Heavier hurricanes and ever more intense wildfires are just some of the extreme weather increasingly driving people in the US out of their homes. Yet, climate change remains largely off the agenda for the US elections. Their outcome, says former US special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, will have consequences for climate talks.
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00:00The U.S. elections are just around the corner, and while climate change is not on the agenda,
00:06it's one of the major concerns for the international community when looking at what is happening
00:10here in the U.S. I'm here with former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern,
00:18to talk about that and more.
00:20Thank you for joining me. I wanted to ask you about the elections. You know, climate
00:25change has not been on the agenda much in the U.S., and I was wondering what you thought
00:30about that.
00:31On the agenda of the election, you mean?
00:32Exactly.
00:33Yeah. You know, I'm pragmatic about these things. I want Kamala Harris to get elected.
00:40I want the Democrats to get elected. We already know what Donald Trump thinks about climate
00:45change, and I have not a particle of doubt that if he wins, he'll take the U.S. out of
00:51Paris again. I mean, that's just where he is. That would be enormously problematic and
00:59disruptive. So I think that Kamala Harris has a very good team of advisers helping her
01:06in her campaign. I'd be delighted to hear more talk about climate change, but it doesn't
01:13like if they do what they do in order to be able to get enough votes, that's what matters.
01:19Then I have no doubt that she would be excellent. I think she will follow in the steps of President
01:26Biden and before him, President Obama. And I think she totally believes in the importance
01:32of climate change. And I think she'd be a real leader. That's what I care about, not
01:38who says what in this election.
01:40But I mean, in terms of, I mean, you said President Trump already took the U.S. out
01:45of the Paris agreement when he was in power last time. I mean, what were the real impacts
01:50of that that would give you concern if it happens again?
01:54Well, I mean, for starters, you're not going to get any new domestic policy. I mean, there's
02:00an international side of this and there's a domestic side of this. So the most important
02:04part of it is the domestic side. And, you know, and the IRA is having a huge impact,
02:13right? I mean, so I think he may try to undo some of that. He's not going to be able to
02:17undo a lot of it. But if Kamala Harris comes in, there will be new policy measures taken
02:25to spur greater development of clean energy, purchasing of clean energy, you know, rebates
02:33for people who buy electric vehicles and whatever. I mean, there's all sorts of different policies.
02:39And a Kamala Harris administration is certainly going to, I don't know which ones they're
02:43going to do, but they're going to they're going to act in that in that way. Trump won't.
02:48Trump will try to support more fossil fuels. He'll try to, I mean, he just doesn't believe
02:54in it. So that's a big, big problem in terms of the international side. Look, when he pulled
03:01out last time, I was pretty convinced that other countries would not follow, that other
03:07countries are bought in enough to Paris that they would they would continue. And they did.
03:14So that was obviously good. But it's different if you have the U.S. as a real leader on the
03:20international side. It's different if you're the president of China. And every time the
03:27U.S. president, like Barack Obama, talks to you, he's raising climate change. And and
03:35down at levels below the president, people are engaging on climate change. And then China
03:43knows that and they know they're going to have to respond. And when Donald Trump's president,
03:50the number of times when Donald Trump would have raised climate change with President
03:53Xi Jinping is zero. Does that affect China's actions? My guess is it does. I mean, like,
03:59I don't know for sure, but I think, you know, I think it's undermining and not just with
04:04respect to China, with respect to other countries as well.
04:07With regards to the COP29 coming up this year, I mean, the U.S. is one of the biggest funders
04:13when it comes to climate finance. If, you know, I mean, we're going to have the results
04:19of the U.S. election days before those negotiations take place. I mean, what impact do you expect
04:27the results then to have on the negotiations?
04:30Very positive. If Harris wins and a big relief, I think countries all over the world care
04:37about climate change and negotiators all over the world and ministers and so forth, I think
04:44are holding their breath a little bit nervous because the election is going to be very close.
04:51And so if she wins, there'll be a sigh of relief and a now a so you you're relieved
05:00and now you can talk about what what can we do next. And finance, climate finance is the
05:06biggest, the single biggest issue for Baku. And there's the issue on the table is that
05:15under Paris, the hundred billion dollars a year by 2020 that was originally promised
05:21all the way back in Copenhagen was supposed to continue to 2025 and then a new number
05:27come up and a new number that's not lower than 100. And maybe with some other countries
05:32participating in terms of donating. So what that what that number is going to be is a big issue.
05:40But there's also I mean, we don't know how this is all going to work out. In my view,
05:48there's there's kind of two elements of finance that need to be taken into account. One is that
05:56that number within the UNFCCC system needs in the sort of the Paris regime, that number
06:02needs to be put forward. A lot of countries want that to be a trillion or numbers like that,
06:06which are completely unrealistic in that context. There are other efforts that have been going on
06:13with respect to finance, climate finance, including the last I think the last three G20s.
06:21And honestly, the financial expertise does not reside in the UNFCCC, does not reside in the
06:28Paris regime, it resides in treasuries and finance ministries and the kinds of
06:36government ministries that are engaged in precisely in places like the G20.
06:43It's going to be tremendously important to get that right, because countries legitimately and
06:49correctly feel that there needs to be a lot more support. And if Kamala Harris wins, can we see
06:56perhaps the US taking some more leadership on that?
06:59I hope that the answer is yes, I can't speak for the, you know, there isn't an administration yet.
07:04And I would hope that a focus on how these big multilateral development banks and others
07:12need to be reformed in order to make this possible. Yes, I hope that that's an issue that
07:17that people, you know, that a new Harris administration would focus on. I think it's
07:23important. But I'm not in the administration. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a former.
07:28You were involved in the negotiations for the Paris Agreement.
07:32I mean, what was the mood like after the agreement was initially signed?
07:38The mood was very elated. This was a process that really started in earnest in 2009.
07:48And President Obama came in that year in January. And I was one of the people who came with him. So
07:54I was the special envoy during his years. And it was a hard and difficult up and down road.
08:06And by the time the Paris Agreement got done, I think it was, I think it actually exceeded most
08:13people's, I mean, in terms of negotiators and countries, it was, it exceeded most people's
08:21best estimate of what might happen. It's now almost 10 years on.
08:25What do you think about the action that has been taken since the Paris Agreement?
08:28Well, I think it's mixed. I think I think that that that there's been a lot of a lot of good.
08:36I think that the, you can't deal with this problem without the international side.
08:45There's obviously other aspects of the agreement. You need technology, you need domestic policy,
08:51you need lots of other things. But you really need an international agreement because you've
08:54got 190 something countries. And countries are not going to act unless they know that
08:59their competitors and their partners and other countries are also going to act.
09:04So the international side of it, really, really important. And I think if you if you sort of step
09:11back and look at where we are right now, we are facing more intense,
09:21sort of harder and faster impacts from climate change, even than people imagined.
09:28We are also in a world where there is spectacular progress on the technology side.
09:34And some of that is driven by it was driven by Paris. And when you the signal that Paris sent
09:39to the whole world, to people, but also to companies in boardrooms all over the world was
09:45that leaders of the world are serious about this. Now they're going to act on this.
09:49And that helped to spur all sorts of innovative action,
09:56inventors and companies springing up to try to take advantage of that. So that's been really,
10:02really good. But there are still big obstacles. And so you've got these different factors going
10:08on with the impacts are worse. The technology and progress, the clean energy progress is
10:14spectacular. But there's still big obstacles. And the biggest of them is the fossil fuel industry.
10:20I mean, considering the the extreme weather effects that we are seeing as a result of
10:26climate change. So, you know, we've got like heavy flooding in Central Europe at the moment.
10:30We've got fires in Brazil. I mean, has there been enough urgency? I mean, you mentioned the
10:35fossil fuel industry, particularly within the fossil fuel industry to decarbonize and to get
10:41on a path with 1.5 degree. Well, so, you know, there's been I think that there has been a greater
10:50and greater sense of urgency in general. And certainly there's been greater and greater
10:57sort of emphasis and greater and greater action coming from the clean energy side of things.
11:04With respect to most fossil fuel companies, no, they are not acting in a way that is
11:12consistent with where we need to go. I mean, we're not going to get rid of fossil fuels overnight.
11:19But let's remember that the goal that countries around the world have,
11:26there's sort of two big goals and mid-century goals that countries have agreed to. One is to
11:31try to keep the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees centigrade or as close to that as possible.
11:39And to have something like net zero emissions in mid-century around 2050. And I think
11:49you will find various fossil fuel companies trying to say the right thing to make people
11:54who care about climate change think that they are listening. And some people in those industries are
12:00for sure. But if you really listen to the people in that industry that are in charge,
12:09they want to be doing what they're doing now 30 years from now. And so that,
12:14so, yeah, do they have enough understanding? I mean, most of them, no.
12:19I mean, if you look at the policies then being taken by countries like the US, for example,
12:23to try to decarbonize and limit carbon dioxide emissions, do you feel that the action is enough?
12:33Well, I think that under President Obama, what the US has done has been
12:41really very, very good. And the so-called IRA is the biggest piece of legislation,
12:50but not the only one. From President Biden, sorry, that was, right? President Biden. Yeah.
12:57And I mean, it took a long time to get that bill, that law passed and the razor-thin margin,
13:06the razor-thin margin is very, you know, it was tough, but, and there's an infrastructure bill
13:12and there's a bill on chips that also has some impact on climate. IRA is the biggest of all. And
13:21that's been, you know, very, very effective. That's been, that has been very, very good.
13:27The US took on a target for 2030 back when Biden was elected, which was aimed at cutting
13:37emissions in half by 2030. I don't think we're going to quite get there, but we're getting a
13:42lot farther than we would have before. And there's a new round of targets that countries have to take
13:52coming up next year. I think the country that is the most important right now with respect to
13:58targets and amounts of emissions is obviously China. And China accounts for about 30%
14:06of the world's greenhouse gases, which is more than all developed countries put together.
14:13It's going to be really important that China come out with a very strong pledge
14:21for what happens in these new targets, because the targets go out to 2035.
14:28I think something like a 30% cut of their emissions is what people are going to be looking
14:35at. And, you know, we'll see. Well, thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure to
14:41talk to you. And yeah, thank you. Thanks.