 Good afternoon. I want you to focus on two simple equations. Global climate change equals extreme weather events. Extreme weather events equal devastation. Thank you for joining us for the CNBC Africa debate responding to extreme environmental risks. I'm joined to deep dive into the conversation by Al Gore, President of the United States in 1993 to 2001, Chairman and Co-Founder, Generation Investment Management, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. Peter O'Neill, Prime Minister, Papa New Guinea. Hindu Omaru Ibrahim, who is the Coordinator of the Association for Indigenous Women and People of Chad. And Philip Hillerbrand, who is Vice Chairman of BlackRock. Thank you all for joining me. Vice President Gore, can you tell me why we need to care more about climate change today than ever before? Well, I think Mother Nature is making that pretty clear. Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the book of Revelation. We are trapping enough extra heat in the Earth's system because of man-made global warming pollution to equal the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours. It's a big planet, but that's a lot of energy. And one consequence that has a direct impact on extreme weather events is that all this extra heat energy is disrupting the water cycle by evaporating much more water vapor off the oceans, which falls in much larger downpours when it reaches the land. So we get these massive rain bombs that have become so commonplace. And that results in floods and mudslides. 500 people died in Sierra Leone earlier this year from mudslides. Similar events occur regularly around the world now. The same extra heat also pulls moisture out of the soil, which makes the droughts deeper and longer and has a profound effect on agriculture. So we get stronger storms. Because most of the heat goes into the oceans, the storms that come over the oceans as cyclonic storms, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, become much more devastating. Just this year, this past year in Houston, Texas, we got one and a half meters of rain from one hurricane. And we had several more besides that. So these events are getting worse. They were predicted to get this extreme and intense by scientists years ago. And because their predictions have come true, we should pay careful attention to what they are telling us now about what will happen in the future and how we can moderate this destruction in the future by stopping the practice of using the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer. So I don't want to dramatize the situation. But if we don't act quickly, how much time do we have left? Well, the consequences that we're already experiencing will continue for some time and will get worse. But we still have the ability to make changes by not dumping 110 million tons of man-made heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere every day. If we did not, then the consequences would be horrific and would pose an existential threat to the survival of human civilization. Mr. Prime Minister, let's go to Papua New Guinea and the fact that El Niño 2015-2016 impacted your island nation, both droughts and also with frost. Take us back to that time because I want to bring this conversation to ground level. Tommy, how Papua New Guinea experienced this extreme weather environment? It certainly was over a long eight months of drought without any drop of rain in my country. We are a small Pacific island nation right in the middle of the Pacific. So it affects quite a large number of communities where they live on farming. And as a result of no rain, there is nothing growing. And you have to slash budgets to try and feed your population. And it is almost a challenge to many families. Fortunately, we were able to feed ourselves by direct government interventions into providing food supplies to families on a daily basis. But this is happening right across, not only in Papua New Guinea, but right across many African, Caribbean, and Pacific island nations. To no fault of theirs, they are made to suffer with these extreme weather conditions that they are facing. A high number of tropical storm that is now starting to happen on a frequent basis, getting stronger and more destructive and many communities and families being misplaced. This is a serious issue while the rest of the world are continuously debating about whether climate change is real or not, it is suddenly affecting smaller countries and communities. We have to realize that in our generation, there will be few countries who will no longer exist in our countries in our world. They will have to relocate if we do not attend to the issues that are on end. So it is a great challenge. We will see displacement and further migration, widespread migration, forced climate refugees, Hindu, Chad. The Prime Minister brought Africa into the conversation. Talk to me about the people on the ground and how local people have been impacted by extreme weather events in your country. Well, coming from a country like Chad, who is a Sahelian country, and much locked in vulnerability about the climate change, I think the impact are real on the way to change firstly. We used to have like dry season, followed by rain season and followed by cold season. Of course, it's not cold like Davos, but it's calling our time. So those rain season become much shorter. The place where it used to be six months, now it's between three to two months. And everybody know that rain is impacting crops and crops is the food security. And now we are facing the food security around all the Sahel regions and especially in Chad, the regions who are not impacted. Let me give you the concrete examples. The climate change impact directly water. And the famous example that I'm using is the lecture. Of course, lecture is very dramatic from the 25,000 km2, just so we run to 150, 90% of the waters evaporated, not used by industrialized agriculture or something, just evaporated. So 90% of the water in Lake Chad is evaporating? Evaporated on only 40 years. So it's not like 100 years or we can project, only 40 years, 90% evaporated. And then you have population growing up. So more than 30 million people living around and the consequence is conflict between communities. We are talking about the international conflict that Boko Haram, the famous one, but how about the local and regional conflict between farmers, fishermen, pastoralists who are competing on the natural resources access. So people are dying, not just by pleasure because they just want to get food, they just want to get survival. And then that brought me to what Prime Minister and Vice President said about migration. So, of course, migration is very sad for the European people's developed countries that say, oh, we are having the problem, people are coming, but how about the internal migration? I want to come back to climate refugees because Vice President Gore firmly put it on the table and it will be a discussion point in the next hour. Philip, I want to bring you in and I want to just tone it down a little bit in terms of the drama that I have started with and take you back to Sunday when you arrived in Davos and give me a sense of how you felt. What happened? Well, I've lived and come up here my whole life and we put our two-year-old daughters to bed and next thing we knew, somebody knocked on the door to gentlemen in uniforms and walkie-talkies and told us that the cots were ready at the local gymnasium and we would very likely have to get evacuated during the middle of the night. So this is real. You know, it's in Davos. We have a lot of mountainous regions in Switzerland. Mudslides are at an all-time high. Values are closed off. There has been closed off as you've seen. You couldn't get in and out. So I think the effects are real and they really touch us all and clearly there's no escaping even in the developed world. This Vice President and all of you have indicated. So I think it's time that we recognize that the corporations recognize this can no longer be ignored and unfortunately we've wasted precious time as the Vice President indicated early on. Vice President Goh, let's look at the world order right now. China is reviewing its environmental policies and being aggressively green and trying to redress a number of the environmental issues of the past. On the other hand, the United States is cancelling. It's policies where the environment is concerned. What does this mean? Just to clarify that last point, President Trump made a speech. Yes, he'll make another one here Friday. But legally the United States cannot withdraw from the Paris Agreement until the first day after the next presidential election in 2020. We're still in the Paris Agreement along with every other nation in the world. So you're saying the U.S. has to participate? Well, the U.S. is legally bound until there's a notice period and in any case he cannot withdraw until the end of 2020. And if there's a new president, excuse me for a moment, then a new president could just give 30 days notice and the U.S. would be back in. But here's another point to emphasize. Our largest states like California and New York and many others and hundreds of cities and thousands of businesses and BlackRock has been one of the leaders on this are still committed to the Paris Agreement. And because of that, the estimates now are pretty clear that the U.S. will comply not only meet the commitments under Paris, but will exceed them. So really one man trying to cancel the agreements? He can do damage and will slow down the necessary progress, but we're going to exceed our commitments under the Paris Agreement in spite of what he says or tweets or does. Prime Minister, if you look at this world order, what are your thoughts on the changing dynamics? Well, it was good to see that the global community came together in Paris to finalize that agreement. But unfortunately, it was towards the end of the Obama administration when United States really put up its end to take this challenge head-on and, of course, convincing China to come on board. The world seems to think that they've got time on hand. They forget to realize that their real communities out there were suffering as a result of this change in weather conditions. And we've heard very clearly from Hindu and what is happening in Chad. And it affects the most poorest first and those who cannot speak. And this is the unfortunate thing about climate change that the most exposed are the countries with the smallest populations, smallest budgets, and the poorest families. So I think the world should stand up and listen to people like the Vice-President Al Gore and others who are at the forefront of our conversation on climate challenges. But running out of time to listen, I think this is the point, we actually have to turn into collaborative action globally. Hindu, let's stay with this policy element for a moment. What would you want to see from your leaders? I mean, you've put some very scary stats on the table. Notably, that leg Chad has been evaporating at a rapid rate and you quoted four years. Four years. I mean, this is the short term. This is not a medium term problem. Did she say 40? 40, yes. Oh, I'm so glad. Because I really did think it was four years and I really thought the end of the world was upon us right now. Still a disaster. Absolutely. Look, 40 years and I'm not making light of it. It's still a disaster. I should have actually clarified because I did find it an outstanding stat. Well, let me interject something if I could. I'll give you an even shorter term. 78 days from now, Cape Town is due to become the first major city in the world to completely run out of water. Day zero. Day zero. They just moved up the date yesterday to April 12. And the drought, the climate related drought in the Western Cape is similar to the drought in the Sahel in the Eastern Mediterranean that led to the crisis in Syria that contributed to the Civil War and the outflow of climate refugees there. So there are short terms involved and this has been a continuing process for some time now and I want to reemphasize, it is getting worse. We still have the ability to take back control of our destiny as a species but we do not have time to waste. We need to get moving on it. Hinta, coming back to you, what do you want your leaders, what action do you need to see from the political leadership in Chad to remedy the situation for the local population? I think I'm coming back to the Paris Agreement first because this is the one agreement who brought all the world leaders together and this is the agreement who gives hope to the peoples like me and my people back home because this agreement for the first time have the human right, equity, justice, solutions to all peoples. The Paris Accord. The Paris Agreements. And this agreement is signed by Chad and with all the ambitions and then Chad also engaged to make actions but the actions that people are talking about at the global level cannot impact the local peoples. We need urgent action to centralize to the local peoples. Let me give you one example again. We do have technology that everybody are proud. We are moving forward but those local peoples cannot use those technology but they have them technology who are calling traditional knowledge and this is recognized also under the Paris Agreement. So these knowledges, we need to keep them. We need to reinforce them, to transfer them. Give me an example of the traditional knowledge. One of the simple example, I think everyone see the sky and they are stars. They are million and billion of stars. So in my communities, the community leaders know exactly 28 stars. Each of the stars stay 13 days and another one come up. Only one of them stay 14 days. When you take just a quick calculation, 28 times 13 plus 1, it's 365. We don't need January, February to get ending two months. And those stars are helping us to plant the crops to move from one place to another one. If one of them missed, so there is problem. So this is just like the general one. But there are knowledges through the way of surfacing. So here, you spoke about earlier the rainy season, the dry season and the cold season, not quite as cold as Davos, you made the point. So local knowledge, traditional knowledge, technology, I think Hindus put a very, very solid solution on the table for us. And we now talk to the biggest asset management firm in the world. You've got about $5.7 billion, according, well, that was at July 2017, the latest stat that I saw. So correct me if I'm wrong. You've got, you've got might. You've got credo in financial circles. Larry Fink, your CEO, has come out very openly. He's written a letter to all shareholders. He has said we need a revolution in ESG, environment, social and governance. Are we now going to see, and Vice President Kohl has said that BlackRock is very involved in this environment. So I'm going to ask you to do even more. And what is that going to be? Yeah, look, I think there's a, I believe I'm optimistic on there being a sea change in the way corporations look at this. For a couple of reasons, I would mention three. First of all, we're about to see the largest wealth transfer in the history of humanity. We've generated enormous wealth and it's about to be passed on to the next generation. This is a, in many ways, a historic event, both in size, but also in the sensitivities of the new generation. It's pretty clear to me when I look at our clients that there's something happening here that has to do with this generational sort of transfer that you have a new generation of clients who care, who simply care more about these issues, who are attuned, who have read the Vice President's books and grew up with this, and want to see us as an asset manager to somehow respond to this, provide them with certain solutions. The second point is, or the second development, is people beginning to realize this problem is too big for governments alone to solve. You know, I'm not the scientist, but other people have looked at these numbers. The World Bank estimates that 57 trillion, that's about almost three times the size of US GDP, is affected, or is at risk, from only extreme climate events. So we're not talking about the long-term development. These things, these numbers are enormous. They are simply too big to sort of just delegate this to government. And the third point, I would say, is what we have seen in politics recently, and this is not something that is just a phenomenon in the US. We've seen it in many ways across the world, that there's a sense amongst voters that governments have sort of failed to come up on a number of fronts, environment, society, governance issues, to come up with the right answers. So you take all these three things together, and I think what you see is that essentially corporations have to become part of this solution. So are you saying that companies, that business, the private sector is going to lead the charge because government has failed? I wouldn't put it that way. I would say the private sector is recognizing that it has to become part of the solution. I don't think you can replace government. I'm a firm believer that there are many things the private sector cannot and will not do. So what we need to find is ways to bring the private sector and the public sector together and address some of these issues, and this probably being in many ways the most urgent one. And I think there is something happening. There's one other point I'd want to make here. There is increasingly research, and investment funds have done some of this, Harvard has done a lot of it. This research is in early days, I would call on academics to pursue this agenda, but the research is beginning to show that at a minimum it is not clear that there's a negative trade-off from an investment perspective when you start to incorporate environmental, societal, and governance factors into your investment products and offerings. And that's a breakthrough. If we can demonstrate that at a minimum there's no negative trade-off, and potentially if you look at a risk-adjusted basis long-term, that you may actually get better financial performance. And so Larry and his letter talked about sustained financial performance. Let's think about financial performance in the longer term. And I'm optimistic that as we push this research agenda, and again here I think the private sector has a role, academia has a role, government has a role, we will hopefully demonstrate that at a minimum there is not a negative trade-off, and there may even be better performance for the results. Can I interject? So the research agenda, how long is this going to, I mean hasn't the research been done, Vice President Kohl? This particular field of research is still evolving, but I think the best evidence now indicates what Phillip was just saying. In 26 sectors of the economy, the vast majority of them, the companies that integrate ESG environments, social and governance into their business plans perform better. So you know the phrase fiduciary duty, of course you do, and your audience does, for many years investors and asset managers have sometimes said well I would like to invest with attention to these things, but my fiduciary duty to my clients keeps me from doing it. The revolutionary change that Phillip is getting at is now it may be becoming clear that if you do not integrate these factors into your investing, you're violating your fiduciary responsibility. So I want to come back to Phillip here while we're on this point. Does that mean that in your investment strategies you are not going to invest in companies who do not put forward appropriate environmental, social and governance mechanisms? That's the kind of radical question. At the moment we have a fiduciary duty which is still actually narrowly defined in the US at least. So if we manage any pension funds, any US pension funds, as you know Vice President, we're fairly constrained by this fiduciary duty definition. I think it will evolve. It is evolving exactly as you said. I think it's a step by step process. First of all, you begin to reveal to our clients what companies that they invest in do and what they don't do. That's the first step. So you start to get disclosure, transparency. We've seen efforts now around the disclosure task force that is very much pushing this. We've seen that at the forefront of this effort. Secondly, we are pushed and I can tell you this is for real. Our clients are demanding products and offerings that incorporate climate change, societal issues, diversity and we're responding to this. We just set up a whole new sustainability investment department. We announced two days ago we have a new CIO who's going to focus exclusively on this. You're still leading the charge on that. You want to come back? We cannot accept that the investment who do not respect environment and social aspect because what are we waiting? People are dying already and are we continuously just putting money in this environmental crisis who are killing people? I think it has to be very radical and it has to be known. Any investment fund has to require the environment safeguard, the social safeguard in order to save life. Not putting money first. If I can jump in here and Philip I will give you a right to respond. We're hearing the urgency from the people on the ground and that is what we need to bring into the forum. This is not about a theoretical debate. This is about people dying as Hindu set out earlier in the conversation. We could always do more. We still don't know. Investors still, this is why Mark Carney's effort was so important. They need to understand we need to have disclosure, we need to have transparencies what companies are actually doing. I would be very reluctant to just rush to judgment and say you're a bad company you're a good company. This is very tricky business. I agree there's a sense of urgency but it needs to be done properly. It has to be a mixture of us taking the lead but we also have a duty to be there for our clients. That's why I think the first point that I made is so important. At the same time the work that the vice president and others have done for many years, now decades is beginning to change the client preference and that's I think a huge, huge factor that will move things very quickly. I believe we're about to see a curve effect in terms of sensitivity around this. Larry mentioned this letter we're going to have our license to operate withdrawn if you're a company that doesn't pay attention to these things. This is I think a new development. It is and we congratulate you for it sir. Mr. Prime Minister, what do you want to see from this is a big question from the developed world in terms of help to developing nations. Is it likely developing nations are not responsible for climate change? That is true in a sense but there are some developing nations like China who is certainly one of the biggest contributors to this challenge. But we know that they are trying to remedy the situation. Yes and of course we commend them for the efforts that they are making but I agree with Philip in a sense that the government does not have all the solutions to the challenges that we have. But it requires the society to change the behavior in a sense particularly I'll give you an example like consumers. In developed economies you have a choice like if you're going to buy energy you buy from a provider that is providing you clean energy you can have a selection of how you contribute individually to this issue of climate change in global environment and of course going further than that governments need to set up policies to make sure that they have private sector behavior in a manner that is socially responsible environmentally friendly and of course promotes good governance and governments can do more by establishing the right policies and introducing the right legislation but we have made a great start with the Paris Agreement. It needs all of us to rectify that and parliament to rectify that and we all can move forward and live within the targets that we have set. Well we're igniting a debate there's a lot of interactivity from the audience and that is why I keep referring to the iPad on a regular basis. We will be addressing these questions in the session. I do however just want to come back to the consumer because I hosted the strategic outlook on the climate change system yesterday and the consumer was at the center of that discussion. The consumer has power. The consumer can make the choices and I think that this could be one of those igniting solutions the silver bullet that we all start as individuals households start caring about the planet. They start caring about the refuse and separating the plastic and not buying plastic. I mean it's those little things or 7.2 billion people on the planet today by 2040 we're looking at 9 billion people we have to sustain this planet is the consumer the solution and widespread campaigns to talk to that consumer. Well consumers can play a role for sure and when individuals decide to insist on the climate friendly and environmental friendly alternatives that not only helps them be a part of the solution it sends a signal to business and to manufacturers and designers that there is a growing demand for these new environmentally friendly products goods and services and that is having that is making a difference for sure but we can't put the burden on consumers consumers can play a part and are already making a difference. Governments can incentivize consumers. Governments can and businesses can as well. And let me give you one other example of a large investor. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. They were funded 100% by revenues from oil and gas in the North Sea. They just announced that they are 100% divesting from all oil and gas assets. One reason maybe is that they are concerned about contributing to this worsening climate crisis. But another reason is that two thirds of the fossil fuel reserves that have already been discovered and marked to market on the books of sovereigns and multinational companies cannot be burned. And so you recall the subprime mortgage crisis we now have a subprime carbon bubble at some point just as clever investors eventually looked beneath the top layers of these products with subprime mortgages and realized that they were worthless. At some point soon people are going to realize that two thirds of these carbon reserves are worthless. They're not going to be put to their intended use and burned. So at what point does that realization take hold? I don't know within the time span relevant to long-term investors. Indira, I want to come to you here because I've just realized there's a fault in my consumer solution and that is that 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to electricity and it's going to be very difficult to change the behavior of consumers specifically in Chad who are battling to feed their families and who are using fossil fuels to fuel the fires that they cook with. We know the issues of how many deaths they are related to fossil fuel related fires in homes. This is a difficult scenario. Energy is really a big solution for all people but also a big luxury for a country like mine. So like getting just electricity a little light that you can see someone during the night or read something it's a big deal there because we don't have the natural one. We do have sun and then we can develop a lot of renewable energy around but this technology we are talking about are not accessible to all the peoples and then transferring the technology in one, it's one issue but how this one can domesticate like country in Chad. How the peoples can get trained and then they can be their own leader of this renewable energy to get this access. Maybe access to the energy for cooking because this is the first need and then electricity maybe for TV and others is another way of accessing and let me tell you many of the renewable energy around the world are targeting the big income like big city or big mega dams those are not adapt to our environment then specifically in Sahel we want to have a small project in the community level where they can get access and develop and this investment is much sustainable for the business and for the peoples who can get at least the first right access to energy. So private sector government Vice President Gore can come in and provide these devices these solutions. There is some good news there are a lot of companies now that are installing solar in villages and in small communities in Africa a company like M. Copa they supply lighting and now they've sold almost 100,000 low power DC television sets completely renewable energy and it's they have these mobile phone apps that make the payments and they make payments over time and then they own it themselves but I do want to come in here because the story is fantastic from the M. Copa I know the M. Copa in Kenya very well but if you look at solar the stat is that the prices of solar PV have come down 70% since 2010 and was it yesterday that President Trump said he's going to put duties up to 30% specifically on solar so are we saying here one step forward and 50 steps back? That won't affect Chad it won't affect anybody except people in the US but the cost reduction curves for the price of solar electricity and wind electricity are really startling some are now predicting that before the end of this calendar year we'll see contracts for solar electricity at or less than one penny one cent per kilowatt hour in many parts of the world it is already well below the cost of electricity from burning coal or gas I beg to differ though when you say that the decision won't affect Chad I say that long term if the current status quo prevails the biggest economy in the world is creating a trade war potentially with renewable energy and that for me is unacceptable I disagreed with his position but I think that first of all I don't typically defend him I will say in this case it really did not start with him this was a trade action brought by private companies they chose a kind of a midpoint in the range of alternatives could have been handled differently not an utter catastrophe and the large subsidies from China for exporting solar panels has put some other companies in the world at a disadvantage can't we discipline these private companies well I think this is a slightly different discussion as you suggested I think when capital owners begin to ask questions and I think we're at the stage that Norway has gone the furthest as you mentioned because they own their assets in our case it's more complicated we are fiduciary on behalf of assets that are owned by our clients so we're not the asset owner and that's why it's not as simple for an asset manager to say I'm not investing in these anymore particularly such a large asset owner you have a kind of a unique position and I do understand that so we have to work with our clients to kind of explain to them what's happening and move along with them and in many cases they're driving us frankly the big asset owners in a sense for them it's easier they can make much more radical transitions and that's what we've seen in the case of Norway but I think generally we can say as the owners of capital begin to realize that not only is this important from a societal contract perspective but it may actually make performance better if you incorporate these things and that's when we'll begin to see capital incentivized behavior in a way that can give us some cause for optimism so now in my excitement I have ignored the audience and I want to start looking at a couple of these questions and put them forward so Rich Fuller pollution is now shown to be the largest cause of death 9 million per year how does this link with climate change considering soil and chemical pollution any takers that figure is related to conventional air pollution which is a co-pollutant when you burn fossil fuels you produce global warming pollution the CO2 you also produce local air pollution and it's killing people all over the world so one of the other benefits that is not put into the calculations on all these things is that we can save a lot of lives from getting from shifting away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and even using natural gas with new technology eliminating methane leakage that's controversial is it not a step in the right direction well I used to think so I've begun to doubt that it's a legitimate controversy but here's the math if you burn gas instead of coal you get only 50% of the CO2 but the methane itself each molecule is 82 times as powerful in trapping heat as CO2 over a couple of decades and the math gets complicated after that so if you get a leakage of only 2% or 3% which some studies say we are now getting there was a new study that just came out two weeks ago that seems to confirm that fracking gas and other leakage in the compression is actually responsible for the spike in methane emissions so people call it a bridge to a renewable future it may be a bridge to nowhere as you change your thinking we may see widespread thinking given that you're a thought leader in this environment chemical pollution on the soil is also about the industrialized agriculture where the chemical can pollute the soil degraded lands and also pollute the underground water and this degradation now it's a lot around the world and I think that we cannot give tips to the industrialized agriculture because they are feeding the world but which kind of food that they are giving we do have the traditional agriculture and this family agriculture who feed millions and billions of peoples I think that need to be into consideration and maybe promote better in order to mitigate the chemical pollution and this is the case of Africa we are talking in Europe about the bio-food, green food and then green agriculture but we do have bio in Africa this is the family agriculture that we need to promote so we have Paula Kahumbu who is a famous national geographic wildlife explorer is it realistic for proper accounting to be done for all products including long term impacts so that consumers know and pay for the real cost and I suppose Philip this comes back to the research that you were alluding to earlier we need to be careful to jump to conclusions I think the answer right now is we don't have that yet we don't have that knowledge yet but again the research is moving very rapidly I think and we will hopefully just the way in the financial crisis everybody was focused on short term returns and then we realize we better think about this and risk adjust the returns I think we're kind of at a point where this is beginning to change in finance that people are beginning to do a lot of research to think about what does it mean on my performance if I incorporate some of these factors so I am optimistic but a lot of just let me just say a lot of work needs to be done again this is not something that can be left to governments or the private sector academia I think has a very finance here the academic profession of finance has an important role to play to come up and work on this because it's a critical question if as the vice president said if all of a sudden you see that actually you get better performance I would expect that you see an acceleration of this trend that I've described so this is a critical issue and here's a criticism of my environment specifically the media from Jill Caesar so disasters in the US get excellent coverage like the hurricanes of 2017 what is the role of the media I suppose I should be asking myself this question to raise awareness of disasters in Papua New Guinea you tell me what you would like to see from the likes of us well I think it's important to tell the story about the destruction that climate change brings to communities this is real and real time it's not something that is going to disappear soon and global community needs to be aware of that as I said earlier that I'm a chair of the group called ACP which is the African Caribbean Pacific Nations a third of those countries will disappear if nothing is done they will cease to exist as a nation and this is real and communities will be displaced and migration will take place some already been displaced because some of these countries are very low line nations and their way of life has been disrupted could I comment on that question two points you're right that events in the US will typically get more coverage the week when Houston had one and a half meters of rain from Hurricane Harvey there was a lot of coverage but that same week one third of Bangladesh was under water from a very large extra increment of downpours in the monsoon and that did not get coverage but here's another point in the coverage of the Houston catastrophe and most other climate related extreme weather events very rarely is the linkage to the climate crisis put forward the news media with some honorable exceptions has failed badly in its duty to report about the reality of the climate crisis in the US we just went through the third presidential election cycle in a row 12 years without one single question being asked of any of the candidates in any of the debates about the climate crisis in 2016 we don't have the figures for 2017 yet the three major ABCNBC CBS and Fox News Sunday they don't have a nightly newscast all four of them together 365 days how much time did they devote to climate 45 minutes 45 minutes we are devoting 60 minutes to responding to extreme environmental risks on this panel now here's one I think we must say how positive are you and I want to start with you Hindu how positive are you how much chance do you believe there is that we will react and in time as society to fight the climate change before it's too late and I think it's very important to get government to get business and to get civil society to answer this question Hindu I think being positive it's that what I think it's I think it's I think it's a very important thing for me and my people alive so I think through all the Paris Agreement engagement that's give already one step and the second step it's about the investment and the collaborations like I am not sure that in Davos it's happened that and listening from people also give hope but is it hope can give life I don't think so what we need it's more action and action like right now and very radical action is step by step it's was 10 years ago when we had the research we don't need to research who can prove anything the proof we have it we have it in US excuse me just to come to the examples we have the US fire we have the US inundation we have UK inundation we have fire in Africa in every place those impact around the world are not choosing the poor of course it's making the poor much worse but it's not choosing also the rich so we have to refer here to the report that the the World Economic Forum the the risk report the global risk report and the fact that the environmental risks have been elevated in that report so how are you being received given the prominence that environmental issues are getting at the forum here how are you being received are you positive about the interactions that you having I mean no because people listening but they are not listening but by them adding to act so that's what I understand here and this is frustrating because what I want like by next year's Davos to see what is going to happen and what is going to happen and what is going to happen and at least one community around the world and that's I think very far to be happen then I think I really bet you to come back and get the radical solutions and impose to your clients maybe you lose them for 10 years but you will get them back on the next 20 years if you are able to do that. I can tell you that he is listening and it looks as though he may very well act. Let's go back to that question let's get business in here how positive are you that we will react in time. Look we I address the group of chairman yesterday they were admittedly mostly European vice president so maybe it would have been a different image but my sense was I was moving in terms of moving the agenda forward and actually the opposite happened maybe it's the spirit of Davos maybe it's the fact that they were all stuck in a snow storm I don't know but I have a sense that something is moving now it probably will not make you happy it won't be fast enough but we have to be realistic we also have an enterprise to run we have shareholders this is a complicated story I think nobody has served by kind of this to very simple sort of fast things that we have to do immediately we have to change capitalism this is really what's at stake here and frankly we need a new kind of contract between companies investors and governments capital corporations and governments if we don't do that we're seeing what's happening in terms of the politics you're a better expert at this than I am but it seems to me that this faction has manifested itself in some countries explicitly and others it's sort of still below the surface so we I'm optimistic I have to be optimistic right but it is it is slow moving I have a lot of faith in this new generation and this wealth transfer that I mentioned at the beginning and I think we're beginning to see it I'll take the optimism Prime Minister are you going to add to that optimism yes I mean you look at it now the debates and discussions and conversations that are happening all around the world it's encouraging this wasn't the case a few years back every global meeting that many of the leaders that attend this conversation is part of becoming a central part of the conversation climate change is an issue so I think and it's good to see when Philip's talking about businesses starting to take more responsibility in our day investing companies and governments and consumers just going back on what Vice President Goh said earlier to see even larger funds like the Norwegian fund that largely benefited out of the oil and gas business are now starting to take interest in non-renewable investments and that is encouraging to see the same change happening even in the Middle East you look at the UAE the non-renewable initiatives that they have taken it's I think the step in the right direction globally the conversation is right although there is some urgency but I think we are in the right direction unfortunately the technology is failing me I'm going to get your level of optimism and then there's a brilliant question here that I want to use for our final round I always choose optimism and I do genuinely believe that we are going to win this struggle but the part of the question that is most important is in time will we win it in time the answer to that more precisely framed question is still to be determined and your audience can play a role in answering that question because pressure from the grassroots from citizens who speak out use their voice use their votes use their choices in the marketplace can make a difference there is a building wave and in technology and business it's now clear to me that we're in the early stages of a sustainability revolution that is based on higher levels of efficiency the internet of things machine learning and artificial intelligence it has the magnitude of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution we're learning how to manage electrons atoms and molecules with the same precision that Google and Apple manage bits of information and this is leading to a wave of hyper efficiency and reduced emissions that is very very encouraging but there are still forces trying to hold the world back from the change that we must make quickly enough to avoid catastrophe I love that the magnitude of the industrial revolution and the speed of the digital revolution and that actually comes to the question unfortunately as I said it has failed me but if I remember correctly it's from Michael and he's saying how can renewable technologies because I want to close this on a positive note and of course we've still got another whole debate two more days of debate here at the World Economic Forum and lots of people to convince me so how can renewable technology change the game for us you know that the term we used to use regularly and I think it might have been banned at the World Economic Forum is leapfrog how can we leapfrog as a result of renewable technology Vice President well just look at the example of telephones in Africa when the mobile phones first were introduced suddenly there was no reason to put wooden poles in the ground and string copper wire across the landscape they leapfrogged to mobile phones and particularly in East Africa but increasingly all over the continent people use their phones for banking, for commerce and you see Maasai warriors reach into their garb and pull out a mobile phone and I've seen that myself in the same way now that solar electricity is cheaper certainly in Africa and soon everywhere now that it's cheaper than fossil fuel electricity why would you put all that electrical grid in place and buy expensive coal day after day after day pollute the air pollute the water pollute the ground when you can just switch clean renewable solar energy clean renewable solar energy I'll come back to you sir let's get your addition here look I think the key challenge is 30% of the world's energy is still met through coal so the main contribution renewable energy has to make is to kind of rapidly reduce that percentage most people don't realize how big coal still is in terms of an energy source I would also say the big problem that yet needs to be cracked is how you store energy you know despite the excitement about car batteries we're not very good at least that's my understanding you know it's storing solar energy so if we can't figure out a way to store it there's going to be limits to the extent that we can hope that this 30% really declines rapidly to me that is the real technological challenge is not just the renewable energy per se but how to store it once we've produced it you wanted to object on the storage well that has been the case but the cost reduction for battery storage has also been plummeting it's come down very fast and continues to come down the largest building on planet earth is in northern Nevada it's called the giga factory it's Tesla's battery factory they're cranking them out 10 more of them in blueprint to stage right now they just opened the largest battery in the world in south Australia and it's working wonderfully they're buying a lot more of them the combination of affordable battery storage and renewable electricity is going to completely transform the energy sector one other point we have to realize that governments around the world are still subsidizing renewable oil and gas at a rate 38 times higher than the meager subsidies $360 billion the number for well the IMF counts it at $5.3 trillion that includes some indirect costs but it's 38 times larger than the subsidies for renewables if governments would just stop forcing taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of our civilization we'd be better off yes precisely I think as the cost of renewable energy comes down more and more consumers will opt for that and villages around some of the remote communities in my own country they're converting into solar energy on a very fast rate and as Vice President stated even mobile technology is from almost 200,000 users in the mobile network or the infrastructure was made available we have over 2 million people subscribing one year would you go so fast to say that renewable technology is already transforming Papua New Guinea of course slowly although the uptake is not there yet for many number of people but as the costs are coming down more and more people are have you got policies that are friendly as government towards renewable energy products coming into the country so that subsidizes or that reduces costs dramatically makes it available to the consumer much lower costs Hindu you have been listening and I've given you the last word I think technology revolution can help a lot to mitigate climate change but don't forget that the natural mitigation is around forests forest is the technology naturally costing nothing and accessible to everybody who mitigate and don't forget all technology natural or revolution or modern we need accompanied by the partnership and partnership it's really have to be very strongly and that I'm talking about one example of the Tropical Forest Alliance who put government, civil society indigenous peoples business all together discussing about how we can use more our forests and mitigate it this is the technology we need to take into consideration final words sir I totally agree just remember the will to act is itself a renewable resource and the message is loud and clear if we're looking to share a future in a fractured world then we need to move quickly to consolidate global action on climate change or we may not have an earth to make great again in fact there may be no future at all thank you for joining us thank you to the esteemed panelists thank you