369: London Cooking: A Climate Action Week, a Resigning PM, and the Future of Climate Diplomacy
London Climate Action Week doesn't usually have to compete with extreme weather. But this year, the case for climate action was abundantly clear: a red heat warning, schools shut, trains cancelled, and temperatures breaking the UK's all-time June record. A prime minister's resignation on the opening day only added to the sense that events we’d once considered rare now seem to be happening all the time.
About this episode
This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson report from LCAW 2026, where 75,000 people gathered to work on exactly the crisis unfolding outside. They dig into the politics swirling around the event and the UN Secretary-General's speech that opened it. And with the future uncertain at the UN as well as in Downing Street, Christiana walks through all six candidates to succeed António Guterres, and what each of them actually believes about climate.
They also speak with Kate Gallego, Mayor of Phoenix, who alongside last week's guest Nick Reece of Melbourne launched the C40 Global Urban Data Centre Pact at LCAW: a commitment signed by 41 cities to push back on unchecked AI infrastructure expansion in communities that haven't always had a say.
And Tom sits down one-on-one with Rachel Kyte, the UK's Special Representative for Climate. She argues that we forgot ‘the second half of Paris’, explains how climate diplomacy is shifting gears, and tells us why, against the odds, she still finds reasons for optimism.
Learn More:
📢 Read the UN Secretary-General's full LCAW address.
🌐 Browse the UN's official Secretary-General candidate page, with vision statements and CVs for all six current candidates.
🏙️ Explore the C40 Global Urban Data Centres Pact, signed by 41 cities across six continents at London Climate Action Week.
🤖 Read the UK government announcement of the new FCDO/Met Office AI weather forecasting partnership, designed to bring 10-day early warning capability to the countries most exposed to the climate crisis
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Editing by: Miles Martignoni
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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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Antonio Guterres (archival speech clip): Climate chaos is accelerating before our eyes. We have just lived through the 11 hottest years ever recorded. And today, this city and far beyond are experiencing the hottest day of the year, with higher temperatures to come. London isn't just calling, it's cooking.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And from a very hot London, we're bringing you our episode from London Climate Action Week. And we have a special conversation with Rachel Kyte, UK representative for climate change. Thanks for being here. So nice to see you both. We're here in person in London. We don't get to do this very often. And what a lovely surrounding we're in.
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Christiana Figueres: Beautiful. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Caitlin. Thank you, Ellie. Very beautiful studio you have put together here.
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Paul Dickinson: This is a lovely, beautiful kind of plants and chairs and everything. And then the other side, there's kind of files and computers and cables. But you can't see that. But I think we discussed earlier that if, you know, if we'd win the lottery, we could actually live in this sort of six, seven star heaven forever.
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Christiana Figueres: Right.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It would be very nice to all live in the same city. Wouldn't it? Get together every week. Welcome to the UK, Christiana. Nice to have you here. No way. No way.
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Paul Dickinson: You are.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I know what's coming.
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Christiana Figueres: Oh, my gosh.
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Paul Dickinson: So this is not the British tourist board, right? It's the Costa Rican tourist board.
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Christiana Figueres: No, I mean.
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Paul Dickinson: Sometimes you try and then you fail.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: The answer to your implied question is yes. We'll move to Costa Rica.
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Paul Dickinson: Agreed. In a studio like this.
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Christiana Figueres: Because Costa Rica is also having heat waves, but not quite as bad as this country.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Wow. That does take some of the fact that, I mean, many things have been happening this week and we should get into lots of good things, but my God, it's been hot.
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Christiana Figueres: Oh, my God.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. For anyone who isn't here, London is not a city that does well in the heat. I mean, 38, 39 degrees, that's nearly 100 Fahrenheit. Many cities endure that kind of temperature around the world, but they're set up for it, right? London is not set up for this, which means that it is very draining and exhausting to be in this heat all the time.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, I just arrived in London last night. I came from south of France because I was in Plum Village for two weeks. And the heat there was very overwhelming. And I have to say, I could not stop thinking of the first chapter of the Ministry of the Future. I could not stop thinking about it because, yes, it was difficult for us who were in Plum Village and for you who were in London. But honestly, what are people going to do who are, who work in the construction sector outside? What are farmers going to do? I saw farmers in France starting to work at 4.35 in the morning because they knew they couldn't work through the day. Right. Is that even going to be possible in the future? What are people in developing countries going to do? I mean, yes, it's terrible if Europe is having a heat wave. Wake up. It is absolutely criminal what is going to happen to developing countries and to those people who do not have the possibility of moving into their aircon or to their swimming pool or to whatever. I've just been thinking so much about that first chapter and it has just torn me apart.
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Paul Dickinson: And those who can afford it are buying their own power to power their own aircon. As we've discussed numerous times, this 40% reduction in the taking from the grid in Karachi. In just four years, I discovered that it's happened that quickly. People making their own arrangements for their own aircon because you die without it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. Now we should say, it's really, really, you're absolutely right to point that out, that many of these impacts, of course, like so much will be felt by the most vulnerable.
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Christiana Figueres: By the most vulnerable and the least responsible.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And the least responsible. But the UK is experiencing things it's never experienced before, right? School closures for nearly a week, fire services on red alert. And of course, in our own little world, not that we should elevate this above anything else, very sadly, our live event, which to my great astonishment, we sold hundreds of tickets for, sold out, sold out. has had to be cancelled at Bath Abbey this week. So not cancelled, postponed. We're going to do it at some later date. But we decided or it was decided by the local authorities that you just couldn't have people queuing around the block in nearly 40 degree heat, all these other different impacts.
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Paul Dickinson: Filling up a building that was never designed for this heat.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now, the other thing that's happened this week, apart from it being searingly hot, is we lost yet another British prime minister who resigned.
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Christiana Figueres: What is this number, what? 11?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We're about to have our seventh in 10 years.
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Christiana Figueres: Seventh in 10 years.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Do you have any idea the last time the UK had this rapid turnover of prime ministers? Was in the aftermath of the Great Reform Act, 1828. So this is completely unprecedented in nearly 200 years. We don't need to get into it because other podcasts cover the political shenanigans the years post-Brexit, but the UK appears to be broadly ungovernable at the moment. We'll find out. Andy Burnham looks like he will be the new prime minister. He's going to be standing unopposed in the Labour Party. He's got an interesting record on climate. He was pretty good when he was in Manchester. He adopted a citywide commitment that was more ambitious than the national commitment. But he's not an instinctive climate leader like say Ed Miliband is. So I think it remains to be seen how ambitious he will make the UK.
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Christiana Figueres: And for those non-Brit citizens like myself, can you give us a sense of timing? When is this all going to be decided?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, when Keir Starmer stood down on Monday and he said he wanted to be replaced with a new leader by the end of the recess, which is essentially September. But he said that thinking there might be a contest. What happens in the UK is the members of parliament have to vote on their leader, but it's looking increasingly likely that Andy Burnham will stand unopposed. That means he could be appointed within the next couple of weeks and then in Downing Street in that timeframe.
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Paul Dickinson: And the EU delayed a critical discussion, waiting for the new prime minister as well, they might do. It's quite hard to know how you act as a politician in these turbulent, febrile times. Some people are saying that Andy Burnham will respect what he was told on the doorsteps. And I wonder about him going from house to house saying, how do you feel about the hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Do you think people on the doorstep are saying, what do you feel about the CH4?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, I don't know. It's kind of like some of this stuff that we've been doing professionally for a long time is quite complicated. And the more politicians try and sort of get to hear the voice of the people on the street, I don't know how easy it is to turn that into structured action.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, shout out here to Ed Miliband.
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Christiana Figueres: I was just going to ask you, so what is the future for Ed Miliband?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean...
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Christiana Figueres: What's the rumor?
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Paul Dickinson: One rumor is he becomes the Treasury Secretary, which would completely embed the decarbonization of Britain into the whole government system. That would be the greatest possible outcome.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It would be the greatest possible outcome. Reading the political tea leaves from the outside, I don't have any inside information, that seems to be receding as a possibility. But absolutely, we hope that that does happen. But the analysis I have read is that the political center of gravity... I mean, Ed, God bless him, is out there fighting for this transition, pointing out that it's in economic interest. But he's doing so against a very hostile press. He's doing so against a kind of ground game of our opponents in the fossil fuel industry who are trying to undermine him. And despite his valiant efforts, we haven't won every single narrative battle in the UK. And he's becoming associated with something that is politically difficult for him. So I mean, it would be a sad outcome if his commitment to transition net zero lower electricity bills cost him that job. But we'll have to see what happens.
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Christiana Figueres: And David Lammy?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I don't know about that. That's a good question because you remember Ed and David announced their NDC on this podcast just a couple of years ago.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, and there's such an amazing team.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. So we don't know. We'll have to wait and see. Now, that's not the only transition going on at the moment. There is also a new transition happening to appoint the new Secretary-General of the United Nations. And António Guterres was actually here in London this week. And he gave what we assume is probably one of his last big set piece speeches on climate. So we heard some of António Guterres' speech at the top of the show. And some of the lines from this speech really went quite viral, especially his line about London cooking. But he was also very big on what we needed to embrace and what we needed to abandon.
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Antonio Guterres (archival speech clip): A model powered by fossil fuels where a single conflict can append global energy supply and a single choke point can send prices soaring. A model that treats nature as limitless to be consumed without consequence. A model that has created enormous wealth, but also deepened inequality and fueled insecurity. A model in which those who did the least to cause this crisis paid the highest price. And the lesson is clear, this model has no future. What we need urgently is the will to fully implement the Sustainable Development Goals, to align prosperity with resilience, growth with sustainability, and opportunity with justice. And the good news is, and like every past energy crisis, we now have a clear way out.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So that speech cut through in some ways, but in other ways, of course, it's difficult to get that kind of message to really land with a mass audience. Christiana, what do you think of what you've heard from the SG?
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Christiana Figueres: Well, not just today, but my heart really goes out to António Guterres because he's been there for 10 years, and he's leaving now. And he didn't go in saying that climate was going to be his topic, but he gravitated toward it, I think because he realized, sadly, that there was very little that he could do about war issues, since it is the Security Council that seems to think that they have that as their own space. And so by the time he gravitated to climate, my heart goes out to him because I think in his 10 years, he has not been able to move the world toward, from a UN perspective, toward the implementation of the Paris Agreement, more than has been done by the forces of the market. So he must feel very frustrated about that. I think he was hamstrung by many things inside the UN and outside of the UN. And my heart goes out to him because he did want to have a mark and he wasn't able to. And now he's finishing. So on the terms of finishing, who are the candidates? Which one of you knows how many candidates we have?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Ooh, I have to say, I've slightly sat this out.
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UNCLEAR SPEAKER (auto-transcript briefly mistagged one of the hosts here): Come on, come on, come on, come on.
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Paul Dickinson: I do know, but let's just see if Tom, yeah, that's...
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Christiana Figueres: You're partly right.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, yeah, that is partly, Tom.
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Christiana Figueres: Nice.
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UNCLEAR SPEAKER (auto-transcript briefly mistagged one of the hosts here): Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: Four women and two men. Okay. Right.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So we're going with four.
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Christiana Figueres: First of all, we have never had a female secretary general.
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Paul Dickinson: Very sadly, because there was a great candidate a few years ago.
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Christiana Figueres: A few years ago. So it's actually very exciting that we have four female candidates and they are Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Great.
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Christiana Figueres: And former UN Commissioner for Human Rights. From a perspective, they have obviously, each of their agendas has different positions on many issues. But I'm just going to talk about climate. She has been very clear about protecting 1.5 degree goal. Very, very clear. Then we have Rebecca Greensman from...
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Who's here this week.
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Christiana Figueres: Costa Rica.
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Paul Dickinson: The magic country.
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Christiana Figueres: She has been vice president of Costa Rica. She is now the secretary of UNCTAD and she was second in command of UNDP, the United Nations Development Program. She has been sort of vocal on climate, seen through a finance and development lens, which is interesting. Not bad. Not bad at all. We have then Maria Fernanda Espinosa from Ecuador. She is the one that would have the most, the deepest environmental pedigree, perhaps, because she has been at the IUCN. She has been the leading negotiator for Ecuador at many COPs. Hence, I also know her pretty well. She has been the most involved with the topic and is very clear about her pro-climate position. Then we have a very new female candidate that was just put forward by Guyana just a week and a half ago. Her name is Caroline Rodríguez-Birquette, and she comes at climate obviously from Guyana from the point of view of small-scale vulnerability. So four very different angles to climate change. Very interesting. Then we have two men. We have Rafael Grossi from Argentina, whose background is on nuclear energy. And so his push is nuclear, small-scale nuclear is going to be the answer for climate change. And then we have Maki Sal from Senegal, who, not surprisingly, his major push on climate is there has to be a just transition for the continent of Africa. So very interesting that each of them comes at climate from a different perspective. And I guess the question for me is, that is their perspective now during the candidacy. The new secretary general has to be in place by January of next year. And we already have many candidate debates going on, so that the Security Council will have to take that vote between now and December. The question then is, once the secretary general is chosen, let us hope, pray, that it will be a female. Are they, she, going to go at climate from the position that they're in now, or will they be able to enlarge their perspective? Because by the time they're secretary general, they have to go beyond their own position to represent other interests. So, let's see.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, well, I think we should do at least an episode about this between now and the end of the year, because there's such a lot of interesting elements around those individuals. And also, the challenges they'll find when they arrive at the UN, because there are budgetary issues, there's all kinds of member state challenges they're facing. I just have one question for you, though, about this process before we move on, because I know we need to. I remember when you were running, and we were in the UN, you participated in all these debates, and I remember how brave you were in standing up and saying, being very clear about your values and your position. And then there was one moment when you had to go into the Security Council chamber to be grilled by all the permanent representatives. It was just you going in there sitting in the middle. What did they ask you?
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Christiana Figueres: You know, I don't remember the specific questions, but the tone, the context of the questions was, can be encapsulated by the title of this very fantastic book. Is it a secretary or is it a general?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Interesting.
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Christiana Figueres: Because their questions were, how much would I think I would intervene into the military and war decisions of the UN? How much would I be subservient to the decisions of the Security Council? How much would I be interested in the famous or infamous reform of the UN structure? But it was very much of a gatekeeping attitude. The undertone was all military decisions of the UN are the responsibility of the Security Council, not of the Secretary General. That was the message that they would deliver.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Are you going to interfere with that?
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Christiana Figueres: Are you going to dare to interfere with that? That was the tone.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And interestingly, you had, or when that process was going on, it was Sam Power from the US, right? We had actually quite an interesting array of progressive voices who were in the Security Council, and they still had that perspective, that we don't want anyone here challenging us. Now, I mean, it's a much more difficult context.
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Paul Dickinson: And the world is so chaotic now. We must have essentially a different kind of leadership, and female leadership would fit that description. I mean, just, you know, I think Guterres has said wonderful things, that we want to pursue this. We want to move forward. And I just want to contrast with a global leader, Mark Carney, who seems to be able to find words that pull the debate forward. So I hope she, the new Secretary General, is able to both expand and evolve that climate debate. So it has the kind of new thinking that can galvanize because I think Guterres makes all the right points about inequality of impacts and insecurity of fossil fuels. And yet it doesn't, it's not cutting through as a new message might.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, exactly. There is no novelty there.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There's no novelty. So let's come back to this. And I think it would be amazing to cover it off actually. And now we just wanted to come back to the issue of data centers because there have been many announcements that have come out this week.
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Paul Dickinson: Very positive. I've had positive feedback from our last episode, people saying, oh, that was very useful and, you know, let's do more.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's interesting actually. That's great. I've had various different people commenting as well. Last week, of course, we heard from Nick Reece, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne. He was here this week alongside other mayors, including Kate Gallego of Phoenix, Arizona. And they gathered to bring the subject of data centers up the agenda. And actually, Kate talked to us and told us how data centers have been impacting her city. So let's have a quick listen to that.
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Kate Gallego (archival clip, Mayor of Phoenix): As mayor of Phoenix, I think about data centers every day. Phoenix has one of the largest concentrations of data centers anywhere in the world. We're seeing huge interests from developers. We've seen a very large number of data centers in residential areas. We've also seen data centers come in and not have adequate transmission and then want to remove open space or other community amenities to put transmission lines. We're glad to be on the forefront of the tech revolution, but we think it needs to be sustainable. The requests our local power utilities have received for new connections are twice the size of the entire utility and everything else it serves. We've seen data centers in our region that use more electricity than an entire mid-sized city for one data center. We see a lot of community opposition, particularly to data centers in residential areas. Residents call our office and say, you've put a data center in front of my home, it's diminished my property value, now I'm looking at electric transmission equipment. We'd like to see the city pay for us to recover from those damages and pay for the diminished property values. We want to make sure we have a diverse economy and that we don't put too much of our economy in any one area. Over 90 percent of the major industrial electric infrastructure requests for new power are data centers, so it's just a huge amount of growth in one area, and we want to make sure it's environmentally sustainable as well as economically sustainable, so this is quite a hot topic in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Actually, Kate, together with Nick from Melbourne, we're here to unveil C40's new urban data center pact, and she explained a bit more about what that is and what it means.
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Kate Gallego (archival clip, Mayor of Phoenix): We have launched the C40 Urban Data Center Pact. It's a vision for sustainable, affordable digital future. We understand digital technology and data centers can be very important to improving lives, but we need to do it in a right and smart way. We need to make sure that residents' concerns are at the forefront and that data centers are good neighbors. In too many communities, we've seen coal power that provides electricity for data centers. Coal plants that were going to go offline can no longer do so because of the huge demand for data centers or so say, their operators. C40 and the Global Urban Data Center Pact are calling on data center providers to use clean energy sources. We know that this is very important to our residents and that residents are more likely to support data centers in their community if they're powered with clean energy. We also want to put data centers where they belong. Data centers can be a really positive asset if they're on the former site of a fossil fuel plant where there's already generation infrastructure and they can create jobs that might have been displaced otherwise. We want to make sure we minimize air quality, challenges, noise, and temperature. There are firefighting concerns to make sure that communities can stay safe, and we want to put these data centers where if there were a fire, there would be minimal impact as much as possible. We also think about electric transmission. In too many communities, forests have been clear cut to make ways for large high-voltage power lines. We want to see data centers located where there's existing transmission or near-power generation, so that we can take advantage of infrastructure, reduce costs, and increase the benefits to our community. I'm really proud to partner with Lord Mayor Reece and C40 cities on the Urban Data Center Pact. It is open to both cities and our business partners. We would love to see businesses commit and come to the table, whether you're someone who purchases the services at a data center or a company that operates them. We want to work with you to make sure that our residents benefit from data centers, that the industry is successful and sustainable.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So great that C40 are focusing on this issue. Either of you have any reflections on it?
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Christiana Figueres: God bless C40. I have to say. Honestly, for how many years, if not decades, have we seen C40 really take the lead on very difficult issues when national governments have just not been able to? And they just continue to do it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: They continue to do it. I mean, it's been-
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Christiana Figueres: And God bless them.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I went to the C40 Local Leaders Summit yesterday and they just- I mean, I remember doing that before Paris, right?
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UNCLEAR SPEAKER (auto-transcript briefly mistagged one of the hosts here): Yes. That's my point.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: They just keep driving forward.
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Christiana Figueres: They keep being cutting edge.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And they're finding the new issues to drive forward in an interesting way. They've grown the organization amazingly.
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Paul Dickinson: Mark Watts, I think, once said, he's a brilliant leader, but saying that all my members are regulators. It was a really interesting concept. You know, we talked about the United Nations. I mean, C40 has got a slightly peculiar name because there's not 40 of them. There's like 90 or something. But why don't we just call them the United Cities? And, you know, they are in the frontline and they seem to have an ability to collaborate in a way that national governments don't seem to be able to. There's less of this sort of weird division of the national border. There's more of a sort of unity of purpose around the metropolis, which is the sort of defining living experience for a majority of the world's population now. So yeah, salute the C40, the vision and the sharing and that productive exchange, which is so exciting.
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Christiana Figueres: And also an additional personal shout out to Mark Watts.
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Paul Dickinson: Oh yeah, absolutely.
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Christiana Figueres: His style of leadership.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
00:23:43.500 --> 00:23:45.180
Christiana Figueres: I mean, if we could only have that kind of...
00:23:45.180 --> 00:23:47.680
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Humble, steps forward, always leading.
00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:50.580
Christiana Figueres: Visionary, courageous, humble.
00:23:50.580 --> 00:23:50.920
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
00:23:51.620 --> 00:23:52.600
Christiana Figueres: I mean, just...
00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:53.540
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Why doesn't he have a knighthead?
00:23:53.540 --> 00:23:55.360
Christiana Figueres: He should have a knighthead. He should also be cloned.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:03.900
Paul Dickinson: Yeah, cloning is very nice to be sort of, you know, whatever, a dame, dame Christiana. Cloning is better.
00:24:05.080 --> 00:24:06.980
Christiana Figueres: Cloning is definitely better.
00:24:07.540 --> 00:24:08.140
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So amazing. And C40 cities, as we said, stepping up. This problem is fundamentally about infrastructure planning and energy and that they're stepping into this gap is just so needed.
00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:19.160
Paul Dickinson: What's key for me is this is about right now. So you have this absolutely mind-blowing investment. It's going in right now. Never had anything like it before. The speed of the data center build out. That requires the most massive build out of electrical energy, electric energy. And that investment is happening right now and the decisions being made about whether that's gas, whether that's renewables, whether it's integrated with grids or whether it's standoffish. All those decisions are being made right now. So big heart out.
00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:50.600
Christiana Figueres: And have a long tail.
00:24:50.600 --> 00:24:52.240
Paul Dickinson: A long, long tail. So we've got to, to all the planners everywhere, both on the developer side and on the city's government side and on the grid side, wishing you the best from all of us to sit together and plan something that lasts and fits together.
00:25:07.420 --> 00:25:08.140
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Absolutely. Very good. Okay. So after the break, we sit down with Rachel Kyte, the UK Special Representative for Climate Energy. And this is a joint role spanning two government departments working at the intersection of foreign policy and the energy transition. Rachel is an old friend of ours and particularly Christiana's. She's a long-standing figure in international climate and development. She was a vice president of the World Bank, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, and closely involved in the build up to Paris. And she came to the studio right after the Secretary General's speech to talk about the new shape of climate diplomacy and why she thinks we forgot the second half of Paris.
00:25:44.940 --> 00:25:48.040
Christiana Figueres: Rachel Kyte, talk about people that I would love to clone.
00:25:48.040 --> 00:25:48.500
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay. There we go.
00:25:48.940 --> 00:25:50.460
Paul Dickinson: That's a whole thing now. A huge shout out to Rachel.
00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:55.800
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I'm slightly terrified actually by the idea of a whole group of Rachel Kytes.
00:25:57.940 --> 00:26:01.100
Christiana Figueres: I think the world can afford quite a few Rachel Kytes actually. The world needs quite a few Rachel Kytes.
00:26:03.340 --> 00:26:04.000
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Come back in a minute. Thanks. Rachel Kyte, this is very exciting to have you on the podcast. I think we've had you on before, but only for a short snippet. So this is the first time that I get to sit down with you for Outrage and Optimism. Christiana is heartbroken she's not here. I know you're good friends. So it's lovely to have you on.
00:26:23.040 --> 00:26:25.880
Rachel Kyte (guest): If Christiana was here, you'd not get a word in there to ask Tom, so.
00:26:26.560 --> 00:26:28.420
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I knew that from long experience actually.
00:26:28.900 --> 00:26:31.380
Rachel Kyte (guest): No, it's nice to be here with you.
00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:43.680
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So you and I have just come from a speech by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, in what I assume is probably one of his last big speeches on climate before he steps down towards the end of the year, he's termed out. What did you think of the speech?
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Rachel Kyte (guest): It felt like a valedictory speech, right? Because it was a compilation of the points that he's been making with, you know, increasing urgency and frustration, especially in the second term. So he's pointing at the fossil fuel industry and at fossil fuels or the emissions that come from fossil fuels as the thing that we have to wrestle out of our economy. And then I think what was sort of new in there was a call for urgent action on methane, which is something that's already going on. But I mean, it really helps for him to just point out the idiocy of not working on methane. And then I think what was also interesting in there was he was talking about the added sort of complication to the energy transition of both the straight-of-home moves, but also the exponential growth in demand as a result of data centers and the embrace of artificial intelligence. And I thought there, you know, what he did was bring the artificial intelligence and energy transitions together and talk about the need for transparency. And this is very much, I think, a US phenomenon at the moment whereby communities are alarmed and outraged by the increase in electricity bills and the fact that they've got a massive data center coming in down the road. We're starting to see those kinds of sighting issues in the UK as well, and that will spread across Europe and the rest of the developed world. And you know, the amount of energy that they use, the amount of water they use. So do you have a new tariff for a large load user and things like that? So you know, his call for transparency, right? That companies have an obligation to tell you how much land, how much water, how much energy are they using, and that consumers need to know that as well, because they should make informed decisions about what goes on in their community. I thought it was elegant the way he brought it all together, but I was sitting listening to him thinking, I don't know who's going to be the next Secretary General. The geopolitics of the selection of the Secretary General at the moment means that there are a couple of countries that put a very low premium on climate.
00:28:47.500 --> 00:28:48.960
Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's a very nice way to phrase it.
00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:49.580
Rachel Kyte (guest): Well done. Whoever is the next Secretary General, and hopefully it's somebody who understands the climate crisis, they're going to have to pick their way through this issue very carefully.
00:28:58.880 --> 00:28:59.120
Tom Rivett-Carnac: 100%. And I mean, I don't want to get too stuck on this, because we've got a lot of things to talk about, but I have to say that sitting there listening to him talk, God bless him, right? He hits all the right notes. It's a wasteland out there of world leaders who are talking about climate, and he's still out there doing it, talking about the science. But also, I did find myself wondering whether, is this really landing in capitals? Is it really landing in policy? Who listens to a speech like that from the SG and translates it into something meaningful?
00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:35.000
Rachel Kyte (guest): I think he would say that the reason why he makes those speeches is that he's doing it for young people.
00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:35.400
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Interesting, yeah.
00:29:35.400 --> 00:29:37.700
Rachel Kyte (guest): He feels that he has an obligation to speak the truth. And you heard him talk about international law and the truth and the role of the UN. So he feels that even if it's landing on deaf ears in certain boardrooms and in certain cabinet offices, he's going to say he's going to speak the truth. Yeah, I mean, I was one of these, you know, private dinner clubs here in the UK a year or so ago. And, you know, one of those sort of bastions of male power that are very stuffy. Do they still exist? Yeah, and the food's not very good. And I was invited in for a dinner and the business executives that I was having dinner with were sort of saying, could you just ask him to stop? Because we're not listening anymore.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: OK.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): But his repost to that would be, I'm well, I'm not speaking to you.
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:20.420
Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's a great answer.
00:30:20.420 --> 00:30:21.660
Rachel Kyte (guest): And I'm not speaking for you.
00:30:21.660 --> 00:30:22.060
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. So I also have to ask you, we are sitting here, beginning of climate week, lots happening, right? I mean, not only record heat wave, schools closed across the UK, fire services on red alert, but also we are currently, you know, I don't know quite how you describe it, sort of in between prime ministers with the political transition. Okay. And you, of course, as a representative of two government departments, this is going to have a big impact on your day to day job.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): Yes.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: How much change do you anticipate happening here? Because, of course, climate action is in law in the UK. Does it matter who sits in number 10? Or is your anticipation that your role will continue as is in this new world?
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Rachel Kyte (guest): Well, so we're blessed by a statutory commitment, right? The Climate Change Committee, we've got a 7th carbon budget. The climate minister will be in parliament on Wednesday, talking about our response to that. So the mechanism is there to keep the show on the road. At the same time, the Labour Party won the election two years ago with a manifesto that was clear about its commitment. And I think we're past the tipping point of our commitment on the energy transition domestically. And the foreign policy is built on the need to help other countries transition. And of course, that's made all the more important by the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. So all of that is a given. But it does matter. It does matter. Leadership matters. It matters who's in number 10 as the Prime Minister. It matters who's in number 11 as the Chancellor of the East Czech Republic because these are profound fiscal issues and macroprudential issues. They're not just what we do with our aid budget and what remains of it. It matters who is the Energy Secretary. It matters who is the Foreign Secretary and it matters who is the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary. In fact, in the middle of this heat wave, it matters who's the Health Secretary. This is an all of government crisis. It'll be very interesting to see where the cookie crumbles.
00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:25.560
Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's not given that leadership matters, but that the momentum is there from a statutory commitment. Is it difficult to work out what to say to international partners? I'm sure speaking to all kinds of ministers from all over the world, what do you say when they say to you, so where's the UK going on climate now?
00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:53.500
Rachel Kyte (guest): Well, I think actually the big shift in the last two years, so people welcomed this government back with open arms because there was a lot of lack of clarity about where the Tories, the previous government were going because you started to see the split in the Tory party between those who were he cleaving to the far right and those who weren't. So people were very welcome with the stated clarity of the Labour Party's manifesto and then, of course, an immediate announcement about a very ambitious NDC. That went down very well. But what happened also was because we started to see the reform party, so the climate denying mini Trump prototype party, peeling away from the climate commitment as represented statutorily, and with now their little tagline of net stupid zero, which they whip out on a regular basis, people started asking, what does this mean for the UK if the consensus amongst the parties is no longer there? That's really interesting because then you talk about the power of having a statutory committee and a statutory body and having law that enshrines net zero. Of course, there are a number of other countries around the world that have a similar legal commitment to net zero, but we were one of the first and I think it's one of the strongest examples. Lots of countries are really interested to know, can that commitment to net zero be unraveled because we've got a party in parliament that expressly denies the need for climate action? The answer to that is, well, no, it would mean that you would have to reverse the act, the Climate Act, and that would require quite a seismic change in British politics because we've got four or five MPs from the far right, who are avowed in their desire to end net zero. You've got a piece of the Conservative Party in parliament that has made bold statements about not believing in net zero. But then all of the national parties, the liberals, liberal democrats, the Green Party and the Labour Party are all fully subscribed still to that. So in a parliament of 650 plus MPs, we've got a raggle-taggle that are opposed to that.
00:34:49.640 --> 00:34:54.900
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So, because I was at an event yesterday where someone stood up and said, you know, the Climate Change Act is gone. And there's this narrative which is creeping in a little bit in the UK now, which is that due to some of this pushback from the far right, the shift in narrative, there's kind of an assumption that there will be an eroding of that law. But you don't see that as inevitable. And in fact, what it sounds like you think that's more noise than signal at the moment.
00:35:11.820 --> 00:35:15.260
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah, I think there's a bit of catastrophizing going on. I think what the most important thing is when you talk to MPs about what are they hearing on the doorstep, right, as they're out and about doing constituency clinics on Friday or talking to their constituents. The constituents want affordable electricity bills. And they are nervous if those electricity bills don't come down. And so then you have to deal with the sort of misinformation and the lies that are put out around why the electricity bill is as high as it is, right? Not because it's renewable energy coming in. It's because of policy decisions that have been made around the transition.
00:35:51.100 --> 00:35:52.720
Tom Rivett-Carnac: And that's not widely understood.
00:35:52.720 --> 00:35:53.820
Rachel Kyte (guest): That's not widely understood. And I think this government should be much more aggressive at taking that argument to people. They want clean air. They want flood defences. They want protection from extreme heat. People are scared by extreme heat. And they want, I mean, they look at their neighbor who's probably buying energy from octopus. And Octopus Now, which is one of the energy companies in the UK, you know, you can charge your car for free if you're buying a certain octopus bundle. And so, you know, your neighbor is not on octopus and probably paying more per kilowatt and maybe is driving, you know, an internal combustion engine car. And they're having to pay two and a half times what they were paying three months ago. And they're watching their neighbor charge their car for free because it's bundled with their electricity bill. And they're like, you know, so you've got this sort of reality of people's lives, which is about affordability, which is about their economic prospects and security. And then you've got this rhetoric. So I think that if you can take the argument to people, people are not anti-renewable energy. They're anti very high electricity bills.
00:37:00.080 --> 00:37:00.440
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. You and I worked very closely together in the years leading up to Paris. You then spent some time in academia at tough school, and then you kind of came back into this role a couple of years ago. And so not that you were ever really out of it, but you reentered as a major player, a landscape that was fundamentally changed by this weakening of domestic commitment to shared objectives that happened in the US, it's happened in the UK, happened all over Europe. And in the days when we worked together, the coalition building that was necessary to build momentum, required politicians to be pretty sure of their domestic positioning to get them to be as bold as needed to be. Now coming back in now with that systemically weaker situation, what has to be different for you to be successful? And what have you learned that is different about this moment? How has diplomacy changed?
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:55.320
Rachel Kyte (guest): So the narrative, and this is even before the war on Iran, right? The narrative was about energy security, but also food security, human security. So within that energy trilemma that we've been fiddling around with for 30 years, right? Where the points of the triangle were security, affordability, sustainability. You know, in the run-up to Paris and the couple of years after Paris, sustainability was top of the triangle. That's shifted. And I think it's security now and, of course, affordability running a close second. So when I travel around the world in my role, I'm almost like a sort of trade and investment envoy more than a climate envoy. Because the opportunities, we need a lot of inward investment into the UK in order to keep driving through our energy mission. And I think Ed Miliband's sort of made clear this week at London Climate Action Week that in two years, we've got to about 100 billion of investment just in our clean energy sector. But we've got experience, know-how, institutional models around how to build your own energy transition that other countries want to know. They want to know how to do offshore wind auctions. They want to know how to reorganize your power sector. So all of that how-to, people want a lot of. And then they want inward investment. So for example, when I go to India, they've calculated that they need some extraordinary number of trillions and trillions of dollars to reach net zero by 2070. And the majority of that will be domestically invested as their economy grows. But they will need between 7 and 12 trillion dollars from international investors. Now, what they're looking for is that the asset owners of the global north, including the UK, are investing in the clean energy transition of India. So when I go to India, I'm talking to the pension agency in India, and then I'm coming back and talking to our asset owners, and it's a conversation about Britain investing in India through asset owners, through long-term investors, etc. I'm not discussing the COP, and I'm not discussing the language of some new MOU or something like that. So I'm very comfortable, and that's one reason why I wanted to do the role is because this is absolutely central now to the financial health and well-being of each economy. And so it changes our relationship. Our relationship with India is post-colonial. We need to invest in them because their success will determine our security.
00:40:28.160 --> 00:40:33.360
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, that's really interesting that that's what the role has become and that you realize that was going to be a case. And as you said, 100 billion investment, as Ed Miliband mentioned this week, and 10% growth in the green sector. I mean, that's astonishing, right?
00:40:39.560 --> 00:40:39.840
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah.
00:40:39.840 --> 00:40:41.620
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I mean, what other sector has 10% growth in the UK?
00:40:41.720 --> 00:40:43.340
Rachel Kyte (guest): I know, and that's where all the jobs are. I was at an event just before London Climate Action Week with all of these young professionals in the energy sector. And it was at Hackney Town Hall. It was heaving with the most diverse group of young professionals you could possibly imagine. And they were just so excited to be working in the energy transition. And they were doing amazing jobs. And one after the other, after the other was coming up to me and telling me where they were in their professional journey and whatever. And I'm like, oh, if I could take a bottle of this and let it off in Parliament.
00:41:10.220 --> 00:41:10.820
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Sounds great.
00:41:10.820 --> 00:41:20.880
Rachel Kyte (guest): Rather than worrying about a couple of reform MPs yelling and screaming about the fact that they want to stop electrification in Lincolnshire, which is going to bring between 25,000 and 40,000 jobs. I mean, come on.
00:41:22.200 --> 00:41:27.100
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So that's a really, really interesting tale of two cities, those two examples. And I think if you were to go back again to 10 years ago, I think we were basically making an assumption that politics would ultimately follow economics.
00:41:35.420 --> 00:41:35.760
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah.
00:41:35.780 --> 00:41:36.000
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right. When we negotiated Paris, actually the solutions were not economically beneficial yet. Fossil fuels are still much cheaper. And we negotiated it on the promise and on the assumption that at some point, the solutions would be cheaper than the incumbents. Right.
00:41:49.280 --> 00:41:53.760
Rachel Kyte (guest): And the business message to politicians was like, let's be ambitious because we can take care of this.
00:41:53.820 --> 00:42:00.960
Tom Rivett-Carnac: But what's funny is that 10 years later, the economics has gone further and faster than any of us thought, and the politics has gone in precisely the opposite direction.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah.
00:42:01.500 --> 00:42:04.680
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So the politics has not followed the economics in the way that we thought it would.
00:42:04.740 --> 00:42:08.620
Rachel Kyte (guest): Because we haven't remembered the second part of Paris, which was the inclusion.
00:42:08.960 --> 00:42:09.480
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Interesting. So say more about that.
00:42:10.680 --> 00:42:12.940
Rachel Kyte (guest): Well, so Paris was about a temperature goal.
00:42:12.940 --> 00:42:13.360
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:15.140
Rachel Kyte (guest): And it was about leaving no one behind. And we're living in a multi-speed world. Within countries, people are getting left behind. Not on climate, but the hollowing out of the middle class, the intensification of the concentration of wealth. Yeah. The economic system is not working for people. That's happened. That's come to prominence in the what should have been the era of implementation of Paris. And I think the things have got mangled up. And then I think because we spent 20 to 30 years before Paris, when we had low interest rate environments, not investing in infrastructure, and not laying the groundwork for them, what we would need for the transition, meant that our infrastructure is either obsolete or non-existent. The country that got this right, of course, was China. And they are 20 years ahead of us on the energy transition, but they're also 20 years, they're not just 20 years ahead of us on solar, they're 20 years ahead of us on batteries and hydrogen and various other things, because that's where they've invested their wealth.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Which creates its own geopolitical problems, particularly in the US, because then you're anti-transition because to be pro-transition means you're pro-China.
00:43:23.260 --> 00:43:33.120
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yes, and then you've got this whole issue of the concentration of supply chains and the concentration of the minerals and the metals that we need for the renewable energy revolution, for EVs, etc. So it brings it, there's an attendant set of geoeconomic and geopolitical realities around that.
00:43:39.860 --> 00:43:43.500
Tom Rivett-Carnac: There's a general assumption that this is a really hard time on climate. Do you agree with that?
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Rachel Kyte (guest): I think it's a different time. I think it's a hard time for the climate community. I think we haven't found a way to embrace the fact that the starting point for the conversation is just a different one. It doesn't, you know, just because we, you want to talk about security, people want to have a security conversation, doesn't mean that it isn't a climate conversation. But this sort of insistent that the word climate has to come in the first, you know, phrase of the first sentence. I'm not there. I mean, we should understand where we are in our goal on climate or reaching our goals on climate. But if we have to talk about security together, that's fine by me. I mean, I think there are other things as well, which are difficult. You know, we used to just talk about mitigation and then we sort of like, oh, my goodness, we're going to have to talk about adaptation. I think we now have to talk about mitigation, adaptation and stabilization. We are now, and the secretary general said that a few hours ago, right? He talked about overshoot. So, the overshoot, and I don't like the word overshoot, but it has to be shallow and short. I don't like the word overshoot because it's sort of, in my mind, it implies that you've got a cartoon character running off a cliff and then their sort of legs are going and they're just, you know, they're in space and then they're going to fall to the ground. You know, what, so, but I do, I do think that we need to stabilize the climate now. We know we're at tipping points. We know we're interfering in the atmosphere in a way that's deeply dangerous. We are already talking about carbon removals and we may have to talk about other things as well.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, yeah, because if we don't think about it, we don't have any governance or management of it.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah, and we do take the climate community, parts of the climate community, we tend to sort of clutch our pearls at the idea that we should interfere in the stratosphere or the atmosphere in a way that might improve the world's reflectivity. But we're interfering in it on a daily basis with the amount of pollution. We're just pumping up there still. So we have to have a reasonable conversation about this stuff now.
00:45:44.820 --> 00:45:51.380
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So I know we don't have you for hugely longer, and I want to end by a really good new story of something you guys came out with this week. So it's long but an issue around weather warning systems on the frontline countries. And you've announced this week a partnership with the Met Office to deploy AI weather forecasting. What is this going to mean in practice?
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Rachel Kyte (guest): So artificial intelligence and weather forecasting models are improving in leaps and bounds. I mean, the technology is just soaring. And being able to bring that technology to emerging market developing economies means that they should be able to have much greater specificity in terms of early warning, but much greater. We can look much further into the future. So we can know with 10 days certainty that an extreme heat event is coming. Now, that's a very, very important part of economic planning, of security planning, et cetera, for every country. We talked about this before Paris. We made the commitments in Paris. And there's been lots of processes with acronyms that have been trying to extend this. But the Met Office is truly world beating. And I think being able to bring these new breakthroughs in weather forecasting to developing countries will be important. The next question then is, once you've got your early warning, do you have all the tools to be able to protect people? And do people know what to do with the early warning? And that will require lots of partnership. But being able to deploy the new breakthroughs in technology quickly, I think, is fundamental.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: A couple of years ago, we were in Azerbaijan and we did a public event. And I did it with David Lammy and Ed Miliband and they announced their NDC. And I started the event by saying that I was feeling something that I had not felt for a very long time and that was that I felt proud of my country.
00:47:35.940 --> 00:47:36.340
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah.
00:47:36.700 --> 00:47:40.080
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Because they'd come into office and they'd announced a very ambitious NDC. The subsequent couple of years have been more complicated.
00:47:43.960 --> 00:47:44.340
Rachel Kyte (guest): Yeah.
00:47:44.820 --> 00:47:46.040
Tom Rivett-Carnac: You're right at the heart of this. Do you feel proud of your country?
00:47:49.420 --> 00:47:50.260
Rachel Kyte (guest): Sometimes. I die in a ditch for Ed and David. I think it's rare to find politicians who can connect their heart and their head and then communicate in a way that makes sense and then have the bravery to stand up and be pilloried by a media which is so cynical and so 24-7 and sort of suggest something different. So, David made that extraordinary speech at Q in September 24, where he laid out a way for a new Britain post-Brexit, post-COVID, new Labour government to connect with the world differently as in a peer-to-peer relationship even with those countries with whom we have a long historic relationship and be pragmatic again and listen more than talk. And oh my lord, did that resonate with the world. That was the Britain that everybody wanted. And then Ed is out there daily, just speaking truth to whoever will listen, you know, this is better for us. We will be better off in the long run if we do this. And, you know-
00:48:57.760 --> 00:48:58.700
Tom Rivett-Carnac: And he just doesn't back down. He keeps going.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): And he just keeps going. And the fortitude, the fortitude involved in that, in a way too cynical world. But I- So I am very proud of them. And I'm very proud of- What I think is amazing about Britain is the potential, right? We have extraordinary philanthropy, extraordinary academic institutions, extraordinary think tanks, extraordinary soft power, culture, media, you know, when it's not being cynical, and an extraordinary sort of public service, which is on the ropes because it's been underpaid for many years and morale is pretty low in many cases. And we have a parliamentary system that, you know, is creaking a bit but, you know, with a bit of attention could do better. I think we're ripe for citizens assemblies. I think there's big questions we have to ask ourselves. I don't think parliament set up to do that very well. I think there's room and certainly I talk about this with my colleagues at Oxford. You know, there are big ponderable questions, which I think are more ripe for conversation, you know, in pubs and village halls around the country. You know, which parts of the coastline do we protect? Which parts do we let go back to the sea? There are some big questions coming for us. But on a sunny day, even if it wasn't quite as hot as today, I'm proud of a lot that we can be and should aspire to be. I'm also proud in London, living in London. It's so multicultural. It's just a blessing. You know, I get on the 35 bus and there are just women doing their shopping in the same market that I do my shopping in from every possible part of the world. All, you know, on a weekend, they're all speaking different languages and they are some of them listening to their preachers back home on their phones on a Saturday and Sunday. And I, it's joyful.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I love it.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): It's joyful.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Rachel Kyte, it's been a privilege and lovely to talk to you.
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Rachel Kyte (guest): It's so nice to talk to you. Thank you.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So great to sit down with Rachel Kyte. What an amazing leader and just a brilliant human being. I was so sorry you two couldn't join for that, but I know that you've heard the interview. What do you think, Paul, maybe start with you?
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Paul Dickinson: I mean, I love the way just if we focus for a minute on UK politics because she is representative of the UK government. How she said we were blessed with climate change legislation that was embedded, and we shouldn't catastrophize the idea that it's all about to be reversed. She said people are scared by extreme heat. I think that's an important thing. I actually, one thing I really picked up on, and she talked about her global role, because she has a global role as UK Climate Change Ambassador, about how pension funds in the UK and India, pension funds across the world are actually igniting around investment opportunities in renewable energy. And I've always been incredibly excited at how closely investment in renewable energy grids represents income streams that entirely match the obligations of pension funds. And so I think she's a genius of picking up on that. And then I think last of all, I think that you'll probably want to talk about this more also, but this idea of the political divisions created by wealth inequalities. I feel are a critically important part of understanding the sort of unraveling of a political consensus that you kind of lamented, right, in the interview. Yeah. I mean, tell us a bit about that, Tom, because you sort of set it up. And I think, Rachel, I had a take on it that we didn't pay attention to the heart of Paris, right?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. I mean, I think what was interesting is, and this is an issue that we've talked about before on the podcast, that actually, even though the economics has improved, the politics hasn't. And I think we kind of made an assumption that once it was in our bed, in economic interest, we would begin to win political actions on the basis of it. But she made the point that we've kind of forgotten this inclusion element of what's happening, that actually people have felt left behind as a result of this transition. And what wasn't really fully appreciated was that nature of democracy is that unless you put people right in the center, the mechanism and the way that it works means that you can't really make that much progress on these issues. So I thought she was very thoughtful on that. I thought she was really interesting on the way in which her role, which she came into, she may have thought was like a COP negotiation role, but actually it's kind of a trade envoy role. It's more about how do you speak to people around the world to try and encourage investment. The UK's...
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Christiana Figueres: Thank heavens that she has that background.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And she's perfect for it, right?
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Paul Dickinson: Perfect.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And the green sector in the UK is growing at 10% a year. Nothing is growing at 10% a year in the UK. So that is the place which is actually the engine of growth.
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Paul Dickinson: When she talked about the buzz she got from all the young people in the energy transition, I found that completely intoxicating. There was a kind of lunch with the FT type thing with the head of AXA. And he said, Europe lacks a project. You know, there is a project, by the way, which is, you know, decarbonize our economies. Young people are desperate to unleash their energy and entrepreneurial skills in this regard. And, you know, it's the fuddy-duddy older people are all kind of like, we kind of can't afford what we can't afford to decarbonize our economies and then sell that technology to the world. No, well done, Rachel Kyte, for figuring out that this is the greatest economic opportunity we've had.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Absolutely.
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Christiana Figueres: You know, to her point about the politics went wrong because we didn't, we forgot about inclusion. What we have discussed here a lot on this podcast is that while politics led as it had to ten years ago for the Paris Agreement, politics is no longer leading. It's now the economics, and we've discussed that ad nauseum. I'm not sure if what Rachel is saying, the reason why politics is no longer leading because it's the economics that is leading, is because we forgot about the inclusion. I would say ideally, and we don't live in a world of ideals, but ideally, we should have both. We should have both the economics leading from a very clear cold financial price competitive's point of view, and also the politics and the social responsibility leading with equal authority, both of them supporting each other. That would be the ideal. I don't think she's saying one came at the expense of the other. Is that what she's saying?
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Paul Dickinson: No, but there was a lack of attention.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. I think what she was saying is that the economics was better prepared, but because people didn't feel like the economics was benefiting them, the politics went the other way. Because even if the politics wasn't leading, but it was at least keeping up and going in the same direction as the economics, then we'd still be in a better place. But actually support for climate remains relatively high, actually. We should be honest about that. But political salience of it, we've lost political battles in many parts around the world, even as the economics becomes more prevalent.
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Paul Dickinson: Just to touch to the subject before the break, the whole basis of this unbelievable investment in AI is mass unemployment. So let's just be clear about that. Those investments are saying there's going to be huge numbers of people put out of work. So this is likely to get worse. Just one final thing, I felt that it was brave of her. I hate that phrase clutching pearls since I heard fans use it. But she did say we can't clutch our pearls about stabilization of the climate. She talked about removals and she intimated solar radiation management. May also be something that we have to consider. I think she's brave to talk about that.
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Christiana Figueres: What I think is interesting is the whole discussion on just transition. I think the just transition topic has been treated almost as a footnote. Almost as a nice to have.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: If we've got time and money.
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Christiana Figueres: If we've got time and money and the conscience.
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Paul Dickinson: How do we make money out of the just transition?
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Christiana Figueres: I don't get it. Let's do just transition. Almost as though it's a gift out of the bigness of our heart to the most vulnerable. That's the attitude that we've been having for it. It's interesting that that is the way that it has been minimized to be a footnote of this whole thing rather than to her point that it should have been front and center for politics. Because if it had been, then we would have had a double lead. Economics and politics. We would have had a double lead.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's how you got the exponential curve towards solutions.
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Paul Dickinson: Business needs to invest in that trust and that consent. You can't skip it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I think it's a great place to end. Thanks guys. Lovely to see you. Nice to be together. Yay. This episode is coming out. London Climate Action Week is still going on, so we'll be providing further updates on social media. So please do follow us and we'll have another episode, of course, next week. Bye.
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Christiana Figueres: Bye.
00:57:50.800 --> 00:57:51.160
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Bye.
