 A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents Code Red for Humanity. Those are the words used by the UN General Secretary to describe the conclusions reached by hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists. The IPCC have determined that human activity is changing the Earth's climate in ways unprecedented in hundreds of thousands of years and that further drastic changes are now inevitable. Many of them irreversible. On tonight's show, I'll be speaking to a leading climate scientist. I'm also joined throughout by Dalia Gabriel. How are you doing, Dalia? I mean, not great given the news today, but yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to discussing it and hearing some sort of sober opinions because we've all seen the very unsober opinions that have circulated on Twitter today that Ash has had to deal with. So yeah, fighting the good fight. Tonight's show is all going to be on climate change. So I'm going to be speaking to an expert for the first half. Then me and Dalia are going to be tackling the more political angles and some of the more ridiculous interventions that we have seen today. As ever, you can tweet all of your thoughts, your comments, your questions on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or comment below if you're watching this back on YouTube. And you know the score, do make sure you hit that subscribe button. As a UN panel put the finishing touches to their long-awaited report into climate change, residents and holiday makers on the Greek island of Evia had to be evacuated as the islands woodlands went up in flames. You can see those images from people who are being evacuated from those islands. It's been absolutely viral on Twitter over the weekend. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released this morning. It was signed off by the world's leading climate scientists and governments of the UN's 195 member states. And the report was very clear. Extreme weather events such as the fires currently devastating Southern Europe have become more frequent and more intense in the last half century. Moreover, we can say with high confidence that human induced climate change is the main driver of these shifts in its influential summary for policymakers that IPCC right. It is virtually certain that hot extremes, including heat waves have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, while cold extremes, including cold waves have become less frequent and less severe with high confidence that human induced climate change is the main driver of these changes. They also say that the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land area for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis and human-induced climate change is likely the main driver. Human induced climate change has contributed to increases in agricultural and ecological droughts. Later in the report they state, human influence has likely increased the chance of compound extreme events since the 1950s. This includes increases in the frequency of concurrent heat waves and droughts on the global scale, fire weather in some regions of all inhabited continents, and compound flooding in some locations. That's what's happening now. The IPCC very, very clear there. These events are caused by climate change or the frequency of these events is caused by climate change. Of course, these reports from the IPCC are most eagerly awaited not for what they say about what is going on now, but what they predict will happen in the future. Valerie Massondel-Mott is the co-chair of the IPCC working group that created the report at a press conference this morning. She explained what our future might hold under different emissions scenarios. In the next 20 years, global warming, the average temperature at the Earth's surface over a period of 20 years, is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the late 1800s. However, if we rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if we can reach global net zero CO2 emissions around 2050, it is extremely likely that we can keep global warming well below two degrees. If we do this, it is more likely than not that temperature would gradually decline to below or around 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century with a temporary overshoot of no more than 0.1 degrees Celsius. But if global greenhouse gas emissions remain around today's levels in the coming decades, we would reach two degrees of global warming by the middle of this century. With every additional amount of global warming, we will see greater changes in the climate. Every additional half degree of warming will cause increases in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes, heavy precipitation, and drought. At two degrees of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerant thresholds for agriculture and human health. At a global scale, extreme daily rainfall events intensify by about 7% for each additional degree Celsius of global warming. As you see, future further changes depend on future human influence. It was the claim made at the start of that clip that we're set for 1.5 degrees increase in temperatures from pre-industrial levels regardless of what we do next. That's already baked in. That was the point made in this report that received the most attention today in the press, particularly because the Paris Agreement set 1.5 degrees as an ambition for limiting global temperature rise as if the IPCC report is correct, we've already failed. Discuss the report's conclusions. I'm joined by Dr Ella Gilbert, a climate scientist at the University of Reading. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Can I begin by asking you about that assessment on 1.5 degrees. They're saying it's already baked in. How much should we despair at that conclusion? I think despair is a useless thing to approach this sort of news with, because whilst we are almost inevitably going to reach 1.5 degrees, the consequences of exceeding that, and particularly I think in the previous clip says every half a degree of warming comes with greatly increased risk. The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is large. The difference between 2 and 2.5 degrees is even larger. Every single increment of warming above the pre-industrial level matters hugely. I don't think despair is necessarily useful in that sense. We're at 1.2 degrees all thereabouts at the moment. Because of all of our historical emissions, we're set to achieve 1.5 in the next 20, 30 years or so, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't go a little bit higher than 1.5 and then start to bring temperatures down. That's still within the bounds of possibility. That idea of we can let temperatures rise a bit and then bring them down, that's all on the assumption that these rises are somewhat linear. If this is reversible, if we can go above 1.5 and then bring it down, that's assuming that no tipping points have happened. I want to move on to tipping points, because that's what really keeps me awake at night, the idea that we're going to reach this point of no return. It was also, I think in a way, referenced in this IPCC report. Let's get up this graphic about sea-level changes, Fox. You can see here, they're giving you again these five scenarios of low to high emissions, but then they've got this outlier scenario, which they call low likelihood, but high impact. That's that the ice sheets melt or instability processes come into force, and then we could have sea-level rises of up to two meters. My question for you is, that initial graph we showed showed if we have low emissions, change might go up a little bit, but then it will come down a bit, but how scared should we be that we're on, I suppose, the cusp of some sort of point of no return disastrous event where, for example, the ice sheets melt and then everything's over? The IPCC uses relatively dry language like high impact, low probability outcomes to mask the actual scary reality of what that would mean in real life. We're talking things like the dieback of the Amazon or the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, and these would come with consequences for the atmosphere or the ice tipping points. This is a matter of meters of sea level rise. For Greenland, it would be, I think, seven meters or so, and the West Antarctic is 3.3 meters worth of sea levels across the world, and these sorts of events would be devastating. That's coastline changing. That's completely redrawing the map and vast populations of people moving away from the coasts where they live, up mountains or further inland. That keeps me up at night. That sort of eventuality terrifies the living daylights out of me because that's hard to predict. It comes with huge consequences, and it would completely reshape society as we know it. Avoiding those is of the utmost importance, and to do that, we really need to keep warming to well below two degrees, as scientists have been banging on for decades. Do you think the IPCC report was severe enough? Obviously, it's being reported as a stark reminder, and political actions aren't meeting the challenge set by these scientists. The IPCC famously is also, they come to these reports by consensus. You have to have lots and lots of scientists agree, and then you need world governments to basically sign it off, at least the bit which is the summary for policymakers. Is there a potential that they haven't put in some of these disastrous possibilities because people in government have said, well, if we're not certain about that, can we leave it out, please? Is that a possibility? I mean, the science behind tipping points and these sorts of events is still highly uncertain. There's a lot about the uncertainty and the question marks around the science of it in the report, and it's acknowledged. In climate science, particularly, I work in kind of polar science, and a lot of the tipping points that would be reached first are polar, so the loss of the Arctic sea ice cover, the loss of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and we're only really, we're seeing huge amounts of disagreement in the literature, and there's less certainty around, first of all, the outcomes, how fast it would happen, the processes involved, that all of these things are still up for discussion in a way, because they're only starting to be represented in our climate models, which is how we kind of predict the future, if you like. And I guess on the other point that the IPCC has got shtick in the past for not, for being too conservative, essentially, like you say, it's this kind of consensus of scientists, but also has to be approved in the case of the summary for policymakers, by policymakers, and by government delegations, which means that it has, I mean, it's been gone through with a fine tooth comb, every single word, every single line has been approved by everyone, and it makes for a really long-winded process, and that can necessarily restrict the sort of severity of that, of that message, but given all of that, I think what we're seeing in this report is extremely strongly worded, coming from scientists who are naturally very wary of being too out there when it comes to language, and are wary of not being seen as unobjective. I think this is a really fantastically scary set of points, because it's saying, pretty unequivocally, that this is really scary, and that we should all sit up and listen and do something about it. I've got a bit of a curveball question for you now, because something that got my attention going through the summary for policymakers was this particular breakdown of the warming effect or the cooling effect that different forms of human activity has had since the 1800s, so we can get up here, they estimate, and as you said, it's all been gone through with a very fine tooth comb, so this isn't particularly speculative stuff, carbon dioxide has increased temperatures by around three quarters of a degree over the past century or so, methane has increased temperatures by half a degree, and you've also got some carbon monoxide and things like that which have increased temperatures. You've also got some things which have decreased temperatures, so mainly sulfur dioxide has reduced temperatures by half a degree. Now, me as someone who knows very little about the weather and climate, I can like, as well as pulling down those red columns, what about if we made those blue columns longer? Getting carbon dioxide down in the time scale we need to is so difficult that we should also consider while doing that increasing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the sky. I'm talking here about geoengineering, of course. Do you think we are reaching a point where people are ready to consider that this does need to happen alongside reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? The danger with geoengineering is that it distracts from the main task of reducing emissions, so if it's very much additional to all of the emissions reductions that we're doing in terms of CO2, in terms of methane, in terms of all the other greenhouse gases that we're spewing into the atmosphere, then potentially it's got a role, but I think what often happens is that people fixate on these sorts of solutions. They're like, oh, it's fine, we can just keep polluting our atmosphere. We'll just put some mirrors in space or we'll just fertilize the oceans and then all these plants will grow and they'll draw down CO2 for us. We don't need to worry about it. I think that's the danger. It's a distraction. With some geoengineering techniques, you have to keep doing them. As soon as you stop doing them, you go right back to where you were and, in fact, probably further along towards climate warming. If a government runs out of money to keep putting mirrors in space, then the energy is just going to come straight back down to Earth and we're going to be in a worse position than we were when we started. We're going to need some carbon negative technologies in order to meet our net zero goal by 2050. That's kind of inevitable. We are going to have to start sucking out CO2 from the atmosphere, start sucking out all the other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. I don't know. Potentially there's a role for those sorts of geoengineering solutions, but I think ultimately it should be very much secondary to actually putting most of our efforts into reducing greenhouse gas concentrations. Let's talk about how you think government policy is matching the warnings we're getting from scientists. As I understand it, this document, this IPCC report doesn't pertain to policies. That's a different working group, but from your perspective, and I mean, I'm sure you speak to lots of scientists who are involved in all the working groups, are any government policies matching the challenge here? There's a really great website called Climate Action Tracker. It shows you all the pledges from all the different countries of the world, consistent with Paris or not. It shows you where, if we added up all the pledges and if all the countries actually followed through on their pledges, how much warming we would be in for by the end of the century. I think at the moment it's around 2.1 degrees. We're not doing so well, which is why COP26, which is coming up in Glasgow in November, is so important. The problem is that many governments and many nations don't necessarily haven't said how they're going to achieve those targets. It's all very well and good making pledges, but it's actually following through on them that really matters. Where we are as the UK, I think some of it is a lot of hot air and they actually need to put their money where their mouth is and make sure that we are on track for 1.5 degrees. We are on track for net zero by 2050 because it has never been more important and this report shows that. We'll have to wait to see what working groups two and three, which talk about the impacts of climate change and then the solutions to climate change. We'll have to wait to see what they say, but we know enough about the climate. We know enough about the changes. We know enough about the devastating impacts. We're seeing them in the headlines. You just have to look at the news to see the effects of climate change. We know enough now to make a difference. There's no time like the present to start doing climate action. Dr Ella Gill, that's a very apt note and that interview. Thank you so much for speaking to us this evening. We really do appreciate your insight on this incredibly important topic. Thanks very much for having me. Cheers. Let's go to a tweet on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. Moving to renewable and clean energy in our fight against climate crisis is a net positive in pretty much every tangible way. The fact we still need to discuss it and some outright denies its existence is an abject failure on behalf of our leaders and business classes. Now, that could be a segue to either of our next two stories. We're going to be covering a lot of those points in the stories we have coming up. Robert with a five. Hello from the US where we don't speak English, but we come down close. Keep up the good work. It's definitely close enough for me. Let's go on to our next story. I think we can get an image up for this one. The COP26 climate talks will be a key moment in the fight to limit catastrophic climate change and because they're held in Glasgow, the UK government has an extra large responsibility to make sure they go to plan. Alok Sharma is the Tory minister in charge and this weekend he gave an interview to the observer. In the interview Sharma told the paper that the consequences of failure at COP26 would be catastrophic. He said, I don't think there's any other word for it. You're seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade, the hottest decade on record on the eve of the release of the latest IPCC report, which was when he was speaking. Sharma said, this is going to be the starkest warning yet that human behavior is alarmingly accelerating global warming. And this is why COP26 has to be the moment we get this right. We can't afford to wait two years, five years, 10 years, this is the moment. He added, I don't think we're out of time, but I think we're getting dangerously close to when we might be out of time. We will see from the IPCC a very, very clear warning that unless we act now, we will unfortunately be out of time. These are all very strong words from the minister who has been put in charge of COP26. They're good to hear. This is what you would want a minister in charge of COP26 to be saying. There is a problem with Alok Sharma though, and it was evident in that interview, the position he is putting forward for the government is completely incoherent. The observer headline, credit to the headline writers, made this clear. So you can see here, we're on the brink of catastrophe warns Tory climate chief, COP26 meeting his last chance says Alok Sharma as he backs UK's plan for new oil and gas fields. Yes, while Sharma believes climate change could be catastrophic, he also backs UK plans to have new fossil fuel projects. This is the last thing you should be doing if you're serious about climate change. The defence offered by Alok Sharma isn't particularly persuasive. So this is what he said on the plan to open new oil fields in the North Sea. He said future fossil fuel licenses are going to have to adhere to the fact that we have committed to go to net zero by 2050 in legislation. There will be a climate check on any licenses. We must act now to avoid catastrophe. Oh, but not quite yet. We're still going to allow this new oil field. Now, it's controversial to say new oil field. I mean, it is a new oil field, but the government's excuse, they're opt out to say, oh, no, this isn't a new oil field. This is an extension of an existing one. And they say because it's an extension of an existing one, it doesn't have to meet the supposedly stringent requirements that the government have set for new oil fields. So it's going ahead. Anyway, also important to know it's not just lefties like us at Navarra media who are opposing this, the international energy agencies, that's a global energy watchdog has said that all fossil fuel exploration and development must cease this year to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The ongoing role and response of the UK and other countries in Europe and North America to climate breakdown is, has been the biggest scandal of the 20th and the 21st century. And now I completely agree with Dr. Ella, you know, the issue here is not a deficit of scientific knowledge. You know, the IPCC told us in 2018 that we have 12 years to limit climate catastrophe, which I think is, you know, probably quite a generous number. And we are a quarter of the way through those 12 years now. And what do we have to show for it? You know, Ken Sarawiwa knew in the 1990s that the lack of political action and the ongoing chokehold that the fossil fuel industry has over our political processes is an urgent emergency. So the issue isn't lack of reports. It's not a lack of understanding. It's a deficit of political strength, and it's a deficit of political will. And that is what we see by the kind of giving with one hand and taking with the other that we're seeing with Alok Sharma. And what he's giving is very minute, what he's taking is very, very considerable. And that deficit of political strength is in the face of, you know, it doesn't just exist because there's a kind of cozy relationship between the fossil fuel industry and our political classes. But it's because there is an overall investment in the broader system in which fossil fuel in the fossil fuel industry exists. So things like our insurance company system, you know, our insurance systems, the financial systems, even us, the state actors within the UK government that all facilitates the existence of a fossil fuel industry and the fossil fuel economy, as well as investment in the broader economic system that sort of demands growth at all and any costs, you know, you can't even slow down long enough to consider what it could mean to transition to a different energy system or to transition to a more sustainable way of living. And that is the contradiction that ultimately lies at the heart of existing state power. And it's not just in the UK, it's across Europe, it's in North America. And it's why within our current political system, we are going to keep losing the very precious years that we have left in order to take the necessary and urgent action. Because we all know that the route out of climate breakdown and not just the route out because I think sometimes we are kind of we're making a mistake when we frame this as, you know, fighting climate change or sort of like preventing climate change. Climate change is already underway. It's about mitigating the impact that, you know, and many ways are already underway, but also mitigating against worsening those impacts. That requires action that strikes ultimately the very heart of capitalism. It requires not only ending the fossil fuel industry, but it also requires things like abolishing intellectual property regimes that, you know, stop us from widely sharing technologies that can lead us to a more sustainable future. It requires overhauling our food and agricultural system. It requires transforming our how we relate to land, you know, how we how we conceptualize our relationship to land and our political classes, even if they might consider themselves to be, you know, invested in the environment because of the how embedded they are in reproducing those broader systems. That is why when we have these incredibly profound and urgent moments such as this IPCC reports, we are met with it. It's met with nonsense like, you know, rinse your plates before you put them in the dishwasher. Or what I think is even more absurd, which is Alec Sharma saying, oh, it's okay that we're cushioning new fossil fuel projects because we're having climate checks on them. Like how can you put a climate check on a fossil fuel project? But, you know, this is kind of going to be this sort of them virtue signalling. And I think it's funny because virtue signalling is often whenever virtue signalling is used, it's normally a very meat and done in a very meaningless way. But it's actually the only way that you can accurately describe the UK government's approach to climate breakdown, because it's signalling that there's an issue as if all that is at stake is, you know, ticking the box on the political sound by checklist. And then behind closed doors, literally making the problem worse and not only making it worse by commissioning new fossil fuel projects within the UK, but making it worse by enabling the financial and political infrastructure that makes the fossil fuel industry possible, much of which is located within the UK. So even if the the fossil fuel projects themselves aren't necessarily taking place within the UK, which of course we know they still are, the decisions and the political ability and the financial ability to do so is taking place on UK land and within UK jurisdiction. So more details on the cambo oil field, which is what the government are giving the green light to, according to Greenpeace, it could produce 170 million barrels of oil and produce emissions equivalent to 16 coal part coal fired power plants running for a year. The oil field is owned by the private private equity backed oil explorer, Sikar point. So you can guess what kind of vested interests are interested in this development going ahead, going back to Alok Sharma. He has given some more statements today. His lines today in response to the IPCC report are to suggest that the worst polluting countries must make drastic carbon cuts. So he's didn't single out a particular government apparently, but he is understood to be pointing the finger at China, India and Brazil. And they are all countries that are yet to put forward plans for emission cuts before COP26. So how the COP process works at the moment, the Kyoto process, that was this idea that you could come up with some big grand global commitment to reduce emissions and then force countries to abide by their share. The new situation we have had since the Paris agreement is that countries come forward with their own targets, with their own commitments, and they all sort of just, you know, take those into account. They're non-binding and they're voluntary. What is being suggested here by the likes of Alok Sharma is that essentially some countries aren't putting their weight because they haven't come forward with their commitments. That's countries like China, India and Brazil. The response to that would be to say, yes, it would be good for all countries to come forward with those commitments for COP26. But there's not much point in having very ambitious targets, as Britain currently does, if you don't have a plan to achieve that. Currently, they haven't published any plan to achieve that. And we know they're still giving the green light to new fossil fuel projects. So targets are all well and good, but you really have to take some action for that to be taken seriously. And so long as you're just pointing fingers at, oh, we've come up with this target. Why aren't you coming up with your target? If you haven't done the basic work that makes your target credible, then you don't have a leg to stand on. And I think that is the danger for Britain going into this COP26 summit, which they claim they want to take a leadership role in. They're all talk and no action. Let's go on to our next climate story. We are talking about people who are all talk and no action. That's very much the Tory government. They kind of say the right things, but they do the wrong things. There are still some people who are so recalcitrant that they won't even engage with the fact that climate change is a big deal. These are the dinosaurs of Britain's media class. Ash Sarkar is not on tonight's show, but she is going to make an appearance because she, this morning, took on Mike Parry, a former journalist at The Sun and The Express, who more recently had a radio show on Murdoch-owned talk radio. They were discussing the new IPCC report, which is telling policymakers how serious climate change is, how urgent action is now more necessary than ever. Mike Parry wasn't convinced. Ash had to tell him what was, I mean, had to put him back in touch of reality. Let's take a look. It's all very well us doing orbit, but we're responsible for one percent of the world's emissions, okay? But Russia, China, India are all actually stepping up their emissions by using more fossil fuels. China have just discovered in Mongolia, which is why they're so horrible to the Mongol people, billions of tons more of coal, and they're going to use it. They're opening a new coal-fired power station about once a month somewhere in China. Now, I know you can say, well, okay, but we're still going to do our bit, but are we putting enough pressure and will we at the COP26 on other nations, massive nations, using all these fossil fuels to do their bit? Because if we're doing our bit, but it's so tiny compared to the rest, it's pointless. So no point in us because we're so small. I'm sorry, but that is a load of fraff. One of the things that Britain can do is introduce legislation tomorrow, which would stop British banks from financing fossil fuel projects. So while you're right, no. So while you're right, we have been decreasing our emissions, but there are still plans for new oil and gas fields in the UK. This is the controversy around cambo just off the coast of Scotland. You've also got these plans for a new coal mine in the Northeast. This is suicidal of the government. It's absolutely suicidal. And it also doesn't wait. Hang on. I'll let you have a go. I'll let you have a go. It also doesn't make economic sense. You're going to have to shut these things down if we want to manage global temperature changes to a reasonable level. What the report says today is that we are at code red for humanity. It's going to be 1.5 degree increase in temperature by 2030. We're at 1.2 now and we're already seeing fires across Greece and Turkey, fires in Italy, flooding in Germany and Germany. So think about what it's going to cost if we don't take action money. But these are all models. This is not fact yet. What you're doing is predictions. No, this is fact because what we can see now, and one of the things the models haven't taken into account, if you read the work of Simon Lewis at UCL, a really, really important climate scientist, is that what none of these models have taken into account is that the impact of extreme weather events is happening much sooner than the models seem to be by. Well, listen, Ash, will you be aware of a chap called Michael Schellenberger, who was described on Time Magazine here over the environment? He's just written a new book called Apocalypse Never. Have you read it? No, have you? Have you read it? No, have you? So you're recommending a book you haven't read? No, I've read the review of the book because this is what I went to look for. That's the same thing. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah, thank you. So continue about the book you haven't read. And what he says is that actually it's all massively exaggerated. This guy was a campaigner for change, and now he says it's not happening. The other thing is, look. Yeah, I'm sure there are lots of people who make a really good living denying the scale of the climate. And there's lots of people who make a really good living for money and for attention. No, frightening us today. The facts are incontrovertible. We are seeing the effects of global heating now. And there are people like you who quite frankly do a disservice to the people of this country by lying to them. I'm not lying to anybody. Have you read the book is such a good line. I have so much respect for Ash every time she goes on mainstream media. That's so disarming. Have you read the book? He hasn't read the book. Let's break down some of those arguments. Obviously, Ash did a great job. We have the benefit of Google so we can go through them with a fine tooth comb as well. Worth noting for our show about the IPCC report, we've got a leading climate scientist, the Jeremy Vines show decided to get a former journalist at the Sun and current host on talk radio. Someone who didn't know their stuff really at all. I don't think he was informing their audience very much. Let's go through some of his arguments. He was making there a classic argument against action in the West, an argument for climate in action essentially, saying that whatever we do in Britain, it's completely irrelevant because it's other countries who have all the responsibility for climate change. Why should we change what we're doing when we're only 1% of emissions? On the face of it could seem persuasive. It's actually, I mean, it's bullshit. Let's look at who is actually responsible for climate change because when you look at historical emissions, and obviously we benefit from the fact that we emitted so much carbon over the last century because that's why we're so rich, why we're so wealthy. When you look at it historically, obviously the climate doesn't care, particularly when the carbon was emitted, it stays around for centuries. It is Europe and the United States, Europe and North America who have the most historic responsibility, the EU 28. So when this was made in 2019 by our world in data, the EU 28 included the UK now has a population of half a billion. Its historical responsibility for climate change is 22% of total emissions. China, who he tries to single out a population of 1.4 billion, historically they've created only 12.7% of emissions, half the amount of Europe. India, he also tried to single out India remember, a population of 1.3 billion people. Historically, they have emitted only 3% of global emissions and you have someone like him saying, oh, he's got nothing to do with Britain. The problem is India. The problem is China. The problem really isn't India. And how can you possibly be asking developing countries to play a role in combating climate change, which we need them to do by the way, because even though, yeah, we shouldn't have emitted all that carbon, we do now need all countries to reduce their carbon levels at whatever phase of development. That's why we should be pumping money into governments in these countries so that they can have green growth instead of dirty growth. But they are not going to take kindly to people in the West saying, ah, climate change, it's your fault because, well, they know it's not true. The point about China, he made. He is kind of right about new coal. China is building 60 new coal power plants. That is very, very bad. And pressure should be put on them to stop doing that. Apparently, they have quite a powerful coal lobby in the country. It is not as simple as he was suggesting, though, because as well as developing new coal, which is unforgivable, China also has more than a third of the world's installed wind and solar capacity. That doesn't just matter for China. It matters for the whole world because they by, you know, developing these technologies actually made them affordable enough for everyone else to use. It's because of China that solar and wind power is now very, very competitive. The last thing we'll point out is the book he cites, but which he had never read. It's by Michael Schellenberger. He isn't a climate scientist. He is a former PR executive. I like Mike Perry have not read the book, so I can't give you an honest rundown of what it said. I did look for some reviews. So in the Yale climate review, Peter Glick, who is an actual climate scientist, unlike myself or Mike Perry, he described it as filled with bad science and bad arguments, which is deeply and fatally flawed. Of course, we shouldn't get distracted by reviews and counter reviews of some book by a contrarian. We have already a document which shows us what is the current consensus among climate scientists. It's the IPCC report. It was released today. It's the kind of thing that the likes of Mike Perry are trying to distract from. And that shows that there are, there is sorry, an overwhelming consensus among the world scientists that human caused climate changes happening. Its effects are incredibly extreme. Whatever a right wing talk show host who read a review about a book by a PR executive might like to say. Let's go back to this exchange. We can see more of Ash's masterful handling of this know nothing. By lying to them. I'm not lying to anybody. No, no, I'm not lying. What I'm saying is I'm trying to wait the evidence on one side or the other. There is a 90 to 95% consensus on scientists that the effects of global heating are real, that there is irreparable damage being done to the earth now. And it is poor families across the world who are suffering from the world now. The issue here is whether in Britain we should make sacrifices that the Chinese won't make. So what I said is that one is that we can apply more pressure to Chinese governments, India, to Russia and to Brazil. They won't take the slightest bit of note to yourself. They hang on one second. One of the things we can do is we can stop British banks from funding overseas fossil fuel projects. You've said that. We can introduce the legislation tomorrow. The second thing we can do is wean ourselves off the reliance of exports which come from these big polluters. Because while we have decreased our own carbon emissions, we've in fact just kind of negatively offset them by buying so much from other countries. So we need to become a lot more self-sufficient as a nation. So that's less by less on Amazon from China. And then the third thing that we can do is use the state as a means to support a just transition. So right now borrowing is very, very cheap for the government. And you don't have to pay it back like a household debt. You can stretch out over a long period of time. So it doesn't make a huge impact on day-to-day finances. So one of the things you can do is, because you're right, heat pumps are expensive, what you can do as a borough to fund this country. You mentioned about poor families, a few minutes ago. What poor family in Burnley is going to want to spend £10,000 on a heat pump, which is a completely unnecessary addition to their house? What poor family in Doncaster wants to deal with yearly floods? Because that's what's happening. Of course they don't, but that's called weather. And there's too much reliance put on climate change being responsible for every bit of weather in the world. I mean, there was a lot that was incoherent there, what Mike Parry said, obviously expertly dealt with by Ash. What I think was most ridiculous there is that he keeps saying, I'm not a denier. I'm not a denier. I'm not a climate denier. And at the same time, he says, you can't keep connecting extreme weather events to climate change. No, I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not here to tell you why increased extreme weather events are related to climate change. I'm instead, which is what I think is the sensible thing to do in this situation, going to go to the IPCC report released today signed off by over 200 of the world's leading climate scientists and all of the world's governments. This is not a radical document. This is representing the consensus among scientists and policymakers. They write, it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Human induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation, droughts and tropical cyclones and in particular their attributes into human influence has strengthened since the fifth assessment report. The fifth assessment report was the last report from the IPCC. You can make your decision. Do you believe Mike Parry who's read a review of a book that he hasn't read by a PR executive or do you believe hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists? Final bit of the clip we'll show you is of Mike Parry and our ever patient colleague. Let's take a look. For instance. The stats are in controversy about the increase. It's cyclical. We don't yet know whether any individual moment in weather is climate change. Absolutely. But you've got a pattern building which scientists say shows it's going. We've had floods in these countries for years. In 1952 people wiped out in Cornwall a massive flood. We're looking at once in a lifetime events happening every year. Why did the Romans grow vineyards in Northumberland? Why did the Romans grow vineyards in Northumberland? I have to admit I did google that question before we went live. I didn't have quite enough time to get a satisfactory answer. Apparently it had something to do with monasteries. Anyway, I'm not going to be able to answer that question for you. What I am going to be able to show you is how the weather we are currently experiencing is not cyclical. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Let's go back to the IPCC report. They show here changes in global surface temperatures relative to 1850 to 1900. So they say with confidence that what we are witnessing now is unprecedented in more than 2000 years. So let's look at this graph on the left first. So that's showing us you can see there the amount that the temperatures have risen since 1850. It's like nothing else you can see in the previous 2000 years. They also show on this that it's only been this hot for a sustained period of time once in the past 100,000 years. That was around 6,500 years ago. We can look now at this chart on the right again from the IPCC. This here, they simulate what they think temperatures would be like if it were merely due to natural variations, that sort of solar and volcanic changes. They say it would basically be no change at all, fluctuate slightly. But we're looking at 0.1 degree heating or 0.1 degree cooling over the decades. When you put into the simulation human interventions, human emissions, then you get what we are observing which is over one degrees of warming. I think at the moment we have 1.9 degrees of warming from pre-industrial times. If you're just looking at two different people arguing, Ash did a brilliant job there, but they're basically seeing climate change. There's two sides to this argument. Who do I believe? Oh yeah, vineyards in Britain during the Roman times. Maybe this is a complicated issue and it's too early for us to take any drastic action. How irresponsible do you think it is to put that kind of person on TV on a day like today? I mean, the British media is completely broken, right? The discussion that we should be having now is not whether this report by consensus that matches several other reports by consensus that as you've outlined that humans are responsible for global heating and that global heating, global warming is going to have these impacts going forward. The conversation that we should have been having is, okay, we know what we need to do as Ash outlined in that clip. How are we going to get there? What are the concrete steps? What are the concrete things that we can do in order to put pressure on our government and have concrete demands on what our government should be doing to get us there? Not debating about the reason that you couldn't find a straight answer to the vineyard question is because it's irrelevant and it doesn't matter. That lies on the responsibility of the Jeremy Vine show, of the media, of producers to present this, to present the key question here to be not how do we take climate change seriously but should we even bother to take climate change seriously? But I think also what we really saw come through in that clip was what we're going to hear a lot more of over the coming months with COP taking place in Glasgow this year. We're going to hear a lot of bluster regarding Britain being a global leader of climate action where the government and the media will be using highly selective statistics to position itself as somehow doing even more than its fair share to in the fight against climate breakdown. But we cannot let that messaging succeed and that is because it sets a precedent for, as I said before, state-led virtue signalling as a replacement for concrete action on climate change but it also allows the government to get away with complicity and with its inaction. He said multiple times, I'm not a climate denier because being a climate denier is kind of a dirty word but what this is is climate deflection. It's deflecting from the core causes of climate breakdown. Using these pressures, it's not every day that climate breakdown is discussed on mainstream media. It's using those precious moments when we can really access the public's understanding of the issues at stake and using that time to simply deflect on the core causes not only of climate breakdown but of most importantly the uneven experiences of climate breakdown and shifting focus to selective and propagandistic statistics and narratives of the past but also shifting focus to false solutions like whether it's individual recycling or shooting billionaires into space because we've given up on earth all together and I think it's so important as well to myth bust on this idea that the UK is a global leader of climate and the fight against climate change because let's be very clear the UK is responsible for a considerable proportion of historical emissions like when we talk about emissions we're not just talking about what's happening today what's being emitted now that's not the only thing that's relevant what's relevant is also what has been historically emitted and here the UK's contribution vastly outweighs the population and country size and so there is a historical accountability here where Britain and in fact you know Europe more generally has a reparative obligation to the rest of the world that can't be compensated by merely you know this light touch greenwashing and saying you know oh with the exception of a few coal mines we're not going to commission any more fossil fuel projects um and you know but secondly even if all fossil fuel projects within the UK ended today which you know obviously we know that the UK hasn't even been able to commit to that the UK would still be complicit in global emissions because primarily London is strategically essential to the continuation of the fossil fuel industry as we've as we've sort of um outlined you know that the government's neoliberal approach means that companies that are literally listed on the London stock exchange are able to use the fact that we have very lax regulation in this area to freely exploit fossil fuel reserves in Africa in Asia without any real regulation or any real oversight and that is what I would argue you know a direct legacy of one of the most direct legacies of colonialism um in the modern day our own government credit agency is has financially supported fossil fuel projects in countries like Oman in Ghana and Brazil locking these countries into fossil fuel driven development models and then turning around and blaming them for omitting too much so in what world could that be considered climate leadership so the question therefore becomes and this is the discussion that should have been had on Jeremy Vine's show what does climate leadership actually look like for the UK obviously it goes without saying no more commissioning of any fossil fuel projects within the UK but also dissolving the political and financial infrastructure that is located within the UK and enables extraction throughout the world and we also need to funnel the UK's considerable financial and political capital into supporting a globally just transition that particularly protects workers in high carbon industries which includes investing in models of development that don't center extraction but also don't center growth at all costs and it also obviously means removing the influence of fossil fuel um industries in global climate negotiations and instead centering people and the communities and the priorities of those who are most impacted by climate breakdown but there's also a reparations element here as well because of that historical role that has been played by Britain which has always conveniently left out in these sort of media hits on climate change and it's because of that historical obligation of European and North American states we need to be providing the financing necessary financing necessary for countries of the global south who contributed the least to climate change and yet are facing its most brutal consequences to mitigate against the impacts of climate change this includes transition you know it does include transitions of wealth from the north to the south in order to to provide for this mitigating infrastructure but it also means things like abolishing intellectual property laws that prevent the technologies that we need in order to mitigate against climate breakdown it prevents those technologies from being widely you know reproduced and widely available for all those countries that need it it also looks like you know opening our borders to people who are displaced by climate change it means welcoming climate refugees and understanding that climate that that being a climate refugees a very broad category it doesn't always look like someone being directly displaced by an extreme weather event but it includes things like economic disruption caused by climate climate change and climate breakdown so that understanding of historical obligation and putting what we understand to be you know the UK's fair share in the context of that historical obligation that is the benchmark for climate leadership in the global north and particularly in the UK it's not these mealy mouthed virtually signaling phrases that we're hearing from Alec Sharma that we're hearing from Boris Johnson it means actually putting your money and your political will where your mouth is and that's what we will not see from that from this government because of the systemic contradiction that exists between the political and financial systems that our government endorse and are embedded in and the actual action that is necessary in order to get us out of this problem well i'm really relieved you've told me i don't have to get it to the bottom of the roman vineyards in england because that frees up the rest of my evening so i'm very very grateful for that i mean the distinction you make between climate elialism and climate what did you call it distract not distract deflection deflection i think it's an important one i think in this case he did do both right because the deflection is saying oh well britain's emissions don't matter because the problem is china that's that's a sort of classic deflection deflectionary tactic there's no point in us doing anything because britain's relevant anyway it's not true but also it's an obvious excuse not to do anything i think he was also doing classic denialism which to say it's all cyclical it's just the weather the weather just changes so that's a real he tried to do sort of a polite deflectionism but ash put like ash pushed him to the logical end of what he was saying and forced him to say what he really thinks the mask came off but i think that this is the tactic now you know we can't openly and you know boldly with our chest deny that climate change is real um or at least we try not to because it makes us look like clowns so instead we're gonna you know introduce all of this distraction and this deflection in order to at the end of the day have the same outcome which is that nothing's being done yeah i think that's that's absolutely right um i'm halfway through a book on this called the new climate war by michael man um it's all about this but i'll tell you what's in it when i've finished it when i've got round to finishing it maybe we'll interview the guy let's go to some comments michelle ratcio bravo ash solidarity and a very kind donation of 49 pounds thank you so much for that neil armitage with 22 quid in case ash needs a couple of bottles of wine after that i would have been forced to tell him what i thought of him in rather industrial language thank you all for your great work and thank you so much for your donation we'll uh we'll pass that onto ash that if she wants to expense a couple bottle of wine bottles of wine and that's that's that's gone in her direction alex with a tenor problem is the later reductions are enacted the more they need to do it's like procrastinating over an assignment leaving more to do at the end public consent for radical climate policy will wear finn exactly right obviously net zero by 2050 is great but if you do all the tough action in the you know in the final year then you've already released loads of carbon beforehand the carbon hangs around in in the air for a very long time in the atmosphere for a very long time i was going to say hangs around in the sky for a very long time but that would make me sound very unscientific albal tweets on the hashtag tisky sour looks like the right are already foaming at the mouth over code red for humanity do you think the IPCC have been a bit too conservative there have been recent reports of tipping points beginning to be crossed including the release of methane from the arctic permafrost um i mean i i do think those reports about arctic permafrost you know melting and letting out a lot of methane and that being another tipping point because that warms the climate and then that makes the permafrost melt more and then that warms the climate and that makes the permafrost melt more i mean all incredibly terrifying i'm definitely not in a position to adjudicate as to whether or not the IPCC was too conservative our climate expert earlier seemed to think that there was you know enough in the report to rally round as a starting point for building policy when it comes to climate change so i'd probably be inclined to be happy to move forward on that basis edubito with a fiver has a couple of suggestions campaign consider out andreas maln things veganism and less consumption are awesome please don't just keep it individual and fossil fuel subsidies i think they're all very good suggestions there are a couple of good interviews with andreas maln on um navarra media i'm i'm there is definitely an fm podcast i think there might also be a youtube video not hundred percent sure but if you google navarra media and andreas maln something will definitely come up and pepafroid with 899 can you please give a birthday shout out to my partner emelda please she's a longtime fan of navarra media and watches tiskey religiously happy birthday emelda um and thank you pepafroid for the donation um i hope you have a great day i hope the ipcc report hasn't ruined it um there is still hope as all of the climate scientists are very keen to say whenever is it time to despair they say no it's the time for political action and we should take that attitude forward with us darlia um we've reached 8 p.m on the dot it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you this evening we'll be back on wednesday at 7 p.m for now you've been watching tiskey sour on navarra media good night