305: Planes, Protests, Pensions... and have banks given up on saving the planet?
Christiana Figueres, Paul Dickinson and guest host Fiona McRaith are back with more of the knottiest and most urgent listener questions.
About this episode
Can a pilot really be the change-maker who helps us to holiday nearer home? Why aren’t governments and institutions doing more to help climate activists? And can climate progress happen without sacrificing prosperity, especially in countries like Brazil?
Christiana Figueres, Paul Dickinson and guest host Fiona McRaith (Director of The Climate Pledge at Global Optimism) are back with more of the knottiest and most urgent questions you’ve ever sent us.
Plus: are the world’s biggest financial institutions abandoning climate action? Sue Reid (Climate Finance Advisor at Global Optimism) explains how banks and insurers are reacting to political pressure, why some net zero alliances appear to be fracturing, and why “green hushing” doesn’t mean giving up entirely.
And: from climate visas to sponge cities, adaptation is finally rising on the global agenda - but is it fast or fair enough? Irene Suárez Pérez (Senior Advisor to Groundswell) walks us through some of the global hotspots of climate resilience, and why adaptation isn’t a consolation prize.
….
Learn more
Listen back to episodes referenced in this Q&A, including:
⏳ Momentum vs Perfection, where Fiona joins Tom to explore different theories of change within the climate movement.
💼 When Business is Political: Climate Commitments in an Age of Backlash, where Tom and Paul speak to Helen Clarkson about the moves of large companies in the context of rising anti-ESG forces.
💰 Learn more about greening pensions and investments: ShareAction, Third Act’s Banking on our Future and Make My Money Matter
🎤 Get your chance to be featured on the show! Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
And follow us on social media for behind the scenes moments and to watch our videos:
Instagram @outrageoptimism
LinkedIn @outrageoptimism
Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Video Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan
Additional production: Miriam Hall
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
Commissioning Editor: Sarah Thomas
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network
Full Transcript
Paul: [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to Outreach and Optimism. I'm Paul Dickinson.
Christiana: [00:00:05] I'm Christiana Figueres, and we still have with us the magnificent Fi McRaith
Paul: [00:00:12] Okay. So this week we're going to go into the second batch of questions from listeners. And we have another weird, wild and wonderful set of ways to advance conversations.
Christiana: [00:00:22] So let's get into it. Okay. From Joel, we have a fascinating question. Listen first to his story and then to his question.
Listener Joel: [00:00:33] Hi, Christiana. Tom and Paul I am an airline pilot, shortly to be an airline pilot. I'm finding my feelings on climate change too difficult to reconcile with a career in that industry. The question is, what next? I'd love to help the climate movement. My ambition at the moment is to create an organization which inspires local travel. A big problem with airplanes is that their speed encourages us to travel huge distances. But while they cut the time required to travel far. They certainly don't cut the amount of fuel needed. Staycations are often seen as second best to what some might call proper travel, but I know that there are millions of people who find everything they want from their holidays and adventures within a few hundred miles or less. The challenge is to cut emissions by persuading more people to try and do the same. I'd love to make my organisation a platform for anyone who's been able to find all the joy they need, without travelling far to share their passion and knowledge. I'm hoping that with enough people, including hopefully some famous people setting the example, it could inspire a cultural shift. I'm intending to call the organisation Look near first, but although I'm excited by the idea, in many ways I'm struggling, I need help. I've tried various avenues, but I haven't found anyone willing to take me by the hand and walk me through some basics and how to get such a thing started. I also wonder whether try and start something myself would really be my best use within the climate movement at all. Do you have any advice on what I should do? Thanks.
Paul: [00:01:55] Joel. Thank you so much for that question, which is all sorts of things. It's a kind of autobiography, and it's a question and it's a passion plan, and it's an exciting series of challenges. And I had the opportunity to discuss it with you at some length, Christiana. And I think we had a really great conversation. So let's try and dig in here. First of all, thank you for being an airline pilot and flying people around the world safely. So that's been a wonderful thing to do. I don't think that you should feel guilty about that, because climate change has only been coming into people's awareness, and we've all used aeroplanes at the same time. Huge heart out. Big thanks to you for thinking about, okay, well, you know, probably better than almost anybody. How much is it? Kerosene really goes into those big aluminium birds that you've been flying for a while, and I think, you know, it's a lot. Okay, so you have a plan, which is to help people think about look near first. Think about getting what they would want from a distant holiday near where they live. Avoiding the need for air travel. And I think, you know, we super applaud your vision and your kind of passion and and it seems to burst out of you, which is what entrepreneurship is all about. So, you know, I've been involved in starting a million enterprises in my life, about two of which have been successful. But I know enough to know that, uh, you're in just the most exciting place.
Paul: [00:03:20] Some of the things to think about are you're going to have to make everything happen yourself. And in addition, you're going to probably want to collaborate with others because it tends to be like a marathon, not a sprint. But then going into the actual challenge that you've set for yourself. This is where I had a super interesting discussion with Christiana, and where we got to was, it's not going to work for you to kind of reinvent Google in a certain sense. You're not really trying to kind of reclassify the information of the world because Google and indeed other search engines have done such a great job of that, as has I. I think what we think you're trying to do is help people look differently at what they're trying to get from holidays. And if I tried to distill what we got from your conversation is, first of all, it might be a case of you looking at what people want from holidays and trying to find ways to group that. Do they want to learn about Italian and cooking? Well, you can certainly, for example, do that in the UK. You don't have to go to Italy. Or do they want certain kinds of experiences? If you want snowboarding, it's probably a bit harder to do that in the UK, but how would you group experiences to help people think look near first? But then Christiana made a brilliant point, she said.
Christiana: [00:04:30] For a change.
Paul: [00:04:31] Christiana made one of many, many brilliant points. Yeah, it's true that Fi hasn't complimented Christiana on any brilliant, brilliant points and I've got to.
Christiana: [00:04:39] Tell.
Fi McRaith: [00:04:39] You, there's.
Christiana: [00:04:40] Brilliance only for.
Paul: [00:04:41] You. But I also don't want you to feel you left out. Want to emphasize what a brilliant point you made when you said that I should be awarded a Viscount ship.
Fi McRaith: [00:04:51] Oh, That's what it was. That was the reason.
Christiana: [00:04:54] I knew it was something like that.
Paul: [00:04:55] It was a different point. It was a different point. The point was that how would people go to that website? How would people go to look near first? And you said it was a campaign, Christian. And I thought about the story that I might read about in a magazine, or I might hear about on the, on the TV or on YouTube or TikTok or whatever, about the airline pilot who designed look near first. And actually building your own media by telling your own story. And that's when you called it Christiana campaign fee. What do you think of this business idea? Look near first.
Fi McRaith: [00:05:27] I actually I love this idea. Well done. I love the name of it. I also think that there's an increasing positive delight. Again, it's kind of a mindset shift of how being present to your surroundings can actually provide just as much delight and inspiration as a trip across the world. I also celebrate and think that so much perspective comes from travel, and in experiencing other cultures and meeting other people and trying other cuisines. And I think that doing that and centering sustainability is also possible. And then I will also say a theme that I've certainly come back to a lot during this episode and through these questions is that you contributed to helping, as Paul said, a many people experiencing new things for the first time. And who's to say how much inspiration that might have brought about in the world? Solutions that might have been negotiated because of passengers on your plane. And I just think you never know the benefits that surround actions. And there are brilliant inventors working on sustainable aviation fuel. So the way things exist now may not necessarily be how they exist in the future. And a huge part of that is brilliant. People like yourself thinking about reimagining what we have in our backyards and finding inspiration within that tiny thing.
Paul: [00:06:57] I think in the probably 30 years it takes us to get sustainable aviation or vacuum tubes that across the world we do need to look near first. So you've got a good 30 to 40 years for this excellent business. Christiana, what do you think of Joel's vision?
Christiana: [00:07:11] Yeah, I'm actually with Fi, I think. And also, I love the fact that I have only lived four years where I live now, and I'm constantly discovering tiny little secrets. Oh, there's another waterfall here that I could walk to. There's another hike here that I can do to. And it's fascinating to me that when I arrived there, I sort of took a quick look around and I went, okay, there are three things. Three activities that I can do here Don check. And the more I live there, the more I discover the beauty of Some gorgeous experiences that you can have if you pause and take the time to appreciate the environment around you. And I'm also with you for that. It is important to get out of our mental shell and understand that there are many ways of thinking in the world, many ways of doing things, that botanical biodiversity is as important as human biodiversity, and travel is one of the best ways to do that, independently of the fact that those of us who have families who live in other countries do want to travel to to see our families. So I would say, as Paul has already congratulated, you don't feel badly about the fact that you have been a pilot. That is something to to celebrate. And also now you can complement that with a much closer approach to discovering what is around us. And I would say it is not as much about a listing of places. It's about us changing our mentality. That that to me is the crux, because when I changed my mentality about the three things, you know, check, check, check, I did this. No, no, no, wait a second. Can I, you know, discover more. Can I slow down and walk the path slower so that I see. Oh, there's another little path that goes off here and oh my gosh, it leads me to a waterfall that is on no map.
Fi McRaith: [00:09:20] I love this so much. Brilliant point, Christiana.
Christiana: [00:09:23] Oh, now.
Speaker5: [00:09:24] We get it. You see, it's your fault. Um, but I know no for your brilliant.
Fi McRaith: [00:09:29] You're saying no, but I really think. And just. Christiana has waterfalls nearby. I, I don't, but one of the things I think it doesn't have to be a waterfall. It can be the way the light reflects through the trees in different seasons at different times of the day. I mean it really. Yes, yes, yes it can. I think that mental shift, that grounding of wonder and awe and joy is always accessible whether you are near.
Christiana: [00:09:59] Yeah, absolutely.
Paul: [00:10:00] There's a little palindrome which I very much enjoyed playing with. To have what you want to want what you have. You know. Have you got the eyes? I was reading a novel the other day. Someone saying, just look, you know, just look at the trees. Look at the extraordinary and magical place you are. You know, it's in the eye of the beholder. If I can quote the famous phrase, that's where our joy is. Lie.
Christiana: [00:10:26] I would say it's in the soul of the beholder.
Paul: [00:10:29] Mhm. You always take things to another level Christiana into the soul.
Christiana: [00:10:34] So you know this is exciting. We have a couple of questions a few questions that have come in through social media. Blue sky.
Paul: [00:10:41] Blue sky. Let's hear it from blue sky, the non.
Christiana: [00:10:45] Linked in, Spotify, etc. so thanks for communicating with us via those channels. Our next question comes from Nauru and it is asking for an update on the way the financial sector climate commitments buckled. So team, we have a brilliant colleague who is actually the expert on this. So in order to avoid fees already mentioned imposter syndrome, shall we ask Sue Reid to answer this for us? Give her a ring and ask her to explain what has happened with the financial sector. Climate commitments.
Paul: [00:11:25] Sounds good.
Fi McRaith: [00:11:26] Hi.
Sue Reid: [00:11:27] That is a really interesting question and thank you for the opportunity to respond. So probably an entire episode of outraged optimism could be devoted to this subject. So I will try to keep it brief, especially keeping in mind that outrage and optimism had some prior episodes that provide some super illuminating context around the anti ESG or anti environmental, social and governance headwinds and the weaponization of different elements of the US government, both at the state and federal level, that worked to stop or thwart or curtail financial sector efforts toward alignment with net zero emissions and climate action. So we saw some really visible manifestations of this, dating back at least 2023, when some members of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance left the alliance under some of these threats from different elements of US government. And then we saw a considerable escalation in the wake of the 2024 US elections. And then we saw some recalibration of what is known as the Glasgow Financial Alliance for net zero, or GFANZ, that pulls together representatives of finance sector alliances and leaders from across all different segments of the finance sector. And we saw defections from the net zero banking alliance that started with the major US banks, and then had some knock on effects with Canadian and other institutions. It's really important, though, to keep in mind that almost all of these financial institutions, the ones who have left the different net zero alliances, have actually retained their own net zero commitments.
Sue Reid: [00:13:30] They've had every opportunity to drop their net zero commitments, but they haven't, With rare exception, Wells Fargo is one that comes to mind as a rare exception that actually jettisoned its net zero commitment. It was very unfortunate to see. And flies in the face of what every other financial institution recognize is a business and investment imperative, that this is the direction of travel and the costs of inaction are so high. The scale of opportunity is unprecedented to invest in climate solutions. And so at the end of the day, it's no surprise that individual financial institutions, even those that no longer are collaborating very explicitly with others, are still staying the course on their climate ambition and on implementation of their climate in net zero commitments. Some compelling examples of ongoing collective work include the forum for Insurance Transition to Net Zero, which I see as a reemergence of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance is something better, more resilient, more robust that incorporates regulators and former regulators, lawyers, civil society and others in its core governance structure and is situated to help drive forward guidance for insurers on how to recalibrate their products so that they are aligned with net zero.
Sue Reid: [00:14:59] It's doing tremendous work, is very, very productive. And then there's the net zero asset owner alliance that has continued to advance the ball year after year after year. On average, members achieving 6% per year over the past five years, emissions reductions across portfolios, really scaling investment in climate solutions and driving forward guidance on a whole range of different areas, different sectors on how to recalibrate investment portfolios for alignment with net zero and aiming for limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C. So what we're seeing mostly is more and more institutions rolling up sleeves, really seriously advancing the work and just saying a lot less about what they're doing. So some have referred to this as green hushing. And what's most important is to keep in mind that the work is still very much underway. So I wouldn't say that financial sector climate commitments have buckled. Instead, I would say that a handful of institutions have retrenched to their own detriment, at their own peril. And overwhelmingly, the financial sector is continuing to power forward with action on implementation to align with net zero emissions because it makes good business and investment sense, and that's really encouraging to see. So I hope this is helpful. Thanks for the opportunity to weigh in and hope to join you some other time again soon. Bye.
Christiana: [00:16:44] Thanks so much, Sue. So glad that we turned to you for this update. So we have this question from Daniel that came through Spotify and it says, Hey Geo Team, can you spend a little bit of time updating us on the adaptation developments around the world? Things such as New Zealand considering a special visa for island climate refugees, or anything to do with natural disaster preparation. So lucky for us, we also have on our team the brilliant Irene Suarez, who we will also call and ask her to update us on adaptation developments around the world.
Paul: [00:17:23] This is like phone a friend, right? You know, you got this very difficult question and you phone a friend who's an expert and they can give you some advice?
Irene Suarez: [00:17:29] Daniel, thanks so much for your question. We have seen growing momentum around resilience from national governments to regions, communities, businesses, financial institutions and more. Of course, progress remains uneven and far from what's needed. Given the scale of climate impacts. But we're seeing clear signals of advancement that we can build on at a national level. Over 150 countries have developed or are updating national adaptation plans. In Ecuador, the pack 2030 plan blends ancestral indigenous practices to strengthen local resilience nationwide. Bangladesh, a front runner on adaptation, has implemented early warning systems that reach over 90% of its population during cyclones, significantly reducing disaster related death in terms of human mobility and disaster preparedness. You mention New Zealand's proposal for a special visa for Pacific Islanders displaced by climate change. This reflects a growing recognition of climate induced migration as the real and rising issue. It is countries like Panama in Central America or Fiji, and Kiribati in the Pacific are developing efforts to relocate communities preemptively with dignity and foresight rather than in crisis. In Africa, the Adaptation Acceleration Program is scaling up impact. For example, in Kenya, over 500,000 farmers now use drought resistant seeds and digital tools for climate smart agriculture. At regional scales, the Pacific Resilience Program is working with 15 island nations to strengthen infrastructure and early warning systems. Fiji has already built cyclone resilient schools and roads support. Nationally, over 1000 cities are implementing strategies with support of C40, MLA and others in Bogota.
Irene Suarez: [00:19:40] More than 1200 hectares of wetlands have been restored to reduce flooding and protect biodiversity. Shanghai In China, the Sponge City pilot has retrofitted 600km² with green roofs and permeable pavement to better absorb stormwater. So relevant. We're also seeing meaningful shifts in the private sector. Over 4800 organisations globally report physical climate risks under the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures, helping advance Vance adaptation measures by making climate risks and opportunities visible and material to business investors and regulators. Firms like Nestlé and Unilever have invested in climate resilient sourcing in over 20 countries. Unilever's tea supply chain in Kenya has used drip irrigation and heat tolerant crop varieties, increasing yields by up to 30% during drought years. So yes, these examples are proof points of progress. But let's be clear we must urgently reduce emissions to limit growing climate impacts. And at the same time, we must embrace adaptation not only as a need, but as one of the smartest investments. Wri research shows that every dollar invested in adaptation yields over $10 in benefits within a decade, a decade. Yet adaptation finance remains insufficient, and the pace of action is still slower than the impacts unfolding around us. This is why we need all hands on deck to scale resilience together today. Thanks again and hoping we have an adaptation episode soon.
Christiana: [00:21:43] Okay, you did it! Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate your stepping in here for us. We still have a few more fascinating questions that we want to get to. But first, let's take a quick break. Welcome back everyone. So we also have a question from Daniel that says, referring to our oceans episode, fascinating and presumably terrifying, though I presume you were not in the dark about the terrible state of our oceans and the effects of both global heating on the oceans and how warming oceans will exacerbate our problems as well as that of life within them. Here's his question. Beyond your success at Paris and the convening power of this conference. Meaning ENOC. I'm interested in how you see climate solutions that deal with the underlying issue of economic growth. Are we anywhere near to discussions around managed degrowth of developed economies featuring on a Cop agenda? Well, talk about a fascinating, difficult question. Who wants to jump in.
Paul: [00:22:53] Manage degrowth.
Christiana: [00:22:55] On the carbon agenda?
Paul: [00:22:56] We've discussed this at great length, and we were having a bit of conversation yesterday. Christiana was trying to kind of explain maybe a distinction between what you might call the capacity of society to deliver a kind of luxury, I suppose, and the capacity of the society to deliver growth. And it's not directly related to climate change, but I think it's a sort of little simple economic idea. And I'm going to contrast the old UK, something like 1936 and 1942. So in 1936 there were lots of luxuries for sale in the UK, lots of butter and, you know, fancy fashion clothes that were being manufactured for people to buy with really quite a lot of money. And in 1942, about six years later, because it was the middle of World War two, there were practically no fashion clothes being manufactured, and it was very hard to get butter and things like that. You had to ration it. Did that mean the economy had shrunk? And the answer is actually no. The economy had probably doubled in size during that period, but the economy was being entirely devoted to producing things like warplanes and tanks and ships. The point that I'm trying to make here is that there are different kinds of growth for different sorts of purposes.
Paul: [00:24:00] I mean, I think that the work and we were having a conversation earlier today amongst ourselves about the kind of work that we're into, we're into growing security and growing the national security of countries. Nato's doing that now by increasing their investment in weapons, whether that's a good idea or not. We can discuss, but that's clearly an idea of growth. And we also need to recognize we have clearly, you know, NATO feels threatened by war and invasion. And we also feel very much threatened by climate change. So we do want to grow our economies by building free energy infrastructure, solar power, smart grids, you know, take advantage of these new technologies, electric vehicles and all the rest of it. Now, when you come to this word degrowth, I think some people are saying, well, there's excessive consumption. And, you know, the sheer number of yachts over 70m long being bought by individuals who all have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, I think that's probably pretty inappropriate growth that I don't particularly encourage. I don't think we should be trying to make 9,000,000,070 metre long yachts. So I kind of get the meta level degrowth argument.
Paul: [00:25:06] But I think we have to be extremely careful about managing people's expectations that they will be able to have a better quality of life. And there are, you know, so many hundreds of millions, billions of people who've barely got enough to eat or whatever, or certainly could eat better and and have better transport access. And that can all be provided. And I think, you know, I'm just going to find a thing. I'll say this long rant is there was something called the Natural Step from Sweden, which was a really good way of conceiving ecological boundaries. And they said we must not systemically increase extraction from the Earth's crust. It's kind of weird language, but I think what I'm driving at is if we have a fully circular economy, if we live like the insects do, then we're not constrained by growth, which is really a way of counting human activity. It's really conforming to the environmental limits and the social limits, and that's what we have to do. But I don't think that means that we stop growth, because I feel that growth is about development and about getting the kind of economy of the future. But what do you do you think?
Fi McRaith: [00:26:04] Yeah, it's such a good question. And Paul, the way you teed up is so, so well done.
Paul: [00:26:09] This is more stuff I think we need to emphasize in this particular episode. Sorry.
Fi McRaith: [00:26:12] Yeah. I'm not used to having a co-host
Paul: [00:26:16] Tom just looks down his nose at me and I mean, Christiana is like, I have to repeat it.
Fi McRaith: [00:26:19] I think there's a lot of conversations happening in meetings around tables that I've been in, you know. London Climate Action Week was a couple of weeks ago, and there's a lot of conversation about the climate movement. The climate community just isn't figuring out how to communicate well and frankly. Daniel, I think your question is brilliant because of what you're pointing towards, which, as I understand it, is that the way we are growing our economies and the way in which we talk about our economies and economic growth are not working. They do not align well with the goal of a safer, more habitable, more prosperous world that is in direct opposition to achieving 1.5. And I agree with that question and that framing completely. But I think one of the places where the climate community has tripped is by selecting terms that are about scarcity and about limitations and about totally zero. So I would say zero.
Christiana: [00:27:23] How inspirational is that?
Fi McRaith: [00:27:25] Right? What does it what does it mean?
Christiana: [00:27:26] What does.
Fi McRaith: [00:27:26] It mean?
Paul: [00:27:27] And it's a net that does nothing. It's perfect.
Fi McRaith: [00:27:29] Yes. And I think the quality of life is better than it has been. And humankind and all living things, beings and animals and plants and including humans in this whole world, deserve a better future than what we're on track towards. And that doesn't sync with the term degrowth. But I think, as Paul was so saying, so well, it's growth of other things that need to be nurtured. And frankly, I would just say that the economic models that were created do not reflect the externalities on the environment that we now know to be true. And we are experiencing. And we need new economic models and a new economic way of viewing the world. I mean, the concept of money and monetary like economics emerged only after the Great Depression to make sense of a phenomenon that happened. And we are seeing that in development by many universities now, a new economics of decarbonization. And I'm really hoping that we are very intentional about the words used to describe these things that are actually about abundance and prosperity and what is possible, rather than sacrifice or scarcity or less growth, because it is about growing towards a better, more prosperous, more beautiful world for everyone.
Christiana: [00:29:01] Not just some.
Fi McRaith: [00:29:02] For everyone. Yes.
Christiana: [00:29:04] Yeah. Totally. I so agree with that. I've been on a path of, um, I'm almost going to say a warpath against words that denote these negative connotations decarbonization, degrowth, net zero. They're all the negative. And words have incredible power and words that elicit the best of us, rather than the feared within us are so much better than the opposite. But this question about degrowth, and whether it's going to make it onto the agenda, that was the question, reminds me of a parallel case that we had way back in the 1990s, when some NGOs proposed a theory that was called contraction and convergence, and it was meant to get agreement that global emissions should be reduced to a safe level. That was the contraction part, while simultaneously ensuring that all countries eventually have equal per capita emissions. That was the convergence part. So what it meant was that basically, the global North had to enter into contraction first, that the global South would be able to continue to emit until a certain point in time. That was the convergence point. And then all countries entitlements would continue to decline. Now, as you can imagine, the timing of that convergence point was pretty crucial because if the timing was early, it would lead to an increase in entitlements for countries with lower per capita emissions, typically poor countries. While if the convergence is later, then it would hinder development prospects of these nations. So and and the unintended consequence that was basically the killer argument that made this completely go away is that many of the critics argued that it had an unintended consequence, which would be if it's a per capita focus, then it will incentivize countries to boost their population in order to acquire more entitlements. Load More
Christiana: [00:31:19] So just to say, you know, and many other arguments that were raised at the time just to say this is not an easy case. And so therefore there's a reason why the Paris Agreement actually leaves it, and I would say dangerously, in the hands of every country to every five years through the ratchet mechanism, to inform every other country how much they're going to reduce from their baseline in the understanding that we have to be at here we go, zero emissions net zero by 2050. But because of the difficulty of getting the Global North to agree that they have to reduce their emissions faster than the Global South and the global, you know, all of that very complicated political negotiation that was completely left off. And I have not seen anyone put forward the contraction and convergence proposal again. And we're basically now in the land of enlightened self-interest. How much can I reduce as part of a collective effort that actually helps me? And that's where I come back to your positive. How much can I reduce my emissions through the betterment of my technology, through the betterment of my energy system, through the betterment of my agricultural practices? And that's enlightened self-interest. And after a lot of thought that went into this. That was the path chosen by the Paris Agreement. Dangerously, as I say, because there is no environmental police that comes and says you're not doing what you said. You know, you said this and this and the indices, and you're not doing it.
Paul: [00:33:11] Well, there's the court of Global Public opinion, and I've seen in my career, you know, companies and you know a lot about this kind of they can be their own peer group. You know in CDP we used to talk about authorities, investor authority and purchasing authority. But in the CDP's city program, the authority was the other cities all looking at each other and growing together. Just one thing about contraction and convergence. Christiana, and it's great to hear it about it again, because, you know, it did sort of kind of fall off the radar a little bit. It's fundamentally the idea of rationing that emissions are rationed to humans. And just as in wartime, as I said at the start of this discussion, you know, when you have to distribute limited resources inside a society in wartime, you do it with rationing. People have ration cards, and it's typically the case that rich people buy rations of poor people and that eat a bit more butter. If contraction convergence was adopted in the world, it's very likely that the rich countries would seek to mitigate the reductions they had to make by buying emissions credits from the poor countries, and this would lead to the most enormous wealth transfers from the rich countries to the poor countries, potentially. But anyway, enough on that. Just the last thought on this. I mean, we're always talking about growth, which I think equates to something like an increase in sales in corporate language. But I want us to always remember that the great challenge we have is nations don't run balance sheets. And so we're just measuring sales. And we're never looking at our assets, particularly our environmental assets and how we're depleting them. And, you know, the crisis of contemporary economic thinking is it just looks at sales and it doesn't look at assets and the strength of the the national and global balance sheet. Okay.
Christiana: [00:34:46] So that question actually is related to another question that we got from an anonymous listener who refers with excitement to our Brazil Cop podcast and then says, I still think you need much more conversation on the trade offs between economic development and addressing the climate emergency. Brazil is still a developing country, with millions of poor people who care more about food and transport than saving the Amazon. So can we explore better economic solutions for them rather than just slogans? So that touches on your point fee. You know, what are we really focusing on here?
Fi McRaith: [00:35:27] Yeah. So it's a really good question. And I I'll just start by again, I think this is one of the areas where we as a community of people who are I mean, every job can be a climate, job, etc., etc., and those who work in climate every day, I think, have much to learn about how to talk about co-benefits and intersectionality.
Christiana: [00:35:52] The concept, I would say about the benefits, the benefits. And the cool part is the reduction of emissions, the right. It's the benefits that have to lead the discussion. Yes and yes. The cool part though, the piece that you get the extra is the reduction of emission.
Fi McRaith: [00:36:10] Brilliantly said. But instead we lead with the extra which is cutting emissions instead of the true benefit to people to planet. And you know, in a world that I work towards building every day, there is not a trade off between protecting for to the good question, the Amazon rainforest and food or transport, those are things have found harmony have found in our being. We have embraced the relationality or the relationship between things that are possible. I know that there is a lot of impressive and an important work being done on bio economies, especially in the Amazon, around how can the world better embrace new systems that are are simultaneously about protecting and embracing forests, while also bringing more prosperity and money and purchasing power, I suppose, or legitimacy to communities so that they can grow. I think the future doesn't have to have to be worse, but we don't yet have strong mechanisms for surfacing stories and examples where the case study is very strong so that it can be adopted.
Paul: [00:37:32] I mean, I think we do have them, and I think we've done a terrible job of putting them together. But we discussed this earlier for you, and you sort of said that the material should be for something, you know, and we do need to have a vision, maybe the SDGs with that vision, the Sustainable Development Goals, maybe that vision is, is, you know, kind of for prosperity for all. The private sector system can be extremely good at rapidly deploying kind of technology and speeding up processes, but is often correlated with investments and sort of super returns for a relatively small number of shareholders. And I think we do need to think about a more distributive model of, of a development whereby, you know, better food, better access to transport exists for many people. I'm repeating a point I made earlier, but I think it's it's about a vision, because you can't have a dream come true if you don't have a dream in the first place. And, you know, in a sense, even back to the days of sort of kind of Reagan and Thatcher and the free marketeers, it was almost kind of like, let's just release the the private sector and see what it does, and amazing things have happened. But I think within the context of us hitting environmental system conditions and in very real ways, hitting social system conditions, we now need to see a sort of a balance with government and society sort of creating growth that really works for everybody. And the good news is we've got the technology, and the good news is we've got to do it and we can do it, but it's going to require a different way of thinking about development than just kind of like more airports. My next question is from Adrián or Christina. How would you pronounce his name?
Christiana: [00:38:55] Well, did you say Adrián or did you say.
Paul: [00:38:58] I believed I said Adrián
Christiana: [00:38:58] Yes. Adrian. Okay. Good job.
Paul: [00:39:00] Listeners will never know that there was anything before that because it was cut out.
Listener Adrián: [00:39:04] Paul, I have a question for the three of you. The question is about climate activism. The Guardian has been recently covering what they've called a global crackdown on climate activists. My question to you is, why do you think we are failing not only to protect, but also to elevate and celebrate the voices of climate activists around the world? Thank you.
Paul: [00:39:28] So this is just a sort of fascinating and kind of deeply challenging question I think I find quite personally quite challenging. If I sort of remove myself from this discussion, I think one of the reasons why people are, you know, not so protective of climate activists or people who are, you know, going to prison even for for civil disobedience is because we, we sort of other them that they're doing that thing and we're doing something else. Their extreme behavior does inconvenience people in massive ways has even been kind of loss of life alleged by blocking roads and suchlike. But I think, you know, there is something about direct action which is of incredible importance in the history of social movements. And so I find myself at one level admiring, I have to say, the bravery that they have to draw the attention to this cause. Then another part of me worries that, you know, putting off people. It was famously the demonstrators got on top of a train very early in the morning, and lots of people, you know, very early workers, you know, on low salaries, very often were angry that their their lives are being interrupted. And does that, you know, cause us to sort of lose momentum on climate change. And I suppose the ultimately the challenging question is why do we, as you know, we all work full time in climate change. Why are we not trying to do more to protect or get climate activists out of prison? You know, I have an inspection company, which I Insulate Britain. There are people who've gone to prison under the theme of Insulate Britain. We have common cause with people, and yet it seems like very different parts of the movement. Tumbleweed.
Fi McRaith: [00:40:59] Brilliance.
Paul: [00:41:02] Can we have that? Put in a little bit louder, Ben?
Fi McRaith: [00:41:05] Yes. Brilliance, brilliance, brilliance.
Fi McRaith: [00:41:09] All of these are brilliant questions. But this is one that I. I don't feel I have fully formulated thoughts, but in the spirit of conversation, both with Paul and Christiana and with the listeners. I think, um, I'll speak for the United States, of which I am a citizen and more familiar with the. It's a very polarized place, and celebrating and amplifying the activism that tends to result in legal action can be hard or scary or risky. And this is not at all to defend any actions whatsoever. I think there's always been place for a myriad of of actions, and activism looks different for different people. And I think when we are all most powerful or most aligned is when we celebrate. Perhaps I can generously use the the word into being when we celebrate that one person doing one thing and me doing a different thing with the spirit of the same cause is more powerful. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be uncomfortable doing just one way of action.
Christiana: [00:42:25] This question brings me back to a very impressive number that I was made aware of a while ago. So Erica Chenoweth, American political scientist and professor, has done a lot of research and come up with a semi magical number, which is it only takes 3.5% of a population to demonstrate, hopefully in a nonviolent way, to bring about political or social change. That's a very small percentage, and yet we're not there yet. On climate, we do not have 3% of every country's population. We do not have 3% of the global population demonstrating. So because we know that we need both political and economic social change. One could think we're actually going to need 3.5% of people demonstrating in some way. Not everyone agrees about which way they want to demonstrate. And you have a whole gamut of those who feel that the only possible way to get attention to their very understandable fear concern is to, I don't know, interrupt the public transport. I understand the frustration. Would I do it? I wouldn't do it, but I certainly understand the frustration. And then it goes, you know, all the way. And those are the people who get themselves into trouble with the law because of the violence with which they demonstrate for something that we all agree with. But then you have the the full gamut there of people who continue to demonstrate or advocate or work on. And I would say we're probably on the other side of that spectrum.
Christiana: [00:44:31] We're on the side of working the policy, working the decisions, working with the actors and occasionally going to a public protest, but in a nonviolent way. And there's a huge spectrum between those two. And everyone needs to find the place where they're comfortable in doing that. Jane Fonda, you know, got herself arrested because she wanted to go to jail, that's why. So she put herself in the position of she knew she was going to go to jail. She wanted to go to jail, right. She went to jail with Roshi Joan Halifax, and they wanted to be in jail because they wanted to make the point. That was her choice. And each one of us has to make a choice of in that spectrum. Where do we step in and understand that? Just because we step in? At what point in that spectrum? That doesn't mean we stay there, because conditions change constantly and we may be motivated to change our point of entry into that spectrum. And me, I have full respect for everyone who is demonstrating, advocating, working because we know that we need this change and we know that we need more people out in the streets doing the policy work, doing everything we need more. When I started this, there were literally a hundred people, all of whom I knew, okay, 100 people. Now we have millions of people. That's great news. Not enough.
Fi McRaith: [00:46:02] Yeah.
Christiana: [00:46:03] So everybody has to choose, you know, how they go into this and then be flexible enough and wise enough to know this may be what I choose right now, but tomorrow conditions change. I may want to change. Yeah. And be okay with that.
Fi McRaith: [00:46:17] This is something that Tom and I dove into as well. And in our mini series, momentum Versus perfection, around.
Christiana: [00:46:24] The very popular mini.
Speaker5: [00:46:25] Series, ever so slightly more.
Paul: [00:46:27] Popular than the one that I did with Fiona Macklin right?
Fi McRaith: [00:46:31] But but listeners, I think I would really encourage you. So in that if you haven't heard it or as a refresher, because it was a couple of years ago, we interviewed different folks who have worked in different movements, including the granddaughter of someone who helped lead the suffragette movement in the UK and the women's voting movement, and she spoke about a breaking point between tactics, and not because one was better than the other. But in many years, if you study what we see now, looking back as successful social movements, though, it's all a trajectory. There's much work to do in every arena still. But when you look at that, there were different actors, different voices playing different roles, and that strengthens movements rather than weakens them. And I think celebrating that is something very important. And celebrating or perhaps honoring is a better word. The deep intersectionality that climate is, I mean, 3% when there are so many things that can at times feel much more deeply personal that are also under attack across many different countries, including the US. Celebrating and finding ways for inclusivity in climate spaces around women's rights, around immigrant rights, and so many other issues is so, so important. Build a big house and it will be full, you know, rather than a tall wall.
Paul: [00:47:54] Let me give the last word to a suffragette in the UK. Outside our Parliament we have this lovely statue of Millicent Fawcett. And on it it says she's holding a banner and it says courage calls to courage everywhere. Courage calls to courage everywhere. So in a sense, you know, rather than sort of saying should be this or should be that, it's kind of yes, the suffragettes speaking to us through little gusts of wind from 100 years ago, moving the shutters in the room. A final question now we have from Nick.
Listener Nick Stoop: [00:48:24] Hello, Tom, Christiana and Paul. My name is Nick Stoop and I'm the founder of Pangaea Impact Investments. We're on a mission to make workplace pension investments sustainable by default. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can empower business to embrace sustainable pensions and further catalyse positive tipping points
Paul: [00:48:47] Well. What a great question. I think this is such an interesting area, and I want to just begin with a with a quote from wonderful politician, now deceased Madeleine Albright, a former US Secretary of State. And it was incredibly privileged. In 2003, in New York, she came to a launch event for CDP. And she said, our business is to help investors vote with their money. And that was an academic and a politician just coming up with the most sensational framing. And if you think about the way the world works, we think that there are kind of like governments or whatever, but actually that, you know, maybe the sovereigns in the system, some of the most powerful Waffle forces in the system? Are we ourselves how we spend our money? You know, if we go buy a whole bunch of petrol cars for the rest of time, there will only be petrol cars. If we buy electric cars for the rest of the time there will only be electric cars. But also how we invest our money. And that's the one that's much harder to see, much harder to understand. So I love this question. Thinking about, you know, one of the most important sort of political acts you have and that wonderful charity which is now ceased operating. But but there are many others in the field, and I'll mention one in a moment. Make My Money Matter was really helping people to think about the the way they invest their money and the impacts that that can have. And it's one of the largest ways, one of the most important ways you express yourself.
Paul: [00:50:08] I mean, you don't realise that nearly anybody who's got any kind of pension in any kind of organisation at all is going to be invested in very large numbers of companies, for example. And those companies are going to do maybe good things, maybe bad things, and they're going to be doing it, you know, for you. And so there's a very intimate relationship between you and your investments. So I think this is a wonderful bit of collective and holistic thinking. Just going to throw in a reference to an NGO I've been involved with for many years, um, called Share Action. And they have and there'll be a link in the show notes. Share actually is a UK charity, but they have actually really quite good information on how you can approach your own workplace and starting to get the workplace to think about, you know, who is managing the money and how it's being managed. But I think, you know, there are bureaucratic challenges and, you know, we can have long discussions about kind of fiduciary duty. But in the end, you have to remember it's your money. And there's a famous ruling from 1830. Judge Putnam said the fiduciary, the people who invest your money shall invest it in your best interests. And I want you to recognize that is a legal principle and not a financial principle. So you decide what your best interests are, and you have to decide how your money is invested. So good on you, Nick, for helping the world to wake up to their principal political activity, which is their pensions and investments. What are you doing?
Christiana: [00:51:24] I totally agree with that, Paul. And I think it's really important to make a difference between short term investments and pension investments. Yeah, pension investments are there to support you when you become of retirement age. So by definition, those are long term investments and long term. We know that it is actually the low carbon assets that are going to keep their asset values. So there is a total coincidence between long term investment and the types of assets that are more sustainable and more responsible. So yeah, I also congratulate Nick for for this work. And it is just builds on such a clear logic. The long term business of pension.
Fi McRaith: [00:52:24] Yeah, I think it's a brilliant point. Around pensions or what I think is probably the same as like a 401 K process in the United States. I think this is another one where, as someone who is earlier in my career, it can feel hard to know how to even exercise your voice on how you want your pension or 401 invested. And perhaps tactical, perhaps obvious to many know myself. Um, oftentimes your work nature can help advise you on a service or a partner that they have who manages your pension. And that could be a very tangible step that listeners could take. If you wanted to find out where your pension is invested, you could make your voice heard by reaching out to your HR department and asking them that, and then talking to the the overseer of your pension investment. And the more people who do that, the more impact it will have. It may not be visible until it's manifest, but trust and keep asking and insisting that you want your pension invested sustainably and help articulate what that is. I once did this when I got started and I said, I do not want any fossil fuel companies invest, and they said that means that it won't be in the top 500 companies in the investment bundle.
Fi McRaith: [00:53:46] And I said, I don't care, I don't want that. But you trust yourself, you know. And as Christiana says, long term trust that it will pay dividends because it is what will make the world more sustainable and more livable. I also want to give a shout out to an organization that I believe you've talked about before on the pod. It's called Third Act, founded by Bill McKibben, though a whole team behind it. And they say one of their campaigns is banking on our future. And they say, if you have $62,500 in the mainstream banking system, your money is producing more carbon than the average American does in six months. So that amount of money has a huge impact on carbon emissions. So, as Paul said, trust that your money does matter and you can choose to bank. And there are lots of NGOs that have done research on more sustainable banks and accountability with banking systems. So just a great question.
Paul: [00:54:44] It's a little bit complicated. I mean, of course, you know, you might have next door to you this absolutely lovely kind of vegan restaurant that seems to be doing great stuff. And they, you know, they want to grow. And if you go and spend, you know, the next 30 years of your life putting all your money into this vegan restaurant and then it goes bust, you have nothing for your retirement. Okay. So diversity is a big principle in investing for the future. We're certainly not giving investment advice on the Outrage and Optimism podcast. But the point is, you know, there are so many amazing companies and industries growing up that are linked to the future of solar electric vehicles, smart grids, insulation, cooling, organic, healthy food. And so, I mean, I think that the real opportunity is actually for creativity in the financial services industry. When I was very young, I can tell you something so stupid you won't believe me. In 1989, I asked for the text of adverts for pensions on TV in the UK because I couldn't believe they weren't using social or environmental criteria to sell them. Now, whatever it is, 40 years later, it's such an opportunity, I think, because the world wants to invest in a positive future. And I think when we can get through the bureaucratic hurdles and get big firms inventing, you know, really cool products, then then we could have a whole different kind of economy. But it actually starts from this absolutely wonderful question. So thank you very much indeed for it, Nick. Okay. This has finished us. Just a last thing, but any reflections on this extraordinary questions and the and what we've gone through today.
Christiana: [00:56:18] First of all, huge gratitude to Fi for you
Speaker5: [00:56:22] Huge.
Paul: [00:56:23] Gratitude.
Christiana: [00:56:23] To you. Thank you so much for that fee. It's always delightful to have your insight into these conversations.
Fi McRaith: [00:56:32] Thank you for having me, and my encouragement to listeners would be to keep sending questions. Yes, please. These are great food for thought. I mean, you heard Paul and Christiana have been talking about these questions off recording as well. I mean, they're really important big questions, tactical questions. So that's what I would encourage you all to do.
Paul: [00:56:55] Yeah. Let our movement continue to set its agenda. And thank you for helping us all think. We'll see you next week. Bye for now.
Christiana: [00:57:01] Bye.
Christiana: [00:57:02] And listeners here are very exciting announcement. As you know, we have been covering the process in the lead up to the advisory opinion coming out from the International Court of Justice. Over the past few weeks, we have been giving you the background so that you have the context of the importance of this advisory opinion. We now know that the advisory opinion will be read on Wednesday, July 23rd at 3 p.m. Central European Time. Therefore, we will likely be dropping our episode maybe one day late. So instead of Thursday, we may be dropping our episode on this on Friday. In order to make sure that we have time to pull the episode together for you. So this is a little warning that our episode next week maybe one day late, but worth waiting for. It is going to be very exciting.
Paul: [00:33:11] Well, there's the court of Global Public opinion, and I've seen in my career, you know, companies and you know a lot about this kind of they can be their own peer group. You know in CDP we used to talk about authorities, investor authority and purchasing authority. But in the CDP's city program, the authority was the other cities all looking at each other and growing together. Just one thing about contraction and convergence. Christiana, and it's great to hear it about it again, because, you know, it did sort of kind of fall off the radar a little bit. It's fundamentally the idea of rationing that emissions are rationed to humans. And just as in wartime, as I said at the start of this discussion, you know, when you have to distribute limited resources inside a society in wartime, you do it with rationing. People have ration cards, and it's typically the case that rich people buy rations of poor people and that eat a bit more butter. If contraction convergence was adopted in the world, it's very likely that the rich countries would seek to mitigate the reductions they had to make by buying emissions credits from the poor countries, and this would lead to the most enormous wealth transfers from the rich countries to the poor countries, potentially. But anyway, enough on that. Just the last thought on this. I mean, we're always talking about growth, which I think equates to something like an increase in sales in corporate language. But I want us to always remember that the great challenge we have is nations don't run balance sheets. And so we're just measuring sales. And we're never looking at our assets, particularly our environmental assets and how we're depleting them. And, you know, the crisis of contemporary economic thinking is it just looks at sales and it doesn't look at assets and the strength of the the national and global balance sheet. Okay.
Christiana: [00:34:46] So that question actually is related to another question that we got from an anonymous listener who refers with excitement to our Brazil Cop podcast and then says, I still think you need much more conversation on the trade offs between economic development and addressing the climate emergency. Brazil is still a developing country, with millions of poor people who care more about food and transport than saving the Amazon. So can we explore better economic solutions for them rather than just slogans? So that touches on your point fee. You know, what are we really focusing on here?
Fi McRaith: [00:35:27] Yeah. So it's a really good question. And I I'll just start by again, I think this is one of the areas where we as a community of people who are I mean, every job can be a climate, job, etc., etc., and those who work in climate every day, I think, have much to learn about how to talk about co-benefits and intersectionality.
Christiana: [00:35:52] The concept, I would say about the benefits, the benefits. And the cool part is the reduction of emissions, the right. It's the benefits that have to lead the discussion. Yes and yes. The cool part though, the piece that you get the extra is the reduction of emission.
Fi McRaith: [00:36:10] Brilliantly said. But instead we lead with the extra which is cutting emissions instead of the true benefit to people to planet. And you know, in a world that I work towards building every day, there is not a trade off between protecting for to the good question, the Amazon rainforest and food or transport, those are things have found harmony have found in our being. We have embraced the relationality or the relationship between things that are possible. I know that there is a lot of impressive and an important work being done on bio economies, especially in the Amazon, around how can the world better embrace new systems that are are simultaneously about protecting and embracing forests, while also bringing more prosperity and money and purchasing power, I suppose, or legitimacy to communities so that they can grow. I think the future doesn't have to have to be worse, but we don't yet have strong mechanisms for surfacing stories and examples where the case study is very strong so that it can be adopted.
Paul: [00:37:32] I mean, I think we do have them, and I think we've done a terrible job of putting them together. But we discussed this earlier for you, and you sort of said that the material should be for something, you know, and we do need to have a vision, maybe the SDGs with that vision, the Sustainable Development Goals, maybe that vision is, is, you know, kind of for prosperity for all. The private sector system can be extremely good at rapidly deploying kind of technology and speeding up processes, but is often correlated with investments and sort of super returns for a relatively small number of shareholders. And I think we do need to think about a more distributive model of, of a development whereby, you know, better food, better access to transport exists for many people. I'm repeating a point I made earlier, but I think it's it's about a vision, because you can't have a dream come true if you don't have a dream in the first place. And, you know, in a sense, even back to the days of sort of kind of Reagan and Thatcher and the free marketeers, it was almost kind of like, let's just release the the private sector and see what it does, and amazing things have happened. But I think within the context of us hitting environmental system conditions and in very real ways, hitting social system conditions, we now need to see a sort of a balance with government and society sort of creating growth that really works for everybody. And the good news is we've got the technology, and the good news is we've got to do it and we can do it, but it's going to require a different way of thinking about development than just kind of like more airports. My next question is from Adrián or Christina. How would you pronounce his name?
Christiana: [00:38:55] Well, did you say Adrián or did you say.
Paul: [00:38:58] I believed I said Adrián
Christiana: [00:38:58] Yes. Adrian. Okay. Good job.
Paul: [00:39:00] Listeners will never know that there was anything before that because it was cut out.
Listener Adrián: [00:39:04] Paul, I have a question for the three of you. The question is about climate activism. The Guardian has been recently covering what they've called a global crackdown on climate activists. My question to you is, why do you think we are failing not only to protect, but also to elevate and celebrate the voices of climate activists around the world? Thank you.
Paul: [00:39:28] So this is just a sort of fascinating and kind of deeply challenging question I think I find quite personally quite challenging. If I sort of remove myself from this discussion, I think one of the reasons why people are, you know, not so protective of climate activists or people who are, you know, going to prison even for for civil disobedience is because we, we sort of other them that they're doing that thing and we're doing something else. Their extreme behavior does inconvenience people in massive ways has even been kind of loss of life alleged by blocking roads and suchlike. But I think, you know, there is something about direct action which is of incredible importance in the history of social movements. And so I find myself at one level admiring, I have to say, the bravery that they have to draw the attention to this cause. Then another part of me worries that, you know, putting off people. It was famously the demonstrators got on top of a train very early in the morning, and lots of people, you know, very early workers, you know, on low salaries, very often were angry that their their lives are being interrupted. And does that, you know, cause us to sort of lose momentum on climate change. And I suppose the ultimately the challenging question is why do we, as you know, we all work full time in climate change. Why are we not trying to do more to protect or get climate activists out of prison? You know, I have an inspection company, which I Insulate Britain. There are people who've gone to prison under the theme of Insulate Britain. We have common cause with people, and yet it seems like very different parts of the movement. Tumbleweed.
Fi McRaith: [00:40:59] Brilliance.
Paul: [00:41:02] Can we have that? Put in a little bit louder, Ben?
Fi McRaith: [00:41:05] Yes. Brilliance, brilliance, brilliance.
Fi McRaith: [00:41:09] All of these are brilliant questions. But this is one that I. I don't feel I have fully formulated thoughts, but in the spirit of conversation, both with Paul and Christiana and with the listeners. I think, um, I'll speak for the United States, of which I am a citizen and more familiar with the. It's a very polarized place, and celebrating and amplifying the activism that tends to result in legal action can be hard or scary or risky. And this is not at all to defend any actions whatsoever. I think there's always been place for a myriad of of actions, and activism looks different for different people. And I think when we are all most powerful or most aligned is when we celebrate. Perhaps I can generously use the the word into being when we celebrate that one person doing one thing and me doing a different thing with the spirit of the same cause is more powerful. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be uncomfortable doing just one way of action.
Christiana: [00:42:25] This question brings me back to a very impressive number that I was made aware of a while ago. So Erica Chenoweth, American political scientist and professor, has done a lot of research and come up with a semi magical number, which is it only takes 3.5% of a population to demonstrate, hopefully in a nonviolent way, to bring about political or social change. That's a very small percentage, and yet we're not there yet. On climate, we do not have 3% of every country's population. We do not have 3% of the global population demonstrating. So because we know that we need both political and economic social change. One could think we're actually going to need 3.5% of people demonstrating in some way. Not everyone agrees about which way they want to demonstrate. And you have a whole gamut of those who feel that the only possible way to get attention to their very understandable fear concern is to, I don't know, interrupt the public transport. I understand the frustration. Would I do it? I wouldn't do it, but I certainly understand the frustration. And then it goes, you know, all the way. And those are the people who get themselves into trouble with the law because of the violence with which they demonstrate for something that we all agree with. But then you have the the full gamut there of people who continue to demonstrate or advocate or work on. And I would say we're probably on the other side of that spectrum.
Christiana: [00:44:31] We're on the side of working the policy, working the decisions, working with the actors and occasionally going to a public protest, but in a nonviolent way. And there's a huge spectrum between those two. And everyone needs to find the place where they're comfortable in doing that. Jane Fonda, you know, got herself arrested because she wanted to go to jail, that's why. So she put herself in the position of she knew she was going to go to jail. She wanted to go to jail, right. She went to jail with Roshi Joan Halifax, and they wanted to be in jail because they wanted to make the point. That was her choice. And each one of us has to make a choice of in that spectrum. Where do we step in and understand that? Just because we step in? At what point in that spectrum? That doesn't mean we stay there, because conditions change constantly and we may be motivated to change our point of entry into that spectrum. And me, I have full respect for everyone who is demonstrating, advocating, working because we know that we need this change and we know that we need more people out in the streets doing the policy work, doing everything we need more. When I started this, there were literally a hundred people, all of whom I knew, okay, 100 people. Now we have millions of people. That's great news. Not enough.
Fi McRaith: [00:46:02] Yeah.
Christiana: [00:46:03] So everybody has to choose, you know, how they go into this and then be flexible enough and wise enough to know this may be what I choose right now, but tomorrow conditions change. I may want to change. Yeah. And be okay with that.
Fi McRaith: [00:46:17] This is something that Tom and I dove into as well. And in our mini series, momentum Versus perfection, around.
Christiana: [00:46:24] The very popular mini.
Speaker5: [00:46:25] Series, ever so slightly more.
Paul: [00:46:27] Popular than the one that I did with Fiona Macklin right?
Fi McRaith: [00:46:31] But but listeners, I think I would really encourage you. So in that if you haven't heard it or as a refresher, because it was a couple of years ago, we interviewed different folks who have worked in different movements, including the granddaughter of someone who helped lead the suffragette movement in the UK and the women's voting movement, and she spoke about a breaking point between tactics, and not because one was better than the other. But in many years, if you study what we see now, looking back as successful social movements, though, it's all a trajectory. There's much work to do in every arena still. But when you look at that, there were different actors, different voices playing different roles, and that strengthens movements rather than weakens them. And I think celebrating that is something very important. And celebrating or perhaps honoring is a better word. The deep intersectionality that climate is, I mean, 3% when there are so many things that can at times feel much more deeply personal that are also under attack across many different countries, including the US. Celebrating and finding ways for inclusivity in climate spaces around women's rights, around immigrant rights, and so many other issues is so, so important. Build a big house and it will be full, you know, rather than a tall wall.
Paul: [00:47:54] Let me give the last word to a suffragette in the UK. Outside our Parliament we have this lovely statue of Millicent Fawcett. And on it it says she's holding a banner and it says courage calls to courage everywhere. Courage calls to courage everywhere. So in a sense, you know, rather than sort of saying should be this or should be that, it's kind of yes, the suffragettes speaking to us through little gusts of wind from 100 years ago, moving the shutters in the room. A final question now we have from Nick.
Listener Nick Stoop: [00:48:24] Hello, Tom, Christiana and Paul. My name is Nick Stoop and I'm the founder of Pangaea Impact Investments. We're on a mission to make workplace pension investments sustainable by default. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can empower business to embrace sustainable pensions and further catalyse positive tipping points
Paul: [00:48:47] Well. What a great question. I think this is such an interesting area, and I want to just begin with a with a quote from wonderful politician, now deceased Madeleine Albright, a former US Secretary of State. And it was incredibly privileged. In 2003, in New York, she came to a launch event for CDP. And she said, our business is to help investors vote with their money. And that was an academic and a politician just coming up with the most sensational framing. And if you think about the way the world works, we think that there are kind of like governments or whatever, but actually that, you know, maybe the sovereigns in the system, some of the most powerful Waffle forces in the system? Are we ourselves how we spend our money? You know, if we go buy a whole bunch of petrol cars for the rest of time, there will only be petrol cars. If we buy electric cars for the rest of the time there will only be electric cars. But also how we invest our money. And that's the one that's much harder to see, much harder to understand. So I love this question. Thinking about, you know, one of the most important sort of political acts you have and that wonderful charity which is now ceased operating. But but there are many others in the field, and I'll mention one in a moment. Make My Money Matter was really helping people to think about the the way they invest their money and the impacts that that can have. And it's one of the largest ways, one of the most important ways you express yourself.
Paul: [00:50:08] I mean, you don't realise that nearly anybody who's got any kind of pension in any kind of organisation at all is going to be invested in very large numbers of companies, for example. And those companies are going to do maybe good things, maybe bad things, and they're going to be doing it, you know, for you. And so there's a very intimate relationship between you and your investments. So I think this is a wonderful bit of collective and holistic thinking. Just going to throw in a reference to an NGO I've been involved with for many years, um, called Share Action. And they have and there'll be a link in the show notes. Share actually is a UK charity, but they have actually really quite good information on how you can approach your own workplace and starting to get the workplace to think about, you know, who is managing the money and how it's being managed. But I think, you know, there are bureaucratic challenges and, you know, we can have long discussions about kind of fiduciary duty. But in the end, you have to remember it's your money. And there's a famous ruling from 1830. Judge Putnam said the fiduciary, the people who invest your money shall invest it in your best interests. And I want you to recognize that is a legal principle and not a financial principle. So you decide what your best interests are, and you have to decide how your money is invested. So good on you, Nick, for helping the world to wake up to their principal political activity, which is their pensions and investments. What are you doing?
Christiana: [00:51:24] I totally agree with that, Paul. And I think it's really important to make a difference between short term investments and pension investments. Yeah, pension investments are there to support you when you become of retirement age. So by definition, those are long term investments and long term. We know that it is actually the low carbon assets that are going to keep their asset values. So there is a total coincidence between long term investment and the types of assets that are more sustainable and more responsible. So yeah, I also congratulate Nick for for this work. And it is just builds on such a clear logic. The long term business of pension.
Fi McRaith: [00:52:24] Yeah, I think it's a brilliant point. Around pensions or what I think is probably the same as like a 401 K process in the United States. I think this is another one where, as someone who is earlier in my career, it can feel hard to know how to even exercise your voice on how you want your pension or 401 invested. And perhaps tactical, perhaps obvious to many know myself. Um, oftentimes your work nature can help advise you on a service or a partner that they have who manages your pension. And that could be a very tangible step that listeners could take. If you wanted to find out where your pension is invested, you could make your voice heard by reaching out to your HR department and asking them that, and then talking to the the overseer of your pension investment. And the more people who do that, the more impact it will have. It may not be visible until it's manifest, but trust and keep asking and insisting that you want your pension invested sustainably and help articulate what that is. I once did this when I got started and I said, I do not want any fossil fuel companies invest, and they said that means that it won't be in the top 500 companies in the investment bundle.
Fi McRaith: [00:53:46] And I said, I don't care, I don't want that. But you trust yourself, you know. And as Christiana says, long term trust that it will pay dividends because it is what will make the world more sustainable and more livable. I also want to give a shout out to an organization that I believe you've talked about before on the pod. It's called Third Act, founded by Bill McKibben, though a whole team behind it. And they say one of their campaigns is banking on our future. And they say, if you have $62,500 in the mainstream banking system, your money is producing more carbon than the average American does in six months. So that amount of money has a huge impact on carbon emissions. So, as Paul said, trust that your money does matter and you can choose to bank. And there are lots of NGOs that have done research on more sustainable banks and accountability with banking systems. So just a great question.
Paul: [00:54:44] It's a little bit complicated. I mean, of course, you know, you might have next door to you this absolutely lovely kind of vegan restaurant that seems to be doing great stuff. And they, you know, they want to grow. And if you go and spend, you know, the next 30 years of your life putting all your money into this vegan restaurant and then it goes bust, you have nothing for your retirement. Okay. So diversity is a big principle in investing for the future. We're certainly not giving investment advice on the Outrage and Optimism podcast. But the point is, you know, there are so many amazing companies and industries growing up that are linked to the future of solar electric vehicles, smart grids, insulation, cooling, organic, healthy food. And so, I mean, I think that the real opportunity is actually for creativity in the financial services industry. When I was very young, I can tell you something so stupid you won't believe me. In 1989, I asked for the text of adverts for pensions on TV in the UK because I couldn't believe they weren't using social or environmental criteria to sell them. Now, whatever it is, 40 years later, it's such an opportunity, I think, because the world wants to invest in a positive future. And I think when we can get through the bureaucratic hurdles and get big firms inventing, you know, really cool products, then then we could have a whole different kind of economy. But it actually starts from this absolutely wonderful question. So thank you very much indeed for it, Nick. Okay. This has finished us. Just a last thing, but any reflections on this extraordinary questions and the and what we've gone through today.
Christiana: [00:56:18] First of all, huge gratitude to Fi for you
Speaker5: [00:56:22] Huge.
Paul: [00:56:23] Gratitude.
Christiana: [00:56:23] To you. Thank you so much for that fee. It's always delightful to have your insight into these conversations.
Fi McRaith: [00:56:32] Thank you for having me, and my encouragement to listeners would be to keep sending questions. Yes, please. These are great food for thought. I mean, you heard Paul and Christiana have been talking about these questions off recording as well. I mean, they're really important big questions, tactical questions. So that's what I would encourage you all to do.
Paul: [00:56:55] Yeah. Let our movement continue to set its agenda. And thank you for helping us all think. We'll see you next week. Bye for now.
Christiana: [00:57:01] Bye.
Christiana: [00:57:02] And listeners here are very exciting announcement. As you know, we have been covering the process in the lead up to the advisory opinion coming out from the International Court of Justice. Over the past few weeks, we have been giving you the background so that you have the context of the importance of this advisory opinion. We now know that the advisory opinion will be read on Wednesday, July 23rd at 3 p.m. Central European Time. Therefore, we will likely be dropping our episode maybe one day late. So instead of Thursday, we may be dropping our episode on this on Friday. In order to make sure that we have time to pull the episode together for you. So this is a little warning that our episode next week maybe one day late, but worth waiting for. It is going to be very exciting.
