 OK, well good morning everyone and welcome to this press briefing entitled Better Growth, Better Climate, the Challenge for 2015. We thought we'd follow up the opening presentation by the Honourable Al Gore in the plenary of Davos 2015 early this morning with a more detailed conversation to look at the better growth challenge around climate change, particularly on the economics of the transformation that is required. We're delighted that the Honourable Al Gore can join us and offer a few more thoughts to the opening words that he gave and in particular on the agenda through 2015. So thank you for joining us here afterwards. We're also joined by a number of other esteemed guests on the panel. To my immediate left is Jeremy Oppenheim. Jeremy Oppenheim is Program Director for the New Climate Economy Project for the Global Commission on Economy and Climate. And prior to that, Jeremy led McKinsey's Sustainability and Resource Productivity Practice. So he's advised many different public, private and social sector clients on these issues. To the left of the Honourable Al Gore is Lord Stern of Brentford, Nicholas Stern, who is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. As well as the President of the British Academy since 2013. Many kind of well-known areas of research on the economics of climate change, but most recently serving as Vice-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Welcome, sorry. That's almost beautiful timing because to the far left of us on the panel. I'm delighted with just-in-time delivery to welcome Felipe Calderon. President Calderon served as a President of Mexico from December 2006 to November 2012, and he's currently an inaugural Angola Paulus Global Public Leaders Fellow at the Kennedy School. In 2012, President Calderon chaired the G20 Summit, which majored on the Green Growth Agenda, and recently he's been the Chair of the Global Commission on Economy and Climate, which is what we are here to talk about. And last but by no means least, we're delighted to welcome Paul Polman, who's the CEO of the multinational Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever. He's a member of the World Economic Forum International Business Council, our leading group of global CEOs. He's a Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, sits on the Board of Directors of the Consumer Goods Forum leading its sustainability efforts. He's on the Board of UN Global Compact and is a Board Member of Conservation International. At the invitation of Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, Paul served as one of the 27 members of the high-level panel of eminent persons on the post-2015 development agenda. And at the invitation of President Calderon, Paul Polman serves on the International Council for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. So we have a wonderful panel here. We want to get into the depth of the transformation that we will need in terms of this better growth agenda as we shift into a more low-carbon economy. But let's start, if I may, with you, Al Gore. For those of us who are here in the room and perhaps watching on the web, what core messages would you like to give across about the climate challenge as we face it now and in terms of things that we really need to focus on in 2015 to advance this agenda given it's such an important year in the political calendar? Well, thank you very much, Dominic, and it's an honour for me to be at this location with such a distinguished gathering. Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to you, Dominic, and to Klaus Schwab and the entire team at the World Economic Forum. I think the way in which the World Economic Forum has elevated solutions to the climate crisis is really very encouraging. And you see with business leaders like Paul Polman, who's become perhaps the single most vocal, visible, inspiring business leader in the world on this challenge. And the others who are here, a tremendous public-private effort emerging. This year is the year of climate. The United Nations has also elevated it to the number one priority. As you all know, in December of this year, all of the nations of the world are meeting in Paris to conclude an historic agreement, one with an architecture a bit different than the kind of agreements that have been negotiated in the past. I happen to support the approach that the United Nations and Cristiano Figueras and the leaders of that effort are taking. We've already seen it bear fruit with the historic agreement between the U.S. and China announced in November. Just a few hours ago, President Barack Obama in the United States once again delivered a very forceful and very inspiring statement on climate as one of the centerpieces of his State of the Union address in the United States. We just saw last week Korea become the second largest carbon trading market in the world. We are now seeing movement all around the world toward either a carbon emissions trading approach or a carbon tax or, in the case of some countries like Sweden and Norway, both. I've long favored both, but reducing carbon emissions is absolutely crucial. This has also been accompanied by historic efforts to stop deforestation. Paul Paulman again in Davos last year announced the great public-private agreement on palm oil, which was a coalition of many organizations. Andrew Stear, who's here from the World Resources Institute, played a key role in that. Yet the centerpiece of all these efforts will be the agreement negotiated in Paris at the end of this year. It is absolutely crucial that we build public will for such an agreement. Public opinion polls all around the world have showed in the last couple of years and in recent months in an even more pronounced way a rapid rise in support for an agreement. For all the work that activists have done, and I serve as chair of the Climate Reality Project, a partner in the live earth effort, which I'll turn to in just a moment, for all of the work that activists have done, Mother Nature has had the loudest and most persuasive voice. The climate-related extreme weather events have broken through some of the lingering denial on this whole question. Really there are two questions. The first is, do we have to change? We've had 150 years of carbon-based energy. It's created many benefits. It looks like it may be difficult to change. Do we really have to do it? And the extreme weather events and the scientific findings ever more persuasive to ever more people have answered that question resoundingly. Yes, obviously we have to change. The second question is, can we do it? And several years ago there were more doubts about how difficult it might actually be to decarbonize our civilization. But now the evidence is pouring in. Renewable energy is coming down and costs so rapidly that the investments in new energy in renewables now exceeds that in fossil fuels has since 2009. The gap is growing year by year. The subprime carbon assets are increasingly unattractive in the ground. We have to leave two-thirds of fossil fuels halfway through this year, June 18th. Live Earth, the road to Paris, as you may have heard from the main stage, will be held on all seven continents. An audience of 2 billion, the largest virtual network of television networks, radio, digital outlets ever compiled, will be assembled on that day, 24 hours of events, four to six hours in each of six continents with a performance also originating from abandoned Antarctica made up of scientists at one of the research stations there to round out all seven of the continents. But the main events, of course, will be in Paris, Beijing, New York, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro. There will be other satellite events as well. We are collecting a billion voices harmonized with one message, take climate action now. Pharrell Williams, our creative director, joined me on stage with Kevin Wall, co-founder of Live Earth and the director of Live Earth. He is also here with us in this room. I'm very excited about the Live Earth event. It is designed to build public will. There will be other announcements about the content. More than 100 of the greatest, most famous artists in the world will be on these big stages around the world. And we will collect a billion voices in support of the goal, take climate action now. So look forward to any questions you have later and I'll leave it at that. Mr Vice President, thank you so much. We'll have a sweep through the panel then take questions towards the end. You set out a very compelling agenda on the need to take action and perhaps a mobilization effort, including the entertainment industry and others, to really drive home the message through to Paris in 2015. If we switch gear slightly and look at some of the work that has been undertaken to complement the awareness raising agenda. This is where I think the new climate economy report comes into play. Some of you may have seen it. It was launched at the time of the New York Summit, the Secretary General's New York Summit. And it sets out a very clear agenda for a link between better growth and better climate. And I wonder if we could turn to the chair of the commission and the person who oversaw the production of this report, President Philippe Calderon. Sir, can you lay out some of the core elements of the report and the main messages you'd like to get across? Yes, of course. Thank you Dominic for your hospitality and of course thank you Mr Schwab for the hospitality of the World Economic Forum for this session. Basically the report concludes that it is possible to have economic growth and tackle climate change at the same time that this dilemma in which we need to choose between poverty alleviation or job creation and being responsible with the environment is a false dilemma. And the conclusions of the report emphasize that in the next 15 years we need to take crucial steps in order to reach both goals, economic growth and better economic performance and tackle climate change. The report establish an action plan with 10 proposals but all of those proposals are oriented to change three big systems in which we need to work. One system is energy system and as Vice President Gore was saying, it is crucial to decarbonize the economic growth and that is possible now better than ever in the sense that for instance the price of renewable energy is the cheapest ever. And we can generate electricity and energy through renewable mechanism and the economic conditions in order to do so are there and it is possible completely. Actually more than half of the measures we need to take in order for instance to be efficient and to save energy are measures that could be taken either by companies or consumers in their own self-payment. In their own self-interest because are profitable, are viable in economic terms and are able to save energy or able to save carbon emissions and they are able to save money as well. The second system that we need to change is the system of cities in the world. Basically we cannot continue with this sprawling model of urban development in which the cities have very low density and are more oriented to the use of individual cards. What the commission is recommending is to redesign the cities to the future in the sense that those cities should be with more density and more massive means of transportation oriented. We are talking about the three principles of the city, compact cities, coordinated cities and communicated cities which means that the new design of these cities should be in a very different way. The third system we need to change is the system of land use. Basically we need to generate a new green revolution, a double green revolution in the sense that we need to produce more food for in order to feed more people and in a better way in the next year. But at the same time we need to do so in the same or even less surface for agricultural purposes. At the same time the commission emphasizes a lot the need to stop deforestation completely and I hope in the next decade we can reach this goal of zero deforestation in the world. But the good news is the report also emphasizes three or more big drivers for economic growth, especially in these difficult conditions that we are looking in several parts of the planet. So the first driver is to foster innovation and technology and yes the measures we are proposing are able to foster innovation through regulation in the same way that for instance renewable energy and technology was fostered when Europe started to regulate carbon emissions in the 90s. The second driver of economic growth is the investment in infrastructure and basically the idea is if even following the current intensive carbon emission model we have, we need to invest roughly 90 trillion dollars in cities, energy and land uses. If we switch towards a low carbon economy path we will need to invest roughly the same amount of money, probably in the margin we need to invest roughly like four trillion more which is not exactly crucial or relevant but by the same amount of money we can get better growth, better climate. But the good news is at the end if we consider the net present value of the operational costs of renewable energy for instance which is almost zero in several cases, if we consider all the economic factors we actually will have lower costs in the new model or in the low carbon economy path if we take the right decision now in terms of infrastructure. Even without considering the cost of externalities associated with high carbon emissions and finally the third driver of economic growth is the efficiency of natural resources. We like to talk about the efficiency of labor for instance and we are proposing everywhere labor reforms. We are talking about the efficiency of capital but it's time to talk about the efficiency of natural resources and pricing in the right way natural resources is exactly the mechanism which we can increase the competitiveness of the economy as a whole through the increase in the competitiveness of natural resources. Basically these three big systems and these drivers of change are the essence of the report and it has been very well received and I think we are thinking in the next phase in order to promote among the decision makers the conclusions of this report. That could be the idea as to me. Thank you very much Mr President. You lay out kind of the big system changes I think that were looked at in some depth in the work. Jeremy Oppenheim you are the director of the programme so you are perhaps as close to the analysis and the investigation as anyone on this panel. What kind of core messages would you like to give in terms of the findings and the direction of travel you would like to see set out from this work? So let me just offer three kind of core messages because I know others will kind of add to the list. I mean that the first is that we are in this period of astonishing structural transformation of the global economy and that is both a shift in the centre of economic gravity to the developing world. It's also the process of urbanisation. It's also the deep processes of technological change as they feed through not just in renewable energy but across digitisation and the way that that plays into how our systems can operate across the biotechnology spaces and the way in which we can actually think about using land in different ways across new materials that will feed into the way in which we build our buildings and cities and develop the next generation of transport. So technology is fundamentally on our side and some of the forces of structural transformation are on our side but we've absolutely got to use this period and the 90 trillion that President Carter on described and use it as an engine of low carbon economic growth. If we use it and invest in the same old way as we invested over the last 15 years, we will lock into the wrong future and not the right future. But we have a period of deep structural change and technological change and they can actually be mobilised to deliver the future that we want. So that's message one. Message two is that this is not going to happen by itself. It won't just happen through market forces playing out in a kind of, you know, let it rip away. It requires specific deliberate choices, policy choices and those policy choices can then allow Paul Paulman and other business leaders to drive the business agenda in a market based way with the right signals. And the wonderful thing about the period that we're in, and I'm sure Nick may want to talk a bit more about this, is that we have a moment of astonishing flexibility. And we have flexibility because energy prices have come down and that actually does create options and solutions around energy that we might not have had a few years ago. And it's across the board. So how do we use the shift in energy prices and turn it to our advantage? And that's going to require really deep thought and smart action, but there are possibilities on the table. And we live in a very low real interest rate world, right? And that also gives us astonishing opportunities. So how do we seize the moment? And then the last point I'd like to make is that this has to get operational. We've got a big, if you will, story of change and the opportunities that presents. We've got flexibility that comes, if you will, through a set of economic forces that could play to our advantage. And now we need to operationalise it. And when we look to that, it's for example making sure that we get that model of infrastructure development, how we build those cities, we've got to get it right. And that means the policy bit of it needs to be right. We need to develop planning capabilities at the level of municipalities. We need to be in a position to actually develop that pipeline of bankable projects. The finance needs to come through and it's a blended finance model in many cases with private enabled by public. And then it needs to get delivered by effective execution, much of which will come from the private sector. So I want our conversation to have that element of how and delivery going forward. Thank you Jeremy, as a director of the project to produce the report, Better Climate, Better Growth. I mean that's a perfect segue if I may and Paul Paulman to you as a CEO of an extremely large, one of the world's largest companies that we have here in terms of the consumer goods space. The how, the implementation, getting it done. What's been your experience as a business leader involved in this work? And what's your message perhaps to other business leaders who perhaps haven't been as close to this kind of analysis and might have a different viewpoint? First of all, thanks again for the opportunity and my fellow panel members again. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. I think what is very clear is there is momentum building and I'll talk about it in a minute. But as I listen to the fellow panel members I couldn't stop myself from thinking we all have incredible protections for ourselves on the right to live. But we somehow refuse to give these protections to our planet on which we depend in the first place. Which to me is kind of bizarre. The interest of business to get involved is very simple. You have 60% of the global GDP, 80% of the capital flow, 90% of the job creation comes from the business community. We like it or not. And obviously we want to have that function, especially at a time when economic growth is slow. We are actually starting to see already for the first time in some of the countries that the growth in these countries is actually limited because of these planetary boundaries. And that is frightening for everybody. And therefore it's not only actually a business agenda, more than ever it's a development agenda. The people that actually suffer are the ones that are on the bottom of the totem pole and live in poverty. They are often worse off, if not in all cases, but they are often worse off of the effects of climate change. So that's why it's very important this year that we have ambitious agreements both on climate change as well as on the sustainable development goals. If you do get a company like Unilever just very practically about 400 million euros a year, we already think we incur because of the effects of climate change. Because of the droughts, because of the volatile input cost prices, because of the floodings, because of the closure of our factories as a result of that. It's nearly a bi-weekly, bi-monthly occurrence right now, if not more often. The second thing is a high volatility in input cost. The food industry, for example, it's estimated that if no actions are taken in the next 30 years, the whole profit of the food industry will be wiped out. And there are many studies that give you that evidence. And last but not least it is this poverty agenda I talk about. If you cannot develop these economies because of this, you cannot develop your businesses either. So it's not surprising to me that we are seeing far more businesses stepping up to the plate. If you just look at the last year alone, we have now 4,000 companies reporting on their greenhouse gas emissions. That's quite a big number. In fact, 80% of the world's largest 500 companies are now setting absolute emissions standards. In fact, 50 of the top 200 companies, if you want to get closer to home, including Unilever, now have an internal price for carbon. And then interestingly, I went to the top 35 companies, which you might call leaders in the field. Many of them you will see as members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which I chair as Dominic says. They actually have set already targets for a 100% reduction. So well beyond the 6% reduction needed to stay within the two degrees. Now the voices of business are also getting louder because the silent majority has been too silent too long. But you look at the recent climate summit in September in New York. We got a thousand companies to sign the World Bank statement on calling for a price on carbon. We see the same with the global compact, 8,000 members calling for a price on carbon. The 56,000 members, global and regional on the World Business Council calling for a price on carbon. Now you might say these are companies, but where is the financial market? $34 trillion at the climate summit in September calling for a price on carbon. Now it's not surprising that this is happening because I think we're at this moment in history, which actually is a very good moment where the cost of not acting is starting to be higher than the cost of acting. And that is what people understand and that gets in essence to the conclusion of the new climate economy report. If you want to have growth, you have to invest in curtailing the climate change. We have a report that just came out from the Oxford Smith Institute that looked at all studies done in the world. It's an interesting reading, but it actually shows that companies that take this, that internalize this, have a lower cost of capital. Not surprising actually because they have a lower risk. When they have a lower cost of capital, they have a higher probability of profitability and ultimately gets reflected in their share price. Now what does business want? What does business need? Business needs clarity. The more clarity there is a price on carbon, clear targets, the better business will be able to invest because you take for them some of the risks away. As El was explaining this morning, business is already two-thirds of the investment. In fact, more of the investments now go to green energy than conventional. But the main driver of investment than Jeremy explained it as well in technology has to come from business. Take that uncertainty away, the investments will go up and we could actually accelerate. The second thing business wants, which I think is also quite normal, is one the level playing field. We have a world where I always say 90% of the people are connected directly or indirectly to business. There are players that get it, there are players that need a little bit of an incentive. We can create enough critical mass, I think, but we also need these governments to put in place the frameworks to give you that level playing field. Now scalable projects are happening. El was alluding already to the Tropical Forest Alliance, the New York Declaration on Forest where we really get a critical mass of companies to say, we want to go to zero deforestation. We have the Natural Refrigerants Alliance moving out of the CFCs into natural refrigerants. More and more people are looking at sustainable sourcing. The green cities at Bloomberg leading one of these efforts. The construction industry, many, many things are happening, but we now need to scale them for impact. And I only have four simple demands as we go on this road to Paris, which is happening in the next few weeks, basically, and time is ticking fast. The first one is we need to set clear targets, which is not zero emission. And that I think was well understood in Lima as well. The second one, we need a price on carbon that should not surprise anybody either. The third one is we have a unique opportunity in Addis Ababa, and it is the green climate fund to get the financing. There is financing needed for countries and perhaps for some industries even. And finally, we need to work on these transformative projects to show that it can work. The business community is working on the road to Paris, as it's called, and they are actually working on transformative projects across industries. We will be looking with the new climate economy task force on all the submissions that the countries will do for their climate agreement, and most likely there will be a little gap that is highly probable. We will then, with the business communities, come forward and say, together we can actually do this and this and this to fill this gap. The risk, as I call it, the political process. But for that, obviously, we need to be all together, and I think increasingly I'm encouraged by the momentum that is being built. Thank you very much, Paul. I'm conscious of our time. We have another press conference coming in here with the UN. I do want to perhaps try and leave a space or at least a question or two, but Lord Stern, if I may just to close a view, if you can be concise, a development agenda was raised a couple of times, and this is something also that came out from the work. It's not just a northern industrial transformation story. Even briefer than usual, if that it. This year shapes the next 20 with those decisions on the world stage on sustainable development goals on climate in Paris and on financing both those things. This year shapes the next 20, the next 20 shape the century, and it's very important to be clear on that. I can only be very brief, but we have to recognise it's poor people who are hit earliest and hardest by climate change, and that's why development and sustainable development and poverty reduction is so intertwined with action on climate change. It's also the case that action on climate change itself cuts enormously the pollution from coal and diesel, and it's that hits poor people very hard, so they gain from action on climate change, and of course a lot of the decentralised technologies such as solar are enormously empowering for the poorest people. So if we do nothing, the poorest people get hit earliest and hardest on climate change, and as we act along better growth and better climate, that story, that past low carbon economy, has enormous direct benefits to poor people and to development. Those things are intertwined. The two agenda are the same. The next 20 years shapes the world. We movement enormously, three things going on, enormously rapid movement from the rich to the poor country, from the rich countries in the balance of economic activity. 25 years ago they were two thirds of the world economy, 25 years from now the rich countries will be one third of the world economy. Next 35 years cities will go from 3 billion, 3.5 billion to 6.5 billion, the most rapid urbanisation we've seen. What happens there will be enormously important. Technology right across the board digital materials, biotech, incredibly rapid change, and these are the 20 years when we have to tackle climate change. You put those three together, this is an enormous opportunity. If we don't take it, we will lose it, but we can take it and what we do in the next 20 years will be transformational. We can make it the best of centuries or if we do that around the next 20 years we can make it the worst. Thank you so much Lordstone for that. Now, we've got time for one question. We organised at the back, are really pressing us on this. You had your hand up, Joe Confino. Joe Confino from the Guardian. I was in a meeting with a very senior oil executive, I can't name because it was Chatham House rule, but he was just laughing at this idea that we wouldn't burn all the oil. He said it's naive, he said we need to produce energy for poor people. He said the idea that politicians are going to act is just not going to happen. He said that by 2100, yes, renewable energy will be in the ascendance, but until then it's ridiculous to think that oil won't just continue, we won't dig it all up and we won't all burn it, and that will lead to probably a four degree rise in temperatures, but we now have to look at carbon capture and storage in other elements to try and reduce that. So this idea that we're going to keep it in the ground, he said it's just not going to happen. So like a response to that. The chairman of the largest oil company said last year and I quote, what good is it to save the earth if humanity suffers? I had to think long and hard about what that statement meant. It's a non sequitur, but it's based on the same lack of logic that informed the comment that you just quoted. Of course they want to promote a variety of different forms of denial, but there's a famous quote from one of the former ministers of petroleum in Saudi Arabia, I'm sure you've heard it, Sheikh Ymani, said famously a couple of decades ago, the stone age didn't end because of a shortage of stones. And the same thing is true of the age of petroleum. As we cross the tipping point, or the grid parity point, where distributed energy resources are available at rates below those for carbon based resources, then this transition will become unstoppable. This is going to take place. My question is how quickly it will take place. We're doing a lot of damage. Let me remind you that you know this, but last year we crossed one of the tipping points of irreversibility with the West Antarctic ice sheet. Now we can still have some impact on the rate at which it collapses and the rate at which sea levels rise. We'll have an impact on whether or not other ice sheets cross that irreversibility point. But we need to act quickly. I referred in my presentation earlier to the beginnings of these large scale methane releases in the Arctic. That's another such tipping point. So we have to act quickly. I think that it is just wishful thinking that on the part of the oil company executive you're quoting to say that it's all going to be burned. It can't be burned. Even if there were not government action, the constraints of mother nature would take place. Look at what's happening already with coal burning in China. People are choking on the collateral pollution from the coal. It is not a sustainable pathway. It is going to change. Efficiency measures, demand response, cheaper energy storage, both electricity and thermal. The intertwining of information and energy markets and again this unstoppable transition toward a distributed energy resource model is going to move us away from this reliance on the dirty energy of the past. Dirty energy makes dirty weather and people have had enough of it. They are making the connection. They are connecting the dots and they are putting pressure on leaders to get on with a price on carbon in markets and they are putting a price on denial in politics. Thank you, thank you sir. I think our organizers at the back are saying that we are going to have to close because we do have enormous amount of press conferences to get through. I'm sure if there are questions that perhaps if we are out of the back we might be able to take a few before Dari's persists. But let me just thank very much the panel this morning. Can I say one other thing before we close? Just one other thing very briefly. I want to personally endorse this better growth, better climate report, not for the first time, but really and truly what Felipe Calderon has chaired, a Nick Stern has so ably assisted on and what Jeremy has done as the director. This is really worth reading. It is a fantastic blueprint. Thank you. That's a great way to close. Thank you panel and thank you.