 We are on what was supposed to be the final day of COP26. It could be a couple of days more. We don't know. Perhaps we'll have an agreement at midnight tonight. Perhaps it won't be till Saturday or Sunday or even the early hours of Monday. Who's to say? I'm joined though. For the first time in way too long by Aaron Bostani, who has just come back from a week in Glasgow. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm really well, Michael. I hope there's no technical issues or I don't pass out through lack of sleep or because I'm so ambivalent about the process on going in Glasgow. But one thing I know for sure, Michael, I'm very happy to be with you tonight in Tisgisau. I'm very happy to have you back, Aaron. I've got a good feeling about the technicals tonight. I will be speaking in a moment to a climate expert and who we had on at the start of COP26. Before we get to our main story, do subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. And if you have any questions, comments, you want us to know about, to read out, do tweet them on the hashtag Tisgisau or you can put them in the super chats. Leaders and negotiators at COP26 were scheduled to agree a final communique an hour ago. However, no COP has ended on time since COP12. That was in Nairobi in 2006. So no one seemed surprised that negotiations seemed set to run into the weekend. The first draft of the COP26 communique, which has to be agreed by all 197 parties, was released on Wednesday. A second draft was published at 7 AM this morning. We are currently awaiting the third and I would imagine final draft. To discuss what's at stake and any standout bones of contention, I'm joined once again by Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at UCL, who is at COP26. Now, thank you for coming back to speak to us. Now we know a little bit more about what's happened at COP26. Can you talk us through the key points that are keeping negotiators up through the night? What are these 197 countries? I presume some of them are more important than other in these meetings. What are they debating? There are two kind of big sticking points. The first is finance. So developed countries have not lived up to their expectations of giving $100 billion a year of climate finance and increasing that going forward and adding additional finance for what's known as loss and damage. So impacts of climate change, such as a hurricane going through and destroying a town or city. And also for adaptation to adapt to the climate change impacts that are already happening and will increasingly do so in the future. And that's the big, big sticking point. The second is around carbon markets where there isn't yet agreement on how they should operate. And some countries are trying to get loopholes in there and others are trying to close down those loopholes. And particularly for the African group and others in the G77 in the developing world. They are keen, it's a red line for them, that they should get a share of proceeds from any carbon trading that goes into a fund-to-fund adaptation. And the US and the EU are resisting that at the moment. Where do they want the funding to go? The US and America? For this? Oh, they just don't want it. They just don't want it, right, I see. They see any kind of levy would increase the cost and reduce the volume of carbon trading, which they don't. Right, I see, I see. One of the key issues or the key development seems to be to put forward or not say put forward or defer basically, the chance for countries to come up with these NDCs, these pledges to bring us down to hopefully 1.5 degrees, to keep 1.5 degrees alive. To that end, instead of us all coming back in five years time to update ambitions, the UK I understand are suggesting that countries come back next year and put forward more ambitious targets. Does that make sense to you? And is it an admission of failure about this COP26? It does make a lot of sense and it's the one thing that could move the dial on emissions. If you have this big conference where everyone accepts that we're in a crisis, we're miles away from reducing emissions far enough to meet the 1.5 degree target they should halve in the next decade and they're currently projected to kind of flatline or only very slightly decrease. Then having countries come back next year means that there's another chance to really start driving down emissions in the near term rather than all these long term net zero targets. And that's specifically about 2030, isn't it? So they're saying at the moment, we've actually got some fairly decent targets for 2050 but we need to upgrade ambitions for 2030. We can come back next year and do that. I want to look in detail line by line at just one point in this negotiating draft to make it all a little bit more concrete what is being haggled over. So this is on fossil fuels, has been talked about a lot because as far as I understand it's the first time that the word fossil fuels has been used in one of these COP communicators. So on the issue of fossil fuels in the first draft of the communique, this was 0.19. So it calls upon parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels. So that was the draft that went out on Wednesday. The draft that went out this morning that had been watered down. The document now calls on the parties to accelerate the phasing out of unabated coal power and inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels. So the commitment is now not about coal in general but unabated coal power and not about fossil fuel subsidies in general but about inefficient subsidies in general. Now, Simon, is this an example of something that really matters or is this almost semantic, you know? Will those two different words added, unabated and inefficient, dramatically increase the emissions which the world will produce over the next couple of decades? How significant, how seriously should we take these changes? Well, I think it's important in the sense of the United Nations framework convention on climate change. These are whole talks. They have a serious credibility problem in that. We all know that fossil fuels are the cause, the primary cause of climate change but they never get mentioned in any text and there's just this enormous disconnect. So actually, we can start to name the problem. They might take it much more seriously. In terms of unabated coal versus coal power, I don't think that's a big issue because the coal industry always says, it's okay, we'll capture our emissions and store them under the ocean. And actually, this is just to say, well, okay, do that if you can and we know that it'll never happen because it's too expensive and too difficult. On the subsidies, that is a massive watering down. No country thinks they have inefficient subsidies. It could be stated more clearly. So one of the arguments for having fossil fuel subsidies is to stop big impacts on the poor in countries, in poor countries, who are reliant on some fossil fuels and if prices fluctuate, they need some assistance with those. But that could have been specified in a very narrow range rather than we currently have six trillion dollars a year in fossil fuel subsidies. Now, for the G20, they have spent more in the past 12 months, the same amount in the past 12 months on fossil fuel subsidies as they have on the green part of post-COVID recovery funds. It's a colossal problem and naming it is part of moving forward. Yeah, I didn't understand the inefficient thing at all because I saw the justification for the subsidies as to say the winter fuel allowance or whatever. But the winter fuel allowance, you might think it's necessary and a good thing, but is it efficient? I don't see how inefficient versus efficient subsidies has any relevance to this issue at all. I don't know what you think was going on there. Well, what outlawing, saying that you would get rid of subsidies is clear and then saying that getting rid of inefficient subsidies leaves it up to the country to decide what is efficient or efficient. So it's just a huge loophole to claim anything, any subsidy you'd like to keep. You can just say, well, that's an efficient subsidy. That makes sense. It could kind of be any word. It could be good subsidies or permissible subsidies, something like that. I want to talk about who have been the good guys and the bad guys at this COP26. First, let's take a look at John Kerry, the US climate envoy speaking this morning. I think we're coming together. I think they're always in this kind of a negotiation. A few issues floating around. There are usually 100 rumors regarding that thing. And I feel very, very good that this has the potential to be a very important statement. Big arguments over finance, I'm hearing. Well, there's some arguments over finance. I don't know how big they are, but we have to come up with a mechanism that provides more money. We want to support more money for adaptation, more money for the overall effort to mitigate because we can't win if we don't have the funding to be able to implement. So, you know, there are always expectations. We're going to work through it. We're going to come up with an agreement. And the arguments are line by line. Do you think the sentence about fossil fuels and coal will survive this last stage? Well, the G20, the G20 supported it. It's very much taken from the G20. The G20 had China, Russia, India, a bunch of countries at the table. They signed off on that language. So it would be sort of odd suddenly being going backwards to what you already put out in the context of the 20 biggest economies in the world. I think the language is coming together. I really feel very confident. We are going to raise the amount of money for adaptation. We're going to be moving in the right direction, less developed countries desperately need additional help. We agree with that. From day one at this COP, we've been saying the United States wants to raise the amount for adaptation. We support it and we'll be moving in the right direction, I believe, as we leave here. That was John Kerry suggesting the US are driving for more ambitious change and also sounding fairly positive about COP26. Speaking to Sky, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davies, sounded less optimistic about the likely outcomes of this conference. There's a lot of fancy words. They don't seem to have any teeth to them. It's aspirational. I don't want to say success or failure. What I want to say is progress has been stagnant. Progress is stagnant. And I hope that we will get out of this quite well. If we are lucky, we will become refugees. If we are not lucky, we will be swallowed up at the rising sea levels. That was Philip Davies with some incredibly sobering comments about the future of the Bahamas if we continue on our current trajectories. Simon, how have the different priorities of different countries played out at this COP? Who's blocked positive change? Who's been pushing for it? Who's come out on... Well, I don't want to say come out on top because I don't want to talk about this like a sport, but how has the interaction between the different parties worked over this past two weeks? Well, you have to take the public statements with a bit of pinch of salt. So John Kerry speaks to a very good game to the public on the outside and from the big plenaries. But behind the scenes in the actual negotiations, the United States have been pretty obstructive. So they won't agree to a definition of what constitutes climate finance. Now, that's a real stumbling block if you're saying, well, we're going to provide 100 billion altogether in climate finance or any other amount. You have to have a definition, but they are resisting them. And they're also resisting this being on the shoulders of the historical emitters in the developed world and saying, well, the new emerging big economy should also contribute. And what about philanthropists and the private sector? And they have a role, but that's outside of these negotiations. And it's been the same with the European Union who have been pretty missing in action over the two weeks. And they also start to speak a good game on the outside but are really not stepping up on the inside. And it's those two groups, the US and the EU, that really need to stand in solidarity with those really vulnerable and income poor countries to both block the Saudi Arabia's and the Russia's and the Australians who are trying to water down the agree and provide the finance that's really required to increase the ambition. If you want to increase the ambition of mitigation, of reducing emissions, you've also got to help global South countries to leapfrog the fossil fuel age. And they need concessionary loans and de-risking of rollouts of renewables and other forms of support to be able to do that. And that's not yet there yet. And finances is the one thing that really could stop a deal completely as we get. It's that serious. It's still moving, but it is that serious. I suppose to make this discussion of terms and them negotiating the specific words of the text, in that example, why would the US not want to define climate finance? What are they planning to do that a definition of climate finance would stop them doing? Do they want to send money to the military allies and call that climate finance? Is that what's going on or is it something slightly more subtle? I think it's more subtle about not wanting to be boxed into an agreement and then having to deliver it, where they want more options in how they might deliver things in future years. I don't think it's been completely obstructive, but they always want things on their own terms. And that's the running sore through all of these negotiations, is that we have a world that's been built on colonialism and those rich countries are holding most of the cards and they are not paying for the climate impacts that they have historically caused through the cumulative emissions and income poor countries are incredibly frustrated by this and are really demanding action and that's the core tension and it's always the core tension within these talks. The big powerful countries don't feel like they need to constrain their own sovereignty and freedom of action, so they won't. Let's look at how far we are from where we need to be. Climate action tracker have said that current pledges put the world on course for 2.4 degrees of warming. That's down from a 2.7 degree projection at the start of the conference, although obviously way too high. They also said though that in an optimistic scenario where countries met their 2050 targets, it could be the case that warming could be limited to 1.8 degrees this century. Simon, you understand climate modeling much better than me, you're a climate scientist. How have they managed to come to these very different figures, 2.4 and 1.8? I mean, I'm sure there's a world of difference between those two things. What's the difference between what they consider their mid-range number and what they see as their optimistic one? So their mid-range number is if you take all of the national climate plans, nationally determined contributions in the jargon that have been submitted to the UN and those pledges from last week on deforestation and methane and the other announcements and then you project those forward and then you include changes in technology and other changes in the world that are expected and you come out with 2.4 degrees Celsius warming. The 1.8 is that you take that, those 2030 figures where we keep emissions roughly the same as they are now and then you assume that every country that said it will then get to net zero by 2050 or 2060 goes on a straight slope down to net zero. And that's just completely unrealistic. There's no way, for example, that Saudi Arabia whose emissions are rapidly increasing are then gonna suddenly decarbonize completely in the 30 years following that. So I think we can discard that 1.8 but what it does show this difference between 2.4 and somewhere down at 1.8 is that there's a huge implementation gap. That we have these long-term targets but the near-term policies are just not there yet and that's why this decade is so important and why countries need to come back next year to be able to try and bridge that gap and get onto a trajectory where emissions actually start to fall rather than keep going up as they have done over the last 30 years since we've been talking about this issue. For our audience, I've got a visual representation which made more like a lot of sense to me of this is from the BBC showing the emission cuts which are needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees by 2030 and the ones which have actually been pledged. So you can see the pledges before COP26, 52 gigatons. After COP26, that's down to 41 gigatons but what we actually need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is to be at 26.6 gigatons. So we're not even halfway there from before and after COP26. When we had you one at the start of the process or this particular COP process in Glasgow, you said there were two sort of important things that will come out of this. So one, the final draft communique, well, I suppose it won't be a draft, then the final communique and the side deals and we've seen a lot of side deals over this past two weeks has been agreements between, I don't know if you can call it agreement, but a pledge by the United States and China to work together to phase out fossil fuel use. We've had deals on methane, deals on deforestation. I was wondering, I wanna know what you think have been the most important ones. What are the side deals that you might have looked at and thought, oh, actually, that is a big deal and potentially surprising that that was announced over the past two weeks. Yeah, there were two standout ones for me. The first was the South Africa Just Transition Deal. So 8.5 billion pounds to help heavily coal dependent South Africa move away from coal. So South Africa has, I think, 87% of its electricity comes from coal-fired power stations, a big coal exporter. And this is to take the country and wind down coal and rapidly roll out renewables with training programs to move the workforce to be producing these renewable technologies. So that's really important, potentially a really important model for other countries to move from where they are towards a net zero economy. And I think the second one was one aspect of the deforestation pledges, which was 1.9 billion dollars to go to indigenous people to protect the forest that they live in. And that's really unprecedented, I think, to see indigenous peoples get access to money to be able to map and then legally define and help protect their territories. And that will help with deforestation because deforestation rates are much, much lower within indigenous peoples' territories and local community territories compared to outside. Good deals. Who are the drivers of those? Who should we say? We're well done for putting together those ones. All of these deals were negotiated by the UK government, UK presidency. So they had what was a pretty sensible plan which was to look at the nationally determined contributions to climate plans and see that there's a big gap with where we need to be. And then they tried to look at sectorally how you might start to bridge that gap. And I think it depended on the teams filling the government, but if you've got good people who really understood what the issues were and really got it and had a long enough lead time, then they could do something potentially very good. Interesting. We've ended on a positive note, although obviously the overall story is that this is nowhere near good enough. Simon Lewis, thank you so much for joining us again. Aaron Bostani, you have spent the last week or so in Glasgow. After listening to Simon Lewis, there is a what are your main takeaways from what has been achieved at this conference? What hasn't been achieved at this conference? The nature of COP26, is it all a big waste of time? We're at COP26, there have been 25 Cops previously. I think it's fair to say that 24 were failures in and of themselves. There's been positive direction in some instances, less so in others, but 24 were failures. I think Paris was the one time it was kind of seen as a success in and of itself. And then the question is, is this another failure? Probably, yes. So given the historic context and how Cops generally pan out, it's not that bad. But of course, it's in Britain. We've had as a result far greater coverage of it by the media in this country. And so it's important to sort of actually underscore how poorly we are doing. Because of course, they regurgitate the press releases. They sort of like to repeat the positive bluster of people like Boris Johnson. But things aren't looking very good. And it is a failure. And it's a failure across multiple nations. And despite what you'll repeatedly hear that it's a failure because of the likes of China, India, it's generally speaking, overwhelmingly speaking, a failure of the global North, of the wealthier countries, particularly the United States, Canada, Australia, are the easy climate bad guys, Britain too. And it's important to say that somewhere like China is at least doing enough to make up for its historic emissions. That's what it plans to do. The likes of the UK, there's basically no country in the West, in the global North is doing that. In terms of the particularities of what's going on in Glasgow, what hit me was that the actual nature of the climate movement has drastically changed in the last several years. It's no longer about polar bears as lovely as they are. It's no longer about species extinction as important as that is. But actually what was being put front and center at COP26 was land rights, indigenous peoples, and habitats that need to be protected from capitalism. That's not to say that there's an agenda being pushed by the powerful because it's not. But it means that the face of the climate movement has changed quite dramatically. I don't think the media and its coverage of climate change has kept up with the changes in technologies, the changes in renewable energy, and like I say, the change in the climate movements. The media lagging behind is a big one for me. They're stuck in this quest for permanent optimism. We can do it. We can feel good about ourselves. No, we're in a really dreadful situation, and it's important to start with honesty. We're not gonna hit 1.5 degrees C, extraordinarily unlikely. Secondly, I think it's just the brazen mendacity and hypocrisy of the countries involved. So a good example, Michael, is, well, we want to end deforestation by 2030, and of course the bad guys and all this, are Brazil and Bolsonaro and the good guys. Well, as always, you know, it's the Europeans, the lovely progressive liberal Europeans calling on Bolsonaro to stop with his deforestation and tree burning and destruction of the Amazon. And yet the EU signs a trade deal with Brazil to double imports of beef. Now, implicitly, that beef requires deforestation. The Europeans know that. They're not stupid. And so on the one hand, you have this hand-wringing about what we have to do, and on the other, carry on with business as usual. You know, Germany is gonna be burning coal into the 2030s. Britain, yes, we've phased out coal, but you can't say, well, that's leadership on energy. You've gotten rid of coal when we're still drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea in dozens of sites. You've got news sites being prosecuted all the time. How's that leadership? So yeah, like I say, the two things that really stand out, very poor media coverage. I really think the media is just not informing the public some great journalists out there, of course, but by and large, very poor coverage. I think that starts the BBC actually, just regurgitated press releases by and large and it's brazen mendacity, just utterly, utterly brazen. We'll talk about this more, you know, one of the things that's been all the rage at COP26 has been tree planting, you know? And actually it's big part of net zero, you know, you don't have to stop or reduce massively fossil fuel emissions right now because we'll be out of plant trees. They're being called nature-based solutions. And often this is a very, very, very poor strategy. You know, I'm all for reforestation. I wrote about it in my article on China. It can be done effectively. Sometimes it wasn't China, often not. But the idea that, oh, well, we can cut down thousands of hectares of wild forests with biodiversity, indigenous land rights being respected. We can cut that down and we'll just put a plantation of eucalyptus and tea trees, you know, several thousand miles away. And that's basically the same thing, utterly stupid. And I talked to indigenous people from Central India, Aravasti people from Ecuador, from Chile, from Brazil. They're also the same thing. If we want to protect this planet's biodiversity, we have to leave that in the hands of indigenous peoples. And that is not the agenda of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and the major powers, by which I mean European powers, the U.S., Brazil, China. That is not their agenda because it's the odds with economic growth. So all coverage and frankly, the whole thing is just riven with hypocrisy. I think it's important to start with that as a premise. On nature-based solutions, which you just spoke about the limits of, I spoke earlier to Kitana Chandrasekaran, who wrote a great article for Navarra Media on this in fact. So this is what she told me about nature-based solutions and their role at COP26. So all the targets to achieve their mitigation are net zero and the net means that it is the carbon emissions of your net minus what you're able to draw down from the atmosphere, carbon sequestration or carbon removal. And that's where the nature-based solutions come in because nature-based solutions are what enables so trees and forests or soil carbon, for example, draws down carbon from the atmosphere. But what they're essentially saying is that they're going to achieve net zero, which means what they are going to do and what they're already doing at the moment, corporations, 1,500 corporations, rich country governments are going to keep emitting according to their trajectories, expand fossil fuel extraction. The UK itself has 40 new fossil fuel projects, but will then use land in the global south, forests and trees to offset the emissions that they're going to emit. And that's what nature-based solutions here is about. So it's actually in the COP text now, not as the term nature-based solutions, but as the term nature as a net carbon sink and enhanced carbon removals from nature. So there's a lot of definitions you'll hear for how lovely nature-based solutions is and what it is, but this is what is actually the politics of nature-based solutions. That was Kitana Chandrasekharan. Aaron, do you agree with that? Do you think, I mean, you've talked about some of the ambiguities about nature-based solutions. I mean, we are going to need to have significant extraction of carbon from the air though, aren't we? Because, you know, as far as I understand, our carbon budget is going to be used up in six years, unless we really, really have a dramatic transformation in sort of how the world deals with this kind of thing. So, I mean, what's your take? Yeah. And you know, this is quite hard for some people to understand, Michael, because I think, my God, look, the green movement has been talking about deforestation for decades. We're saying, here's more trees and it's still not making you happy. Maybe you're being, you know, contrarians. We thought you were tree huggers, but it's a bit more complicated than that, Michael, because if you don't plant the right trees in the right place, it doesn't just not solve the problem. It can actually make things worse. So examples, for instance, of trees being planted in certain areas, you know, pine trees in Latin America and they take up too much water and actually they do nothing for biodiversity. They might not live very long. Often, the initial reforestation efforts in China, trees were dying, about half of the trees being planted were dying. And of course, the worry is if you have reforestation where you chop down some trees, which will continue for at least 10 years and you plant them elsewhere and elsewhere they're sucking up precious water reserves or most of them are dying or they've got no biodiversity, it's still a massive net loss, Michael. I think we have to get this really through as political commonsense. If we're serious about expanding the forested parts of the planet, which we have to do, you're absolutely right, it's a critically necessary thing to do that has to be led by indigenous peoples. That's not some woke thing I'm trying to say to score brownie points and to look cool or to knock western governments. These are the people who presently administer, I believe 70 to 80% of the world's rainforests and habitats like that. They're very good at maintaining these places of being custodians of these places. And so if we're going to adopt that strategy, Michael, which was saying rightly that we have to do, you have to send to indigenous peoples. And it can't just be, the UK says, I'll give you an example, we're going to plant 30,000 hectares every year after 2025. Well, how many trees per hectare? What kinds of trees? These are hugely important questions. Secondly, you also have all these commitments around planting trees. When you actually break it down, it often looks like there isn't really enough land. And that's before you sort of ask questions about, well, people live on this land. Where are you going to put them? Obviously conflicts between agricultural land and we need to use land for agricultural purposes. And you're saying also we need to use it as a carbon sink. I mean, that's something that Bill Gates says, I kind of agree with him. He says there's an important conversation here. We need to feed the planet equitably and in a far healthier way than we presently do. You need to be careful about saying, well, we can just give, multiple Australia's over to reforestation tomorrow. Well, it's a planet of 7.5 billion people. It's going to be 10 billion probably sometime this century. They need to live somewhere, they need to eat. That's a lot harder than it sounds. So the reforestation thing is good. It's positive. It's a really positive thing that we're here. But the likes of Bill Gates, the billionaire class are attracted to it for a reason. And the reason is, actually two-fold. The first is it allows them to carry on burning fossil fuels for a little bit longer, really into the second half of this century, which should not be happening for developed countries. And secondly, this of course provides a whole new area of financialization because you can trade with the carbon, you can create futures markets. And actually the idea of nature being a commodity is why we're in this situation the first place. And I find it very hard to believe it'll therefore be part of the solution. So I think criticism of tree planting reforestation, they may sound strange initially, but it's being adopted and it's all the rage at COP26 for a reason because it means we don't talk about the thing that matters the most, which is stopping fossil fuels. We can't drill any more oil and gas wells. And yet in this country, we're doing it in dozens of places, you know? China, which I think is doing considerably better than the United States or any European country is still going to open dozens of new coal-fired power stations over the next decade. If we're serious about 1.5, none of that would be happening, but it is. So the idea of net zero reforestation to sort of redress carrying on with this business as usual. And at the same time saying, well, we can stick to 1.5, 1.5 to stay alive, it's 2.4, it's three degrees C. And three degrees C is really, is really concerning. You know, today, well, the last 24 hours, I think we had about 1200 undocumented migrants come here in the UK over the English Channel. Look, in a world of three degrees warming, that's a walk in the park. You're going to see displacement of billions of people. And so 1.5 is still very possible, but net zero is an agenda, I think, kind of locks in us going far beyond it. We've got a couple of very good comments on precisely this topic, Caroline Duvier, tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. Nature-based solutions sound like colonization all over again. We invaded before and took the land, and now we invade again and take the land. I guess it's all super positive, though, since first time we brought civilization to the brutes. Obviously, that was in quotes. Now we bring some trees. It's fairly intelligent. I think there's a lot to that comment. Tad Cantwell says, there is a study that shows old growth forest absorbs more carbon because they are bigger. It's fairly basic stuff, yet capitalism still wants to cut down old growth as a resource. So that makes sense. Ecologically, we probably want to keep, those forest with the massive trees standing there. Capitalism obviously wants to cut those down and replace them with quick growing trees, which are going to absorb less carbon because they're smaller. Let's go to an example of the hypocrisy of the West that Aaron was talking about then. This is a tweet from Robbie Blake, who is someone from Friends of the Earth, Europe. So he tweeted, a scandal broke today. The EU gave its backing to 30 gas projects, worth 13 billion euros in the middle of COP26. But it seems every single media outlet is too busy covering the blah, blah, blah at COP to notice actual fossil fuel subsidies happening now. So a lot going on there. The West is still addicted to fossil fuels, not willing to move away from them as quickly as it needs to. I also now want to show you a clip of the protest, something Aaron was talking about earlier as well. You probably saw the big protests at the weekend, Greta Thunberg speaking at the Youth Rally on Friday. Today, there were also demonstrations and delegates from inside the conference walked out in protest. Let's take a look. People got the power, people got the power. Power to the people, power to the people. People got the power, people got the power. People got the power, people got the power. Power to the people. That was delegates leaving the conference hall to join protests outside. Aaron, you spoke about the politics of, you know, the protesters there and sort of the civil society movements there saying, you know, quite radical, talking about, you know, not having colonial solutions, et cetera. Do you think they have much impact? You know, because obviously, you know, obviously there are these protests at every COP26. Did you get the sense from people that they felt like they were also in part shaping the agenda? But do you think there was a more fundamental relationship between outside and inside at this COP26? I think the major criticism that was repeated to me, Michael, about this particular COP was accessibility. And actually, activists, people from the Global South, journalists from the Global South felt really locked out of the process. You could talk about that because of COVID-19, et cetera. But that was a word I kept on hearing, accessibility. I think you're right to say, look, climate protests aren't going to solve this. And people going on, you know, the streets and saying, you know, the people united will never be defeated. Well, they've been defeated many times when they've been united. So there's an element, of course, of, you know, platitudes and cliche and going through the motions. At the same time, I think it's really important to say that in the last three to four years, climate change and its perception has been dramatically shifted because of protest, because of the youth strikes, because of indigenous land movements, you know, you saw it in North America, you saw it in a bunch of other places. In this country, Michael, you know, if you think about fracking, it didn't happen because of protest movements. You know, there is an alternative reality where we have fracking in this country and, you know, we have little mini earthquakes and people's water, you know, has methane in it and you can set it alive. That never happened in this country because of protest. But the key thing is protest only works when it's being aimed nationally at democratically elected politicians, which has always been my critique of the EU as well as the Eurosceptic. They sort of go, oh, we're going to centralize power at Brussels and Europe. Well, no, because then they're not accountable to national populations, national discourses, natural civil societies. Oh, we'll have a transnational civil society. People have been saying that, Michael, since the early 1990s, guess what? CO2 emissions have been exploding and we've done next to nothing. I don't buy it. We know that where people make real gains in politics is at the level of the nation state. It doesn't mean, you know, you're some bigger and you want to close the borders. It's about saying the one time that we've had popular scrutiny and accountability of politicians was during an era where nation states were the primary repository of power. No, that didn't apply in the global south because of colonialism, by the way. I'm not saying it was the same everywhere, but it's clearly the case in many countries and even in the global south, many countries won things through, like I say, contesting politics at the level of the nation state. So I wouldn't write protest off. I think it's hugely important at the level of nation states. I think when you're protesting power at the transnational level, things become a bit stranger. But I wouldn't say that they were wasting their time or anything like that because those same people with that same rhetoric mobilizing in those ways, as I said right at the top of the show, you know, they've changed the complexion, the face of the climate movement, how it's seen. They've centered the people right at the middle of this, which is people in the global south, the people who've done the least on climate change. Their emissions are tiny. You know, the average Indian historically, I think their carbon footprint is 1 30th of the average Canadian. They're going to be the ones that experience the extreme weather events and the water shortages and the flooding before the more affluent people. So those people have been centered because of protest movements in the last five years. That's fantastic. But I think it's also really important to say, well, look, we need governments to step up and they're not going to unless they're forced to by their publics because they're in the pocket of finance, big energy corporations, big business. They don't want to change business as usual. They want to be seen to be changing business as usual because they want to be reelected. They want to think they're the good guys, but in reality they're not. And it's something that I was asking people repeatedly, you know, who's the leader with regards to climate change? And people couldn't really give you a country that might say Bolivia, they might say Denmark. Some people said China. And that's now what we need. We now need to move into an era during the 2020s, the 2030s. We're going to need nation-states. It just needs four or five countries. It could have been Sanders in the US. It could have been Corbyn here. Four or five countries to say, you know what? We want to decarbonize by 2035. We want to help finance the transition in the global south. That is not going to come from a COP meeting. That is going to come from politics at the national level. Unfortunately, I don't have the graph to hand, but the best evidence, or the most sort of clear evidence that protest often does work in this particular area is when you look at, it's a you gov poll, I think, where they ask over time, what are your top three issues that you're concerned about? Right up until Extinction Rebellion, barely anyone was saying climate change. After that first wave of protest, that massively went up. I think around 30% of people were saying that climate change was in their top three issues. So we do have very recent evidence of protest working. And I also think whether or not you can provide evidence that it works, you might as well do it. And there is evidence that it works. It doesn't matter anyway. Let's go on to our next story, which is not about COP26. It's the bread and butter of Tiskey Sour. It's outrageous goings on in the Labour Party. While sluggish on matters of policy, purging the party of left wingers has been a task taken on by Keir Starmer's team with real vigor. Up to now, that's mainly involved kicking out ordinary members and the former party leader. Now, according to the BBC, the Labour right are organising to remove other left-wing MPs. The BBC report that Taiwo Oatemi and Zara Sultana, who both represent Coventry constituencies, could face deselection before the next general election. The article cites a number of reasons that CLP members are supposedly unhappy. Some constituency Labour Party members in Coventry were left deeply unhappy at the candidate selection process during the 2019 SNAP general election. There were claims it was a stitch-up and suggested the National Labour Party had imposed candidates loyal to the then leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in the two Coventry seats but left vacant by the retirements of the long-serving MPs, Geoffrey Robinson and Jim Cunningham. They also report some members claim the election results were an indicator that Coventry voters were also unhappy with the choices of Labour candidates as they held onto the two seats by a whisker. So they're saying the fact that the election was closer than 2017 was because of the left-wing candidates, not because of Labour's Brexit position or anything like that. They also said some senior members of the CLP in Coventry South have also grown increasingly frustrated at Ms Sultana's habit of speaking out against the party leadership and causing controversy, such as when she was pictured with anti-police banners at a rally recently, something she later apologised for. A similar story this week was run by Jewish News. They highlighted Zara Sultana, Sam Tari, Ian Byrne and Abzana Begum as potential targets for deselections. And they ran with some more comments specifically about Zara Sultana. So they reported two local members who spoke to Jewish News accused her of being more concerned with winning over the support of students studying at the local Warwick University rather than improving relations with many in her CLP. Another member said her views on issues such as Israel prevent strategy and other issues did not chime with the views of the vast majority of people in Coventry. They added, despite having Zara Sultana as our MP, the local party is a remarkably moderate one and is fed up with her antics. Local party sources confirmed that the view amongst the majority of branches in the constituency was to go for a short list of more than one name. So that would mean having a selection where it is potentially the incumbent, Zara versus another candidate, or I suppose they could even have a short list without Zara on it at all. Aaron, what do you make of these stories? Do you think this is just people putting out stories to keep the left on their toes, or do you think that there genuinely could be left-wingers like Zara or Sultana who get deselected before the next general election? Yeah, they're gonna try, and it's coming from the top. I've had a number of sources tell me that this comes from the leader's office and it's being signed off, allegedly, by people like Luke A. Kirst. You've got somebody who works under Luke A. Kirst, called Matt Pound, who worked on the Starman leadership campaign. He's working on removing these left-wing politicians, left-wing politicians. What I worry about, Michael, is if you say this, it becomes somehow, it's an evil thing to say. But it is deeply concerning that Luke A. Kirst, who his job is as a lobbyist from Israeli NGO, he's a lobbyist, that's his job. And people are allowed to lobby governments in a democracy. That's how it works. He's also an NEC member. And now, we're looking at allegations of him looking to systematically remove those MPs critical of Israeli policy. I find that remarkable. Just change the words around, Russia. Let's say you had a Labour NEC member who was working as a lobbyist, pro-Russian lobbyist. I'm just saying Russia, it could be any country. And they were working to remove aim MPs or minority MPs who disagreed with his views on Russia, who he kind of, whose interests he represents. We would say that's a scandal. We're talking about corruption right now. That to me seems pretty remarkable that you have somebody representing certain political interests in their country and in some ways, undermining political opponents. Now, let's see how the story develops because at the same time, it's gonna be hard to do that with Zara Sultan or Uppsana Begum because they're Muslim women. And if you look at it from just a strategic point of view, the Muslim vote is hugely important for Labour. And they can just, you know, they can dismiss it at their peril. They sort of did that with badly in Spain and they almost lost the seat. Now, people can say, well, they kept the seat. They kept the seat, but they kept it with several thousand in 2019 and in a bar election, they kept it with several hundred. So that's a very dangerous strategy to pursue. So I think they'll go for it. You know, who will they be successful with as a separate question? I think Sam Tari, similar story. You know, there's bad blood between him and sort of West Street-ing supporters in that neck of the woods in Elford, I believe. So I would say that of all the left MPs, yeah, they're gonna try it with five or six MPs, maybe success, be successful with one or two. And the thing that will be pushing it back will be the public response. And what really makes me sad, Michael, is we've got COP26. I don't believe Keir Starmer went to COP26. Maybe he did. I can't see any evidence that he did. I hope he did. It's really important. The next one's in Egypt. It's a lot easier to go to the one in Glasgow. He didn't go there. Meanwhile, his minions are working on removing socialists left-wing women as MPs. I find that really, not just concerning politically as a journalist, I find it really sad, depressing and despairing. So we'll see. That's what they want to do, Michael. And like I said, it comes from the top. If you are enjoying this video, do make sure you hit subscribe. We go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m. We put out multiple videos every day. Let's continue with this story. It is, of course, notable that of the five people suggested for deselection in these two articles, free are women of color. Labour-Muslim network have suggested Islamophobia could be a play. They tweeted the following about the Jewish News article we showed you before. So they write, the peace twists valid concerns about prevent, policing and foreign policy to paint a picture of Muslim politicians as extreme and obsessive, where other MPs might have strongly held convictions informed by personal experiences. Muslims like Zara Sultana don't get that luxury. I assume that there are undertones of Islamophobia here. At the same time, my experience over the past five years means I am reluctant to point to Labour Party members who want to replace their MP. Obviously I 100% disagree with them in this case and say, oh, you're probably motivated by racism because we saw it with Louise Elman and we saw it with Luciana Berger where people were saying, oh, it's these horrible anti-Semites that want to replace their MP, where I think that was just because they had right-wing politics. Presumably the people in this CLP would say, well, we want to get rid of Zara Sultana because she has left-wing politics. It's got nothing to do with her ethnicity. I don't know, how would you navigate that somewhat complex situation? Yeah, I think it's a really good question, Michael. And look, I support mandatory selection. I think every MP should go through a process of mandatory selection before a general election. But what we have to respect here is people like Zara Sultana or Apsana Begum are anti-war, anti-war on terror, which I think many people viewed as Islamophobic. And of course, the Labour right was in power when those things happened, anti-prevent, I oversaw that, for instance, and they view those as perfectly legitimate things to have done. And so it does adopt, of course, an Islamophobic element, Michael, because of course most Muslims think that the war on terror and invasion of Iraq was insane and evil, which it was. Are they trying to remove them because they are Muslim women? No, they're not. And I think that's a really important thing to say because equally they're going after Sam Terry. Why? Because West Streeting has a beef with him and West Streeting's allies in Elford have a beef with him. They're going after Ian Byrne and Liverpool. Why? He's seen as sort of somebody who's gonna uphold left-wing values. You know, they suspended Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour Party MP. He's now a Labour Party member. He's still not got the whip as a Labour MP. He's not a Muslim woman. So you're right, this is not, let's identify the Muslim women and get them out because if these were Muslim women who were pro-war and pro-occupation of Iraq and pro-prevent and not remotely critical of the police and favoured Blair right policies on public-private initiatives with regards to healthcare and love the city of London and take trips with Labour friends of Israel to Israel every summer, they would have no problem at all. It's because of the political substance of their positions. Now, that is related to the fact they're Muslim women but they are two separate things, Michael. It's very right and important to say that. Also going back to the media coverage of this, I talked about the Jewish news, there was once the BBC article which I just found unbelievable. I've never read an article, Michael, in the BBC where not a single source, not a single source was named, not a single source was named, the people apparently working in the local party, who told the journalists this? And the fact that landed in the BBC on the website retweeted by Kuhnsberg, that's why I sincerely believe it's an operation coming from the top. Well, I know it is, I've been told that by multiple people but that corroborates it because that is not normal, that is not usual and I think we'll see a lot more of it. And the way it's reported versus when there were left-wingers considering deselecting right-wing MPs is just world apart. Back then it was abuse and it was Stalinist purging. Now it's that, oh, local members are unhappy with the MP because they're too controversial and they attack the leadership. Now, if that was ever used as an excuse to deselect right-wing MPs, oh, we want to get rid of them because they attack the leadership too much. You're like, that's Stalinist. Now, that's completely reasonable apparently. We are going to talk about some really explicit racism that Zara Sultana has been subjected to in one moment. First of all, a comment. Henry VIII, fake with a fiver. Labour wants to be elected, yet also want to deselect the likes of Zara. They'd better pick one because they ain't having both. They, I think that's a very important point. I mean, Labour seemed just completely intent on pissing off anyone in the country who's under 25, under 30 and has the kind of left-wing politics that mean you're anti-war. Kirstama, just out here saying, let's arrest protesters. Bizarre. He didn't say that. I think it was Diana Johnson that said that the LSE protesters should be arrested, but Kirstama did tweet condemning them. Thank you to Tarana for your donation as well. Labour MP Zara Sultana has spoken before about the shocking level of racist abuse she receives from members of the public. And this week, she shared two particularly hateful emails. On Thursday, she tweeted, having spent a couple of days away on bereavement leave, I came back to my emails today. This is what I found. Muslim women in politics shouldn't have to tolerate this. So she was emailed and I should, obviously what I'm gonna read out is quite unpleasant. Go back to your country. You are in my country, not yours. You do not belong here. You live in my country. You live to all that is my country. Black facing brothers, you tough. One of our traditions. It is not for us to consider Britain first rising. We will soon get our heritage back and tough if you don't like it. Labour lost thousands of us to Brexit. Immigrants, the biggest reason. Obviously really disgraceful, horrible racist email for anyone to receive. She then tweeted this morning, I posted about racist abuse email to me this afternoon. I checked my emails again. Islamophobia must be called out. This one, you are not British, stop pretending. I wouldn't move to China and pretend to be offended when the Chinese voice normal preferences for their own. Please stop pretending. The racism card means anything, yadda yadda yadda. Ends with we see you as invaders, rightly so, stop pretending you are not. So again, completely disgusting. And from everything I hear all too common for anyone who is a woman of color in public life, particularly people with left-wing opinions. This isn't the first time Zara Sultana has spoken publicly about the racist abuse she receives. This is part of a speech Sultana gave in Parliament this September. When young Muslim girls ask me what it's like, I'd like to say there's nothing to worry about that they would face the same challenges as their non-Muslim friends and colleagues. But Madam Chair, in truth I can't say that because in my short time in Parliament, that's not my experience. So let me read out a few examples. One person, for example, wrote to me and I quote, Sultana, you and your Muslim mob are a real danger to humanity. Another wrote, I'm a cancer everywhere I go and soon they said Europe will vomit you out. A third called me a terrorist sympathizer and scum of the earth and that sanitised of their unparliamentary language. I have discovered that to be a Muslim woman, to be outspoken and to be left wing is to be subject to this barrage of racism and hate. It's to be treated by some as if I were an enemy of the country that I was born in. As if I don't belong. It was summed up by these words in a handwritten letter and I quote, if you can't stand the racism, perhaps you'd be happier going back to your country of origin, foreigner. Chair, it's worse when I speak up for migrants rights in support of the Palestinian people or criticize Tony Blair for the war on Afghanistan. One abusive letter said and I quote, Our cities are full of Muslims, send them to Pakistan. Another suggested that I must support the Taliban all because I'm Muslim and against endless war. Madam Chair, this Islamophobia doesn't come from a vacuum. It's not natural or ingrained. It's taught from the very top. These fires are fanned by people in positions of power and privilege. When a far-right online account targeted me with racist abuse, suggesting that Muslims were an invading army, a conservative MP replied, not calling them out for their racism by insulting me instead. That was Zara Sultana speaking earlier this year, incredibly important and brave speech and also refreshing to see someone relate these emails and this abuse to the hate that is propounded at the top of politics and the media in our country. I'll show you one more tweet. This is from Friday morning. It's a very defiant tweet from Zara Sultana. So she tweeted, This morning after a few difficult days I woke up to find my inbox filled with messages of love and solidarity from the bottom of my heart. Thank you to everyone who has shown their support. They want to drive people like me out of politics. We won't let them. Obviously, solidarity was Zara Sultana before we say anything else. Aaron, your comments on this. Do you think it's important for MPs to share this kind of abuse that they're subjected to? I mean, on just simply a human level, I don't think people should suffer alone. So I'm glad that people are tweeting this out. But what can we take from this? What needs to change? Well, we all know, Michael, that Islamophobia is a huge problem in this country. We know that. It's the permissible racism. And yeah, nonsense saying otherwise is just so frequently indulged. It's the permissible, we went to war. We were involved in wars which have killed a million plus people. And it's just not even seen as a problem because they're brown, because they're Muslim. We have people dying in the English Channel today. Yes, that doesn't matter. They're Muslim. They were white Europeans. How do you think that will be reported? And this goes all the way to the top of our allegedly progressive party. Kier Starmer, time of broadcast, it might change over the weekend. He hasn't extended his solidarity to Zara Sultana. What's going on? And that's not just Kier Starmer. It could have been, I think any Labour leader not from the left probably would have done something similar. Very few Labour MPs have extended their solidarity to her. No Tory MPs have, as far as I can see. Maybe one I've paid attention to. And that's because Islamophobia has seen as fine. It's seen as permissible. We've literally based foreign policy on it. So yeah, it's important she talks about it because I think there are many well-meaning people out there, principled people who find that disgusting and don't know the scale of it. But I think anybody who's ever been in receipt of it or has a friend or a loved one who has, I mean, they know just how bad it is. We see it with Ash Sarkar, our colleague, Michael, the stuff that she's sent and she goes through. But it's seen as OK by many, many people because Muslims have seen as secondary citizens and Islamophobia has seen as a secondary racism. Labour Party has a quite overt hierarchy of racism, as, by the way, does the Tory party, which sees Islamophobia as fine. I mean, it's interesting you say Kier Starmer hasn't responded to this because you might say, oh, he's leader of the opposition. He can't respond to every incident of unpleasantness. He did find time to tweet in solidarity with the Israeli ambassador to the UK when she was subject to peaceful protests. Now, there was no evidence of racial slurs, no evidence of racism whatsoever. Kier Starmer very, very quick to condemn those people. He doesn't have anything to say now. About a colleague as well, right? You'd say it's not just a fellow legislator. It's not just somebody in your party. You're the leader. Step up, man. Step up, forget all that. It's a colleague as well, like in a workplace, if you were the CEO and somebody said, this is happening to me while I'm at work, you would express your solidarity with them, at least the rest of the workforce, has he done that? So we don't need to make this a rant about Kier Starmer. You can do that about 101 things. But I mentioned it because I think it does, he is, his response is personifying the issues around Islamophobia. And equally, you know, the lack of solidarity, the extensions of solidarity from other labor MPs. The response of this by much the media compared to other other racism that MPs have been subject to. MPs who were subject to anti-Semitism, disgusting, call it out, you get an overwhelming response often from the media, less so with regards to Islamophobia. And somebody might disagree with that. That's my view. And like I say, that's because Islamophobia is seen as permissible. You know, when we talked about anti-Semitism for years because the labor party, one of the things that became increasingly obvious was how insidious it was as a racism, because people didn't necessarily recognize it as such. In the post-war era, we've come to think of anti-black, anti-brown racism as the sort of anti-racist. That's what we deal with. And I think that was a very fair criticism actually of bits of the left for sure. But the idea that, you know, the media didn't address it. David Bedil says that for instance, you know, Jews don't count, I think it's nonsense. You know, if Zara Sultana was Jewish or South Asian, or I mean, if it was homophobia, maybe I'm wrong. I just feel like the bigotry towards Muslims is seen as permissible. It just is. It just is. And that permissibility bleeds through to the kind of abuse that she's receiving. And like I say, we see it with Ash, our colleague. It's just, if you're a Muslim woman in particular, my God, you're just treated utterly differently to anybody else. All incredibly important points. And yeah, we know this all too well. From our very brave and brilliant colleague, Ash Sarkar. And we've got a lovely comment from Saul with a fiber supporting Zara against the attacks directed at her by the Labour writers. One of the reasons I'm still a Labour Party member solidarity. Let's go to our final story. The second job scandal has shown many Tory MPs are subject to extreme conflicts of interests. And on at least one occasion, it's revealed their brazen hypocrisy. You might remember that back in July, after England lost the Euro 2020 final on penalties, it was leaked that Natalie Elphick wrote the following in a WhatsApp group of Tory MPs. They lost, would it be ungenerous to suggest Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics? The rather cruel suggestion from Elphick there is that Rashford missed a penalty because he'd spent too much time defending the rights of children, not to go hungry because of Tory policies. The more general implication, people should stick to their day jobs. If you have a second job, it will make you worse at your first. Well, it's now come to light that Natalie Elphick hasn't been following her own advice. I News first revealed the double standard. They pointed out that according to the register of interests, Elphick earns £3,000 a month in her role with the new Homes Quality Board. That's £36,000 a year on top of her £82,000 MPs salary. If you didn't know that NHQB is an independent watchdog for new-build homes, she was appointed as chair at the board in May 2020. She is set to spend approximately 416 hours working for the organisation this year, which works out at eight hours a week. Labour has raised questions over a lack of transparency in appointing board members and queried how the watchdog can be independent of government if it is being chaired by one of its own MPs. We've got another conflict of interests story here as well. Aaron, hypocrisy from a Conservative. Are you shocked? No, but it's a good one, isn't it? It's nice and amusing. What are the political implications going to be, God knows. Mind you, don't get on the wrong side of Marcus Rashford and get away with it. Michael, you know, here's the thing. The stories are a meme. You know, we have a meme as a political party running the show in the UK. And it's starting to sort of fall apart for them a little bit. And that could be temporary. You know, polls now putting them increasingly in the high to mid-30s rather than low-40s. But I don't know. I do wonder about the extent to which this is bad for politics just because it becomes constant background noise of just daftness and stupidity and vacuity and triviality. I do worry, Michael, because if you don't have political movements sort of drawing out why they're hypocrites, which is because they serve particular interests and they're venal and often corrupt because of the ideas and the ideologies they pursue, then I wonder about the politics of it. But it is funny. It is always funny to see the meme party, aka the Conservatives, basically look even stupider than I thought. That's a good way to end the show. Let's wrap up. Aaron Bustani is an absolute pleasure to have you back on Tiskey Sour. It's been too long. I can't go two weeks without you again. Was it two weeks? I presume. Well, you weren't here last Friday. So maybe, yeah, I don't think you were last week. Last week, it was ash every show, I think. Yeah. Well, you know, I'll make up for it and I'll do extra shows, Michael. And the Bustani withdrawal symptoms will be immediately rectified with some medicine. It takes. I already feel calmer already. Thank you for watching Tiskey Sour. Thank you for your comments and your super chats. If you are a regular donor, thank you so much. You make all of this possible. If you are not, you can go to navaramedia.com forward slash support. We ask for the equivalent of one hour's wage a month so we can keep expanding this organization. We'll be back on Monday at 7 p.m. You've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navaramedia. Good night.