transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.

Speaker 2:
[00:05] I'm Christiana Figueres.

Speaker 3:
[00:06] And I'm Paul Dickinson, back from Being Lost.

Speaker 1:
[00:08] This week, we talk about the reasons why and in what way the Iran crisis is accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels. And we discuss the upcoming conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Thanks for being here. OK, so this week, we're looking at the ways in which what is happening in Iran has put the transition away from fossil fuels back at the top of the agenda, both politically and economically. What we have seen is that there is no way to manage development of countries or economic growth on the back of these fossil fuels that are so volatile. The price spikes up and down. You have no control of the flow of them out of the Middle East. So that's what we're going to talk about initially. And then after that, we're going to get into this conference that is happening in Santa Marta, in Colombia, looking at phasing away from fossil fuels. Which of you would like to kick us off with some framing comments about this enormous issue?

Speaker 2:
[01:00] Paul, you would like to.

Speaker 3:
[01:01] I would, because I'm back with you two, my favorite people, and I'm so pleased to have the opportunity to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, which I love doing. Look, the International Energy Agency says the wall link disruption to flow to the Straits of Hormuz creates the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. And joking aside for a minute, airports are going to run out of air fuel and the planes just stop flying. And far more significantly, because most people at airports have got some money, super, you know, the most vulnerable people, we're talking hundreds of millions of people, perhaps, you know, I don't know the number, are going to not be able to kind of get food or fertilizers. I mean, I'm looking forward to the day when we're not dependent upon fossil fuels, but at the moment we are, and they have been choked off and world's gone crazy. And no one knows what's going to happen. And it's kind of super scary time.

Speaker 2:
[01:58] We will get into more money, more details about this in future episodes. But for the time being, I just wanted to point out that this war is bringing to the fore two problems with fossil fuels, in addition to the fact that they pollute the hell out of the entire atmosphere. But one is there are only a few countries that produce, i.e. that supply, to pick up Paul's point on supply, only a handful of countries that supply this fuel. And hence, all other countries are importers and depend on predictable supply. But the other piece that I think has really come to the fore is the transport issue. Because since the geography of the supply of fossil fuels is so concentrated in just a few countries, then the transport of fossil fuels is just as important as the supply itself. And the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, that is what it has evidenced. That the transport of these fossil fuels is also incredibly dangerous to be depending on that. And that is why we're in this choke point. Because it's not just the supply, it is the transport. Hence, the alternative for countries. And it's almost like I feel like a broken record. But the alternative for countries as quickly as they can to transition away from their dependence on, imported, their dependence on imported and transported fossil fuels to their own domestically produced and not transported internationally energy has never been as clear. So the issue that we have here is that we have an emergency situation of the closing of the strait and of the war. And that calls for urgent, urgent measures. And we know that most countries need to and can transition. But that urgency cannot be responded to by the alternative fuels in the same speed. So the problem here is the difference in the speed.

Speaker 1:
[04:26] Right. Well, and this immediate short-term crunch is probably not going to be met by that broader transition, but hopefully the political demand for that will outlast this short-term crisis. I mean, no matter what happens on the ground, the ripple effects of this disruption are going to be with us for weeks or months. And we're talking about airlines around the globe are weeks away from running out of fuel. And it's true that many governments have seen this as a driver to accelerate their transition. We've seen this in the EU, the UK, South Korea, the Philippines. These countries have all responded to this war-driven spike in oil and gas prices with these calls to accelerate electrification and the rollout of clean energy infrastructure. But of course, the other side has happened too. And some places have gone, we need to double down on drilling. We've certainly seen that in the US and in certain parts of the UK political landscape, even if it's not the parts that are currently in power. But the route out of fossil fuel dependence at the global level, of course, remains contested. I would remind us a couple of years ago, we were in Dubai, the COP techs committed all governments to transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems. But we're at this moment of kind of progress and fragility. And the interesting question is, how do we seize it and capitalize on it to accelerate this transition?

Speaker 2:
[05:38] Because both forces are at play. Because from a logical perspective, as you say, this is probably the most clear argument for transitioning away from fossil fuels. Absolutely clear. And there are some that are calling for doubling down on drilling. Right. The difficulty here is the timing. Even if you do drilling, which is crazy, you won't have your own oil and gas until 10 or 15 years ago. And by that time, of course, you could be as a country, you could be so much more energy independent with your own domestic clean sources, which is where the world is moving. That, I believe, but I leave that up to the two of you, is a very open conversation in the UK. Rosebank being the big case. Do we drill for, do we open Rosebank? Absolutely crazy measure. But we're in this incredibly frustrating, very, very debilitating, I would say, transition because there are forces pulling us in both directions.

Speaker 3:
[06:49] The key here is that no one really could have seen this coming at all. And I think you failed to mention, Christiana, that the President of the United States has been very clear that we must open up North Sea oil drilling. He's been absolutely adamant about that. He's encouraged Britain to do that. He's also posted pictures of himself as Christ. And his Vice President and Speaker of the House have been correcting the Pope about speaking on religious matters. But none of, no one could have seen this coming. And to make this specific point, Tom, I want to share with you that on the 7th of October 2009, you wrote me an email saying we should go and meet Rear Admiral Neil Morissetti, who is a lovely person who used to run an aircraft carrier for the British Navy. And we met him 17 years ago. And I remember saying to him 17 years ago, once your job in the Navy, and he said, we have to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. So none of this is entirely new. It's all completely crazy.

Speaker 1:
[07:40] I'm very impressed you found that.

Speaker 3:
[07:42] Thank you. But where I'm going with this is we're in, you know, with the crazy town president in the USA, who knows? But all I know, one thing for sure is if Donald Trump is saying the UK should drill in the North Sea, we shouldn't.

Speaker 1:
[07:52] Well, but to go back to your point, Christiana, I mean, you know, what we're seeing is that you can't solve the immediate short-term crises with policies that bring more energy on stream in the coming, you know, in a time frame that fits the time frame of the crisis. And that is an argument that is used by opponents of the energy transition to argue against the transition. They're like, you know, we've got this crisis, we need to start drilling, open it up, we need to move quickly. But the drilling takes longer. Exactly. As you just said, it takes many times longer, and yet we somehow still lose sometimes the narrative battle. It would be quicker to begin to transition at an accelerated rate the entire economy than to try and open up these new fields that require all of this scoping, this years of development, et cetera. But into all of this, at a sort of opportune moment, the stars have aligned for this moment is the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. And this is taking place in Santa Marta, Colombia, from the 24th to 29th of April, tomorrow, if you're listening to this podcast, on the day of release and it's co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands. And this conference is being presented as a space for countries, sub-national governments, indigenous people, and civil society to discuss how to advance a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. Now, this is interesting, isn't it? Because that is, to create a space to discuss a process away from fossil fuels is pretty similar in some ways to a COP. My understanding is that they are presenting this in a slightly different way. The COPs have historically talked about fossil fuels at the point of combustion emissions. And what they're trying to do here is talk about fossil fuels at the point of production when they are produced, to stop them entering our economy. So they are looking at the same issue from slightly different angles, even though there's clearly a lot of crossover. We're going to in a minute talk to Mary Robinson and Vanessa Nakate. But anything either of you would like to say before we start? It's not a UN conference, we should point out. It's independent.

Speaker 2:
[09:48] Yeah. And listeners may remember when right after the COP, we interviewed the COP presidency. And she was so clear about the fact that they launched the roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels and that they stay as active COP presidents throughout this whole year. And kudos to that move that has a very clear work program behind it. And I guess my wish is that this conference will continue to support that effort of Brazil and its roadmap to transition away, because nobody is questioning whether we have to transition away.

Speaker 3:
[10:37] I think it's Napoleon said, it doesn't matter what the plan is, as long as we all do it at the same time, we'll win. So I hope that everyone's super aligned.

Speaker 1:
[10:49] Okay, so let's go to the conversation with Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and climate activist Vanessa Nakate.

Speaker 2:
[11:00] Dear Vanessa, and very, very beloved mama Mary as I love to call you, as you know. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us here on Outrage and Optimism, on a very, very difficult moment, especially to do with oil and gas industry. And I would just like to invite both of you to say, how are you dealing with this very difficult moment that we're experiencing?

Speaker 4:
[11:34] This is a very difficult situation, as you said, and it's not the first time. It's the second time in four years. Look at the aggressive war by Russia on Ukraine. And now we have this terrible war, as you said, a legal war of the United States and Israel on Iran. And in both cases, it has caused the cost of energy to rise dramatically, but also the cost of fertilizer, the cost of food. This is coming into people's homes. I know in Asia, it's particularly affecting people because they're very dependent on fossil fuel from the Gulf areas. But it's also affecting all of us. When oil prices rise for an island like Ireland, everything is transported in or out. That means that food prices go up. Even in a comparatively rich country like Ireland, we have to face it. We're feeling the pain. A lot of people are feeling the pain at the moment. We even had a protest, but it's actually not necessarily generating what I'm hoping for, which is a recognition. We have a way out of all this and we have to do it more rapidly into the cleaner, safer energy that doesn't cause these problems and indeed doesn't even cause wars.

Speaker 2:
[12:42] Mary, I just want to follow up that very good point that is the second time in four years by perhaps asking you, is there something additional and different this time in terms of bringing to the four, the criticality of the transport of fossil fuels? Because this time, because of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, I think this time we're dealing with the two problems that we have with fossil fuels, but they are so much more evident. That I think is the helpful thing about this, that is making it very evident, both that almost 80 percent of countries have to import fossil fuels because they don't produce it, and that that import means that it has to be transported to them. Then my question is to pick up on your second comment, Mary, are we going to learn from this, or is this yet another crisis that we will lament, live through, and go back to, I don't know, business as normal? Is that even possible? There is no such thing as business as normal.

Speaker 4:
[13:58] On the first point, I couldn't agree with you more that the emphasis on the transporting is really important. It's not just the transporting of oil and gas. As I mentioned, it's a transporting of fertilizer, it's transporting of pharmaceuticals, it's a transporting of food. We have to realize that when we look at the oil and gas on top of that, we are in a very fragile world that can easily be disrupted. And the disruption is because of wars that aggravate and are aggravated by the fossil fuel requirements. On the second point, I think Santa Marta must actually be the moment when we come to a serious knowledge that we're in a new place now. We're not talking about whether we get out of fossil fuel. It's how. It's the how of the just transition. How do we get out of fossil fuel? How do we get into affordable, accessible, clean energy for all? This is very complicated and a difference in different countries, which is why I really want to hear Vanessa on, you know, what developing countries are feeling at the moment.

Speaker 2:
[15:07] Vanessa, yes, absolutely. You have been so public and compelling about the structural barriers, which I think it's very interesting that they mirror the blockage. The blockage now of the Strait of Hormuz is a very interesting way of mirroring the structural barriers that we have to get rid of fossil fuels. And I would love to hear where this crisis has taken your thinking, especially with respect to developing countries and very specifically African countries, if you will.

Speaker 5:
[15:49] Thank you so much for that question. Firstly, I would say the situation right now and what is happening in Iran, I can say it's a clear example or illustration of something that people have known for decades, that our dependence on fossil fuel extraction for energy is not really built on a foundation of security. It is built on vulnerability because we see how just the energy crisis that is looming from these disruptions and how it affects people who even have nothing to do with the war. Because it's not just about the transportation of the oil, but also it's the transportation of food, it's the transportation of fertilizers like President Mary has shared. And again, to build on what happened in Ukraine, it didn't just end in Ukraine, it affected food security in many African countries. And there's a concern for that even with this situation. And as we head to Sondamatta, I think this is such a critical moment, especially for the climate justice movement. Because for so many years, the language on fossil fuels has been almost impossible to talk about in climate negotiations. And it's hard to really address the climate crisis if you can't even name or mention the root cause of the crisis. So I think the Sondamatta moment is so important in that. We're not just going to discuss what is causing the climate crisis. We are going to discuss and engage in the barriers, what is limiting the transition to renewable energy and what are the opportunities. And for me, especially from a developing country perspective, I would say one of the barriers to this transition is the external debt that developing countries are facing. And this debt is locking them into fossil fuel extraction. But beyond that, even the UNFCCC processes, I would say there is still a lack of transparency and accountability in holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for their presence, but also for their interests. And I think for me, it's just the understanding that we really cannot successfully have the transition if the interests of the fossil fuel industry are greatly represented in climate conversations. So I see that as a barrier. We need more transparency and accountability in the UNFCCC processes, but also subsidy reform, especially on the side of businesses. Businesses have a huge role to play in this, you know, transition. I have seen that sometimes when it comes to the climate movement and business, it's like there are two opposite directions, like speaking from two opposite directions. And I think it's important to engage business in this transition, because business plays a huge role in either being a contributor to climate challenges or a contributor to climate solutions. Right now, a lot of subsidies are flowing into environmentally harmful activities. And if we had businesses on the side of the people and the planet, and maybe we could have subsidies instead flowing to renewable energy. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[19:51] Thank you. You make so many good points, Vanessa, the fact that we have subsidies benefiting the polluting industries, that we still have that despite the fact that we have measured that impact now for years, and that is still the case. Could you also explain to us, Vanessa, your other very important point about debt? Why is the debt that the developing countries are holding? What is the relationship between that and dependency on fossil fuels?

Speaker 5:
[20:30] Yeah. Thank you so much. So recently, I read a report that was talking about the connection of debt, gender, and fossil fuel extraction, especially for developing countries. And this report clearly explained how, with countries that are locked into debt and they have very high debt servicing costs, they have the expectation from creditor governments or private lenders to invest as a criteria for accessing these loans, to invest in fossil fuels because they need to be able to invest in activities or economic activities that earn money in a currency that does not face so much volatility. And most of the countries find themselves locked into investing in oil or investing in coal or investing in gas so that they can first of all fulfill the requirements and demands of creditor governments or private lenders, but also to pay up these debts. And if they have to pay these extremely high debts with high interest rates, then it's really impossible for them to actually transfer or allocate their budgets to renewable energy. But also we've seen countries having to take up a loan because of a climate disaster that happened. So you find that already the financial system itself, it's unjust, but also even the climate crisis itself is pushing countries to have to take up loans. So the constant locking in of debt really shrinks the physical space of many of these countries and investing in renewable energy is not really an option for them. I personally think that if there was a form of debt restructuring or debt reform or debt translation that really reallocates or repurposes loans into maybe investing in the national adaptation plans of countries or investing in their mitigation plans, I think it would help more countries advance their national climate goals.

Speaker 2:
[23:09] Such important points that you make, Vanessa. The cost of credit is so much higher to developing countries because they're not considered credit worthy or at least credit sure, credit safe and so they have a very poor credit rating. They have to pay so much more for it, for the interest for them is so much higher than other countries. And part of the reason why the credit worthiness is so low, is because they're impacted by climate change. So there is this constant cycle of climate that just puts these countries in a very, I almost want to say this pernicious rat race of constantly having to pay these debts at high prices in order to import fossil fuels that are not a good investment for them, that are not a stabilizing force toward the future. And there they are stuck. And is there a reason to believe, Vanessa, that of all of the developing countries, are African countries more stuck in that?

Speaker 5:
[24:25] I would say that many African countries are more stuck in this debt. And I think there may be many reasons at play here why African countries may be the most impacted when it comes to being trapped or locked into debt. And you've mentioned some of those reasons that they are not phone credit worthy. And we see this even in the investments in renewables. Even though statistics are showing us that investment in renewable energy reached record levels in 2025 for the African continent, only 2% of finance for renewable energy has flowed to the continent. And reasons for that, you know, high perceived risks, high capital costs. So it's not even just about, you know, the debt and the high interest rates that African countries have to pay, but also even the renewable energy investment. So I think the reasons really lie around high perceived risk for African countries, but also the lack of credit worthiness because of these perceived risks. Some that really stem from climate disasters, some stem from maybe conflict in some regions. So I would say those could be some of the reasons that are not only locking African countries into debt, but also locking them into fossil fuel extraction.

Speaker 2:
[26:06] Thank you, Vanessa. That is so clear on your part. Mary, coming back to you to bring a little ray of light of how do we get out of this rat race. Mark Carney has this wonderful habit of giving speeches that become very famous. His last speech at Davos was about middle powers and about coalitions of middle powers. So I would invite you to share with us what the elders are, how the elders are pushing the envelope of that concept.

Speaker 4:
[26:39] Well, there's no doubt that Santa Marta has to be a coalition of the doers. And the space is a new space where we're not affected by the negative impacts of fossil fuel. We're looking at just transition, how we get there, how we make it fair, how we deal with the injustices that Vanessa rightly pointed out. And there are already existing coalitions, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the Coalition to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies led by the Netherlands. And I do agree with Vanessa that business has to be very engaged. It was more engaged. And unfortunately, because of the current climate and the fear mongering that's going on, it has become less engaged. But I think in Santa Marta, we're going to see a very big attack on fossil fuel subsidies. A lot of the just transition is going to be about taking a deep breath and looking at where the money is going. The money is going to subsidize what is harming us. If we can shift even a third or a fifth of that money quickly into incentivizing what moves us faster where we want to go. This is a human problem. It's not an insurmountable political problem. It's all a matter of being aware of where we need to go and very fast. There's no doubt that the technology itself is moving us in that direction. I know you've talked about this in your optimistic mood, as opposed to your not so optimistic. You're right. The technology is doing wonderful things. China is doing wonderful things. We need to realize that we can now move much more sustainably and much more fairly. It just requires something that Vanessa touched on, investment in Africa. It's got so much going for it in the forestry, the talent of the people, the rare earths. And yet, there's such a level of injustice at every stage, and blockage at every stage, and debt at every stage that stops Africa from reaching its full potential. If we can have Santa Marta show us how to really shift the needle now, really move and do it counter to the overwhelming onslaught of fossil fuel propaganda, if I could put it that way. What a safer, better world we will have. I mean, we have to believe this. You know, so in every country, there are steps to be taken that are particular to that country. And I think this is one of the things in Santa Marta that we must realize. It's not a one size fits all in our world. It's actually a diverse, thoughtful, empathetic response to what we mean by just transition. It's very different in very different places. And we have to let everybody move as fast as they can in their context. And that may mean in the short term using gas in the short term, but not locking themselves in, not being locked in by the system, but being able to move as rapidly as possible.

Speaker 2:
[29:41] We're always looking for signs of progress, right? Because we know we have to progress. We're always looking for signs of progress. What can we point to that shows us not that there's a miraculous fix, which there isn't, but signs of progress? And what are one or two signs of progress that you would identify that say, yep, this is a little step in the right direction?

Speaker 5:
[30:08] At the beginning of this year, I remember reading how renewable energy investment was a record level. So for me, I see that as a place of hope, that investment is increasing. And hopefully, it continues to increase in 2026, but also that it increases in a really equitable way. Right now, it's mostly concentrated in China and a few global north countries. However, it would be good to see this investment start to increase on the African continent too.

Speaker 4:
[30:51] I will just look at nature with great hope, because we're talking about the climate and nature crisis. It's two sides of the coin, as you know so well, Christiana. And we're seeing more progress. We saw the high seas treaty last year, despite the geopolitical divides that we have. And we're seeing real progress on marine areas, on protection areas. And we're looking much more actively. And people are really understanding that we're not going to solve the climate crisis unless we know we are part of nature. And I think increasingly people are beginning to do that. And I love the planetary boundaries approach that Johan Rockström has adopted. And I'm one of his guardians of the planetary boundaries, because it's holistic. And it shows us that we did make progress with the ozone layer. We retrieved it when we knew that it was under threat. We got the Montreal Protocol very rapidly to deal with the chemicals that were causing this problem. It was an easier problem in the climate, but it shows it's all resolvable with human leadership and human endeavor. And I'm very hopeful that women's leadership will play a strong part in that in the future. And because I see it all over the place now, including on this program.

Speaker 2:
[32:04] Wonderful. Thank you so much, both of you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for sharing your analysis, your thoughts and your hopes, which we have to continue to nurture. And not one step back, always forward. So, you know what, guys? I think that this meeting in Colombia is coming out of a deep sense of frustration that we all share. The fact that we are still dependent on fossil fuels the way that we are. The fact that we still have these choking subsidies that favor polluting industries. The fact that developing countries, as Vanessa pointed out, are in such a trap around their debt and the cost of their capital and their credit worthiness, which we addressed in a previous episode. All of this is incredibly frustrating. And so the meeting, the conference in Colombia really comes out of that frustration, which we all share. My question, and I'm sorry to be so disruptive here, but does a meeting about all of this, does it have more or less impact on transitioning away from fossil fuels than the closing of the Strait of Hormuz? Which of the two has more impact?

Speaker 3:
[33:38] I can answer that one. I mean, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz is a gigantic global event that is affecting half the world's people right now, which is no confidence ever achieved.

Speaker 2:
[33:48] Yeah, yes, and, but what we're really pursuing here is to accelerate the transition. So, you know, we just spoke before the conversation with Mary and with Vanessa that we all know well, those of us working on these issues know that this points to the need to transition, but we don't. And then we have a meeting or two or three or four or five meetings, and we still don't transition at the speed in which we should. And we know that we are transitioning and we have all the data points, so we are transitioning. The problem is the transition is understandably much slower than what is needed, and we all just have collective frustration around this.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] Yeah. I mean, I think it is much slower than is needed. And just to come in on some of the things that your conversations surface with Mary and Vanessa, I think that people are still frustrated that fossil fuel interest continues to be present, yes, at the international level, although that's a bit contested, but certainly at the national level and in many different countries. The subsidies are still in place. We've been outraged by these for decades. We're still subsidizing destruction of the atmosphere. Developing countries are still stuck in debt traps around fossil fuels. All of these are really consequential and critical pieces. I think what's interesting about this conference in Santa Marta is, I think that in terms of building political will and movement towards action, I think it's a really consequential step to demonstrate to people that there are countries, there are subnationals, there are NGOs, there are corporations who are prepared to buy into a process that would lead to reducing supply of fossil fuels. I think it's an interesting...

Speaker 2:
[35:37] But it's not the suppliers that agree with that.

Speaker 1:
[35:40] But it's not the suppliers that agree. So that's the difficult political bit, is how do you get...

Speaker 2:
[35:44] That's the difficult thing.

Speaker 1:
[35:45] And Godspeed to them for having a go at that. But I think if you sort of say, how do you get the suppliers to agree to supply less of that product?

Speaker 2:
[35:53] Aha. Now we're talking.

Speaker 1:
[35:55] Right. That's why the political needle was threaded as it was in Paris, right? Don't talk about saying, you know, this country needs to supply less or that country needs to supply less. You say, let's collectively build the infrastructure of the future, and then that will facilitate a shift. If you want to look at it differently, and some of this conference does this, is to say, okay, well, that's part of it. But the other part is we need to focus on the supply and begin to actually almost regulate that so that we begin to transition away from it. I mean, conceptually, I think it's the right argument in some ways. But how you get people who are providing that to actually agree to stop doing it, what it does to prices, how it shapes the world economy, these are all really important questions.

Speaker 2:
[36:37] But Tom, just to push back on that, when you say regulate supply, really? The Plastics Treaty went down in flames because correctly so, countries said it's the production of plastics that is a problem. Absolutely correct. The supply, the production, that side of the equation. It went down in flames because those who produce and supply didn't want to be regulated and they cannot be regulated. Let's remember that every country is completely sovereign. And so if you don't want to be regulated, you're not going to be regulated. There is no such thing as an international regulator that is going to regulate the production of plastics or fossil fuels. It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't exist. So for me, that is the frustration that the problem is definitely the production, the supply for sure that cannot be regulated. In fact, it is incentivized and orchestrated by OPEC.

Speaker 1:
[37:44] Yes, to do the opposite, to increase it.

Speaker 2:
[37:47] To do the opposite. But that's because they themselves created OPEC for that purpose. There is no anti-OPEC. That just doesn't do it. I mean, that would be fantastic if we could create an anti-OPEC.

Speaker 1:
[38:00] Maybe that's what this is trying to be. Is this trying to be the anti-OPEC? Maybe it is.

Speaker 2:
[38:03] Yeah, but then you would have to have OPEC members as a member of that.

Speaker 1:
[38:06] You need a different membership.

Speaker 2:
[38:07] Exactly. You can't have an anti-OPEC with consuming countries.

Speaker 1:
[38:12] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[38:12] It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3:
[38:13] If you had enormous renewables companies in the coalition, would that be great?

Speaker 1:
[38:17] But that's different because that's about how do you build the bit you're trying to get to. This is about how do you coordinate the decline of fossil fuels themselves. And so if you're trying to build the industries of the future, it's technological, it's economic in order to create that shift. If you're trying to coordinate the decline of fossil fuels, that is a political process because that's tied up with national revenues, with jobs, with sovereignty, with geopolitical power. So the question of how do you get countries to collectively wind down something that each of them still depends on, that's a tough thing to do.

Speaker 2:
[38:52] The question is, what is the most effective strategy going to be? Is it the squelch strategy of forcing countries that depend on fossil fuel exports as their backbone of their national economy? Or is it the outcompete strategy? Me, I would put my eggs in the basket of outcompete.

Speaker 3:
[39:15] Outcompete is good.

Speaker 1:
[39:16] Right.

Speaker 2:
[39:16] I think history shows that when you have a technology that is superior in all ways, cheaper, better, faster, more effective, more efficient, that technologies that are superior outcompete and in the market, not in politics, in the market, then they actually squelch the other technologies, but not as a political squelching. I just don't think that that's possible.

Speaker 1:
[39:45] I mean, I love that we've now got different distinctions of squelching. This is different kinds of…

Speaker 3:
[39:49] I can see like some… the book of 2027 is going to be called Squelch.

Speaker 2:
[39:53] I think that's the name of this episode. Squelching. How many squelching do we have?

Speaker 3:
[39:58] But you know, look, listen, it is vital, right, that the work these people are doing is like matching that agenda from the Brazilian government. We need to be clear. And I hope that that all aligns really, really well. You know, the idea of kind of treatise it gets very complicated when you kind of get into this new kind of bureaucracy. I think that my highest hope here is that we get this real alignment between all of these efforts. We must have this sort of discipline and focus that we need to, you know, build. And I'm not sure if it's squelching in or squelching out. What's the opposite of squelch to clearly push through? Because, you know, the stakes are high.

Speaker 2:
[40:37] Yeah, but I guess, you know, as we close, the question that really remains open for me is, what is the most effective route here? Is it a political or is it an economic and technological route?

Speaker 3:
[40:50] Are they the same thing? Are politics and technology almost suffused in the 21st century?

Speaker 1:
[40:55] It is a good question. So do we have to think of it as a dichotomy? Is there a way in which they are different steps on a shared journey?

Speaker 2:
[41:02] That is for sure. And the political piece, however, would have to have the participation of oil and gas producing countries. And that's the piece that I honestly don't feel that we will have. I just don't see them voluntarily giving up their national income, voluntarily, unless they're outcompeted.

Speaker 1:
[41:30] I mean, Colombia is in there. They're a fossil fuel producer. So that's a step in that direction. And I think you're right, though, what we need to hope, and for this to be successful, we need to see significant amounts of fossil fuel producers understanding this is in their interest and joining this as a complement to the other side of the ledger.

Speaker 2:
[41:47] How would it be in their interest?

Speaker 1:
[41:48] Well, I suspect they probably would willingly give up, give in or accede to something that they can't stop happening.

Speaker 2:
[41:56] But that's not in their interest.

Speaker 1:
[41:58] Well, it is if the other pressures are such that they can't stop it happening.

Speaker 3:
[42:03] It's a fascinating time, and I know that we're going to dig into this ahead. Energy is running out in a strangely intense way in large parts of the world. I think the whole world's attention is focused on fossil fuels, their role and the vulnerabilities that they expose. And now is an extremely good time for us all to sort of think about how we can unify our messaging and reconfigure the political and economic systems to get the outcome we want. So I wish all working on this well at this particularly acute time. And I'm looking forward to digging into this further, because I think there can be huge opportunities for us, but we must be sort of smart about how to get through to the other side of this teachable moment in world history.

Speaker 1:
[42:49] Okay, so I think that takes us to the end of this week's episode. I hope everybody who's in Santa Marta has a very successful week. This is such an important mission. And we will be back as ever next week. Nice to have you back, Paul. We missed you. Power to the squelch.

Speaker 3:
[43:01] Great to be back with you.

Speaker 1:
[43:02] Power to the squelch. Good stuff. See you next week, friends.

Speaker 3:
[43:06] Bye.