 Welcome to Striking a Green New Deal. I am your moderator, Penny Appi-Wardina. I am New York City's Commissioner for International Affairs, and it is a privilege to chair this session with this very distinguished panel. Today we have His Excellency Kiriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece. We have His Excellency Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. We have First Vice President of the European Commission, Franz Timmermans, and the CEO of the Inca Group, Mr. Jesper Broden. So around the world, political leaders are picking up the mantle and calling for climate action. In the U.S., unfortunately, the national government has abdicated its responsibility on climate, and so subnational leadership has stepped in to take on this challenge. Last April, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the New York City Green New Deal, a $14 billion initiative with ambitious targets that will ultimately cut emissions by 40% by 2030. Some of the highlights include requiring all large buildings to conduct retrofits to lower their emissions a global first, banning construction of all glass facade buildings unless they meet very strict guidelines converting city government operations to Canadian hydropower, et cetera. We are also leading on climate accountability. After moving to divest, city pension funds about $5 billion from fossil fuel companies, New York City and the City of London and C40 cities teamed up to create the first ever divest invest forum to help cities worldwide follow suit. Now, just this week, we identified and finalized a selection of advisors who will help develop our divestment strategy. Now, across the globe, especially in areas where national governments have been slow to act, cities are not waiting. In fact, more than 1,300 local governments in 25 countries around the world have declared a state of climate emergency, a critical step in activating immediate comprehensive solutions to drive down emissions. Encouragingly, in some parts of the world, leadership is listening and representing the voice of their people, and we have you here on stage today. So welcome. Thank you so much. I want to start with the first vice president. The Green Deal has very ambitious targets from cutting emissions to investing in research and innovation to preserving the continent's natural environment. Your goal is to make Europe the first carbon neutral continent as an American. Good luck. We are rooting for you. Governments seem to be dragging their feet, so I want to know how you think that you can succeed with the European Green Deal, and if you can first give us a little bit of an overview of what your primary targets are, please. We're even more ambitious than that. We want to be climate neutral, which is even more ambitious than carbon neutral. Why are we here? Because I think everyone saw all the politicians who were in the European elections, but this is the one issue that sort of captures the imagination of Europeans across the continent. It's also one of the few issues where nobody doubts that we have to act on a continental scale if we really want to make a difference. So what we did is then we went back to the drawing board and said, if we want to be climate neutral by 2050, what does that mean for 2040? What does that mean for 2030? What does that mean for the next five years? And we started mapping it out, and then we chose a holistic approach. So not just one sector. It's not just about energy. It's not just about oil. It's about the whole economy. Why? Because we're also in the middle of an industrial revolution that sort of coincides with the climate crisis. And we are challenged because of our demographics in Europe. When my parents were born, Europe was about 23%, 24% of the world's population. Africa, 5%. In a couple of years time, it's going to be exactly the opposite. And in a generation's time, Africa will account for almost half of the world's population. So these are sort of tectonic shifts. And the one thing is clear. Every industrial revolution or every fundamental change in our society has the potential of being extremely disruptive and extremely unfair. Very few people win and a lot of people lose. So if you take your role as government seriously, you have to organize it together with all the stakeholders this time, not on your own because that won't work. And organize in a way that it leads to a redistribution that leaves no one behind. And I think that's the core element of the Green Deal. And I'm really very, it's very clear. Without Generation Z, without millennials, we would not be here. They are going into the streets. They are shaping the politics of the future. They're taking this into their hands and that's a good thing. That's wonderful. Prime Minister, I heard through the grapevine that you are the greenest Prime Minister Greece has ever had. We are really... I'm guilty. I said this. It's not for my part, but I did say it. I was trying to keep it anonymous. Was it so inexperienced? I would love to have your thoughts on the Green Deal and what the first vice president said, especially in terms of how you see it protecting Greece's extensive coastline and very unique cultural heritage. Well, we're extremely supportive of the Green Deal and I'm happy that it is an ambitious plan. As the vice president said, it's a plan that is all-encompassing. It doesn't just look at one particular sector. And what I like is that it unites Europe towards a new, extremely important cause. If you look at the history of European integration since Europe as a united entity was first created, we always put very ambitious targets and worked towards them. Our fathers or grandfathers created the European economic community at the time to ensure prosperity and peace for the continent. The euro was a next important milestone. It was more about financial robustness. But what is the cause that we can actually unite a new generation of young Europeans to work towards? It has to be climate in conjunction with technological disruption. These are the two big challenges that we have to face. So this is a very, very ambitious plan. We supported it from day one. It's particularly important for Greece. Why? Because all climate models tell us that the Eastern Mediterranean is going to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Now, this is nothing new. I remember we look at the horrible fires in Australia. But we had the mega fires in Greece, the first mega fire that I remember in Greece that was chairman of the Environment Committee in 2007. And at the time, we commissioned a study about the implications of climate change in Greece. And we really almost lost the decade. So we cannot afford to lose another decade when we address these issues. We are a coastal nation. Our tourism, 90% of our tourism infrastructure is on coasts. Our particularly sensitive ecosystems are marine ecosystems. So we have an additional reason to deeply care about this problem. And this is not a problem that we will be faced in the future. It's already here. We see it in Greece. And we have to work towards a very ambitious agenda. I'm very happy that the Commission has proposed it to that extent. I think it has been very well received across political families in Europe. But of course, the real difficulties are going to come once we start committing real money to it because then there's a question of budget. Can we still do the same policies that the European Union has always done very well, cohesion, common agricultural policy, and have additional funds for climate and technology? And of course, the disruption that some of the difficult decisions that we will have to take will entail for local communities. I'm sure we'll discuss this as we move into. Into our discussion. But it's nice to have young people engaged in this topic, but we also have to address people who will lose their jobs as a result of us quickly moving away from a fossil fuel intensive production model. Excellent. Another ambitious prime minister. In the Netherlands, you've agreed to cut emissions by 49% by 2030, compared with levels seen in 1990. And you've expressed your willingness to go even further by cutting emissions by 55%. Can you tell us more about the national climate agreement and its goals? Yeah, because it's not easy. In the Netherlands, we have not been particularly successful in cutting back CO2 emissions in the last 10 years. We have not been successful. And my worry is that the Green Deal is there. I'm very happy. It's good that we have these ambitious targets, but it all comes down to implementation, that we need to plan. So what we felt in the Netherlands is that we needed, on the one hand, these targets, we needed the societal support. But for example, just to sketch out how difficult this is, we had regional elections last year in March. We were not ready with this climate agreement. And basically the only thing we communicated to the electorate was un-clarity. We couldn't tell them whether it would be affordable, whether it would be achievable, et cetera. And my party, who was traditionally the biggest party, was now ending up second, biggest. And a new party was the biggest party in that election. And in my assessment, because we were not ready, then by June, we were able to strike the deal. And I believe now that the last part of society is behind it because people sense that it is affordable, they don't have to sell their houses, their cars, skip their holidays. But it is ambitious, it is achievable and affordable. Incrucibly here is the fact that we have 150 societal organizations on board, including Greenpeace and the employers and the unions, et cetera, et cetera. And we broke it down to all kinds of very specific programs. For example, one issue, and then I'll hand over. These two days, I have many discussions with the big industries in the Netherlands, of course, Shell being based in the Netherlands, but also the big chemical clusters, the big petrochemical clusters and the big steel mills. I don't want them to leave. No, to the country, I want them to invest in my country to make sure that what they need to do in terms of, and they want to do, it's the wish, in terms of changing their way of production from a high carbon industry into a low carbon industry or carbon neutrality, whatever they can achieve in that particular industry, like for example, electrical cracking, which is technologically not yet feasible, but hopefully in five or 10 years. What type of investments do we need? How do we pitch a CO2 levy? Is it a flat tax? I don't believe in that. Is it an excess levy in terms of the marginal CO2 so that you make it conducive for big companies to change their behavior? They want to dialogue with us. They want us to be them, to be part of that thinking. And I'm optimistic at the end that if we get this right, that you will not have fewer jobs, but more jobs, more economic growth. Europe being by far the biggest economy in the world. It's not the U.S. the biggest. The biggest is Europe, America's second. We are number one in terms of overall economic size. If we can get this right, it has a huge impact of the rest of the world in terms of jobs creation and economic growth and of course, bringing down the CO2 emissions. But it's not an easy way ahead. And there's always the risk that we all think, oh, we start to sing the song and we're all very happy and here in Davos, internationalism and together we will get there, but there's so much to be done and there are so many hurdles along the way and we have to take the whole population with us. And we can only achieve that if more economic growth, job opportunities will arise. That will be crucial. Just as a point of information, very briefly. Please. The Prime Minister's party again came second in the European election. He's another party. Look, I love to be gossiping. They've been snaking the social democrats. That's it. Thank you very much, my brother. Thank you very much. We're going to talk. No, but it was such a perfect transition from the Prime Minister to you because Ikea has been a leader in this, right? You're not going to call me Prime Minister like in the Green Room. And then I changed it to maybe President of the United States. I would accept that. But Ikea is one of the companies that's been leading on climate action in the private sector. Would love your thoughts, your thoughts from Ikea's perspective on the Green Deal, but also the larger sector's perspective? I would love to also share the Ikea view on it, but I think we are very optimistic. This was a message and a time that was just perfect. We have most of the work, or almost all of it ahead of us, of course. So we're entering a very interesting phase now. But I must say maybe France will disagree with me. But sometimes long, long back, the EU could have been a bit anonymous, maybe not known for speed or for unity. And here we are with, I think people like yourself, France Ursula stepping up, showing leadership, direction, unity, and a speed that is phenomenal. So we think this is going to be basically a European orchestra that sometimes have sounded a little bit so-so in the past, but where we need to play all of us and we want to play a part in that. We think even we as an industry can be part of playing a big instrument in this. If you give us a small one, we will be annoyed. So hopefully we get something real to play here. And I know for sure that there are a lot of companies and other stakeholders out there who actually want to, we want the speed. We are in a decade where maybe it's the most important in the history of mankind really. So we have this opportunity now. But at the same time, how can we all participate and be part of it? Can I ask you to share a few concrete examples in terms of what IKEA is doing? Well, you can say to give a few concrete examples, I think first of all, our story is about two things. It's about the complete commitment. So it's not about symbolic actions. It's a 2030 commitment also. We're not going to take the risks to say to pass on the changes that needs to happen to the next generation. So we're going to be climate positive by 2030. And we think we know how. Then when you bring it back, the interesting thing maybe to bring to the room also there is a misconception in the world that sustainability will cost and come at a premium. If that would happen, we will have another crisis. The many people as we refer to are not going to be with us on that journey. And the thing is, when you look at the engineering, when you look at innovation, it's the absolute opposite. In IKEA, being a consumer of a lot of raw material, the 1900s model is probably not going to be smart going forward. We need to have sustainability in order to have low cost. The veggie bowl, I give us the example. I don't know if you tried the veggie bowl. It's very silent, so I'll leave it here. So the IKEA veggie bowl was introduced I think two years ago or something, as an alternative to the excellent Scandinavian meat bowl. Oh, no, no, no, it's still there. It's still there, but it's about 15% share it has taken. And the story about the veggie bowl is that it's of course healthier. But certainly, I think it has about the 6% share to food. So that's kind of good. And are we live streaming this, or are we live meat? We actually earn a little bit more money on the veggie bowl than on the meat bowl. So there you go. You go to LED lighting. It's a much better business since we faced out incandescent lighting. Our total sales of LED is the same saving in energy as the whole city of Amsterdam in energy per year. Our investments in renewable energy, which now covers all of our operation and retail and beyond, is a good business. So I think we need to create an understanding that sustainability will be the business model 2.0. Exactly what the Prime Minister was saying, excellent. Mr. First Vice President, so we hear our planet is dying and we have to change our ways now. The young people are literally shouting it off of the roof right now. But many people believe that they have to give up everything. So how are we gonna handle that? What are you gonna say to them? Well, you know, the planet isn't dying because the planet was there before we were there and it's going to be there after we've left. Humanity is at risk. I think we should be aware of that. That's the big thing. We're doing this not for the planet. We're doing this for humanity so that we can recreate a sound balance between the planet and us. And I believe that doom and gloom is not gonna help us, but realism is. So we need to follow the science and the science is now explicit and relatively undisputed. You know, you have a few people who still flat earthers will always be there, but the science is relatively undisputed. And we as politicians have the duty to translate that in policies. And that's what we need to do. And then, you know, we are, you know, the Dutch example shows because the Netherlands have gone further than many other states in mapping out what this means. And it shows that once you've mapped it out and individual citizens understand what it means for them, they say, whoa, wait a minute. This is, you're asking a lot. And if you can then show to them what the end of all of this is, they'll embrace it. But if they are insecure about the end, whether their kids will still have jobs or, you know, whether this ends by them living in caves, eating grass, you know, they will not embrace it. But if you can show that this is a transformational agenda that will take us into a better society with cleaner air and better transport and a more comfortable life and better jobs, then they will embrace it. But it's a hell of a job to get us there. And we need, so we need a comprehensive approach and which complicates it. We need specific approaches for specific sectors. Mr. Broding's sector is a different sector than the coal sector or the oil sector or other parts of retail. And we need to be very specific on every sector. That's actually a great transition to you, Prime Minister, with the Lignite coal plants, not coal plants, plants. In September, you made a commitment to close all of the Lignite plants in Greece by 2028. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the politics, how you got public opinion behind all of this? Well, for those of you who don't know Lignite is brown coal, it's the dirtiest form of coal. And for literally 70 years, Greece's growth and cheap electricity was fueled by essentially one valley in Northern Greece provided all the Lignite that we ever needed. We're at the point where we have to take important and pretty drastic decisions. We're doing it not just to comply with the targets that we have set at the European level, we also do it because burning brown coal in inefficient plants doesn't make economic sense any longer. So we have taken the decision to shut down all our Lignite fired plants by 2028. We will shut all of them bar one, which is a new one we inherited. It's in the process of being completed by 2023. And of course, we're rapidly moving towards natural gas and renewables, natural gas as the obvious transition fuel, and then a much heavier push into renewables to balance out our energy mix. Now the politics, it was one of those decisions which were taken and announced without, I want to be very honest, without a significant degree of public consultation because I felt that as a new prime minister I need to set the bar very high. Surprisingly, even in regions which are directly affected, there is concern, but there wasn't a completely negative reaction because I think people even on the ground understand that they also have to change. We were discussing with France before, would your kids want to work in a coal mine? Probably not. If you can offer them a better job, they would probably prefer that. So the real challenge is, okay, how do we take a region that is very dependent on energy production in terms of jobs and offer these people reasonable alternatives? That's where the European Union kicks in, the Just Transition Fund, which aims to mobilize significant amount of capital to help with this transition. And what I basically told my colleagues is, look, the countries that step up to the plate, we have 30 co-producing regions in the European Union. Those who make the change at a much quicker pace should be rewarded. And my intention is to be at the beginning of the queue and not at the end, because we always know that European funds are relatively finite. So we're sending a very clear signal on that front. Of course, our strategy, CO2 reduction strategy is not limited just to that. We have a very ambitious retrofitting program for public, but also private homes because our homes are still relatively old and there are tremendous efficiencies that you can get by upgrading your buildings, better insulation, better heating, better cooling. And we are giving financial incentives and I think we have very good European programs that have worked extremely well in Greece. A lot of interest in terms of people upgrading their homes as the real estate market is also picking up there's more interest in investing in your properties. We've gone to hotels and told them something relatively simple. We'll give you some additional square meters in terms of your public spaces, in terms of building rights. If you upgrade your infrastructure in terms of energy efficiency, so we're essentially monetizing the transition without us actually paying money. So we have a very broad agenda to reduce CO2, but energy production is going to be particularly important and as we map and as the Green Deal is mapping our path towards carbon neutrality, we all know which sources of energy production are going to be important. Natural gas is very important in the medium term and renewables very important from day one. Big question mark is what do we do with more innovative technologies? Hydrogen, whether we have a hydrogen strategy as a European Union, it's another topic I think of great interest, but I think sometimes you have to set the bar high and then engage people rather than having everything come out of a public consultation process. So I'd like you to reflect on that, right? So the policies need the citizen buy-in. You've done some very ambitious things in the Netherlands and so would love for you to talk about some of the challenges you've faced in trying to get the buy-in from communities, local, sub-national governments around creating these effective policies. It's difficult. There is this tradition in my country that we talk endlessly about everything. Then we decide and then in the implementation phase we can speed up because you know that there is this broad-based buy-in that there's this particular issue that one third of the Netherlands is below sea level. As you like to say, God created Earth, the Dutch created the Netherlands, because we had to reclaim that over the centuries from the sea, Schiphol Airport is four meters below sea level, for example, the second biggest airport in Europe. However, given that tradition, it's very difficult for a government to say, is there going to do it? By the way, in most countries it doesn't work. Yes, I like what you were saying about setting the bar. There it will work. But look at some countries with a very centralistic system. At the end of this parliament or the street or a population in general who will then correct it. So at the end it will only slow down the implementation. So we took on board, everybody had discussions about indeed buildings, what are they emitting, how can we redress that, cars, so infrastructure in general, transportation, of course industry, which has to add another 14.3 megaton in CO2 emission reduction to achieve the target by 2030. So that's a big part of it. And of course, the general citizens in all kinds of ways as it impacts on society. At the end, as I said earlier, we took more time than we thought we had to take. And particularly in that phase, we found that we didn't have the narrative there. And it's crucial that when you take so many people on board that you also have that debate almost on television in the newspapers, that it is not just presented. And because we were not ready and when things started to leak out and were incomplete, it was easier for others to say, okay, this is nothing. It will mean that you have completely to change your lives. Jobs will be destroyed, et cetera. Well, that's exactly what we didn't want. Of course, the aim of all of these policies is to make sure that we are on the forefront of fighting this problem, but at the same time creating that economic growth opportunity. But then, again, we were successful by June. Now it is about implementation. In the implementation phase, again, we have to work broad-based. That's why I'm spending most of my time here with big industries to try to tell them that we want to be their partners in making that change happen and that we need them to do that. Because if they just would leave Europe, then we can have a border carbon tax or a adjustment tax at the border. That's great, but you have a huge leakage of carbon to other parts of the world. So we have to address the problem here and make sure that in terms of the newest technologies, it is Europe where these technologies are created and implemented and I'm absolutely convinced we can do that. Excellent. I want to talk about the different role of stakeholders building off of that. Young people, youth activists. I know you, Mr. Broden, have been meeting with young climate activists and I want to know the role that IKEA has in changing consumer behavior. This is such an important sort of connection to make and I'm curious what you have to share with us about what you're hearing from the young people. Yeah, I think we decided to engage basically. There is a gap out there. There's a lot of anger, frustration and I think it was in New York in September, we heard some grown ups say they got a lot of hope from the youngsters out there. I think we get a lot of anger and frustration, honestly. And from my perspective, I see a lot of solutions. I see a lot of things being implemented, a lot of hope really, but I'm a father of three teenagers and so I have a lot of questions at home and they are well educated in the problems but not in the solutions and the gap there is dangerous because it leads to lack of hope and ultimately cynicism and all sorts of things. So I think we will just try to continue to listen to each other and when we try that, we find that through dialogue we are much closer to each other than what we think and that most people actually want to be part of the solution and not the opposite. So it's, I think one of the elements maybe of the European Green Deal was also to allow that to happen, allow different stakeholders to talk to each other without maybe necessarily being overly stressed about the exact solution. We will find it if we can only provide those platforms. That's what we think. That's exactly right. And on the Green Deal, it is so ambitious for Europe but other continents should be trying to do that and I want to know what kind of advice you have for them but also as an American sitting here, I talked about the sub-national leadership that US cities and states are showing. How are you engaging European cities? What is that sub-national leadership on climate change? How does that get sort of interwoven into your strategies? Well, first of all, the good thing is that the federal government is not on our side but the Americans are. Indeed. So that makes for a great start. You know, General John Allen from Brookings said something brilliant yesterday where he said there's US leadership and there's American leadership and there has been extraordinary American leadership on climate. So I think that's important. That's reality and secondly, Mike Bloomberg and I are co-chair of an organization which is called the Global Covenant of Mayors and there you can bring together all the best practices from all over the world because one of the places where in Europe and globally we need to showcase the fact that we need to make this transition and it can immediately lead to positive results for citizens is in cities. You know, a greening public transport. I want to bring together European cities at such a scale that you can tender not a couple of hundred electric buses but 5,000, 6,000. You bring the price down and you create a new opportunity for European industries. You do that. I want to showcase the best examples of greening cities. You know, we want to plant two billion trees in the next five years but part of that is greening cities and bringing the temperatures in the Mediterranean cities down improving air quality, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. You know that 400,000 Europeans die every year prematurely because of bad air quality and cities can show that we can change this relatively quickly and there's a huge political willingness in cities regardless of the political orientation of the city to do this. Their citizens demand this. But I have to add one thing to this. The biggest danger of that is and I think you see this in America as well as in Europe is that you create a chasm between cities and rural areas. I think cities should also feel more responsibility for the development of rural areas because this industrial revolution has a tendency to favour cities and have the expensive rural areas. And there we need to also have a system of redistribution because at the end of the day, livability in the cities depends on the successful rural area development as well. Absolutely, absolutely. Good point. Prime Minister, I want you to tell us and I want to open up some time for Q&A with the audience and said this is going to be a question for all of you. Davos here, everybody's been talking about collaboration, engaging other stakeholders. In the next year, what would you like to see in terms of a collaboration that could help forward your agenda with the Green Deal? I think we need more. On a domestic level, we clearly need the broader public discourse about the importance of the policies that we are proposing. One interesting thing in Greece is that we don't have a Green Party or if it exists, it's insignificant politically. So I think it is an opportunity certainly for the party that I represent, which is a sort of liberal center-right party to explain why you can do climate, ambitious climate policy in a reasonable way without exaggerating on the one or the other end. So as far as the targets that we have set, you need very specific milestones. Otherwise, there's no way you can reach your target. So we've come up with a national strategy on energy and climate that has very specific targets that we hope we will be able to meet, and that's what we'll be submitting to the European Union. But I think this is also an opportunity to get input from other thought leaders. It's a great privilege and honor for me to see in the audience, his audience, the ecumenical patriarch Bartolomu, who has been a thought leader on Green issues way, way before this problem was actually acknowledged. And I think adding a deeply spiritual dimension to this debate, not just looking at it from the point of view of cost benefit, whether we look at it as an insurance policy against the terrible future or just as an opportunity, but adding a moral dimension to this discussion could only do us good. So let's open it up to people who we would not necessarily consider to be part of maybe of the Davos entourage, and I'm not just talking about your climate activists who sometimes raise the bar so high that it is just impossible to reach it. Prime Minister, the same question, if you don't mind. On that same question, we always thought, I think as politicians, that you have countries and the NGOs and the big international organizations who have to solve problems. I cannot imagine that we can solve this problem without the active participation of the big industries and the big companies. And many of them want this, not all of them, and many of them want this. I think one of the positives of this Davos is that I feel speaking with these companies that, like governments, they are always also telling me that they had spent a little bit too much time on traveling to nice conferences and discussing the need for climate change without actually doing enough. And I believe there is now, and I'm positive about this, a tipping point where the governments are stepping up, but also the big companies. And we need them because they can provide the leadership, also in terms of infrastructure, to take company of Unilever or Shell or DSM, some of the Dutch examples, but you will have them in many European countries and also in America and other parts of the world, which have the worldwide network and the infrastructure impact in terms of being able to roll out the necessary policies and to help us and the NGOs slash UN type of organizations to do this. So we need that triple approach. It is not just us. And if I may add, it's not just about the companies, it's also about the allocators of capital because that's going to become even more important. And if you have big pension funds that are looking 10, 20, 30 years ahead, I mean, they are the ones that would have to put the pressure by their investment decisions on companies, even if they're sort of unwilling to change, to actually engage and discuss seriously about their... So we have to convince them that this is a way to make more profit on their pensions. I never thought I would say this as a socialist, but BlackRock actually gave a good example. Yeah, very stinking. By saying they want to move in that direction. So as a big company, what would you want from the folks on this stage? I think participation, maybe to try some new things that we haven't tried before. We sometimes get into our silos and our old ways and manners. And I think if we put the problem as an opportunity on the table and work a little bit unconventional, I think I'm a believer we need to have legislation that supports this. Carrows and steaks. But it tends to, for the nature of it, take a bit of time sometimes to make that right. But the problems, if you take yesterday, I read the study about the circular economy. So since 1970, we have doubled the population of the planet and quadrupled the use of resources. And the level of recycling has gone down from 9.1 to 8.7 percent something. So it's not heading in a good direction. But the solutions are there, and that's good business. That's going to be the future business. So if we can come around the table and engineer that future and make sure that we don't lead that future from very big review mirrors, we could have smaller review mirrors and a big front window, and then we will create that together. Then I think we will have the same speed as the Commission has pointed out from the beginning, also in implementation. Excellent. I feel like you wanted to talk about that. Just one sentence, because here, governments also can play a positive role. For example, in autonomous driving. This is not your company, but I'm just... You will just remind me of this. Autonomous driving can be a big force also in terms of making transportation overall less carbon dependent. And one of the things we are trying to do in the Netherlands is to make the Netherlands into a sort of test market or parts of the Netherlands for autonomous driving. So I've had a couple of conversations during these days on this issue. But there also you see that business and governments can help. And sometimes you need to tell us what type of regulation you need for you to be able to make these steps. Then of course it is still a political decision where it can be done, but at least we know what you need. And that conversation is crucial. And there's one responsibility governments have that they can't shy away from. And that's looking at taxes. We need to tax carbon and we need to reduce tax on labour. This is a shift that needs to happen. And most countries are hesitant because it creates insecurity because it creates insecurity in terms of the tax revenue a country or another entity can count on. But this is a shift we need to make. And I don't care how you do it. You can put kerosene tax. You can expand the ETS system, the trading system in carbon. You could do whatever. But we need to make we need to show that carbon emissions have a cost on society and we need to make this tax shift so that it doesn't mean that people are going just to pay more taxes. But we'll have see tax relief in other areas that make it easier for them to work. But for a debate, because we cannot agree on anything. I agree in general with your point, but we have to do it in such a way that then that tax on carbon will help the industries to really make the changes we've made. Of course, if it is just flat. No, no, no, we need to earmark that. We need to earmark that and we need to immediately siphon that back into measures that help the transition. We can do that. You know, it's available to us, but we need to muster the courage about the flat tax on CO2 compared to an excess levy on the marginal. So that directly it is conducive for companies to be in the in the best of class, to be the best in class. I think it's more positive than just flat taxes, which will then create more income. We can then re channel into the sector, but that is the government trying to funnel back some money into one concrete example on this on products. We say as European Commission, we need legislation that says you look at the best in market in terms of sustainability, and that will be the norm. And all the rest will be below the norm and will not be allowed in the market. That's not a tax, but it's a huge incentive for industry to produce the best possible material. I think so we have different ways of changing the behavior of producers and consumers. So we have a few minutes and I think it's time to open it up to the audience to hear what they have to say. Who are they're allied with on this issue? Does anybody want to participate with a short comment? Do we have mics? Do we need mics? Oh, I know, I'm just waiting for the mic. Thank you. I'm Hamza Yazdani, I'm a global shaper, I'm a lawyer by profession. Firstly, the panel is predominantly European and Europe as a continent has always been relatively more conscious of being greener than other continents. Climate change, the biggest problem is that it's a one for all, all for one situation and because we have the benefit of politicians, the biggest problem they face is convincing their population that they have to make certain compromises on their lifestyles, as well as the biggest question is who pays for all these incentives? A green new deal would require carbon pricing, which time and again we have seen because of haggling is never enough to deter carbon emissions or there are enough loopholes giving subsidies to greener economies, revoking subsidies to people, other industries. So how do we tackle all these and how do you still convince people to vote for you, despite the fact that you're willing, you're asking them to compromise on their lifestyles and it still may not be enough because there are other countries across the world who would not make those changes. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody want to? What certainly would not work, I think, just a quick answer is for us to lecture the general population on what needs to change. I think we have to acknowledge that there is a widespread acknowledgement of the issue that we are basically, that the planet is warming up and that we have to do something. I think there is a wide agreement, a widespread agreement about that. And then the question is to gather with everybody to come to a plan to change that and to take time to implement that plan and not to all of a sudden force you and me and others to change the lifestyles because that is the fast route to the room type of populist to take over and then nothing will happen at all. And even you and I would vote for the room type of populist because that is not a working policy. So sensible political parties in the broad centre from left to right of centre have to work on policies where broad-based societal support take the timeline, make sure that it fits in with the general realisation that we have to change things. And we have made these transitions in the Netherlands from coal to gas, now from gas to renewables. We are used, I think, as societies in Greece and other parts of Europe to go through these societal changes. And don't underestimate the speed with which citizens already change their lifestyle. Give them some credit. People are doing this in a massive scale. It's still, you know, it's not the largest part of the population but some leadership is shown by society. I hesitate to say this, but it's the truth. We don't always need politicians to say where to go. Mostly citizens know this by themselves. And I see it, especially the younger generations, are showing us the way ahead in a way that I find deeply inspiring. So we have about a minute. So I'm going to look at my colleague at the forum. He is coming out with a mic. All right, I think this gentleman, let's just keep it, keep it. The right to deal is about how to pay. And that you can finish the deal with solid payments. Yes. And I'm afraid that's a big loose end, a loose end, in this striking the deal, how we mentioned it today, and how to divide it. Because the people are all enthusiastic, but as soon as they have to pay, we all know the reaction. So I'm afraid it's still a loose end. How do we pay the end? Because we're planning till 50, and we have to be sure it had to be paid. Well, you know, when German reunification came about, this was a huge task for Germany, nobody said how we're going to pay for this. People said this is something we need to do and then we'll go and look for ways of making it happen. I think we're in the same sort of situation now. We can no longer afford to say, we can't afford to do this. We have to do this. And on top of that, I would say, if we organize it, well, I get two types of people in my office now. Industry coming to my office and saying, we've woken up, we smell the coffee, we know we need to do this, but we're worried because we have trouble getting the investment because the risk is high and our investors and the banks are a bit hesitant. And then I get institutional investors coming to me and saying, we've got all this money, we don't know what to do with it. Can you give us some indication where we should invest? I mean, this is a problem waiting for a solution that should be out there. There's a big answer. And I honestly believe, I honestly believe we can bring this together. If we create synergies, both horizontal and vertical, within industries and between industries, the capital can be mobilized. Because we're talking about in Europe, about 300 billion investment a year. And if I then hear what we're still investing per year in fossil fuel, it's more than that. So we need to have the shift and it will not be a problem, I believe, to find the capital if we bring things together and if we as governments provide some long-term predictability and stability. I think a per... Yeah. We will have this discussion very soon at the European level. Because we are discussing the next multi-annual financial framework. And then we'll have to decide whether we can do agriculture, cohesion, and climate at the same time. And agriculture is important because those are the people who will be left behind if you don't support them so you can't lose them. At the same time, you clearly need some more money to do the more ambitious climate policies on that front. So my dear friend Mark, this is certainly going to be a very interesting discussion. We're going to have with the council. But the money's going to be a small part of it. No, but it's an indication of commitment to the private sector. Mr. Ritt, I think this is the perfect ending to a session called Striking the New Green Deal, is that we can no longer afford to not do it. Thank you all so much for your time today. Thank you for being on our show today.