It said, talks daily, and I'm your host, Elizeu, if there's one thing the covid-19 crisis has made clear, it's how interconnected we are as humans on this planet. Climate change poses a similar collective problem for the globe. And Nigel Topping knows this all too well. He's the U.K. high level climate action champion.

And at 10, 20, 20, he sat down with Ted's global curator, Bruno Giuliani, to make sense of the systemic changes afoot, the hope he has for the next generation, and how we can individually contribute to solving the climate crisis.

Our next guest is Nigel Topping. His official title is UK high level climate action champion for the United Nations Climate Conference. The COP, 26, which was planned to take place in November 2020 in Glasgow, UK, and it has been postponed to 20 21. Now, 2020 was to be the year of climate in a world of climate action, really five years after the Paris agreement, when the moment when the world would come together and take stock of whether there is there has been progress or not and what kind of progress and maybe even at the level of ambition towards reaching the targets set towards 2030 and 2050.

And then the covid-19 pandemic arrived and shook that that momentum, but in the minds of some. The health crisis and the economic crisis are reasons for pushing the pause button on climate. Others instead seem to think that a pandemic has actually shown the fragility of the basis of our economic system and of our society. And that's what we want to talk about, about climate change and system change. Reforecast, a major topic. Welcome to 2020. I Bruno.

Nice to join you. I think that we need to start from court and tell us briefly what it is and especially why the Glasgow Cop 26 is so important.

First of all, to explain what cop stands for, because it's not obvious to the conference of the parties, which means it's the conference of all of the parties to the UN Climate Convention. And as we all know, Paris was the real breakthrough and everybody agreed on the long term goal and the mechanism. The reason that Glasgow is so important is that it's really the first test of the Paris agreement. What will the Paris agreement work? Is it working?

Because what the Paris agreement did was it gave up on the idea that nearly 200 countries can agree everybody's targets. Imagine the number of combinations. That's just it's kind of ridiculously complex, but instead empowered every country to set their most ambitious targets, but realize that you won't get enough ambition first time around. So the second thing that Paris, it was said and every five years will review everybody's targets and everybody will come back with a new plan. So this is what's happening right now.

Have we as an international community been able to ratchet up our ambition? That's what we'll find out in Glasgow.

Your job, high level climate action champion. That's not exactly a mainstream job title. So what's your role in there?

So the other thing that was special about Paris was that for the first time in the international process, there have been a recognition that not just national governments, but businesses, investors, cities, states and regions. California is the fifth biggest economy in the world, and cities like New York and London have much bigger economies and populations and many smaller countries. So all these big real economy actors have a real role in the politics, but they were invited in light of the legal process but into the informal process to lend their voices.

So the role of the high level climate action champion was created to work with those communities of businesses, investors, cities, states and regions to keep driving ambition alongside the national process as a kind of a feedback loop between the two.

But in terms of the legal aspects of the discussions, those are still national. It's the political aspect that is more all encompassing.

The legal agreements are entirely between national governments. So my job is to work with what is sometimes called non-state actors or non-party stakeholders in the UN system.

But that puts you in a position where you have one foot close to government and another one goes to the many people working on asking for action on climate or pushing back on action on climate. How do you create productive, meaningful dialogue?

So first of all, let's being realistic in meeting people where they are. And then I think I spent a lot of my time acting as a kind of bridge between different worlds, particularly paying attention to early signals of change, because both incumbent businesses and incumbent politicians are very wary of moving too soon to change. So they tend to look at what the majority are thinking all the time, which means that kind of cognitively blinded to early signals of change. I spent a lot of my time searching for and pointing to early evidence of this kind of change, which we know is inevitable.

You know, when people from the outside look at the multilateral efforts around climate, they may have the impression that it's something a bit dysfunctional. We think of, you know, the cop, 25 in Madrid last November, where in any case, if we follow it through the media, it looked like at least a partial disappointment. But when you offered this job, you took it. So I guess you have a different opinion on that.

I mean, it's a real challenge, right? We are talking about the complete reengineering of the global social and economic system. But I do think that we get more excited and pay more attention to negatives. And I think that's the story of Madrid. You know, in Madrid, just a year after the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, the the panel of scientists published their report on the scene at one point, five degree warming and two degree warming, which basically said that it's a massive difference.

And for every fraction of a degree, we have significant human and economic damage. So let's really reset all of our thinking. We've got to go for one point five degrees, which means getting to zero by 2050.

In the one year between that being reported and Madrid, suddenly we had hundreds of businesses and cities and states and regions and lots of countries saying, OK, we're going to.

So we had a massive ratchet in ambition during the Madrid conference, the continent of Europe, the entire trading bloc, one of the biggest trading economies in the world, committed to net zero by 2050. And yet the media coverage was dominated by protests on the street, which which are real and which reflect real discomfort, unease, anger on the street and the failure to negotiate some small bits of the Paris rulebook, because that's mostly what's being left to negotiate their important politically, because that affects our ability to agree.

But they're not as material as the entire European economy to make such a net zero. So I think there's always it is a very complicated process. It does require collective action that's difficult to achieve. So before the pandemic, there was a growing momentum around climate, from politics to business to citizen youth activists in the streets and so on. Many people are basically saying, let's postpone talking about climate. Let's, you know, roll back regulations to restart the economy.

So how do we restart the economy without forgetting the urgency of the climate crisis?

I mean, you know, there is a sort of truth to the. Sense that one must concentrate on the most immediate problem first. So I think it is true and understandable that ministers and leaders have focused more on the immediate health crisis and less on the long term climate crisis, because nobody wants to be told that their long term health is being secured whilst their short term health is while people are literally dying.

And we understand the science of the risk of climate change very, very well. And it doesn't get better.

We already have locked in a lot more temperature rise that we have locked in more floods, more droughts, more wildfires, more typhoons, but we also know economically that the solution to climate change is a driver of economic growth and a driver of jobs.

So so it would be real folly now to ignore the science of risk and to take stupid economic decisions to invest in the jobs that are dying anyway instead of accelerating the transition to the jobs which will be lost, which will. Build wealth and which will deliver a cleaner and healthier world for us all to live in. I am curious, when was the first time that you yourself realized that climate change was real?

I mean, viscerally, in 1987 in Greenland, I was in a I was a 21 year old mountaineer and on an expedition and we were doing some scientific research on the snout at the end of a glacier where the glacier carves into the sea. It's the east coast of Greenland. The sermonic fjord, it's a very big glacier, is one of the main ones draining the East Coast ice sheet. And we got to where we were supposed to be doing the science, which is where on the map the end of the glacier was.

And all we could see was that two kilometres of open water with bits of ice floating out. To see it took us a while to realize that we were in exactly the right place, but the glacier had just moved back 20 kilometers, so it was really shocking. That's really stuck with me. Know, it's never been any doubt in my mind that climate change is real because once you've seen something physically up front like that.

Yeah, I asked the question because I guess that many of us know and acknowledge that climate crisis is real and we need to change. But we're also not embedded in very complex big systems. The ones that run our life, the economy and thinking about changing system is really sometimes it's hard and sometimes can be overwhelming. So in the past, you've worked on large scale manufacturing systems in optimizing factories, optimizing supply chains. And so and I know that in your current role, you actually set up your teams to work on systemic change.

So how do we think about changing complex, big, overwhelming systems? Yeah, I mean, it is hard, it can be overwhelming, right? Most of our life, we break things down into small chunks and work on one part of the system. That's how we can get as how we get stuff done. But when we're confronted with the need to transform systems, I think the first thing is to have a sense of the whole Satava sort of map of the whole.

So so we take something like the system that produces cars, which leads to a lot of pollution in cities and a lot of CO2 as we drive cars and burn gasoline and look at all the different levers that are influencing that system.

So it's not just the technology and the policy that those are important, but also how are investors thinking about that? How is the next generation thinking about that? How are cities thinking about that and then particularly look for four early signals of change. So, you know, the kind of evidence that cities are starting to create or that some companies who exist by leasing cars are starting to commit to go 100 at least plan. So so being aware of things as they pop up and and scanning and then looking at the way they interact with each other.

So, for example, young people are becoming more and more aware of climate change, starts to really affect the employment contract. So you find the smartest engineers now don't want to work for companies that haven't got their house in order on climate change because they want to be solving problems, not contributing to them. So you're looking for those kind of feedback loops that shift the whole system over time.

So what you're saying is that the future is not something that we walk into. Is the signpost to the future kind of keeps shifting? Because every time one of those decisions that you mention from citizen companies etc is taken, then it gives permission to others to be more ambitious or to change their practices or so.

Yeah. And this sort of dynamic way of thinking about the future is really important because mostly we think very linearly and incrementally. So we're always surprised at how fast things even when we know we're always surprised, we're still surprised.

So the way I describe it, I live on a street with 10 houses, the way that most think is about the future. Try to predict how many people on my street will have an electric vehicle in 2030 is they look for public commitments to buy an electric vehicle and they find out that Nigel and Tracy down the street. So they say to people out of town have committed. So it will be 20 percent. They completely ignore the fact that the costs are coming down, that when Nigel buys his Tesla, people are going to look at it and say, oh, can I have a drive?

And then that's going to encourage them to buy it. So actually, by the time we get to 2030, eight or nine out of 10 are going to report.

I always think also that the way that we think about the future really, really matters. And I just read the history of the moon landing. And, you know, when JFK said that we're going to land on the moon, lots of people said it's not possible. In particular, some of the best mathematicians at MIT said, but we don't even have the mathematics to calculate the orbital trajectories to land a vehicle on the moon. So that's quite common.

That's quite often the response of experts, actually, when when a bold target is put out there is to say why it can't be done, whereas what JFK did was say, I don't care, we're going to the moon. And eventually those same mathematicians said, OK, we're going to go to the moon. We better figure out those orbital dynamics. And they did. And we went to the moon. So I think this is you know, experts sometimes are very good at saying why we can't do things.

We need to insist on the future being the one that we want so that we unlock some of the creative juices of experts and engineers around the world.

One of the silver linings, possible silver linings of things being postponed to to next year is that it's not going to be caught into the vortex of the US presidential election campaign of November 2020. Talk to us about the US and the role of U.S. politics in the climate discussion. Maybe we can put it this way. Is the U.S. going to succeed in slowing down action for the rest of the world?

Well, yes. I mean, this is a is a. Key player in the economy on its emissions and and was one of the key actors in getting us to Paris, the decision of the current US administration to withdraw from Paris is really it's damaging. It kind of legitimizes bad behavior in the multilateral sense. But I think I think the jury's still out on whether that really has the negative effect that it sounds like on the surface, because remember, America has two redeeming features in the sense of climate ambition.

One is it's a federal system. So a lot of power is delegated.

Many, many states and cities and and companies and universities have all created an alliance actually called We are citizens. I think I think American politics at the federal level is not the only game in town. California is the fifth biggest economy in the world, and it's got one of the most ambitious plans to clean up its economy. So the jury's out. But you're right. I think you're right that it will be helpful that the cop will not be the week after a presidential election because that would kind of suck all of the media attention out of what goes on in Glasgow.

You mentioned China. It's an interesting case because it's a leader on solar, for example, but at the same time, it's building coal plants. Why so? And what can be done?

Well, it's complex, right? I mean, it's a very big, complex country and it really has led in solar wind electrification. So leading the way many of those industrial transitions. But it's also, you know, a huge economy with a huge energy need.

I think that the ultimately the market will take care of coal in China. If you really look at the state's coal fired power stations in China are running at very low utilization levels because they're also built such a lot of renewable power. And the renewable power has zero marginal cost, basically, whereas the coal power has the it's complicated by the politics of employment.

Right. Because China has employed a lot of people mining coal and a lot of those communities don't know what they do. And we've seen that social dislocation in the states, in Virginia, in my country, in the north of England and South Wales, where coal mining communities are very painful transition. So a lot of the work that's at the heart of the energy transition now is to think about what we call just transition.

How do we actually take manage the transition from a human point of view? It's not just about getting the technology right. If you have a whole community where you know, where half the people work in coal mining, you can't just say to that community, coal is bad, good. We have to do something you can't do. So I think that's what that's what China's grappling with. It's also grappling with the risk of social unrest from dirty air in cities, which is pushing in the in the clean direction.

Remember, even in Europe, Germany, one of the most sophisticated economies in the world, has said it will keep burning coal until 2038. Similar drivers like mine and burn brown coal is the dirtiest form of coal. So they've had to negotiate with their communities and with the unions, a timeframe which most of us think is woefully long. I mean, I would like to see Germany get off coal by 2030, but also understand it's politically very difficult.

Again, if you're a politician in that community where most of the jobs are coal, you can't just turn up and say you're all out of a job in three years. You have to manage a process.

Absolutely. They want to go back to those early signals of change that you mentioned at the beginning. You know, because if you look at the media and film and social media and books, there is a lot of doom and gloom about the climate. But then there are a lot of good news in a way that go almost unnoticed. Give us maybe a couple of examples of those early signals of change that was good news. And why do you think that important and how to think about that?

Well, first thing I say is don't spend too much time reading all those gloomy books. Right. It's really important because once you've read one, you've read them. All right. If we don't tackle climate change, it's really bad, right? And so you have to go from despair to hope. What you have to choose to act in the belief that we can avoid the worst of climate change. We can't avoid everything it's already and try and we're already seeing it.

And when you start looking, there's evidence all over the place that we are waking up that we are getting more ambitious. The cost of renewables continue to plummet. You know, solar costs come down 80 percent the last 10 years. Within a few years, electric vehicles are going to be cheaper than I don't know why anyone would buy a combustion engine car by 2030. I think the technology costs are going down.

Millions of young people striking is a positive sign. That's young people saying we're holding our parents generation to account. And, you know, that makes a difference. I've seen policymakers say this has changed the politics forever. I've seen CEOs being asked by their 14 year old daughter, what are you doing about it, Daddy? That's a that's a very powerful signal. So I think grassroots is part of the system and they are connected. You can't be not connected to systems change.

So everything that grassroots movements are doing, when people take to the street and say we want more climate action, that systems change. Right. So never underestimate what small actions can do. It could be a it could be 10 million kids on the streets or it could be, you know, one student asking their university why they're still investing in companies that are taking climate change seriously. So never think that because you're only one small. Or your grass roots that you don't have systems impact, those those noises when they're hurt often have a disproportionate impact.

When CEOs start realizing that young people, that university students don't like the trajectory their company's going in so they won't buy their products or they won't work for them, that has a profound effect. So you're you are systems change agent if you're if you're grassroots activists. So keep it up.

Nigel, let's maybe end on a question that has to do with the individuals who feel overwhelmed by this, because people do wonder now, what can I do as an individual? Can you share maybe one of two ideas about what is the individual action plan to contribute meaningfully to fighting climate change?

First of all, it's entirely normal to feel overwhelmed, but just don't get stuck being overwhelmed. But I think there's two levels you can think about. This one is your own footprint. And remember, we need to halve in 10 years. I just don't think about it as tomorrow. In 10 years, you can shift your electricity supply to being fully renewable. You can actually do that in a few days. If you do own a car, you can decide you're never going to buy another car or your next car will be a shared electric car or an electric car.

So the combination of renewable electricity and electric car that's taking a massive chunk, you can shift anytime you upgrade any big piece of capital equipment like a boiler or a stove, you can shift from gas to electric. So you going from fossil to now renewable power, you can look at your diet. I mean, intensively farmed meat is a big part of the problem. So you can look at your diet, you'd have to go off meat completely sustainably farmed meat.

But a lot a lot of red meat is bad for your health and it's bad for the health of the planet. If you fly a lot, you can use this technology more, maybe say I'm going to halve my flights in the next five years. Right. So you have you have individual power over all sorts of things. The other thing is you're a member of all sorts of groups. If you're if you're a student, you're in a school or a university.

Asked a question about the school university's plan to get to net zero, what it does with its investments. If you have a pension, ask your pension fund. How are they working on this? Because you never know when one. One more question is the one that finally gets the head office and has a change of policy. So keep keep prodding away.

Major, thank you. Thank you for being with us and sharing your knowledge and your challenge. Really good luck to you and your team. It's reassuring to know that there are people like you and your team working on this. Thank you very much, Adrian.

It's a pleasure. PR ex.