350: Who Wields Power Now?: Money, Movements and the Future of Climate
This week we continue to explore climate leadership in a fragmented geopolitical moment. We ask what happens when multilateralism is threatened - and who or what will fill the gap.
About this episode
Who shapes climate action when old systems begin to strain? And where does power really sit - with governments, financial institutions, communities, or individuals?
Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson explore climate leadership in a more fragmented geopolitical moment. Picking up the threads from last week’s episode, they ask what happens when multilateralism is threatened - and whether smaller coalitions, subnational actors and civic movements are already stepping in to fill the gap.
Because with great challenges, come new opportunities. What might we gain from faster, more focused alliances? Might Indigenous wisdom provide lessons for building fairer, greener economic models? And how can we use the resources we have to support Brazil’s vision for a global mutirão?
Learn More:
💡 Watch Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos
🍩 Dive into the concept of Doughnut Economics
🏙️ Explore what C40 Cities members are doing across the world
📈 Find out more about ShareAction’s work to build a fairer and more sustainable financial system
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres, trying to continue the conversation when we were so rudely interrupted by the clock.
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Paul Dickinson: Hi, I'm Paul Dickinson. Welcome to part two.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Welcome to part two of our Answering Your Questions About Power and Politics. Thanks for being here. So, Christiana, at the end of last week, we asked a question about progressive politics, which is a brilliant question from Daniel, who used the example of Venezuela, and we were started to get into a bit of a conversation about really how can you manage progressive politics in the era of social media and short attention spans, and to what degree is populism necessary? But we didn't get into the connected questions. So the first one is from Dieteram, who says, While disappointing, the momentum at state, city, and corporate level in the US remains strong. The real question is whether international frameworks can adapt to engage these subnational actors more effectively. Climate action has never been a purely federal story. And actually, there was a connected question from Alexander, who asked, How do you think leaders outside government should respond when these global guardrails start to weaken? So these questions are obviously about the fragility of multilateralism and where does agency now sit? So we'd love to hear your answer to these, Christiana.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, I very much enjoyed listening to Mark Carney's answer, because he gave an absolutely brilliant speech in Dallas that has elicited a lot of excitement.
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Mark Carney (archival clip, speech excerpt): It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.
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Christiana Figueres: Honestly, I think the speech really merits the full read or the full listening, because it's absolutely brilliant. Summarizing, though, I think Mark Carney in that speech does two things absolutely brilliantly, and he is speaking about national government. So I will set that out, but then I will make the parallel argument for subnational and corporate. At the national level, what Mark Carney is saying is, ciao nostalgia. It belongs in the past. The multilateralism that we used to have doesn't exist anymore. The international frameworks that we used to believe in have been weakened to the point where they can no longer operate, and we shouldn't continue to try to pull the donkey by its tail back and go, like, I really wish that we could have, sorry, gone.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Did you know that until 1900, nostalgia could be listed on a death certificate as a cause of death, because it was so powerful, that if you got overwhelmed by nostalgia, it could claim your life and you disappear. So it's actually quite an interesting point about moving beyond nostalgia, which can absorb you into regret about how the world is turning out and to step forward and face the future.
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Christiana Figueres: It definitely paralyzes. I don't know if it kills you.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think they decided in the end it doesn't, but it does paralyze.
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Christiana Figueres: But it does paralyze you because you keep on wanting to build up something that is in pieces. And so what he's saying, and I think honestly, I really tip my hat to Mark Carney, because I think he is the first national leader who stands up and says, dudes, what we practiced, what we felt, what we believed in, what we fought for is gone. Let's just accept that and move on. And I just think that is so courageous because everyone else is trying to pull little pieces together and where is the glue and you know.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Maybe we can put it back together again.
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Christiana Figueres: Maybe Humpty Dumpty we can put together. And he's just saying, forget it. So I think that is incredibly helpful in that speech and very courageous. The second thing that he does in that speech is he says, so what's the alternative? And he sets out very clearly what he calls the middle powers, which is no longer looking at the huge economies, but the middle power where he puts Canada into a middle power, he puts China into a middle power. I thought that was very interesting. I would never put China into a middle power.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So who's in the great powers, just the US.?
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Christiana Figueres: Well, I guess.
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Paul Dickinson: Okay. China ain't no middle power.
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Christiana Figueres: But what he says is, it's time for these middle powers or maybe also the small powers to forget about the huge multilateral that brings everybody together, and let us build coalitions by issue. Where do we agree? On what issue do we agree? And can we then have strategic alliances that are brought together, by issues and interests that are common to a particular subset? It doesn't have to be everybody on the face of this planet.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's the era of plurilateralism, isn't it? The idea that you would get groups of entities together, national governments and others who want to have a shared agenda. You are largely known as the mother of multilateralism in the climate process. What do we lose when we move from the era of multilateralism to the era of plurilateralism? Because, of course, it is attractive at this point because it's achievable. But what do we also lose?
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Christiana Figueres: Well, what do we lose and what do we win? We lose, of course, the seal of the imprimatur that, you know, everyone has agreed to that. I mean, there's a nice ring to that. When I say, you know, the Paris Agreement was not adopted by consensus, it was adopted by unanimity.
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Paul Dickinson: The entire world, you mean?
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Christiana Figueres: The entire world. I mean, there is... Yeah, that's nice.
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Paul Dickinson: It sounds nice, yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: It sounds nice. There's a certain sense of moral superiority to it. So I definitely, you know, can get into that.
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Paul Dickinson: Having got the entire world to agree on something, how do you feel about that?
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Christiana Figueres: So you lose that, what do you win? One of the huge prices of multilateralism is that you very often, Paris Agreement being an exception to the rule that I'm just gonna share with you, you very often move to the minimum possible common denominator. And well, we had to do that within the Paris Agreement on several accounts. Whereas if you have smaller groups of countries, corporations, subnationals, that say like, wait a minute, we agree that we want to encourage reforestation and protection of our standing force.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Go at it, run at it.
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Christiana Figueres: Go at it at its maximum. Not at the minimum common denominator, but at its maximum. So that's what you win. And that is what he is proposing in his Davos speech. And interestingly enough, the reason why I started that in reflection on Dieter's and Alexander's questions is because that is what we already see happening under the climate convention. And we saw it very clearly at COP 30. That you have these groups of countries, corporations, subnationals coming together across sectors. It's not just countries among themselves or not just subnational governments among themselves. It's like, let's understand that this is a cross-sectoral effort. And so you have subnational governments working with corporations, working with NGOs on a common agenda that really does require the cross-sectoral corporation. I think that's a good thing. So these are, to Alexander's question, these are leaders outside government, right? Because I think what he says government, he's meaning national government. Subnationals are doing this. In fact, even in the United States, we will remember that under Trump 1, we had a huge subnational outbreak.
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Paul Dickinson: We are still in.
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Christiana Figueres: We are still in and that is still alive. And there is now a huge movement in the United States that wants to really show that subnationals in the United States and corporations and individuals and NGOs and companies are definitely still moving forward with decarbonisation and they are planning this big international showing of climate responsibility within the United States.
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Paul Dickinson: Nature abhors a vacuum, the US federal government does these bizarre things, withdraws from the Paris Agreement, withdraws from the UNFCCC, and then others, regional, city businesses, investors, NGOs, they all rise up to fill that. You can't say that a nation is defined by this bizarre stance of its leadership.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I would phrase that slightly differently, which is that those actors have always been there. That's been the remarkably consistent thing. If you think back to Paris and before, the cities, the states, the corporations, it ebbs and flows a bit, but not in the way that the federal government in the United States does. I mean, to be fair, most other governments are much more consistent than that as well. And I think to build on your-
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Christiana Figueres: Well, because they're not in this political cycle, right? The electoral cycle.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Cities are, of course.
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Christiana Figueres: Cities are, yes.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: An entity like the US, of course, is incorporating so many polar differences that inevitably it flip-flops back and forth, and then you end up with other challenges. But there's a lot more stability at the sub-national level.
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Paul Dickinson: It's the kind of lies of the flag, you know, this idea that there's the United States in its kind of extremely one way, and then there's an election in this extremely another way. Well, neither of those are true. It's really, you know, a complex consensus. And the nationalism becomes sort of quite bizarre in these circumstances. The national government is seeking to speak for the people when it doesn't.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: The other point I would make, which to these very good questions, is that it is just in your economic interest now to make the changes that we're talking about, to shift to clean energy, to reforest your cities, to improve your air. It's based on quality of life. It's based on cost of living. It's based on affordability. It's based on improved health. And what I've often heard leaders like Mark Watts from C40, and even Mike Bloomberg, say is cities and states and others are closer to the voter and they know what their concerns are. And the concerns are actually much less about, do we take over Greenland? And more about, are my kids' lungs clean? And do my community have a lot of asthma? And I want shade on my street? And these things that are going to make the difference on climate often are much more resilient when you get down to the local level because they represent people's interests.
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Paul Dickinson: It's actually, you know, that you feel the impacts of, you know, extreme weather and all the rest of it at the local level. That's where it's at home. In the White House, that's something else entirely. It's a different space.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Great. All right. Should we move on? So we had a great question actually from Ahmed in response to Christiana's New Year's episode on indigenous leadership. And this is about broken world views and how we move forward. Do you want to read this one?
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, sure. So the comment is, or the question, This resonates deeply, especially the point about replacing dominance with belonging. That shift isn't just philosophical, it's geopolitical. Our climate system was built on extraction, hierarchy, and short-term gains, the same logic shaping international climate politics today. So when a major power like the US signals withdrawal, it exposes how fragile the dominance paradigm really is, and how dependent the global south still is on a worldview that wasn't built for reciprocity or continuity. Indigenous perspectives remind us that climate cooperation isn't charity or leverage, it's shared survival. So curious how you see Indigenous continuity thinking influencing global governance when geopolitical polarization increases. Okay, this is a heavy sigh, a heavy draw of breath.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: No, I mean, this is a deep and fascinating question that I'm happy to provide some thoughts on, but I think merits a conversation between us, because there's no easy answer to the very important topics that this highlights. So I would say first of all, that we would be of the view that an Indigenous worldview is fundamental to the solutions that we hope to find and the world we hope to create. The extractive, largely colonialist-based narrative of just go and get something, dig it up, do what you want, don't worry about others, which does sit at the core of our capitalist mindset still in our economy, even though the form of that has changed somewhat since colonial times, causes all kinds of problems in our economy and in our minds. And many of the solutions that we try and come up with end up faltering because they're based fundamentally on that world view. And there's all the things we don't like in there, extraction, you know, exclusion, polarization of wealth, great power politics, all of this comes out in some way of that world view. Now, I would say that we are existing in a sort of between times where that is still present and still with us, and there is some form of collective realization that we need to reimagine the purpose of our lives and the purpose of our generation and how we are going to create this different world that we can see appearing. And we are in this weird time where both are coexisting at the same time. And as a result of that coexistence, both are almost becoming stronger. We're seeing these like death throes of a capitalist world view, and we're seeing the emergence of a different approach. But nobody knows how to do this, and how to get to the next part. So the part of this question that I don't know how to answer is, how does this influence global governance and geopolitical polarization, and how can it provide an answer? I can see the two emerging, but I can also see that geopolitical thinking gets more polarized as we get into a period of resource restriction and other things, so I don't know how we bring that about. And much earlier in my career, this is what I really felt I wanted to spend my life on, that this shift of narrative, of worldview, was the most important thing. And I still think that, but I've entered a more practical phase.
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Paul Dickinson: But today is the day!
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, you bounce back and forth, and maybe many listeners resonate with that, but you're on the one hand thinking, we need to work on the worldview and on the narrative and on the paradigm, and thinking, what do I do today? How do I get moving? And I think we both need to exist between those two different things.
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Paul Dickinson: If you're still in contact with the previous Tom, can we get him on sometime? Exactly.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: No, I feel like I fully integrated him. Absolutely. And I still really resonate with this question. But how we focus on that and bring that forward, I'm going to tee this up and just hand it over to Christiana.
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Christiana Figueres: Oh, well, great.
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, I've actually got some filing to do. I'll be back in about half an hour. See you then.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I agree with you, Tom, that they're both coexisting and perhaps vying for our attention and validation. I don't agree that there has not been any proposal, concrete proposal, as to how do we build an economy that is based on reciprocity. If reciprocity is understood, not just reciprocity between humans but reciprocity with our natural resources, with nature, right? That is...
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Paul Dickinson: With our sacred elements.
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Christiana Figueres: With our sacred elements based on the highest understanding of AI. If AI is understood as ancestral intelligence. I would say that the person that has come closest in putting forward a very concrete proposal on this is our friend Kate Rayroth, Donut Economics. Absolutely. Right? She has thought deeply about this. She has really put forward a proposal for a new economic structure that has reciprocity at its core. Entirely possible to do. My question is, if that is there, what your first deposit that you made, we're living between these two realities, I agree with that. If now I'm saying, and we have at least one very concrete example, the question that rises for me is, why aren't we moving toward that much quicker?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Because it's going to be happening very quickly. Exactly.
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Christiana Figueres: Why not? Right? So that's the question for me, and that has to do with the deep roots of basically fossil fuel companies that aren't benefited by that. And the fact that carbon logic is so embedded in everything, in our economic structure, in our society, that carbon logic, how fossil fuels, what the investment plan, the business plan for fossil fuels, all of that is so embedded. I don't think we realize how embedded it is. And therefore, it is from just from a human nature, it's much easier to stick with the status quo than to break with the status quo and move to something new.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Do you think it's fossil fuels or do you think it's deeper than that? It's more about the growth paradigm that sits at the heart of how our economy works, the need to provide GDP growth every year in order to service national debt. There's all kinds of inbuilt structural elements around the way growth and debt work that makes it very difficult to step away. Everyone's terrified of the bond market.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I would say fossil fuels are easy to identify because they're sort of at the top of the visible part of the glacier, let's say, right? The iceberg, the visible part of the iceberg. And then there is everything else underneath. But that iceberg is very coherent top to bottom.
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Paul Dickinson: And just a language thing, I mean, Sandra had a sort of link question saying, does this mean the end of capitalism? I think that this binary between kind of like, well, we're doing capitalism or we're not doing capitalism is a false one. I think capitalism doesn't really lend itself to easy definition. Is it swapping beads in the caves or is it, you know, advanced securities or something? I think we need to sort of be freer in terms of how we think of alternative systems. I don't know, the cooperatives of yesteryear or there are numerous different sort of models that we could be excited and seems very generative and positive. And I think, you know, there are the whole sort of lesson of what everyone talks about all the time is how to escape the binary and be in a kind of a creative space to consider other ways forward. But this deep question of sort of culture, you know, the seventh generation wisdom, thinking about the seventh generation of our indigenous people, or thinking about the long term of any organization or asset, they're not actually antithetical to human thinking, but it just needs sort of revision away from the hypercapitalism of surrendering politics and going into shareholder value, I think.
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Christiana Figueres: Extraction, that's the root, right? So it's the extraction mentality and the whole paradigm that is built there versus the reciprocity paradigm.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And I think, I mean, one other observation I'd make is you can't really change the capitalist mindset by sort of proposing alternatives and trying to change institutions. You have to just build momentum with something that has some of the solutions and then try to get that adopted and build momentum as you go, because it's so insidious, it's so inside all of our institutions, all of our ways of the stock market working and the way public policy works and the private sector works. It's everywhere. That's the sea we swim in. We don't even question it most of the time. So my friend George Monbiot reminded me of this off-quoted thing that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
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Paul Dickinson: No, I have to fight that. I think it is Airbnb, a capitalist enterprise, and kind of maybe it's a stock market company, should right-thinking people create a not-for-profit Airbnb that's more kind of loving way of sharing what we own, maybe.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, that's a really good example of maybe little tiny steps in that direction. I also wanted to challenge all of us because do you remember the question that we had about Mark Carney's speech or I put it in there, Mark Carney's speech, where he basically admitted without saying it in so many words, multilateralism as we know it is dead. What is the parallel thinking here? He says multilateralism is dead, therefore we have to construct something different, these alliances. Okay, so the question is, does capitalism have to be dead in order to move to something else? Or can we move toward something else gradually, smoothly?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It has to be that because otherwise the impact on people would be too catastrophic. You can't have a collapse and then a rebirth of something different. I've got lots of more activist friends.
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Christiana Figueres: But we have that with multilateralism.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, but the collapse of capitalism would lead to supply chain disruption. You know, it would be much bigger in terms of people's lives if you had a genuine collapse of capitalism.
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Christiana Figueres: But maybe not if you understand the way that Paul is understanding it.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, I think, you know, the idea of sort of ending capitalism and these sort of, you know, drastic changes. And as I said, I don't think capitalism is one thing and I think we can redefine it. But this idea that there has to be like a total change is based on existential angst. I think zillions of people have with climate change, with the fact that AIs may be coming along to take all our jobs, the increasing wealth disparities.
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Christiana Figueres: With their own livelihoods.
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Paul Dickinson: With their own livelihoods, exactly. So it's a kind of febrile time for a whole bunch of reasons. Politics is quite naturally picking up the blame button, but there's a sort of, you know, there's just a febrile thing in the field, as my friends at FinDorn would call it, the global field.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think that's a really interesting point and it's really good to highlight what I think we see in many of our friends and certainly many questions from listeners and conversations with listeners, that the context that we're living in is really hard for many people. The cost of living is difficult, the transition is hard. People sometimes have a sense that we're not making the transitions we need to make that leads to anxiety. The point I would layer onto yours is that, that leads to a moment of breakthrough slash opportunity. One question I would love to challenge us with is, are we really ready with the radical solutions for what that new world would look like? Because an opportunity feels like it might be coming, and these doors don't open that often. When people re-imagine the world that we're in and the systems we're using, and it often can come as a result of breakdown and challenge, and we need to be ready with the deep different solutions that enable us to move forward.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I also, I think it might be helpful to differentiate between breakdown and end. Because breakdown could mean that what breaks is the pieces that are no longer useful, or no longer generative. But that doesn't mean that it is a hard end of. So the breakdown of capitalism for me is different than the end of capitalism.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I see, yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: And I think we're very, very well seeing and experiencing the breakdown of capitalism, whether that means the end of capitalism, or whether that means the evolution toward something different that is more human-centered, is more nature-centered, that still has capital.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, for sure. Investments and return.
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Christiana Figueres: We'll probably still be there. We're not going to go back to trading seashells.
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, AIC, Ancestral Intelligence Capitalism.
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Christiana Figueres: Exactly. It's understandable because of the angst that is felt by all of us that we term it the end of capitalism. But maybe it's not quite that drastic.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's a really good point. Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, so actually there's a connected question here, which comes out of some of the thinking that we've previously done in partnership with our Brazilian friends around a Global Mucirau. As listeners may remember, was the call from the Brazilian COP presidency for everybody to collectively get involved.
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Christiana Figueres: All hands on deck.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It means barn raising in some ways. It means lots of different things.
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Paul Dickinson: From the film Witness, where they all make a barn together.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, okay. That was a little left field. I haven't seen that film.
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Paul Dickinson: If you haven't seen the film, please ignore what I said.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, so the idea that everyone comes together and does a collective thing, and that's what we need on climate. Many of us have actually reached out with similar questions to ask, what are realistic ways that citizens can get involved to wield material power at this critical moment? One of the best was from Georgina. Let's have a listen to this.
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Georgina (listener): Hi, Christiana, Paul, Tom, everyone at Outrage and Optimism. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're really helping to keep me sane, oscillating between Outrage and Optimism. Recently, more outrage at the lack of pace that seems to be manifesting right now. And specifically, I've got a question, mainly for Paul, perhaps, about finance and just been thinking a lot about this beautiful Brazilian concept of the global muchirao. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but there are like however many billion people on Earth. And what would it be like if there were a mechanism whereby even a small percentage of us could chip in, you know, $10, $100 or whatever, $1000, to create some financial clout for some of these important projects. Anyway, is there a mechanism for this? Could we create one? I'd love to know.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Paul, this is a question for you.
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Paul Dickinson: Georgina has completely chosen me well because I was kind of like bursting in response to this question. We can tell. We can tell. I'm a tigger right now. This is what I want to talk about. You know, yes. Huge, huge, huge yes. It's your savings, your pension fund. And the limit, and I really want to start with this, is the limit is your imagination. You know, funds, companies, investment clubs, financial services providers in different forms. Anything is possible, but there are some problems.
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Christiana Figueres: The first one is Paul, when you say anything is possible, what do you mean by that? Well, she's saying, can we all put chip in, you know, $10, $20, $100 into a fund that finances projects?
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Paul Dickinson: So your answer is, well, I'm going to suggest that more than 90% of our listeners probably have $1,000 invested somewhere already. So the money's there, right? So anything is possible. However, lots of people get rich out of it being complicated and difficult. So there is a sort of complication industry saying, well, you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't do the other. Now, part of that is based upon some very good history and some good evolution of our society. For the last thousands of years, literally, people have been sort of looking after each other's money and stealing it and doing improper things with it. And that's wrong and so we've got a whole framework of law to protect me from taking $1,000 from you, Christiana, $1,000 from you, Tom, and then you kind of never see me again. And I don't build the solar energy I said I was going to build. I end up going off and living somewhere on the other side of the world and no one can find me. So we do need to have kind of responsible legislation and regulation, but at the same time, that also sucks away our sense of our ability to do things. It's designed to protect you. But for example, if you wanted to set up something in your street saying, if you've got $1,000 to spare, or a thousand pounds or a euro or whatever to spare, we're going to build this thing here. Come and come and have a long and open a bank account and everything. Well, you get in all kinds of trouble with the government for breaching all kinds of regulation. But if we can sit with lawyers and if we were willing to read the regulations, there are all sorts of things you can do. That carbon coin that was such a central part of the Ministry for the Future, that excellent book, looking at things like the co-operative movement that built up into multi-billion dollar industries across Europe by people just getting together. These little acorns can build great oaks. I mentioned savings clubs. People have to be able to lose the money, so it has to be money you can spare. But I think we raise millions to fix the church roof or whatever it is. They have wonderful co-ops where I live in Brighton. There's a Brighton and Hove Energy Co-op who will give you a great return if you put money in and they'll put solar all across the roofs of Brighton. So money is information about the future and we should feel empowered to use our money in more creative ways. But we just have to have the patience to sort of invest in getting over these legal and regulatory hurdles that sort of stop us doing things. But not let that stop us. Let that be something that we've got to go through, get to the other side and be creative. And there's a whole literature and architecture about talking to your pension provider, talking to your investment managers and lobbying them and share actions probably now that the leading NGO in the UK, for example, where you can look at ideas about that after Make My Money Matter kind of finished its mission. I would say that if I really trust the spirit of your question, Georgina, it's do it yourself.
00:29:02.220 --> 00:29:03.920
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think, so that's a really helpful answer. I think definitely it's good to point out some of the challenges that we face. I have a connected question which I think is implied in this question as well, which is what you say has sort of been known by many people for a while, right? You can deploy your invested capital towards solutions. You can make donations to build solutions at scale. But we've never really done this at the scale that would be needed to tip the system. And why is that? Because some of it might be transaction costs, but there have been programs and plans put together to get more people involved. Why isn't this completely normal that you build your pension and it's based only on investing in the future? What's the answer to that?
00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:55.260
Paul Dickinson: I mean, I do have an answer, which is that I was obsessed by this since like 1988, this idea that you could actually win business as a pension provider or as an investor by using these kind of ethical criteria, sustainability product marketing. It has happened and there have been lots of kind of green funds and stuff, but regulators have come in and said, oh, those aren't good, or they may be, you might be misselling. And it suddenly got way complex and it sort of run a bit out of steam. But what do you think, Christiana?
00:30:08.500 --> 00:30:13.380
Christiana Figueres: Paul, what is the level of assets that BlackRock manages?
00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:14.740
Paul Dickinson: 10 trillion, give or take.
00:30:14.740 --> 00:30:19.520
Christiana Figueres: So if I were Georgina, I would ask, and what are they doing with those 10 trillion? Are they actually investing that into projects that have, yes, a decent RI, but that are also good for the planet and for the common good? And if not, why not?
00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:47.140
Paul Dickinson: I think if there's an if not, why not, people at BlackRock might say, and I'm obviously not authorised to speak for them, but they might say we've been attacked by attorney generals in the United States for undermining the fiduciary duty to invest in the best interest of the beneficial owner. Now I've spent decades chatting to people who know about this, and they're not undermining the fiduciary duty to invest in the best interest of the beneficial owner.
00:30:54.460 --> 00:31:03.200
Tom Rivett-Carnac: But can you just define the phrase fiduciary duty to invest in the best interest of the beneficial owner, that I would say probably not every listener has gone with you on that phrase?
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:03.640
Christiana Figueres: Yes, thank you.
00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:13.160
Paul Dickinson: I mean, one piece of legislation that's often, or it's actually a legal ruling that's often quoted from I think since 1830 or something, Harvard versus Amory, it might be 1980.
00:31:13.160 --> 00:31:14.740
Tom Rivett-Carnac: But it's not getting any clearer so far.
00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:26.880
Paul Dickinson: What the law sort of says is that if I took literally $1,000 from each of you and you said, Paul, invest this wisely for my future, I would be acting as your fiduciary. So I'd be the person responsible for kind of guarding and growing your assets. The great piece of case law says that if I'm in that fiduciary role, I must act in your best interest as the beneficial owner. It's a beautiful judgment actually, when Judge Platton says, with due regard to what people at time thought was important, isn't that well-worded? So that actually, I would argue, means that you absolutely should be very focused on climate change in 2026. It's absolutely critical. But the attorney generals, who are perhaps Trump supporters, who criticize BlackRock will say, oh no, no, you get much better returns out of fossil fuels, and therefore you shouldn't invest in renewables. And so the problem BlackRock faces primarily is it's a big global brand, and it needs to operate with the support and the permission of the US government, both at the state and the federal level. And it's afraid of having its business model attacked by mischievous, I would say, politicians who seek to undermine its ability to trade and may prosecute in all sorts of different ways.
00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:26.420
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I have just something else to add in there, and I don't know if you have another answer. I mean, I think Georgina is also asking about us using individual dollars towards solutions. But I also just wanted to say, I think, you know, I've worked with you at CDP and other places for a while, and the financial services sector is so complicated and so devoid of everyone actually taking responsibility for the outcome. I mean, Christiana, you and I met with Larry Fink several years ago, the CEO of BlackRock in Glasgow.
00:32:50.520 --> 00:32:52.580
Paul Dickinson: Now co-chair of the World Economic Forum.
00:32:52.800 --> 00:32:57.980
Tom Rivett-Carnac: And what was amazing about the conversation we had with him was he basically said, well, I haven't got any power. I'm only the CEO of the world's largest asset manager. The asset owners or the sovereign governments need to tell me when they give me the power.
00:33:05.860 --> 00:33:14.180
Paul Dickinson: So by the way, the asset owners are people like pension fund trustees who I spent a lot of my time talking to and they say, we haven't got any choice but to buy the products sold to us by BlackRock.
00:33:14.180 --> 00:33:29.780
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So this is the point I'm making is that if the thing becomes so complicated and the logic becomes so secuitous that it's not true of everybody and there are remarkable leaders in the financial space, but often you talk to people and they all just sort of say, oh, it's not me, you got to talk to someone else down the corridor, it's their responsibility. And we kind of go round and round in that without anyone saying, everyone, as you have explained very clearly, has the legal right to take leadership, but often they don't.
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:42.800
Christiana Figueres: The legal right, but not the legal duty.
00:33:42.800 --> 00:33:43.800
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Responsive, right, yeah.
00:33:44.140 --> 00:33:54.400
Paul Dickinson: I mean, a friend of mine, Helen Wildsmith, worked with others to bring some resolutions to BP and Shell, for example, on sort of the way they were working on fossil fuel phase out. And those resolutions were actually backed by management. Those are 98, 99% of the shareholders backed the shareholder resolution. And she would then go and talk to these companies and sort of say, well, how's it going? And she was representing 99% of the will of the shareholders, quite a lot of authority in that meeting. I mean, this was many years ago. But so, you know, there are all sorts of innovative strategies that people can adopt. Maybe we'll do another episode one day, like a whole episode or a series of episodes, even on all the different possibilities. But my direct answer, Georgina, is just to sort of believe that you can fulfill your ambitions in terms of investing in the future we want. But you may have to swim, soothe and treacle to get there.
00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:34.480
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Just a final question before we leave this topic. Would you agree with my analysis that that whole sector has not quite lived up to its promise? Because you talked about thinking about this in 1988 and good things have happened. But it hasn't really changed the world in the way that it might have done.
00:34:46.220 --> 00:34:57.820
Paul Dickinson: I mean, the thing that actually really breaks my heart is we haven't found a way for advertising and marketing to really allow the good people to make the good products that we all buy to deliver the scale outcome.
00:34:57.820 --> 00:35:04.120
Christiana Figueres: I wonder how comforted Georgina is right now.
00:35:04.160 --> 00:35:06.020
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I would imagine she's actually probably a little confused.
00:35:06.020 --> 00:35:06.420
Christiana Figueres: Yes. Well, and frustrated, and frustrated because I think from an individual's perspective, all well and good to talk about 10 trillion dollars in asset management by Blackwell. Well, what does that have to do with me? And I think she's asking a question of me, I want to put $10 someplace and I want every single one of my neighbors and every single one of the people in my town and in my city and in my country to put in $10 and then can we do something good? That's what she's asking, right? I think she's actually proposing something that is precisely against the established financial system.
00:35:44.420 --> 00:35:45.260
Paul Dickinson: Yeah, sure. And I started off by saying, Georgina, I think you might be exactly the right person to do that yourself and lead it and make it happen.
00:35:52.300 --> 00:35:52.720
Christiana Figueres: Okay. And so how would I do that? If I'm Georgina, what do I do? If I'm in the privileged position, and we don't know that about Georgina, but if I'm in the privileged position of having some savings, what do I do? I look at what my savings are, I call the person who's managing my savings, and I say, don't you dare invest a single dollar of my dollars into any fossil fuel industry company? Or what do I do?
00:36:17.480 --> 00:36:18.780
Paul Dickinson: What's the outcome you want?
00:36:18.780 --> 00:36:20.700
Christiana Figueres: Well, that's exactly the point. You can have a global effect if you manage to influence Black Rock, da-da-da-da-da-da. But how many people are in that position? Unless you're an attorney general, it's very difficult to influence Black Rock, right? So I would be more interested in what is the agency that an individual has sitting there going like, I do have $10 spare every month. What can I do with that? My answer to that is, find something that is doable. Find a project close to home, localized, that you can actually go and put your dollars and your time and your love and your energy into, and make a difference, whatever that is. That may be planting a garden, it may be improving the recycling on your street, it may be joining a small group of people who are lobbying positively for some kind of a policy change. I'm just saying it can't just be about changing Black Rock.
00:37:35.380 --> 00:37:36.720
Paul Dickinson: Sure, I agree entirely.
00:37:36.720 --> 00:37:45.140
Christiana Figueres: It also can be about doing something at the local level, because I'm passionate, and I wouldn't say just go find something to do. No, find something that is really meaningful to you, because the passion that comes from that, the love that you put into, is going to make you feel better way beyond the $10 that you put in.
00:37:56.540 --> 00:38:01.180
Paul Dickinson: As we've said many times before, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
00:38:01.180 --> 00:38:13.700
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So that's very good, and I think we probably need to bring this to a wrap up now, but the only comment I would make to that is actually an experience I have a lot, and I think this is something that the climate nature movement needs to acknowledge. I think about how complex this conversation has been about what you do and how it works. You might meet someone who says, you know, I've just read an article about the drying out and the potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest, and I feel deeply emotional about that, and I want to commit some of my resources to stopping that from happening. We don't actually have a clear answer to what you do. You could say, well, give it to indigenous groups, but then someone else will say, well, it should be conservation, but then conservation isn't meaningful if you don't do something about the farmers, and then there's cattle, so you should change your eating habits, and what about the electoral process in Brazil, and maybe Bolsonaro comes back? You get that answer, and of course that reflects some of the realities, but it's very hard for people who have an emotional reaction to a big change, and the answer is so complicated that the result is paralysis, and I think that's really difficult.
00:39:03.720 --> 00:39:08.420
Paul Dickinson: And the answer is Google and read around it and make a decision about which organization you want to support.
00:39:08.420 --> 00:39:18.840
Christiana Figueres: Or the answer is maybe I do not participate directly in the Amazon, but maybe I do something that is right here within my sphere of influence. The more and more I think about this, the more important I think it is to do something that you really have an influence under, literally not to send your efforts, money, thinking, half way across the planet, because of those complexities. And then I think you end up being more frustrated than when you started. I would rather honestly go out and help a child to plant a tree and help that child water that tree and see it grow over years.
00:39:50.540 --> 00:39:54.360
Paul Dickinson: Maybe buy less beef because actually that's maybe driving deforestation in the Amazon.
00:39:54.360 --> 00:39:54.760
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Tom. Georgina, we would genuinely love to hear from you.
00:39:57.680 --> 00:39:59.320
Christiana Figueres: What do you think about all this?
00:39:59.320 --> 00:40:01.080
Tom Rivett-Carnac: This answer has gone down. I'm not sure we've answered yet.
00:40:03.100 --> 00:40:04.240
Paul Dickinson: There are laws in the UK. We can't really call that long rambling thing an answer. Okay, it's going to cost us 50,000 pounds to get the legislation in place.
00:40:11.260 --> 00:40:13.240
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, so I think that draws us to a close. It's taken us two episodes to go through these amazing questions.
00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:16.640
Christiana Figueres: No, no, no. It's taken us two episodes to go through not even 50% of the questions that we wanted to address.
00:40:21.820 --> 00:40:22.620
Paul Dickinson: And not answering them.
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:24.120
Christiana Figueres: And not answering them.
00:40:24.120 --> 00:40:26.720
Tom Rivett-Carnac: And this is in 50% of the questions in one category. So this is the power of politics. We will return with other questions in different categories at some point. I'm not sure.
00:40:31.260 --> 00:40:32.440
Paul Dickinson: Thank you for such good questions.
00:40:32.440 --> 00:40:32.940
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Exactly. Thank you for such great questions. And as you can see, they got us thinking. So we'll see you all next week. Thanks for joining us. Bye.
