Climate Change | Tom Burke | From the Archive

Highgrade now has more than four years under its belt, and an archive full of interesting conversations. We have seen some amazing people through our studio and we have published some amazing video interviews. 

Over time people have been asking us to put those interviews into podcast format, and that is exactly what we have done. This is the first episode in our new series, From the Archive.

We start off with an interview from 2018 with Tom Burke, Chairman of the climate think tank E3G. We wanted to start with this interview because climate change remains a hot topic. And Tom Burke has been at the centre of the debate from the beginning. For example, he coined the term ‘Green Growth’ already back in the 1980s. He is a forceful and clear thinker – and that is evident in this conversation. Enjoy!

Transcript

Åsa Borssén: 
Welcome to Highgrade and our Natural Resources Podcast. I am here today with our Editor, Nic Di Boscio, bringing you the best and most relevant insights from our Highgrade archive.

JINGLE

Åsa Borssén: 
Nic, welcome to The Natural Resources Podcast. [NIC: Thank you Åsa, it’s good to be able to join you].  And today we are launching our series “From the Archive”. Tell us, what is this?

Nic Di Boscio: 
First a reminder; we now have more than four years under our belt, and an archive full of really interesting conversations. We’ve seen some amazing people through our studio and we’ve published some amazing video interviews. Then, over time people have been asking us to put those interviews into podcast format, and that is exactly what we’ve done 

Åsa Borssén: 
So, it’s the filmed conversations now turned into podcasts. 

Nic Di Boscio: 
Yes. And in 20 years we could call this the “History Podcast”. But most of them are very relevant now, so we curate them and we put them into context: how are they relevant today? How do they continue to shape the discussion?

Åsa Borssén: 
So, you are now surely wondering, how is our first ‘From The Archive’ podcast shaping the discussion today.  Well, we start with an interview with Tom Burke on climate change, and this is a topic that is not going away.  We filmed this in 2018 and if you don’t know Tom, he is a renowned environmentalist and journalist. He’s a pioneer in climate change and sustainable development thinking – for example, he coined the term ‘Green Growth’ already back in the 1980s. 

Nic Di Boscio: 
And we wanted to start with this interview because climate change remains a hot topic, and one that is not free from polemic. There are different views. Scientists have made different projections. People have questioned the reasons behind changes in climate, and also what needs to be done about it. I know that for some people out there this remains controversial, and that is another reason we like it. And we will open Highgrade to contrasting views – but regardless of where you stand, Tom lays down the basics remarkably well. I’ve known Tom for decades. He is a forceful and clear thinker – and that is evident in this conversation.  

Åsa Borssén: 
You mention this lingering controversy around climate change.  I actually started by asking Tom if he gave any credit to the arguments by climate change sceptics. Here is what he told me: 

Tom Burke: 
“No, about the same amount of credit as I would give to people that argue that the Earth is flat.”

Nic Di Boscio: 
And that is Tom in a nutshell: strong minded and compelling. 

Åsa Borssén: 
He is.
 
Nic Di Boscio: 
And on that note, we should better leave you to enjoy the rest of this absorbing conversation. 

***

Åsa Borssén:
Climate change sceptics, they accept the rising temperatures, but they do question whether this is man made. Do you give any credit to their views?

Tom Burke:
No. About the same amount of credit as I would give to people who were arguing the earth was flat or the sun went around the earth.

Åsa Borssén:
So are we here squarely because we've been burning fossil fuels?

Tom Burke:
Yes. And what matters is the combustion of fossil fuels that produces more CO2 in the atmosphere. That means the atmosphere heats up exactly as if it were a blanket greenhouse. There are other gases which contribute as well, but the main bulk of it by a long way is from the burning of fossil fuels.

Åsa Borssén:
So fossil fuels and the extractives is really at the heart of the story of climate change.

Tom Burke: 
Absolutely. At the heart of it, they are both the makers of climate. But they're also the takers of the climate because they operate in very extreme circumstances, very dry circumstances for instance, or very cold circumstances. I read a fascinating thing the other day that in the Arctic, the oil companies are now having to refrigerate the ground because they can't operate unless the ground is cold permafrost in order to be able to continue their operations because climate change is warming the permafrost.

Åsa Borssén:
And how prepared are companies to work with these changing conditions?

Tom Burke: 
I think the best of them have at least recognized there's a problem. The best of the oil companies are predominantly European. I think the American oil companies, by and large, are quite a long way behind. The national oil companies, who were actually in a way the biggest suppliers have not shown any sign of beginning to respond to what climate change means for their future revenues. But I think some of the European companies have started to sink, but I wouldn't go much further than that.

Åsa Borssén:
Let's go back to the science. What are the climate scenarios that we face?

Tom Burke: 
The two really that matter, the governments of the world on the advice of scientists who said, look, the threshold of dangerous climate change is two degrees centigrade of additional warming. And nobody's really argued with that. Some people have argued that actually it's even that is too far. It's probably a lower temperature. That's the danger of climate, a dangerous thing. So you're in a scenario of either climate policy succeeds and we stay below two, which means we have to get emissions from the fossil fuel industry down very fast indeed, or climate policy fails and we go above two degrees, in which case the 90% of the corporate world that isn't a fossil fuel industry begins to pay the price.

Åsa Borssén:
And you say very fast, what are you talking about then? How many years?

Tom Burke: 
Well, technically we already have all the technology we need for the world to be carbon neutral if it wanted to be, and it probably won't damage the economy, but it will damage the pattern of change, the pattern of winners and losers. So it's very politically difficult, but it's not economically or technically difficult to move to a low carbon economy, certainly by 2050, which is what you'd have to be if you wanted to have any degree of confidence at all that we're going to stay below two. So that's an issue not of getting the technology, the economics right, but of getting the politics right.

Åsa Borssén:
What technology are you talking about then?

Tom Burke: 
Well, you've got loads of technology depending on where you look, whether you're looking at just simply the obvious thing to do, will help people with electricity, consent, energy, consumers most is simply to increase energy efficiency with which we use it. Then you've got renewables, wind and solar, a lot of different kinds of solar to come in. You've got that storage, meaning that you can do solar in very large quantities. You can use niches, there'll be niches for things like some biofuels. So there's a vast range of technology and we've only just started, if you like, to really think, and there'll be a lot more technology as we go. But in a sense too much of the debate on energy policy is about technology choice and actually when it comes particularly to electricity, we're really talking about different systems or different architecture for the way in which we generate, distribute and use electricity. So it's a more complicated choice than simply looking for some kind of silver bullet that will get you off the hook.

Åsa Borssén:
So what policies would you like to see put in place?

Tom Burke: 
I think the most important policy in lots of ways is simply to set a mission reduction targets that take you onto the right trajectory. We've got on with Paris, we got onto the right road, but we're not being far enough or fast enough done it. Now there's going to be a role in some places for using a carbon price to get, particularly things like agriculture. We've got lots and lots of decision makers where you can make a difference at the margin and add all those differences up. But the best use of a carbon price is to generate revenues, which you will then use to lower the risk of investments in low carbon technologies. So it's not so much the price impact cause we don't have time for that. It's using the revenues to alter the cost of capital so you can do what you already know how to do faster.

Åsa Borssén:
And why hasn't that been implemented yet? Is it political will?

Tom Burke:
Yeah, it is. I mean not the biggest resource in relation to climate change that we're short of is, is political will and to be a fair. I mean these are quite difficult social adjustments and, and I don't think as thought has gone into the social adjustment has gone into the technology development. So you can get rid of your, we're going to, you can get rid of your coal mining industry, but you will create loads of nodes of jobs in the renewable industries. But there won't be the same jobs for the same people in the same places with the same skills. So you really have to think that through. And I don't think enough has been done to think that through, which in a sense leaves you with a conflicted political problem. I think we have more intractable geopolitical problems in relation to the national oil companies. I mean, as I remind a lot of my colleagues constantly look, what we're trying to do is eat Putin's lunch. What do you think he's going to do about that? You know, there's going to be quite a reaction from those States that are hugely dependent on their revenues, particularly those States like Saudi Arabia, like Russia, where there's limited legitimate authority and the political system.

Åsa Borssén:
Let's look specifically on the extractive industry. Why is the climate change debate relevant to the extractives? Is it because minerals production is particularly CO2 intensive?

Tom Burke:
Well, there are two dimensions. It depends which part of the extractive industry you're talking about. If you're talking about the oil and gas industry, then the big biggest risk is climate policy success because it basically puts them out of business. The short term risk is the climate's already changing and that means operations are getting more difficult. The costs are going up. And it's so, it's harder for you to operate it for the mining industry as it were. The other big part of it, you have a real problem because you have basically put billions of dollars into a hole in the ground quite often in narrator or semi-arid or otherwise environmentally sensitive areas that you can't move. And if climate change destabilizes the political context, you are in a lot of trouble and, and you know you, you'd take a big mining investment, you're thinking about an investment that may not begin to pay back for 10 years and maybe take 15 to 20 years before it's paid off the cost or it's capital. So there's big risks. You know, if we go on as we are, we're going to be in a two degree world, certainly shortly after the turn, the middle of the century.

Åsa Borssén:
Let's go back to then CO2 emissions from the industry. What they are talking about now is carbon capture storage as the solution. Do you agree to them?

Tom Burke:
I don't understand why there is so much a focus on carbon capture and storage. One thing is absolutely clear, it's not going to play any role in the power sector, which is the biggest consumer of coal for instance. And increasingly of gas simply because there's no alignment along the supply chain. So the people who supply fuel and the industries that are buying it and the people who've got a storage simply don't have an alignment of value. I think there will be an important role for carbon capture and storage in specific places where you need it for smelting, for instance, for Alia minium and and steel making where you need it and a bit for the chemical industry, there'll be a few places, but if you look at cement, for instance, cement in Europe there are 394 cement mills. You're not going to collect all the carbon up from them and bury it. It's never going to happen. So way you're dealing with industrial uses of, of carbon that you can't reduce by technology, which is the reductive use. Then you've got to see it as a waste management problem, not as some problem that there's an economic solution for, there's a problem. You've got to dispose of dangerous waste, like any other dangerous waste and you've got to pay for it.

Åsa Borssén:
Now what about consumption? I think it's easy for people to blame the industry, the oil, gas cold industry. But the reality seems to be that people, they like cheap energy more than they want green energy.

Tom Burke:
I don't know that that's true. People like cheap energy and they like green energy and they leave it up to business and governments and the rest of us just sort out the fact they want both of them simultaneously. And I don't think that's going to change by and large. When you look at opinion polling in terms of energy choices, overwhelmingly not just in Britain, but in most of the developed world, people overwhelmingly favor renewables over other sources of supply for their electricity. I don't think actually it's right to think that somehow going green is more expensive. If you want to lower bills for people in the developed world in particular, the single best thing you can do is invest in energy efficiency improvements that gets your bills down extremely fast. Are very reliably and confidently

Åsa Borssén:
During your career, you advised both oil and mining giant on climate change policy. Are companies doing enough?

Tom Burke:
I don't think so. I think some of the old companies are beginning to think about what an impact climate policy set assess while having, they're beginning to think not just about lowering their own emissions, but about how they might have to change their business model. I think the mining industry, which went through a pretty rough period in the sort of twenties noughties or whatever it's called, I think they have basically destroyed their capacity to think about these problems. They're not going to be other than the coal industry businesses. They're not going to be effected by current climate policies success. So much they'll be effected by climate policy failure. They'll be affected by inability to deliver a return on investments they've made as food security or water security declines, which is a consequence of a changing climate.

Åsa Borssén:
So is there a business case for them to, to think about this issues?

Tom Burke:
Well, I think they've got to think about it, but much more because they need to engage with governments and with civil society organizations, which have a shared interest in maintaining stability in the world. But it's something they're not used to. I mean, in other words, they've been very good at coping with the endogenous risks, risks to things that they control, but they're not shown much capacity to cope with exogenous risks. Those risks, which are a result of things that third parties do or don't do.

Åsa Borssén:
So when you entered the private sector, that was in the 1990s how has it changed since the dialogue within the companies?

Tom Burke:
Well, what has been interesting for me to watch is the mining industry, which when I joined the industry was kind of in a bit of a trough in public esteem, finding it difficult to recruit graduates made a really big effort to change its position in global agenda, particularly in relation to sustainable development and succeeded in doing that. And then got into enormous trouble as an industry because of overreach because it got, got caught up in a sort of commodity super boom and then it was destroyed. All that capacity, it built up so painfully. So I don't, I think it's not quite fallen back to where it was in public esteem when I joined in the late nineties, but it certainly lost the capacity to, as it were, move forward, which it did have at one time.

Åsa Borssén:
Now looking at policymaking the Paris agreement has become the main reference point on policy. What is the Paris agreement really?

Tom Burke:
Well, the Paris agreement basically is an agreement to keep the eventual rise in temperature below two degrees and to try to keep it even lower than that below 1.5 degrees. That's the core of the agreement. And then tied onto that are a whole series of agreements about there's a mechanism so that people pledge what they can do, review what they've promised to do to see how far they've gone, and then pledged to do more. And then around that, again, there are some devices for making sure there's transparency. Everybody can see what everybody else is doing that as a rule book about how people count things and so on. So it's quite a complex agreement that basically sets us off on the right road to tackling climate change. But it doesn't take us down that road fast enough or far enough. And that was recognized when it created that mechanism for, as it were, ratcheting up the commitments that countries have made. So it was a really important agreement, but it's a long way from being the last word.

Åsa Borssén:
Now without real penalties. Do these targets that the country said have any real meaning.

Tom Burke:
I think that's, that's people confusing international agreements with the sort of sports game. It's not, it's not, it's not a boxing match, you know, countries. I mean, first of all, the thing to remember is that countries didn't make these agreements because somebody put a gun at that. They make their disagreements because they understand how dangerous a world in which above two degrees is dangerous for them, for their prosperity, their stability, their security. So nations didn't do this in some way, in bad faith they did this because they thought that was the best thing to do at the time. It's not good enough. Which is why there's a mechanism to ratchet up. Will countries cheat a bit? Yeah, of course they will. Will they? Will they seek to undo it or somehow disable it? No, and I think what was interesting about the reaction to president Trump and then saying that he was pulling out was it actually made the other nations come closer together and be more determined and that's because this is a real threat to everybody's prosperity and security and most governments recognize that whether they are going to be very brave or not, they recognize the scientists are right about climate change.

Åsa Borssén:
I do feel though that there is a general feeling that we are running out of time. Are we going to solve this mess before reaching the tipping point?

Tom Burke:
I think you're right about the importance of the time factor in this and we're not used to acting under a time constraint. Lots of the kinds of economic instruments we use don't really work in a bounded set, a unbounded set like this. They work when you can try it and if it doesn't work, try something else. If we get this wrong, we are all in a lot of trouble and definitely before the end of this century, we're all in a lot of troubles. So we have to come up with measures that get us to a particular point by a particular time. That's very unusual. We've never done that in any international policy that I can think of before. But our choice here is either we figured out how to do it or life gets very uncomfortable for everybody.

***
Åsa Borssén 
Thank you Tom - this was an interview recorded back in 2018 - and thank you All for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this “From the Archive” program.  Before we say goodbye I’d like to acknowledge our great partners in this adventure, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, through BGR, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Make sure to subscribe to our channel on whichever podcast platform you are using. We will be back very soon. Until then, so long!