Climate Courage: the economics of climate

Cop29 has been deemed a failure as it only promised $300 billion to developing countries by the mid-30s. What’s even more challenging about this number is the percentage offered as loans, because countries already struggling with debt burdens taking on more debt to deal with a crisis not of their own making is amoral, not to forget, it’s not charity. Ensuring the developing world gets the funds required to transition to clean energy is a critical need for the world. Another vital pillar is financing for adaptation, because if we don’t, we will be overrun by record human migration – something that will cause even more challenges for our societies. 

Beyond the needs of the developing world, we’re going to get personal. Are we aware of how the planetary crisis will impact our own pockets – regardless of how much wealth we have today? Are we preparing for it? As the planetary crisis escalates, with extreme weather events costing $2 trillion globally just in the last decade, how will that roll out and impact us individually? Insurance costs, pensions, investments, and beyond? What impact will all these extreme weather events have on our food, our homes, transportation, as well as air, water and on we could go? Are we ready to face this truth? Do we want to know what we should be doing right now to get prepared? Yes? Then join us for our last Livestream of the year. 

To help us dig into this topic, we are delighted activist Robert Redmayne Hosking has agreed to come back and join us for a second week, because honestly, he has so much more to say. Robert is a lifelong nature and environmental enthusiast, and a conservationist at heart. Environmental and climate policies are his passion, and he is relentless on X, showing up with daily protests, as he works to shape the future of how leaders, governments and the media think. Robert speaks from the heart and tells it like it is, so get ready for an engaging and passionate conversation. 

The economics of climate is a critical topic, so please do join us live Friday, 6th December – 3pm Singapore time, and 7am UK time, or listen to the recording after. Livestreaming to multiple locations. 

Climate Courage is a livestream, held every two weeks and is co-hosted by Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko and Richard Busellato. On the show, we cover critical topics across the full spectrum of the polycrisis, in everyday language, and we go big picture on the climate crisis, while also drilling down and focusing on the actions we can all take to be part of the solution. Whether individual action, community action, or national/global action - every single one of us can be part of ensuring a live-able future for our children and grandchildren. We owe them that!

#ClimateCourage #RethinkingChoices #UncommonCourage 

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Climate Courage. My name is Andrea Edwards. And here you have me, Richard Bussalotto, for once in the middle. Yeah. And myself, David To. And, we're gonna come along just before Christmas and our final show before Christmas or the holidays. And we're going to talk about the economics of climate today. Yeah. So the lodge has been very much as well. Yeah. Yeah. And we've got we've got Robert Redman Hosking joining us again. So he hasn't popped in, but as soon as he comes in, we'll we'll bring him into the show. But, yeah, we're gonna be talking about, the economics. And Richard, David, and I have spoken about this in the past, but we thought it might be a good time to bring it up again. But we're not just gonna talk about from your own pocket perspective, but we're also gonna talk about the the the deal at COP 29 and what it means. But, of course, before we do that, should we talk about what's going on in the news from a climate perspective or even not from a climate perspective, but potentially what could be impacting or being impacted from climate. Who wants to start? Let me let me take that and, go go see what where it goes. I think, first of all, what I'd like to say is that everything is, convoluted with climate. It's kinda like meshed together and mashed together in that way. And it's a little bit like, you know, when you start making a dough and you put the flour and you've got the water and you've got, you know, the yeast and other stuff altogether. After a while, you can't tell which is which anymore. I think that's worth remembering. So one of the big thing that's been going on around the world is obviously South Korea. 2 things comes to mind for that. The first is reason for it was because the president got fed up with the fact he couldn't get the budget through, the parliament. So he'd end up declaring martial law, and the budget is kind of very important. The second is actually what it demonstrates about real democracies, people getting out on the streets and doing something. Because people doing that is what turned it over. That scene we all saw of the woman holding the gun of the soldier, challenging that military power to say, you know, you are there because I am here, Not I am have to sort of that's that's the essence of it, and we all forget that very often. You know? And then we have France, which is collapsing with needing a new government. Major governments in the world, this is. We have, Germany under the same situation, both for the same reason, a budget problem again. And in France, the president did the same thing as South Korean one, tried to force a budget through par without consulting parliament. And in Germany, the parliament couldn't agree and end up splitting themselves up. And in the UK, we have a referendum demand or a call dem a a demanding, the UK to have a second new general election. I think they collected, like, 200,000, post, 200,000 signatures online in a very short time about it. And the rule is that people have to discuss, parliament has to discuss it. I doubt it will actually happen. So these are just somewhat But a huge number of those were overseas signatures. Right? And a lot of it came because Elon Musk pushed it through. Right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Mister And the irony. But the irony of it was the same people who were saying this should be discussed won't discuss Brexit when they get signatures. So there's a fair bit of irony going on as well. Right? Yes. There is indeed. So, it it does point out, I mean, miss mister Musk has also been very much involved with, in trying to push and influence, foreign politics in this particular case, you know, giving a 100,000,000 to the reform party is the is the touted kind of news in in in that way. He's obviously trying to repeat what he had done, for Donald Trump in that way. Yeah. So so those are some of the things that have been happening in the rich countries. And across into Europe, we just I just saw this morning about Romania, with their election and very tightly contested with, with the, you know, with the potential leader claiming that they will pull out of any support of Ukraine. They're very pro Russia in that way. So the the the world's dividing up even more, in in that sense. And, of course, Russia and Syria linked, have been so far a long while. And Syria is flaring up again, with the so called rebels taking very much taking, advancing further than they had been able to before, in that form of course. Syria is financed. The government Syria is funded from Iran. And so you still have the remnant or the or the fallout of what's happening with Hezbollah and Israel. That ceasefire is still holding there. But Gaza, if you look at some guy like Al Jazeera, every day on their front page is a report of how many people are killed in Gaza. And it's in the, you know, 20 to 60 everyday, and has been for the past few past few well, really quite a while now. So that's a lot of bodies acting up in that way along. Richard, what have you got to add to that? I think, like you said initially, while it's not explicitly about the climate per se, everything links back to the climate because of the stress climate is putting predominantly on our finances, but also on people's minds and well-being. So, I tend to find that all this is just like you said, really linked together. And I think, Syria might be more important than we we give it credit for. We know that the the Assad regime is heavily backed by Iran and, by extension, by Russia, because they're using mostly Russian equipment, etcetera, and the rebels are not. And, it opens up a new front in the sort of quest for supremacy over the Middle East, and we all know what Middle East symbolizes in terms of oil and and allocation of oil. So I think it needs to be followed very closely for anyone that, you know, were passing interesting macroeconomics because this is clearly a new page that's been opened that we didn't know about 2 weeks ago, really. And it's going to affect Iran, and everything that affects Iran affects the Middle East and the battle for supremacy over the region. So it needs to be followed very closely. But, obviously, closer to home, the French election is big news. It will probably be a new general election because it when you have a no confidence vote of this magnitude, it's very hard to see how you would any credibility can try to reshape government. So we're gonna face a new election there. Germany will go to the election booths very soon. It's the 2 superpowers of of the EU that actually will have a new government and a new political structure coming over the next quarter. That's super important, and it all links back to the global ecology and global economy. So that's what we're here to discuss today, the economics of climate change. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, it's it's it I think a lot of people are probably sitting there just going, oh my god. What's going on? And it kinda goes back to my question, is fascism inevitable when it comes to the poly crisis? And, Julian Cribb wrote a piece talking about it just in the last couple of weeks as well. And it's it's incredibly concerning what's happening, and there's a lot of dimensions to it. So I've been really digging into the Syria story and what it means and arm shipments and movements because Turkey is in the mix as well. Right? So Yes. You know, there's it's a very complicated, situation, and, you know, getting to the bottom of it, try not to try not to go look for simple answers because there's no simple answers. But I think one the thing that keeps coming up for me is for a really long time, 50, 60, 70 years, we've been almost especially those of us in the west, we've been fat and happy. Right? Life's been easy. Everything's been going smoothly. You know? And then we've watched in the last sort of 10 years, it's starting to degrade, and now we're moving to an acceleration point of that degradation, which is not just political degradation, but environmental degradation as well. So I I honestly think if if this isn't the time for everyone to start standing up we watched the response in Korea and how quickly it was. Sorry. South Korea. And they the people got involved and and and, you know, turned it around very, very quickly. In a lot of western countries, we're still not out on the streets. We're still not protesting. We're still not marching. We're still not putting our voices out. We're still not getting behind climate activists who've been imprisoned and and demanding governments get them out. You know? So I think it's time for us to grow up, to wake up, and to start getting active. And it's not inevitable if we get involved and we haven't been getting involved. That's that's, you know, every every protest that that I see, you know, a 100000 people on the street. And I mean, it should be a 1000000 people on the street. You know, this this these issues are so big. And we got Robert here, so let's bring him in. Hi. Hello, Robert. Hello, Andrea, David, I think, and Richard. I'm right in the names. I do I do apologize, Andrea, for, entering the, session late, but my battery was very, very low. I had to put it on charge. And I I I wasn't I didn't factor that as being as low as it was, so I apologize about that. That's okay. It's okay. Okay. We're we're happy you made it. We were just going through the news and everything that's going on and how complex it is. But I I was listening. Yeah. Stand up. Take up. Fight. Yeah. I think we're talking in this meeting, are we, about the politics of climate and its associated extremities. Am I right in saying that? Yeah. So we're just we're just still in that little piece before we get into the theme where we're talking about the news. Another piece of news that, I I I was agreeing with your sentiments exactly there, what you were saying about the state of affairs with actually protesting and, the, the, the the dangerous lack of of being able to actually intelligently make progress, with the situation that we find ourselves in with the emergency that we've got across our planet. And it's absolutely woeful. You know, we seem to have more protests going on by the day, to be honest with you. And yet we have absolutely less inclined, assertive, genuine and definitive action across our planet in any context in this crisis, I think then at any time that the climate emergency was declared, from what I'm seeing. So, I really honestly believe that I think to be honest, I think the face of protesting needs to change. Mhmm. I think we really do need to fundamentally find new ways of being able to, being able to, put across the message, far beyond just holding a sign in mass groups and bombarding and storming buildings. Because in my honest opinion, if you want me to know, I find that desperately archaic and not helpful, in the ways that now need to be addressed in order to be able to move forward with actually putting, definitive, conservative instruct in in, constructive intelligent action, to the forefront of what needs to be done. I just feel that storming buildings is so not, you know, the, the the the way to go in so many different levels. But, anyway, I hope I'm not digressing too much from what your the the topics of the news content that you were talking about. No. I But I I I'm people often ask me what I think of the different forms of proteins, and I I personally like whatever whatever you feel is the right move based on Yeah. So when people ask me what I think, the the question tells me that they don't understand how how dire the situation is. That's exactly what it is, Andrea, to be honest with you, I think. Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you. You carry on if you're, if if you're. But but then no. I was just gonna say one other piece of news that came out. So for quite some time now, the climb and I I I I only just saw it just before we started. The climate scientists have been trying to work out why, there's been some an increase in warming in the last couple of years, and there's been lots of different reasons. Reduction in sulfur emissions from the from the shipping, the the the, volcano. I can't remember how to say it, but that was also discredited as a cause of warming. It actually created some cooling. But, it's it's, there there's less clouds in the atmosphere, which means there's more more sun coming in than it's being reflected back. So they're they're finally accounted for the 0.2 degrees of warming that they haven't been able to account for, but I just saw that come out. So No. You're quite right there. Some yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you put that in, as part of the discussion, to be honest with you. I'm afraid to say that scientific data, as we probably know in terms of analyzing and, and putting across the, new information that's coming across and the crisis is changing. I would probably constructively say by the day, to be honest with you. And, I honestly do believe that, obviously, the the scientific data is already proving far too much for a general public that sleepwalking and apathetic is its best. I'm afraid that, there does need to be a drastic shift in the way the public are educated for sure. But, of course, I keep coming back to a lot of my work on X with, the absolute, how can I put it put it? The, the degradation of the media to be able to constructively and intelligently report on this crisis to the to the public en mass globally is nothing short of a crime itself. It's not just me that's been saying it. There are many, many other people. X, you know, who, talk about this subject on a day to day basis. And this lack of media reporting is a crime. I mean, we're talking about 8,000,000,000 lives being gambled with here. We're still going about this business as usual factory with absolutely no inclination to cut emissions in the context and the ability and the gravitas that's needed to be put across. And, we're you know, the I think the public are just still in this cocoon of expecting every single leader and politician and governmental organization to just blindly be able to do what's necessary, and everything will be changed before, you know, by 2050. And the the so called climate situation will have magically, Nothing is further from the case. So I hope I'm not raging here, but I'm very passionate about it as you probably know. And I have a hell of a lot to say about it. Because what I feel is constructed content, otherwise I wouldn't be opening I wouldn't be opening my mouth now. So, what's the sign sorry, Anthony. No. I was just gonna say, here's the sign. I saw Cyber Monday, hit record sales. I I didn't see if Black Friday hit record sales. Did anyone see? Yeah. It did. It did. It's just like, oh, here we go again. I know. Yeah. Well, this is the this is the part of the mentality problem, you see, as I keep on saying. You know, we've got these, we've got these mass promotional organizations going on as there's absolutely nothing wrong. You know, just keep flowing the plastic out into talking about plastic pollution just for a second. Keep flowing the plastic out into our societies, dumping it as though there's absolutely no problem with the, with with the ability to be able to process it at all. You know, the level of, the level of willful negligence is far beyond words that I can put into context with it, to be honest with you, In terms of just plastic pollution alone. And then of course we have these stunts, of course, that are purely by manufactured by industries and can, you know, you know, what do we call them? Corporations and so forth and so forth. That, they need to get more and more x mid millions of the public to be able to buy in mass goods that they probably don't need, or probably half of them won't ever use. And, you know, we have Cyber Mondays and, Black Fridays, and they keep on and on and on. And to be honest with you, I feel personally, there's no place in society for them. I think we I think we've already to quote, a friend of mine, George, you probably know him, the Greek guy, who puts a lot of stuff out on X, a very intelligent stuff. And he's got the I he's got on the pulse with actually the way the human species is evolved and the way that humanity. Oh, yeah. I'm sad to say the flaws and the character of humanity are massive. And of course, you try explaining that issue to a public who, very fundamental, you know, on a certain level way. And you have deep, deep problems in being able to get a context of message across with, you know, on the deep problems that are affecting the entire fabric of our society. I think, actually, I'm digressing here slightly, Andrew. I apologize if I do because I think you were talking about Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. But, But but but but you brought up the plastic treaty, so if you haven't heard of plastic Yeah. Absolutely. And, the one of the headlines was the the fossil fuel industry has won. And I'm like, wow. What a what a great win, you know, because Yeah. I'm Yeah. I'm in Asia. I've lived in a country that still accepts waste from from the northern hemisphere. The beaches are absolutely piled high with waste. You've all seen the videos out of Bali. It's disgusting, and that's gonna double and triple. So before we go into the theme, David, Richard, anything else with the news or what we've been talking about? Well, not really. No. That's not true. I I mean, I I think that the the whole point is that talking about it is not gonna make a difference. And, you know, you you you kinda have to understand how the structure of how your how the money that goes to governments work because that's the crisis that we are actually facing at the moment as we spoke earlier about it. You have you you seen the French government topple. You're seeing the German government topple. You're gonna see tremendous stress on the UK. You're gonna see the US government, finding every way possible to effectively slash what it does in in in that form. And then you've seen the, you know, South Korean government effectively, done the 360 in in a really dramatic way along. You're seeing Chinese kind of, closing in very much on itself along the way. And all of that has to do with how the governments are working and how the funding of the governments really come about. And you may want to cut all of these things but all of these things are how our governments are funded and we want our government to be funded. So, there's a bigger transformation that you have to address. When Rob talks about you know you have to think about how you're actually demonstrating, it's really easy to think about how you're actually thriving Yeah. Yeah. In a way. And we we have this pattern where we think that someone does does something to change all these things. There is no someone out there to do something. That's exactly it. Yeah. That'd be important for. And all we're doing by this is we're victimizing ourselves. We're putting ourselves in a situation that actually we're incapable. We have no agency which is the opposite of what it is. But we have actually but it's part of this thing. I mean, you know, this is what our our first book, The unsustainable Truth, is all about. How genuinely that economics is so integrated along with it. And if you do follow the money, if you do go along and find out why, it is to support our sense of security. And by us, this is all the people within sort of the OECD countries, which are the richer countries, and is to support the aspiring people in the developing countries. That's the the image that they have. It's a world where making money gives you security and comfort. And what we are seeing is that costs are rising, challenges are increasing, and making money is not sufficient to that. So the whole value proposition of our economy is collapsing around us. But we still call on it in the same way. We still call on it by saying, go go do this, go do that and everything we do actually. Nobody ever talks about the fact that actually it's not just your shopping. It's everything that is done makes the world worse because it drives climate change worse. Mhmm. You have to seriously think, is what I'm doing genuinely beneficial to me, to others at the moment when I do them? Or is it only good if it somehow miraculously succeeds? Absolutely, David. Yeah. If I can interject there for a minute without being rude, I hope I can speak for a minute there, Andy, if that's alright. Yeah. You know, you you you've hit the nail categorically on the head, David, as you always do from what I've heard of your content so far. I will say that, this is one of the major flaws actually with the whole way that our systems mechanics are geared at this present time. We wonder why we're in this state of emergency that we're in. We must actually analyze and look at everything that integrates financially and conceptually at every last little thing that runs the mechanical finances of our systems and why they're driving us to do the things that they do because at the moment we have entire systems that are geared for collapse. The collapse is in is built into the way that the mentalities of business think. We have this, we have this mentality of mind of things we can continue to con we continue to consume in mass. We can continue to produce as much as we can humanly put out in terms of goods hour by hour, day by day, and just keep putting out more and more goods, taking more and more of the Earth's resources, more and more degradation, more and more, chopping down of, trees, forests, and mass. We've always seen mass deforestation, but I won't get on that, for a minute because I'm digressing from the subject. And, we've got we've got this, we've got this, how can I put it, this voracious appetite, for consuming the earth's, raw materials? We're as we I don't need to say to anybody here, we're all intelligent enough to know, that, you know, we we've, we we we're extracting materials from our planet, on a finite basis. But what's the words? I forgot that probably the wrong way around. We're extracting materials on an on an infinite basis, I think that's the word I want, on a finite planet. I think I've got that the right way around. It's very early. It's early in the morning here at

7: 23:48

23, so I'm sorry. I'm still getting my, my head, woken up a bit more, so I do apologize about that. You know, we cannot continue with this lunacy. If we really seriously continue that the economics of our of our planet as they are at this present time and the whole way that everything is geared within our systems financially is failing us? And one of the biggest problem problems is not to offend anybody or anything, but economists have literally, obliterated, the way that we can actually sustainably live on our planet because every damn thing is geared totally and fundamentally in business and controlled near enough and run by and spoken by. Economists are, you know, dictating the ways of financial being and policy to such an extent that it's actually it's crippling countries, it's crippling people, and it's crippling everything to do with the very fabric that our society should be able to function for the future on a basis that brings true sustainability and not this consumatron death ride that we are currently on. I use the word consumatron because I do honestly believe it really does describe the way that we really are acting, how can I put it, no more than just ants that are just geared by the mechanics of a failed system to continue in our ways until the very end where the finance runs out, the raw materials are not available anymore, the way that manufacturing and industry actually, conducts itself will eventually fail because the bust situation will inevitably move in at x point and so forth and so forth? So, the way that finances, I do honestly believe are, put in place, to talk about sustainability are still flawed. I honestly do. I have to say that. We know you only need to look at COP 29, to speak. And we're going to speak. The way that, there was every opportunity at that cup, you know. 29 cups, 29 years of cups that have failed to levels and degrees that can be gone gone over intelligently at any given level. 29 years of fail of failure. If that doesn't tell you that the mechanics of those damn conferences need urgent reform, in my honest opinion, every single part of them needs dismantling and re putting together to be fit for purpose for 8,000,000,000 people on our planet. Because I tell you this much, if we have another when we get to COP 30 and those mechanics within that conferences are driven failure after failure, We get to COP 30, and we have exactly the same scenario again. We have exactly the same way of, of, not being able to, you know, within the financial discussions and parties. Not being able to, objectively and subjectively get to the very heart of the level of collapse that's affecting the most vulnerable countries across our planet. Because that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about adequate protection, for these vulnerable countries. It's not being put in place. Sorry, David. Were you gonna speak, Dana? I thought I saw it. I mean, I thought I think that's for me, you know, we we we felt since the time when Greta went to COP26 or wherever in Glasgow. Yeah, I think so. Yes. That the the mechanisms themselves, they we we forget this thing. They were set up. The the whole envisioning of it started at a time when climate change was a distant prospect. Yeah. And that's when people worked out, oh, you know, let's give ourselves some target. Let's think about what it means and so on. And we've lost the race, let's be, you know, diabetic and honest about it. And this aspect where we are focusing on what do we do about emission in the present is all wrong because there's nothing we can do about emission in the present. And that's why it fails. It's what we do about emissions in the future. Yeah. And the approach towards it that has always been that is still being maintained is that the mission in the future will somehow go away if there are alternatives to how we live today. Yeah. And the key aspect to that is this word alternative to how we live today. Because all of the proposals, all of the mechanisms and all of the approaches at the moment is about staying with the lives that we have today. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's not actually alternative to how we are. It makes no difference if I get up in the morning, I turn on the light and that light is powered by renewables Because what ultimately happens in that world is that's a world of economics, which is constantly requiring to make more money in order for it to to have a meaning. Unfortunately, what we're coming to is a problem that we don't have enough in store for us to survive through the challenges. I was looking at the, World Food Organization. They do a biannual report, on global food. And what struck me is not that somehow global food is, you know, this is the food and agriculture organization. It's not somehow that we're seeing, you know, devastations in the production of food. We're actually still producing a lot of food and increasing amount of it. What struck me about it is 2 things. The first of it is that the amount of world stock to use ratio, how much do we have in stock versus use, is about 30% for a year. A third of a year, which is like, 3 months, 4 months in that way. Mhmm. If you go back to biblical stories, there was a story about was it Joseph or whoever it was who, you know, interpreted the dream of the pharaoh and said you're gonna have 7 great years and then you're gonna have 7 famine years. And we need to build this massive silos to store things across 7 years, to store grains across all of those things and make sure that we can have that. The world has 3 months, basically. That's the the the amount of preparedness we're going to be. That's why we're going to be constantly up against the wall. And when you're up against the wall, everybody knows when you're up against the wall, everybody knows when you're up against the wall, you can't save money. You can't actually divert anything because you have to face the bills that comes along. You have to face it already on payday loans. You know, there's a guy with a baseball bat next that you're gonna try and borrow from. Yeah. So And and When you talk when you talk about the the food reserves for a quarter or a 4 months or whatever it is, are you talking about sort of the natural so rice, wheat, the sort of the basis of our food system, storage that last for years years years, which obviously would be more important. This is the problem. We're living off. This is the problem. We'll be living off 20s. This is of our meats, and so on. This is the raw Yeah. Right. That's produced along that. That goes on to feed those other stuff that you have. Yeah. And those are the stuff all gas consumed. There's a rate of which they are used and the amount of stock available to the use. And this use includes all of the things that you use it for from making biofu to making all that synthetic food in some form because they still come from some food source in some ways. And it goes to the second part about what I see in this, which is sugar. Sugar is increasing enormously and is driven by growth in Africa and developing world in that way as they urbanize. And this is a reflection again of what we're saying earlier about the fact that we're not really changing. We are calling on the developing world who have ways in which to live with an environment, with a world that is better than what the developed world have, who are not yet caught within the same money economics, extractive economics, that they their food is making them diabetic basically. Yeah. In in that massive way. And and a huge amount of it is coming from that area, that region for the growth. So when you call on the money and you say governments need to have money to find needs to finance all this thing. Government gets that money from taxes. That taxes comes from the industries that produce it by selling goods along. Those are the goods that ends up going into having all these developing world becoming diabetic. They're needing all the insulin. They're needing all the health care. That actually is a is a secondary level of genuine care. It's not about what you do when you thrive because when you thrive, the genuine meaning of that is you're able to live with your environment in a way that actually fulfills you as supposed to become dependent and then slaved by the modern economics. So what we keep falling about tripping over ourselves is what are we ourselves genuinely doing in terms of understanding how we are going to be able to sustain ourselves beyond those 3 months? Nobody is really asking that question. When you are in a position where you can put your own front foot forward and say, I know how I'm doing that. You are able to get out there with a much stronger voice as Robert say, and get out there to be able to say, look, I am doing what I am in order so that I can protect myself in that way. I won't use the governments to do that next step to make sure my efforts aren't wasted. Absolutely. Over from you must go there to protect me while I sit hoping that you somehow do it. The power in those 2 is tremendously different because the agency is like in South Korea when the poor people go out there, they face into the military, into the guns, they grab them and they're saying, what are you doing? Yep. You know, this is not us. This is not our country. This is not what who we are or what we are like. Richard, you've been silent. We're gonna get into the pain in a minute. Very powerful argument. But at the end of and I think the discussions are largely correct. But what it does raise, and that's where I think, the vast, vast majority of people, fail to make the connection is if you're going to retool society, and I think, personally, I think that has a lot to do with this because we're constantly borrowing from the future as we run up debts. And debts are making new records every year because that's how we try to sustain the current growth trajectory is by basically borrowing more from the future. Leaving that aside, it does raise the question what our governments are for and what our government services should be providing. And there has to be a realization that if we demand more and more from our governments, they need to raise more and more taxes to do so. And those taxes can only come from increased economic activity the way they are being done now. And you cannot turn on the news at any point of the day without having someone appealing for a course that they think should be funded by the government. Absolutely. And and that's just crazy because that economics does not work. You need to figure out as a society what level should be provided for us, a basic structure. We say we're a developed nation. Every child should know how to read and write, and we shall have some basic form of health care, and we need a a legal system that actually functions. Everything else needs to be scaled back, and people are not ready to hear that story. That's exactly right, Richard. Yeah. I do agree. If I could just interject there for a minute, Andrea, if it's alright. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I just want to, actually add to that because the thing is, we're the mechanism society at the present time, which is all integrated with it, I do have to say this that, we have a system here. Let me just, bring into context just for a second the legal system, if I may, and to do with judges. And the importance of having a democratic ability to be able to see common sense reason and to be able to function with intellect and intelligence, which is so very, very sadly lacking in my opinion in the judicial system across our planet. I will say this that, the way I see it, when you are persecuting this is just an example, mind. When you are persecuting people that are speaking up, climate scientists who have devoted their life to being able to safeguard the planet, its systems, and everything to do with it. When you were openly putting those guys and people and, women in prison for for telling the truth on the collapse of our planet. There's something very, very mentally sick with our judicial system that enables that to take place. I have to honestly say that because I keep seeing this, and it's going on incessantly. We are seeing, scientists imprisoned, silenced for telling the truth to try to safeguard 8,000,000,000 people across our planet. It is totally unacceptable. This is just one facet of the absolute total breakdown of democracy. How can that be democratic for judicial systems and judges to think that it's acceptable to jail climate scientists for god's sake? I know I'm getting very heated about this, but by god, it just makes me sick to my core when I see this level of so called democ that's not democracy. That's the the what we're seeing there, from, from from judges who probably be probably being bought, by, you know, the various extremities and systems to be able to act in that context in the first place. It's totally unacceptable. We need to change the face of the way judges and the way the courts act in terms of the difference between right and wrong, right and wrong, the difference between truth and lies. I have to bring this into play because I feel it's very much needed to be said. We're talking about truth here and the distortion of truth over the ability to be able to lie and think that it's acceptable. We don't expect our global judges, and we don't expect our global courts to be acting in such a way. And this is just one facet of the thing that has to fundamentally change within our societies if we are to actually gain what's laughingly called democracy across our planet at the moment. Because as I've said this before, you know, the people of our planet are under the context that our governments are acting with democracy for the greater good. But actually the very reverse is the case. Our governments are actually doing everything in their power, to suppress people's right to be able to tell the truth. This is one of the great ills of our society at this present time that this is actually being allowed, to fundamentally carry on. It has to be addressed in its entirety. There's no question about that. I think Sorry. David, you you were gonna you were gonna say something there. There's there's, I agree. You know what the what you say there, I think there's a misunderstanding of what governments and nations are. And this dissenting standing has come about over a rather beautiful period, when, you know, people can put all their hopes into the UN and, things are supposed to be working along and what we had is tremendous economic growth essentially. Debt became democratized. Everybody could be a debtor. And by being a debtor, you felt that the government would back you up and so it didn't really matter too much. You know, the the original hire purchases that started back in when when when was that Richard? About 50, 60s? Yeah. I would I would put it mid fifties probably. Yeah. That that's kind of expanded out this kind of economic extraction in that way. It wasn't democratizing the power economic power of people. It's democratizing debt so that everybody could be a debtor in that way. So that was that that class by the middle class. As long as you're gonna earn enough to keep paying your bills, you are okay. So you're living you you turned into living from check to check as opposed to living with nature in that way. Mhmm. And the government nature of governments has always stayed the same as protecting your national interest. It's always been about protecting the national interest. It's just that it was felt that somehow because everything was extracted from other places and so on, that its role was coming together into this globalized world but it was still always about protecting your national interest. And I think that's coming to the fore because the finance, the economic climate is becoming harder. And what people are calling for is a change, is as Robert say, is a change. They don't have the power to make that change because within the world we have. I mean, this is the whole point of, you know, what we're trying to say here. Right? I think yeah. That's that's the thing about it. And and and and that's the that's the unsustainable truth is actually that all of these things, you know, our nations and stuff that what they do best is to fight wars against each other. People are the ones who cross borders, who unite. They have always been the one who have said, look, you know, these these boundaries are fake. You know, my neighbor lives across the other side to to me here and and you know we we are better together in that way in that way along. So the whole mechanism of the UNF triple c and all of those things come from that historic period where somehow we thought we'd leave our trust to governments to do the big things. And the fallacy that came from there was because people all felt that we solved the ozone problem in that way. Last year's ozone hole was still amongst the highest in in That's not that's not that's not common news. Is There's not common awareness around It wouldn't be it wouldn't be, Andrew. If they there's a heck of a lot that's vital information as David has just mentioned that doesn't get to be common news. Probably because of suppression yet again if from the media. Yeah. No. Exactly. Well, CNN published it. Some New Zealand scientists sort of came out and said it. And then, I saw a piece on CNN but not much else. But I wanna get onto the theme because because I don't want us to to lose the focus of what we wanna do today. And there's 2 sections that we really wanna talk about. And the first one is, you know, COP 29 considered a failure, 300,000,000,000 promised in funding to the developing world, most of it in loans, which, of course, is a really, really, challenging thing for a lot of those countries because they're already selling debited. And the the critical need for this financing is, 1, to get countries to move rapidly towards sustainable energy solutions. That's the the most critical thing. You look at countries like India, the Philippines, Thailand's more gas than coal now. Indonesia's definitely more coal. So when you look around, a lot of the so called developing nations, even though there's a lot of wealth within those countries, they can still broadly consider developing. Coal use is going up, and we've talked about China before. They're looking at, starting to go down from 2025, which could have other implications because we're gonna lose the, the pollutions from the atmosphere. Right? But so we need a rapid transition, and that's what the funding is for. So that's in everybody's interest because if we don't do it, then we're all cooked. And then, of course, the second part is adaptation, so it's making sure their homes are ready. The infrastructure, like, Richard, it was interesting what you were talking before about education, health care. But the other thing is making sure the infrastructures make sure the dams can hold when there's more water, or just the, you know, sewers work, and they're not even inundated with seawater. So, making sure their farms and their agricultural works or looking at, alternative ways of farming when there's gonna be water shortages. You know, we see the what's going on in Zimbabwe at the moment. So if we can help people to stay in their homes, they're not gonna migrate, and that's a good thing for everybody in the world because if the 1,000,000,000 climate refugees that they're talking about get on the move, it's just gonna be carnage. Right? So there's 2 areas. 1, moving to sustainable energy. 2, adapting to sort of exist and survive and thrive in the in the environment that we have coming. So I I I I strongly sort of, you know, vehemently disagree with that approach completely and and and the reason is because that approach doesn't actually keep the oil gas and coal in the ground. Nothing in there provides an actual economic incentive to keeping oil, gas, and coal in the ground. What that does is it says we spend our efforts doing the other things. Think think of this. You've got you know, you you're running out of money in your household, basically. Right? So you you go along and you say, we shouldn't be spending the money. Somehow, we should be preserving it. And one of you sort of says, well, let's work out a budget of how we can spend, you know, how much we spend and how much we don't need and stuff. And another one goes along and says, well, you know what? Maybe we can start growing our own tomatoes and, you know, we can we can certainly grow lettuces and and all those things along the way and maybe we can eat less meat along because those are expensive and all of that. And then the 3rd person goes along and says, yeah, but, you know, what we need to do is really plan for that future. So what we gotta do is to go and, buy a plot of land where we can do all these things and then we can go along and, you know, re re reorganize our house and change the plumbing and everything. And all of those things cost all the money that you don't have the budget for. And that translates in actual terms to the oil gas encoder we are supposed not to use. So as we expand in that way, all of that oil gas and coal continues to be used. You look at the evidence of what we're going on. We've been doing this for 30 years. The UNF triple c has been around. This is not something that we say, oh, we must need to do this. You look at the growth in the renewables, there is now enough renewables compared to kind of that 30 years ago to power the entire South American continent plus more. Yet the South American continent is not powered by renewables. What you're seeing is the more renewables, the more we're making these transitions, the more oil, gas, and coal is being used. That's why the fossil fuel industry is so happy about it. And the harder and faster you push it, the more you need very high energy density fuel, and that's oil, gas, and coal, and that's what's going on. So, the only way, if you're serious about it, is to say how can we keep it in the ground in a way so that it's profitable to do so. If I myself wants to say I'm going to have a car at the moment, just maybe it has another 10 years life in there. It's about 10 years old. So it'll be about 20 years by the time we finish or 25 and so on. I can go along and say, okay. I'm gonna think by transport out that way. But at that point, the oil and gas that I would be using, I don't wanna use. I want to be able to buy that stuff while it's still in the ground and say that's mine now and I'm keeping it there. There's no mechanism to be able to do that. If you believe in a just transition, that means that you, Andrea, has an allocation of oil, gas, and coal for you, for each of us, for each of our children. I want to be able to say, I want to take that allocation. I wanna buy it because it's my allocate. You should and I want to be able to decide whether I'm gonna use it or not. And I need to be able to say I'm gonna keep you in the ground. And if I do that, I want to be able to think how can I actually make money by doing that in same way as if I went out and I bought a piece of art and I buy for an investment that somehow I can make some money for I can show it to people or or to share it around or I can go and do other things with which I can make in that sense an investment money back in nature itself so that I can embed it within my economics within the way in which I can see value as being able to thrive but we have none of that? All of those transition arguments, all they do is they allow more oil, gas, and coal to be used. And as the volume of it be used increases, it becomes harder to retract away. Hard when you're spending a $100 and you move to spending a 1,000 to go back to spending a 100. Absolutely, David. Do so. Yeah. I completely agree with you. You see that sorry, Andrea. Please, carry on. No. No. No. No. I just wanna I just wanna I'm just wanting a really David's explained it in a really interesting way. Right? So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so for the rest of my life, I've got this amount of energy. Right? So if I use that energy, I get on a plane or I drive a car or whatever, I I I lose some of that. And then over a lifetime, it sort of goes down. But every single person on the planet has this budget, right, that they're allowed to use. Yeah. And then if if you run out of budget in your lifetime, you can pay someone who's living in another part of the world who's got excess budget. You could maybe potentially buy up some of theirs to give them money. Is that the sort of thing that you sort of got in mind when you when you think about it? Want to do is to say I'm buy I'm I'm having it to keep in the ground. Yeah. Yeah. But but if you can't but but we're gonna use energy. Right? Right. And so if you wanna talk about climate finance, you know, to to to my brother in another country, maybe in Malaysia where they're flooded in that way. I can go along. They can come along and says, you know what? I've got an allocation here. I really don't want it to be used. Why don't I sell you what I may have what I have allocated that's in 20 years time. You give me the money now so that I can take the money and build a life for me so that I won't need to use it in 20 years time. But we're not doing that. What we are doing is we're saying extract more today so that we can build a thing so that we don't have to worry about what happens in the future. But all of that in the future is still available for us and because it's there, we're gonna eat it. It's like sweets on the table. Eventually, the bowl of sweets is empty. Yeah. That's not the problem. Eventually, it will be empty. But if you can go along and says, if you pay me for my sweets, that's at the bottom of the bowl. Now I can build myself alive, make the change so I don't need to eat it. And then you know what? For the money that you give for me there, I'm gonna take that sweet and I'm gonna lock it away because that's mine. Alright. So, another another example just just because I think it's really interesting what you're saying, but, I've spoken to a few guys that are working with refugees in Uganda. So Uganda is very open to the refugees from its neighboring countries. It's it's doing incredible work to take care to take care of its neighbors. The first things the refugees do when they land in Uganda is they chop down forests so that they can cook food and they can put build homes and all that sort of stuff. Right? So for me, the the money that we could potentially raise for these sort of communities could when when when the refugees arrive, we can have some sort of a home, some sort of a way of cooking food that doesn't produce smoke and it doesn't require trees being chopped down. And it's about sort of, you know, sort of a a refugee kit, you know, that we could be be be having ready to move. You know? That's sort of Yeah. That's sort of the outlet. Yeah. So that Yeah. I can say that. Yeah. I I I agree there with your points. Some good points there. We do, you know, I've said this before in the course of my work on X that we actually now need to adapt like mad. We are left obviously with the, how can I put it, the, the ongoing ashes of our sins, for what we've done to the planet's climate so far? And, we now what is left of our planet, as I say these words now, we need to, we need to be able to adapt like mad and hope that we can actually salvage, what we've got left in the coming years because, all this drivel of 2050, I always thought that was, utterly pathetic in the approach and the mental, you know, thinking of it. It's, just like, yes, we've got a crisis. Yes, we want to tackle it, but, we'll just brush it under the carpet for x amount of years. Doesn't really matter. Not gonna take it seriously because that's a mentality issue that is, all too, prevalent, within, you know, governmental institutions that, want to actually talk the climate talk as we probably all I don't need to say to to everyone here. You already know. But I can find it. Come back to the Uganda thing. Right? So Uganda has about 5 to 6 kilowatt hour per square meter of solar energy per day. And, you know, a a kilowatt, basically, a kilowatt hour is, you know, kind of kilowatt is like a small kettle that you have. Body for an hour, you can cook a lot of rice on it. Just think of it in that way. Yep. So you can make a solar cooker, and you can have the refugees be able to design and improve a solar cooker for themselves. So that they don't have to go and cut the trees down in that way and then it will be available to them and what's more they will be able to design and cook this themselves and they will have a ability to build an economy out of it. They can market it, sell it to other places and so on and teach others and do all of those things. And that's an economic connection they can build from other people. They can cook with it and actually be, you know, kinda run restaurants and do things along with that. There's plenty of energy, plenty of availability, and the type of resources that you need for that is minimal in terms of actually making something like a solar cooker. It's a re it's it's it's a very basic, basic in the sense that it's something which a primary school child can do. That's about as sophisticated as it needs. And what makes it different between now and the stone age where we came from and people start worrying about what happens if we didn't have oil, gas, and coal in that way is that we have knowledge. And that knowledge is now much more democratized and actually primary school children do have the knowledge to be able to do this, in in in that way. So you go ahead and you go forward and you do this, and what you do is you actually allow them to say, you know, this will give you an economics along. You know that there's an your allocation forecast and co that can be available maybe in 20 years time or whatever because we that's that's the stuff we need to keep in the ground. That's the stuff that can't come out, the stuff that's out already is the stuff that's already out. So don't go shouting about how the stuff that's out is out, is the stuff that's not out that needs to stay not out. And you go along and why don't you sell that stuff that's not out, that's your allocation for money now so that you can build your business making solo cookers for people in similar situations around you or around the world. And you can make a move in that way and you allow your economics to emerge naturally and you take it from where that source of money now comes from is money that protects the planet, that protects nature by keeping it in the ground. That's the source of money. So the more this happens, the more oil, gas, and coal is kept in the ground. Whereas at the moment, the call for climate finance is money that comes from extracting it out. Saudi Arabia is a is is actually the most shocking news item. You think of the news item this week, the most shocking one to me is reading that the fiscal breakeven of Saudi Arabia, this is the amount of this is the oil price it needs to have for it to balance its budget as a country. It's now $93. Oil is what? 70 something dollars at the moment. Yeah. Brent is even below. Call it 70. 68 to $70 at the moment. So it's a third higher than where it is at the moment. That's for the country, Saudi Arabia, which is a very fragile politically sensitive country in order for it to break even. And it needs to do that because its sustainability plan is demanding it has to do that. So what happens in this call for sustainability in the way we have it is it forces more oil and gas to be sold because Saudi Arabia needs it. And if you look around at the world, something like 63 low income and developing countries are relying increasingly on extraction of minerals and materials to support their budgets along. And that includes oil and gas and coal and Brazil. The the, chair of the NICS Corp has just started the bidding process for 2 deep sea oil platforms. These are massive Yeah. Oil producing production, you know, ships in that way. Not 1, but 2. It's increasing its oil and gas production even as it heads into the presidency of COP. And everyone is saying how Azerbaijan is terrible and Antlok was terrible. And how is all going to resolve by going to Brazil where the Amazon is drying out? The fact is if you rely on money today that comes from extracting oil and gas today, because all money today, 80 over 80% of our energy comes from oil and gas. So all our activity depends on it. So if you need money that comes from the activities today in that way you're going to have more oil and gas produced. So you have to drive it from keeping the stuff in the ground thinking how that money can be used to genuinely develop that future and you can't have that much money coming along. So you actually have to say what can I do with a little bit of money rather than how can I get more money than people who can ever give me? Yeah. Absolutely. I completely agree with you and I understand that. So it's it's the complexity of it that you're talking about, right, David, which most people don't get. You know? That's it, Andy. Yeah. It is a complex issue. Yeah. It needs to be it needs to be addressed and spoken about in the way that David has spoken about it. It's complete logic really at the end of the day. But it's just getting that message across to a mass audience, which is, one of the seems to be one of the great stumbling blocks that we still have. But but what what you're saying here, David, is that in order for us to do this, we really need to dramatically shrink the global economy. Right? It's not necessary you have to shrink the global economy today. You can't do anything by hurting people because then what you get is people get hurt. And when people get hurt, they are less able to support you. Yeah. You know, you you you play a football game football and your players are hurt. They are not gonna be able to support you. You may be the best striker in the world, you know, you so you you you can't do this by hurting people. But you have to you have to make as Robert was talking about a genuine change in how we protest. We have to protest by demonstrating that we can see how we can thrive without the oil, gas, and coal. Yeah. That's by saying, you know, give me a dollar and I'll make the best use of it so that I won't need that dollars worth of petrol in the future. You you you need to do that and then the protest then comes to say because I'm able to do this, I want the right to buy that dollars worth of oil in the future and not to have it extracted because that's mine. You can't take it. Mhmm. Absolutely. We don't think of that. For some reason, we think some geological accident where these things happen to fall within certain artificially drawn boundaries give those power of those governments and nations the power to go along and say that actually they're not common they're not things that affect everybody. Mhmm. It's not true. K. Robert's just gone up. I was just gonna say if he if he wants to jump. So I do you think we've gone so far that it it's gonna be impossible not to hurt? I I think that, you know, I wake up some mornings with a pain in my back because I'm I'm old and decrepit and all the rest of this week. Right? And and I think those mornings that, you know what, I gotta take it easy. When when things hurt, it's not a signal to go and take more painkillers. It's a signal to understand that actually, you know, there's a signal my body is telling me. When the economy hurts, it's a signal. It's not to go and say figure out some magical subsidy to avoid it. When when the climate is hurting, you know, I I I had this comment in my in in my new book, Thrive and Imagine, that when you have a fever 1 and a half degrees, you feel really sick. You can do 1 or 2 things, pop some paracetamol or whatever and pretend it didn't happen, get on with what you do, which is what our economy is telling us to do, or you can go along and says actually I need a sick day. I genuinely need to look after this and figure something out about it. And when it gets to 2 degrees, you are in hospital, You know, typical adults don't do well with 2 degrees rise in body temperature. The planet doesn't either. And and so it's not thinking about whether we need to change to to slow or or whatever it is. Because I'm not thinking that somehow because I've got temperature 1 and a half degrees that I'm going to have to pause and everything. Or when I've got my back hurts in that way. But I am thinking maybe I really need to do things differently. Maybe there really is a signal here and I need to do things differently. And what is that differently that I need to do is something which I need to begin to search, and it needs to fit me. Because I can't do differently that works for Rob or Richard or Andrea because, you know, my body is worse than that. So I need to figure out I doubt that way. Yeah. Well, alright. Alright. Robert, do you wanna do you wanna jump in and give your point of view? This is sort of about the the Yeah. Well, I've all got plenty to say. I'm never stuck for words, that's for sure. So, yeah, as we're talking about, this issue of how we adapt and do things differently, I think David's points are right on context. I completely agree. As I've said before in the course of my work, it's actually, not just getting that message across, but it's actually getting to getting governments now and individual, politicians within governments and getting, the whole way that governmental systems are geared at the moment to actually understand, those, points that David's put across and understand other vital points that need to be put across as well in terms of the context of how we deal with this. Because let's face it, at the end of the day, it's all about seeing things as intelligently as possible, isn't it? Because intelligence should be the main driving factor in what we're doing. But unfortunately, the main driving factor in all we're doing is profit money. And that's why we've got this crisis that we're in because everything is geared solely to the profit of a certain individual group of people, as we all know, who are, you know, continuing with unlimited extraction, etcetera, etcetera. But getting aside from that, we now need, to be able to, put across, these issues in a context which can actually make the difference, which can actually, speak to the people that, that that are the decision makers. Because the decision makers, I have to say at the present time, I've been wired up for a very, very long time with faulty thinking, and, that is why we, are in this crisis that we're in. The ability to be able to put across these issues, as David has just very, very, coherently and intelligently said to us, is vital. It's all about, seeing things in a different way and, excuse me a sec. I've just had a power issue crop up on my phone, so I've just got to adjust the angle, apologize about that. So, anyway, without getting distracted too much, the this this issue of putting these issues across, it's how we do this constructively because I don't need to tell anybody here. We already know that governments are set in the way that they dictate policy at this present time. It's a way it's a transition issue. We need to have, a fundamental shift in transition issue with the way that, sustainables and the way that green energy is implemented across every country, on our planet. I call it a blanket coverage for want of better words because it does describe it rather nicely. We need a blanket coverage of, sorry, my phone's freezing. I don't know whether it was happening there with you on your screens, but I just, I just haven't noticed. Was it all right? Was it? Yeah. So, it's all now about, the way that this adaptation process is put in place because I don't need to say this because I don't want to sound like a broken record. Every time I open my mouth, I just want to speak coherently and I want to speak subjectively and intelligently about adaptations, green transitions because that's what's so critically important, an intelligent conversation with constructive outcomes to enable the lives of millions and billions of people to be, to be able to be lived, for the greater good of a crisis that many millions of people never imagined they would see in their lifetimes or ever feel that they would be caught up in. So, I will say this that, in terms of this green transition, there's still so much that still needs to be done, but it's about the right words in the right places. And I do honestly feel that there should be much more of an emphasis, in, in very prominent, positions within governments and with, within, policy making decisions. If I can fudge the words I wanted to be able to get this message, like David's words, put across fundamentally in the spotlight for all the right people to be hearing them and to be implementing them en masse across our planet, because that is what matters at the moment. It matters to be able to subjectively get across this message to a wide audience. And that's where we're still failing, I'm sad to say, at the moment. I wish it wasn't like that, but it doesn't have to be. We can fundamentally, get this message across, to, millions, billions of people. But it does actually start within the system that we've got at the moment. We have to, unfortunately, as bad as it is, we have to continue to work that and we have to mold it and we have to manipulate it to the greater good of where we want to be because that's one of the fundamental key objectives with a with being able to get a green transition, a sustainable green global transition across for 1,000,000 and billions of people because this green transition is so unbalanced at the moment across our world. We see countries that are adapting to a certain extent, and then, of course, let's fight the inevitable financial issues. There's squabbling taking place. There's the inability to subjectively come to a conclusion for the greater good of, x amount of countries or people. And then we have a situation where there's a small pocket of green energy transition. And then we have a few countries where there isn't the sufficiency energy transition to be able to get across for those millions, billions of people. And this is another fundamental issue, that needs to, be, addressed with urgency. I know within the Crisis Club, Alex mentions about China and Russia. I'm sure you've heard this, Andrea, yourself, that, there is not a lot talked about. But, you know, they are countries, like all countries. And as big as they are, they are still fundamentally part of a necessity for a green energy transition. And just because there are many, many individuals that don't talk openly about green energy transitions and what's actually going on behind the scenes in the mechanics of those countries. It doesn't make it any more important that China or Russia doesn't have the obligations necessary. I will say that obviously from what I've seen seen so far that, China does seem to be implementing one heck of a lot of solar, across its, its energy systems, which is encouraging in its to a massive extent. And I, you know, I I warmly welcome that. Green energy transitions in their forms of solar, wind, etcetera, because obviously, there's always comparison charts about how good wind is in its, you know, its financial context and its way that it's able to be, run. In terms of, cost, there's that always that comparison of wind and solar, which there always will be. I guess, really, at the end of the day, it does, break down to which of those particular energy sources is, the most cost effective, for the policy making of the financial side of things that's put those, processes in place. But, talking again about adaptation, there's so much to be said about it. And there's so many words to be said in, vital ears that need to hear it. I don't want to digress too far, but I must bring the context of the way governments and politicians actually think about green transition. This moment, I know that not everyone here might agree with what I'm about to say, but I'm afraid that, I'd like to think you will, but carbon capture in my mind is a great, smokescreen exercise in order for the, the fossil fuel industry to continue with its ways and mass just that little bit longer. And I'm sorry to say, but when I keep seeing these these, these machines and things to do with carbon capture popping up across the planet and, certain governments, not least our own UK government, and other governments talking about the necessary necessity to implement carbon capture. I say, for god's sake, please, will you start having constructive intelligent conversation? Drop this carbon caption nonsense. And actually, understand, the green transitions, the way forward will be solar, it will be wind, and it will be other green energy transitions as well. Those other green energy transitions will mostly, in my mind come about on a larger basis depending on whether the financial stability of those transitions can be, put in place because it does come down to finances. We know that. And, anyway I'm gonna interrupt it a bit because I think you've been Yeah. Sorry, David. Yeah. Please. Thank you. Right. I I think it's it's good to bring in lie together with that. And and I noticed Richard's been really quiet. So, Just a bit. He has been a bit quiet, Richard. Has, hasn't he? Yes. You know, he has pretty firm opinions on carbon capture too, which are not dissimilar to yours. So what I would to start with is we we talk of the transition. A transition means that you go from one to the other. It doesn't mean you go from one and the other. Absolutely. What we are doing is we're going from one and the other. We're adding more renewables, you take China, but China is also using more coal and gas and oil in that way. And another thing to point out about gas is actually that it's now increasingly recognized that gas may well not be that transition fuel because the small gas is methane. Methane is much, much worse than carbon dioxide in terms of its warming potential. Over about a decade, it gradually breaks down into carbon dioxide. But for that short period, while it's there as methane, it's about a 100 times worse or something like that, which means that actually if only just 1% of the gas leaks out, you're now worse off. And gas is a gas. If you ever tried blowing up a helium balloon or tying up a balloon along, it leaks. You know that everybody knows this. If you ever tried pumping up an air bed and get you know, whatever it's on, it leaks. And if you think it just needs less than about a percent for it to be worse. Then, of course, the other part that comes along and and and going back along. So so that's one aspect about thinking about transition in that way. Be careful. And the second is this very important thing, transition has to bring the thing you don't want to be using down rather than keep using both. China is an example, India is example. These are the countries which are developing. India is gonna be the next major source. Africa and places are, other examples, Namibia, Ghana, Suriname are massive producers now. They're gonna be the big producers coming forward. When they produce, they need it to be sold. So they need their neighbors all to buy it and all the rest and they have development needs that comes along. So you need somehow to be able to keep you in the ground. Now Volvo and Priam Sweden, the there's a sweet sustainability people, transition people, who did a report on winter sports and sponsorship of them and so on. And they make the point about how the sponsors of winter sports are people like, you know, the high the high value cars, the Mercedes, the Volvo, and those sort of people very often and the fuel that they use in that way. And those companies, when you go to them, are talking about how they're electrifying or going to sustainable fuel and and that kind of stuff in in that way too. The missing step is a step I'm talking about before. If Volvo is going to go along and sponsor winter sport, what they need to do is to say that, you know, the €6,000 you're gonna save over your 3 years of having a electric car. We're gonna take some of that money and we're gonna buy the oil that we won't be using for your behalf or whatever it is and keep it in the ground. That's not produced that comes at the time in the future where they may be produced. So we're actually going to make the real transition happen because at the moment what's going on is that it is it is producing the electrification, but someone is owning the oil who is gonna have to produce it because they paid money up for it, this is the economics for it, you pay $10 you pay 10 quid or $10 or whatever it is for the, you know, the goods that you are hoping to sell to make that$10 back. They're not gonna give it up, they're gonna have to make it back and 80% of these are owned by governments who needs the money back to right at the beginning of what we talked about. We are facing a world where governments are falling apart because they can't figure out their budgets. So they're always gonna be extracting, and this is the way in which new money effectively comes about and actually changes its story along. And then the last part about carbon capture, the thing that Rob didn't quite point out is a business that goes about doing this is only going to go about doing it if it is profitable. Where does it get its money from? And it currently gets its money from subsidies from governments. So the direct answer question to ask is, do you want the subsidy to come to you directly? Maybe $2, maybe $10, maybe $100, so that you can maybe plant your indoor garden and have some idea of how you can have food beyond those 3 months or whatever it might be or be a community garden as people did, a little while back in that way or whatever way you want to go out for a night night out with your mates or whatever it might be that that it does. Or do you wanna go to this carbon capture facility? Because what's happened with this carbon capture is a lot of that subsidy goes into pumping it back into the ground to extract oil and gas back out. So what it has done is actually made it practically free to extract oil and gas, funded by governments to do this. And so you you end up in this situation where it's supposed to help but what you're doing is is actually encouraging the oil and gas to be extracted so it'll be used and other people will want to extract more because if you're being able to extract it for free you're taking away their share so they're gonna have to compete and find some other ways to extract for more that's kind of how the economics works. So a lot of these things are the direct opposite, a lot of these transition steps that people tout are the direct opposite of actually keeping them in the ground. They're actually encouraging more extraction of oil and gas. Absolutely, David. Yeah. You've you've hit the point the nail on the head again there. If I can just I was just gonna say if, Richard wanted to jump in and try Adrian. For me, carbon capture is, it's basically an external form. It's a complete hoax. Absolutely. The British and Yeah. Because the economics for carbon capture simply is not there. It's an extremely inefficient method of dealing with our problem that did no business in the world would ever put the dime into carbon capture without government subsidies. So how can you even start talking about it being a business of the future? They it's a complete hoax, and I hate subsidies because they distort the economics. And and and carbon capture for me is, like, the symbol of of how we waste public funds on pet projects. That sounds really, really good, but, actually, there's no economics, and and their impact is also extraordinarily small. I mean, just do the numbers on what a really big carbon capture facility will Absolutely. It's hardly anything. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you, Mark. But But, also, how much more economic? How much energy does the actual those actual, facilities use is extraordinary. There's a Yeah. So yeah. It is, Andrew. Yeah. It's Yeah. There's very simple ways to see this. So, you know, you take a piece of paper, and you've got that piece of paper, and you tear it up into tiny little bits, and then you go throw it up in the air and it falls on the ground. And then you go along and you say, okay. Let's we go and pick it all back up. Think about the energy expanding bending up and down, picking up all the tiny piece of paper along. That's what carbon capture means. Versus just don't tear up the piece of paper and don't chuck it about. Which one is got a bad back, the big one worse. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just gonna I was just gonna bring us back together because I'm looking at the time. So the other the the other side of it is because yeah. I I still think we can simplify this message for people even more, but, I think the probably the best way to so because, you know, when I'm listening, most there's a lot of people out there that believe we've already gone too far and collapse is inevitable. And, you know, when we were saying about people don't want pain, pain's inevitable. You know, and and there's other people that are sort of got the hopium, you know, we can do it, and there's a report came out that if we stop polluting, the, temperatures will stop going up. And it just doesn't from a lot because a lot of this is logic. Right? And I think that's the frustrating thing about it all. It's there's just if we're taking too much, eventually, it runs out. Right? Yeah. It's logic. Right. Yeah. So but let's let's hone in on us, individuals, whether whether we're and and we're not focusing on the bottom sort of 1.4, 1,500,000,000 people who are struggling to get by. We're talking about, you know, there's 3,800,000,000 middle class people today. There's gonna be 4,800,000,000 by 2030. So let's sort of look at, you know, half the world's population, basically, who are consuming and and like what David was saying, you know, or or or Richard, you might have said it. You know, if the the new middle class they're entering want exactly what we've all got, which is fridges, cars, clothes, you know, and if we just get more and more and more and more people wanting that life versus living a better life within the constraints of the societies and the cultures that they come from. Absolutely. You know? So but but, eventually, you know, I hear people telling me their plans for the future. And if they're open to it, I say, well, have you thought about this? You know, what's sea level rise looking? You know, they're talking about somewhere they wanna retire at. What's the sea level rise looking? What's the temperature looking like? What extreme weather events have happened there in the last couple of years, in the last couple of decades? You know, all of them people talk about pensions. I'm like, are you sure you're even gonna have a pension? You know? Or is it gonna get wiped out by the by all by all of this becoming worse and worse? So just David and Richard, you guys are the experts here. What what can we what can we share with people? Because I know it's a it's a tough subject. But I mean, it is. It's a really tough subject, but, you know, if we're gonna be realistic about the situation we're in, what can we what can we share to to help people understand what this really means? And if it keeps going the way it's going, well, how it's gonna impact people individually in their own pockets? Who wants to I think I think I'd summarize it or or I'm actually maybe I should have Rishi go first. No. No. No. You go. I'm happy to come back later. I I think it all starts with honesty. Put it up. You bet. Yes. You wanna carry on? No. No. No. You go. So so I I would say, I would say that you you you don't don't get scared by the reality. You know, that's what honesty is about. Phasing up to the honesty of what it is because that's what it is. So don't get scared by it appreciate that nature always thrives over all of the Earth's history along you know just go through and watch the Richard Attenborough videos and whatever it is. Yeah. Absolutely. Come out and have a look in the spaces around and just watch. Nature always thrives so and ask, do you want to be a part of that nature? Absolutely. And if you do, think about what economics at nature's pace means for you. How can your Say that again. Economics at nature's pace is what you just said. Right? Yes. So think about how your economics would be if you allow it to be at nature's pace. Actually, I think Sorry, David. Please, Carrie. I was just gonna add something there. Yeah. I was just gonna add something there, David. Sorry, Andrea, but I just felt it vitally important just for a second if I may. Just those words and of net, economics at at nature's pace. I honestly think they should be the driving words within, government talks, politicians talks right now from now into the future in, in in in in how we, come together and how politicians come together on this. Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to say that, it's the right But that's all. And obviously, David, you you've got a line that you can you can use turn it into a meme. Because it it's it's, yeah. It just Yeah. You know, sometimes it's just a a sentence. It's just profound. It hasn't It is, Andrea. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. That's why I interrupted then. I apologize then for that. I'm sorry. Yeah. You I'm sorry, David. Please carry on. That's a great idea, actually. So so help help help to create the memes, economics in nature space. Because that's what it is, basically. You know, the challenges we are facing and all of those things is about appreciating how we can lift our economics at Nature's Space. It is. It always thrives. Yeah. Nature's a very tough cookie at the end of the day. As I've always said before, you know, physics will have the deciding hand. Physics entwined with nature. Nature's a very powerful, a very powerful, person or should I say a very powerful, being, the way that that is constructed. She is the dominatrix. She is the yeah. The boat said, Andrew. Yeah. She is and she will have the deciding factor. She's very resilient and it's incredible to think that we're battering her to the umpteenth degree. You know, day in day out and without giving it a thought. But she will she will continue to, in in in capacities probably that so many of us don't or aren't thinking about already. Nature will continue to thrive, adapt because one of the incredible things about mother nature is her ability to adapt. The ways of being able to fundamentally, you think you've killed something off within nature and it rises. If I can put it like a phoenix on the ashes almost, in a way that it, you know, it's able to bloom and grow again. So I've got every faith in mother nature being able to, adapt and rise in its capacity. Sorry if I took over the thing there, Andrew. I know that David was trying to speak. I apologize about that. I know. I I was just gonna add with the with the with the nature thing. So someone someone did something for me the other day and said, but we've gotta save nature. And I'm like, no. No. No. No. No. We're not here to save nature. We're not here to save the earth. And we're we're here to make sure that we don't screw up our ability to thrive on the earth. Doing, right? And, you know, when I think when I think of of of mother nature and and and the earth mother, you know, she's she's baked before, she's bubbled and boiled, and then she's gotten green and all sorts of life flourished and then it didn't and meteors struck and all sorts of things. And she just and her her timescale is so different to our timescale. Right? And I think that's another thing that, you know, some of the David Attenborough, things that they show slow motion of a plant And and Wow. And it's, you know, it's a branch that sort of flicks off and wraps around something and then grows and overtakes. But, yeah, we're not here to save nature. We're here to live with the constraints of nature. Yeah. Actually, Andrew, we're here to be try to be intelligent enough and try to be able to adapt our minds to be intelligent just for once in a way and be responsible enough in our actions to actually save ourselves for the greater good. And at the same time, saving ourselves along that path of being able to make sure we nurture nature and not destroy it. Because we've had far too long of destroying nature. It's now all about nurture and, and, obviously the, protection of what we've got left that's so vitally important. You know? Yeah. And that's part of the acceptance, you know, when you kind of that was sort of our very first chat. So I I was I was if we if we're not if we don't wake up to what we're doing, you know, we're we're not gonna we're not gonna survive. And, that's that's a part of my journey to acceptance. It's like, okay. And I remember hearing some academic research. It was only on a podcast. I've never been able to find it. And the test was, if you got this block of land, would you live on it sustainably? 70% of the respondents said yes. 30 per 30% of the respondents said no, and they basically take everything this piece of land had to offer. And, unfortunately, those 30% are represented in our societies and they're in leadership positions in business, in government. So when people are sitting there going, why won't our politicians do what they're supposed to do? Why won't business people do what they're supposed to do? They're potentially that 30%. And the interesting thing about the 30% is so they're the sociopaths, narcissists, machinist, that sort of thing. Right? And the interesting thing is there's always someone behind them ready to step in. So if we actually wanna get it right, and you're looking at all this stuff that's going on in politics around the world, if we actually wanna get it right, what we gotta do is, get get all of those people out of positions of power and put in put in place someone from the 70%. I I think it is a time for feminine power, not necessarily women, but feminine power. But then there's it's a pushback against that. Right? And then you're listening to the the musks and the tills and those sort of people of the world, and they're like, oh, we need the alpha males. Right? And I and I sort of sit there going, yeah. But if we if we just have a world that's run by the alpha males, you know, the superior alpha males. Right? They're the reason we're in this spot in the first place, and now you wanna you you wanna you wanna drill down on that type of leadership in the world today. I don't think that's a really good idea. I don't think it's smart. And, you know, the whole diversity inclusion, there's a there's a backlash against that. Well, countries are are are more prosperous in every way, GDP included. Businesses are more successful when they focus on it. So, you know, there's so there's all this backlash against the direction that we need to be going in if we if we give ourselves a chance and then we're going into this other direction, which doesn't give us a chance. And that's Yeah. The rumble in the world of politics that I'm sort of seeing at the moment. And I don't know. No. You mentioned good points there, Andrew, if I can just interject for a minute. It's very much a case, as I say, of, mental clarity now amongst, the import amongst power, amongst the decision makers. And, of course, mental clarity, I think, amongst the public as well because the public actually can be the leading global change makers of everything that we're talking about here. I firmly believe there is enough, intelligence within the global public to make those changes that are fundamentally needed in order to guide, political power, guide politicians, guide leaders, and guide all the extremity organizations to be able to act with the accountability now needed for the greater good. Obviously, finances play that role that vital part. But also, it's also about the clarity of mind to be able to make the choices for the greater good. And that's, something that's not always shouted out as often as it should be. I think really, we do, there is a problem still with being able to engage the public at certain levels with, well, I'm getting I don't wanna get bogged down in green transition again because I've talked to that at length already, haven't I? But, there I think we need to definitely have a clarity and we need to have mindset and adapt, you know. I I I go, you know, it's I summarize it in a in a in a in a in a different way. I've I've come to summarizing in different way. I've come to summarize it as, you know, does the lump of concrete in front of you give you joy or does a tree in front of you you give you joy? Well, that's right, David. Yeah. That's a good point exactly. I agree with you about that. It's a great way of analyzing it. I couldn't agree more. It's a it is like that, isn't it? We have to ask ourselves that fundamental question. Does that lump of concrete satisfy, you know, our mental capacities and needs? Or are we ready to break free to be able to do, to move forward? Even if it's only small steps at a time, it is still vitally relevant in order to do what we need to do. There is so much needed to be done. We don't have x amount of years to be able to get our acts together collectively. I can say it like that because when I say acts together, I'm not just talking about political or, or leaders or or, governmental institutions or corporations or all those extremities. I'm talking about everybody collectively across our planet because we can all play a difference. We can all make, different and vital parts necessary to be able to make those changes, the cogs in the wheel, if I can put it like that. So, yeah, it's absolutely very much a case. Now we've gotta ask ourselves that fundamentally difficult question. Does this, does this thing in front of us? Does it give us joy? Or are we ready to open our minds to be able to see? Yeah. You know, with with the clarity of thought as I'm using that word clarity again, but I think it's very relevant. Yeah because there's a lot of brain fog about as we know so yeah. I'm sorry. I'm Richard. Sorry, Richard. Yeah. No. No. I was gonna say, alright, Richard. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna put you on the big screen. Here we go. Yeah. Well, it's So let's let's talk about The honesty argument, I think, is it sits at the heart of it all. And you commented on the alpha male versus feminine power. I think it's possibly for me a bit more profound than that. I generally think women are better leaders than men because they they tend to think about issues a little bit differently. And and that means they're more apt at leading from the top than men who are perhaps driven by other emotions. However, what I would want to see, and I think and we've spoken about this many times before. I think the world is ready for leaders who are prepared to tell the truth to to the electorate or the organization they're in charge of. It's been a really tough sell to tell people you possibly will be worse off financially. I think it will happen. And, you know, I'm not gonna go into a monologue about long term economic trends, but we are pretty far above what could generally be considered our our trend wealth in the world. And we could drop a long way from here without actually going back to mean over where we statistically should be. I think that's a very tough sell for a politician to say you will potentially be financially worse off. However, when you look today, Global Stock Markets are pretty much at all time highs everywhere. Global Property Prices are pretty much at all time high everywhere. And still, when you see confidence data being published, people are not that confident. So there is something out there that is telling a vast majority of us that things are not right despite the kind of optical illusion of us never ever having been rich than we are today. And I think part of it is debt. A huge amount of this wealth is backed by debt that actually is not net wealth, but on the margin being borrowed against. But there is also another sense. And, you know, we've we've we've touched now on the necessity of joy for you to feel good about yourself. And I think that element is essentially what makes people much less confident. They are somewhat fearful and apprehensive about the future. But most of all, you need to ask yourself, are you actually happy in this environment of having more perceived wealth than ever before? And I I don't think that's the case. I would agree about that, Richard. Yeah. Some very good points for me there. I thank you for saying sorry. I'm interrupting. I don't mean to apologize. So were you gonna speak there, Andre? I'm not sure. I I just wanna add add to Richard is, you know, the the reason, in in a sense. You know, there there's this idea of a balance sheet, you know, kind of your your income on-site expenses, the other kind of thing. This is sort of like two sides of the thing. And the reason why it's not working is because our costs and expenses are going up. And so your wealth Absolutely. Which you want the stock markets and people and kind of the conventional sort of view of economics goes along and says, see, you know, this is as long as this increases, it's great. The role of governments has always been about trying to somehow make sure that we don't get the recessions, we don't get the times when we don't drop get the drop in wealth in that that way. And central banks were supposed to keep check on the prices of things. So that's kind of how it it works in that big way. But central banks can't stop rivers from drying out. Believe you or not, they really can't. I mean, you may think that they've got great power, but they actually can't stop rivers from drying out. And so what happens is that the cost of moving things around, the cost of growing things and cost of everything else goes up. They also can't stop hurricanes from coming. And that again I think people don't realize is that actually central banks can't actually stop hurricanes from coming and nor can governments in that way. So all that they can do is they can inflate everything along in this sort of fictitious economy where wealth can keep growing and as long as we can try and keep that growing faster than we keep expenses growing, then we have this illusion this this sense that everything is going okay. But what that does is it bloats everything up. It drives everything to be more bloated. We need more resources, more extraction, then more efforts needs to be coming to try and make sure that everything stays balanced. In the past, it's been about, you know, this industry shouldn't do this, that industry shouldn't do that, and that's kind of how the long regulations come in a bit like that, but regulations amazingly and quite tragically, you know, also cannot stop the floods from pushing all the cars down the down the roads of piling them up in those ways which I think may come a shock to people because, you know, governments can't stop and Central Banks can't stop the storms and the droughts and regulations can't stop the floods. Absolutely. And those are the things that are happening and they're outside of our system of governance. Absolutely. And they don't. Yes. Are increasing the costs so that it doesn't matter if you think your balance your pension statement is increasing. You're not meeting your costs. And that's how economy collapses. That's how economy fails. Yeah. And it's not that Can I ask you guys a question? Because this is one of the one of those questions I ask on a regular basis that I've never found an answer to. Who is who's the personal people that are supposed to be responsible for asking the question? Is this a good idea? You know, is it a good idea to go from a 1000000 fridges to a 1000000000 fridges on the planet? Is it a good idea to double the amount of cars that we have in available Well, I would imagine, Andrew Andrew, if I can just interject there for a minute, if it's alright to, without interrupting anyone. I would imagine that that is probably a territory I would think of, partly to do with economists and and, the extremities of, of the think tanks, I would imagine, that are, the one of the arms of governmental policy deciding and governmental talks. I would think that there's obviously there are I think if I'm right in saying that there's probably actually institutions that are, for, that are then their daily work is, asking such questions if I'm right in saying I'm sure I am, about such matters. And, I think that, you know, talks of this length, there are definitely, various extremities of, you know, institutional, people that are actually paid. As I said, think tanks, I call them. I guess they are really that are devoted to talking about, whether this is good for the greater good of x amount of, people within societies and so forth and so forth. Yeah? I mean, we know the we know the club club of Rome obviously raised the point, but it's it's like every every country on the planet. It's sort of everyone's going to town, you know. Is artificial intelligence a good idea? You know, we've got a Well, that's another melting point. Here and yeah. Yeah. That's another melting pot, isn't it? Artificial intelligence because there will be that brigade of people to a certain level that will hold their hands up in horror and say artificial intelligence. My god. It's a step too far. You do get those people who are like that. But at the same time, I think we have to understand that we've been given these technological procedures, if I can put it like that, to be able to explore them. The fact that they're actually there, enables us to be able to, maybe move forward, and surprise ourselves with the discussions that we have on artificial intelligence. I think there are levels of it that can be extremely useful within our societies. But, of course, I guess it can come to that extent that if you over artificially intelligence intelligence artificial intelligence civilizations, I couldn't get that word out for a minute, If you over overdo that on a capacity, I guess you can be, sir, be somewhat in trouble, with the way that you've, you know, implemented, an intelligence procedure that can possibly take over human procedures so much in the entirety that it ends up finishing off human, humans to a certain extent. Well, I don't wanna sound ridiculous, but I just, I I'm just banding thoughts around in my mind in terms of, you know, the levels of how far we could go with artificial intelligence. It's always fascinating to see because there's so much of, artificial, intelligent capability that's being still being invented across our planet. And I suppose has been realistically artificial intelligence has been, has been part of our societies for for for many, many decades now, hasn't it? I would imagine at least since the sixties, late sixties maybe, because they were, they were they were, how can I put it, developing, that level of, artificial brainpower and, thinking, weren't they? Within labs and that all that time ago. So, I would think sorry. We were gonna say something there, Richard. Yeah. Sorry. Well Or was Davis or I mean, I was gonna say, you know, again, we we can go go on down a lot in there, but I want to bring back about this sort of economics and, you know, the Yeah. Blaine's David. Markets driven by a few tech firms and so on. And and people make money. For company to make people, they don't make people buy more artificial intelligence playing on artificial intelligence doing things. They need people to go and do something in order to make money. So the the the source of all of our of our money, of the money that comes about is people engaging with activities themselves in in some form or other. So whatever may happen with the artificial intelligence and for all the amount that's spent along with it, what it's going to do is it means that you are going to have to do more of something. Otherwise, that money is not going to be made. Because if a machine just does small, that's something that doesn't make money. It has to end up with people doing that. That's the thing about nature. Nature doesn't actually make money. It doesn't need to make money. Its economy operates without having to have that in that way. We've created a situation where we end up forcing ourselves into these. So all this talk and hype about artificial intelligence is actually an entrapment to say you are now going to have to spend a lot more of your time fixated on something in some way so that more money can be made. Absolutely. In that way. I agree completely. The issue is not about whether it's more intelligent than people or whatever it is. The issue is how do you want to spend your time living your life? Yeah. I I completely agree with you there, David. We do get fixated on that level of, of, of thinking. It's a dangerous way to be, you know, for a mindset to go. And just before I say anything else, I do wanna apologize for the weird angle of my camera as I was pointing towards my lampshade in the living room. And the reason is because I've got a Ben Crouch down with my phone charger on as I'm actually speaking. So do apologize for the weird angle, Andrea. And, and Richard for what it's worth. So if you I don't know. Crouched down for the remainder for the remainder of this, Andrea, you'll know why I'm crouched down at a funny angle here because I'm I'm trying to get back to comfortable. Yeah. Well, just about it's not it's not it's not, it's not brilliant, but I'm doing my best, you know. Yeah. I'm doing my best. The artificial intelligence, thing, it's it's it's an interesting one because, like David said, we could go in many directions. But for me, the thing that most people are unaware of is how energy intensive it is. And so, yes, we've always had it, but but by mainstreaming it, you know, so March this year, the biggest fossil fuel industry event on the planet was just full of technology industry people trying to work out how they could get more power to for for AI, which kinda felt like the most just the craziest situation that, you know, here we go. The technology industry, which was always looking like it was gonna do the right thing, is from from a sustainability perspective. Now now it looks like that's the one that's gonna send us over a cliff. But, looking at the time, so, you know, so there were 2 components of what we were talking about today. So first is financing for the developing world, whether it's for to moving to sustainable energy or or, adaptation and the impact on your own pocket. And I don't think we we dug into that as much as I thought we were going to dig into that because we sort of stayed in that really big space. But we've got a why don't each of you just give us your final thoughts on either of those areas, and then we can wish everyone a merry Christmas or happy holidays. Exactly. Again, will we, Andrea, until after Christmas and night and say this? We're not back. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, who do we who do we let go first? I'm quite happy for David or Richard to, to speak first. Or I'm happy to kick off. Alright. I think, people are sort of disappointed by the amount $300,000,000,000 that were granted over a long time for helping the poorest nations. And, I think that aside, it's becoming increasingly clear that there is no more money. And and the model where we are somehow thinking we're gonna fund the poorest nations, those most exposed to the sort of perils of of climate change will not work with money. The rich world is essentially imploding over money, which again, paradoxically seems crazy with stock markets at all time high. But it's because governments are running out of money. COVID obviously didn't help because debts took a big jump during an expensive period for governments to maintain some kind of social cohesion. But this has been going on for decades, where, essentially, public finances are consistently spending more than it's coming in. And it's now accelerating because interest rates are no longer at 0. So financing that debt becomes a lot more costly. That is a situation we need to see as the reality. Everyone in the sort of supranational space calling for money simply do not understand the severity of this issue. Europe has no money. The 2 major countries of that continent is essentially going to reelection over money. Donald Trump is basically pulling back the US from any commitments because the US fiscal situation is possibly even worse. There is no money. And anyone calling for that as the solution simply is living for me in a parallel universe. When there is no more money, you need to look at different parts forward because money cannot fix this problem because you cannot invent it or print it contrary to what some people believe. All you will get is increased inflation. So we're starting that. There is no money. Now what can you do? Yeah. No. I'm not taking too personal, sir. And and is it and is it is it and and when you say what can you do, so I'm I'm not asking you to have the whole answer, but, I mean, do we need to fall apart so we can pull ourselves back together to work it out? Is that kind of where we are or what I'll tell you something, Andrea. I've got, I've got certain thoughts that might be of use on the subject. So, if I'm if I'm okay to speak for a minute. I think Richard's finished. I'm not sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You start with the honesty of saying there is no money. There is no money. Now you see, this is something that the reality hasn't actually got into the mindsets of all those activists at that COP 29 because they're shouting and shrieking at the tops of their voices, about we need more money. We don't need we don't we're not accepting 1,000,000,000. We want 1,000,000,000,000. But the reality is, as you've just, said, Richard, you can't print money indefinitely expect it to be there. It's not gonna happen. So I think fundamentally now we have to shift the paragraph, if I can put it like that completely, and how we fundamentally address this. I know I've said this before and I firmly believe this is, one particular context that needs to be taken on board that, when you think of the 1,000,000 and trillions in fossil fuel subsidies that's still being allowed, that level of money should be severed in any subsidies for fossil fuel companies completely as of this moment. That is one way of being able to, to bring much needed capital and money into the situation for the extremities and those vital, situations that now need to be accounted for globally that we've been talking about. Robert, can I can I can I just raise a point on that? Because Well, you do and be. Yeah. Thank you. The sub the subsidy conversation, and I I always find it's a very confusing one. Yeah. So my my understanding of subsidies is it's actually subsidizing the cost of fossil fuels actually at the pump. So anytime Yeah. A country reduces its subsidies, it means that the fossil fuels are gonna cost the individual more Yeah. Which means it's gonna cost more for them to drive, and that's always the starting point of revolutions in countries. So taking subsidies out well, everyone talks about it a lot. Is is it actually, potential for revolution anyway, so it's not a good idea? I don't know. It's a very fine line, Anne, to be honest with you. An incredibly fine line. And, that's right. To the fossil fuel companies. It's going to the the pockets of the people. I think that is the basis for the revolution. I say let the revolution do it. Yeah. I I I don't have a problem with that. You can't I mean, you can't do that. You you can't you can't go along and make people's lives worse than they are. Of course not. Because most of most of the people, you know, you you you look around at the world today and the developed countries have the luxury of being able to cut down their emissions and they're making some progress in that. Obviously no country is making as fast progress as people would like, but the increase in the in the use of oil and gas and coal is coming from the countries that are needing to develop and wanting to develop and there is a mentality about what development actually means. In those places, every time that there have been subsidies there have been deaths, in cuts in subsidies and reduction in subsidies. There have been violent deaths, there have been violent demonstrations, there have been changes to the governors that you're gonna get along. And that will not change. These are locked in aspect. The thing I keep I was point trying to point out to the money that people are looking at, the top 2,000 companies in the world has an annual revenue of over$50,000,000,000,000. Just think of that. Okay? That's the money everybody is spending. If you put it through governments in form of taxes, governments have their mandate, which are driven by the electoral situation, which then has to go to fulfilling that individual national needs first. People can help and direct that money more more directly into the things that they feel they may help. And the best way to do that is to put an extra step in there, lock in the oil and gas and coal in the ground. So let me give you an example. Columbia loves feet football. You know, it's a it's a great fantastic thing. The Chinese people love football. There have you seen the village super league, the clips of village super league. Absolutely amazing fascinating stuff. Huge amount of money is spent by individual supporting football law. So Colombia has signed on to the new to the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. It's desperately trying not to use oil gas and coal and carry on, but it's the largest exporter of coal in Latin America. So how about going to the environment minister who's very advocate, very loud voice during COP 29 about how there needs to be a transition and the money needs to come somewhere and say, why don't you work on our behalf with the Colombian government, who are the people ultimately get the royalties from the coal that's extracted, and say after 50 years of production left, we're gonna start chipping at the end of it. And the money that comes from our football fans in from Colombia into the country in that way goes back to the community for them to figure out how they can best not be not need that export, create new exports that they can have in that time. Just that one loop. The money is there in that way. It's in the money we are all spending each day. We just don't think that we have the collective power to direct it, and we don't think about directing it at the coal and the oil and the gas that's still in the ground. We keep talking about the stuff that's being dug out. The stuff that's being dug out is being dug out. If you take it away, 82% of all energy comes from oil, gas and coal. You're gonna kill someone. Absolutely. Yeah. That future of saying, actually, put it into the stuff that's not come out yet so that that can be kept in the ground. But sir, use that as a way to circulate that money back into the projects that makes it not necessary to keep it out. Allow the people to allow the economics to emerge from there rather than trying to get governments to get huge plans. You you you take a look at the big plan for renewable energy. They're all massive grid projects for most of the places in the world which needs developing. That is about the most expensive way of getting energy to people like the comment before about Uganda and the refugee camp. You don't need a massive electric grid project for them to cook. What you need is a little bit of a solar cooker Yeah. To do that. Places need or need water. Chile in 18/74. That's what, 150 years ago, were able to produce 23,000 liters of water by distillation using the sun and bits of glass. That technology and materials are available almost everywhere in the world by people in middle school to do. And you know what? It needed about 70 by 70 meters area to do it and you can chop that up into any size. So your household can produce it for themselves in that way and when you do that you improve knowledge of how to use technology. You turn your school lessons from being about how to get into Harvard and MIT to being about how you actually make food and water for yourself. Yeah. Some very good points there David. I completely agree with you. So so let let me come back with with my tip. My tip, which is what I've been doing over the past year, is go and plant something in your house. Take the seed from the fruit and vegetable that you eat. Stick them in the bowl into a cup, put a bit of water on it, just keep it from, you know, until it germinates a bit, get a pot something, plant it, see what happens. What you found what I found is celery grows back from from the bit that's there. So I buy from supermarket, there's no root attached. I just chop the top of it off and the last little bit of it put on the dish eventually new roots come out, I stick it in and they grow back out. I didn't know that. But when you start experimenting with things like that, you start opening your own perspective to what you yourself can do, and that's the most powerful thing of all. The sense that you are able to do things for yourself. I completely agree with you, David. Yes. And good points there from you. It's a way of thinking though, isn't it, at the end of the day? If we actually understand these thoughts that you're saying here, if we can take them on board in our own minds, it's going to be to the greater good for us, you know, in how we think about things and how we think about what's going on around us and within our daily lives. We don't want to necessarily we don't want to be hurting ourselves as we've mentioned already within the context of the conversations that we've had here today, but, we do have to shift our minds to be able to mentally cope in the right ways and to be able to think with, as I said, with an openness of thought, that is lacking in the way that we come to our conclusions about things. So, it's all about, being able to think clearly and to be able to think that, to be able to connect subject, fundamentally, as you just expressed there, David, with the way that we, with the way we think about nature as well, which is so fundamentally important. And of course, we have to also connect with touching on your points as well, David, about the, our our abilities to understand that the fossil fuels that we've got in the ground, we have to subjectively think in those terms of being able to make sure that we address these issues to keep, with the financial side of things to keep those, in the ground, and we have to be able to work within the context of making sure financially with the decisions that we do. We have to focus on that ability to keep those on the ground because we keep screaming about the sheer amount of fossil fuels that are being taken out, as we've just said in the context of our conversations here. But we do fundamentally need to see we need to shift our mindsets in the way that we think about this issue with fossil fuels. If we can do that, I think we can we can make fundamental progress on that issue, if I can say that. So, Andrea, have you got anything else to to to add thoughts? No. No. No. I mean, I think I'm moving around because I'm trying to bend in. No. It's okay. No. No. It's it's it's such a it's such a big conversation that we're having here, right, that if you actually listen messages. Yeah. There's there's some there's there's some really basic messages that are coming through. Right? We're we're we're at a crisis point. We we are continuing with business as usual, and, you know, we're we're we've added, what, 18% sustainable energy to the grid, but we're still we're actually that's just more energy, so we're still living the way we've always lived. And that's fundamentally what we've gotta be really be thinking about changing. You know, and and it's the business as usual that's the problem. We can't have a sustainable future if we continue having the same way that we're living today. You know? And I I don't think people are kinda making that connection. I think from an economics point of view, you know, you know, people should be thinking about what does it mean to me? You know, what does it mean to my future plans? What does it mean, you know, if you if you own a property, like, I I don't know what the place that was in the UK or in Wales that was flooded for the 3rd time this year. It could be the 1st abandoned, town in in the UK. Right? I mean, those places are everywhere. All of those, Mac housing estates across Australia and America that have been built in in flood plains. There's gonna be more moisture in the air. There's gonna be more floods. Right? So, you know, I just keep saying it. It's paid. Yeah. Paid taxes to what it's gonna impact you. Right? You've got it. I mean, it's in your own interest and people don't wanna they don't wanna face into this. But then I I always say to people, at least understand the risk to yourself personally, and then start thinking about what does it mean to me, What do I need to do about it? You know? Yeah. Absolutely. It's not bad. You see, the thing is, yeah, it's all about mentality of thought again, Andrew, about people actually thinking about, how they're going to be able to address these issues for the greater good of not just themselves and their families, but for their communities as well. Because we're talking about we've seen this. Even this year, 2024, those spay those, floods that have decimated communities in Spain, Under our present, wipeout conditions, as I call it, I'm only too, too too used to using those words, wipeout conditions, because they fundamentally do, explain the situation that we're having to encompass at the moment. These conditions that we're continuing to see will just under our present path as I keep on banging on like a broken record on x, we'll just, we'll just continue if we don't fundamentally get a grip on this. You know, we'll just have more and more extreme weather events blanketing our communities, and we'll just continue to see community after community going underwater like we've never seen before, you know, in our history. And, you know, we'll we'll just get to that stage where there could be that potential stage where there's very few few communities left that aren't underwater if we continue with our present business as usual, situation. But we do have to fundamentally get a grip here in the you know, for the greater good of, of billions and millions of people. But, getting that message across, even though if we think just for a minute that all those communities just in Spain alone that have gone underwater and even at this very moment now, as I say these words, we've got more and more communities in on the Asia, basin and, you know, the Taiwanese floods and all those associated areas across their Malaysia, etcetera, etcetera that are Indonesia Indonesia today. Yeah. Indonesia. Yeah. Absolutely. That being blanket covered by flooding. You know, even though we have this level of collapse, we are still not changing our ways. So, I'm continually asking myself every single day, to be honest with you, just how much will it how much collapse of our our communities will it take before we finally finally understand we have to, change our whole mindsets on how we continue to live our lives here because, if we don't get a grip on this, within x amount of years, and then maybe I'm just speaking about a 5 to 10 year block alone, I won't dare go any further because I already read all the I already read all the scientific and climate data from some of the most respected climate scientists across our planet. And, I will say that when scientists are as scared climate scientists are as scared as they've ever been in their lives and their careers, it has to send the alarm bells ringing in all the right places in order for subjective change to not just be something that we think about and band around tables for the next 5 to 10 years where more communities go underwater, but we have to subjectively get an get our acts together in in fundamentally changing the way that the business as usual module is allowed to conduct itself at the present time. So, I hope I'm not talking over time, Andrew, but I needed to add that to the communication for what it's worth. Yeah. No. It's it's absolutely right. David, Richard, final words? Honesty. Yeah. Nothing more, nothing less. You know, it starts there. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing more, nothing less. You know, it starts there. Yeah. Yeah. When when do you think when do you think I'm I'm you know, when Robert was saying you're sort of looking at the extreme weather events. So we've got no money now, and everything's getting more extreme. Right? So from an honesty perspective, just imagine how, you know, like like, I think, David, you always say, nobody's coming to save us. Right? No. That's very true, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's I think I think we we need to we need to I I take, I take everything that Robert's been saying as this is how it is. This is this is the reality. I I I take it as saying, we we are so far gone in in that in that sense that we have to accept. This is like, you know, you you you come out from, a a biopsy and the doctor comes along and says, sorry, you know, it's what we said. You know, you you kind of have to take it and say, okay. That's what it is. That's that's that's the honesty. That's the truth. Accept that. And then what we need to do is to start asking how do we how are we there for each other? How do we thrive? I think I think it's very important that at this point, we are no longer fighting the battle that was 30 years ago. Absolutely. Which is how do we avoid it. Absolutely. The goalpost of change beyond beyond beyond that. Yes. Here we are. This is it. That's the honesty. So how are we here for each other? How do we thrive? Yep. And and that has to accept, you know, what do we have around us? Just look around in what way do we do that. The smile to our neighbor, that's important Yeah. For whatever it was. You obviously don't know my neighbor, but okay. Yeah. Well, I'll leave it there then. No. I think I think that's a I think that's such a great place to leave it, David, because community. Really focus on community resilience within yourself and within your community, taking care of each other and holding on to our humanity, but also let's fight the dystopia. Absolutely, Andrew. I completely agree with you about that. It's communities are vital king kingpins of the way that we can continue to, keep ourselves held together, you know, in a crisis that so many of us have, have had no if I can put that no hand in. So yeah. It's vital we continue to we work together, we think together, we must unite together, we must strive together, and we must implement together as well. Yeah. If I can add those final words to it. Yeah. And don't let the 30% take us over the edge. Right? The 70 Yeah. You you even after that percent yeah. The 70% need to rise instead of take take back the reigns. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We could do it. Alright. So for everyone celebrating, merry Christmas. We're gonna be, back sometime in February. Really appreciate everyone who's been checking in in the comments. A little bit quiet today because we're I think we're having a little bit more of a a serious conversation. But, we we really appreciate everyone checking in. And, Robert, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. It's a pleasure always. And Richard and David as well. Thank you. Yeah. And, we'll see you guys in the new year. Happy new year. Indeed. Happy new happy Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year to you all. Happy Christmas. See you in 2025. Yeah.