and said the country was plagued by systemic racism.
And now it's time for HARDtalk.
Welcome to HARDtalk.
I'm Stephen Sackur.
Maybe the most dramatic policy shift to follow the transfer
of power from Trump to Biden has come in the field
of climate change.
Team Biden is promising hundreds of billions of dollars
to speed up the decarbonisation of the US economy.
The White House wants cooperation with China, too,
to make good on the Paris Agreement on emissions cuts.
My guest today, Michael Mann, is one of America's leading
climate scientists.
He says a new climate war is unfolding.
If so, who are today's biggest climate enemies?
Michael Mann in Pennsylvania, welcome to HARDtalk.
Thanks.
It's good to be with you.
It's great to have you on the show.
Let us start with the Covid pandemic and the global
economic slow-down that came with it.
There's some pretty dramatic figures which suggest that
carbon emissions worldwide may have been cut by something
like 6% or 7% last year, as a result of what happened.
Can we see that as of any long-term significance?
Well, I mean, that's the good news, right?
We saw a decrease in carbon emissions of about 7%.
And if we can keep that up year after year for the next ten
years, that would put us on the path to keeping warming
below catastrophic levels, below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that that was largely a temporary
response to the pandemic.
Social distancing, lockdown, decreased transportation -
that led to a sizeable downturn in carbon emissions, but we're
already seeing them come back.
And so there's another lesson here, which is that individual,
you know, behavioural change can impact our carbon
emissions.
But if we really want to see the sort of decrease
that we need year after year, we need structural
changes in the economy.
We need to decarbonise the economy.
Changes in personal behaviour, individual actions alone,
aren't going to do it right.
Right.
Well, we'll get to a detailed discussion of the actions that
you think are necessary, the systemic action.
But before we get there, just...
You are the "hockey stick curve" guy.
You're the guy who told us, you know, 20 years ago
that the rise in global temperatures connected
to industrialised emissions was something that could be
portrayed by that famous hockey stick.
So tell me now, in your opinion, how much future
temperature rise is baked in already, given
where we are today?
Yeah, it's another "Good news, bad news" sort of situation.
The bad news is that we're where we are.
The bad news is that the hockey stick, this curve we published
two decades ago, has now been validated and it's
been extended.
The warming has continued beyond the tip of the blade,
if you will, of where we were 20 years ago.
And if we had acted then to bring down our carbon
emissions, we wouldn't be in the predicament we are now.
The good news here is that our best understanding
of the underlying science of carbon emissions and warming
today tells us that efforts to decrease carbon emissions
actually have an immediate and direct impact.
We used to think that if we stopped burning carbon
now, putting carbon pollution into the atmosphere now,
the planet would continue to heat up for decades to come
because of what we call the "thermal inertia".
The oceans take a while to warm up in response
to the greenhouse gases we've already put
into the atmosphere.
But there's another factor that only recently,
over the last ten years, has really come into focus,
which is the role that the oceans and plants on land,
what we call the terrestrial biosphere, play in
drawing down carbon.
So if we stop burning carbon now, we stop putting carbon
pollution into the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere
continue to draw it down, those concentrations of carbon
dioxide come down.
Those two effects - the thermal inertia of the oceans,
which would lead to further warming, and this carbon cycle
response, if you like, the uptake of carbon -
those two effects cancel out and you end up getting a flat
line, which is to say if we stop burning carbon now,
the temperature of the planet stabilises within a few years.
What you seem to be saying with the science is that action
makes a difference real quick, so let us get to what
you pointed to earlier.
That is the degree to which we are seeing
systemic, concerted action.
Let's start where you are in the United States,
with Joe Biden.
He's made all sorts of announcements tied
to his $2 trillion economic package that a lot of that
money is going to be channelled into green and environmental
initiatives, particularly aimed at electric vehicles,
at renewable energy.
Are you...?
As a climate scientist, one of the most influential
in America, are you happy and satisfied with what you've
heard from Joe Biden so far?
Yeah, well, I'm satisfied with what Biden and the Biden
administration are doing through executive
actions, right?
They're using all of the lever arms of the federal government
to try to affect climate policy.
And what they've laid out comes about as close as you could
come to what we might think of as a Green New Deal,
an expansive effort to address the climate crisis.
It goes about as far as you can go through executive actions
alone, but executive actions only get us so much.
We need massive subsidies for renewable energy.
We need to block additional fossil fuel infrastructure.
We need to put a price on carbon.
There are all these other things that a president cannot
do through executive actions.
We need Congress to act at the same time.
And that's really the wild card here, because we do have
a Democratically-controlled Congress now,
but very narrowly.
And so as a result, it's going to be difficult to get
expansive climate legislation past a Congressional
filibuster by Republicans.
Ironically, it's sort of where, in my book,
I envisioned we would be.
And the book went to press back in August, but I figured we'd
probably have a Democratic president, we'd probably
have a split Congress, and so we're going to need some
sort of compromise.
And that's where progressives might have to give a little.
We might have to put some things on the table that help
bring some moderate Republicans to the table,
like carbon pricing.
Where does the US stand, for example, in relation
to European countries?
And I'm thinking of the United Kingdom, where
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just announced that
he's going to speed up the decarbonisation
of the UK economy.
He had this aim, which was really toward 2050,
of massive decarbonisation.
Now, he says by 2035, he wants a 78% decarbonisation
as compared with levels of emissions in 1990.
That's pretty darn dramatic.
It is.
Can we expect the Biden administration to get
anywhere close to that?
Well, that's what we're looking for.
Again, in the executive actions that they've
instituted thus far, there is, for example,
a commitment to bring carbon emissions from electricity
generation down to zero within a matter of a decade
and a half or so.
Now, again, we have a different system.
It's different from the parliamentary system
that the UK has, and so you do need this sort of bicameral
cooperation between the executive and the legislative
branch if you're going to put in place policy -
policy that has some staying power, that can't be reversed
by the next president if we get another Donald Trump-like
president in the future.
And so that's the challenge.
But I expect that you're going to see a pretty bold
proposal by Joe Biden this week, along with China.
I think we can see some real concessions from China this
week, at the summit that's taking place here in the US,
and that'll hopefully lay the groundwork for what's
to come later this year at the Conference of
the Parties, COP 26, the International Climate
Conference in Glasgow...
Yeah...
..where we really do need to see that ratcheting up.
I want to get back to the international arena
and particularly talk about China, India and
the developing world obligations, as you see it,
to be part of this decarbonisation programme.
I want to get to that, but I also want to
address a mind-set.
And you refer to your recent book - you've got it
behind your shoulder there, I've got a copy, too,
which I've been reading -
The New Climate War: The Fight
- you call it - to Take Back Our Planet.
I just wonder, given that you wrote this book, actually,
a year or so ago or even more, whether it's a little
bit outdated?
You know, is it time to stop talking about climate war,
about endless battles with your quote-unquote
enemies?
And goodness knows you've got plenty of enemies, particularly
in the fossil fuel industry.
Is it time to get away from that sort of rhetoric?
Maybe it's time to talk more about meeting in the middle,
about some sort of consensus.
Yeah, there is...
In the book, as you know, I do talk about the importance
of finding some bipartisan consensus here in the
United States, for example, and the importance of bringing
moderate Republicans on board with mechanisms
like carbon pricing that they can
potentially support.
So what I'm really talking about in the book,
the New Climate War, what this is is a recognition
that the old war that we're used to talking
about has essentially ended.
This was an effort by fossil fuel companies and those
promoting their agenda - that's conservative media
outlets, politicians doing their bidding -
this effort to discredit the scientific evidence for
climate change and to attack the science and the scientists.
And that's not credible any more.
They can't get away with that because people understand this
is real, it's happening.
But there are an array of tactics that the "forces
of inaction", as I call them, continue to use to
slow down progress.
That's the "New Climate War" - and it is very much under way.
We can see all of the tactics that I describe.
They're playing out right now...
Yeah...
Right, you...
Yeah, you don't sort of hold your fire.
You talk about the various Ds that your enemies in the fossil
fuel industry still use.
That is, things like distortion, deceit, delay.
These are their tactics.
Let's not forget deflection, one of my favourites.
Deflection, let's not forget deflection -
all sorts of different aspects that you say are deeply cynical
on the part of fossil fuel.
I would just point to you, it's not my job to defend them,
but I would just point to you that big corporates
like Shell and BP have made some massive transition
decisions already.
If you look at Shell, you know, they've ended
drilling in the Arctic, they've sold off billions
of dollars' worth of oil sand and other oil extraction
assets.
BP is calling for a 40% reduction in oil and gas
production over the coming decade.
These are real changes that these companies are making
to become much more, sort of, power generators,
often with renewables and much less extractive
fossil fuel businesses.
Do you not recognise that?
Oh, no, absolutely.
And we need to encourage that.
And that really is the message of the book.
You know, that there are some bad actors that are trying
to stall this transition.
And even British Petroleum, which, you know, as you allude
to, British Petroleum, Shell, some of these energy
companies are starting to move in the right direction.
And that's great, we need them on board.
But it wasn't that long ago that British Petroleum actually
gave us the first individual carbon footprint calculator.
And that's because British Petroleum and other fossil fuel
companies wanted us so focused on our individual carbon
footprint that we failed to notice theirs.
Just 100 polluters are responsible
for 70% of emissions.
And so, individual behavioural change alone
isn't going to cut it.
We need structural changes, we need carbon pricing, we need
subsidies for renewables - things that fossil fuel
companies aren't yet necessarily supporting...
No, but hang on a minute, Michael Mann...
They have to do it faster.
on Saturday
Let me interject and say, yeah, individual behaviour change
on its own isn't going to cut it, but it is still vitally
important, is it not?
There will be millions of people around the world now
wondering whether you care or not whether people
stop driving these ridiculous big SUV vehicles,
whether the frequent flyers become a bit less
frequent in their flying, whether all of the people
who love eating beef every day can stop eating beef every day.
Are you saying that none of those behaviour changes matter?
No, and they won't think that if they've read my book.
Because one of the points that really do try to make is that,
absolutely, we should do all those things in our
everyday lives that minimise our environmental impact
and our carbon footprint.
In many cases, these are things that save us money,
they make us feel better, make us healthier, set
a good example for others.
Of course, we should do all those things.
What we can't allow is for those individual actions
to be framed as an alternative to the systemic
changes that we need.
We can't allow that to take the pressure off of polluters
and politicians to enact policies that collectively move
us all in the direction that we need to go.
You sit in the United States, the home of capitalism,
red in tooth and claw.
Do you believe that the systemic change that you've
talked about throughout this interview can be achieved
within a thoroughly capitalist system?
Because there are many people who've entered this debate,
like Naomi Klein and others who say, frankly,
capitalism will never deliver the change needed
because it is fundamentally exploitative?
Yeah, obviously, you know, pure free market capitalism with no
regulation is a prescription for environmental disaster
because that's been treated as an externality.
It's not even part of the business decision-making,
the health of the environment, if we don't have regulations.
And so, clearly, an unregulated free market economy is
incompatible with a sustainable existence on this planet.
And that's why we need regulations, we need laws,
and we need enforceable policies, and we need
international cooperation to establish those laws
and policies across the board.
towards addressing the climate crisis within the framework
of a market economy.
As long as we have reasonable policies and, you know,
we can have that conversation about whether a sustainable
planet is ultimately consistent with an extractive
resource-based economy.
But we don't have time to remake the global economy.
We've got to bring carbon emissions down by a factor
of two within the next decade.
Right, but your message to fellow Americans
is that they better get used to big government, much bigger
government, cos it's only big government that'll solve
this climate emergency.
I would actually say the opposite.
I would say we do need government, we do need
governmental regulation.
But you know what?
If we fail to act on the climate crisis and we, sort of,
start to become the dystopian world that Hollywood has
depicted, if we really allow climate change to go
unmitigated, the disastrous impacts that it will have
will force bigger government than you ever expected.
The adaptation, the policies that would be necessary
to support eight billion people on a planet with finite
food, water and space, and climate change exacerbating
all of those tensions and competition, that's
a prescription for the biggest government you could imagine.
So, if you don't like big government, you better
support action on climate.
Let's shift focus, then, from the United States,
which we've talked about, to the wider picture -
and in particular, the powers of the developing world,
that is China and India, as well.
Now, both of them still have a massive stake
in coal-fired energy.
I believe there are more than 1,000 coal-fired power
stations active in China, they're still building
them by the dozen.
What is your message to the Chinese government
and the Indian government, too, which is heavily reliant
on coal-fired power?
Do they have to join this debate and actually
stop their commitment to coal-fired energy right now
because of the nature of this climate emergency?
Yeah, and so, you know, we have to return to
something like what we had, what was happening under
the Obama administration before Donald Trump became president.
And there, you did have this bilateral agreement
between the US and China to make major progress in
addressing the climate crisis - the US, bring its carbon
emissions to a peak and bring then down,
and that's happening, and China, to bring them
to a peak, at the very least, within the next decade.
Obviously, China doesn't have the legacy we have
of two centuries of access to cheap fossil fuels.
They're still building their economy, they're still,
you know, industrialising, in the industrialising
phase of their economy.
And that's why it's so important that China and India,
which is in that same phase, not go down
the fossil fuel road.
But, with respect, they've gone a long way
down that road already.
And for them, there's just a basic question
of economic justice, which remains unresolved.
And I'm going to quote you the then-Environment
Minister of India back in 2015 around the signing of
the Climate Accord in Paris, he said, "Look, developing
countries have a fundamental "right to develop.
"They need carbon space," as he put it.
"Developed countries must now vacate that space.
"We cannot suffer because of their sins."
And I think that attitude still prevails.
So, I'm wondering what you, as an influential climate
scientist, can offer China, India and a host of other
developing countries today?
Yeah, so let's take them one at a time.
China - first of all, China was actually decommissioning
coal-fired power plants when Barack Obama
was still president.
They were actually exceeding their commitments under
the bilateral agreement under Paris.
Then Donald Trump threatened to pull out of Paris.
That took the pressure off China, and they started
building coal-fired power plants again.
So, there is a moral authority that the United States has
to take here, because of this legacy of two centuries
of burning of fossil fuels.
If we don't have our own house in order, how can we tell
the Chinas and the Indias of the world that they,
too, have to decarbonise their economies?
And so, I concede your point very much.
But, look, China was going in the right direction when
the United States was leading.
Then, when that leadership disappeared, we saw China,
we saw Australia and other countries start to ease
off in their efforts.
Now that there's US leadership again, and there was a major
agreement just reached the other day between
the US and China, I think we're back on that path.
Now, with respect to India, it's a slightly
different situation.
It's a very poor economy.
The prospect of cheap energy obviously is attractive
to them from the standpoint of growing their economy
and increasing the living standard of their people.
And that's why it's so important that the rest
of the world provide them the resources that help
them leapfrog past the fossil fuel stage.
They don't need fossil fuels to build that inner
energy infrastructure.
There are many influential voices in the environmental
movement who say, to be honest, they believe it's too
late to avoid terrible consequences for our planet,
including mass extinction.
I'm going to quote one to you, Morgan Phillips.
Now, she's the co-director of the Glacier Trust.
A couple of years ago, she said this.
"The political, cultural, technological change required
"to save the climate is now impossible.
"We are very likely now in the midst of "a mass
extinction event.
"It looks to me too late to avoid runaway warming."
Are you convinced that she's wrong?
Yeah, it's frustrating to hear those words,
because there just isn't science to support that.
This idea of runaway warming is based on a myth that's very
popular among what I'll call - and I do call in the book -
Climate Doomists, those who are convinced it's too
late, the planet is undergoing runaway warming.
It's typically premised on this false notion that there's
a massive amount of methane escaping into the atmosphere
from the thawing of the permafrost.
Now, that's something that could happen if we continue
to warm the planet, and we don't get our carbon
emissions under control.
But there's no evidence that that's happening right now.
And to the extent that there is an increase in methane,
it looks like it's coming from natural gas recovery,
from fracking, from our extraction of fossil fuels.
So, look, there's no evidence of that.
There's no evidence for, you know, a massive extinction
of human civilisation, and all of these other
scenarios that typically underlie these doomist
narratives.
And so, first of all, they're wrong, but also,
they're extremely unhelpful because they put forward
a paralysing narrative of hopelessness, and that
potentially leads people down the same path of
inaction and disengagement as outright denial.
You, I have to say, in the course of this
conversation, have struck me as much more optimistic than I
expected you were going to be.
Are you even surprising yourself with the amount of
hope you're feeling right now?
Well, it's a hopeful time, you know, it's Earth Week
here in the United States, we have renewed leadership
in the Biden administration, you know, the countries
of the world, the leaders of the world are coming
together for this virtual summit to get us prepared
to really make major commitments at the end
of the year, at the next international climate summit.
So, yes, there are reasons for cautious optimism.
We're turning the corner, carbon emissions have plateaued
- they started to come down last year, some of that was,
of course, due to the pandemic, a fair amount of it.
But they're actually coming down in part
because we're moving towards renewable energy.
But Michael Mann...
You're the "hockey stick" guy, and we remember you for that.
Are you saying that that hockey stick can yet be broken,
and then, that spike upwards can be reversed?
That's right.
We can bend that curve downward.
It's been spiking upward, but at least with the carbon
emissions, we've flattened them.
We now have to bring them down the other side.
We have to bend that curve downward, and we
have to do it rapidly.
But it's still possible, it's still possible to do
that in time to avert catastrophic planetary warming.
We will end with that positive message.
Michael Mann, I thank you very much indeed
for joining me on HARDtalk.
Thank you.
Thank you, it was a pleasure.