 Our guest this evening is Dr. Joseph Curtin. I'm very familiar to us here at the IA. Joe is his currently based over in New York. He's director of climate resilience with the Rockefeller Foundation and he was previously a member of the Irish government's climate change advisory council and of course he was seeing our fellow with ourselves the Institute of International European Affairs and he also previously worked with the OECD the National Economic Social Council and with UCC. He's a frequent media commentator and you'll have seen him in the New York Times on BBC, foreign policy, financial times, the Atlantic, Washington Post named a few. He's a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, the London School of Economics and he's a PhD in climate finance from UCC. So just in terms of format Joe is going to speak to us for about 15 minutes or so on COVID-19 climate change and what next for the climate movement and then we'll get into Q&A. So anybody who wants to join the Q&A you can do so by using the Q&A function that's in the bottom of your screen and you can send questions into us throughout the session as they occur to you or you can hang on until the end when Joe finishes his presentation. So with that Joe I'd just like to say also that Joe will be speaking this evening in his own personal capacity and the full event will go up on our YouTube channel once we finish up and if you want to join in the conversation you can using the handle at OyaEA on Twitter. Joe over to you. Hi Sarah it's great to be back in Dublin albeit under slightly different circumstances than I was expecting. Yeah so good to see you and good to reconnect with the IAEA. So yeah I'd like to as you said talk today a little bit about the implications of COVID-19 for the climate movement and as we know this is a pandemic that's spread with alarming speed over seven million people worldwide have been affected. Global debt owes approaching half a million people and lockdowns have imposed across the world. According to the World Bank this will have a devastating impact. Economic impact as well as the health impact so approximately 93% of countries are projected to enter a recession in 2020 and the baseline forecast for the World Bank at the moment is a global contraction of about 5% in GDP this year. So this is the deepest global recession in decades and of course there's huge uncertainty even around that figure and you know there could be a far more prolonged and deeper global recession depending on what happens in the autumn with wave twos etc of the pandemic. So this will obviously have a devastating impact on advanced economies but I think when we think about systemic shocks and be a horizon for climate change or pandemics or anything else it's always the most vulnerable and who bear the brunt and so the World Bank again are estimating that an additional 71 million people could be pushed back into extreme poverty and this year and the protests in turn Africa will be the hardest hit but the latest data is also presenting a particularly particularly sobering picture for India which is home to many of the world's core and so I suppose today what I want to talk about is what are the implications of this backdrop for the climate agenda and I think it's fair to say there's been two competing views and in the conversations I've been having with peers and with partners there's been a sense of how should the climate movement respond to this pandemic and you know there's certainly I think a risk that you know the climate movement if it doesn't and step forward in the right way then it could be perceived as being so much tone theft to the current promises and so there's been two sharply divergent views in the conversations I've been having so some people experts and policymakers and activists believed that we potentially should be deep prioritizing climate action now given the divergency responding to these short-term issues what others I think are taking a different view to suggest that you know this is a unique kind of moment to take action on the climate agenda for various reasons and I think there is actually an element of truth to both of those perspectives and in actual fact it's actually about timing and I think it's important to distinguish between the short and the medium term when it comes to climate agenda so I think it's true to say actually good in the short term we do need to sort of take the backstage as a climate movement and climate activists and in the Rockefeller Foundation we've been giving a priority to our testing action plan our testing solutions group and these are all responses to the health crisis what the second near-term priority is to support relief efforts that ensure that a certain essential human needs are met and most countries have advanced you know fiscal and monetary policy responses although in the wealthy world obviously these responses have been better resourced than they have been in vulnerable and some emerging countries and well most of these responses in the short term have been focused on expanding social safety nets and protecting the most vulnerable wage support to preserve jobs increased access to unemployment benefits targeted cash flow for low-income high-sales etc but I suppose our thesis is that these short-term responses will give rise to a different agenda in the medium term and as soon as we enter this period of recovery and that can happen and perhaps towards the end of this year perhaps towards the first half of 2021 and a key priority at this stage will be to avoid a prolonged economic recession in the long run but it will also be a unique opportunity to address structural issues including in quality poverty or adaptation but also the more slow-living climate emergency and and I think it's important that we use this moment and to address some of the vulnerabilities and fragilities that have been brought into plain site and by the current pandemic and climate change obviously is one of those and issues and so yeah and I suppose this is I spoke we I think we need to see this is a longer in the longer term as an opportunity to reshape the economy and to make decisions that are not only in short-term interests but also in the long long-term interests and so before talking about how this directly relates to the climate agenda I'd just like to paint a little bit of a background in terms of where we were before COVID and I'm going to focus on the climate and development agenda more so than to develop a climate agenda for the developed world and although I would say upfront that it is the developer from climate justice perspective it needs to move fast and that includes climate laggards like Ireland unfortunately and like the US where I'm where I am at the moment and we do have programs and initiatives that are focused on the rich world but I'm going to focus on the emerging and vulnerable countries in for the most part of this presentation so the baseline situation is that energy demand is growing across Asia and Africa but 800 million people still have no access to electricity and approximately under 2 billion up to 2 billion people could and be considered to be living in energy poverty so they don't have reliable access to cheap power and the power of access to isn't enough to drive you know economic development and human development to support human flourishing so this growing demand for power and there's a race underway between coal and natural gas and renewals and unfortunately coal is still in full position and according to the global energy monitor there's 500 gigawatt 550 gigawatts of coal power planned permitted around the construction across Asia and Africa but we know that coal is not the right answer for development or an environmental perspective it's not the right answer for energy access because it's usually too too expensive to build the transmission and distribution lines for customers who will only have initially at least a small demand and who don't have and who we don't you know are then attractive proposition from a utility perspective but it's also not the right answer to these hugely growing cities because coal is hugely financially risky as an investment proposition 42 percent of the coal operating fee at the moment is cash flow negative and carbon tracker estimates that 72 percent of the current coal fleet will be unviable by 2030 so the idea of layering in massive investments in the coal power against this backdrop makes no sense and a lot of the reasons that well we can go into the question the question's answer is why we are actually building all this coal if it is such a proposition from an financial and economic perspective and on the other side of the same coin wind and solar PV are made of cheapest options for power it costs most of the world two-thirds of the world most of the markets and the IMF has identified energy transition as a 2.3 trillion investment opportunity per annum so the economic fundamentals move in only one direction and this brings me to to green fiscal stimulus so green power is the cheapest and least riskated cleanest and source of power and so therefore I think at a big picture level we're seeing a completely new development pathway and a development opportunity opening up for emerging and vulnerable countries they don't need to follow in the pathway of the 19th century development model which is based on fossil fuels and given the unprecedented scale of the crisis and we're going to have to in my view advance an equitable and a green recovery which targets inequality exclusion and finally changing the fundamental matter and green power is a great way of doing that and so as I mentioned and this is there's been a huge amount of economic analysis which supports the proposition that this green development pathway is the most attractive economically and I would point you to the new climate economy report in 2018 which is one of the best I've seen and which is now which is that thesis so the types of investments and in wind solar PV hydrogen transmission lines factory storage solar PV can help us to overcome this economic slope in the short term but there are also investments in the in humanity's long term future and so one of the key arguments here for why the green pathway is better is that these investments in green technologies tends to be far more labor intensive so if you spend one million on a green the green economy you create probably about three times the number of jobs as you would create and in the fossil fuel economy and again there's been a huge amount of analysis on the kind of labor intensity of the green economy versus the and that's why you find leaders like Christina from the for the international energy agency who are all pushing this proposition of a green recovery it's because it makes sense from a development perspective and from a climate perspective so I just want to say a little bit and more about which areas of the green economy and are attractive are particularly attractive and there was a survey conducted by the was it again the outside spill of sustainability and Guy Hepburn and he interviewed 231 finance ministry officials central plan for his economists etc and what he discovered was that yes the green economy and was considered the most attractive option and from a recovery perspective and the key areas that they identified were renewable energy assets like I said storage and green hydrogen grid modernization and ccs technology I'm not so sure about ccs myself but that's what came across in this study and they also identified building energy efficiency and that's a highly labor intensive area which delivers multiple benefits and they also identified education and training and to build the workforce for these opportunities as an important and supporting supporting opportunity and finally they identified natural capital investments so the likes of the forestation or a nature based solutions and approaches to sequestering carbon as another labor intensive and climate friendly approach to putting people back to work and and finally investing in r&d is a lot of clean energy r&d is a longer term opportunity and I think in in vulnerable and rural contexts and I think what's important is probably less important to put in developed country contexts we still have an important innovation agenda that we need to meet with some fortunate customers once and so lastly I would say a lot of this evidence also comes from exposed analysis it looks from the same Korean fiscal stimulus of 2009 which is very heavily focused on the green economy as was the american recovery and green investment act also in 2009 and both of those have been subject to you know pretty rigorous analysis so we know that this works from past experience as well and and so you know just finally a few words on the us I mean the same logic applies here to us in fact what we're seeing is you need huge subsidies to support the ongoing particularly in the coal sector but also in the oil and the gas sector these you know these these are you know subsidy and these these are industries that need to be undergirded with subsidies right now and I think from the US perspective what we need to do is we need to envisage and the opening things that will arise on the agenda hopefully post November 2020 and we need to have pragmatic innovative ideas that have been regularly rigorously assessed on the table when the next window of opportunity opens up for green fiscal stimulus and that's some thinking and definition we're thinking about and we have quite a bit of thinking going on that and so lastly I would say when this recovery effort is finished I think there is another implication for example I think what we've seen is that the current international architecture which is essential for the likes of the pandemic response but also it's actually for climate change it's not really fit for purpose international cooperation and development institutions that were set up and post world war two are not fit for purpose in an interconnected and globalized 21st century and I think you know eventually we're going to get to a period of reflection where we have to really do a bit of an assessment how did the likes of the UN or WHO or these other institutions have different worlds institutions for world bank and the IMF who similar idea of performing better how did they perform in what are the lessons we learned we can learn for climate protection because as we know we need to engender cooperation between lots of different countries and to get anywhere on climate change and I think that there's lessons from COVID-19 to we can learn for climate action and I suppose you know in the 21st century we increased population density the growth of mega cities the destruction of natural ecosystems these are factors that have made the COVID-19 pandemic more likely but these are also the factors that underpin climate change and so that's another factor that we need to consider we need to prepare for a world where systemic crisis and catastrophic disruptions are a feature of the system and not a bug not an aberration and I think therefore what we learn from the current crisis and it will be essential in terms of how the human family proceeds over the next 100 years and could in fact be critical to our flourishing perhaps even our survival and you you guys probably read what our anxiety Roy said about this but it really struck me and at the end of her financial times I'll bed for a few months ago and I'll leave you with a quote from her so she said historically pandemics force humans to break with the past and imagine they're a world anew this one is no different it's a portal a gateway between our world and the next we can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred our avarice our data banks and dead ideas our dead rivers and snowy skies behind us or we can walk through lightly with little luggage ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it so I'll leave it there very happy pretty much Joe very detailed to begin with and then very big picture system change stuff to finish with to get the the conversation going for the Q&A so I'll take off Joe maybe with a public questions and I'll just say now just a reminder to the people tuning in if you do want to ask a question just just pop it in in written form using the zoom Q&A function there at the bottom and I'll fill them out with Joe then and Joe I mean this this obviously I mean the COVID pandemic is is is completely unprecedented but you know there's always been talk of reassessing at crisis moments and you know using this crisis as an opportunity I mean people have fallen asleep at the moment they've heard that and John Berrigan very senior Irish official in the European Commission director general of DG Fisman now he was on talking about green financing and he said you know this is the moment you know you know we cannot not take this opportunity he said and he said and look I've been around long enough to hear that cliche but I'm telling you and this is widespread so can you just sort of talk to us maybe a little bit about why this is the moment this seems to be the time when everyone says okay now we'll actually pull ourselves together and build back better so to speak can you can you just talk a little bit about why this is the breaking point yeah I mean I think it's the future is always inherently uncertain and it's you know you know and how we act now determines you know the world we were living I think I didn't talk about the EU it's funny since I moved to the US and since I started working for the worker better foundation we've a very development focused agenda across a lot of our programmatic activities so my world has been slightly more focused on us and emerging in vulnerable countries but having said that I think the the EU is still just a shining beacon on the hill to the world and from where I'm sitting and the kinds of steps they're taking both to foreground and green the green economy in nation-state and EU level fiscal symbols plans has been remarkable and it is be noticed and and that leadership isn't you know isn't going to waste it is being noticed and it is inspiring a lot of people in extreme people around the world what is possible and when you get into the when you get into the green finance debate again this is a huge opportunity for the EU to use some of the tools the heuristics the screens and for assessing investment flows assessing the sustainability of investment levels to put those to practice you know and to and so the green finance or sustainable finance plan and developed this taxonomy and so now is a chance to put that to the test and so so I suppose one other thing I would add is that what's different this time is that the economic fundamentals have completely shifted you know and Goldman Sachs release report you know reports can be able Goldman Sachs release report the other day saying that yes they're actually saying that you know the coal is dead anyway in terms of economic fundamentals it's just not completely and utterly dead and but what this report was saying was that oil and gas were also significantly on the back foot and because of underlying economic fundamentals what's been critical this is something that everybody has to stay in it hasn't been carbon prices right the US has completely failed to get a carbon price across the line on the numerous occasions what it's been is when an investor wants to get to access capital for a coal project he's been charged such a huge risk premium that actually that risk premium is the equivalent of having a between 40 and 80 dollar carbon tax so in Ireland as you know our carbon tax is what mid 20s right so their risk premium the additional risk premium from investors being charged to support a fossil fuel project is so much higher than a clean energy project right now and that's why is that it's because of the divestment movement it's because politicians have tried and failed to get carbon tax over the line but they keep on saying they're going to keep on trying it's because of pipeline protesters it's because of the Sierra Club initiative which is brought a net which is brought a privilege around to dozens of coal plants across the US it's because of every single individual who is taking action who is protested who is it's because of Greta Thunberg it's it's a bottom up theory of change rather than saying we're going to do this sort of carbon tax so between that sort of level of consciousness that is permeated across the financial system and between the kind of policy major and between just economic fundamentals you know this moment can really be an inflection point for the great economy so you would I mean say there's a symptom of the of the of the climate moment in terms of the mass protests and just you know we're all coming together at this particular point it's really meant that you know you've got finance on board the politicians on board the people on the streets and it's just all sort of reached this point now where in the middle of this pandemic people are saying we can't go back to what we you were just in you know that wasn't working I mean you're talking there about the you know the post-World War II institutions essentially failing to address this issue so a couple of questions coming in they'll get to them now one question from Afrique was asking about the green energy better option financially because it's so labour intensive would these jobs not just be very short term and be gone is the question she was asking so it's not sustainable jobs development it's just here today go on tomorrow what was what's the sort of research saying on that yeah so the whole idea of a fiscal stimulus to have a like economic rationale I'm loving that second question by the way I can't wait to get to that one and so the whole rationale of a fiscal stimulus is that the output of the economy is trapped below its the equilibrium is the lowest equilibrium level so government has a rationale for intervening and so the whole objective is to scale up opportunities to create jobs in the short term so yes like if you build a wind energy farm and you know the construction phase will the first couple of years and where you're doing your private timing and then eventually your construction before you get into the operation stage will be to make the create jobs same with solar panels etc and the difference is that in a solar project compared to let's say a cold project you need more labour you know for a longer period of time to get the same amount of energy and the operational costs are zero so you're not showing tens of millions every year into coal your you know your your marginal cost of operation is lower so if you know obviously having invested in cheap things that generate a better return is better for the economy than investing in you know expensive things to have a really poor return and that are highly financially risky so you know in the medium term this should also you know be better in the you know for you know for a lot of the medium term economic growth prospects of the economy but the last thing I would say is that we do need to invest in smart r&d to ensure that we continue in the medium term to sort of progress in a you know economically optimal way it's not just about meeting the short-term need but the immediate priority is short-term needs it's the tens of millions of people who are unemployed across the world they don't care right now their job is going to be for two years over six months they just want to work and that's what the green economy we're supposed to have that's the problem it's designed to be okay another question here and from our economics researcher Kilian Rossi and he asks about the the novel The Overstory and just you know climate change and environmentalism he wants to know is there a better novel than that on on that topic or or what were your thoughts are I haven't and it's the best thing I've read in years and I mean I feel like I don't know maybe and I'd love to hear actually from and the participants and maybe it's not a representative sample but I feel like what that novel represented to me was there's an environmental awakening you know that we are starting and if you hear what Richard Parris and himself says he said that the the type of novel which was man versus nature right which was and Moby Dick would be the class example or maybe to a lesser extent the old man in the sea but I think Moby Dick we stopped novelists stopped writing that kind of novel it was one of the three great crack categories of novels because we had essentially tamed nature we had worn and now nature is fighting back and now it is kind of man nature kind of war dynamic disharmony is bubbling up into the kind of collective consciousness again and I felt that this novel was really kind of meeting that moment and maybe it's just because it's my world but I thought like this was the beginning of a sort of an amazing kind of awakening of a kind of a need for a more balanced relationship between man and nature it just it's such a brilliant piece of work it blew my mind I would encourage everyone to read it it's probably a little bit hard to get into and you know first 80 or 90 pages but if you stick with it I think it's it's really rewarding but I'd love to hear from Killian if he has any other recommendations because I'm always looking for a good kind of nature novel and you know to get stuck into Rand I'll almost pick it up but I'm going to get him off to you if he has any recommendations and no question here Joe we think on the last point you're making about you know the fate of multilateral institutions really to address this this this crisis from Karen Ferris and Joe you've talked about how multilateral institutions were used to structure solutions to past crises can really help to build global consensus on how to approach the recovery particularly from a climate perspective in a post-pandemic era when we've seen more retreat than nationalism attacks on global bodies like the WHO and you know less multilateralism when we're facing an ever common global threat so I mean do you just want to pick up what I was going to ask sort of a similar question and you know in this overhaul of the of the of the international order that you picture what would replace us and so sort of twin questions there for myself and Karen. Yeah I mean I think Karen you're you're dead right and there's a need you know there's there's a need there whether that need is being met I think we're going to need to go through some election cycles before there's any prospect of really addressing this need and you know the US is still so important to the international order and it goes without saying that you know leadership isn't being provided at this moment when it's most needed in fact you know the international institutions and the international order the EU the WHO the UN itself is being scapegoated by national leaders we saw Bolsonaro for the Trump's lead as well in this respect and so it's I suppose the reality is it could go either way you know you know I think that it's any thinking person who's looking at this situation would identify the need for more international collaboration more cooperation more joint initiatives and you know just even from the perspective of you know controlling a pandemic and you know meeting thinking about spillover effects and you know how they could be managed collaboratively or you know the one area where I think we have seen really positive vision of a collaborative collaboration is on the scientific aspect like scientists just tend to be very internationalist interview and you know you've seen a huge amount of cross and cross national collaboration between these teams and in terms of developing vaccines and that's been really encouraging of course I know that some of you may be saying well when the vaccines get kind of uh developers want to get this unseen you kind of rush to make sure that you know one country over another gets up first but I think you know there are really positive signs there around and how scientists are kind of scientists in some ways are the best of us you know that they they really do see the kind of big picture they really do sort of want to collaborate they're very mission kind of driven and so that has been one positive sign but I absolutely accept and what you're saying about the this sort of clash of reality and you know and the rise of nationalism with the kind of world we need to build and you know that is a it's a big problem and in some ways it can only be it can only be solved at a national level first you know and step one is November 2020 and if we don't get that you know then we'll use kind of the whole spectrum around let's be very honest and in terms of the kinds of institutions like again I'm biased but you know I think the kinds of collaboration that are a gender between the Asian states between the EU you know forms a model I mean this is obviously not going to work anytime soon at an international level but you know we need kind of structured international collaboration between member states and you know I think on a micro level we can look at the kind of mandates of the likes of the World Bank and the IMF and the international and the likes of the development finance institutions seek African development and the Asian development like the Asian infrastructure investment fund and all of these I think can be doing more particularly in service of the green economy and green investments although their mandates are changing I think more can be done and and power of rights is probably more to be said but Grant, Grant well you mentioned there Joe you know when I've heard you you know previously discussed this and the window of opportunity and you talked about a couple of election cycles can I just ask maybe we're sort of moving a little bit off your area of expertise now on climate but I mean are you optimistic about these you know the changes that need to happen at a national level you know you've talked about the climate moment and the grassroots ground up approach and do you think that culminates ultimately in in political change and are you hopeful or are you a bit more pessimistic? I'm always an optimist and you know look the trends are if you're talking specifically about the U.S. picture you know the trends are very very positive but the you know there the priority B will do absolutely anything you know anything without any lens to maintain the status quo and you can see that manifests in any number of ways you know from political donations to and gerrymandering to voter suppression and you know and of course the inherent to the system itself gives a huge electoral college advantage to and the current administration and so and so there are definite risks but you know the moment we're in at the moment I mean that the murder of George Floyd has been absolutely incredible moments here like an incredible moment and really really profound moments that I think goes well beyond you know the systemic racism and the you know the original scene of the U.S. which is slavery although it heavily relates to that debate but I think it's almost like just a letting off of frustrated energy and from you know progressive independence and center center-minded people who are just you know pushing back against this kind of nationalist scapegoat and agenda that's that's just been so in our faces for the last three and a half years so there's just a kind of an unreal energy an unbelievable energy and it's actually a really interesting time to be in the U.S. for that reason you know with being working within it and I'm lucky to work within a foundation that really cares about these issues and it's been so interesting to have these conversations these difficult awkward conversations with colleagues and from across a wide diversity of backgrounds and as an Irish guy to you know not necessarily have the language to not know how to talk about it and yet to be allowed to say that has been amazing say that I don't know I don't have the language to talk about this I'm scared I'm going to seven a line mine and just to listen and learn you know from people from my black colleagues especially and to learn from their experiences and it's been amazing it's been a really interesting experience it's been a privilege as well to kind of be here and to witness that I was saying to you guys just before we started it was literally a Black Lives Matter protest right I lived in Brooklyn and in Clinton Hill fairly residential area and it was just you know we've had so many protests you know going down our our avenue Washington Avenue and over the last few weeks and and as I said to you there's one just before just before this event started a big protest kind of parked inside the house and so I was concerned about my background noise with a man and a more political question then just in terms of you know the specifics of the the upcoming US election the presidential election and do you have any sort of thoughts on this a question from Ono Keefe at the IA he wonders do you have any thoughts on on Joe Biden's proposed climate plans and how they might sort of swing the US in the direction from from the court administration yeah I was actually very impressed with Joe Biden's plan of plan to be very honest I think he got a lot of the you know Obama and men folks to write it it was particularly strong when it came to the international dimension climate cooperation had to engender cooperation had to show leadership on the international stage and it was also quite ambitious on the domestic front you know very ambitious under the national front now the advocates and the was a the the Green New Deal folks found plenty in it to criticize and I know that AOC and one of the more mainstream folks one of the more mainstream senators John Kerry actually I think maybe have been brought together by the Biden campaign to kind of to draft an official climate position but I actually looked through all of the candidates kind of proposals in detail and there was literally nobody who wasn't like presenting a man the perfect climate agenda you know so it's across the board on the kind of democratic front and you know this is a you know a serious crisis it needs to be demands an urgent response and and so I think that you know we will see under the or under Biden administration would see a very kind of proactive kind of agenda and another one here Joe from from Killian economic research with the institute and it's on the topic broadly of greenwashing and you know the commission circular economy action plan and commits a tackling greenwashing but the commission itself has been accused by MEPs and not following his own advice according to reports in the FT yesterday and appointing black rocks financial markets advised you to avoid and integrating sustainability ESG factors into used banking regulations you know so I know you're not across the detail of the specifics of that EU case but how how serious an issue more broadly is greenwashing in your view it's you know more broadly it's it's a huge issue you know I attend the climate week somewhat here and it's like you know um is this am I on the record you're on the record Joe for the you're speaking your own pasty well um let's do some answer now I hear financial I hear major financial institutions who are bankrolling you know the most hard to reach carbon intensive projects in the world in the Arctic you know shale gas coal and deep sea oil you know are standing up at climate week talking about how to change their life bulbs so um you know it's it's an absolutely enormous issue it's a huge issue and that's why we need government intervention we need government regulation we need central banks to set the agenda we need financial regulators to act and and you know because the industry itself is the capital is like water and water and capital always flow to the area of least resistance and the area of least resistance for an investor is the area with the highest return but that's the lowest risk so in order to change an investor perspective you have to either affect the return or affect the risk you know and a lot of the work that you know I haven't actually been focused on this very much recently but a lot of the work which in the past has been looking at the risk and the equation and and so you know that's the part of everyone here in France that's the part that you know the people you know who lobbied BlackRock for example to and for Larry for Larry Fink to include climate changes the central proposition in his letter to investors earlier in the year and you know anyone who's protested a pipeline anyone who's been involved in the investment campaign you know anyone who's lobbied the Irish government to and act law offshore you know oil and gas exploration of the earth like all of those things they increased the risk premium for investors who are trying to make quick work of fossil fuels and and so I actually think I've rambled far off the original question but I think you know the issue is that you know greenwashing is a huge issue and that we need government regulation financial regulation and action from central plants and military authorities to address that and it needs to be consistent and coordinated particularly between the EU and the US. Very good yeah and Joe look I think we're coming towards the end here now but I think and I'll take it obviously that maybe you're not as as as clue it in and following what's going on here in Ireland but I mean I'll just finish with a question on on government formation talks here and the programme for government was was released this week by Finnegale, Finnafall and the Greens it's going to green members now and checking my Twitter feed it's it's uh all the the green conference is going on at the moment all the difference representatives are speaking in favour or against it and have you had a chance to to to look at any of the headline items and and what what are your thoughts on this and and how would you see that that government progressing the climate movement in Ireland? Yeah I mean I think that the you know the headline goals are incredibly ambitious and I think that the Greens don't jump at this opportunity from a climate perspective they'll be potentially missing a once in a lifetime you know a once off opportunity to really affect you know energy transition and climate change in Ireland let's be honest our performance has been pretty deplorable and one of the slowest countries in the EU to get off and to get out of the locks we've made some good progress in the power sector to be fair but you know prosperity economy progress has been incredibly slow I mean if I was writing a climate plan seven percent annual reduction animations is as ambitious as you could possibly conceive you know what I've been considered competing unrealistic and you know the two-to-one spending between transport and roads is huge and it's something that I've been advocating for for a while you know a lot of the targets we already have on retrofit and electric vehicles are so incredibly demanding and they need there are forces within government who are opposing those targets on very spurious basis and I think we really need a political voice at the table which is advocating for that transition and making the case and to be honest not accepting some of the you know fairly shoddy cost benefit approaches that I've seen propositions to to stand in the way of some of these targets being achieved and so yeah I think it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I would include a green party membership not to let the enemy be edit the perfect the enemy is good and to endorse the political government and hopefully take your seat at the table and influence decisions from the inside rather than kind of you know shedding from the outside brilliant job thanks very much for that just just the final question it has come in just I think on the base of what you've just said there talking about that seven percent you know being as ambitious without being unrealistic can you just actually maybe talk us through what that would actually entail I mean given how I mean I don't know how detailed you want to go into here now but it's just a follow-up question from Owen asking what would I actually mean for our lives and you know so yeah I'll leave that one with you and we'll finish up on that yeah we'll put it this way like I've looked at the most rapid decarbonisation that's ever been achieved by any developed country in the last 50 years and it's actually the UK has achieved a 3% annual reduction in emissions between I think it was like maybe 2008 and 2018 France when it was building out its massive nuclear fleet also achieved a national 3% emissions reduction so to achieve a 7% emissions reduction is just we're talking about you know hundreds of thousands of energy retrofits in the building sector so we're talking about investing 30 40 thousand in each home or maybe a million homes in the country we're talking about everybody driving an electric vehicle within the next five or six years and no more internal combustion engines we're talking about you know a massive scaling of investment in the renewable sector and possibly achieving you know at least a 70 percent air renewables penetration by 2030 and we're talking about you know to be honest none of this can be changed without a very significant and what's the political way to put it land use planning in the agriculture sector which you know means you know taking you know massively loss making kind of beef production and you know using those subsidies to you know support farm livelihoods and incomes in a way that's you know far more friendly be it you know supporting and by diversity ecosystem services of our station whatever it might be so we're going to have to address all the sectors of the economy agriculture buildings transports and energy and they all have to be addressed in a fundamental manner and it has to be done in a scale that's never been seen before in the world there you go and the green party membership want more than that they really need to kind of check themselves because it's it's just not it's not coming from planet reality well I think the main the main issue that they have without speaking with the greens here obviously is that they're saying that the majority of that will average out in the next five years from 2025 to 2030 so they're saying it's not a commitment for this this part of the government but I mean even still they do have in in in settings down the two to one on transport that you talked about and I mean commitments to lay the groundwork so that that massive unparalleled reduction over over each year can can happen but you know it's going to be very interesting space to watch I'm sure you'll be watching from New York we'll be watching from here and see what actually happens could I just ask you what's your read political theories and what's your sense of what the green membership will go for I mean they needed two thirds majority don't they they need two tours yeah look I mean I think some very prominent members of the greens have been out talking against this and you know a couple of the TDs in the parliamentary party abstained and they've been at this convention today talking against this so I don't know is the honest answer I don't think anybody does I think it's a bit of an unknown because the greens membership is like so much in the last two three years lots of influx of new members and I think the reading was about 2,600 members signed up to vote so and yeah it's a big number so and I think I think anybody who tells me now exactly what's going to happen is this line to you know that everyone's everyone is just a bit of a wait and see and so yeah we'll have to see what the crack is thanks very much Joe for taking the time this evening and lots of questions that we got through and look we look forward to setting up another white pn for July and then we'll take a break in August and come back in September with with a couple more so thanks very much for joining us this evening Joe cheers thanks everyone take care bye bye