297: When Business Is Political: Climate commitments in an age of backlash

Tom: [00:26:27] You talked last week about octopus, right? Great new renewable energy providing company in the UK and there are many other examples around the world. I personally would be very happy if octopus emissions went through the roof in the next few years, because what it shows is they're installing more solar, they're deploying more wind, they're upgrading grids. Their scope one, two and three emissions are likely to rise significantly as a result of that, but the net effect of society would be different. So my final point on that would be to say, if you try and change a system that has multiple complicated interactions and you say, what we're going to do is we're just going to add up all the constituent parts, which will be all the companies and the countries, and then somehow those individual bits all taking responsibility for their own piece, will then add up to solving the problem. You've not understood the system. The system is about the interactions. It's about the innovations. It's about the transformations. And I'm not saying we should give any company a free pass. Of course we shouldn't. But I really worry that we have looked at this from a kind of almost 19th century version of physics of like, you know, mechanics rather than quantum theory.

Paul: [00:27:33] Well, Lord, preserve us from the sort of ferocious ness of your intellect. You know, it's tough. The 7810 companies with science based targets are locked in a system which, you're right, doesn't recognize the emissions reductions that may be created as a result of other activities. And that's a kind of a bit of a flaw or a complexity or a big old wrinkle. But just to really help with this problem, I want to make it even complexity, which is not a word which is essentially what you said about meta, you know, or indeed X probably worse than matter. Can we disaggregate climate change from these broader issues in our society, you know, such as freedom of information or democratic debate? And, you know, often when I find myself threatened with a problem like this, I have this image of writing an opera. Okay. And you have two people singing. One of them is singing. We have to think holistically of system wide issues like the, you know, the free speech and meta. And then somebody else is thinking, no, we have to concentrate on greenhouse gas emissions, otherwise we'll go mad. And as these two beautiful songs are sung, you know, the audience have tears running down their face in the front row because there's a sort of paradoxical duality that we have to define and resolve if we're going to get through to the other side of this. And that ain't incredibly easy. But we know, and that's good.

Tom: [00:28:50] And you're right. And I hope I didn't sound like I was criticizing anybody, because anybody involved in doing this has my not only admiration but deep respect, because this is hard, right? It's really difficult to get our arms around. And you know what I just said, which I casually threw off in the course of a podcast conversation with you, explodes the whole thing. But I do think that to come back to the point we're making, given the political reality of the moment we're in, we have less political chips to play in terms of what we push through, and I think that we need to create our systems and our structures to incentivize where innovation and opportunity reside rather than where chiding and you've done something wrong reside. This has to be about building the beacon of possibility, value creation, opportunity and interconnection rather than a race to the bottom in terms of, you know, blaming and responsibility, because that won't solve the problem.

Paul: [00:29:42] And this is the perfect moment for my inappropriate and flippant comment. You know, Tom, if it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun, inappropriate, flippant comment.

Tom: [00:29:50] So Ben, our producer, was put in the show notes here that he can hear Christianas eyes rolling from the South Pacific. So I think it might be time to move on.

Paul: [00:29:56] Yikes. As long as her eyebrows aren't raised, I think we're okay.

Tom: [00:29:59] We're gonna turn to Helen Clarkson now. Helen is a good friend of ours and CEO of The Climate Group, an international non-profit driving climate action and building powerful networks of businesses and government leaders. The climate Group has become a central organizer of Climate Week NYC. I actually remember the very first Climate Week NYC, and a lovely picture that's still on the wall of the CDP offices of you with Ban Ki moon and Steve Howard and Michael Bloomberg.

Paul: [00:30:22] And it was launched because there was a combination of Actually, the CPU used to have a global launch of all the corporations responding on climate change in the same week as the UN General Assembly. And that happened two years running. And Steve Howard from the climate Group had the genius to say, wait a minute, we could form Climate Week showing this combination of national governments and corporations coming together. So salute to Steve Howard and his vision, which Helen now is leading.

Tom: [00:30:43] And I think we should say at the front end, this is one thing we'll get into with Helen. There have been all kinds of questions about what is Climate Week going to look like, is it's still going to go ahead. I've even heard rumors of like, it's moving to Canada and it won't happen in the US. And will everybody think.

Paul: [00:30:56] A large number of Canadians have said it's moving to Canada?

Tom: [00:30:59] Right? Okay. So I think many of these rumors are untrue, but we will ask Helen to dispel or confirm them for us so that alongside other points is going to be what we talked about.

Paul: [00:31:07] And let's also hear from Christiana take on Climate Week and how that's showing up and how it might work.

Tom: [00:31:11] Let's do that first, and then we'll take a short break and then we'll go into the interview with Helen. Here's Christiana.

Christiana: [00:31:18] On previous episodes, we've already discussed how Trump's exit from the Paris Agreement could well be a huge opportunity for other countries, such as China, to take advantage of the economic openings of clean technologies. Now, in this episode, we're also discussing that it could be a positive provocation to those private sector actors in the USA and elsewhere who understand that decarbonization is underway, but not only underway, it's actually irreversible, and that they might as well get in front of it. But in addition to that thought, I also wanted to suggest that we could think about the relationship between Climate Week and the non-formal part of the cops, not the negotiating part, which continues to be the realm of the multilateral process among national governments. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the non negotiating part, because the fact is that some important issues of the international decarbonisation process still remain to be multilaterally negotiated and agreed upon, and therefore still within what we could call the realm of climate diplomacy. And that formal process can clearly use a refreshing. But the fact is that the potential for real impact is quickly shifting away from climate diplomacy to what I would like to call climate economics, because many of the opportunities to address climate change are becoming increasingly competitive, desirable and scalable. So Climate Week, New York, Climate Week, London and the other cities that are also hosting, they serve as an important staging for that fact. For the fact that climate economics is actually beginning to take over climate politics and climate diplomacy.

Christiana: [00:33:23] Those climate weeks represent the real world, as we call it, from a unique perspective. The real world, which is actually transitioning much faster than the international political process. Therefore, while the Cop is undoubtedly a unique mobilization opportunity, the provocative question here is whether that mobilization should continue to be as closely linked to the Cop as it is now, or whether a certain degree of independence. A semi-detached design, for example, would allow the civil society participation to be less of a sideshow of the cop and move rather to be the center of real action. One rather interesting consideration of that paradigm shift is that the civil society space that operates around the cops is not actually governed by the cop. It's not governed by the parties. It's not even governed by Cop presidencies. It has actually grown over the years from voluntary participation and voluntary presence of all of these stakeholder actors. And it is not mandated by any cop decision. Hence, a change in the government's or the management or the design of this space does not have to be consulted with or approved by parties, or in fact, even by the Cop president. Design, management and funding of the convening space would certainly have to be carefully planned. But it's totally doable because there is much experience out there in the industry that organizes what we could call sectoral affairs, many of which are even larger than the 80,000 people that we have had at the largest cop. So completely doable.

Tom: [00:35:27] Okay. Welcome back. So that was a very useful intervention from Christiana, from all the way down in the South Pacific. And on the basis of that, I think we've got a lot to get into with Helen Clarkson, CEO of the climate Group. So let's go to our conversation. Helen Clarkson, welcome back to Outrage and Optimism. It's wonderful to see you. We'd like to kick off. Paul and I have set it up to our best of our ability, a few different elements around how this chilling effect that is unfolding in the US, that we are all following in the news and we all see what's happening, but what's the next level down of detail around how that's landing? There's really no one closer than you are to companies, to other kinds of non-state actors to get a real sense of how they're responding to this effect. Are they doubling down? Are they going quiet and moving forward cautiously? Are they pulling away and disappearing? What are you hearing and what can you help us understand?

Paul: [00:36:17] Are we still in? As they used to say?

Helen Clarkson: [00:36:19] Yeah. I think it's a really mixed picture, as you might expect. I think that sense, as you said. Are we all still in? Last time around, there was this real kind of, you know, this resistance movement.

Tom: [00:36:30] And it felt kind of fun, actually, didn't it? The resistance last time.

Helen Clarkson: [00:36:33] It doesn't feel like it was standing up. I know, I know and kind of yeah. Weird that we now see those as halcyon days. But that's, that's a sort of longer discussion. Now, I think it's a real mixed, mixed picture. There are some companies that are shuffling away from the scene, so I think we have to be honest about that, where maybe commitments didn't go very deep. I think there's a layering of the whole economic picture, which also sort of builds into that. So you're getting that question that we had years ago about, like, why should I spend my budget on this? But so many companies, I start with companies and come back to the states and regions, which we also work on. So many companies are much, much further along in the transition as we know they understand what the next 20, 30, 50 years has got to look like. They understand why they've got to make that change. They're also being driven by a lot of EU legislation that's come in in the intervening years. And there's also a sense that things aren't slowing down in Asia. So when you see the global companies, a lot of them are I wouldn't say doubling down but are keeping going, maybe talking about it a bit less. And so I think we're seeing a bit of change of language or, you know, sort of maybe less. I don't know how many reports this year are going to have there. You know, their old ESG section. But as someone who is working on this, we've always pushed companies to move it to the core of their business and not have it as a weird sort of like office at the end of the corridor, as it were.

Helen Clarkson: [00:37:57] In that sense, the ones that I've done that are kind of keeping going. And so just to give some sort of more concrete examples, we ran a one day session in D.C. we've been doing for the last five years. We ran that in April. So, so much closer to the centre of disruption in that way. And, you know, really good attendance, really good level of conversations. And actually the conversations I probably would have been expecting to have at this time. You know, if you'd asked me last year what would be on the topic? The topics for this year, it would have been permitting and siting. How on earth do I do X amount of electric vehicles when I need to put in the charging infrastructure and the grid capacity isn't there? So those kind of that level of conversation, which the leaders are like running into the kind of real life barriers to action and how do they overcome them, and how do they get in a room with people and talk about what they've done? Those are still going on and continuing, and there was an enthusiasm to have that conversation. And we had, I think, 3 or 400 people registered for that event and sort of turned up across the course of the day, so that that was great. And then very similarly, I've just got back from Asia. We ran again, a one day summit there and very little talk of actually about. I didn't really hear the word tariffs all day. It was much more again, about kind of those pragmatic aspects.

Tom: [00:39:11] And you know, you made the point at the beginning about we are still in and you know it's worth remembering. Someone reminded me the other day that it was over a year between his inauguration and the emergence of all of that stuff. Actually that lag, we forget that lag. It took us a while to organize ourselves. So. So hopefully the resistance is still coming. And I know many people are thinking really hard about how to organize this. I don't discount the fact that it's different, but that lag was there last time too.

Helen Clarkson: [00:39:37] Yeah. That's true.

Paul: [00:39:37] Is it resistance or counter leadership.

Tom: [00:39:39] To counter leadership? Yeah. That's true.

Helen Clarkson: [00:39:41] Yeah yeah yeah I mean I think you've talked about this as well, but like the other one of the big differences on that sort of rallying thing last time was like in the immediate aftermath of him making that announcement last time you got other countries stepping up and kind of go, oh, maybe we might drop out as well. And then no one really did. Yeah, this time I didn't really hear it. You sort of heard about it for about ten minutes, I think, from Argentina. But I just vanished. And I think a lot of that is, again, you know, China's a hot topic, but it's sort of knowing where your bread's being busted in a way, I think, and what the commitments there are.

Tom: [00:40:13] And I know Paul was coming, but just I mean, just on your point about your workshop. I mean, really, you know, we had so much you know, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, we had all of this momentum. It felt like the wind was behind us. And then you get together with those companies and it sort of feels like it's business as usual. Did it really feel like that?

Helen Clarkson: [00:40:29] Well, interesting. So I say there's some that have disappeared. There's a lot of talk about the remaining payouts from the IRA and are they coming? So that is occupying a lot of head space. Yeah. But yeah, like I remember a global company that we worked with that we do work with last year said to me, oh, you know, we're actually much more driven by and this was an American headquarters company. We're saying we're much more driven by EU regulation. If you're a global company, in a way, you've always got to go for that kind of what's the highest level sort of thing. So that's been interesting to watch, and that's why I sort of climate group, I've been saying we've got to really keep going on the EU policy because in a way that worries me equally, that if the EU policy drops away and that's the policy, which is kind of driving what's happening in Asia to a large extent in terms of supply chains, because we haven't unwound globalization. Now, I think when you throw the bit that was kind of really unpredictable. There's kind of if tariffs come, if they don't do that. But the big chart in Asia is seaborn, which is obviously you've.

Tom: [00:41:26] Got to spell that.

Helen Clarkson: [00:41:27] Out. Carbon border adjustment mechanism. Thank you. And that's coming or sort of in the process. And that is gripping companies. So export economies in Asia are thinking very hard about how we're going to import into Europe when there's this adjustment mechanism.

Tom: [00:41:41] That's it. I mean that's very encouraging. Yeah.

Helen Clarkson: [00:41:43] But I'd say some of the froth is gone. The excitement and the really big problem that we'll talk about Climate Week later is who is standing up in front of it. And that sense of how do you publicly do these things. And I do worry, I guess, over the next four years, let's say, and certainly climate Group are three of changes very much been sort of centered around publicly committing, yes, holding companies to those commitments. And then behind the scenes, we do a lot of kind of policy work. So for example, Ari 100 global commitment to renewable electricity. And as companies get towards 100%, which they can do through sort of certificates and things in different places, they get very excited about, oh, are we going to declare 100%? You know, we're at 97. That's a rounding error. And I'm like, no, no, no, where's the three? Where's the 3%? And that sort of directs us off to do our policy work to those markets where they really can't do anything. And that piece of it, which then relies on them having made a public commitment in the first place, wanting to achieve that, that can get eroded over time. And I think that that's sort of worrying. And we're sort of looking ourselves at what's the theory of change and how do you, you know, it gets called green hashing, but I think it's a bit deeper than, deeper than that in a way.

Paul: [00:42:52] Helen, you know, there's so much of this is about infrastructure. And we've just heard a little bit of infrastructure being constructed outside of your window. But yeah, shut that down. So that's good for the listeners. Good for the podcast. I can't let you off the hook though, talking about Asia, so to say, where were you at that one day event? And just before we started recording, you mentioned something about a bit of a breakthrough in China. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Helen Clarkson: [00:43:10] Yeah. So I was in Singapore. We run a one day summit in Asia. It's the second time we've done that. We did it a slightly different format at different time, called the climate Group Asia Action Summit, which is a one day thing we run in Singapore and invite businesses from across the region and governments. And we held a under two Asian ministerial. So that's kind of a high level meeting. Yeah. So again, it's quite similar to a mix of the action summits that we do. So one in DC and one in Asia are sort of like what they say on the tin in the sense that they're very action focused. There's a lot of roundtables, there's some plenary and announcements, but very much centered around bringing people together who are facing quite specific issues. And how can they learn from each other. So that was about ten days ago. And from there I went to Shenzhen in China to meet with the National Energy Agency there and others. And we've been doing a bit of work over the last two years to get the China Green Energy Certificates aligned with the RI 100 technical criteria. And that part of this trip was was the sort of the ceremonials that you're very familiar with come at the end of these processes, and lots of photos and a few few nice meals to celebrate the fact that we've got there. And so I now have show you my proud, my own unit.

Tom: [00:44:31] Of.

Helen Clarkson: [00:44:32] Which I think if I retire this, if I just hang it on the wall, that's a unit of energy retired or something like that.

Paul: [00:44:38] Well, I mean, congratulations for getting that working on on the recognition because I've been told, for example, that submarine cables between, for example, Indonesia and Singapore are entirely dependent upon the different treatments of the renewable energy certificates that could be 20 times the price of each other in different domains.

Helen Clarkson: [00:44:53] Yeah, I mean, it's really tricky. So in order for 100 to work, we have technical criteria, which and one of the biggest, biggest debates we get into what we call market boundaries, which is. So just to put the simplest case, if you're in South Korea, which is one of the hardest markets for by renewable electricity. Oh yes. You cannot buy a certificate from, say, Norway hydropower. That just doesn't count. It's got to be within the market. Now, South Korea is incredibly difficult because it's essentially an isolated market. But for China, it's been this case of like looking at their technical criteria for their certificates. They just weren't quite at the right quality. So we've been doing work to persuade them to change some of their rules. There was a sort of I don't know what they were, but there were sort of three left. And there was this big delegation came over to our office in December and negotiated the last three in December, while we sort of shoved coffee and cakes through the door at them. And so that all got done.

Paul: [00:45:45] It's like choosing a pope, but, uh, for for renewable energy, honestly, unblocking this sort of technical plumbing is so important. So salute to you and colleagues for your patience. I want to come on and ask you about NGOs, but just before that, I mean, you've been managing this massive under two coalition of regions. Can you talk a little bit about where that is at the moment?

Helen Clarkson: [00:46:02] Yeah. So that's really interesting because the last few years we've been collaborating, along with C40 and various others on something called champ. The climate world loves the shortening. As you've acknowledged the coalition for High Ambition multi-level partnerships. But basically what that champ. Anyway, so basically what that says is that national governments will factor in their sub nationals into their NDC commitments, their commitments making for Cop 30 in particular, the UK government signed up and various others. And it's a way of saying, look, it's the national government that sets the commitment, but a lot that will be delivered at subnational level, whether that's states and regions and under two cities in C40, local governments and others. And those sub nationals have been. This is a slightly weird sentence, but they've been very keen to get in the room at Cop. And I always say to them, are you sure it doesn't? I don't think it's that exciting to be in a room, but there's this thing of like, how do we, as the actual level at which things are delivered, get closer and closer to to the action? And we had the local Climate Action Summit. I think that was in Dubai, where a lot of them came together. So we've been kind of getting nearer now, funnily enough, with what's happening in the US, the US states are going to kind of step into that gap this year, and we're talking to the UN nuke team about that and what that looks like and how they might incorporate action from the States. Because actually, if you add together sort of California in New York, you've got a really good start towards the US's NDC. Now, I mean, Tom, and you would just be so much aware of the politics around it, but it is good to get.

Tom: [00:47:40] Such an interesting and enormous topic.

Helen Clarkson: [00:47:43] Yeah. And we can get back to that nearer cop as plans come back together 100%.

Tom: [00:47:47] And bless you for doing that, because that's so important. And the political ramifications and implications of a multilateral body liaising directly with subnational governments is a whole thing.

Helen Clarkson: [00:47:57] It's a whole thing. I don't quite know how we're going to do it. We're having that chat now. But the other then, can we use New York for that? It's not the question. And that's where kind of these weeks come in. These moments in the year and how you get that bounce. There'll also be a local climate summit the week before. The cop is my understanding in Rio so that we're not necessarily in the. So it's all, you know, and lots of politics around it which have to be worked through.

Tom: [00:48:20] So let's turn to that. I mean, if I were to believe every rumor I've heard, you are moving Climate Week to Ottawa, Rio, Mexico City, it's being cancelled. Trump is denying all visas. I suspect that some subset of these are not true. Maybe you can help us understand. Is Climate Week New York going ahead as planned?

Helen Clarkson: [00:48:37] It's going ahead. Yes. So it will happen in New York in the third week of September, as it usually does alongside the UN General Assembly. No, we're not going to move it. The only the only thing this morning we will talk about that. What would cause us to be if if Unga moves at some point, the UN General Assembly, we will then have to look at it how I'd put it. But until then, the reason for doing it in York has always been to hold a climate conversation alongside Unga. When you've got everyone in town and it gives people. People already have a reason to be in New York that week. There's a lot happening still around the SDGs. World leaders are there for Unga. There's a real kind of pull to New York in that week. So one of the ways that we have run Climate Week over the years is both. So climate Group has its own platforms. We run the opening ceremony, we run our events. We call it the Hub Live, but we also then host a kind of a website, an affiliate event. And last year we had over 900 events registered on that platform. And then we do things like we check that it's a climate aligned event. You know, we kind of give it that mark and we organize it thematically. So if you're a food person who only wants to go to food events, you can just sort of drill down on that.

Helen Clarkson: [00:49:47] So it's a way of us facilitating week. But it has meant, you know, it's been a bit of kind of build it and let people come. In a way, it's it's weird to even think about how you would lift that up and put it somewhere else. Does say unless unless Unga moved it's happening in York. What we saw in D.C. a couple of weeks ago is a real hunger from the corporates to have that conversation. Businesses want to come. They want to be part of that. I think what will change this year is whether we'll get to that scale again. Probably not. There'll be a lot of events that probably don't happen. I've talked to all the kind of the big ticket ones that don't actually necessarily all affiliate with it, but, you know, things like girls House, the Nest summit, there's a Climate World summit. There's something called solutions House. Those things are all going ahead as planned. Everyone's got their plans in place and are starting to move on. They're on their plans for those. So I think structurally it'll be pretty similar. I think the questions are going to be, yeah, what? How much is public, you know. Yeah. Probably aren't as many big announcements probably a lot of closed door stuff, which is good and bad.

Helen Clarkson: [00:50:49] I think you get into really interesting conversations when you do some of that kind of smaller, closed door stuff. And that's where a lot of the kind of value add comes. But as I said before, I still think we need to be making quite a lot of this public and people want to see. But, you know, there's a survey this morning that I saw like 80% of companies really want more action. We know that sort of that 80 somewhere above 80% of people want to see more climate action. There's still a lot happening. And so we want to create the platform for that. So I wouldn't say completely business as usual, but yeah, it's going ahead. And we just really would like to see as many people there as possible, because I think one thing that's really important is that we get civil society there, as usual, kind of holding people to account. And then the path that we were on and we were trying to set the direction for that to have a lot more conversations with the Global South in particular, and how do we give them access? I think that could be challenging, and that's what we're going to have to really figure out how to, to make sure that that continues in the way that it was before.

Tom: [00:51:45] Thank you for dispelling that. So everyone can rest assured. Climate, with New York going ahead as planned in New York is going to be big as ever. Really appreciate that level of clarity. I know we're running out of time. Paul, I think you've got a follow up question.

Paul: [00:51:57] Just one last question. And you know, once again, congratulations on being sort of such a pioneer. You, in that community of non-state actors are just critical in sort of the collaborative advancement of everything that we need to do in the world. Just a question. You know, what's it like at the moment? Is it not for profit with activities in the US? What are you hearing from peers in this space? It would just be great to get your reflection on that.

Helen Clarkson: [00:52:18] Yeah, I think it's very challenging in the sense that. So someone who I spoke to recently was actually from a bank they weren't even at a nonprofit, was like, oh, you have to factor in ten minutes to every meeting, don't you, to give your peers therapy. And this is where actually it comes back to Climate Week, because I think people have a lot of personal feelings about going to New York. And I want to acknowledge that. And we get a lot of questions like, is it safe? And there's good sort of documentation of what's going on. And I totally respect people will have strong personal feelings and it might make them not want to actually go. And that is important to acknowledge that people have strong feelings about that, and people are finding it challenging to work there at the moment. I'd say that the other thing that's come up a lot recently is a lot of worries around what's going to happen to the tax code. You know, for non-profits working under the 503 regime, whereas they're going to be sort of restrictions on moving money around. And that is a sort of background level of stress that, no, I mean, obviously no one needs it, but we've also got other stuff we're going to be doing. So the amount of sort of just energy people are spending on the mechanics of being an organization have gone up, and that's not a great use of everyone's time, to be honest.

Tom: [00:53:28] Helen, so lovely to see you. Thank you for carrying on and doing everything that you're doing. We will definitely be at New York Climate Week, as we always are. So I'm sure it will be as consequential event as it always is and look forward to seeing you. I mean, there's now so many regional climate weeks as London Climate Action Week coming up and many others, so I'm sure we'll be seeing you around. But thanks very much for joining us and look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you and thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you next week.

Paul: [00:53:49] Thank you, Helen, for your leadership. See you all next week. Bye bye.

Tom: [00:53:52] Bye, everyone.