“This house believes that tackling climate change is good for global equality”
Prepare to question everything you think you know about climate change and equality as the ‘against’ team wins this fascinating debate at the Oxford World Forum 2023.
Topics discussed include:
• What is the value of collaboration and competition around climate action globally?
• Will climate action widen or narrow the development gap?
• Can renewables enable the democratisation of energy?
• How might legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act affect momentum in the global south?
Chair
Pilita Clark, Associate Editor, Financial Times
For
Dr Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)
Charlotte Wargniez, MSc Student, Smith School on Enterprise and the Environment
Dr Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund
Against
Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive, Energy UK
Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War on Want
Alexis McGivern, Net Zero Standards Manager, Oxford Net Zero
Beginning of session poll: Is tackling climate change good for global equality?
78% YES 22% NO
End of session poll: Is tackling climate change good for global equality?
38% YES 62% NO
It is Oxford so we need to have an Oxford debate my task is just to introduce the moderator of the date to polita Clark from the financial times um but before I do that I’d just like to say that the proposition that this house believes that tackling climate change is
Good for Global equality is a meaty one and you shouldn’t necessarily assume that everybody is arguing for the site that they actually personally believe in which makes it quite enjoyable often think that more of us should spend more of our time arguing the opposite of our prior beliefs
Um so I leave that thought with you but I’m I’m simply going to introduce balita who’s a super friend of the Smith school she’s a business fellow at this music school but mainly she’s associate editor and business columnist at the financial times so she’s been writing a weekly
Column which I’m sure many of you read I certainly do on corporate life and a range of other exciting things you should be covering environment and climate and Aviation the environment for um actually I shouldn’t say a very long time but let me give precise dates since
2003. so polita thanks for your support thanks the Ft for being our media sponsor and I’m certainly very much looking forward to the debate thank you well thank you very much Cameron it’s a great pleasure to be here today um I think I’m right in saying that this
Is the first time that the Forum has had a debate so a new addition to the Forum one that I heartily approve of um we are of course as you all know just a short stroll away from the Oxford Union where people have been debating all manner of things from membership of
The EU to whether we should go and live on Mars to the rise of hookup culture uh very pleased that today we are going to be debating emotion which is kind of come up in some ways in the earlier discussions today some of the themes I think we may hear being repeated but
Really the idea that this house believes that tackling climate change is good for Global equality is as Cameron says a little bit trickier than it may first appear we won’t be using all of the Oxford Union’s rules we will be having an audience vote before and after and
I’ll be explaining shortly how you will be able to vote uh but first of all I’d like to introduce our two absolutely brilliant teams and um huge kudos to the Smith school for organizing uh these teams So speaking for the motion we have Dr Aruna begosh who’s the founder and
Chief executive of the Council on energy environment and water which is a think tank very um esteemed Think Tank aaronaba has also been an advisor to an array of governments and U.N environmental processes everything from the Montreal protocol to the Paris agreement and most recently an extremely influential U.N report on corporate Net
Zero Target the second speaker for the motion is going to be Charlotte Vanier who is a student at the Smith School where she’s doing one of the exceedingly sought after master of science degrees in sustainability Enterprise and the environment Charlotte’s already done an hbse at the University of Toronto and
She’s now a research assistant at the school of geography and the environment the final speaker for the for the motion will be Susie Kerr Who’s chief Economist at the environmental defense fund which is one of the largest and most influential environmental campaign groups in the U.S Susie has done
Extremely important climate work for many many years she helped to create the New Zealand emissions trading scheme and she’s advised several governments on carbon Market design speaking against the motion we have first of all Emma pinchbeck who is the chief executive of the energy trade Body Energy UK which represents large
Generators suppliers all manner of energy companies if you listen to the Today’s Show I’m sure you already will have heard Emma speak before she joined energy UK Emma was at the deputy chief executive at renewable UK and previously head of climate change at WWF UK second speaker is Alexis mcgivern who is
Net zero standards manager at Oxford Net Zero research initiative here in Oxford she also runs a training program for four and a half thousand climate Justice activists and she was previously at the international Union for conservation of nature which publishes the very well-known red list of threatened
Species and third on the against team is Assad Raymond who is the executive director of War on want which is a group that campaigns to end poverty and Injustice and Assad was previously head of the international climate at Friends of the earth he served on boards including Amnesty International UK
Global Justice now just to name two of them okay so these are our two teams the rules are that each member of the team will be speaking for eight minutes in turn starting with a representative from the four team they will then have four minutes at the
End to make some very brief closing remarks and to rebut what the other team has said as I said before we start though we are going to take a vote and we’re going to be using slido which I’m sure is an app or it’s a website that you will be
Familiar with if you point your phones at that QR code I have tried this myself it does work you will come up with the question that you’re going to be asked to vote on which is is tackling climate change good for Global equality see a few phones still up so I’m just
Going to wait for everybody to pull it up anybody having trouble hands up any no no trouble okay vote away if you believe that tackling climate climate change is good for Global econ equality please tick yes if you don’t please tick no we will shortly have a big reveal but not quite yet
Just go a few more seconds we’re dangerously close to running on time which is astonishing but don’t get okay has everybody anybody still waiting to vote okay I think we can now see what the answer is ah 78 okay what a surprise okay well that um that means it’s time
For the debate to start so 78 for you are the first speaker um let’s see how you do in confirming that 78 please welcome our first Speaker for the motion Aaron abigosh thank you [Applause] oops good option everyone and thank you for having me here the last time I did an
Oxford debate I think it was 20 years ago uh the planet I won’t tell you how the debate went but the planet was definitely less warm but the world was definitely more united um so can we now focus on climate action in a manner that we also deliver a world
That is more united more Equitable and I’m here to suggest that we can we are dealing with a world where on one hand countries and people are having to handle a challenge of debt and development and on the other hand a challenge of disaster and decarbonization more than 50 countries across the world
Are heavily indebted which reduces their capacity to act on a range of sustainable development goals only a fifth of the sdgs which are meant to be achieved by 2030 are on track and therefore how does a country or how does a community handle that level of indebtedness and crisis a Here and Now
Crisis while also living in a year which happens to be the hottest on record which has had wildfires from Hawaii all the way to Asia how does that economy then also deliver opportunities that make us more resilient against the disasters but also make us a participate in the world of decarbonization
I’m going to suggest to you that we can do that in three ways that climate action can on one hand Bridge the development divide between countries that climate action can Bridge The Economic Opportunity divide between economies and that climate action can Bridge the Justice divide between people
Just a few weeks ago when the G20 leaders Summit occurred with the world’s most prosperous economies and the fastest growing economies coming together there was a recommitment to the sdgs but more importantly there was what was called a green development Pact a pact a covenant not an international
Treaty not a negotiation but a pact that suggested the green and development can go together let’s take two examples then when these stgs were announced in 2015 India my country had the largest number of people without access to electricity over the last two decades about 700 million people have got access to
Electricity in India over the remainder of this decade 700 million people in the world have to get access to electricity bridging this energy access divide which can drive a range of other climate climate and sustainable development outcomes is part of that green development Pact but then there’s another part of that
Pact which is about Finance and if we can drive climate action in a manner that delivers Finance then we can deliver the equity that is missing unfortunately I’ll be the first to say that money does not flow where the sun shines the most when I started CW in 2010 none of the
Top 10 countries with solar capacity were in the tropics and yet since then India has deployed 70 000 megawatts of solar capacity 42 000 megawatts of wind capacity and yet if we look across the world all of Africa gets less than three percent of clean energy investment
So acting on climate means acting in the geographies where infrastructure is needed and that infrastructure has to be sustainable and for that to happen Finance has to flow the trillions of dollars that need to flow to the billions of people in the global South but bridging this development divide by focusing on
Clean energy not just by sdg 13 but sdg7 sdg6 on water which then helps to drive outcomes on gender on public health and on education perhaps creates the foundations of sustainable development and human development but I would propose to you that we can also then Bridge The Economic Opportunity divide
When we think of the energy transition and climate action we are faced with a triple challenge of money which I’ve talked about Manpower and materials but is there a way to overcome this by having a different Mantra of jobs growth and sustainability less than one percent of the global
Workforce is in the fossil fuel extraction sector And yet when we think about the just transition we focus on the few ignoring the many that could benefit from a completely different model of development the challenge is not going to be easy just because I’ve quoted some percentages in India again 13 million
People are dependent in some way or the other on cold-led Industries and yet we know that there is the potential of 50 million net new jobs through India’s Net Zero transition across the developing world we see that potential in Vietnam or Malaysia as exporters of solar PVE panels in
Indonesia Colombia as large parts of sustainable agricultural value chains including biofuels and of course in sub-Saharan Africa if we bridged not just the development divide but the Economic Opportunity divide by focusing on the kind of value addition that we derive or can be delivered in these geographies especially when it comes to
Critical minerals but then that leaves us with a Justice divide and can we truly overcome a Justice divide by acting on climate 74 lowest income countries will be most affected by climate change but going back to my first day of debt the challenge with a changing climate a
Challenge with disaster is not just you’re hit by storms and floods and droughts but that the percentage of one’s GDP that gets impacted is far higher in Low Middle income and middle and least developed countries investing in early Warning Systems as was discussed just last week at the U.N secretary General’s climate ambition
Summit actually one minute left right actually allows us to save billions of dollars in losses and thousands of lives investing for instance about two trillion dollars in adaptation and resilience over this decade could generate over seven trillion dollars in global net benefits but it’s not just about increasing resilience also about powering livelihoods
Bridging the Justice divide requires us taking the energy transition closer to people the 37 million livelihoods that could be mobilized in India alone using distributed clean energy for rural livelihoods as I conclude then let me simply propose to you that climate action alone is not going to
Work but climate action to deliver on the development divide on the economic opportunity to divide and the Justice divide by putting people at the heart of it all can deliver a just outcome climate change is only the second greatest crisis facing Humanity the greatest crisis facing humanity is a lack of empathy
A lack of understanding of people of other colors cultures genders and geographies it’s that bridge that we have to Cross arrest my case thank you so much Aaron Albert beautifully timed I have to say uh okay uh the first Speaker against the motion will be Emma Emma pinchbeck thank you foreign
It’s already going brilliantly well as if that pole wasn’t good enough there’s something about being back in Oxford that Justin hinges me which is good news for the team um our contention I think we’re going to hear a lot of the same arguments from both teams the
Difference between the two teams is one of can or could and will and is and my job here is to tell you a little bit about what the private sector is doing and the reason for that is basically where we have made gains in terms of tackling climate change it is almost
Entirely been about mitigation and that mitigation is almost entirely been delivered by the private sector and Technology development and I work for the private sector so unusually I’m here to tell you all the things that they are bad at um first up I think it’s really good many
Of you I suspect from the suits work in the private sector and there is something great about Private Industry in the space we think long term we plan for 20 years unlike governments the iea and the ipcc is very clear that that is the reason that the curve is bending if
It is at all and actually industry innovates and often innovates faster than the state has predicted so the costs of Renewables have fallen Faster by factors of 10 relative to what the state predicted I can see Ben Remington the UK civil servant in the room and I vividly remember being told that
Offshore wind would only be 100 pounds a mega one hour in 2020 and it’s now below 50 maybe a bit more at the moment however you’re going to hear from the rest of the team about why mitigation in itself is an unfairness and the focus on it
From the private sector is also an equal there are three trillion dollars of private capitals circulating the world we struggle to get it into mitigation projects but even so that money is not going to move to into adaptation or into loss and damage with anywhere near the same ease
The reason is simple whilst business understands that adaptation is a punt against risk it still basically appears on the balance sheet as a cost and loss and damage is just the cost as far as business is concerned and our current framework inside current Frameworks those things are not going to get
Financed and that’s where a lot of the global inequity sits just as an international negotiations I would also argue that the focus on growth in models predicates requires that we miss some Bolder actions and actions that could bring forward emissions reduction more quickly that’s because we’re obligated to think about
Pathways as the least cost that is the only way they would get through government we are obligated to think about Pathways that continue the business model as we know it we are obligated to think about people losing jobs if we change incumbent companies sectors of the economy changing and the disruption of
That shift and therefore even the UK World leading carbon budgets only model of 50 likelihood of meeting that 1.5 degree Target anything Bolder is politically untenable and certainly untenable in the current economic model profit which is the motivator of my sector feels obvious to say this at our
Child is not something that incentivizes social good our job as industry is to make money and we pursue Technologies and business models and outcomes that will prioritize profit above other things that is why sub-Saharan Africa does not have solar even though it’s sunnier than the much of the global North all of the
Global North that is why Tech rolled out inside countries like this one prioritizes middle class and wealthy customers first you probably will have iPhones in your pocket I remember when those came out because I was probably in a room like this one and the only students that could afford them were the
Very wealthy ones and we all waited until the market socialized them and made that cheap I don’t think that’s particularly just way of doing technology rollout if we were to design it but it is the way that the market will deliver it there are inequities in that business model
Because of us pursuing profit above social outcomes and that will happen for EVS that will happen for clean heat if you leave it to the market or profit or growth or GDP or existing models to drive the change the other thing I’m not supposed to say out loud because it
Drives the climate Skeptics to my Twitter is that all infrastructure has an environmental and social cost and this is an infrastructure challenge of the kind we haven’t seen for 100 years we are building an enormous amount of Kit all of which involves concrete all of which involves minerals all of which
Involves local impacts there is often a trade-off between local and fairness a national fairness and it is a trade-off if you’re thinking about the world that I’m in in the UK where we have a world leading Renewables Market in my time in the job I’ve dealt with things like offshore workers wages and
Whether it’s fair that we pay Maritime wages to workers on offshore rigs because they move around the world and that’s what they get paid everywhere instead of for example the UK minimum wage I’ve had conversations about unionization less unionization and Renewables than the traditional energy sector I’ve had conversations about
Minerals there are fewer minerals in an EV than there are in our IC vehicle but they are different minerals from more vulnerable parts of the world like the Congo or the DRC we’re having conversations about the unfairness of geopolitics if you’re in Taiwan right now the fact that you may call the world
Superconductors and the best microchips in the world is something to consider when the two biggest Global Powers China and the US are now after that market this is just in my day job um there are also within country the trade-off between local and National benefits if we build pylons in East
Anglia and substations in islanglia because that is where the wind is and Renewables are innately Geographic what does that mean for those communities if the only answer we give them is this is better for everyone’s bills is that actually truly equal or should they receive more money and a
Bigger share of the benefits and how do we fund that less bad for me is not the answer but it’s often the one that we give and even when I think about the measures that the industry is taking recycling wind turbine blades extending battery lives battery reuse circular economy models
The fact that profit is still our primary motivating factor means that those things are as much about resource efficiency as they are businesses truly asking what is fair or what is just jobs were mentioned then and so if I look at the world and the jobs that we’re creating there is also an
Unfairness and some unspoken things in that world we will create more jobs for the green economy but they are a lot likely to be in the same places for the same communities as the fossil fuel industry has been we saw what happened with coal and without active effort
There will be unfairnesses as we transition communities away from fossil and into these clean Technologies I think about Aberdeen all of the time in the UK and there are equivalents all around the world equally no offense to my industry but 85 percent of you are still white men and I have been working
For 10 years in the sector and not seen much change in that regard despite all the language about Renewables being a more altruistic better more ambitious caring industry the reason that is a problem is the workforce tends to design infrastructure in its own image and coming back to the fact this is an
Infrastructure challenge we will create the same inequalities in our future economy as we did in the last if you’ve ever tried to move a baby around the tube you will know that infrastructure designed by Ben to get men to work does not favor women or indeed other voices
I mean I supposed to finish having run through all the list of things about what the problems are okay well what could we do to fix it there are two things that move business and move the economy one is public pressure and we’ve talked a bit about mitigation but the
Other side of the coin and territorial emissions I suppose is the other side of the coin to that is consumption and we should be clear that consumption is going up in the global North the public say they care about climate change but they’re flying more than ever and they
Are buying SUVs business can do something about that but it is a much bigger Civil Society effort and a Communications effort and do we think that is possible in today’s politics and looking at Ben here the last frame is government I’m in this job because I think we can
Do it better agree we all agree that we can do it better the skepticism from our team is will we do it better because governments have not yet sought to act in this space and just to finish I believe in the human capacity for empathy I have two children
My daughter is extraordinary in the innate care that she has for her brother and other people but does she need good rules to become a good citizen absolutely am I sure that governments are going to provide that no I’m not thank you [Applause] thank you very much Emma
Um okay second speaker for the motion will be Charlotte eight minutes is yours Charlotte’s starting almost now hello everyone I’ll start off with a simple question because I’m a simple student what is climate change now firstly and correctly this is a straightforward answer it’s the change in the world climate patterns
Or some might also view it as just the amount of greenhouse gases associated with those changes and simple parts per million number Tech and climate change is good for Global equality wow I was in Thailand when I received this topic and naturally I shared it with my best friend and astrophysicist from Bangkok
And he couldn’t understand why climate change and equality was even in the same sentence and trust me it wasn’t just because his head was in the stars but he was right with a simple yet incomplete of definition of what climate change is it was easy to overlook what the problem
Is and pick the wrong side so an effort to Enlighten the opposing team and the 22 percent of you it lets paint a bigger and better picture of what climate change entails and what will soon come to realize is that climate change is unforgivable but foremost it is unfair and that not
Taking action can result in an increased mortality poverty and economic breakdown in the long term challenges which are far greater threats than the what the opposing team would suggest as the waste products of tackling climate change such as switching to carbon economy so when we associate some of the most
Cutting-edge research on climate change with economic and non-economic measures of inequality the results are frightening and that’s why even though mitigation might not be ideal it might not be perfect and especially in the private sector but the question is not about if but it’s about when we should
Be talking climate change let’s take for example the three main economic sectors talk about agriculture energy and tourism in terms of Agriculture climate change is associated with warmer temperatures okay straightforward which in countries like Canada and Northern Europe could result in longer growing seasons for vegetables but now what were we talking
About in lower latitudes where most of the countries tend to be the less developed temperatures are now exceeding crop Optimum temperatures and causing lower yields and also physiological damages it also goes beyond just about average temperatures going up we’re talking also about climate change affecting the amounts of droughts going
On increasing the water stress in South Asia where agricultural represents represents 22 percent of the regional gross domestic products and employs almost 60 percent of the labor force it is predicted that the annual average daily temperature can increase by up to 2.6 degrees Celsius just by half of the
Century in 2050 and thus heat stressed in the in the region could be increased by 21 projections also claim that almost half of the ingogangetic planes which is the major food source for Southeast Asia could be completely inappropriate for wheat production by 2050. now the impacts of climate change not just the
Stress are also mostly felt in the lower income countries in agriculture because one a bigger portion of their economy relies on agriculture and two they have less adequate equipment to actually combat those of those stresses that they’re going to be felt now if we move on to the energy sector
Howard mean temperatures once again there’s a recurring theme Here mean that on average the world will need more space cooling to sustain indoor temperatures to comfortable and healthy level now the way the current energy supply chain is currently structured makes it highly vulnerable to climate change not
Just by increasing the demand but for example we’re seeing at the production level a lot of the energy today requires water for for example nuclear energy but also natural gas refining and if we look at the water stress which again is a product for climate change then that
Means that we have more water stress and more stress on the energy production side it doesn’t stop there if we’re talking about energy transmission so extreme weather events currently have also had an impact on the transmission networks especially in countries developing countries where transmission networks and the resources at hand to
Protect them from those challenges are less robust for example in January 2022 massive power outages caused by historic heat wave in Buenos Aires at Argentina affected nearly 700 000 people alone and another example on the other side of the Spectrum in November 2020 freezing rain that caused pow coated power lines in
The Far East of the Russian Federation leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity for several days further increasing energy poverty in vulnerable countries and finally tourism pre-covered the ipcc report showed evidence for countries in the tropics and Global South where tourism provides our main economic activity have already
Shown to be vulnerable to exceedingly warm temperatures small island development States for example can represent up where their GB G one quarter up one quarter of their GDP and at least seven of those is due to tourism and most of their economic growth can be thanks to tourism they
Also face an increasing risk to the decreating coral reefs and an increase in Cyclone activity now complex systems have complex problems and we have we live in a complex world that’s why there are direct and indirect costs to climate change if human conditions worsen for example then performance is lessened
Communities are less resilient and ultimately reflect in economic losses so for example some of those can have shown to increase mortality due to higher temperatures especially cases of heat shock in pre-existing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases patients especially increased after 32 degrees Celsius most regions projected to experience consecutive extreme heat
Days are in central Africa southeast Asia and South America in fact the New York Times created a nice website where you can track the amount of days in your hometown that have reached these extreme hot days of over 32 degrees compared to when you’re born to now to projections
In the end of the century so I played around with that website because I thought it was great and I decided for the sake of science to be 63 years old and when I compared my hometown Paris with my friends in Bangkok you could see that in 1960 Paris could expect only one
Day a day one day a year to reach above 32 degrees Celsius today it’s around three and in 2100 we would expect about nine very hot days a year now let’s compare this with Bangkok 1960 there were 185 very hot days naturally latitudes but today it
Experiences about 264 and by the end of the century we would expect Bangkok to experience at least 314 very hot days that’s 214 percent paris’s increase in very hot days so and that’s just talking about climate stress in terms of heat we’re not really regarding in terms of the Technologies
At hand to keep people cool and we’re also not talking about the Health Care Systems in place so it’s all about thinking about it and systematically um Studies have also shown that climate change is related to infectious diseases due to high thermal preferences of vector-borne diseases and also new
Studies in Psychology show that there can be GDP losses due to lower cognitive performances so there’s something inherently incoherent with the new picture that we painted and my physics friend who would remember the first law of mutant by heart wouldn’t understand why not taking an action can result in
Such drastic reactions but that’s why climate change is unforgivable but foremost it is unfair attacking the most vulnerable and breaking economic barriers geographical barriers and what even may seem like physical principles taking action and relying on new technologies New Economic flows and shifting our goals from development to
Such things as sdgs provides the direction we need to narrow the economic and human development gaps if we do not take action conditions are to worsen efforts against inequality are going to be dampened at best and that is why attacking climate change is not only good but it is necessary for Global inequal
That’s it [Applause] thank you so much Charlotte we will now hear from our second speaker from the team speaking against the motion Alexis mcgiven thank you Alexis eight minutes starting now thank you so much what a pleasure to be here today um my opposition have already given compelling arguments that tackling
Climate change is good for Global equality now since we are outside the halls of the Oxford Union I’m going to start off by breaking two forms of debate convention the first is that I’m going to state state all the things that I agree with my teammates on we agree that there is a
Moral obligation to act on climate change we agree that climate change poses the greatest threat to those with the least responsibility the global south or Global majority countries low-income peoples and disadvantaged and disadvantaged peoples women and intersex people marginalized ethnic groups and queer people and thirdly there are clear win-wins to
Addressing the linked crises of inequality and climate change these include for example the fact that manual laborers are increasingly vulnerable from excessive heat and humidity to Charlotte’s point and in the U.S occupational heat related mortality is 35 times higher among agricultural workers than any other industry there are also tertiary Health
Consequences that are affected by climate change including conflict Force migration and famine all which deepen poverty traps within vulnerable countries and indeed many climate technology and solutions come with co-benefits that are built in for example we look a lot at the triple benefits of moving from traditional cook stoves to more
Efficient ones in terms of forest preservation improved Health outcomes and Time Savings for households and yet I am going to break convention a second time by saying I’d like to change the motion to the fact that climate change is not necessarily good for tackling Global equality the necessarily is important because how
We solve climate change is just as important as the fact that we solve climate change without careful consideration of the solutions that we are implementing we risk baking in the exact same inequalities into our new world if we take it as a given that solving climate change automatically addresses
Inequality we risk putting blinders on the unintended consequences of our actions to add to what my honorable colleague Emma has already said I’d like to bring in three key ideas that it is not necessarily necessarily true that tackling climate change is good for Global equality these focus on three things power
Process and people the first Power where is power being concentrated when we think about tackling climate change research from the Smith school’s very own Sam fankhauser and and colleagues have shown that the global patents for inventions related to climate adaptation two-thirds of them are held in just five countries China Germany Japan South
Korea and the United States these include Technologies like water desalination air quality improvement and others this data which came through the world patent statistical database shows that quote virtually no transfer of the relevant patent to knowledge is to low-income countries when we think about tackling climate change where is that power and wealth
Being distributed and where is power being concentrated as we roll out our Global Climate Solutions the second point is on process that solving climate change depends on Fair representation as we roll out our Solutions whose voices matter in building this new world and talking climate change cannot inherently tackle global inequality if
It does not represent all voices and opinions if we look at the UN framework convention on climate change which is our Global architecture for handling climate issues there are so many inequalities baked into that system from very practical pieces such as delegation size at comp27 last year the United States brought a
Delegation of approximately 300 people 300 people which allowed them to be in every single negotiation room across every single agenda item it also allowed a roving a cycle of people who were extremely well rested well that’s maybe an exaggeration and ready to negotiate in comparison small countries are there
With small delegations that need to cover their ministries of environment back home and follow several negotiation items at the at the negotiations this is called negotiation by exhaustion and often leads to outcomes favoring the most powerful countries and therefore our climate Solutions in that space reflect the inequality of our existing world
Research from The International Institute of environment and development also showed that queer people are excluded from climate action from finance and from formal networks they are also completely unheard in policy design so how can we expect to deliver Fair climate Solutions when we’re excluding such a significant portion of the population
My colleague talked about just transition and we cannot have a just transition without free pirate and informed consent which is something that doesn’t often happen in communities around the world it’s just transition speaks to not leaving people behind and instead empowering workers and communities and ensuring that we don’t replicate
Patterns of low pay poor conditions and precarious work in our new world I’ll note that in the UK the Scotland has has had the just transition commission which has done really careful and thoughtful work on what a just transition partnership would look like in Scotland
And that has not extended to any of the other devolved governments England being most most large in the UK United Kingdom the third is on people and that tackling inequality means tackling Inequality For All not just shifting the zones of where inequality happens I’m going to quote from one of my favorite people
Alexandria ocasio-cortez who recently spoke at the climate March in New York City speaking to 75 000 demonstrators who are asking for the end to fossil fuels to be fast fair and forever she said what we’re not going to do is go from Oil Barons to solar barons there are concerns legitimately raised about
Renewable energy rollout with regards to access to energy and to land and the amount of land grabs and human rights violations that are happening as a result of renewable energy rollout in India cop 26 there was a pledge made to roll out and increase the amount of renewable energy which has then been
Linked to a large acquisition of land mostly from a poor rural title holders and this is not unique to India in The hibei Province in China a new PV project um was the developers were accused of forcibly removing people from their lands and the london-based business and human rights Resource Center tracked 197
Human rights violations of solar wind bioenergy and hydropower projects between 2010 and 2020 and the same of course goes for carbon markets and most contentious climate solution that has been accused by the clean that the clean development mechanism has been accused of not only not furthering emissions reductions but secondly being involved
In the forced eviction and the human rights violations of land Defenders so as we discuss this important topic and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be with you all here today to discuss it and knowing that we all sit somewhere along the spectrum of climate action being both urgent and necessary I just
Want to emphasize that solving climate change inherently alone does not bring us close enough to a more equal world and that we need to ensure Fair inclusion and fair prior and informed consent across all of our projects as well of inclusion of All Peoples especially those most vulnerable in
Order to ensure that our move to a Greener and fairer future and go hand in hand with a more equal world thank you so much [Applause] thank you [Applause] thank you so much Alexis now our third and final speaker for the motion is Susie thank you Susie you have eight minutes starting now
I’m going to make three basic arguments the first is that climate change exacerbates inequality second that if we are going to have effective Global Climate action and and collaboration that will necessarily Advance Global equity and third that how we matter how sorry how we act really will matter
For Effectiveness and equality and I would note that to win the debate we don’t need to show that climate action will lead to a perfect equal world I wish it would but we need to show that it is better for equality if we take action than if we don’t take action
So first climate change itself exacerbates inequality my partner in crime here has done an excellent job of laying that out essentially climate change disproportionately affects the poor and the vulnerable and it will massively set back development they live in the worst places and they have the least ability to adapt
So just to add a little bit more to what she already said um there there’s a climate action lab uh sorry a climate Lab at University of Chicago have done empirical work that suggests that the mortality rate from extreme heat will hardly change in rich countries as
A result of climate change but under business as usual climate change it will rise by 144 people deaths per year per 100 000 people in poor countries and if we can limit climate change to two degrees we could lower that death rate in poor countries by 78 so hard to argue
That that wouldn’t be good for equality so I would also note that the debate is about the word is is good for Global equality not that it will be perfect for Global equality or that it will be good for equality even in the future I’ve been working on climate change now for
30 years and some days I feel that I’ve failed but looking on the positive side we have Innovation that we never would have had if people hadn’t been working on this problem focused on climate change renewable energy we’re putting up a methane satellite so that oil
Companies will now be able to see where they’re releasing methane into the environment many many other Innovations and I’m sure there are a lot here at Oxford too we are beginning to see policies that are bending the curve in some countries so although we haven’t done nearly enough it’s not good enough
What we’ve done we are doing some things that are good and that means that that’s good for equality too so I would argue QE do here but I’m going to continue so second effective Global Climate action and collaboration will necessarily Advance Global equity and I would argue this following on from in
Some ways what our number said modeling from the EU suggests that in 2030 if we are on an a cost-effective track to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees 75 of the mitigation will be happening in developing countries that mitigation is not going to happen unless we transfer resources and by
Resources I’m talking about Capital grants carbon payments concessional loans debt forgiveness but also transfer of technology and skills and capability and access to markets for clean products we won’t do all of any of those perfectly but if we’re going to make progress and we’re going to achieve even
Some of our goals we’re going to be transferring resources to people who really need it and I am hearing that in this meeting today conversations about how do we overcome the barriers to moving Capital to Emerging Markets conversations that I was not hearing 10 or 20 years ago and I’m confident that
The brains in this room will make at least some of that happen and all of that bring brings real benefits to the countries where those resources land one of the really critical uh parts of that mitigation over the next 10 years is renewable expansion about 50 of the mitigation options are in
Decarbonization of electricity and again as our another said there are 750 million people without electricity at all the combination of the Innovation and the pressure to decarbonize our electricity grids gives us an unprecedented opportunity to expand Renewables to those people avoiding maybe 600 000 cases of malaria a year lifting 1.3
Million sorry 1.3 billion people out of poverty and with particular benefits to women who have to spend enormous amounts of time walking to get fuel wood and water this will give them time for education for income generation and to do the job they really want to do on child care and Renewables
Are combined with electrification of Industries and that brings air quality so a Chinese Academy of Sciences study showed that the improvements in air quality in their cities as a result of closing coal and increasingly rolling out EVS has been saving millions of lives in recent years and that’s that’s
Happening now it wasn’t just about climate action but it’s part of their wider climate program and protecting tropical forests is 10 of the mitigation options that are coming that are needed those tropical forests are home for indigenous people they really want to have them protected and they are taking increasing leadership
Roles to do that it protects against flood and drought it provides cultural social and economic values so none of this is going to be feasible if we try to keep all the gains in the oecd we will be forced to share some of that benefit with other countries and third how we Act
Matters so I’ve argued that only climate action that drives development will actually work and we all agree that developed countries and high income people have a moral obligation to help those who are less disadvantaged but I would also argue that success will rely on some empowerment of groups who are currently
Disempowered so climate change unlike other problems we faced in the past is terrifically complex involves every aspect of our economy of our society of our cultures and it requires decentralized decision making so decentralized decision making can only be done by the people on the ground and so we will have to provide more
Empowerment for those people an example of how that is actually working is in the Amazon where there’s a group called Quaker who are a collaboration of Amazonian tribes and they are very actively working with companies through the leaf coalition to try to get better control over their land they don’t want
Their land to be cleared but they need help and they need essentially to be given more control in order to protect it so in closing uh climate change is itself the greatest threat to Global equality so taking action is and I would argue will improve Global equality the movement of
Resources and empowerment of people is key to that success and finally I’d argue that taking climate action gives us all hope everywhere in the world and that is a critical part of our well-being thank you thank you so much Susie well our third and final speaker from the team speaking
Against is Assad and we now have we are zooming along here I have to say I mean I’m still only going to give you eight minutes though starting from now I’m a northerner so I might try and speak fast to get as much in um I was reminded as I was sitting there
The words of Greta fromberg when she famously said we’re telling ourselves bedtime stories to lull ourselves to sleep and we have it to have enough of this blah blah blah so we are not dealing with issues of should could or grasping for some empty claims because
It warms our hearts I think here today is this discussion like climate science should be rooted in empirical facts and in empirical realities we all know we’re standing on the edge of an ecosystem collapse of a planetary crisis of a crisis of inequality of climate violence we know that scientists have said that
We’re leaving the Holocene period when human and civilization as we know it has flourished and in the words of the Secretary General uh now entering an era of global boiling so if we don’t have an answer to the question how did we get here then how do we avoid replicating
The same Injustice of of inequality and in and Injustice that are baked into our economic and political system and there’s a reason why those on the front lines of the crisis have always coined the word system change not climate change because as we all aware we’ve known
About the science of climate change for what about 100 years the scientific models we’ve known about them for like at least 50 years by its impacts we even signed a binding treaty 30 years ago and we’re currently heading not to a warming of 1.5 degrees but according to
Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center at Manchester University we’re heading towards between three to four degree warming not the one degree that was demanded by the global South in 2007 and that was rejected by European Union us and the rich countries the reality of
Course as we know is the past shapes the present and it determines the future Dr gosh eloquently States we have a crisis of empathy but it’s not just lack of empathy and Abstract actually we we have a system that is designed to do something and I if we had time I would
Say we have to go back to the doctrine of discovery which codified a racial hierarchy of black brown uh poor indigenous and women and and and and and legalized that notion of exploitation and extraction of resources and people and that’s been played through from slavery colonialism imperialism to our
Current reality and the current dogma of neoliberalism the idea of sacrifice zones and the deliberate impoverishment of the global site has been the Cornerstone of our system and of our policies as they are set out so we have to ask ourselves how is it that the richest ten percent all of us are
Sitting in this room we own 76 of global wealth and the poorest on only two percent of global wealth that same poorest 50 who not only like clean cooking electricity social protection public services but are currently earning the equivalent of 5.50 a day we know that 2 billion people face hunting
Issues a billion people without access to water now this isn’t an accident this is deliberate and those who are shaping our policy Solutions today are the same top one percent who are who have benefited from that same economic model as Audrey lord said the Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house
So I want to talk about some facts the carbon budget so because some people reduce this whole conversation simply to a matter about carbon so even if you took a simple carbon lens right because that is the Cornerstone of what current climate policy is it well let’s talk about Fair shares
Historical responsibility if you took the G8 countries together they’re currently responsible for about 85 percent of excess Global emissions you took the global North as a whole 92 did the rich countries meet their pre-2020 climate targets no they didn’t are they doing their fair share of the 2030
Target no they’ve adopted this deadly dangerous and frankly inequitable Net Zero 2050 go aiming to consume more than their fair share of the carbon budget and making the poorest pay the heaviest price and as we’ve seen this week the US the UK Australia Canada planning on a
Massive expansion of new oil and gas 51 of all Global so the question about yes we might see more renewable energy but of course the dominant form of fossil fuel industry in the global North is continuing that economic cost of inequitable colonization of the carbon budget it’s been estimated it’s a
Whopping 172 trillion dollars if you talk wealth and resources that have been extracted from the global south from 1960 to present day that’s another 152 trillion are we having any conversation about the by resource uh returning some of those resources to enable people in the global site to tackle those
Inequality of course not we stood here in Oxford with a very bricks and Waters of these brand buildings flow from the ill-game prophets of slavery and I’m also from the Indian subcontinent I know well when the UK came and visited us for a few hundred years it left our GDP from
24 to less than four percent and took home 38 trillion pounds to finance its own economy look if you simply that’s not just about historical it’s in the climate mitigation models the Pathways in the ipcc all but one developed in the global North all of them allowed the
Global North to continue to pollute all of them rely on proven Technologies to suck carbon out the atmosphere and there might very well be people here who genuinely believe in ccs it’s not proven the only technology that is viable bioenergy carbon capture and storage relies on land mass of two to three
Times the the continent of of India whose land will be taken whose land ours no of course it will be the poorest in the world can we overcome that inequality divide when the very economic models that are the Cornerstone of all climate policy are predicated on unjust energy consumption of the global North
And the global South if you look at those climate models by 24 50 per capturing coming sub-Saharan Africa is meant to grow from one thousand dollars to three thousand dollars in the global North thirty five thousand dollars two hundred pounds to thirty five thousand dollars to sixty nine thousand dollars it’s
Built in this inequity in Injustice and if we look at Finance you know we talk about the amount of money that’s needed Six Trillion the UNF Triple C’s says pre-2034 trillion for clean energy well in 2009 we had a promise of a hundred billion less than a third of that is
Being met just this last week we had an Africa climate Summit you know a continent which has faced farming some floods 800 million people without access to energy a continent with only responsible for three percent of your historical emissions did they discuss adaptation did they discuss loss and
Damage no an agenda shaped by the United States and McKinsey said it’s all about mitigation it’s all about carbon markets so that the rich can pollute and and rely on those who pollute less to be able to cut their emissions for them we talk about renewable energy there’s no
Finance and Technologies on the table we talk about all of these Industrial strategies of the global world they’re all about controlling the global economy and controlling resources I want to say of course that you know I can hear words already or we must be pragmatic we must
Be live within this system of course living with this in system is a luxury only for those who are not already dying from the system and that is the reality of this inequitable system now the ipcc when it released its report AR6 said change is now inevitable the only
Question is who will be the pay the price and the UN special reperto on Extreme poverty when he wrote well we’ve created a climate apartheid where the rich will use their wealth to seek safety and leave the port to burn and drown is the reality of climate crisis
And I want to end by just saying there is a reality because we’ve just seen it in the last two years right of a covid pandemic in real time right we were told by our G7 leaders if you remember no one is safe until we’re all safe and what
Did we do we competed with poorer countries for PPE equipment four times more than what we needed when when the public health systems of the global South were collapsing because of those debt repayments because we’d hollowed out their Health Systems we told them to get back get more debt
Creating loans when taxpayer research funded the vaccine and Global South Country said let’s have the vaccine we said no we’re going to but put patents on them and allow big pharmaceutical companies to make a million dollars per second and allow 5.5 million people in the global South to die unnecessarily
That’s the reality of climate policy [Applause] thank you very very much wow um how unfortunately I don’t have to sum this up right away because we now are going to go to the rebuttal period and because you’ve all been so brilliant uh at sticking to time I’m going to give
You six minutes each oh no or sharp intake of breath all right unbeliever on time I’m going to give each team six minutes each to respond to the points made in the opposing team and we are going to turn to the four team first and so I’m
Going to start very very soon to put the timer on for whoever would like to go and speak first you have six minutes starting from now to rip up thank you Susie I’m going to take a leaf out of the uh against Thames book and start
With what we agree with and we agree that the current world is grossly unfair and that that is not acceptable and we agree that current climate action is not being done in an equitable way and there are a lot of moves afoot that are not
Helping uh to to do that things like the cbam is putting really disproportionate pressure on countries like India and South Africa we agree that empathy is a problem I’ve always liked Mike Connie’s um question mark Carney’s sort of categorizations of different tragedies and I think we actually face an extra
Tragedy which is the tragedy of distance most of us simply cannot imagine what it is like to live in the global South and to live in poverty and so although we might be empathetic towards people we know which is what we’ve evolved to do we’re not able to really think ourselves
Into the head of people we’ve never seen um but all of those things which are terrible are not a reason to stop taking climate action they are an argument for doing better in how we do climate action and unlike in colonial times when there was a terrible extractive and exploitative system and I
And that has continued in this instance we in the north have to solve this problem too because we can hide our bunkers but that is not the lives we want to live so success for our own well-being the well-being of our families and our children depends on us
Helping those in the South to address this problem too so I think this is a unique opportunity to force the north to actually think about the interests of the south in a really deep way if we will take it [Applause] I think I can’t reiterate what Dr care just said
Um we agree on a lot of things and especially I would agree on the opposition team to say that it has been unfair for the global South in terms of their economy and potentially the associated halt the short-term Halt and the economic development of the global South due to tackling as we call
Mitigating climate change but as the ipcc report in 2022 just released the long-term goals what about the long-term trends and in the long term not taking action focusing on development only and not taking action and actually mitigating the impacts of climate change in the global South result in economic
Losses that far outweigh the short-term economic growth that we might currently see so sure for current presidents for current politicians it might not be in their favor to think only in the long term and not see the economic growth they can take into account now but I
Think and that’s the only thing I will say is is the reminder of the long-term trends and that taking action is not about just thinking right now it’s about taking what our next generation will endure and that attacking climate change can also mean growing in a smart and
Better Way in the global South [Applause] talking about the Next Generation the other day my daughter who’s just ten and a half said Baba we are doing these sdgs this time so this is the second time round right so what happened previously I said there was the mdgs so we achieved
The mdgs as no we didn’t uh the problem with the MDG is it didn’t Focus on inequality and the whole point about put acting on climate change is that you cannot act on climate change without focusing on uh the inequities I agree with the three challenges that the opposition has put forward the
Concentration of Technologies the concentration of voices and the concentration of private incentives but there’s a different way in order to act on climate change we have to not receive technology we have to co-develop Technologies in my hand as a block not of green steel but a block of green
Brass made by small businesses in India in order to change the voices who are setting the rules we have to look at climate change as an opportunity for not concentrated but decentralized and distributed markets and in order to change the private sector incentives I simply want to say if you want to make
Money come home come to my house because I’m offering an investment opportunity of over 500 billion dollars this decade alone we’ve got to stop thinking of people as the objects of our largest and more as the subjects of the change that they desire thank you [Applause] foreign ER but now
Um the team speaking against the motion now has six minutes to rebut and Emma you’re gonna go first I think I’m going to try you’re looking as though right okay six minutes starting from now we thought for no other reason than to promise you that we’re all singing from the same
Hymn sheet I would do the comments for the whole team though they may Heckle me um fundamentally the question about tackling climate change hasn’t been one about equality and that is why you’re hearing so much from our esteemed colleagues on the other team about could and if rather than will and are
I thought Susie was interesting because you said we should judge the world as it is and I have lived through the last 10 years of the energy transition and we’ve achieved more than we thought was possible in my sector I talked about it it’s remarkable frankly sometimes it’s
The only reason I get out of bed in the morning having worked on climate change but in that time global inequality has grown we have delivered in the UK a third of the electricity mix as Renewables we have done that was growing the economy but our society in the UK is more
Unequal than it has ever been the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens have grown you can deliver an energy transition you can deliver emissions reduction and mitigation you can grow your economy and do things differently but you do not necessarily get a more equal society and you do not
Necessarily correct the injustices of the past I thought it was so interesting Susie that you talked about that see the world as it is and then the rest of your argument was about we could do this and it will happen but I couldn’t see the tools to actually get us there
The second thing that I think we’ve talked about oh actually and this is especially for asset the other thing to note is that no one can agree whose responsibility that is by the way International level the ipcc has said the equity point the just transition that is a job for National governments I
Don’t know if you heard the prime minister’s speech last week but we have just pushed back our climate Targets in the UK and slowing down that trajectory will cost poorer people more money slowing down EV de appointment actually means that the poorest don’t get access to second-hand Vehicles slowing down our
Progress overall adds additional costs the economies costs that will be borne by the poorest National governments are not taking responsibility for this and speaking for business we are motivated by profit we are not social Enterprises tell us why it’s our job to correct the inadequacies of our International or national governments
Hope is not enough either I love this quote from Civil Society there is a famous quote hope is not an aspiration it should be a bloody tool we use to batter down doors it’s not enough to say we could do this we should do this Society will improve if you want
Equity as an outcome we have to measure it and that means GDP is not an effective measure for the economy because that prioritizes growth at all costs in a world that is finite it probably means that growth is not a sensible metric for business because what does that say about circular
Economy models enough being enough redistribution of benefits something that is fairer for society profit is not enough because it means we don’t pursue social outcomes and the models that drive climate mitigation in of themselves baking intergenerational and historic inequities and assume a status quo and arguably that is not enough if what
You’re pursuing is equality rather than a missions reduction or equality and Emissions reduction to pick examples from colleagues just because you have an Indian solar industry does not mean that it is more diverse I’ve worked on projects with cook staves myself I ran them at WWF they do help women to no
Longer collect wood and instead put their girls in education they do give women economic empowerment but the massive transition and Renewables that you’ve seen is being delivered by global multinational companies and let me tell you their boardrooms do not look like me women are not necessarily being empowered by the energy transition at
Least at the energy transition at scale if we want that you’re going to have to force them um and I suppose that’s what I mean when I say hope has to be a tool you have to actually use it the last thing I would say is this we heard a lot about impacts
From the other team and as you know we agree the most unequal thing we could do is allow the ravages of climate change to happen across the world vulnerable people vulnerable groups vulnerable countries will be the most exposed to this we absolutely should do something about it it is a moral imperative there
Is no question of that however all of the conversation today has been about mitigation we talked about how difficult it is to do adaptation it is not happening fast enough and loss and damage the correction of the impacts that were caused by an unequal system and then trying to do something better
That is certainly not a conversation that was happening and basically all you’re saying when you’re saying we should solve the impacts is you should make the world marginally you should correct the bad things we’re already doing that is not an argument for making it better that is just compensation for
The things we’ve already done wrong and when I think about my kids and I think about the limits of that conversation even if we did everything right there is still some unfairness here how do I explain to the people of the Marshall Islands that they’re going
To lose their country and what is the compensation for that where is the fairness for them and how to explain to my daughter that the area that I grew up in will not be the same for her where is the compensation for that where is the fairness thank you welcome [Applause]
Well thank you so much to our two brilliant teams um I have to say I I thought I kind of knew roughly how everyone was going to argue but um you really surprised me and I have to say delighted me uh with some of the arguments
Um so I think uh very powerful Arguments for the team arguing for the motion um clearly it’s pretty hard to argue against the fact that you know climate change is such a huge threat to Global equality we only have to look at where it lands hardest and who’s hit more and
I think you did a great job of setting out just what that impact is in low-income countries particularly when it comes to agriculture obviously if you’ve got water stress and high temperatures then you know because these low-income countries are so dependent on agriculture that’s where we’re going to
Feel the pain some great points made about why the Millennium development goals failed um sdgs we’ll see but you know I mean they didn’t that it’s pretty widely recognized they didn’t take quality into account as much as many argue that they should um and you know fundamentally I think a
Very very great job was done by the team now the team speaking against I will say um also made some really compelling points you know we have delivered a huge amount on climate change we’ve exceeded expectations when it comes to the deployment of Renewables and yet Global equality inequality has grown some great
Points made about the UNF Triple C process which is appallingly unfair when it comes to the way that middle income low-income countries in particular are supposed to negotiate with just a few dozen or less people in their teams versus the 300 or so of the US and others
Um you know I think this the argument that actually didn’t develop as much as you might have I think about ioc’s argument about you know we don’t want to go from having Oil Barons to solar Barons that’s a really interesting and live Topic in many parts of the world
Um in the US in Africa and elsewhere um great points made on green jobs and some also um I think these points also made about the climate models which I am not as going to be as adapted as explaining as many people in the room but I think some
Of the points you made there aside also um were very very strong when it comes to looking at some of the built-in inequities there so um some great work done by both teams we now come to the Moment of Truth where we’re going to ask you to vote again
Uh by the magic of the audio visual scene we will see another picture of the QR code so if you point your cameras at that and vote [Laughter] you’ll remember that 78 was the yes vote when we started I’m gonna do this myself I’m not voting I’m just looking
Yeah I spent my whole time arguing okay question is tackling climate change good for Global equality a tapping lots of people looking at how everyone else is voting [Laughter] okay now people looking expectantly at the screen I believe who hasn’t voted yet any undeciable right one of the back
We’re going to let everybody vote here technical difficulties technical difficulties oh all right I think that we have probably finished okay my colleagues will with the magic of Av put the final result up on the screen and it is oh really okay oh my God [Applause]
Okay what can I say I mean really very interesting I would just like to say a huge thank you to both the teams for doing an absolutely amazing job really interesting debate and thank you for the Smith school for putting it on and go to hand back to Cameron right now thanks Cameron
[Applause]