 If governments don't completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2040, society is doomed, says Jeff Nesbitt, author of This Is The Way The World Ends. That kind of apocalyptic rhetoric costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet, says Bjorn Lombord, the author of False Alarm. Are fossil fuels an imminent threat to human life, or are attempts to eliminate them more destructive? That was the subject of an Oxford-style online Soho Forum debate hosted on Sunday, October 18, 2020. Arguing in favor of the complete elimination of fossil fuels over 20 years was Nesbitt, who's the executive director of Climate Nexus. He went up against Lombord, who's the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Here's Jeff Nesbitt and Bjorn Lombord in an online debate moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein. Again, tonight's resolution reads, to combat climate change, the world's leaders must make it their highest priority to completely replace the burning of fossil fuels within the next 20 years. I'll be keeping track of time to debaters and will briefly interrupt each of you to say when you have five minutes left and one minute left. Jeff, you're first up to defend the resolution. Jane, please close the initial vote and take it away, Jeff. Okay, great. So I wanted to thank you all for letting me talk to you this evening about meeting the climate moment and why I'm arguing that we need to go as fast as we can as quickly as we can. Today, I'm not going to talk about IPCC reports, parts per million of carbon dioxide, two degrees Celsius, climate models, cap and trade schemes, carbon taxes, economic theory, or polar bears. Instead, I'm going to start with my book. It's called This Is The Way The World Ends. And I'll just a quick note for those of you who are authors. I did not choose the title for this book, My Publisher Dead. I think I'm 0 for 27 with my books in terms of titles for my books. But I wrote the book to shift the discussion. I wanted to shift the discussion with thought leaders, with the media. I wanted to describe how climate impacts are happening right now, not 50 years from now. So we all see it right now. We see climate change with our own eyes. Hurricanes are stronger and faster. Wildfires are more intense. Extreme flooding is catastrophic. Heat waves are scarier. Ice shelves are melting more. Sea levels and storm surges are rising. And on hurricanes, I just want to say this. I'm not saying there are more of them or even that climate change is causing them. What I'm saying is that climate change is making them worse. And the impacts are here right now, not 40 or 50 years from now. They're dramatically affecting water resources across the planet. They're impacting hundreds of millions of species right now. They're driving dangerous geopolitical strategies, which I talk a lot about in my book and I'll get to those in just a second. They're creating huge climate risks for businesses, insurance companies, and financial groups. Virtually every species on earth is on the move. Half of all species are experiencing local extinctions right now. And for those who don't know what local extinctions are, it means when a species can't move fast enough, can't migrate fast enough, they go extinct in that part of the world. About 80% of migrating species are doing so because of quote, physical constraints on their habitats. Extinction rates are 100 times what we might expect. Two thirds of all species on earth have shifted to earlier spring breeding, migrating, or blooming. Earth's third poll, the Himalayas, is under serious duress. The Himalayas, for those who are familiar with it, they're really the engine of the climate system. They're the primary source of water for a billion people. Temperature increases there are now double the global average. Glaciers that took thousands of years to grow are vanishing in just 25 years. And in fact, and I talk about this in the book, the Chinese just opened up their research that they've had underway in the Himalayas for the last 50 years or so, and hundreds of glaciers in the one small part of the Himalayas they studied have entirely vanished in the past generation. So if you extrapolate from there, that means that thousands of smaller glaciers have disappeared entirely. The melting rate for the biggest glaciers is accelerating. It's doubled in just one generation. The world's pollinators are disappearing as well. And that's not good. So climate change is crushing bumblebee species in both North America and Europe. This comes from a United Nations, a special report with experts on pollinators that they gathered on an emergency basis to study what's happening with the pollinators. And what they found is that they've retreated 200 miles from their historic ranges in just a generation. But that still quite honestly isn't fast enough. Nearly all of the 20,000 species of pollinators are equally stressed. Hundreds of billions of dollars from our food supply every single year are at risk. So what about climate's evil twin, ocean acidification? For the longest time, the two were not linked. Ocean health, ocean acidification, and climate change up in the atmosphere really were not linked. But folks have started to do that very closely. First of all, oceans are a carbon sink. And second of all, they can actually affect what goes on in the atmosphere. 550 billion tons of carbon dioxide have dissolved in the oceans since the pre-industrial revolution times. That's a dangerous change in its chemistry. Oceans have grown 30% more acidic in the past 100 years. That's the fastest change we've ever discovered. We've all heard about the collapse of the great coral reefs that's been documented quite well. But the last time we saw ocean chemistry changes like this, 55 million years ago during a mass extinction event. And just one final note I'd like to add, phytoplankton has dropped 6% in 30 years. And as if you know ocean chemistry, phytoplankton is what drives oxygen in the oceans. And that level, 6% in 30 years, is already affecting oxygen levels. Meanwhile, the Arctic is changing right before our eyes. I know folks early on in the climate discussion started to focus on polar bears. I'm not talking about polar bears here. Permanent ice, which is known as multi-year ice, has shrunk 20% to just 2% in 30 years. The jet stream has been wobbling for a decade now. And that jet stream wobbling effect affects extreme weather events in both North America and Europe. The truth sadly is this, the Arctic is going through an ecosystem regime change right now. A big pivotal study that involved a half dozen countries recently found 19 separate ecosystem shifts underway at an unprecedented pace. The Great Green Wall in North Africa, which was conceived as literally hundreds of millions of trees are on the desert, it won't save the Sahel. Despite that $4 billion pledge to build a wall of trees around the desert, it won't save the nations in around the Sahel. And one caveat, when I started to research my book, I really believed that that pledge would help, that you'd have those trees, they would hold back the desert. The truth is it doesn't. In one example, which I described in the book, they planted 15 million trees in one of the countries around the Sahel and they died within three months. So that's not going to solve this problem. Thousands of farms are being swallowed up. Two thirds of Africa's arable land could be lost in just the next 10 years. Half of the world's population now depends on food imports. So all of this has profound implications in that part of the world. Most of us now see what are called domes of heat on a regular basis. Cities in the subtropics, and again the subtropics is where climate scientists have said for quite some time that we're going to start to see the most severe impacts from global warming. So right now, cities in the subtropics keep setting records for the hottest temperatures in human history. Record highs, outnumber, record lows now, two to one. That imbalance, you would expect it to be 50, roughly 50-50, is one of the clearest climate signals we have. In fact, meteorologists had to add a new zone for Australia, Australia, a purple zone on top of their existing graphics and charts. Heatwaves kill tens of thousands every few years now on a regular basis. Category 6 hurricanes, and by the way, there is no such thing as a Category 6 hurricane. You only go up to Category 5, but if there were Category 6 hurricanes and there were that chart, they're just around the corner. In fact, we've probably already seen a few. Hurricanes now intensify much faster and they drop more rain. They're fueled by warmer oceans. They're carrying 8% more water circulating in the atmosphere, which is what drives these extreme precipitation events, which means that some coastal cities are becoming uninsurable right now because of the risk of catastrophic flooding. Water wars have already begun in the subtropics, and I spend a lot of time on this, on the geopolitical implications of climate impacts right now throughout the subtropics. Climate scientists, in fact, and environmental groups saw Yemen's civil unrest coming before others did. When the water ran out, the internal wars began. Saudi Arabia has drained its aquifer. It's effectively out of water. And granted, there are multiple reasons for that. They grew wheat when they shouldn't have. They drain the aquifer. They traditionally don't give very much rain, but climate sits over the top like the 800-pound gorilla and has driven them to this situation. It's one of the reasons, again, why they're buying land for food in places like Arizona. They're scouring for land for food up and down the Nile right now. A multi-year drought in Syria drove farmers off the land and into the cities. That, in turn, created a political crisis. Water scarcity in Jordan is making the Palestinian refugee problem much worse. Again, I'm not saying that climate change is the cause of that, but it's certainly driving it combined with mistakes that they're making on water distribution and how they're dealing with their water infrastructure. Water scarcity also creates instability. The lack of water in Samaya has made it nearly uninhabitable and very dangerous. Pakistan and India have nearly gone to war over water issues in Kashmir. A water war there seems inevitable. In India, there are emerging scientific studies that show the monsoon might become unstable. That will affect a billion people. And because of the situation with the Gobi Desert, China is now buying virtually every soybean on the planet. These are some of the geopolitical stories I talk about in my book and I want to be clear about this. These are very real costs. They are affecting much more than just a small fraction of the global economy right now. But there is some good news in all of this. We have a blueprint. We'll need $90 trillion in new infrastructure in the next 15 years. This is going to happen whether we have a climate and clean energy strategy or not. And I'll add, this build out isn't based on hypothetical economic theories. It's based on need. We have two political conversations going on right now. They're on parallel tracks. Environmentalists focus on climate change, the business and investment community focuses on energy and cost. I've been arguing for years that we need just one conversation. And to really make this work, we need a transition. We have to go from green to blue. We need to change the paradigm from green or save the planet to blue, which effectively means save humanity. We have the technological communications and science capacity. World output has doubled since 1980. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. But two and a half billion people still live on less than $2 a day. They're the energy poor. And I'll say this right now. Of course, we should focus on their needs. We also need to recognize this. The age of fossil fuels is coming to an end. We have the technological capacity to replace fossil fuels for electricity and cars within 15 years. Micro grids and battery storage can power the energy needs for the energy poor. Utility companies are choosing renewable energy over natural gas right now. Transportation companies are placing similar bets and they're not betting on fossil fuels. So are major financial institutions. They finally see both the climate risks and economic opportunity. A renewable energy future is in reach right now. Wind, sunlight and water sources are 55 times what we need each year by 2030, 10 years from now. Analysts say we'll need 17 terawatts of energy in the year 2030. We have 667 terawatts of available solar, wind and water energy right now. Utility... Five minutes. Five minutes. Utility scale so... Thanks, Jane. Utility scale solar and wind energy is now cost competitive. It'll be the cheapest new build within five years. Electric vehicles are also at that inflection point. It's why California just banned gas powered cars by 2035. Others will follow. And I'd like to say this emphatically while I'm certainly not opposed to it, we do not need breakthrough technology. We don't need to research this for 30 years. We just need to deploy what we have now. And I'll tell you, China gets it. They're racing toward a clean energy future. China said they'll peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. They see a major disruption of current electric power and car business models by 2030. China's doubling its renewable energy capacity each year now. It'll add more generating capacity for renewables by 2035 than the United States, Europe, and Japan combined. Because of this, clean energy solutions will they'll receive two-thirds of the $5 trillion invested in new power plants in the next 10 years. So if you don't believe that change can happen very quickly, I want you to think about this. Google and Amazon incorporated in 1995. Both of them had upended established industries within 15 years. Google offered the New York Times a 25% stake early on. The New York Times said no. They didn't see the Internet threatening publishing. Tech industry titans like Facebook, Google, and Amazon now dominate the global economy and it took less than 20 years. A clean energy economy is truly the next big thing. And the analysts see it. Energy exploration and cheap power drove the global economy in the 19th century. The tech industry drove it in the 20th. I would argue clean energy is poised to be the 21st century's economic opportunity. And no one honestly wants to be the next blockbuster or Sears or Toys or Us, Borders, Minolta, or Kodak. The truth is decarbonizing the economy will create jobs. There's a recent report by a group called Rewiring America that shows electrifying everything in America by 2035, that's 15 years from now, creates 25 million jobs. Electrifying everything would also save the average family $2,000 a year in energy costs. All 50 states in America can transition to 90% clean energy in just 15 years with no additional consumer costs. It's why clean energy jobs are growing nearly twice as fast as any other sector in America. Even the oil and gas majors not clearly see this, they see this future. BP just announced it'll increase its low carbon business investment 10-fold in the next decade. It'll increase its investments in this area $5 billion a year. And it will immediately shrink its oil and gas production by 40%. So do other oil and gas majors. Royal Dutch Shell, ENI of Italy, Total of France, Repsol of Spain, Equinor of Norway, all 10-year targets, which leaves Exxon and Mobile and Chevron to fight for oil for the next 20 to 30 years. So I'll say right off the bat that it's true, it could take 20 years to switch out a billion internal combustion engine cars. But the electric vehicle trend is accelerating and it's impossible to ignore. Tesla's battery that might last a million years and cars that compete on price are obvious examples. And Volkswagen is clearly becoming an electric vehicle company now. So are others. Meanwhile, the age of electric cars is dawning ahead of schedule. Battery prices are dropping much faster than analysts expected. 80% in just 12 years. Analysts also say electric vehicles won't need government incentives in the near future. VW is ID.3, same price as a Gulf. Tesla Model 3, same as a BMW 3 series. China's NEO company sees price parity in just three years by 2023. And when electric vehicle prices match internal combustion engine sticker prices across the board, the race to switch is on. So I'll predict this. Renewable energy will win the fight with fossil fuels in less than 20 years. Berkeley had a 2035 grid study that shows all 50 states in America can reach 90% renewable power in just 15 years. The Rockefeller Foundation has a microgrid solution to solve India's cheap power needs. Even the airline industry is decarbonizing. Airbus will have zero carbon prices, zero carbon planes within 15 years. The world's Fortune 500 companies see it as well. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Unilever all have 2030 targets. Others are moving even faster. The U.S. Commodities Future Trading Commission has a new report that sees climate risks. And this is what financial institutions are finally seeing. Chase, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Bank of America, Citibank all are looking to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to look at climate risk transparency or to study their emissions. Even huge numbers of Americans want to act right now. Two-thirds across the board. They want 100% clean energy. They want Congress to act. They want climate policies to spur innovation. They want a multi-trillion dollar stimulus. And they even want to retrain workers in fossil fuel industries who lose their jobs. So to closing, we have a choice. A clean energy future is within our grasp. We have the technology, the investment incentives, and the political will. There's no reason at all to rely on fossil fuels for much longer. Disruptive energy sector changes can clearly happen on 20-year time horizons. And the clean energy transition designed to meet this climate moment will be known different. And I'm certain we can meet that challenge. And then one last set of slides. Yeah, if you're at 50 seconds, 30 seconds in the hole. All right. But I just want to show these just really quickly. This is Fifth Avenue. It's the turn of the century. Yes. This is Fifth Avenue in New York during the Easter parade at the turn of the 20th century. The parade was all horse-drawn carriages. Ten years later, same Easter parade, same Fifth Avenue, they were all cars. Change can occur that rapidly. Thanks. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Bjorn, I'm going to give you an extra 45 seconds to match Jeff's. And hopefully, you'll make the most of those extra 45 seconds. Speaking for the negative, Bjorn Lumberg, take it away, Bjorn. Good. And Jeff, thanks a lot for your presentation. I'm very glad that it also took a little bit of time to get your slides up and running. So now I can fumble around as well. Yeah, can I just say, by the way, I got a ding at the start. So, you know, so for taking time to set it up, I just wanted to say it. Yeah, you guys are great. You guys are great. Jeff, let Bjorn spear on. Thank you very much. Great. All right. Hey, thank you, guys. So look, first of all, let's, and, you know, I had to prepare these slides before I knew what Jeff was going to talk about. So let me just, most of it is going to address directly what Jeff talks about. But let's just get this out of the way. Climate change is real. It's man-made. It is a problem. So our conversation really here is a question of policy. So the question is, should we eliminate fossil fuels in 20 years? And to answer that, I think we need to look at a few key points. So let me just summarize what I'm going to go through here. The first one, of course, is how big is the challenge of climate change? Jeff's presentation makes you believe, my God, this is really sort of end of the world kind of stuff. That's not the correct answer. It's a moderate problem in the world of problems big and small. It is an issue. It's not the end of the world. And that, of course, matters in the terms of how much are we willing to spend on this. Then the second question is, how much good will this end fossil fuels in 20 years do? How much good will it actually produce? I will show you the evidence from the UN climate panel that indicates that this will do some good. Roughly if we adjust it towards the global GDP, it will roughly be equivalent to each one of us becoming about 2% better off. Remember, when I'm measuring this in GDP, doesn't mean that everything is measurable in GDP. It simply means it gives us an understanding of what is the size of this when you try to incorporate all the different challenges. Many of the non-markets, many of them, you know, disappearing wetlands and many of the problems. So also, how much bad will this proposed policy do? Because obviously, it has cost, and I'll get back to that because Jeff sort of alluded to, maybe it won't cost money at all, it will. But how much will it cost? Well, turns out that it will have quite a lot of cost, likely around 16% of GDP. Now, spending 16% of GDP to avoid 2% cost is a bad deal. That's the fundamental reason why this is a very bad proposal. This does not mean we should not be focusing on, and I'm a little surprised that my clicker doesn't work anymore. This is the kind of thing that you don't want to see. Apparently, my computer just decided to halt. So overall, more bad than good, and we should still do climate policy, and I'll get back to that, but we should do it smartly. I'm not sure my computer seems to be freezing of a little bit. Anyway, how big of a problem let me go through these three points that I tried to make. So the first one is what is the big environmental problems? Let's just take a look at the, how is the world's most deadliest environmental problems? A lot of people would tend to believe that that's global warming. They would be very, very wrong. So very clearly, some of the biggest problems is indoor and outdoor air pollution, which is only marginally related to fossil fuel use. It's about 20% that comes from fossil fuel use. Unsafe water led, unsafe sanitation, hand washing ozone, only then comes global warming at about 140,000. This is the World Health Organization estimate from 2020, the rest of the global burden of disease, 2019. Yes, global warming will in 2050 be a little higher up to about 250,000, but it'll still be much, much smaller. So it's important to have a sense of proportion. Yes, global warming is a problem by no means it's not the most important environmental problem. It is indeed not the world's biggest problem by any standard. Of course, the biggest problem in the world is arguably poverty, which kills about a third of all people that die every year. So again, we need to get a sense of proportion. This does not make global warming unimportant, but it makes it very important that we don't over focus on global warming to the detriment of all the other challenges that we face. This is also why when the UN asked the world, this is the biggest survey that we've had. They asked about 10 million people what are your top priorities? This is the answer that people across the world gave us. They told us it's education, health, jobs, corruption, nutrition, whereas action on climate change came at the very bottom of 16 of 16. Again, we're an advanced civilization. It doesn't mean we can't do many things at once, but it's important that we don't over focus on global warming. And again, then why do we know how big of an impact global warming has? Well, we do that because climate economics have been spending the last 30 years. This is from the last UN report in 2014. It's also from the only climate economist who got the Nobel Prize, Nordhaus. Well, Nordhaus at Yale who's done these estimates. And again, I'm sorry, it looks like it shifted a little bit because I just moved it to another computer, but there you are. It's roughly true. So what it shows us as temperatures get higher and higher, you get more and more negative impact on the world. This is Nordhaus best estimate of what the total damage cost is. What it tells you is at a realistic impact, we're going to see somewhere between two and four percent of total global decline in GDP from global warming. That is a problem, but again, not by any means the end of the world. And this is not just Nordhaus model. This is also what the page and the fund model shows. These are three models that the Obama administration used as its foundation to make an estimate for the social cost of carbon. So if we have this setup and we hear that global warming is going to cost us a couple percent, but not this end of the world stuff, you got to ask yourself why is that I hear something entirely different in the news? And you also heard that from Nespot's presentation just a little while ago. Well, the answer is that we often hear the story without adaptation. Let me just show you this one study, but there's many, many of these studies. If we look at flooding, that was one of the things that Jeff mentioned. Flooding right now is estimated to cost about 3.4 million people being flooded. The cost is about $11 billion in cost, $13 billion in diet costs per year. That leads to a total cost of 0.05% of global GDP from flood cost. That's not as big as I think you might have imagined, but it's not trivial. However, if you then look at a world that is going to be much warmer, that will have much higher population and much higher cost, what will happen as sea levels rise? This is the typical answer that you hear that because we do not adapt, you will actually have huge costs. You will see a situation where 187 million people are going to get flooded every year. It'll have a cost of $55 trillion. This is the typical argument that you hear with no adaptation. 5% of global GDP at 100 fold increase in costs. But what that neglect, of course, is that we will adapt. All of these models assume that we will adapt and this is what you actually see if we adapt. We will see fewer people flood it. We will see higher costs, yes, but that's mostly because we're richer. We'll also see much higher cost from a dyke cost. But overall, the total cost in proportion of GDP will actually decline almost 10 fold. What that tells you is that you hear stories that are very, very good for headlines that gets great amounts of attention, but that are not realistic. Global warming again is a problem. It would be a disaster if we did nothing towards it, but it's not going to be a disaster because nobody imagines that we're going to do nothing about it. That's why global warming is a moderate problem and then one we need to ask well, how much is it going to cost us to actually tackle it? So how much good will we get from this proposed policy proposal? Well, we know that many of the policies that you think will have a lot of impact actually will do fairly little. Even extreme policies like all of the rich world stop all their CO2 emissions tomorrow. If you run that through the UN climate panel model it will reduce temperatures by the end of the century by just 0.8 degree Fahrenheit much less than what most people would probably imagine. So how much good will this cost? Well, ending fossil fuels in 20 years will likely land us around two degrees centigrade. We know how much good that will do because the UN climate panel report from 2018 actually very specifically tells us if we do nothing it will cost the world it will cost further damages of 2.6 percent. If we get to two degrees it'll get us to 0.5 percent instead. So doing nothing will cost damage worth 2.6 percent. Ending fossil fuels in 20 years will cost damage worth 0.5 percent. So the benefit will be to avoid 2.1 percent of GDP damages. That's the simple answer to what's the cost and what's the benefit. But there'll also be a cost. Of course there is a cost and here I think we need to address head-on something that Jeff also seems to indicate that oh my god this is going to be cheap. Well no across Europe we've seen that the more renewable energy you put in the higher the cost. This is not because individual solar panels are not cheaper. They are much cheaper now than they used to be and they're possibly even cheaper than new fossil fuels. But of course it's only cheaper when the sun is shining when the sun is not shining it's actually infinitely costly and that's why you can't actually easily supply the world with renewable energy. That's also why when the UN climate panel did their modeling they found that of 128 models all 128 models had real cost. So the story that you often hear is the standard slightly schizophrenic story on the one hand renewables will inevitably take over as they get cheaper and on the other hand that this is going to be a Herculean World War II sort of mobilization kind of effort. I think actually that Jeff landed most in the top one that this is going to be cheap. We don't even need to have this conversation then of course I wonder why we're having this debate because then we don't need to decide anything it's just going to happen. There's a little bit of truth and a lot of misdirection that argument. No, this is going to be phenomenally expensive and I'll show you why. We do have estimates not for how much this is going to cost but we do have reasonable estimates of some policy estimates that are close to this. So let me just show you how absurd this proposal that we're going to stop in 20 years. Let me go back to 1800 when in 1800 we got almost all of the world's energy from renewable energy in 94 percent. We've spent the last 170 years getting rid of renewables and for the last 50 years we've stayed pretty stably at about 13 to 14 percent. This is mostly developing countries using bad fuels like wood, dung, cardboard inside their homes to cook and keep warm. Even today we're at 14 percent renewables. If we look at the Paris Agreement this is the International Energy Agency if we totally fulfill Paris we'll get almost to 20 percent more realistically to about 16 percent. If you look at all the UN basic scenarios they have five scenarios we will in the very best scenario get to 45 percent by the end of the century. So this is important to get a sense of proportion over the last 300 sorry last 200 years in the next 100 years we're basically likely to get rid of fossil fuels in the very best case maybe get back to 50 percent. However what Jeff wants you to do is to do this go from about 14 percent today to 100 percent in two decades. This is not going to happen but if we try to estimate how much is this going to cost it is going to be phenomenally costly. We don't know exactly how much because there's literally nobody has ever cost at such an extreme policy but there are two other studies that do indicate what the cost is to get 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 so a longer timeline and less ambitious timeline will cost somewhere between five and 10 percent of GDP every year to get to 100 percent to by 2050 so the 100 percent that Jeff proposes but further down the line for New Zealand will cost somewhere between 16 and 32 percent of GDP so it's realistic that this will be very costly and of course it will fail to get implemented for a very simple reason remember the Washington Post last year asked people we have many of these surveys they found that two-thirds of all Americans think global warming is really important and if you ask them as Jeff posed the question do you want a trillion dollar green package they'll say yes but if you actually ask them will you pay for it they'll say no more than half of the U.S. population weren't willing to spend $24 a year remember the Biden climate package is going to cost about $1,500 per person in the U.S. and of course getting these 16 percent of GDP even just 5 percent of GDP in the U.S. by 2050 will cost about $12,500 per person per year thank you so no this is not going to happen and that's of course why we need to recognize look the cost of the policy ending fossil fuels will vastly be outweighed will vastly outweigh its benefits that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything means we should start tackling climate change smartly and so let me just very briefly say what we should be doing we should have a realistic carbon tax I know that Jeff has talked about $40 per ton I probably think that's a little optimistic but let's just go with that but that's certainly not going to solve all the problem we should also look at adaptation and mostly we should look at lots of green innovation and I'm sure that's one of the places places we're going to be discussing Jeff told you we have all the technology we need no we don't and there's a lot of reasons for that Bill Gates famously said that we we're short about two dozen great innovations to get there that's why we and my organization has been arguing for a long time we should be spending about a hundred billion dollars on research and development into green energy every year the world spends about 20 billion dollars right now so that's a five-fold increase that would help enormously because the trick here is to make sure that we actually get green energy to be so cheap that everyone will want to switch rather than right now as we have to do twist everybody's arm to get a little bit of reduction in CO2 emissions but let's not do the dumb stuff and that is this proposal ending fossil fuels in 20 years is spectacularly wasteful way of helping a little it'll likely fail it will make us ignore the policies that will fix climate when we're so focused on getting all of our fossil fuels out and get renewables in we forget to invest in innovation we forget to invest in a carbon tax which we've seen fail most places around the world if you forget to focus an adaptation but it also means that we ignore the solutions that for most people around the world matter a lot more the ones that matter much more the ones that help much more the ones that'll help much faster and help at a much lower cost like for instance education nutrition and health so the fundamental point here that I'm trying to make is simply to make us realize yes global warming is a real problem it's a moderate problem we should make smart policies but we should not please not make the policies that will make us incredibly much worse off and that will also fail and that will make us forget all the other issues that we really need to focus on so thank you very much I'm looking very much for it to a great conversation with you Jeff and all the questions from the audience thank you Blyne we now go to the rebuttal part of the debate five minutes for you Jeff to rebut take it away Jeff so first I just wanted to say at the opening I enjoyed the presentation Bjorn you are clearly a statistician you chart after chart after chart lots of statistics so I enjoyed that so I also want to say very quickly I even though I say we don't need to have innovation I'm a big fan of innovation I'm a big fan of R&D I mean I spent years of my life at the National Science Foundation and first in the Bush administration then the Obama administration I clearly believe that lots more research and innovation can only help so I want to get that out of the way I also want to say that I like I my organization helped launch the climate leadership council which advocates for a $40 card and tax we've put out the statements from hundreds of economists I'd love to see a card and tax I just don't think it's politically realistic I don't think it's it's clearly not feasible in the United States and finally there's no question that we're going to have to adapt I think that's obvious that we're going to have to adapt so where this sort of bulls down to is as I view this Bjorn is arguing this as a moderate problem maybe not so big a problem I'm saying clearly it is a big problem it has interlocking whitsaw impacts across the board on other things but I will also see this I just want to point my son runs a global public health organization that is working on the front lines with community health workers my wife is a physical therapist my daughter is a physician works in medical poverty my son is a lawyer who represents migrant workers there are lots of big problems and so I just want to just put that out there I'm not saying there aren't other big problems so what it boils down to is one is climate change a big problem as I'm arguing or a moderate or non-existing problem as Bjorn's arguing and is there going to be exorbitant costs so let's go to the cost equations so I know Bjorn you're a big fan of William Nordhaus his dice theory I get it he says the GDP costs are huge enormous but there's another Nobel prize-winning economist for economic science Joseph Stiglitz he in next turn had their own panel and which was supported by the World Bank where he was the chief economist he says that isn't true at all climate goals can be achieved with a moderate price well within the range of what global the global economy absorbs from variable energy prices now I'll be the first one to admit I'm not an economist I would let Joseph Stiglitz argue that as opposed to me I'm a writer and a journalist to interviews folks and you know pulls that away from that Nordhaus also in my opinion and others that I've talked to severely underestimates the damage from climate change climate impacts as I think I've tried to show and I've written about in my book that are cited by hundreds of studies aren't limited to just a few outdoor places so the impact that it's somehow only going to be two three four percent is not true you know just look at things like a certification rising sea levels storm surges water scarcity in the subtropics food insecurity biodiversity changes that create pandemics I'm not saying that climate change causes these but they're clearly interlocked with them that's a lot of impact across the board and so I think how we how we how we how we disaggregate this the climate change pure climate change impacts with these whipsaw effects I think is important to understand I'll also say that climate change fuels extreme events there there's lots of attribution study this studies in the scientific literature that's now starting to show this and I will also say in terms of GDP loss just in one year alone in 2017 the United States lost one and a half percent of its GDP from these extreme events and again I can you know just anticipating where you're going to come at this Bjorn I'm not saying that these hurricanes or these extreme events are caused by climate change and that's the sole reason for the property and loss of life but they're clearly interlocked and so the question is how much are they responsible for it I think I think we can have a reasonable debate about that the arguments I would also that your arguments they really don't take into what's known as tail risk and somebody I've learned from Hank Paulson who is the secretary of the treasury his risky risky business report was issued out of my own organization Hank also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times where he talks about this tail risk he calls it a a climate risk bubble again this is Hank Paulson who laid out who helped save the United States economy coming out of a recession so I think you would want to take it seriously when a guy like Hank Paulson a Republican treasury secretary says tail risk and climate risk bubbles are real we need to pay very close attention to it that's what I do so I take that and finally I'll just say I don't think it's right for us to ignore or discount the environmental and societal impact of climate change on future generations so I'm uneasy with talking about costs now and benefits for generations in the future that somehow we can incur costs now for benefits in the future and I'll just say I know this is a terrible analogy but I'll just use it anyway I have three kids my wife and I paid for their college education that's a cost right now for a future benefit it's a pretty simple equation I think that we can do that as a society as well Thank you Jeff five minutes for you Bjorn, take it away Thank you so Jeff thank you very much and I also enjoyed your presentation a lot and I think you're absolutely right that we should you know really boil this conversation down to the two questions of is this a big problem I you somehow mentioned that I was almost suggesting that it's not a problem well that's not what I'm saying right but that it's a more moderate problem which I think the overwhelming literature and certainly also the UN climate panel tells us that it is but I think much more importantly so you were talking about is it going to be an exorbitant cost I think it's important to recognize that none of the policies that we've done so far have come out cheaper they've come out much more expensively so the EU 2020 policy which is the best study policy that we can now see how much cost it was the EU said it would cost 0.5% of GDP the the big climate models that came out of the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum showed that it would cost about 1% of GDP but unfortunately the EU decided to implement it in a rather foolish way as politicians often like to do which ended up costing about 2% of GDP now it's important to recognize that none of these will bring the EU to the poor house and so I think your point is right in saying of course we can do this we can spend 16% of GDP and remember by 2015 especially by 2100 we will be much much richer so again to go to your college analogy for your kids clearly you want to leave your kids with smart stuff and and generationally one of the things that we found is one of the best ways to leave your kids and future generations is through knowledge and through a technology of resources so basically make sure that kids are the next generation have lots of resources lots of knowledge that they will be able to figure out the problems that will come in the next generations the next two generations but let's just make sure that we actually do that you gave your kids a college education I'm pretty sure if you were the weird dad who had decided to invest all of his money in I don't know model trains you went first with a bad analogy so I can just go on along with that I'm pretty sure they'd be pretty annoyed if you'd given them all your resources and model trains and you'd be like all excited about it the point is of course we should make sure we leave our kids and future generations with really good stuff it's very hard to know what is good stuff in a hundred years you showed the Mayday sorry East Parade from New York remember you see switches very very quickly when there's an obvious benefit to individuals one of the big problems with climate policy is that there's no obvious individual benefit if we really get the climate revolution right sorry if we get the energy revolution right you will get exactly the same amount of your plugs as you used to get namely stable cheap electric power at the very best it'll just feel like nothing changed at worst of course it'll feel like oh my god I only get it when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining which I think nobody really wants so the point here is it's a very different technology transition it's only one that is driven by cost there's no other great thing you want it a car rather than a horse because it was cheaper it was better in so many different ways you want it to switch to google because it was so much better than using the library you want it to switch to a cell phone because it was so much better than waiting at a a wide phone and all these other things most innovations have been great because they changed something we're actually talking about I'm making an innovation that will change nothing and that's why this is going to be about cost and I think we can't really ignore the fact that all of these studies so the UN climate panel very clearly tells us that all of these impacts will have cost yes we'll get of jobs but you get jobs no matter what you do the point is you get jobs when you have someone doing productive stuff but you don't get much welfare if you do unproductive stuff thank you very much so the sorry did you say one minute well yes yes yes yes yes good great so fundamentally you're right we're basically down to is this the end of the world and I understand why a lot of people will present as the end of the world both it's a much easier and much nicer story to tell it also makes it much easier to say we got to spend anything you know obviously if this was an asteroid hurtling towards earth we should spend everything we should send you know Bruce will is up there and fix it and that only works for people of the older generation right but the but the point is it is not such a thing it is a problem and unfortunately your solution the 20 year solution of going entirely fossil free is not only I think absolutely unrealistic but if we try to do it be phenomenally expensive and there's no good reason to believe that that is not exactly what that will happen thank you thank you Bjorn all right we now go to the Q&A portion of the evening we have questions that came in from the audience and the first rule of Q&A is that any either of the debaters at any time have the prerogative to ask the other a question and I'll begin by asking if you want to exercise the prerogative now or wait for questions Jeff would you like to pose a question to Bjorn at this moment or wave the opportunity until later yeah I have a couple of questions I'd ask I'd like to ask Bjorn do I just go ahead go ahead or okay the first is that's the first and then we'll get to the second go ahead okay Bjorn you talk about but the you know about that if the rich world which we're talking about the EU and the United States and several others if they act it's still not going to have enough of an impact well of course that's true I mean it you know but that's not what we're talking about the Paris climate agreement was every country in the world China has committed to to to doing things if China alone acts that's 17 percent of the problem so and India is all a bigger so so my question is is that fair to just focus on if the rich world acts and the rest of the world doesn't is that is that a fair way to address impacts no yeah and and it's a good question I think it's worthwhile because we have this conversation in the rich world it mostly is the rich world conversation it mostly is in the rich world where there's conversation about actually going actively net zero by 2050 you're right that China I think mostly strategically have come out and said that they want to peak in 2030 and that they want to go carbon neutral in 2060 if you read their document they also promise that they'll go democratic by 2050 so I think it gives us a sense of what we can realistically expect I think it depends a lot on what will happen in in the far future if we manage to innovate the prices of green energy down below fossil fuels and we also have a way to make sure that that just doesn't work when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing which either mean batteries it means much better biomass right now biomass I think is a terrible choice but it could become a really good choice or nuclear power or or or fusion there are many other ways that we can imagine this but if some of these things come true of course everybody is going to jump on the on the bandwagon you mentioned for instance electric cars I think many people are going to switch to electric cars over the next 10 years we should also just have a sense of proportion of what that's going to do so the international energy agency estimates that if we actually successfully managed to get to 360 million electric cars about a third by 2030 it will reduce carbon emissions by about one percent this is a very small part of the solution and it's the easy one and it's not going to solve transportation needs in general it's going to solve rather niche problem it's great thing I I love the fact that it's happening I hate the fact that we're right now spending $10,000 in subsidies in each electric car we should not be doing that well the U.S. is spending what $7,500 in California in California you also give a top up so I think it becomes $10,000 right many other countries they're spending about you know somewhere between six and $10,000 that's a terrible idea but again innovations can come and you know the electric car for some parts is going to be a great innovation and great that'll happen but this only shows that's the kind of solution that we need in a lot of different areas sorry I think I meandered a little bit away from your question Jeff okay I'll hold you a second question Jeff I want to I want to put the ball back in Jeff's to Bjorn's question do you have a question for Jeff if you want to weigh it I think it's much more fun to hear the audience questions I hope we might be able to get back to questions to each other but I think we want to get others in we'll be getting to audience questions but Jeff has a second question for you I'll do that yeah and I actually think it's just in line with what what you were just talking about Bjorn so I very quickly a bit of a backdrop so when the U.S. economy was collapsing I was at the National Science Foundation I was their chief lobbyist and their chief public affairs official it was my job to try to pull money from the Recovery Act so I was able to successfully lobby for three billion dollars for the National Science Foundation to fund you know spectacular R&D well one of the biggest bets was on battery storage a billion dollar bet on battery storage this was back in 2009 so I think I would encourage you to sort of update the way you think about this because the truth is that big bet in R&D which you're a fan of way back then is now paying dividends you now see this this question of when the sun is shining or whatever that's no longer really an issue anymore thanks to R&D that has really accelerated along with other things like microgrids storage solutions and other things so my question to you is if that were solved if R&D were to solve this problem would you worry so much about about solar and wind no but you're unfortunately not very I'm very happy you got a billion dollars for batteries but I think you you're entirely missing the scale of problem and I'm sure you actually know this but right now there's batteries enough in the whole of the U.S. to cover 14 seconds of U.S. electricity consumption average U.S. electricity consumption so no we know we're near being able to fix this and the real reason I think a lot of people fail to get this the real reason why solar and wind cannot actually uphold and end up making the the grid much more expensive is because all solar especially comes at the same time this is also true but slightly less true for wind but if you look at all solar it all comes around midday that's great for the first couple percent of energy because typically in most countries noon is about the peak time so it actually eats into the peak time which is some of the most expensive production of electricity so it actually helps a country but what very quickly happens is that it starts eating into the revenue of all the other producers you end up with an enormous glut of electricity so when you when you hear countries for instance going typically for the first for the first time oh we've just produced 100% of electricity for a country what you never hear is and the price went negative it's actually worth nothing because you can't sell this at any other time so what you end up with is you're selling a lot of electricity at very low cost and then you have to get the rest of the cost covered for the non-solar and non-wind by much much higher cost electricity that's produced elsewhere which is why you end up seeing all these effects and you've seen that much more in Europe than you have in the U.S. because Europe just has much more renewable power and also done it probably worse I would say but mostly simply because you can't have a lot of solar or a lot of wind without much much more battery so when you're talking about batteries they're trivial and they will still be trivial by 2040 now if we can get much more battery so the IEA has done so the international energy agency has done a big study especially in India because India has some of the best solar not surprisingly they're right you know at the equator and they could actually have a situation where they'll have so much battery that they will start not putting up new coal-fired power plants after 2030 that be wonderful it cut a full percent of emissions towards 2040 but it's not going to solve everything it's going to solve a bit bit part and yes we should be should be spending a lot more money on this but we need to get a sense of size of this issue and you know just to give you just sorry wrap this up if you look at solar once you have 15% of solar for instance in California the price drops by two thirds once you have about 30% of wind the price drops more than 50% which is why when people tell you it's competitive it's only competitive if you don't think about the fact that you have lots of others already running so yes we should have a little bit of solar and wind but once you start having a lot of solar and wind you basically disrupting the whole energy system that's why you end up with much higher cost and without much much more storage we're talking about storage in the next decades almost fantastical to imagine that that would happen even if prices drop dramatically as we're hoping they will and we're hoping that r&d will make them drop even more even faster thank you Bjorn and so let's turn to a couple of the audience questions there's a sort of symmetrical questions for both of you let's start with you Bjorn the challenge is this you were speaking in terms of dollars in GDP and the impression for the audience is Jeff is speaking in terms of human lives that human lives are being threatened even as we speak by all of the things that he listed the Himalayas acidification all of that and so could you change your metric for the moment and say what's what's what's it what's it going to save in terms of human life to do what Jeff proposes and I'll guess what might it cost in human life to do what just Jeff proposes yes because we only had 17 and a half minutes so I've cut back a lot of slides I would love to show so now I'm just going to have to tell you and you have to take me on this I'll tweet this afterwards so if you look at the last hundred years the number of people have died from climate related sass is that floods droughts storms extreme temperatures it's dropped precipitously it's actually dropped is that the right word precipitously good thank you sometimes I worry that that meant precipitation anyway so it's dropped 95 percent and since we've at the same hundred years quadruple global population the individual risk of dying from climate related disasters has dropped by 99 percent so I actually showed you graphs of human life I showed you what are the biggest environmental problems that killed the most humans clearly many many other problems especially indoor outdoor air pollution and water and sanitation kills many more people than global warming does but also it's very likely that the things that Jeff worries about that we're going to see more extreme storms so just to give you a sense of that the UN estimate will probably see fewer storms but we'll see more violent storms and violent storms are worse than fewer of them so overall we'll have bigger impacts so Jeff is right that this is going to be a bigger problem but it'll actually kill many fewer people because we'll get much richer and we'll be better able to adapt so the real answer here is to say this is the world where we used to see about half a million people die from climate-related disasters today we see about 20,000 people die globally from climate-related disasters in the future we'll probably see many fewer we'll maybe see say 5,000 but had we not had global warming or had we had Jeff's projection of a policy institute we might see 4,000 or 3,000 people and honestly I'm making up these numbers because we don't have data because they're so small but that order of magnitude we'd save a few thousand people but the cost would come in terms of especially poor people but that's both poor people in rich countries and poor people in poor countries who would have less access to more expensive and less reliable energy that would have much greater healthcare costs very clearly it has cost when you both have heating and cooling which is one of the big killers of humans around the world we estimate probably in the order of 10% of all deaths are due to heat and cold deaths most of them are cold deaths actually and we know that when people have to pay more to heat their homes they heat them worse and so more people will die it is very likely and I can't give you the exact numbers but it's very likely that orders of magnitude so 10 100 maybe even thousand times more people would die from these policies then would be saved from them from not having climate related disasters Jeff could you comment on Bjorn's response so I will say this the problem here is that what we're talking about is what's happened in the past versus what might happen in the very near future again the reason why I wrote the book whether folks want to agree with it or not I hope they at least you know take a look at it check out the citations is that I'm arguing that these impacts are here now right now not 50 years from now because one of the big arguments that you hear now for those who are arguing for the status quo is let's just wait and see how bad it gets and which the truth is if these if there is a tail risk and if these as I believe are going to be significant costs to society to human life across the board we can't wait 50 years to see how bad it's going to get it's going to be significantly much worse 50 years from now so that's why acting now is important so I believe it's a bit of a red herring to talk about well things haven't happened in the past it's true nobody's migrated from Bangladesh because Bangladesh is not underwater so there are no climate related problems but if Bangladesh goes underwater and they have to go somewhere then there are going to be all sorts of impacts Yemen's another great example I really dug into Yemen as a very perfect example of the climate scientists said because it's in the subtropics because we're seeing climate impacts now the water scarcity is an issue right now it's only going to get worse in the very very near future it's going to drive these wells that's exactly what happened in Yemen and the warlords took control after 14 to the 16 aquifers went dry took control of the remaining two created this internal strife it led to a great deal of loss of human life and a great deal of suffering in Yemen you can see this play out across the board the same thing is happening in the cell you can make a very clear case that because the climate impacts are happening right now again not 100 percent you know responsible but this whipsaw interlocking impacts is driving things even like the creation of terrorism in some of these countries so there is a great deal of impact on human life but my main response is that just looking backwards to climate impacts that aren't yet happening is an unfair comparison to what's going to happen this water already what's happening now but is going to happen in the very near future not 50 years from now Can I just say some very very quickly all right go ahead go ahead sorry so just Jeff if you're saying this is happening right now we have the data we know that there used to be half a million people dying from climate related disasters a hundred years ago now there's 20,000 people dying from climate related disasters this is not something we can have an opinion on this is simply true that the risk has reduced 99 percent and it's kept reducing since the 1980s as well so look there's just you know if you're going to say it's right now you're just wrong now you can say that in the near future something bad is going to happen and that the past is not a good example for the future and you know that's a fair argument but I think the models very clearly tell us that that's not going to happen either You want to respond Jeff or you want to wait for the next question? Well that's fine I mean I I'm not wrong there are impacts right now I mean that's those are nice statistics you've thrown out there but clearly we see climate impacts right now I mean I could go I'll just give you one example I mean the fact that half of all species are experienced in local extinctions that is as big a canary in a coal mine as you're going to see and I interviewed Terry Root for my book who is the preeminent biodiversity expert in the country she's beside herself that nobody quite understands what is happening to species on earth the human species is just one of hundreds of thousands of species but the fact that we're seeing that occur right now means something that is a big statistic not a small one that is a very large statistic so to say that I'm wrong that impacts are happening now I would argue that's you know that's not correct they are happening now and every that's that's why that's why the thousands of climate scientists who look you know talk about you know multiple levels to describe the climate fingerprint and the climate impacts they've they've they've anticipated and now they're seeing it question for Bjorn Jeff mentioned another Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz who takes a different position on costs and benefits of Jeff's proposals from the other Nobel Prize winner you mentioned could you respond to Jeff's point about the alternative measures that Joseph Stiglitz has associated himself with Bjorn yeah so I mean two points first of all Joe Stiglitz got his Nobel Prize and the communication of information in in markets like used cars he did great work in that he's not a climate economist no but Nordhaus got his economics prize in climate economics I don't know all of Joe Stiglitz work but I do know the the work that Jeff mentioned and he did that work together with Nicholas Stern what they showed was and I think Jeff also correctly mentioned it was that a carbon price can actually manage a transition to a lower carbon economy at a reasonable price that's absolutely true there's no one who would deny that you can do this at a reasonable price especially if you get to decide yourself what is reasonable but clearly you can have a reasonable transition so you know if you go for the 80 percent below to 1990 levels as the EU did you can probably do it for 5 percent that's that's doable that's reasonable I think a lot of people would still think it's way too expensive and as I pointed out I think most voters are going to say no to that way before that happens but they did not show that this was a good investment of money and I think it goes to the whole point of of Jeff's Jeff's argument I think Jeff slightly skew or sort of slid away from his answer and start talking about a lot of other species I was simply making the point about we have good statistics for humans and you're saying it has impacts on humans right now and it doesn't in those statistics but but but the but the main point here remains that the question is what would have happened for instance in Yemen and other places had we made an enormous climate policy back in say 1980 or 1990 90 92 when when we first promised had the whole world stop using climate fossil fuels what would have happened well very little we know it would have had very very tiny impact on the temperatures for Yemen in the 2010s it would however have made every country in the world much much poor including of course making many hundreds of millions of people keeping them in poverty so the real question here is not would I love to be able to snap my fingers and make climate change go away yes I would love that because yes Jeff is right climate change is a problem the real question is of course outside this sort of wishful thinking is we have to pay a price for a climate policy to get a benefit and the question is how big is the cost how big is the benefit and Joe Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern did not do that calculation and I don't I don't I'm not very surprised they didn't do it because they know what the answer is there's been lots of people doing lots of those estimates over the last couple years sorry over the last couple decades and they've all found the same thing we should do some but not a lot I do want to respond to to Bjorn's answer Jeff well no I don't think so because I I wouldn't presume to answer for Joe Stiglitz I mean I think he defends himself quite well I think he's actually written about some of this about your book Bjorn in the New York Times so I think he answers this for himself and I've characterized it somewhat here here in this discussion question for Jeff then the audience is characterizing your argument Jeff as a little bit ambivalent as to whether you think that that conversion from fossil fuels to clean energy is so efficient that's going to happen anyway versus the opposite idea that it might not happen anyway but policymakers have got to make it happen force it to happen because unless they force it to happen it won't happen so could you clarify your position with respect to those two different approaches yeah I will and I'll say that's a really good question I believe this it will be a messy transition and I'm going to use the transition on the internet as a good example and I think those will be I hope this will be helpful for the audience again I worked at the National Science Foundation when there was a thing called the World Wide Web long before anybody knew what it was the Pentagon was running supercomputers they handed off things called pops they handed off things you know that could create this interconnected thing the World Wide Web long before there was the internet well the National Science Foundation placed a big bet they bet a big part of their budget to connect every university in the United States and then on the planet to connect with these pots to basically build the architecture of the internet so there was a big bet that was a policy that was a political decision by Congress actually Al Gore was involved in that he was to re-authorize the National Science Foundation specifically to build that architecture so there is there are policy drivers there are political drivers there are financial incentives there are public incentives and I believe the same things going to happen here it's true as Bjorn has noted I I did focus very heavily on where private financial groups are going I didn't focus as much on public drivers like the Paris Climate Agreement like nationally determined carbon dioxide levels for for for countries IDCs on the Paris Climate IPC you know the NDCs under the Paris Climate Agreement I didn't focus on the public side of the equation there's going to be have to be both the reason why I wanted to focus on the private sector side of the equation is because I really believe you're seeing a very clear signal right now from financial answers and analysts who see both climate risk and opportunity from big business CEOs who are clearly I mean if you look at the big tech companies they're clearly trying to get they're competing with each other to get to 100% renewable energy in their supply chains and you know by 2030 they're doing that for a reason they're under pressure both from the public side and the private side so I think ambivalence probably the wrong word to describe what I'm trying to articulate I'm focusing on the private sector I'm focusing on private financial analysis but I do believe absolutely there may there has to be a public component to it it can be regulatory it can be political it can be policy oriented and honestly it's probably going to be a bit messy just like the transition to the internet was a big bit messy go back to what I said about the New York Times had an opportunity once upon a time early on to buy 25% of Google their answer was Google? what's the internet? that's not a that's not going to compete against me um and so so they said no I think the same thing is going on right now some are placing big bets on a future that I believe is going to be here much sooner than people realize going to want to comment on just response so um well I mean the private sector is mostly in uh on this because it is PR you mentioned that most of the big tech companies want to go to 100% by 2030 well that's because they mostly emit fairly little CO2 it's easy to do when you have little uh emissions Sky and Europe was the first of uh big corporation in Europe to go carbon neutral that's because they basically just have a few PCs that they had to offset so it's very very easy when you're small companies most of these private companies do it because it's profitable for them because they're going to get lots and lots of money that's going to be handed out by a lot of different programs to a lot of different policies but let's not for one second presuppose that that's going to fix global warming there global warming is at heart a public problem it's a problem where putting out CO2 creates problems that have nothing to do with me it has everything to do with everyone else which is why you need public regulation for it that's also why unless you get public regulation you're never going to attack very much of the problem so I think in some way it's it's a little disturbing if Jeff if you if you almost entirely focused on the private bit because this is going to be about all of us this is about the Paris agreement and how we're going to do both as individual nations and certainly as as a global community and that's where our in our experience has been we've constantly been promising stuff and not living up to it we promised in Rio in 1992 didn't live up to it in Kyoto most didn't live up to it the only reason why some did was because of the financial crisis and now we promised in Paris and even if everybody does what they promise it will have a minimal impact on temperatures so we're still far far away from what we need to do and that's why I'm marking that the that the studies clearly show this is going to be very very expensive all right we have a time for like one final question I guess lab to you Bjorn Jeff has mentioned a few times the idea of tail risk and your instance interpreting that to mean that there's some one in a thousand chance likely or something like that of a true disaster do you acknowledge that risk and if so what do you propose doing about it yes so it's actually a good argument and I think it is the best argument for making bigger investments so Nordhaus and many others have looked at this and it does increase the amount of investment that we should put in climate policy one of the things that I try to work with in my organization since Jeff has been flaunting his book I guess I should also just mention that I have a new book out and you should take a look at that but what I mostly actually do is focusing on looking across all the different areas so with my think tank the Copenhagen consensus we look at all the different investments that you can do in the world so should you be investing in nutrition or in education or in healthcare or in global warming or in air pollution and gender equality and all these other challenges that the world faces and I think one of the problems that we have when we talk about existential risk is if you look out till 2100 almost every policy that you can imagine can have a potential existential risk all you need is to say there's a non-zero risk of if we choose this if we go down this route it'll open up you know say if we don't tackle HIV in South Africa it's going to make some African countries collapse you're going to get terrorism throw in bio of terrorism throwing you know the ability to make viruses and bam bam you have the death of everyone before 2100 again it's not given it may even be a very very small risk but it's a non-zero risk and so we should be spending more money here the problem with the argument of tail risk is if everything has tail risk you really have to ask how do we handle these different issues and I like to just very briefly say we actually have a good estimate because back in the late 1980s early 1990s we started realizing that you know asteroids could hit the earth we've always known but you know people started realizing we could actually figure that out and the U.S. Congress asked NASA to find 90% of all these asteroids that could hit earth NASA had also provided a budget for finding 99% of them but Congress felt that that was too costly so there we have it you actually have a very clear estimate of how much we're willing to spend extra on safeguarding us against the next 9% of tail risk and the answer is not very much and I think that's also what we see generally across history we have tail risks everywhere we look we cannot afford to worry about each and every one of them of course every single participant who's just arching for their particular issue will say tail risk give me more money but overall we have to recognize that there are tail risks everywhere not just in global warming Jeff, we are out of time for the Q&A please roll if you want to respond to what Devin just said roll that into your final summation you'll have seven and a half minutes for that we have to go to that part of it so Jeff for the final summation would you take it away great yeah I'll just say that was that was I enjoyed listening to that discussion about tail risks so it's tail risks was just one of those very I mean insurance companies take a look at tail risk you know financial analysts who have to manage vast sums of money look at tail risk so it's certainly a valid question so let me just try to sum up this way if I can I don't have a prepare I just want to sort of go through sort of where we've had the discussion first I would argue that the Paris climate because my organization we were there we were there every single day we held like 24 press conferences over a 12-day period in Paris the Paris climate agreement was a breakthrough moment for the world Rio, Copenhagen all the Kyoto all those things that Bjorn talks about it's true they they didn't get a whole lot done there's a lot of talk that was not the case for the Paris climate agreement the Paris climate agreement changed everything when you have every single country in the world rich and poor coming together saying we are going to take this issue seriously we're going to get this done we're going to figure out a way between public and private sector that was a big deal so I so that's why things have changed and I will say in the United States it's interesting Bjorn talks about there isn't this public will to deal with this that's not the case in the United States climate change for the Democratic Party for Democratic voters in the United States is it is now their top issue you saw it very clearly we had we had climate change questions from both presidential debates and the vice presidential debate it was the one issue that dominated across all three it is a very big deal in the United States as an issue it's at the bottom of the list for the Republican Party for multiple reasons and this is from somebody I worked in a Republican administration I was Dan Quels communications director in a Republican White House I was a Republican political appointed the FDA a science-based agency I also worked to the National Science Foundation and a Republican administration and it has always bothered me immensely that the Republican Party has not dealt with this issue from a science basis so that continues to bother me but I will tell you it is absolutely a paramount concern in the United States there is massive public support for clean renewable energy and for a transition whether we want to argue about whether it's going to take 20 years, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years the public would like to see it they'd like to see jobs as many as possible that's why I mentioned this rewiring America study that showed quite clearly there are millions of new jobs waiting to happen it's because there is a pent-up demand for this I would say and I would say at least in the United States and it could be around the world it's a bipartisan approach people want to see this transition and they'd actually like to see it sooner rather than later it's one of the reasons I would argue that virtually every analyst says that clean energy a clean energy economy is the next big thing if you look I mean most people think that the global economy may not see dramatic growth thank you may not see dramatic growth absent this clean energy revolution so yes I know I'm focusing on the private sector I'm happy to talk about the public sector which I will in just a second but but why not bet on that future why not I mean just as some people said let's bet on a technology revolution and a technology driven global economy why not bet on this clean energy revolution as well and on the corporate sector yes I hear you Bjorn when you say they look like it's done for public relations purposes it may be done because they don't have necessarily an outside footprint but I will say this when virtually every fortune 1,000 CEO gets in the game and just puts their company's reputation behind it at some point and I hope certainly much sooner than later those commitments by those corporate leaders translate into real meaningful action across the board when you see Facebook and Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Unilever and Salesforce competing to get to 2030 targets they could just as easily provide net zero by 2050 targets they're not doing that they're saying it'll be by 2030 I would argue that's going to translate into a global economic opportunity probably within a decade then on the public sector side and I can speak mostly to the United States because I have a great deal of experience in the political sector I'll predict right now in 2021 I guess we'll see what happens with the elections in two weeks but I believe there's going to be a massive public sector approach to dealing with this issue it could come in the form it could come in one of three forms it could come in the form of a multi-trillion-dollar economic recovery package that creates conservation cores and rebuilds things and puts together infrastructure but also infrastructure on the financial side of the equation that's a public sector driver I believe you'll see the first serious effort for a big climate bill I just interviewed the chairman of the House Select Committee on Climate I've talked to Senate Democrats they're prepared to move on the public sector side of the equation finally after years of not being able to do so and I think there also is going to be across the administration if Joe Biden does win the election there's a very good chance that across every single public sector aspect of the federal government they're going to do something both on the climate emissions side of the equation but also on the clean energy revolution side of the equation I also wanted to talk very briefly and then close with this that we talked earlier in this discussion about rich versus poor action among rich versus poor and it's true that if the rich countries they can't solve this problem Yemen couldn't solve the problem if had they taken and I think that's a bit of a red herring to talk about if you'd solve you know Yemen couldn't solve the climate problem but if the world solves the climate problem if a water scarcity was not an issue in Yemen then there's a then there's every chance that you don't see some of those societal problems there that's the point here that this is a global public commons problem that the global economy needs to respond to it the countries and the leaders and the business needers need to respond to it and I do believe yes it's in China's best interest because they don't want they lost the technology race they do not intend to lose lose the clean energy race I can guarantee you that that's part of what's driving them and if China acts and they act meaningfully that will have an impact likewise in India I've talked to the leadership of the Rockefeller Foundation that's that's that's betting on a microgrid solution that will help the energy poor in India I think I believe India is going to get there they would love to see a clean energy a cheap clean energy solution because they that's that's what's going to get to those three four hundred million people who don't have power right now they would love to see that and I actually genuinely believe they will get there and that will help with that problem and then I'll just close with this I what did it I will what I've been arguing here is that we have public will we have financial interest we have human interest finally after so many years of looking raw statistics and questions about policy we're starting to see human beings interested in this and I'll just leave you with one discussion this is the United States there are there are victims in 20 states that have banded together called higher ground who have who who have lost their homes or lost property from flooding that's driven by climate change and we could talk about the science behind this and the climate science behind it and so I'm just going to put it out there's a given climate change is is now intersecting with this and so you have human interest people you see people in Houston who are worried about the flooding that swept through the city you're seeing wildfires and we can you know this is a climate science question but you know wildfires are bigger and hotter and it's one of the reasons why it's almost it's becoming very hard to ensure things in California you're seeing human interest in this story so the combination of all of those things leads me convinced that the world thanks to the Paris climate agreement and others is going to act so thank you and thank you for for the opportunity to hold this discussion thank you Jeff okay and beyond seven-and-a-half minutes for your bottle for your summer excuse me well yes I think it's more going to be a summary so yes Jeff thank you very much for this conversation I think the way that we've been framed this is very much sort of leading up to whether you should vote yes or no to this proposition so I think we need to get a sense again of proportion so Jeff is very upbeat and and you know I was I was at Paris as well I didn't hold as many press conferences as you did clearly but I think we also got to be honest and say yes countries made a lot of noise there was a lot of reporting there but even if all countries live up to all of their promises it'll have a minuscule impact on temperatures even 80 years from now now if they kept those promises and kept them for the rest of their century it would reduce temperatures by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit that's very little and of course no major partner is actually poised to keep their current promises let alone the bigger promises that they're now going to be rattling off climate policy has constantly been about making grand promises and then not keeping them and I question whether that's the best way to leave our kids you know so instead of giving them a college education as you were talking about we'll just promise them stuff and not give it to them I think that's probably one of the worst ways that we can deal with the climate problem or indeed any other problem and so it gets back to saying is the right way to do this is that to promise not just what we've already done and is not keeping not just more than what we've already promised but an absurd amount namely let's go carbon neutral in 20 years something that we know is not going to happen something we know is going to be phenomenally costly something we know is going to be much much costlier than the benefit will drive plus at the same time it will take away attention from all the things that will help both with climate so adaptation carbon tax and certainly a lot of innovation and also all the other issues in the world so Jeff also talks about there's massive support and yes you're right if you ask people very sort of shallowly do you want us to do something about climate change they'll say yes if you ask them is this a really big crisis they'll say yes it is a really big crisis they'll also say lots of other things are big crisis crisis disease but if you then ask them are you willing to pay for it most people are only willing to pay a couple hundred bucks for this as I mentioned the Washington Post twenty four dollars but you can get others you know surveys they'll show that people willing to pay a couple hundred dollars for it if you're then proposing the sorry five minutes to go yeah yeah five minutes yeah five minutes okay good if you're then proposing to people that you're going to pay fifteen hundred dollars per year per person which is just the you know the biden proposal the trillion dollars of you know there's two trillion dollars over four years and that's just you know simple math you're going to get people upset people are not willing to spend that much more money you're saying that it'll generate more jobs that'll generate more opportunity but the reality is of course if you are getting and you know I'm just using the official statistics if you can get solar energy and employ 39 people from solar energy for every time you can employ one person with gas you've got to realize that that's not a great thing that means 38 people are working not on something else not on educating your kids not on taking care of your kids in kindergarten or taking care of your elderly or making better healthcare or making better infrastructure and all the other things that we also need people for using people to make incredibly unproductive work is not a great idea the famous skitters you know when when you're in China and they're working just digging digging with shovels when you when people claim well that generate more jobs then the obvious answer is well why don't they just use teaspoons if that's what you're trying to do but of course the reality is we're actually trying to make people more productive so that we have better opportunities so again when you say that clean energy could be the new thing of the 21st century I think this is fundamentally wrong and for a very simple reason we alluded to that before if you get the clean energy revolution just right nobody's going to be able to tell the difference because you'll just get clean power now out of your socket before when you've before it got not clean energy out of your socket but it'll feel the exact same way there's no way to get people excited about this Google provided new opportunities all technologies in the past have provided new opportunities the only thing that will drive this either a lot of money spent on political hold or that we get innovations that just simply makes it cheaper than fossil fuels I argue that we should be focusing on making it cheaper because that's the only way that we're going to succeed in getting the clean energy revolution but we should not allow ourselves to believe that this is going to be easy and certainly not that this is going to be cheap and so that comes back to saying we can have this conversation and you rightly say this is a big issue and the US and it's also a big issue in Europe but the issue here is how do we get people along with us to actually accept that we're going to be spending you know five or ten percent GDP I don't think you can do that and I think that's why we need to recognize instead of trying to essentially hurt with the yellow vest as we saw in France when when Macron imposed carbon tax that's equivalent to 13 cents in the gallon of gasoline and you basically get the country rioting for half a year we need to find a way that allows us to solve global warming within the budget frame of what most people say they're willing to pay not by making trillion dollar deals that will not be sustainable in the long run and quite frankly if corona has taught us anything it is that we've pretty much run out of money now we're not going to be able to also support a huge and subsidy hungry green energy reform so so uh you you talk about that we have public will we have private will we have human interest well we have human interest as long as it doesn't cost very much we have private will as long as we get lots of money from the public and the public will I think thank you the public will is really just a question how much money are we willing to spend I would argue we can spend a little and we should spend it smartly I think Jeff and I'm sorry I'm now going to characterize you especially because you can't come back at me but but I think Jeff's proposal is basically say let's spend lots and lots of money badly on not fixing this problem very well and that's why I'm arguing we should really say no to this proposition it doesn't mean say no to climate policy it means let's say yes to smart climate policy unlike just saying let's all go carbon neutral in 20 years which is just not going to happen there's going to be phenomenally costly and unfortunately going to derail our conversations about real impacts for climate and all the other things that we also need to tackle but again thank you very much Jeff who is I think it was a great conversation I'm sorry it's a slightly sort of this confrontorial conversation at the same time thanks for your apology Bjorn and thanks for your contribution to what is a clash of views it's not attack on individuals it's not you guys have been marvelously polite to each other which is quite appropriate no ad hominems you disagree with each other and that's what the audience wanted to hear the clash of views between you and I commend you Jeff and I commend you Bjorn on meeting that challenge both the resolution of course reads to combat climate change the world's leaders must make it their highest priority to completely replace the burning of fossil fuels within the next 20 years well all right Jeff you began with 13.33% of the other vote for yes the yes vote got 13.33% and you held at 13.33% so you kept your position but you didn't add Bjorn began with 60% of the vote went up to 86.67% for gaining 26 points Bjorn it looks as though you win the Tootsie roll and so congratulations to you Bjorn thank you very much Jeff and Jeff I want to tell you Bjorn's English is not Bjorn's first language so he was a little bit of a disadvantage but he did very well in English Jeff you did as well thank you to you both and good night to all thanks very much thank you very much and thanks Jeff you your English is really good Jeff better be I've had plenty of practice so you pull off a precipice a precipice that word you stumbled on Bjorn if you fall off a precipice you fall violently that's where precipitous comes from right okay great but good English very good English people thank you guys everybody bye bye