You're listening to the Decarbonisation Dialogue,
a podcast from Salix. Welcome to the Decarbonisation
Dialogue. I am Hannah Walker and I believe that
the best way to communicate a message is by being
passionate about what you are talking about.
My guest today is Kevin Anderson who is Professor
of Energy and Climate Change in the School of
Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at
the University of Manchester and is a former
Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research. He has recent publications in Climate
Policy, Royal Society Journals, Nature and Science.
He engages widely across all tiers of government
from reporting on aviation related emissions
to the EU Parliament advising the Prime Minister's
Office on Carbon Trading and having contributed
to the development of the UK's Climate Change
Act. With his colleague Alice Larkin, Kevin's
work on carbon budgets has been pivotal in revealing
the reality of rapidly escalating emissions.
His work makes clear that there is now little
chance of maintaining the rise in global temperatures
at below 2C and despite repeated high -level
statements to the contrary. Moreover, Kevin's
research demonstrates that avoiding even a 4C
rise demands a radical reframing of both the
climate change agenda and the economic characterisation
of contemporary society. Kevin has a decade of
industrial experience principally in the petrochemical
industry and is a chartered engineer and fellow
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and
is a director of Greenstone Carbon Management.
That's an awful lot, Kevin. Thank you for joining
me today. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Now, let's
start with some of the basics. When people hear
1 .5 degrees or 2C, it can sound rather abstract.
So in simple terms what do these numbers actually
mean for us? I think really if we were to start
again we wouldn't use 1 .52 degrees centigrade
to frame these things but given where we are
we're sort of locked into them now. I think we
have to remember these are just proxies for what
really concerns us about climate change and what
is important about climate change are the impacts.
Now whether that's droughts or floods or more
fires or extreme temperatures These are the things
that really matter. And even there, it's the
rate of change of impacts that matter. If those
impacts occur over a million years or a thousand
years, OK. But if those impacts occur over five
years, ten years, or even a hundred years, then
we as a species, as humans, we probably can't
adapt to that. And certainly ecosystems can't
evolve at that sort of rate. These temperatures
are effectively like a proxy for collection of
impacts. And then every so often, the international
negotiations with the policymakers. determine
what they think are dangerous levels of impacts.
And they've used these temperatures to sort of
package these sets of impacts. So 1 .5 degrees
centigrade that came out of the Paris agreement
was the sort of impact associated with that.
We thought, well, these are bad, and two degrees
centigrade, definitely dangerous. Since the Paris
Agreement, which was in 2015, over a decade ago
now, the research on the impacts has led us really
to think that the 1 .5 degree C package of impacts
are now probably what we should classify as dangerous.
When we get to 2 degrees centigrade, we're already
locking in lots of additional feedbacks, and
that looks to be a very devastating future. And
so these temperatures are just proxies. for the
impacts and how dangerous we think those impacts
will be. The other thing to bear in mind, I think,
across all of modern human time, so really all
the time that when, if we want to call it, civilization
has developed, we've had a very, very stable
climate, very stable level of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. And then almost literally,
almost overnight, we're seeing this rapid increase
in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere going up
at a phenomenally fast rate and changes in temperature
that did not occur. during this very stable period
when humans have flourished. So there's a real
arrogance and sort of hubris that we somehow
think we're the exception. We are the species
that we're able to deal with this rapid change
that's occurred literally overnight. And so this
1 .5 and 2 degrees centigrade also very much
relates to a timeframe. So we're now talking
about just... But 1 .5, we're probably at that
now or very near it. And even 2 degrees centigrade
of warming is going to be by the middle of the
century. And if we don't do something radically
different, then we're heading towards 3 degrees
centigrade and with additional feedbacks, possibly
4 by the end of the century. But that's very
well explained in terms of, and thank you for
putting that quite plainly, actually. We talk
about unless we do something radically different,
and you've said that word, can you tell us a
little bit about what the carbon, what is the
carbon budget? So the carbon budget really is
a way to take all the complicated stuff that's
in the science and translate that into a useful
numerical framing for policy. So it is a scientific
framing. It tells us how much carbon dioxide
we can dump in the atmosphere and other greenhouse
gases as well if we want to stay below a certain
chance of 1 .5 degrees centigrade or 2 degrees
centigrade. So the carbon budget relates to a
particular chance of a particular temperature.
and it tells us how much we can put in the atmosphere
from now out until eventually we've put that
much in the atmosphere. So it's a bit like having
a salary for life. If you had your salary for
life and you used it all up in the first few
years, then you'd be quite hungry not doing anything
later on. And that's really what our carbon budget
is. It's our carbon budget forever from now.
For 1 .5, 2 degrees centigrade. And I know that
you work very closely with governments and we've
talked about the 1 .5 and the 2 and then I know
that we'll talk about 4 in a minute and whether
we're ever going to get to that point. But do
you think that when you talk to governments,
do you think politicians, do you think we're
all, politicians in particular, do you think
they're being plain enough with all of us? And
how does that add up in terms of the maths of
climate? With very few, if almost with any exceptions
really, the politicians are not being honest
with the public, with their citizens. But I think
some of that is because they're, some of it's
because they're being deliberately dishonest
and it might be for good reasons. It might be,
and I don't think these are reasons are valid,
but it may be like white lies. We dare to tell
people, I hear this language all the time, we
mustn't scare people. Rather than being honest
with people, we mustn't scare them, we must treat
them like children. But I think so some policymakers
are being deliberately dishonest about this for
good reasons. Other ones for bad reasons. In
other words, they're just doing it because it
might help them from a queer point of view. They're
only interested in the short -term economy from
staying in power. They're not really interested
in the long -term well -being of their citizens
and those elsewhere in the world. Other policymakers
are ignorant of the issues. They're simply not
up to speed. And other ones, I think, have been
misled. And I will go further. I would say deliberately
misled by the expert community. I am very critical,
a lot of my academic colleagues on climate change
and many people in the expert community, that
we should speak our conclusions clearly and bluntly
and courteously. We should not sugarcoat them.
And I would say with very few exceptions, I think
people who look at what we need to do on climate
change sugarcoat the issues. But as soon as they
put a microphone in front of them, they'll tell
you a cheery tale about technology is going to
solve the problem for us. As an engineer, I would
say technology is a really important part, but
it's now too late. to solve the problem in isolation.
Major social change is necessary. And whether
it's the policymakers, the experts, or indeed
the journalist community, we dare not raise that
issue or we choose not to raise that issue. Because
climate change is a cumulative problem, in other
words, every time we put more carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, we're using up more of the
budget. And so because it's this cumulative issue,
every year we fail to deliver the rates of cuts
that are necessary, the next year gets harder
and harder again and harder again. And we have
failed. Since the first big international agreement
on climate change in 1992, we've failed now for
over a third of a century to get any handle on
emissions. And that is true of countries like
the UK who pretend it's done a lot as much as
it is globally. Global emissions are still going
up. Places like the UK are coming down a little
bit. But if you look at the full carbon footprint
of the UK, including our imports and exports
and our flying and our ships and so forth, then
we've had nothing like the reduction that is
often claimed by governments or indeed by, in
my view, deeply co -opted experts on this. And
that point about not wanting to scare people
and making people feel more comfortable, so you're
saying we need to be a lot more brutal because
we, on the decarbonisation dialogue on our podcast,
I get to speak to amazing people just like you.
And most people talk about the balance of not
wanting to scare people too much because you
don't want to create this sense of inaction that...
it's gone too far and our climate has gone too
far and it's not repairable. So there's the danger
of that happening. People can be frozen in fear.
But you need the statistics and you need science
to create action too. disagreement with people
who take that view. You might be an expert on
ocean circulation. You might be an expert on
cloud condensation nuclear. Why do we think we
are experts in psychology? Why do we think that
we know how to inform the public? Surely our
job is to appropriately inform the public of
our research and our conclusions, not to sugarcoat
it, not to overplay it. And then it's up to the
public and other policy makers and others to
interpret that in the way that they think is
appropriate for driving action or for putting
policies in place. If we deliberately manipulate
our information and then pass it on to the next
group who might manipulate it again in the next
group, before you know it, you've got a whole
story of delusion. And I would argue on what
we need to do about climate change, not on the
science on what we need to do about it. that
almost collectively we swallowed the blue pill
a long time ago and that we are now deeply delusional
on this and I would say extends not just in the
policy realm right through to what research is
funded, how can the obsession is with technologies
about the future, technologies for the future
to avoid policies today, that's what they're
there for, they're not really about the technology,
they're avoidance technologies effectively. We've
now locked in at a global level, a delusional
framing around climate change, that we can somehow
solve the problem simply with exotic technologies,
rather than the fundamental reshaping that needs
to now go on within our societies, within our
economies, within our finance systems. That fundamental
reshaping is because we have chosen, at a leader
level, and indeed at an expert level, for 30
years to fail on climate change. And every year
we fail, the following year gets harder. And
so we are now in a position where we've emitted
not far off 0 .4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide
now since the Paris Agreement. We've put out
more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, primarily
from burning fossil fuels, since the big 1992
agreement on climate change than in all of human
history before that. Every single reasonable
metric on climate change, we have fundamentally
failed. and we have spinning increasingly cheery
yarns about what we can do about it. This is
incredibly dangerous. This is our job to be honest
to the policymakers, honest to the public, not
care about the political sensibilities, not care
about any of those things. Be courteous, but
honest. Is the language that we use a huge part
of that? So, for example, I'm dying to ask you
the question about net zero has become a little
bit of a no -go word in a way in many areas.
Should we be using that phrase at all? I would
say there are two problems there. One is the
zero and the zero goes to a date. So we're typically
in the UK, in many places, we talk about net
zero 2050. That zero date, remember what I said
earlier on, we have a carbon budget. For a particular
temperature, we've got a carbon budget. Now,
if you carry on emitting like we are today, we're
going to use up the carbon budget for 1 .5 degrees
centigrade in about two and a half years globally,
two and a half years. For 2 degrees centigrade,
we'll use it up in about 12 years. Remember,
emissions are still going up. So globally, emissions
went up last year by about 1 .1%. So emissions
at the moment are either going up or possibly
they're static this year. They're not coming
down. And so we're using up the budget very rapidly.
The date comes forward. Because we're failing
to bring the emissions down, that date, the 2050
date, comes to 2045, then to 2040. So for 1 .5
degrees centigrade, it's only about 20. Even
if we brought emissions down from today to zero,
it'd be about 2030 to be zero carbon. 2030, just
around the corner. Not possible. That's why I
think 1 .5 isn't possible. Even for 2 degrees
centigrade, for wealthy countries like the UK,
we need to be zero emissions by about, say, about
the late 2030s. Another way of looking at this
is that if you take that carbon budget at a global
level, for two degrees centigrade of warming,
and simply said, what rate of reduction do we
need every year globally? It comes out to almost
8 % reduction in emissions. That's almost 8 %
in carbon dioxide emissions every year. To put
that in some sort of context, that's two to three
percentage points higher than the reduction that
occurred in the stringent year of the COVID epidemic.
That was one year. We would have to do that every
single year until we got to zero emissions. Where
do we hear this? This is simply, take the science,
Do the maths. Because that provides us now with
two scary stories, we hide behind net zero. And
the net part is another part of the zero story,
which is dangerous. So the zero needs to go with
a date and needs to go with a pathway. The net
part is we're not really going to go to zero.
That's what the net means. We're going to carry
on because the wealthier of us want to carry
on some activities which we can't decarbonize,
like lots and lots of flying. And so we're going
to pretend that not us, our children, will suck
the carbon dioxide out in the atmosphere so we
can carry on expanding the airports. So our Prime
Minister goes to the last COP, the big international
negotiation in Brazil, and says that the UK is
on loan for 1 .5 degrees centigrade and yet is
enthusiastically looking to expand our airports.
That only holds together because he's relying
on our grandchildren and our great -grandchildren
to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
with fingers crossed that we don't get any tipping
points or feedbacks in between. So I think that
the net zero framing has, from a political and
from a journalist's point of view, is incredibly
unhelpful and I would say dangerous. Yes, okay.
And you mention aviation because obviously you've
done a lot of work on aviation and we are flying.
For all of us, people who are listening, we might
have relatives abroad, we're going on holiday,
people are still flying all over the place. and
you've just talked about expansion of airports,
etc. And before that, you were talking about
behavioral social change. Can we keep flying
then? As much as we're flying, we're increasingly
flying all over the world. And in fact, you mentioned
our grandchildren, our children. I'll hold my
hands up. My children fly a lot. I mean, they're
young, they want to go exploring, and they're
off all over the world. it's symbolic of the
problems we face, which are broadly ones of equity.
Remember, when we say do we have to stop flying,
most people don't fly. Globally, most people
don't fly. And even in the UK, these figures
are a little bit out of date in the Department
for Transport data. But broadly, half the population
in the UK doesn't fly in any one year. And about
70 to 75 % of all flights are just taken by 15
% of the population. So I think flying is really
emblematic of the deep inequality we have in
our society, which we then pretend we're all
in this together. This goes into one of my other
issues here, that the climate change issue is
deeply about equity. It wasn't originally because
we solved it from a technical point of view,
but the later we've left it, the more and more
it becomes about social change and equity. You
cannot squeeze emissions out of people that barely
emit. Those of us that fly frequently, typically
we're the ones who also have bigger houses, larger
cars, buy more goods. So it's very much related
to wealth and income. And so even if you look
at someone like the UK, Most people in the UK,
sort of middle to low -income people in the UK,
they're structurally locked into a poor quality
house, poor quality public transport, probably
an old car. They can't afford solar panels. They
can't afford to get an EV. They probably can't
afford the insulation to really retrofit their
houses. So they're structurally locked into their
emissions. But most emissions in the UK are discretionary.
The wealthier households in the UK emit somewhere,
use somewhere between four, four and a half times
more energy than the poorer households. Most
of those emissions are discretionary. So the
way is really important in this. In wealthy countries,
it is the wealthy people in those countries.
And this is true, of course, of poor countries,
the wealthy people that dominate the emissions
profile. And it's there that the big reductions
can come about. But that is almost never discussed.
Maybe discussed at a global level about fairness,
but not within the country. And the reason we
don't do that is because who is in that category?
Professors? journalists, business leaders, policymakers.
We have normalized our lifestyles. We pretend
we all live like this. Of course, we don't at
all. Most people don't live like this. There
is no cost of living crisis in a very rich country
like the UK. It's a deliberately manipulated
affordability crisis for some. So when I'm interviewed
in the Today program, the presenters in the Today
program aren't changing their lives, aren't cutting
back on the heating of their homes. It's the
poorer people who are doing that and the average
income people that are doing that, not the wealthier
people. And so we are a very wealthy country
and we have chosen to allocate out the resources
and the productive capacity of our society to
particular groups of people. And we have to open
that dialogue up if we come to climate change
because we need... the productive capacity, the
labor, the resources, the political capital,
to be retrofitting our homes, to be putting in
the public transport infrastructure, to be building
the renewables. Instead, they're not doing that.
These people are facilitating those of us who
live in nice houses, the extensions, improve
our bathrooms, bigger kitchens. all the rest
of it. So the flying is emblematic, I think,
of that deep inequality. Not that many people
fly. We often blame the people who fly occasionally
to Benidorm every second or third year. And we've
normalized that we're all in this together. We're
not, because we've left it so late. And that
comes out of the maths, not out of a moral argument.
So regardless of your moral argument, if you
want to stick to 1 .5 or say 2 degrees centigrade,
equity is a key component, along with technical
change. For most of us, we're heading towards
this global warming. We're heading towards the
three and four degrees that you've talked about.
You want, obviously, a greater honesty and transparency
in what is happening to our climate. To a large
extent, we look at climate news every day, whether
it's seen as this is what's happening to a planet
or whether it's seen as there's just flooding,
there's just wildfires. We're seeing climate
migrants, people shifting out of their homes.
And as you say, it's often there's a great sense
of inequality and it's often the poorest people
who are affected the most by these impacts. But
we do see it on our news. But we are heading
towards a warmer climate. What does that really
look like for us? I use the term now that there
are no non -radical futures. The future is radically
different to the present, either because we do
something about climate change, which will ask
some fundamental questions about our norms and
our values and our structures, or we just carry
on with the lies and delusion and the climate
change will get worse and worse. And then I think
there's a sort of a belief amongst some, and
certainly I've heard that, pontificated by some
of the very, very wealthy. tech bros and so forth,
that they somehow think we're going to technically
get away out of this. And what they mean by that,
of course, is they think that they can build
big enough walls around themselves that they
will survive. So they think there's small enclaves
of human society and may well be able to just
carry on business as usual. I think that completely
misunderstands the systemic nature of climate
change. Climate change, well, first it goes along
with all the other ecological damage and some
of the social challenges as well. But climate
change means things like rapidly changing or
reducing or changing pollinating insects, which
means that rapidly changes our food production.
It might reduce food production or move it very
significantly. If we significantly weaken the
Atlantic... really of overturning circulation.
In other words, what we would call the Gulf Stream,
which is part of this, the big conveyor belt
of warmth that moves around our oceans, that
is fundamental in giving us the current global
climate we have. If that changes, there's quite
a lot of evidence suggesting it will do, that
will massively shift in monsoon patterns and
change agricultural patterns. So what we're talking
about here is a world where no one would be isolated
from this. And I think we will almost certainly
be heading towards a period of significant geo
instability. in a world where we're going to
have eight and a half to nine billion people,
lots of people will be well -armed, have good
maps. They're not going to sit still and suffer
at home. They're going to move. And that means
you exacerbate existing tensions. And eventually,
the climate change will cause more tensions,
whether that's from food or drought, migration.
Where we're heading is utterly disastrous, but
we're so locked up. into somehow thinking that
the ephemeral political norms we have today haven't
existed forever. They haven't. They're very,
very short -lived, and we think we can't change
them. We can chart the evidence that we're going
to hell in a handcart very quickly, but we appear
to be unable to do anything about it. We're coming
to the end of the interview. I would like to
end the interview asking you whether you're an
optimist or a pessimist, but the messages that
you're giving are quite bleak, aren't they? Obviously.
very bleak, you're giving a very real picture
of what is happening to our climate, what is
happening to our future, and no one being, actually
very strong words there, no one being isolated
by what's happening. We all share this one amazing
planet that we live on. How do you feel about
your contribution? The final question is you're
working. in this arena, you're talking to governments,
you're advising governments, you're speaking
to people like me, you're spreading, you know,
you're communicating a very clear picture backed
up by science. How does that make your job feel
when you're talking to people like me and you're
trying to communicate what's happening to our
planet? I try to, in my own head, and even when
I talk to other people, I try not to say I'm
an optimist or a pessimist. I try to take the
data and be what? I might call a realist in my
own head. I'm not hopeful, but I don't think
it's hopeless. I quite like, and I often use
it to end some of my talks, the Antonio Gramsci
quote, pessimism of the intellect and optimism
for the will. Everything I do from my work point
of view, okay, we're doing well on renewables,
but we're still burning more fossil fuels. And
the climate only cares about the fossil fuels.
It doesn't care about the renewables. And other
agricultural things do with diets and so forth.
All the analysis tells me things are looking
dire. But we're not locked into that future.
If I'm not a betting person, if I was, I think
we're going to go, it's going to be a terrible
future. I think if you look at our children from
2050 to 2100, I really despair for what future
they're very likely to have. But that's not locked
in stone yet. And so the optimism is in the will
is can we change things? Yes, we can change things.
Do I think we'll change things? No, I think we
will probably choose not to. And they say the
we, that's generally the wealthy in our society.
Our policymakers, indeed, obviously, our journalists
and a lot of the experts, we won't choose to.
But we could do. We could change things very
rapidly. That has happened throughout. History
is punctuated with very significant changes.
Even the 19th and 20th centuries have been punctuated
by some very big changes. So we have the capacity
to do that, I think, whether we will or not.
The jury's out. The science aren't looking particularly
good. But we have everything at our fingertips.
We have the technologies at our fingertips that
we know how to deploy today. We know the social
changes that are necessary. We know how fast
we need to do this. We have lots and lots of
material. Productivity in our society and productive
capacity. We have very educated populations.
We have everything there to do this. Potentially,
we can make this rapid change. We can. And as
you say, not locked in stone. So we could change,
but it's whether the will is there. Thank you
very much to Kevin Anderson. Thank you for providing
such incredible insight. Thank you very much.
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and please do email us with your views and ideas
at podcast at salixfinance .co .uk. Big thanks
to Kevin. You've been listening to the Decarbonisation
Dialogue, a podcast from Salix. For more information
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