 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the union session called a climate and ecological emergency can a pandemic help save us over the last year we've all been working from home we've been doing our science from all rooms like these and whilst working on our geosciences we have witnessed how in times of crisis drastic policy changes were implemented based on advice from the scientific community but at the same time we have witnessed governmental decisions that completely ignored scientific consensus apparently giving higher priority to other concerns we've seen countries come together to face global crisis together and we've seen countries trying to shut the outside world out and weather the storm alone some more successful than others the team of conveners of this sessions are all like most of you attending each year geoscientists who do their job in time of human induced global climate change and watching the events of last year unfold we asked ourselves what can geoscientists learn from this unfolding pandemic on how to communicate scientific results to make sure policy is made based on solid science and also which examples should we definitely not follow my name is roford i'm an assistant professor at delve university of technology and i'm honored to be part of the convener team that hosts this session my fellow conveners are professor iran steward professor haley fowler mr nick avarart and professor hannah cloak and together we managed to invite a selection of speakers on the interplay of global climate change changing organizational culture and impact on policy first we will give our speakers the opportunity to introduce themselves and their views on this topic then we will move on to a panel discussion where the audience is also invited to ask questions questions can be asked in the q and a below and will be relayed to me by the amazing egu staff making this all possible but first before we move to our first speaker i briefly want to give the floor to egu president well i have to say former egu president because i think he his term ended yesterday isn't that right professor alberto montanari yes that's right thank you very much rof for introducing me and i'm pleased to confirm that the egu council and the whole community is looking forward to this session with excitement we know that reacting to the pandemics requires an international effort that has to be supported by the scientific community we feel it's a duty of geoscientists and therefore we feel it's a mission of egu to provide the scientific support for making a synergy of the efforts required to react to the pandemic and react to the climate emergency this is why egu is also liaising with sister associations and with policy makers to provide scientific advice to favor and support more favorable and improve the relationship between the humans and the environments at all levels again i think the pandemics gives us a opportunity an opportunity to put the steps forward towards mitigating and possibly and hopefully resolving the climate emergency so once again i really would like to say that we are looking forward to the session and i hope that we may also get some scientific output some indication for ways forward for scientific research to support moving forward towards a better and improved climate and relationships between humans and nature thank you very much rof thank you very much to the speakers and now i sit in the audience with the real pleasure well thank you very much uh professor beto montelari also thank you for your service to the egu community over the over the past years um we're going to move to our first speaker our first speaker is professor catrin hao she's a professor of political science at texas tech university where she is the director of the climate science center she is also ceo of the consulting firm utmost research and consulting in 2014 the american geophysical union our sister's brethren's over at the other side of the atlantic awarded her its climate communication award professor aoe is known for in her science communication being able to convince people who initially don't share the scientific consensus on human made climate change to change their views including her own husband professor aoe the digital floor is all yours thank you so much when we talk about covid and climate change there are many things that they share i'm going to begin with the negative ones and then progress to some of the positive ones so sharing my screen here the first thing they share is that we knew about the risks far in advance people have known about the risks of zoonosis the transfer of viruses from animal to human populations for a long time and the risk those pose to human populations and of course we've known about climate change for a very long time the science has been studied since the 1800s and scientists were sufficiently concerned about the risks to formally warn a us president 55 years ago now this is an old headline so if these were events were foreseen if they were no mystery why were we so underprepared there's a basic human phenomena that we all share called psychological distance we often view risks as being distant in time or space being abstract rather than concrete and being irrelevant to our primary concerns this psychological distance was initially there with covid and we see it today with climate i'm going to show you some data from the united states but i would just remind you as a non-american living in the us that what i've experienced is that in the us the signal to noise ratio is just higher in other countries we have the same concerns and the same problems we just have a lower signal to noise ratio so you can see the conclusions more clearly in us focused data but we see the same trends in human behavior and opinions in other countries as well so in the us for example when you ask people is global warming happening and you look at results by counting the vast majority say yes but when you say will it harm people personally the vast majority say no of course both covid and climate change are public health crises it's obvious how covid is we know with climate change though first of all it's caused by burning fossil fuels that the most recent estimate puts at nine million deaths premature deaths from air pollution per year from burning fossil fuels compare that with covid we just top three million worldwide so three times a covid pandemic every year from the air pollution from burning fossil fuels of course there's possible interactions between exposure to air pollution and vulnerability to covid and this is just the tip of the iceberg because when we look at climate change there is a whole litany of ways that changing climate can directly or indirectly affect our health through heat related illnesses and death exacerbating air pollution and allergies making different types of weather disasters more severe or more frequent increasing the risk of water contamination the spread of disease affecting our mental health decreasing the nutritional content of our food through increasing co2 levels and ultimately increasing the risk of conflict and refugee crises not only that but both covid and climate change disproportionately affect those who are most vulnerable we know from covid that it's likely to push and this is even here an old estimate it's likely to push well over 100 million people into extreme poverty and we already know that climate changes at work exacerbating the same inequalities two years ago before covid two of my colleagues at stanford released a study where they had found that climate change had already increased the gap between the richest and poorest countries in the world by as much as 25 percent in some cases from 1960 until today and then perhaps the worst part of this is that both of these issues rapidly become politicized when as soon as policymakers look to scientists for guidance why and how this happens was actually described by Scottish philosopher David Hume 400 years ago in a fascinating book called scientists as profits by Linda Walsh she talks about how Hume articulated very clearly that science explains what the current state of the world is policy states what we ought to do about it and the logical gap between the way it is and the way it ought to or should be cannot be bridged without values so no matter how much data we have values still stand in the way of effective policymaking and this explains what a prescient book to read during the pandemic this explains how even a simple statement of the way the world is such as humans are causing climate change or wearing a mask prevents the spread of covid implies a response is needed and is therefore perceived to be political and of course the United States being what it what it is we saw this in the data almost immediately in February 2020 before covid really hit in North America there obviously were cases already but it was not widely known or understood climate change was the most politically polarized issue in the whole country the width of the gray bar shows how far apart people are depending on if they're conservative republican or liberal democrat by august guess what had happened now these bars are not in order of the width of the gray bar so i'm going to point out number three two and one the third most politicized issue was covid the second was race and ethnic inequality and the first was still climate change so when we saw medical professionals saying as long as we just provide the facts to the people they'll surely understand exactly what to do you can see what climate scientist reaction was here unfortunately we've been trying that for 200 years maybe not 200 talking to the public but certainly a full hundred now i mentioned earlier that the United States has a higher signal-to-noise ratio than other countries and analyses have borne this out the trends that we see in the u.s. exist across other countries for example across 56 nations climate change beliefs education and experience were dwarfed by values ideologies world view and political orientation a more recent study that just came out last october found that when people who self-identify as liberal or more educated they become more concerned about climate change but in rich countries where people produce a lot of carbon conservative ideology significantly attenuates that effect and in the u.s. of course being what it is it reverses it so turning to the positive then if this is the negative what works three things first of all we've seen that swift action works we saw that swift action during the lockdowns reduced air pollution significantly we saw that it's likely that these reductions in air pollution could have saved a number of lives this is of course by the same stanford scientists who did the analysis on the difference between poor and rich countries over time we know too that during the month of april carbon emissions dropped by seven percent seventeen percent and globally they dropped by seven percent around the world and here's the interesting thing if the changes that we had seen last april were permanent a seventeen percent reduction in our carbon emissions we would have been about one third of the way to our 2030 one and a half degree goal at the global scale in just a few weeks just a few weeks that is what swift action can accomplish it's amazing what else works effective policies with co-benefits what we are seeing today in the green recovery process is changes to our lifestyle that are good for us today but that are also good for us tomorrow whether it's increasing pedestrian areas in major cities whether it's having to report your climate impacts before you get COVID relief as in my home country of Canada whether it's air france and KLM having to reduce their carbon footprint whether it's the fact that during the pandemic renewable energy accounted for 90 percent of the new energy installed around the world 90 percent when we have policies that begin with an awareness of the values that people have what will motivate people to support action what motivates people to resist or challenge action we need to understand these in advance rather than responding to them afterwards we cannot any longer assume that just overwhelming people with an avalanche of information ensures support for constructive policies and of course we need to make sure the policies are based on sound science we all agree on that but we have to recognize that tension between sciences is as philosopher hume points out and policies ought how the world should be lastly what works long term changing social norms and we already saw this play out in the difference between various countries response to COVID countries that were already conditioned towards collective rather than individual action countries also where people were used to wearing masks beliefs about what others do and what others think we should do these tiny little seemingly inconsequential things are what ultimately change our culture again we saw this play out already with COVID with different attitudes towards responses but how do we trigger these changes how do social norms actually change they change primarily via something that every single one of us can do but many of us aren't doing what is that to explain it I'll just go back to these maps I showed earlier we left off here how many people think that global warming affects them personally not very many but then there's two maps that are even darker blue do you ever talk about it 35 percent and do you ever hear about it in the media 25 percent fascinatingly we don't talk about something if we don't think it matters to us we don't know how to communicate it to others and we don't think there's anything positive we can do to fix it and that is why it is so effective believe it or not the tiny little action of clearly communicating risks and advocating for practical solutions because that changes what people around us think it changes our collective idea of the way the world ought to be it changes our sense of whether anything can be accomplished by action and that is ultimately what encourages us to act I want to leave you with a quote from a young person he's the son of a man called Duncan Green who worked for many years with Oxfam and in Duncan's book he quotes his son and this is what his son says what climate changes for us slavery was to them 200 years ago a massive immovable object yet by being small cogs and a very large machine they were able to make a difference so well it's hard for us to see how we can possibly make a dent we just have to remember it has been done before thank you well thank you very much professor Ayo for your introduction into this session before we move on to the next speaker I have one question for you that was being based on this have we been guilty of underestimating the climate change problem and how we communicate about it by by constantly using these a few degrees of warming as our main message I think that we have been guilty of assuming that the reasons why we scientists are alarmed are sufficient to convince everyone else of the need for action a recent study looked at for example BBC coverage of climate change and they showed that most of the images that were used are images that invoke psychological distance Arctic sea ice Greenland Antarctica polar bears things that have nothing to do with our lives where we live people often say oh it's just a few degrees but if our child's temperature goes up a few degrees we are taking them to the doctor or the hospital so we have to only assumed that everybody thinks like we do and of course the reality is that they don't most people do not think like scientists do and that I think is the importance of clearly communicating the risks and advocating for practical sensible solutions that can be enacted today okay thank you thank you very much for this we're coming back to you of course in the panel discussion anyone that's watching this live stream watching this session you're very welcome to put in questions in the q&a and we will address them at the end when all speakers have had a chance to to say their say which means that we're moving on to our second speaker and our second speaker is Dr. Andrea Hinwood and she is the chief scientist of the United Nations environment program her career has included providing strategic advice to governmental organizations on a wide variety of environmental matters including ozone depleting air quality fire and smoke management biodiversity impacts emerging contaminants what might be interesting to know for the geoscientific audience today she has also earned her stripes during her field work including measuring arsenic concentrations in the hair and toenails of residents living in areas with high environmental arsenic concentrations Dr. Hinwood please address your fellow scientist thanks very much you really did look up the internet to find out what my background was okay um thanks everyone and it's a privilege to actually be joining you today I'm just trying to load my presentation and hopefully we'll be away so I'm going to say some similar things to Catherine the United Nations is talking about three planetary crises that is climate change that is biodiversity and nature loss and pollution and waste and I guess today's topic we're dealing with climate change and ecological emergencies and I just want to talk about what the United Nations and UNEP strategic objectives are for the future it's to attain climate stability when at zero greenhouse gas emissions and resilience in the face of climate change are achieved that we live in harmony with nature where humanity prospers in harmony with nature and towards a pollution free planet where pollution is prevented and controlled and that we have good environmental quality and we have health and well-being for all and we've just seen from Catherine the slides the impact of poor air quality on populations and I think the point here is that these three big issues are all combined it's not just climate change pollution and waste impacts on climate change declining biodiversity and the impacts on nature also impact on climate change and they also impact on our ability to mitigate the effects of climate change so I wanted just to show this image from the emissions gap report which which is actually demonstrating greenhouse gas emissions not not impact but emissions under different scenarios and where we're actually sitting in terms of what we need to do to have or to achieve a two-degree above pre-industrial levels or to achieve the 1.5 degree scenario that we've got it's clearly obvious we are not on track to meet that at this point in time even more importantly we need probably much more rapid implementation and if that we want to achieve our targets by 2030 we're actually going to have to do better and we're going to have to deal with 45 reduction in emissions by 2030 compared with our 2010 emissions we've got somewhere to go yesterday the WMO released their 2020 report for climate change and we had our warmest decade on record and 2020 despite having an El Nino was also one of the warmest years on record and that's in spite of seeing some of these reductions in greenhouse gas emissions I wanted to put this slide up in terms of greenhouse gas emissions just to demonstrate again that they have risen 1.4 percent over the last decade but also to see where the major contributors are in terms of fossil fuels but also have a look at that methane increase over time as well and last year Noah was actually reporting that we had one of our largest measured methane events which is interesting in a year with significant restrictions in place and there is some reports that are going to come out about how we might be able to deal with methane in a fairly opportunistic way but also which will have some significant impacts and I just wanted to also talk about bending the curve during COVID we've talked about flattening the curve I want to talk about bending the curve in relation to biodiversity loss to this point we're seeing reductions in the extent of suitable habitat we're seeing reductions in wildlife population density compositional intactness in the ecosystems and we're we're experiencing one in eight extinctions at risk at the moment and that's without the increase in temperature and global change events that are occurring bending the curve shows us what is possible and again by looking at the different issues and looking at reforestation restoration of ecosystems etc we can actually turn this around and have positive impacts for populations and for climate change and overall ecosystem health so as as Catherine said as well what did we observe during COVID restrictions we did see swift response to control the spread and to mitigate social and economic impacts we actually did all of those things we put it on an emergency footing the response was largely based on science and risk and we've continued to provide early warning and trading data we demonstrated we can take local national and coordinated international action relatively quickly to do some of the things we did in the in the time frame we did it was actually quite remarkable and we've also contributed enormous funds most countries have contributed funds and we're approaching 17 trillion US dollars we demonstrated a willingness to protect public health and I know that there are there's lots of variability in this space across the globe but there was an overall willingness to protect public health if we're talking about climate change we also need to talk about that protection of public health and what it means for individuals we shared information and we co-created we created vaccines we've got several options available despite current debates about the efficacy and issues with them that was a remarkable achievement we also made lifestyle changes really quickly and personally for someone who likes to be out there with people I did adapt to working at home on my computer day after day and it's shown us we can have some positive impacts on the environment as well as noted we saw some reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we had quite a substantial decline but we've also had a very swift rebound and of course we're still tracking up in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions we saw improvements in air quality but we've also seen a rebound with economies cranking back into action we had only anecdotal observations and improvements in species diversity in areas which did not have human pressure anymore and but we also saw increased use of single-use plastics and medical waste we saw increases in domestic household use bar fuels in particular areas and actually some of that was measurable at scale and we saw increases in domestic wastewater and in some locations poor poor water quality so where we reduced industrial contributions to wastewater we saw some improvements but where we saw domestic wastewater that might impact on the environment we saw poorer water quality as a result of some of our systems building back better everyone's talking about building back better and spending money taking account of long-term economic environmental and social considerations but I think what we've observed and thanks to the global recovery observatory for their live database on this information regarding spending in 2020 only 18 percent of recovery spending and 2.5 percent of total spending had positive green characteristics so the COVID-19 crisis will only contribute significantly to 2030 emissions reductions if we incorporate strong decarbonisation and I think that's something that we need to pay a lot of attention to and very quickly as I said before we probably need to have significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to meet a 2050 net zero carbon target we really need to promote nature-based solutions restoration recovery of natural systems and for example if we actually focused on efficiency of buildings energy efficiency UNEP's done some research on buildings and actually shown that buildings and construction sector accounted for 38 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions to get on track by 2050 we could actually building back looking at energy efficiency and make some substantial inroads in that so in my view how can the COVID pandemic help we respond really well to emergencies we need to put our three planetary crises we do call them emergencies on that emergency footing but people actually need to realise it's important there's time to build back better because there are still many outstanding decisions around how we actually generate the COVID-19 economic recovery the social co-benefits or positives of carefully designed green policies can make a difference to health outcomes and I don't think we're factoring in the benefits of some of these changes in terms of the health and the cost of health in the future if we don't do anything there are many options for reducing personal emissions and governments have shown they can use incentives provided through government policies legislation investments very well but I guess my most important message is I think we need to change the conversation and I think we need to change the conversation to be positive to not talk about how negative everything is but what we can positively do to change outcomes to use science and evidence and to discuss risk and associated costs to drive the reticence in action so in my view the responses to climate and ecological crises is possible achievable and COVID has actually shown us that we can do that so thank you very much for your attention well thank you very much Andrea for for addressing us I had one question listening to you you talked about way more impacts that humans have on the earth system than just climate change in isolation is it is it time we start talking about total impact of humans on the planet maybe even human abuse of the planet I don't know whether I'd call it human abuse of the planet I think that's probably a bit strong and very negative connotations but I do think that these three crises that we talk about are interrelated we can have some significant benefits if we restore degraded landscapes if we prevent reductions in biodiversity if we actually look at pollution and waste because they are also associated with greenhouse gas emissions if we look at the the activities in an integrated way and the sustainable development goals are actually established to help us do that I think we will have a lot more impact because people in where they live have seen the changes to the environment where they live and if you relate it to what people's experience is on the ground then you do actually get at what they can see and what they can feel and therefore what it means to them to actually change okay I thank you for that answer it nicely relates to the psychological distancing that Professor Ayo just talked about for anyone that asks questions if you have a question and you see a similar question you can upvote or down no not down but you can upvote questions in the q&a that of course makes it more likely that that question will get asked in the in the panel discussion and we will be moving on to our third speaker who is Mr. Mike Berry he currently has many roles in helping businesses become more sustainable he is a strategic advisor for uh instinctive partners and climate invest and a board trustee of a blueprint for better business he has his own consulting company called Mike Berry ECO and but before all this Mr. Berry was the director of sustainable business at Marks and Spencers the large British supermarket chain I may be underselling Marks and Spencers here as a non-UK person in that role he thought up and implemented the award-winning plan A because there is no plan B and plan A helped Marks and Spencers to achieve zero waste to landfill status switched to 100% renewable electricity and achieve carbon neutrality across its UK wide stores offices and warehouses Mr. Berry please tell our geoscientific audience what we can learn from your experience thank you very much for all and again I will just share some briefly some slides with you and again I'm a shopkeeper we've heard some amazing scientific presentations about the role of the pandemic and the role of the climate crisis and how what we can learn from each other I'm going to put a business frame on that briefly of the next 10 minutes and I'm going to talk about seven big trends that I'm seeing in business that can help us accelerate the action we need on the climate crisis and I want to be very clear with you at the beginning business is the problem business is causing the unsustainable use of resources on the planet business is causing the climate crisis the disproportionate amount of the emissions come from business activity and as Catherine's already told us just like governments business is short-term in its thinking it's atomized it doesn't think about systems it thinks about individual things an individual shock an individual factory an individual farm and all that has failed miserably during the pandemic and it's failing during the climate crisis as well so let me just briefly introduce the seven things I'm going to talk about very very briefly in the next few minutes I'm going to talk about how the sustainability of the climate crisis is reinventing business sectors it's no longer a reputational issue that you faced a bad day in the garden of the new york times if you've got things wrong this is fundamentally your business now I'll talk about the rise of the net zero economy how we're starting to understand it's our consumption behaviors again we've heard about that already from previous speakers our consumption behaviors drive the climate crisis I'll talk about well-being now what is good for the person individual is good for the planet too I won't forget the social issue as well how can business be a good system I'll talk about partnership no one can solve this on their own and the power of technology for good to solve the challenges we have today I want to start with a really big point for the last 40 years business has had its own way globalisation as we know it has seen business face low taxes low regulation to be able to produce and sell what it wants where it wants now some businesses might complain about that but that's how it's been that's coming to an end now and it was coming to an end before the pandemic but the pandemic has accelerated that the climate crisis is accelerating it you can reach back to the financial crisis of 2008 when the banks and business were bailed out by society while everybody else suffered we cannot carry on with the system we have today so I want to be very clear that the pandemic is the last nail in the coffin of globalisation 1.0 we need a new system so the way I'm going to start with is this point about Big Bang I've grown up in a world where businesses worried about a bit of reputational damage from an NGO attack it was a bad day in the office for one day then it's gone now if you get it wrong you are out of business and we're seeing that already too big industrial sectors you'll have heard the statistics Tesla is now worth more than every other car company on the planet put together because it saw the shift in the need for low carbon mobility before anybody else everybody else thought with diesel and petrol or whatever Tesla saw the opportunity and of course this graph that shows the valuation of the world's biggest energy companies just 10 years ago ExoMobil was the most valuable company on the planet Barnum today's valuation is close to being overtaken by next era the world's biggest renewables company so in two sectors already we're seeing those that sleepwalk into the climate crisis and not just causing it they'll be destroyed ultimately by good when they need to be replaced the third sector that sleepwalking into it now is the food sector and again that would be the subject of a presentation and it's all right that we don't have time to today but already we're seeing both the food sectors are sourced for missions being impacted by climate change and new models for producing food emerging very rapidly as I say a discussion for another day the second thing I'll just mention is very quickly businesses having to realise this is not about becoming 2% less bad every year in the way that it did reducing its carbon emissions in the past this is about fundamentally changing every aspect of your business and I work for a small retailer Marks and Spence was a thousand shops supported by 2000 factories producing goods for it supported by 20 000 farmers producing fruits vegetables meat flowers of wine and behind them thousands of raw material sources fish cotton palm oil cocoa soy selling to 32 million customers that small war marty's 25 times bigger than Marks and Spence do the math so if you're going to change every element of that you need to understand legally it's required and brilliant but we're now starting to see the law emerge from Europe South Korea Japan China soon Australia and the USA as well it is mandated in legislation and that last investors are asking the companies to invest into to change we're seeing that businesses having to adapt not just cut their emissions at the scope one and two their own operations but the critically important scope three emissions as great supply chains I mentioned a moment ago that drive the emissions and the consumer use of your products science-based targets to underpin it and only offsetting residual emissions at the end of that journey you must cut your emissions first this is all new to most businesses a few voluntary business flat unilever and stood this year's ago and have done it voluntarily most businesses are scrappling into the 2020 blinking their eyes at this new requirement to do business so the third thing I'm going to talk about very briefly is this concept of consumption we've talked about sustainable production in the past factories better farms better lorries behind the scenes but for 7.7 billion people on the planet they can't seem stuff or those of us that are lucky enough to be rich enough to do so and there's more of us every year coca-cola serves 700 billion servings of its drinks around the world every year the world consumed before the pandemic 130 billion pieces of clothing and footwear in one year Walmart probably sells 100 billion items per year it is all about stuff number of flights we take number of holidays number of cars you know to foods we consume you know to meet it's all about stuff so businesses starting to have to rapidly look around it and ask the question of the people that consume from it do you really care and a captain's of a great job at sort of a societal level helping us understand yes to do but it's a great way of engage what business is starting to understand is that people want everything they want great products at great prices great experiences but they want you to address climate change as well these studies all of them keep coming back to a single number 70 percent of people in most marketplaces what business takes climate change seriously and increasingly people are linking these great global problems that we're seeing from the Amazon to the Arctic with their day-to-day decisions that that coffee cup did you need it that you threw away every time you do that it's got an impact it's slow it's not fast enough but people are linking their lives for the big picture and of course we asked this question about a generational divide you know I'm an old man now do my generation really care well they do care surprisingly much what they don't have to do have the confidence or the skills to do something about it that's what the younger generation has and they're becoming the dominant force in the employment market the investment market and of course the consumption market too and here we've seen great products emerge the Tesla car the alternative to meet all birds trainers they are the most sustainable option in the marketplace but there are also things that people desire and want to buy as well so the fourth issue I'm seeing in business is there's linking of good for the individual and good for the planet we've mentioned it already cut through the previous speakers again we're seeing the rapid personalisation of food diets medical care again the pandemic has accelerated it the concept of a well-being plate good for the planet good for you as an individual there is one diet as well so the concept of well-being is going to drive change in business now don't want to forget that in all the sort of scurrying around that big business is doing on net zero now it has to be a good citizen and frankly I don't see enough ambition here I've seen some good response in crisis from business in the pandemic good but it's been short-term risk management just like it wants to make sure there's no children in factories overseas it wants to make sure it doesn't poison anybody with food or kill somebody in the building site it's risk management the needs with the same level of social ambition that we're starting to see in business environmentally and again whether it's the just transition making sure that all rig workers can be trained to work offshore wind farms that be farmers prepared to farm carbon in the soil we have to make sure that people feel that they can win from the transition business has to have a point of view it's difficult it's politicised you've seen that in the state particularly in the last few years but business has to stand up for what is right business needs to pay taxes to fund all the transition that we need as well so all around this business needs to be a good a good citizen and then of course business can't just win alone it's grown up trying to beat its competitor now Coca Cola and Pepsi have to work together on the climate challenge Nestle and Unilever Tescos and Walmart huge competitors but only by working together can you fundamentally shift the climate crisis we're seeing it to already in terms of retail which is retailers working together on net zero we've seen it with the climate friend pledge in terms of Amazon bringing sort of partners together all the way across the world to work together on this we're seeing it from climate action 100 plus a bunch of investors with over 50 trillion dollars of asset under management collectively asking for change from big business the businesses that call the carbon emissions the penultimate point as well so then just finish off with a quick reflection on tools I talked about business I worked for that had sold three billion items a year I try to track and trace those in supply chains around the world to make them better with a pen, a paper and abacus and a spreadsheet I've got gray hair for a reason difficult now with artificial intelligence big date you can start to track and trace all these problems and put them right so finally we've got a suite of tools if we use wisely we can transform a business footprint for the better so let me just finish we're coming to the end of a 40-year cycle of globalization pandemic has finished off there are of course difficult discussions and problems that reach into the future but I as a businessman now see several sectors and many companies going to their death because not not responded the climate crisis is looking good but I also see the opportunity to drive change in behaviors again we've spoken about it repeatedly in these presentations we need to do things different but we can only do it if we offer people great solutions great calls great foods great holiday that also fundamentally more sustainable too thank you for listening for a little bit of a different discussion about the climate process thank you very much mr berry for your for your point of view that which is completely different I guess from most people in the audience I think most people in the audience have a background somewhere in academia in research and what I'd like to ask you is you're apparently obviously someone who's very good at getting people to stand up and motivate them to make changes within the business environment and take action on that for decades now scientists have been highlighting the climate crisis we could say with seemingly little effect if I'm being really cynical um from your outside perspective our universities and research institute fit for purpose to be those addressing the climate and ecological crisis well it's a really good question Wolf and I think scientists have to be scientists I don't want scientists to be co-opted by big business or by government scientists are there to provide us with the facts and we've already heard about the the gap between this is how things are the facts and this is the decision that policymakers and business leaders now need to make on the back of those so this is not about a problem of science this is about a problem of business and policy ignoring the science and not responding to it there's probably a way that actually scientists could have worked with businesses earlier in the cycle to get us to do some of the heavy lifting of pushing government and consumers and citizens to change and develop solutions quickly but this is no fault of scientists this is my response both these businesses that relieves me and I hope a lot of people in the audience that it's it's not our fault and I think I like the bridge that you make towards policy because that nicely introduced our final speaker for today who is Mr. David Mayer he is the head of the unit called Knowledge for Policy at the European Commission Joint Research Center his unit with him as one of the authors has written the report understanding our political nature and how to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision making and I've been going through that last weekend and I can advise any scientist that wants to interface with policy to have a read at least at the executive summary but probably at the entire report Mr. Mayor the floor is yours to enlighten us why it's so hard for science facts to influence science policy. Thanks very much Rolf and thanks to the EGU for this opportunity to talk about our work in case you don't know the JRC we are the science and knowledge service of the European Commission so we're an integral part of the European Commission but our job is to try and bring scientific evidence into the EU policymaking process so we have laboratories and research projects and publications in high-ranking journals and all of that and partnerships with scientific bodies around the world but at the same time we have if you like a double life and by day we also sit in on policy formulation meetings inside the European Commission and advise on draft legislation impact assessments evaluations and all these sorts of things so we're known by this dreadful phrase we're a boundary spanning in organisation we we sit in the scientific community but we also sit inside the executive branch of the European Union and get called on to to bring the best of scientific knowledge into the policymaking process and it's the job of my particular team to study that particular problem why is it so hard to bring scientific evidence to bear on policy and political questions and what can we in practice do about it and so therefore the report you mentioned sets out our basic theory of why it is so hard and some practical ideas of how we want to do this and we're very pleased to work with EGU in a number of areas to try and help scientists not just only within our organisation but more generally so if you go and look at our website you will find also we have a handbook on how to bring science into policy we have a free online quick sort of taster course for researchers wondering about first steps in influencing policy we're also working with the EGU to train up some EGU members I think to become great trainers in training scientists and we see part of our role is very much supporting the skill development of scientists in trying to influence politics and policymaking because there is no more urgent and important task I think we're going to need science massively to solve climate change and other problems but it is also very complex and difficult and I think COVID just to go back to the subject of this panel has really exemplified how difficult it is to bring science to bear in in policymaking in ways which we thought we had a clue but I think has really exemplified the challenges because in many ways there are similarities between the pandemic and climate change COVID is like climate change a full spectrum policy problem it's going to need all the scientific disciplines and it has touched COVID pretty much every single area of public policy you care to name and I think climate change falls into the same category of we're going to need all the knowledge and it's going to need to be deployed in pretty much every policy area so and I think we have learned some lessons we the European Commission has certainly been involved in policymaking on COVID but of course national governments have also played an absolutely essential role so we in the JRC have played our part in trying to bring science into various EU level policy questions and we're of course very far from learning any definitive lessons on this but we do have some emerging lessons which tie back into the report you mentioned and the first point I'd like to pick up is what Catherine said and I think this is an incredibly important point the distinction between what is and what ought to be first raised by David Hume we have to be absolutely clear that solving climate change is a policy problem it's a policy challenge and science by definition cannot solve a policy problem a political problem science can solve a science problem it can't solve a policy problem and so we have to be clear what science can cannot do science is is indispensable to provide the knowledge we need but it cannot answer the questions about what we should do or what we ought to do that's simply outside its scope and I think that's a very important jumping off point into this debate and I think Catherine got it right that the values are there and values and indeed the related concept of identities are absolutely fundamental because it is that people's values and identities that will determine what they want the ought to be what they want the policy to be and therefore when it comes to COVID or climate change I think COVID has shown very clearly that even with a you could say perhaps a quite a sort of straightforward problem you know no one was saying the virus is a good thing let it spread everyone was pretty clear that we needed to stop the virus and eliminate the virus there wasn't a great deal of differences between what people around the world wanted but nevertheless you began to see that there were very important values differences between how people wanted to go about solving the problems raised by COVID and that I think is an important message coming out of some work we are doing on the science of values and identities is that there will always be a plurality of values in our society people will are going to have different opinions about what we should do about things and they are going to have different opinions about what we should do about climate change and particularly how we should go about it and no amount of science is going to make those differences about what we do go away and no amount of wishing they would go away and people would just agree on something because the science is going to make them go away we have no other choice but to recognize that people want different things or want to go about solving climate change in different ways we need to understand the full diversity of them respect them and grind through these differences to build the compromise where people feel that their values have been understood and properly taken into account and the really really difficult thing about this is what the psychologists tell us about my side bias which is a very particular bias and it's a bias that comes to any of our thinking when we are thinking about things we care about matters of conviction or matters which touch upon our very identity when it comes to these things my side bias means that we have enormous difficulty in accepting facts that challenge our core convictions and our identity and what is so interesting about this bias is that many biases are mitigated by IQ or by thinking style open mindedness my side bias is an outlier where it is not mitigated by IQ or open minded thinking styles so whoever you are if you really care about something passionately you have convictions on it or it's close to your identity you are going to struggle to hunt out evidence that says you're wrong and when you meet with evidence that says you're wrong you are going to struggle to accept this and this applies to policymakers politicians people in the street in the street but it also applies to scientists so I think that's one of the another important message from our report is that rather than pretending scientists are presenting their views from nowhere and the white coat shows that they are entirely value free is to accept that science is not itself value free that all the choices we make about what to research which facts to present which order when these are based on our own values considerations and that's fine we just need to be upfront and clear about them and honest and transparent about the values and then also we need to therefore make greater efforts to understand in particular people who have different values to us it's really hard to empathize with people with different values where we want we desperately all want to win our values battles and therefore trying to learn how to empathize with other people's values is very hard but we're not going to do it we're not going to succeed in getting people either to accept the underpinning science or to agree on some sort of way forward that we can all live with unless we are able to demonstrate this values empathy and learn new techniques about how to about how to reach compromises when we have legitimate differences of opinion I think there's some also important lessons come out of covid for scientists in that the discourse of science I'm not a scientist myself but when I came to work in a scientific organization I was a little bit surprised at the tone of scientific discourse scientists don't take many prisoners when they debate with each other they really don't and that's great for the scientific process I think in front of the public public citizens can sometimes infer different things about the perhaps slightly intemperate nature of scientific discourse we know there are going to be differences of science opinion great or small and therefore I think one challenge for scientists is to is to enable a mode of discourse where humility and respect around disagreement in the public sphere can be cultivated and this in particular I think has been exposed by covid is that is that this is such a sort of multi-dimensional problem that we're going to need many many different disciplines and I've never come across a scientist who's an expert in all the disciplines so it seems to me humility when stepping outside your area and engaging real the disciplines is going to be a core competence and a skill that scientists can learn in learning to play nice in public discourse about science and the last thing I want to mention is that even if scientists and policymakers and politicians wrap this all up nicely behind closed doors and come up with perfect solutions they can all agree with it won't fly with citizens neither the science will fly nor the resulting solutions so we're going to have to get serious about new deliberative and participatory techniques to bring citizens into both the process of the construction of the knowledge base and informing the research topics that are researched but also in terms of thinking about the solutions we know how to do that there is a wonderful deliberative wave of these tools across the European Union across the world yesterday the European Commission launched a cutting-edge public deliberation tool to think about the future of Europe including climate questions where citizens can discuss these things with each other in 24 languages simultaneously translated these are the kind of things we're all going to need to get used to to bringing scientists in so so that's it from me thank you very much thank you very much Mr. for this elaboration on how your world works and why it doesn't always work the way we may have wanted to I have one question for you as well before we move on to the central panel part of the session and that would be that I always wonder how much of the political decision-making process that you're in the center of sometimes is being influenced by public opinion and so if we as scientists want to make sure that our science is used as a basis for decision-making I'm not saying what it ought to be but at least providing the facts what it is should we focus in communicating on the public as some people would advocate or should we focus on communicating more with politicians civil servants and institutes if our focus is on getting policy getting our science into policy it's not an either or roll it's it's got to be a both because all the politicians I've ever worked closely with are incredibly sensitive to public opinion and actually the views of voters they meet on the street and they tend to be all the politicians I met even much much better than career civil servants who don't have to get elected so I think it absolutely has to be both and actually the mode of discourse for scientists when talking to policymakers and talk to citizens is not terribly different actually so even if you do have to therefore you know put a few more dates in your diary the kind of messages you're passing but also actually the fundamental skill of listening and that's that's my one standard but go to advice for for scientists seeking to influence policy do not start with what you know start with asking what the politician or the citizen or the policymaker wants to know ask them what's on their desk and then seek to present your research as an answer to their question rather to present your research as an answer to a question that perhaps they don't have thank you thank you so much for that and I think that's very valuable advice for many scientists looking forward to communicate we're going to move on to the panel discussion part of this session there have been a lot of questions in the q&a if during this panel discussion you in the audience have a follow-up question or another question please put it in the q&a if it's very similar to a question already posed please upvote that question which gives us better chance of addressing that one and then for the panelists there's a raise hand button if you feel like you want to react to what one of your fellow panelists is saying please use that function so that I can move the virtual mic around if I hear something that sparks a bridge then I will of course do that myself and I think the first thing that I want to address is a question from Catherine jacks up front I'm going to apologize to anyone in the audience if I mispronounce names I'm very sorry I'm Dutch first is a question by Catherine jacks that asks after a co after a year of cofit constantly dominating all headlines how can we force the climate emergency on the agenda of editors and media outlets and politicians minds um professor hey oh do you have an opinion on that I definitely do so one of the biggest problems we have when it comes to climate change is one that I suffered from myself as a student the idea that climate change is a niche issue it is an environmental issue that environmentalists care about environmentalist work on and the rest of us wish them well so if you tell a story about climate change it's an environmental story that belongs in the environmental section once a week at most that is the biggest misconception we have the reason I became a climate scientist was because I took a class when I was just finishing my undergraduate degree that showed me that climate change is in fact an everything issue climate change affects every aspect of our lives on this planet it affects the air that we breathe as I and others talked about it affects the water we drink the food we eat it affects the economy business jobs national security it affects the places where we live it affects everything we already care about and so honestly at this point it is hard to write a story without having some aspect of climate change in it whether it's about gardening or outdoor sports where what about the olympics how are they going to protect the athletes from heat there whether it's talking about what's happening to our weather or our water what's happening in other countries what's happening where we live I was listening to the bbc right after prince philips funeral actually and it was really interesting that in a half hour news program three of the world's stories in a half hour were about climate change but they were very different some were economic some were impact based I think things are starting to change where people now realize that climate change is an everything issue and if reporters are having problems pitching it to an editor who says oh that's just a niche issue an environment issue the answer is no it's about real people and real places and real issues that matter to every single one of us today does that does that mean that if we as scientists want to communicate our story broadly outside of the scientific community that we should pitch it as something else than an environmental story 100% an environmental story creates that psychological distance such that only people who see themselves as environmentalists would care about it and what's even more horrifying is the last time I went to google and I googled environmentalist a year ago last earth day google gave me eight photos of those eight photos seven were men white were dead and four had very large beards so we have a sense that environmentalists are only a certain type of person and they care about it and nobody else does whereas the reality is to care about climate change we only have to be one thing and that is a human being living on planet earth and we are every single one of us that thank you thank you for that um uh dr inwood would you like to react on that from your point of view because you've done research on human impacts that's so broad yeah and and I guess I I do have a slightly different perspective because I have been I guess it's a panel discussion and we've got differences um I've I've worked with a lot of communities mainly with pollution and waste type issues and my I guess from my experience across doing surveys of general members of the public they are all interested in the environment and they're all talking about changes to their climate and what they see and importantly because I've worked for a regulator in the past what am I doing about it so I actually think that the interest has been there for a long period of time but it's been under the surface and I also think it's about how we talk about it though if we continue to say we're going to lose this you know we're going to have death and mayhem and people just start to switch off so this is why I talk about changing the conversation because we are able to switch it to what we can do which is positive which people can then relate to themselves in their lives so I I think that we're actually got a lot of momentum and a lot of interest in it and it's the way we communicate it that is becoming more important and that we communicate the risks effectively so that we get action thank you and I think that links to Mr Berry's work because you say you have to focus on how it can improve their lives I think that businesses play a role there you've you've talked about kind of co-creation where you create value for people whilst doing sustainable actions there is a concern in the chat though in the questions though that businesses buy their nature if they focus on profit and if the cost of environmental unsustainable action is not addressed within that profit are they actually given how we structure businesses that are capable of providing that positive value that Dr Hin would just address so it's a brilliant question let's face into it business is far from perfect business has got us into the crisis we have today so why should we have confidence that business will get out and gets out of it first we need to start with a policy system and I'm saying as a business leader it's grown up in a cycle of relatively light regulation of the last 20 30 years we need more policy it needs to be smart policy long-term policy but once the business knows that it's got a high hurdle to lead it'll innovate and find ways around it so things like a price on carbon let's tax the polluters out of the marketplace and reward the ones with low carbon solutions out there so I absolutely support the need for strong policy but that's not enough we must excite people we can't just tell them this this is about the end of the world we need to give them exciting options and I use the smattering of examples whether it's the Tesla car the old bird sneakers the impossible or Memphis meets alternatives to a meat-based diet and all the research I've seen said there are two groups of people in the middle of society that really matters to us on this 35 percent of people who are what we call light green consumers they're really worried about all the issues we're talking about today but they want to live a good life and provided that we can help them find a way of having a good entertaining exciting life and it's more sustainable look at with us and again the electric car beautifully made by Tesla the best example but there's another group another group of 35 percent who don't care about consumption as a pathway out of where we are today they utterly care about their locality where they will be I was born in Mumbai I live in Mumbai I'll die in Mumbai what's anybody doing here so we need both a policy solution we need a product and consumption solution but we also have to talk to people where they actually live their lives so again that's been a recurring theme across the panel as well but let's finish by being very clear this is not about leaving this to the free market the free market has got us to where we are now but it's about tapping into the free market within a policy framework which gives us a solution to leave so that is is a nice segue into of course Mr. Mayor's experience and what I'd like to to grab from your your comment is for example a carbon tax is highly discussed and people with vastly different values value the implementation of a carbon tax differently Mr. Mayor how would you reflect on that is that something that where is the is and the art relating to implementing a carbon tax I think we have to do better at understanding what is driving different opinions on a carbon tax and get to the bottom of those things and then inevitably when you want to build a consensus on a particular issue you need to put together a compromise which all the distinct possible positions on a carbon tax and there'll be a spectrum of opinions based on a spectrum of different values that you have properly understood them understand what they're aiming at and tried to address them now that doesn't mean necessarily you give something for everyone because that doesn't create in the end a balanced proposal but at least you're properly taken into account all the different opinions you've done your best to put together something that commands a consensus and for those points which you those arguments and values concerns that in the end you ultimately decide to override you have given people good reason and cause an argument you've listened to their argument you've addressed it their concerns that's that's the only way forward I can see to deal with this so to understand the the full diversity of the opinions because one of the strange things about values is is they're not exactly black and white we all have some sympathy with all the main values to different degrees and they do all they're all connected with each other a bit as well so there is a sort of underlying basis of common ground on values and it's the question I'm the work I'm pleading for is that we work a bit harder to try and uncover that because we don't naturally do that because our own value set we feel so viscerally and powerfully and we struggle so much to put ourselves in the shoes of people with different values but if we can I think there's potential there so to bring that back to the topic of this session there's a question from Chris Holloway that relates to this Mr Merrick which is do you think to cope with 19 pandemic has increased people's tendency to to think collectively I think I don't really know I don't I'm not enough of a scholar on that thing to really know the answer to that my guess and my hope is that these underlying values we have are in the nature of general dispositions and how they play out in a given political context there's a bit of a margin for change but they don't fundamentally change what what the values research appears to suggest is that our our deep underlying guiding values they don't change so much over our life they're reasonably pretty stable so my my speculation it's frankly speculation would be that that doesn't fundamentally change but we can't always what we have to do is to think about how these values play out in a given political context with a given political issue and that they're the kaleidoscope of political events is always turning and always changing and these values do not determine automatically what our views are going to be on any particular issue there's plenty to play for in the way that issues are framed and discussed and are relevant okay well thank you I think this also relates to the the work of Professor Hano because it sounds to me what I might be wrong that these underlying values are pretty fixed for a person whereas Professor Hano you've been known to change people's values um or so is it the role of a scientist to change these values or is or am I completely getting a drone and please correct me oh so so no I very much agree with David I don't feel like I've changed anyone's underlying values what I have done is showed them how all the values that are already at the top of their priority list which may or may not be the same as mine are the very values that make them care about climate change so sometimes it might be the fact that someone is a member of the Rotary Club and the Rotary Club has four questions it asks is it fair you know is it is it the truth is it beneficial to all and those apply directly to climate change sometimes it might be because someone is a parent and they care about their child or they care about birding or hiking or outdoor activities sometimes it might be because they have former military experience or they're a business person who cares about the security of the local economy or there's someone who cares about justice and poverty whatever it is that we have at the top of our list we can connect climate change to it and I think that's what David was referring to but often for us scientists what's at the top of our list is science and we connect so innately over a shared love and curiosity for science that we scientists often struggle more than anyone else in terms of figuring out how to connect with others and in fact it's interesting I just wrote a book it's not quite out yet it's called saving us a climate scientist guide to hope and healing a divided world it's here because I was just going through and editing all of my references as you can see but in the book I talk about how wherever I go the biggest question I get asked is how do I talk to fill in the blank about climate change and it's scientists who have the biggest problem answering this question sometimes I've even had to go through a list with them like do you enjoy this or this or this are you part of this organization or that or that and finally after 15 questions the scientist says well I do dive I am a diver and I'm like yes why not talk to other people who dive about how climate change is affecting the ocean or another scientist at NASA said well I like to cook with my friends and I said well there you go talk about how climate change is affecting our food another woman said well I want to talk to my grandmother so I said well what do you do with her she said I knit so I said well get the warming stripes that Ed Hawkins has developed and knit a scarf with your grandma of the place where you where she grew up and have her tell you stories and see how it got warmer over time I buy that scarf yes exactly I'll knit you one so we can do this it just requires us to think outside our box a little bit okay thank you I think that dr. Anil wants to react to this yeah I was just going to add in another component of that which is that as a scientist and having had to go and talk to many communities about really challenging issues that they're facing is we also need to listen sometimes we're so intent on trying to make something okay or trying to convey a particular viewpoint that we don't listen and I'll never forget that in one forum where that I attended where we were actually dealing with a mining proposal and it was a community was living really near the community near the mining proposal and this gentleman was absolutely just furious with his veins popping in his neck and you know you know that tension oh I don't want to listen to him because he's too angry and I won't go into the full story the bottom line is he had solutions to the environmental concerns that he had and if we had not taken the time to actually sit back and listen to what he had to say we would not have actually come up with something that was really innovative so the the thing that I really learned about that is about not making assumptions about who you're dealing with and what the issues are and to make sure that you actually listen so that you can engage meaningfully to solve problems climate change pollution and waste biodiversity and nature loss are the same types of issues that we need to engage in in the same way and I think I want to segue that again into Mr Berry's expertise if scientists may be really good at answering the questions they come up with themselves and not so good as we hear right now in listening and we could learn from that I believe businesses survive by listening to their customers is there something we can learn from the way businesses do this well well this is what business is working up to slowly so so if I quote Henry Ford if I'd listened to my customers I would have given them a faster horse customers never know what the answer is they just tell you what the problem is and you've got there's a business got to go off and interpret what the solution is Steve Jobs exactly the same no one asked him for an iPhone but when he turned up with one people said that's what I need isn't it business every single year well yeah there is over consumption but business generally is better than politicians at preparing for these shifts and changes politicians live in the very much in the here and now politics in the UK today is dominated by the concept idea of a european super league it's here and now it's not the climate crisis it's not going to fundamentally change our life but it plays to the press and people today I think business is better but not perfect at looking over the horizon and saying the diesel car is dead we need to prepare for the electric future a meat-based diet is under pressure we need to find alternatives coming down lines business generally is a little bit extra triangulating the many uncertain issues that surround it and turning into and this is what we should do about it but again that's not that's not saying business is perfect and I think that relates into a question that Carsten Hausstein has put up and I think it's best to address that to you as well Mr Berry which is some businesses have a huge impact on how we view the world around us you've mentioned Apple but especially media businesses the Murdoch and media empire for example they have a huge potential to form public opinion etc is is that part of the world I'm kind of answering my own question but do you also see that as part of the problem and what should we do about it if yes very briefly I think we've seen traditionally people are focused on business and climate change is very much about emissions so it's the big oil companies the big coal companies of course they need to be dressed but business is starting to realise that the power of advocacy its voice and for the media companies very specifically what they broadcast is just too powerful I mean we've seen the the sea spuricy um documentary coming out about the plight of the oceans from Netflix that's probably had more impact on citizens across the world at understanding what's happening to the oceans than hundreds if not thousands if not millions of scientific papers it's a little bit sad and I know that people have got some concerns about the specific science you can see spuricy but it's cut through and it's got people's attention so I think the big broadcast platforms do have a role I'm very careful though in terms of free speech as soon as we ask media outlets to become just another campaigning voice to say climate change is everything we need to send we need challenge what we don't need is the lies and the obfuscation that we've had from the fossil industry and the supporters in some of the right-wing press traditionally so I want to move this to Mr. Mayor again you've talked about different values and even Mr. Murdoch has its own set of values should we should we listen to those as well when making decisions well if I could tell a brief story I I live in Texas which is the center of the oil and gas industry I'm going to come back to you in a few seconds with first David Mayor was going to answer well I was quite excited by how to how to address these things in Texas I mean from what I've understood from the values scholarship and literature which is which is quite considerable you know these the values that we hold these underlying values firstly they don't dictate or determine any particular policy course of action so the future is is to be written that these things people care about these underlying values as some of the great social scientists have understood they found these regularities across all sorts of societies across the world so they seem to be a pretty good guide to what people really want what is the ought they seem pretty stable but they do not determine any particular policy or another but on the other hand they can't be sort of automatically written out of their question they some may not be relevant for any particular policy issue but you do need to do the hard yards to go through and understand them and then understand what the impact of these different values what people want how it's going to play out in the particular issue gather the evidence to to evidence the concern and the value that's there and then go back and discuss it before you can begin to have a basis to reaching some conclusion on it and then right at the end of the the process what seems to be possibly useful is that you frame the scientific evidence in ways which remains truthful and non-contradictory inaccurate but the framing looks different depending on who you're talking to or which values you're talking to and we have some further work to work out how to do that in an open transparent ethical non-misleading way but that I think is going to be an important part of the question that we learn how to frame the same science in perhaps different ways that means it sometimes sounds different but it is in fact the same science it's the same message and we're not contradicting ourselves and now I also really love to hear about how that works in Texas I apologize for jumping the cue there you are an excellent moderator so so here in Texas as you know it's you know one of the centers of the oil and gas industry of the world and I was asked a few years ago to speak to the executive board of an oil and gas company about climate change and I don't speak to people unless I can figure out some way that we can connect and I thought to myself how am I going to connect what value do we share and it took me a few weeks I had to consider it but finally it dawned on me I am profoundly grateful for energy and that energy has been provided for by fossil fuels for the last few hundred years a woman's life two hundred years ago was difficult it was often short it was full of tasks and chores that took all day so education liberty long life and long health were things that were not freely available to people before the industrial revolution so when that dawned on me I realized I could connect with them over that and so that was one of the first things I said when I walked in the room and most people were sort of sitting here like this like who invited her and how long does this last I started off by expressing my gratitude for fossil fuels and it was as if all the faces cleared and they said you get it we need energy we can't live without energy and I said you're right but just as we don't use horses and buggies and party line telephones in the same way we don't need the old ways of getting energy that we've been using for 300 years anymore so how are we going how are we how are we going to ensure that we continue to get the energy we need in the future and you are able to provide jobs for all of the people who you care about and we were able to have the most amazing discussion after that because of that beginning with those shared values and it's not always possible it's not always possible to do that and not everybody is the right person to have a conversation with everyone else there are many conversations I've turned down because I couldn't find a place to connect but when we can I feel like that's where the change happens and it begins like Andrea said it begins by listening to what people care about first rather than coming in with what we think that they need to hear thank you um Dr. Inwood from a UN perspective I like that Professor Ayo addressed that women's life have improved greatly over 200 years so have men's life but but we were ahead and we're you're closing in you were not there yet um but I also think there's a huge diversity if you look globally different regions and I'd like you to address a little bit if we want to implement policies on a global level even what are we going to say to people that say I want to have a refrigerator as well because we still don't have one yeah and and uh you we must address the underlying inequalities that exist and we do need to address uh poverty and social disadvantage and we need to make sure that we do improve the lives of women because COVID in some locations and while you know I do think overall it has actually shown us some really positive things there have been some negative consequences of COVID in some parts of the world where more disadvantaged have actually become more disadvantaged now this is where environmental quality comes in and this is where you're able to deal with social economic and environmental systems to actually improve outcomes so nature-based solutions uh sustainable agriculture you know we need to provide food for the population and there are ways of doing it that are going to both improve the environment improve people's lives and cut back on on greenhouse gas emissions and I think you know sometimes perhaps we go you know we it is complex I'm not saying it's straightforward but there are solutions that can be applied that are local that may not be high tech sometimes they will be and we need to actually start now so what we need to do is to galvanize that action globally and I actually think we do have an agenda the UN is very clear that we need to address these planetary crises before 2030 and we are working on the sustainable development goals so we do integrate society economy environment to improve the lives of the world's citizens so I guess I am positive I actually believe that we can make these changes but we do need to actually have those conversations so we've been looking at the the past of things that we can learn from what happened with COVID and let me address that it is a terrible disaster that'll happen that we should never had but given that it has we've been looking at what we can learn from it what you say is we need to implement these things now if I look at the local governmental level what I see here in the Netherlands happening is that we're slowly coming out of this crisis and we're with policy right now what we're hearing is we should put on hold these policies on additional nitrous pollution because we need to kickstart our economy again and get that going that feels like a threat to achieving our climate goals is that something that we should and I'm thinking I'm looking at Dr. Hinwood and Mr. Merrier is that something we should address on a local level on a European or global level Dr. Hinwood? I think we need to address it at a global level and we are actually talking about the building back better and to change the the economic systems that we've currently got in place and the way that we change investment and finance because those things will change industry and business and we can do that at you know for those international operators but I also think we need to look at it at the local and national scale and I guess the philosophy we have is that we are if we are able to influence and advocate at the global level we want that to filter down for the regions and at the local level to make a difference so I think what we are advocating is that this should be on an emergency footing but we don't we don't want to we don't want to spook the horses as it were we actually want to make sure that we do this with long-term economic stability with society firmly in view with as I said before addressing the inequalities but getting those environmental changes. So Mr. Merrier you're working at a European level within the EU there's a lot of policy freedom at the national level as well so how do you deal with that attention field I would say in Dutch between those between those levels in implementing in implementing policy? Whoa I mean people are made lengthy academic careers explaining the multi-level governance of the European Union so I'd hesitate to I'd hesitate to try and summarize that but suffice it to say that you know the European Union itself is a unique political construct and has a very complex relationship with decision-making levels at national level and regional and local level the rest of it. What I would say some very much smaller thing that we are simply trying to do in the JRC is to try and connect up the scientists working to influence policy within the European Union so we're trying not just to work in our little bubble inside the European Union but actually we're trying to make sure that there are scientists who are able to bring knowledge into the policy process at all levels of government and each course each country in Europe is different have different systems of governance some of the regions are more important than others so we're doing our best to make sure that every government has the science it can it can draw upon and that the scientists are all connected which is very important in particular for smaller countries that may not be able to invent a whole sort of science policy system of their own but will need to draw on science from wherever it comes across the world because it's undoubtedly important that we have countries and the nation-state is an important construct that is important in decision-making it's also incredibly important in our identity and therefore national identity and national decision-making is a very important part of this complex equation about what will be decided and so long story short I think it's going to be important that if you want to influence policy in country X you have a scientist from also country X who speaks the local language X and brings the best advice about what the science is saying in a way in that local national language and which is contextualized for the local national conditions that I think is incredibly important some sort of anonymous global scientist saying everything's got to change talking in a foreign language in a way that appears to be ignorant of the local political environmental social and economic context that's probably not going to pass those messages so that you know as always in persuasion and communication that the identity ethos values of the messenger is just as important as the content of the message and as I'm saying this of course in science it doesn't matter or at least it appears not to matter science the independent republic of science knows no national or language boundaries and works very very well but I think one of the reflections that's come out of our work is that science is a very unique community it is a community which prizes truth telling and fact and accuracy and that is a core value of being a scientist and so therefore there is never any tension between your identity as a scientist and seeking accuracy truth and these sorts of things and that makes science quite a unique and rare community in most communities sometimes you need to sacrifice the truth and accuracy to maintain the group cohesion and identity and there are solid good reasons why you do that because being part of a community has enormous personal payoffs and that tension is almost never there in science because you know people rarely get kicked out of science for trying too hard to tell the truth or understand reality so there's very little tension and that I think is something that scientists need to recognize that all the social norms and pressures within science go in the same direction of finding the truth and that is not true of all communities I like to and I know that I'm leading this panel and not a panelist but I like to draw a conclusion from that is that if we want to influence policy globally or at least within the EU in all countries it it kind of follows from your statement that we should have scientists from all these communities and if science is dominated by for example white men from the Netherlands it's going to be very hard to convince people in Lithuania to to implement things and I think that we can extend this to a global I think our work has cut out for us to make science more inclusive in that access as well I want to grab the idea of identity here and move on with that because if I look at myself I clearly identify as an apple fanboy looking at this desk and I think that you mentioned the nation state as a important construct I think that on maybe even the same level or bigger than the nation state internationally operating companies are also part of our identity part of our culture we don't have as far as I know a mechanism in place to talk to these companies and address new science in the same way that we have to talk to policy leaders on the nation state or or EU or global level so Mr. Berry should we have that should we have the same attitude towards talking to companies and informing them about the current science as we do to policymakers yes and I think business has got as we've heard today an enormous power to cause harm and hopefully good and a lot of business today is not well informed by science they understand their specific specialism of making an ever better phone but not that's sort of the true implications of that phone it's impacting the environment the wider scientific ecosystem so I think making business leaders more scientifically literate without asking them to be scientists I think it's very very important and I think the best businesses that I see out there have a very good way of taking basic science and turning into day-to-day reality they have that but too many don't and it's it's not a question of just sending hundreds of scientific papers to a boardroom and saying please read these now we all between us need to form a bridge between those two worlds to say this is what the science needs and you know I'm a keen foe of Catherine on social media and I think does a brilliant job at making science not just accessible to citizens but science accessible to leaders of every part of civil society politics and business and we need more of that so I want to move the mic then to a professor Hale again you've been successful in talking to companies you've just addressed oil companies in Texas and my accent changes when I mentioned them so I don't think that but that's my personal opinion every scientist should be a trained science communicator I think it's a team sport and we need people covering all bases on that field but for those people that do want to take up that role I'm especially addressing early career scientists that feel like they want to engage with either businesses to inform them on current state of science or with policymakers you've been there what would be your key advice to to geo early career geoscientists listening right now well first of all I want to emphasize the point that you just led with which is that there is a whole spectrum over which scientists can contribute and there's no run one right place for any one person to be on that spectrum we need people doing the sound science publishing it in the peer reviewed journals we need people writing essays in the conversation to explain it to a broader academic audience we need people I'm speaking at their children's school like I did yesterday we need people engaging with the local community with local industry and businesses with local elected officials we need everybody all the way to NASA scientist Jim Hansen who you know would chain himself defenses and protests we need people across the whole spectrum and where you fall is an individual decision that you yourself make and there is no right or wrong it's just a matter of where you feel that you can contribute the best and that may change over time in general younger scientists tend to be more interested in engaging I feel like and when we do it's important to recognize what are we uniquely good at so some people are just amazing at making videos climate atom for example some people are really good at social media some people are fantastic about writing books like my colleague Kim Nicholas in Sweden who just wrote a great public interest book on climate change some people are very good at engaging with and building relationships with key decision makers behind the scenes like Ken Caldera with Bill Gates for example so we each have something you need to contribute and focus on what it is that you are interested in that you value find like-minded people like for example Gabe Becky who's a hurricane scientist he plays ice hockey and he figured out that many of the people he plays ice hockey with were not so sure about climate change or why it mattered so he decided to look into how climate change was affecting outdoor ice hockey in North America and share that with them so we each have something unique who we are and what we can do and if we focus on that we can be most effective with the limited time that we have because outreach can take up as much time as you allow it so deciding how much time we have ahead of time what's the most effective way to use our time and then constantly going back reevaluating monitoring what we did what was the best investment of our time is really important I fully agree with you I think that you and me are currently of the people here the other of the panelists here those active in academia and you're a senior scientist I'm coming out of early careers who call it mid-level I think that there's an onus on us not on the early career scientists to also recognize when people do that and implement policies that make sure that it's not only your age index that makes sure that you get promoted to the next level because otherwise we're going to lose these people and I think I want to move to Dr. Hindwood for that if you've been in science and you've moved to well the UN environment program science academia is a pyramid there's only so many assistant professor places available for a lot of PhDs from your perspective if someone wants to have impact within let's say your realm coming from a PhD and moving into policy what would be the best advice you can give them at the current early career stage of their of their career at their early stage of their career is to make sure that they can communicate their science to those who are going to use it I think what I discovered because I have been an academic and one of the benefits I have having been an academic but also then working for government I actually know how to use the science that academics produce so lots of academics don't know how their how their work is going to be used by regulators or by policymakers and I think one of the benefits when you transition is I actually know how to use that in a government setting so I guess if I look at my younger self or younger academics I'd be saying as you do your research always partner with someone who's going to use your work because they give you that perspective too you have to be able to communicate it if you're going to work in the science policy interface you've got to deal with people from a range of different disciplines and you've got to be able to communicate your science in an easily understandable way and that means written and verbal and you know what I like about young scientists is that they are so much more clever in how they use no seriously in their visual skills and their you know those very clever short videos that I see that you know I did and you know when when academics now do abstracts the graphical abstracts that they're able to actually put their papers into simple abstracts just a fantastic guess what that resonates and that's really really useful in your career going forward so I would partner I would I would work with a range of sectors I'd make sure that when you craft your research if you're really interested in the impact side of it to actually think about that upfront and to say make sure you get those science communication skills honed when you move into the into it into a different career it's pretty exciting by the way anyone out there who's interested in in moving from academia into to government or into a organization like UNEP it's just fantastic so I think that that's a wonderful advice and I think that this two weeks of EGU there's a lot of activities organized for early career scientists but I think also that a lot of later career states scientists could benefit from these addressing how to do science communication and how to interface with with policy so I would advise but we're at the start of these two weeks of EGU I would advise anyone to to look in the schedule and see if you can find anything if you'd like to do though you'll probably find me in most of these sessions because I enjoy them every year. Mr. Barry you're not trained as a scientist I did see that you did chemistry in your in your education but then quickly moved into retail but you have communicated with a lot of scientists if there was like one thing that you say oh I wish they'd understood this about my world what part of your world I think it's the potential of business to help turn science into solutions so I think many scientists just don't register there is this thing called business out there if they do register if you know and rightly so they see businesses a big part of the problem see you know the majority of your missions on the planet only at the very tertiary level that people then say but what can I do to develop science to solve this now when we bring science into solving the issues like battery storage you know we can see the science the chemistry that's pouring now into bringing us solutions and I want more people to see that business is the problem but business can also bring to the marketplace and scale up the solutions that you're inventing in the lab or you're writing about and it can be your partner for good and there's a good way in a bad way of communicating with business and if you understand the way of working with business you know that's a great opportunity for you well thank you and we're getting close to the final few minutes of this of this panel session I've been enjoying it greatly so far I want to give all of the panelists the final one minute to make a final statement maybe a call to action to all our viewers online and everybody that will be watching this recorded live stream later on and I think we'll be doing that in the order that we had the presenter so professor hey if you had one minute to address our audience finally what would you be saying I would say that climate change is the great threat multiplier we don't care about it in and of itself if the only thing that was happening was the average temperature of the planet we're increasing by one two three or even four degrees but nothing else was happening it would not be at the forefront of all our minds or concerns today the reason we care about it is because it takes everything else in this world that we are already worried about it takes every single sustainable development goal and makes it more difficult to achieve if I could do something I would actually take number 13 climate action out of the sustainable development goals and sort of put it in like an over an arch over them because the reason we care about climate change is because we care about hunger poverty lack of access to basic education health care gender equity jobs for people clean energy for people clean water this is why we care and again that means that to care about climate change we only have to be one thing a human and that we all are that thank you very much professor hey you Dr. Hinwood some final words we have under 10 years to 2030 to actually address the sustainable development goals and actually meet our goals across the range of different areas and I guess I would encourage people to positively embrace the integration of environmental issues with the social and the with the social and the economic but importantly to engage in what the information is telling us and working out how we can get involved and I think that we are innovative we are clever look at look at the society that we have we are quite incredible and that's everybody so I think science information education and paying attention to environmental issues and working out where you can make a difference would be terrific well thank you very much Mr. Berry if you had one more minutes to address our audience very briefly be clear we're living in a climate crisis you've got an opportunity now once in a generation opportunity to move from incremental improvements that dominate the economy society policy for the last 40 years we've got an opportunity in the next five or 10 years to radically reimagine society in the economy that supports it and those radical changes have to be informed by science they have to be informed by science and we'll only reach that potential if the scientific community can find a way of connecting with business explain the need for change the possibility of change and actually how we can change things can be fundamentally better for all of us I'm very excited about the way that scientists can do that well thank you very much and finally Mr. Mayor your final minutes to address our audience that's quite daunting isn't it I can only echo what others have said but I think it is without question that we are going to need science in in massive quantities and the very highest quality to be able to tackle these problems so the value and importance of science is without question but I think what I would encourage scientists to do is to understand and read a little bit of the science of science and policy so read a bit of philosophy of science read a bit of the psychology of how persuasion works read up on behavioral biases understand these things because unfortunately all the normal mechanisms processes behaviors and habits by which you win scientific arguments don't really work if you want to persuade policy makers politicians and citizens to do something different science has a very particular form of processes by which it reaches the truth and or the best version of the truth that we currently have and the processes by which we decide what we as societies communities and governments and whatever are going to do involve different ways of thinking and talking about the evidence and you need to do them rather than simply you know don't treat policy makers citizens and politicians as if they were fellow scientists thank you very much to all speakers here I want to thank you very much for your contribution to this session if I learned anything today it would be that if you want to communicate outside of the scientific community about your science have impact on policy on business on communities at any level it would be to be interested in these processes and in these people so be interested in policy learn how it works businesses learn how it works and people and learn how they work and what matters to them I think I have heard that echo throughout this panel session it's been valuable to me in preparing this I've read up on your work and I can encourage anyone in the audience to seek out the work by these panelists because it has informed me a lot and I hope it will inform you a lot as well I want to stop before everybody leaves this session by mentioning a few people that were really valuable in getting this session off the ground first of all my co-conveners Professor Ayn Stewart Professor Haley Fowler Mr. Nick Eiffelert and Professor Hannah Cloak I think that they took leadership they invited me to be part of this and I'm really grateful for that opportunity and finally before I press leave meeting for all I want to thank Chloe Hill who has been on the on the support of of EGU and Martin Rasmussen who has been doing the technology for this session it would have not worked without them they've been behind the scene providing me with the questions making sure our connection is stable science is a team effort and they're definitely part of this team so thank you all thank you all for this amazing session and I hope you're having a really good two more weeks of EGU