that it is the first time that we are just painfully, painfully close to being capable of protecting the ceiling of 1.5 because the whole year was the average. Now, in order to completely blow through that, we would have to have consistent briefings of that.

Speaker5: [00:14:56] For how many.

Christiana: [00:14:56] Years?

Speaker5: [00:14:57] Several years?

Christiana: [00:14:57] Yeah, it's a good question. How many.

Speaker5: [00:14:59] Years?

Tom: [00:15:00] I think it's I think it's 5 or 6 years. It's not enormous numbers of years.

Christiana: [00:15:03] It's not.

Speaker5: [00:15:03] Enormous.

Christiana: [00:15:04] Yeah. And in the meantime, we're eating up the carbon budget.

Speaker5: [00:15:07] Totally.

Christiana: [00:15:08] Right. I mean, that that's the thing. We're eating up the remaining carbon budget. So it is. I mean, science has never been as clear about the fact that delays just are unacceptable. And that goes back to my swallowing an alarm clock.

Speaker6: [00:15:27] I mean, you know, you get comments.

Paul: [00:15:29] Sometimes from people. I've heard this Nigel Farage character in the UK who's a politician who sort of says, you know, we shouldn't worry too much about climate change. The time period is the thing that I think is so ridiculous. Everyone thinks such short term, you know, the next two years. Next four years. Samantha Burgess at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts. She commented on the Copernicus report. She said we are now living in a very different climate than our parents and grandparents experienced, adding that it had probably been 125,000 years since temperatures have been as hot as they were today. I mean, they've been way hotter in the billion year history of of of the world. But humans ain't been around long, friends. We're talking about 5000 years of recorded history, you know, ten. If you start looking at pot shards, but, you know, there's not much there's not much there. You look at this graph, right? It tells you just one thing. It is getting hotter, relentlessly faster. And it's like, I don't know, we're a smoker. We're like smoking cigarettes. And we basically got something in our lungs, you know, the x ray says the lump is getting bigger and bigger and Trump saying, no surgery for us. Let's smoke. Babies smoke. And that's just crazy town. But we I it's a moment for the whole world now, right? We're currently dividing. We're going into the kind of fortress people who say kind of keep out the refugees, put the fences up and, you know, like, forget about climate change. La la la la. And then you've got the people who are saying, we've got a global responsibility here. We need to think internationally. We need to build up institutions, we need to build up new institutions. And that's both happening. And it kind of can go either way.

Tom: [00:17:04] Right? Well, both are existing at the same time. Well, I mean that's quite a setup. Right. So we have a difficult geopolitical year. We have terrible leaders in position who aren't going to prioritize this. We have recent reports that show us just how late this has come. So I really hope you've enjoyed this reminder of the podcast and where it came from and how we met. But what we really wanted to do today is to talk to you about this coming year, 2025. Welcome back everyone. And we are going to look now in the second half of this first episode of 2025. At the year we've got ahead of us, this is going to be an incredibly busy year. The three of us and many other people who are involved in climate are going to be traveling to different events. We're going to be speaking at different events. We're going to be doing everything we can to try to get the best out of these moments that are up ahead of us. One thing that will sort of hang over this year, or be part of this year, is the fact that it's now ten years since Paris. This is. Load More