Solving the climate crisis is challenging because it requires both dramatic behavioral change and a great deal of capital. And yet, when faced with a global health crisis, governments were willing to enact multitrillion-dollar aid packages and people radically shifted their behavior in a matter of weeks. So, what if we mobilized against climate change similarly to the way we responded to the coronavirus?
Sir David King is the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government of the United Kingdom and Rick Parnell is the CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration. Together, they coauthored The Washington Post piece, ‘Stopping Climate Change Could Cost Less Than Fighting COVID-19.’ On this episode of the podcast, Sir David and Rick join Ross to discuss the opportunity governments have to invest in climate repair as we rebuild our economies in the aftermath of the global pandemic.
Sir David and Rick compare the economic impact of reversing climate change with that of COVID, describing the catastrophic consequences of rising sea levels and explaining what Europe, China, and the US are doing to both reduce emissions and scale direct air capture technologies. Listen in to understand why the countries that took the advice of scientists fared well in the pandemic and how we might learn from their example to respond to the climate crisis.
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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Write to me through Substack @ rosskenyon.com.
Resources:
Foundation for Climate Restoration
Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University
Rick on Carbon Removal Newsroom
‘Stopping Climate Change Could Cost Less Than Fighting COVID-19’ in The Washington Post
The Thunderbird Study on Market Opportunities in Climate Restoration
Sir David’s 2006 Pandemic Prediction
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Season 2 of Reversing Climate Change. We are doing that podcast thing now and launching a Patreon. You can find it at patreon.com slash noripodcasts. There are various tiers with different types of goodies available. Do you want to receive a special newsletter digest of what norinauts are reading that week? Be a part of a nori book club? Get special access to nori events? Go take a look at patreon.com slash noripodcasts for what we’re offering. And in that spirit of being lean in that startup kind of way that, you know, we like to do, this list of goodies is subject to change and we’d very much like your feedback.
Is there something that you’d really like to see but it isn’t listed here? Honest feedback does a lot to help us shape what we offer to you. You can send an email to podcast. nori.com or fill out our podcast survey anonymously in our newsletter which you can find at nori.com slash subscribe. And thank you so much for listening to another season of Reversing Climate Change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. Today I have with me two guests. Rick Parnell, who has previously been on Carbon Removal Newsroom, is the CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration.
Hey, Rick, welcome to The Other Show.
Rick Parnell: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s great to have you on. And we also have Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government and to Prime Ministers Blair through May. Hi, Sir David.
Sir David King: Hi, good to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Glad to have you. I invited you both on because you co-authored the article, Stopping Climate Change Could Cost Less Than Fighting COVID-19 for the Washington Post. How did you come to that conclusion? What led to this piece?
Rick Parnell: Yeah, I’m happy to start. I would just say that for us, it’s about the message of the piece is about we have the ability to change course and we can do it rapidly. There’s been a lot of conversations in the past about the expense of climate restoration and changing behavior, and it’ll take a lot of time. And I think that what COVID demonstrated is that when the challenge is put before humanity, we can make the change, not perfect, but can make the change and can find the investments possible. So I think it was a It was a big moment in the behavior change for humanity is essentially the bottom line of the piece.
Sir David King: If I could add to that, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a dramatic impact, has had a dramatic impact on economies around the world. And I think many, many governments, if not most governments, are now planning an investment program to get their Economies back up and running. And I see this as the best possible opportunity to switch the economies of countries away from fossil fuels and into the new green economy world.
Ross Kenyon: How much has been spent on COVID-19 in the various ways that money is being spent? And how much do you propose might be enough to make a serious dent in climate change as you lay out in this piece?
Sir David King: Well, I’m just going to speak to you from a British point of view. I’m very happy to tell you that just this week, the British Prime Minister has announced that the re-greening of the economy will happen here in the UK, and that by 2030, all of our electricity on the grid will be provided by renewable energy. This means a very, very big investment in particular into offshore wind, which in Britain is now almost unbelievably cheaper to install than any other form of energy production on the grid. And secondly, photovoltaics. So using those two avenues forward, we can at least green the electricity production part of our economy.
Of course, we would like to see considerably more investment into efficiency in buildings, energy efficiency in buildings, heating and cooling, etc. And that is also under discussion now here in the British government.
Ross Kenyon: Rick, I’ll let you respond for the American perspective. But Sir David, I’ve also seen in the last week or so various announcements coming from Boris Johnson about carbon removal as an issue of policy in the UK. Do you know much about that?
Sir David King: So in the United Kingdom, the government in 2017 announced that we would be changing our commitment from 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to net zero emissions. And net zero emissions implies, of course, because we can’t get to absolute zero, that we will, on British soil, take up all of the greenhouse gases that are emitted in So in other words, we have a big program now of installing five new greenhouse gas removal demonstrators. And out of those demonstrators, we anticipate that two or three will be rolled up to scale in order to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
I believe this is much more important than is implied by what I’ve just said. Greenhouse gas removal at scale is a critically important part of repairing our climate system. Today, we’re at 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere. And just to explain that, pre-industrial period, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 260 to 270 parts per million throughout the current warm period. And so we are closing in on doubling the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. And although the temperature rise now is only 1.
1 degrees centigrade, nevertheless, we know that this is already going far into the climate change arena. So if we look, for example, at what is happening today, just in the Arctic Circle region, The Arctic ice sitting over the Arctic Sea has been melting over the last 25 years. And the result of that melting is that the Arctic Ocean is now exposed to sunlight, heavily exposed to sunlight in the Arctic summer, which of course is a 24-hour summer. And this means that the Arctic Circle region is now heating up on average at about three times the rate of the rest of the planet.
So the three degrees centigrade up from what it was pre-industrially. Now that is causing a large amount of concern for several reasons, one of which is the melting of the ice on Greenland. When all the ice on Greenland melts, global sea levels will rise by seven meters, 22 feet. And of course, what that means is that every city sitting on coastlines around the world We’ll be going underwater, well, well before that time anyway. I mean, I think if we go forward with the melting that is currently taking place, both on Antarctica and on the Arctic region, Greenland, but also the Himalayas, we’re in for a sea level rise which may well be 30 to 40 centimeters just in 30 years’ time, and certainly 2 to 3 meters by the end of the century.
Now, if we were to stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, we would still be heading in that direction because there’s a very hefty time lag in the process. The Tipping point has been reached for the irreversible loss of ice in the Arctic region, and it may well also be in that place in the Antarctic. And what that means is that we really, to manage this problem, have to have deep and rapid emissions reduction. Today we’re emitting, closing in on 40 billion tonnes a year and still increasing. We need to switch that around and head towards close to zero as possible.
And then we also need, then, now, we also need to start removing greenhouse gases at scale.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I’m certainly supportive of that. We need carbon removal. We need it immediately. And I’m happy to hear your voice so firmly in support of that.
Rick Parnell: So Ross, can I pick up there from Sir David and say that to your question about the cost, you know, the cost range, estimates from $150 billion a year to $5 trillion. But I think what’s really important here is that the economic opportunity, when we were in Davos at the World Economic Forum back in January, our partner Thunderbird University released a study that shows that there is an estimated $1. 5 trillion economic opportunity in climate, annual economic opportunity in climate restoration With a wraparound of up to $3 to $5 trillion of residual effects.
So I think that to the point of the build back that so many of the different nations are doing it in a fully sustainable climate restoration, again, would be our goal. Third pillar of climate action, or as Sir David says, climate repair. But making those kinds of investments will provide those kinds of economic opportunities. There’s a lot of businesses. There’s more than 600, 650 different business solutions, operations that are either online or coming online and scaling. So it’s a real opportunity. I have a colleague who talks about how carbon removal and climate restoration and climate repair are It’s not unlike the solar and wind industry 15 years ago, where it was somewhat nascent and people weren’t sure and look at it today.
So if you look at some of these kinds of solutions and investment opportunity over the next 10 to 20 years, it’s in the trillions.
Sir David King: If I could just come in to follow up on what Rick has said, here in Europe, We began investing in renewable energy systems on the grid. Germany began 1989. And by the year 2003, 2004, every European country was using a form of feed-in tariffs for the use of renewable energy onto the grid. When the system was introduced, this implied a public subsidy for renewable energy systems, which was really big because the cost of the installation of photovoltaics and wind turbines was much, much higher than the production of electricity from gas or coal or oil even.
And so, What we saw was that this regulatory system to drive through renewable energy was absolutely vital. And it’s reached the point now where for most countries between the tropics, but here we are in Britain outside the tropics, for most countries in the world today, it is cheaper to install new energy production using renewables than using old fossil fuel technologies. So The renewable system is now competitive with the fossil fuel industry, with the mature industries around fossil fuels. And what Rick is saying is, and why wouldn’t that also work for the greenhouse gas removal technologies?
As they’re first set up, they’re bound to be expensive. It does need subsidies. It does need government support to put them in place. It needs philanthropists. But it also needs people from the private sector, the banks, and in particular the insurance and reinsurance sectors, who understand about managing risks. In other words, managing risks downwards as a means of saving money in the future. And I think here in Europe and particularly in the city of London, we’re seeing that understanding coming through already.
Ross Kenyon: Well, when I see this as framed as stopping climate change could be cheaper than stopping COVID-19, but in the United States, we didn’t really stop COVID-19 very successfully. Who’s to say this isn’t actually much more difficult and more expensive than it looks at this moment?
Sir David King: Well, if I could come in there, in my view, let me just say what is going to happen in Southeast Asia with rising sea levels, 30 to 40 centimeters even in 30 years’ time could happen. We could see cities like Jakarta, Calcutta certainly, Mumbai. Those cities are very vulnerable to sea level rises of that level. Country of Bangladesh, very vulnerable as well, and the whole of South Vietnam as well. The Mekong Delta, which has the largest rice paddy fields in the world, were likely to go underwater. The paddy fields of Indonesia also going underwater.
That would be an enormous cutback in rice production in that part of the world, which is a staple part of the diet for several billion people living in that area. So what you’re looking at is perhaps... 200 million people looking for somewhere else to live. In other words, climate change refugees. I think you’re looking at a total destabilization of the world economy. I think you’re looking at a situation which becomes, by the second half of this century, a destruction of the global economy. So let me remind you what is happening with COVID-19.
The economies of the world are stagnating, if not falling rapidly, as a result of this pandemic. Now, I’m saying, of course, the same is going to happen with climate change. We know what’s going to happen well in advance and we can start acting on it. By the way, we also anticipated a pandemic of this kind. I led a massive effort to See what might happen with a new infectious disease of this kind arising and reported in 2006 that it was highly likely a pandemic of this kind would happen before 2030.
If the world economies had taken notice of that, we could have avoided the disaster that has already happened. And this did happen in South Korea, did happen in Hong Kong, it did happen in Singapore. What you’ve got is various parts of the world where this action was taken, and you will see that the number of fatalities, and New Zealand is another one, Greece is another one, The number of fatalities in those countries is no more than 300 or 400. And of course, the economy is also not severely dented. What I’m saying there is, take science advice seriously in advance of the challenge hitting us.
If we wait until that time, I’m afraid it will be too late.
Rick Parnell: You know, some have said to us, Ross... Let’s look at restoration and carbon removal in post-2050. Let’s get to net zero first. But if we wait until we get to net zero, the carbon is still in the atmosphere. 95% of this legacy carbon will still be in the atmosphere. We’ll still have these issues and the storms and the fires. Why wouldn’t we, to Sir David’s point, the science is here now, why wouldn’t we do this third leg of the stool and move forward on carbon removal and climate restoration? Climate repair, as well as mitigation adaptation.
There’s not an either or in my mind. I think it’s that we have to do all the above and the science is there for that.
Ross Kenyon: I very much like the framing of this as a bargain. And I think the ways that various governments acted during COVID-19, whether they were successes or failures, or even in the United States, some of my friends who are more left-wing We’re very surprised to see, oh, we could have just done a universal basic income and cut people a check. Like we could have done this this whole time. I think there’s a number of wake-ups that people had during this of maybe new ways of doing things. And I think that is certainly what we’re seeing now.
Do you see any glimmers of any of those lessons being learned in a way that we will see coming out of COVID-19? Do you see actually these investments being made into a green transition?
Sir David King: Well, it certainly is happening right across Europe. But of course, Europe has already been acting on climate change. But the understanding about greenhouse gas removal is really taking off now across Europe. And it would be really highly desirable that it happens also in the United States. Perhaps I could also mention the statement very recently by the Chinese president... Saying that China will be net zero emissions before 2060. Now, in every single case where the Chinese government has announced a commitment on climate change, it has over-delivered well before the date it actually originally said it would achieve.
And so I think most commentators who understand China understand that this is likely to happen in China By 2050, China must also therefore, and we all know this is happening already, be switching away from fossil fuels and switching towards greenhouse gas removal. So, I mean, to be honest, China is also working on trying to prevent the Himalayan ice from melting. They’re working on various technologies there. And I think that is something else that we all need to join hands on, see if we can develop technologies to stop the melting of ice on the Himalayas and ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
If I can just say the ice in the Himalayas is a source of agriculture for all of the countries in the Himalayas region, and India and China, Bangladesh in particular. So what we know is that if all of the ice on the Himalayas or most of it melts, we will see the rivers during the spring season, the growing season, drying up. And this would be, of course, disastrous again for the whole region. And the Chinese government fully understands that.
Rick Parnell: So, Russ, let me say something about the US and making investment in carbon removal and climate restoration solutions. One hopes that however the election plays out, and then 27 days, 26 days that are left, that the next administration, whichever it may be, would take climate restoration seriously and make the investments in carbon removal that we need. That said, there are already at the local government level We launched a local government campaign in Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley back in January. And local governments are taking seriously the idea that they need to make investments in carbon removal solutions.
And what that does is that it’s a perfect marriage between the business community, investment community, and the local governments because the investors and the entrepreneurs are creating things like carbon-negative concrete that then local governments can use in their planning and procurement and scale them at the local level. So I think that what you’ll see is that this is happening. We need to rapidly grow it, but it’s happening at the subnational level.
Sir David King: I think I would also like to come in and say here in the UK, in the University of Cambridge, I’ve set up a Centre for Climate Repair, which is acknowledged by the university to be one of the most important new ventures in the university, if not the most important. And the Centre for Climate Repair has got three objectives. One is deep and rapid emissions reduction. Two is greenhouse gas removal at scale to get greenhouse gas levels back down to 350 parts per million or less. And three, the business of refreezing the Arctic, the Antarctic and Himalayas, working on the technologies that might achieve that.
We can’t do all this alone, and so we’re also working on creating alliances with universities around the world. And needless to say, amongst the leading universities that we’re working with in the United States, absolutely top-notch universities in the United States, and many of them have already got research enterprises working in this area.
Ross Kenyon: That’s fantastic to hear. I love the terms climate repair and climate restoration, by the way, kudos to both of you for really captures my imagination. I’m sure it does for listeners to the last question I’ll ask, because I know we should wrap up here. Do you think that COVID David, do you want to go first?
Sir David King: Well, I think that I am happy to go first, but really there is a very big difference between what has happened over the last 20 years in Europe and in the United States, and not just in Europe. Europe and China and other countries have been acting quite strongly. On the switch over from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels, our emissions have dropped in Europe very dramatically compared with 20 years ago. So it’s not a new issue here. I think what we are learning is that science is important. I mentioned that in Europe, the country that led on managing COVID-19 was Greece, Germany not far behind.
And in Greece, the Prime Minister simply went on television on the 4th of March and said, this is a problem for infectious disease experts. I’m handing this over to this person on my left. And the person on his left was his chief infectious diseases expert in the country, We can’t second guess the best way to deal with it. In Germany... Their chancellor is a scientist, and she fully understood the advice that was coming to her from the infectious disease scientists. So I think it is critically important for governments to understand that when scientists make pronouncements on how to handle things, like we all surely believe that a vaccine is a way forward on infectious diseases, It’s been such an enormous benefit to mankind over the last hundred years.
So we don’t question some of these things. And it’s so important to understand that the science of climate change has been in quite an advanced state since about 1900. And the prediction in 1898 by a Swedish scientist was That if the greenhouse gases were to double, temperatures would rise by around three to four degrees centigrade. It’s turning out to be quite accurate. There is a time lag, as I mentioned before. But that is what we would be in for if we simply halted greenhouse gas emissions and didn’t carry out greenhouse gas removal.
Rick Parnell: You know, Ross, you asked about whether or not we’re optimistic. I would say for me, I’m very optimistic. I think that we’re seeing, it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I think one thing that has come out of COVID, I don’t see any, well, almost anyone’s So I think that we have seen... A massive shift in the US really quickly on, again, not perfectly, but on COVID and wearing a mask and doing the social distancing. I think we’ve seen the kind of behavior change that people thought would take decades for Americans and they did it in weeks.
So again, not perfect, but I am quite optimistic that we can make this change for climate restoration.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, I thank you both for being here. Your article, Stopping Climate Change Could Cost Less Than Fighting COVID-19 at the Washington Post is in the show notes if you’d like to read it for yourself. Rick Parnell and Sir David King, thank you so much for being here.
Unknown speaker: Thank you.
Rick Parnell: Thanks, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nori.com where there is a newsletter. That’s nori.com slash subscribe. There’s podcast. There’s a whole bunch else. Or you can send us an email at podcast at nori.com.
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