Net zero is not real zero because net zero is not really about phasing out fossil fuels and really reducing methane emissions. Net zero is about compensating.
SPEAKER_01Sabrina has been looking into and studying issues around climate change for more than a decade, and she brings a really important eco-socialist perspective that I'm excited to get into in this conversation as we dig into COP26 and the many proposals for green capitalist solutions that purport to deal with the climate crisis, but actually delay the necessary action that we actually need to take the kind of structural changes that are required to seriously reduce emissions and to change the way that we live to ensure that it's in a more equitable and sustainable way. Sabrina was actually at the COP26 conference earlier this month, so she tells us a bit about what actually happened on the ground, you know, the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists and corporations there, and what that meant for the actual discussions that were being had at the conference. And then we dig into this term net zero by 2050 that you've probably been hearing a lot lately, and what is actually kind of embedded in that term and that concept, and how it involves the idea that we can continue polluting and not take the rapid actions that are necessary because things like offsets, nature-based solutions, and new technologies that haven't even been developed yet will kind of save us from ourselves in the future, even though those things are not at all proven, and we're taking a massive risk if we don't take the action that we should be taking in the next few years to seriously curb greenhouse gas emissions. I realize that we haven't talked nearly enough about climate change on the podcast so far, and you know, hopefully I'll be able to change that in the new year, have more guests to focus on climate issues. But now that we are having this conversation, I'm really happy that Sabrina is the person who is kind of joining us to have this discussion, and I hope that you enjoy our conversation and that you learn from it. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada, and you can find out more about the other shows in the network by going to Harbinger Media Network.com. If you like the show, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, like every episode, is free for everybody because listeners like you support the work that goes into making it every single week. So if you like the show and you feel like you learn from it, consider joining supporters like Andy from North Germany and Benjamin Slade by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us and becoming a monthly supporter. Your support helps ensure I can keep doing this and bringing these fantastic conversations like this week's with Sabrina to you every single week. And with that said, enjoy this week's conversation. Sabrina, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me, Perry. I'm a huge fan of the show.
SPEAKER_01I'm really excited to chat with you and obviously, you know, thank you for uh promoting the show and suggesting it to people in the past as well. Always appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00I'm always happy to do it. I'll be promoting now because I'm in it.
SPEAKER_01So that's why I had you on, right? It's to get your expertise because, you know, the COP26 conference happened recently, and this is a topic that you've been working on for a decade that is really key to your research. And, you know, I would say climate change is a topic that I haven't talked about as much as I would like to on the show. And so hopefully, you know, next year in 2022, I can fix that and have a bit more uh uh episodes on this. But I think it's really the perfect time to have an episode on climate change and on you know what's been going on, these proposals that are out there for how we address it and you know a lot of the problems with them. And so I wanted to start with COP26, and we can use that to get into some of these bigger issues. You know, in the past year in particular, we have seen um how climate change is something that's happening now. It's not just happening in the future. We've seen, you know, increasing fires, we've seen storms that are, you know, more powerful than in the past, um, wet bulb temperatures in Pakistan over the summer, uh, you know, when it gets so hot that your body can't cool itself down, right? And so in 2015 at the Paris conference, there was a commitment to try to keep warming to 1.5 degrees instead of the previously accepted two degrees. So going into this month's COP26 in Glasgow, what were the expectations that people had for what might come out of this conference?
SPEAKER_00Uh it depends on who you ask, right? So um a lot of the governments that were saying yes, we're like we're keeping 1.5 alive. That was the huge thing. Like uh Alok Sharma, the president uh of COP26, basically uh through the UK presidency, kept repeating this. Um, but even by the end of it, now that we have like what is like the this final, this final text, right? Like the Glasgow Climate Pact, uh, Alak Sharma had to say that, well, we are in 1.5 alive, but like the post is weak. And that's actually an euphemism because different uh approaches, like looking into um the numbers behind it, you could say that perhaps the current policies, like from this agreement, they would put us at 2.4 by um uh 2100, and so like maybe later 2.7, and this could make things like quite complicated in terms of like sea level rise and things like that. But if you're really, really, really optimistic, you could say 1.8. So yeah, it's still not 1.5. So things are pretty bad in that sense. Um, but other than that, uh, we need to understand like this COP26, there were a lot of expectations on it, precisely because we had to finalize this rule book on the Paris Agreement. So a lot of like very specific things, uh particularly in connection to climate financing, loss and damage, uh, and the thing about the mechanisms, right? Like so, like market and all market mechanisms, these things would have to be settled. And there was a lot of conflict around it. And we also like as observers, so I was there and like the observers were complaining a lot uh with reason that yes, they brought like 40,000 people in, so this is a loss. So, like if we consider uh the copy in Madrid, uh it was like a little over 20,000. So, yes, a lot of observers, but we couldn't get into the rooms because then they said that the rooms were not big enough. And so they were encouraging people to watch it from the platform. But if you're just watching from the platform, it's just like watching Netflix, right? You can't really, you know, be there to put pressure and to actually engage with the negotiating process. So that was quite bad and was also very uh exclusionary for other reasons, right? So, like there's a pandemic, vaccine apartheid, many things that we can mention in a sense, even though um the presidency tried to make it look like wow, this is very inclusive, COP26, because we are bringing stakeholders from everywhere, you know, so like we're giving space for a few indigenous leaders to speak, a few youth leaders to speak. So yeah, it's very, very inclusive. But in fact, we know that organizations that normally uh send people to the COP couldn't send it because, you know, uh visa issues like the UK, they really didn't make this easy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I think that's a really key point that you're making there. And, you know, it's one that I saw you make during the conference, right? Was that you had people and representatives from the global south from many of the countries that would be most affected by climate change not being able to make it to the actual conference themselves to, you know, have their voices heard, to participate in these discussions to try to push for more ambitious climate action. And then on the other hand, I believe uh what I read was that there are like more fossil fuel lobbyists there than have ever been seen at a COP in the past. And naturally they are influencing the direction of these talks.
SPEAKER_00Oh yes. Um 2011, 10 years ago, I wrote and um published a report together with Richard Girard uh at the Polaris Institute in Canada when we were talking about the influence of corporations within the UNFCC process in general, not just COP, right? So there are many different ways that these corporations can get into the process. They could be there like uh through bingos, for example, so like business and industry NGOs. So you would have, for example, the IETA, and that's like a major one that you see every time. Um, but now like they're just everywhere, it's so much easier. Uh, if you walk through the pavilions and this is like a part of the blue zone, just like maybe I should give a little bit of an introduction, right? Of how things work. Like you have these basically two spaces this year, like the blue zone and the green zone. The green zone is where you have like some debates, it's a little bit a little bit like a trade fair. Um, it's normally open, like easier to access, like you don't need uh proper accreditation with a UNFCCC. Um, but this year it was like a ticket system because of COVID and it was really hard. I like I didn't go to the green zone myself. And for the blue zone, that's where you have um the negotiations and you also have the pavilions, is where like countries and associations are like promoting debates and you know showing what they're doing about it. Sometimes they have like demonstrations for new technologies and things like that as well. And you need accreditation uh through uh an organization that's an observer to the UN, right? So uh then you get like researchers in there, you have like people from business and industry, youth organizations, civil society in general, you could get accreditation through that process, and then what you have like these different badges, right? So like people that are coming, like with the official delegation of a country, their badge is going to have like this uh pink uh label that's like sets party, so like conference of the parties, so you're there for it, and then like observers, uh ours was like yellow, and like press is going to be orange, and then when you go into the negotiating rooms, for example, a lot of these rooms press can't get in, but the observers can get in. But there are also negotiating rooms that only party members can get in, though those are like closed negotiations, so there's a lot of things happening at the same time. For me in particular, it was quite frustrating to see how this time they weren't even trying to disguise the presence of these corporations, right? So, like I would walk around and there was like an entire floor that was like Bloomberg, Facebook, and Google right there, right? And then when you go to the Papua New Guinea stand in the pavilion, okay, that's a country pavilion, but like Ernst Young, the big consulting and accounting firm, right there. It's like you didn't know if it was the Ernst Young Pavilion or the Papua New Guinea pavilion. And um, when you go to the Japan pavilion, they will be like, okay, this is the schedule of like, you know, um people who are going to be presenting, also the businesses are going to be presenting. So a lot of these governments they're just making a lot of room for these businesses in there. So like the Brazilian government was there with direct support from the agribusiness and industry associations. So it's quite obvious. And as a researcher, I had to see through a lot of these panels too, so that can be a little painful sometimes. And they were really, really into propagating uh false solutions, but they were also appropriating a lot of the language from the movement. So sometimes they would talk about just transition in a completely different way. That was about like pricing it correctly. That was just transition for them. Or, you know, they would talk about, you know, we really care for nature, and then you get into, you know, language like nature-based solutions that to the outside, oh, that looks cool, right? But in the end, when we look into it, it's much, much more complicated.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that outlines it really well for the listeners to get an idea of what actually goes on, you know, inside the conference. And I think your point there on kind of the reframing of the language and kind of the redefinition of the terms is really important. And I want to get to some of those false solutions, but first I think we need to discuss, you know, what actually came out of COP26, right? So, you know, over the weekend, I guess the final uh draft was approved by the assembled members or whatever the right term would be. Um, so what actually came out in that agreement and what does it reflect about what actually went on at COP this year?
SPEAKER_00We had two sets of things coming out. Uh, one that was like from day one, is like countries would get together and they would like make a pledge, a unified pledge to like phase out coal or like no new non-abated fossil fuel investments abroad, like very specific things, and then they'll get together, like 20 countries here, 40 countries there. There was this huge uh deal like to curb deforestation that was signed by a lot of countries too. But those are there to grab headlines, like Nathan Tankee, like who was with us like with the COP26 coalition, he was also make like mentioning this all the time, like grabbing headlines. Why? Because, well, this is just like voluntary things that you can say one day and then you just forget about it, right? So, like you have this huge conference that costs a lot of money, and uh because it costs a lot of money, the UNFCCC decided to thank its corporate partners everywhere, right? So, like corporate partners, IKEA, Land Rover, it was all over the place. And they weren't actually negotiating, right? They were making like these pledges that were coming from somewhere else and announcing it in the newspapers. So that happened. There were a lot of things that you can find online in the newspapers about this, and then there was the actual negotiating part, just like the reason why people were there. But how to use this mechanism within the UNFCCC to actually make sure that we stick to 1.5. At the end of it, they came up with what they decided to call the Glasgow Climate Pact. It's about 11 pages, I believe. And it works in the traditional way of like UN resolutions. So, like for those who are not familiar with it, uh like I went through like model UN stuff when I was at university, so like it really, really did prepare me for this kind of thing is that they draft a resolution that has two types of causes. So, at first, you're kind of like reaffirming things. So they do say, like, affirming that this happened, recognizing that this is important, and then they will do things um in the sense that were actually like kind of interesting to look at because in this actual final text, they said like uh also noting that for some people the concept of climate justice is important, it's like for some people, yeah. For some people, exactly, right? So, and then they will get into the part where they actually like made some decisions, and then they're going to use instead of using you know, like noting, recognizing, it changes into notes, recognizes, uh, recalls, urges, um, encourages, emphasizes. So those are like these main verbs and things like that. And I think like suffice to say that some of these verbs they don't mean an od a lot because when you say like encourages, like okay, it's there, it's in the draft, but it's only encouraged, okay. And I think like the most important ones that we find is when they finally agreed on saying like decides, resolves, uh, requests, and perhaps calls upon, because it's a little stronger. Um, and sometimes within these negotiations, they're going to be fighting over this, right? Are we going to put urges or are we going to put requests? And that could be like a whole meeting, an entire hour of this, right? And I'd say that what came out of this is better than nothing. So I'm not going to say like it was like completely horrible. Um, but even um, you know, as I was leaving Glasgow and like I was seeing people from different standpoints and everything, everyone was a little bit depressed because they had a feeling that at least on climate finance, things will get better. So, like in general, what we had here is like some calls uh for countries to really um, you know, like cut down on their emissions and some encouragement for countries to actually uh keep re-evaluating what their pledges are. So you have this thing that's like the the NDCs, these national contributions that the countries need to say that well, we're going to uh reduce our emissions by X or Y. And like there was even encouragement to say, well, you know, in a few years you should like readdress this and say that we're going to cut it faster because while you are adapting and you're mitigating, so there are other things that you can do around it. So there was that. But uh two really big points of contention. So you have the stuff on mitigation and adaptation, and um, just to like make it clear, basically, um, adaptation is you know how you adjust to the effects of climate change. And mitigation is about trying to make climate change less severe, so like actually preventing or reducing um the emission of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So we need a lot of mitigation and we need adaptation as well. And countries that are vulnerable, uh particularly countries in the global south, they need adaptation really badly. And um, that will lead into also a different conversation, which was loss and damage. And around loss and damage, this was um pretty frustrating because there are groups of countries like the V20, like the vulnerable 20, or like the LDCs, the least developing countries, um, that really wanted you know more funds for loss and damage because as you said earlier, these things are already being felt right now, right? So if there's like this really, you know, like grade five hurricane uh hitting an island, and we know this is climate change. Well, if you have this special fund for loss and damage, this would be quite good and uh help to deal with that. Um, but richer countries kind of said, no, that's what humanitarian aid is for. So we're not going to uh stick to something else. So they basically just kind of like agreed to some sort of like working group over this and to keep this conversation going on this. Uh, in relation to mitigation adaptation, a lot of the fights were over climate finance, and we still came out of this without a proper definition of what that means. So different countries have different ideas of what climate finance means because uh for some countries it means anything. So, like, oh, we're providing you aid to build, you know, water reservoirs, and that that goes under climate finance, but that's not necessarily climate finance, it's important, yeah, but not necessarily climate finance. But they would they would say, yes, see, we're providing this, and that would count towards um these pledges, right? And but the big, big fight is over like grants instead of loans. So a lot of the poorer nations are like, well, we should be getting grants, because one of the principles behind the Paris Agreement, and like this is really important, is that it's about how these uh contributions to climate change, they're different. So like climate change is a common scenario, but it's differentiated in the sense of who's contributing to it and who's being affected by it. So climate finance, if it's mostly about loans instead of grants, that means a lot of nations are already quite indebted. They're going to be more in debt as they're trying to, you know, um mitigate, but like especially adapt uh to situations that you know it's not their fault. So that was a big fight. Um, but something that you know came out of it as quite strong is that the language around net zero was still pretty much there. Uh so then that was quite convenient for the whole discussion and fights and the frustrating part over Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which is a part that deals with market mechanisms, non-market mechanisms, sustainable development mechanisms. Uh, these were the negotiations that I followed a little bit closer because I'm very interested in looking into how like the carbon market approach was being pushed by different nations. So, yes, now from the Glasgow Climate Pact, we have what is the blueprint for uh an international carbon market mechanism. Um, and this for many looks like good news. Uh, for those of us who are very critical of the system of offset and the concept of net zero, um, that just means that we're much, much, much slower in terms of like how how fast we should be going uh to actually mitigate and perhaps adapt.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I think you've outlined it so well to give us insight into how this whole process works and so many of the important aspects of this pact that has come out of it and the things that we should be concerned about. And you know, I think the way that you ended your answer perfectly picks up on the next thing that I wanted to ask you about, which is specifically, you know, this idea of net zero by 2050, right? That all of a sudden uh in the past couple of years, we've started to hear everywhere kind of like replacing these shorter term commitments, it feels like. You know, here in Canada where I am, the government is talking a lot about net zero by 2050 now, even as it keeps missing uh its shorter-term emissions reductions targets. And a lot of the other global North countries that I'm seeing are including offsets as key parts of at least their short-term emissions reduction strategies, but likely I would imagine their long-term emissions reduction strategies. And so what this suggests is that you know the actual actions to reduce emissions are being pushed down the road, and instead offsets are being put in there to replace it. So, what is net zero by 2050? And what is the concern around this concept as it kind of picks up traction in these negotiations and in the global north countries in particular?
SPEAKER_00Uh net zero is not real zero. So, this is the first thing that we've like had been saying. Put that on our like mess and everything, like net zero is not real zero because net zero is not really about phasing out fossil fuels and like really reducing methane emissions. Uh, net zero is about compensating, so that's the main thing. So when we're talking about offsets, we're talking about compensation. It means that um some countries and some industries they could reduce a little, but not not that much, because everything else that they're still emitting, well, they're just going to compensate with carbon that's not being produced somewhere else or being stored somewhere else. And that's where you get into this whole conversation about nature-based solutions and forests, right? So, well, um, instead of me here um basically um cutting the emissions, you know, I don't know, from the tar sands in Navorta, uh, rather than doing that, well, we need that because it's really important for the economy in Canada, you know, all of the things that we've heard all along in Canada. And well, what we're going to do is that we need then to uh stay within our NDCs, we need to offset these emissions with forests somewhere else. So like forests are very key to it. And this is why you like the this whole deforestation deal like that came out in the beginning to avoid deforestation, it wasn't just because it decided that, oh, forests are like sacred and we respect forests and we want indigenous communities to be respected too. No, it's because forests are key to this conversation around net zero, right? And um, basically it means that you're going to be using this carbon stock somewhere else to compensate. And when some other places actually do cut their emissions, then you know if credits are generated through that, you can use those credits uh to offset your own. So you don't really move, right? You kind of stay where you are in terms of emissions. You might have a little bit of overall reduction, but you're never going to get to the emissions that you actually need. And right now we already have a problem of under-accounting for emissions. So there are like uh many, many associations that actually like do the math on this and say that like governments are reporting uh emission cuts there are actually much lower in reality. So like they should be cutting a lot more. And with this, with this problem with upsetting, um, this becomes uh you know more of a reality. And the approach around the carbon mechanisms within the Paris Agreement, the good thing about it, like if I'm trying to look for silver lining here, is at least they were more careful to ensure that we wouldn't have double accounting in this mechanism. So you know, it's going to be a lot more strict when they report it to the proper uh bodies at the UNFCC. This is good, but it also allow them to kind of count some previous credits that come from like the Kyoto Protocol and things like that. And those credits, like we call them like poor credits, because like they're really hard to actually like see if they actually made any difference, but also they're super old and we actually need new things now. So net zero is really a way of like making look like they're going fast and they're worried, and all of these businesses within there, they were talking about net zero the entire time, but it's really about this this situation, like well, we're going to pay to set emissions, right? And that's going to give us some, you know, some climate benefits too. And then everybody wins, right? When in fact, we know that if we're actually going to you know stop at 1.5, not get to 2.0, there's no win-win situation, you know, especially looking to the corporate side of things. A lot of people will have to lose so that the majority of people don't lose their lives, uh, so that ecosystems can still be well kept and you know, we don't have like even more loss of species in the planet.
SPEAKER_01I think you've laid it out so well. And there are several aspects that I want to dig into further. And so I'll just start with you know the market-based piece of this, right? Because if I have my history correct, you know, the kind of prospect of these carbon markets really comes out of the Kyoto Protocol and the US and the Clinton administration pushing that as a solution in opposition to the Europeans who wanted taxes and regulatory measures. And so you have this kind of marketization of the problem of uh emissions and needing to reduce emissions. And, you know, I think it's fair to say, and and you know, I think you were kind of outlining that in your answer, that the issue there is that then you have this kind of abstraction of the problem of reducing emissions. And so instead of say, you know, taking the difficult measures that would be necessary to say reduce emissions in the Alberta tar sands or you know, in the United States at coal and oil facilities and things like that by you know beginning to really shut down the production of fossil fuels, instead, you have these proposals for nature-based solutions. So, okay, instead of starting to phase down fossil fuel production and use, what we're actually going to do is you know use these forests to make sure that they're protected. And so you don't actually have the difficult actions that are being taken today because they're using forests and other solutions and you know, um, carbon capture, which I think we'll get to in a little bit, to kind of delay the actions that we need to reduce emissions today. And that that is where that idea of net zero comes from.
SPEAKER_00They make a lot of money along the way, because that's the whole thing, right? So um I said through a bunch of panels that like conversations were around use of blockchains to make sure that you're transferring this credit. You you had an episode on this, so I think like it connects quite well, right? So uh, you know, using blockchain to like there was like these people from uh like the oil industry talking about how the oil industry are upsetting things and how blockchain is really important to make sure that you have proper credit. And then they would say these things that I thought were like brilliant as a like for me as a researcher, it feels like I just caught you right there. Because, well, if you're going to use blockchain for this, then we need to make sure that we have you know properly certified land tiles. And but we're talking about places in the global south where the indigenous and traditional communities, well, there's no land settlement at all. So they're still quite vulnerable. So that means you know, like land titles, like by whom? Agribusiness and the majority, right? And that's why like the agribusiness association in Brazil, uh CNA, was pushing forward and saying that Brazil is the future of the green economy. So it really does connect to like how they can make money out of it. So like there was like these um asset management firms there, and they're also excited, and they're talking in terms of trillions. Oh, because like we manage this portfolio with about like uh you know trillions here, and then we can use this money to help to get us to net zero. So it is really about you know creating the markets and making more profit, and it can even uh lead to very worrisome things. So, like you mentioned like going back to the Kyoto Protocol, and we had like the RED Plus uh mechanism, and this is something that we were really worried about for a really long time because it that meant not just you know, you know, reducing these emissions, you know, trying to cut on deforestation and things like that. So that kind of looks good too. It's always like this, they look good, the acronyms they look good, but in reality, um they were facilitating uh you know problems with land grabs and like managing these huge pieces of territory and forests uh to the detriment of the indigenous communities that have been protecting these forests for a really long time. And until now, RED was pretty much like results-based, like so payments according to like how well kept and like how deforestation was avoided and things like that. And but there was always been a push ever since RED Plus kind of like resurfaced uh through the Paris Agreement, that yes, and then like let's let's move this into you know credits, credits, credits. So the whole conversation is about creating carbon credits uh through every means possible. And the real problem here, like the the catch that we have is that if you have all of these countries and all of these corporations saying that you know they're going to reach net zero by offsetting, we don't have enough carbon capturing, absorbing tactics and like forms to do enough for all of this, right? So obviously that's why they wanted to do some double accounting along the way. Um, so that's that's creating a problem of governance that's quite worrisome for these vulnerable communities that have been taking care of forests, of rivers. So, like nature-based solutions is something that looks cool, it looks like they're finally paying attention, and perhaps like you know, when we're talking about geoengineering as well, then nature-based solutions kind of talk that must be ecological, but that's not what it means at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I I think that's a great point. And I want to get to the carbon capture point, but first I want to kind of follow up on a point you made there, especially about RED Plus, right? Um, and that is, you know, I think it's important to state for people that in the process of, you know, kind of enclosing these forests for the creation of carbon credits and for the purported reduction of emissions, what happened is that often local people and indigenous people were pushed out of these forests and off of these lands that were preserved. Um, and that, you know, there were a lot, a lot of issues around the management of this and about people from the global north effectively going into the global south and buying up these large tracts of land that they would then control and you know purportedly manage for the production of carbon credits. But as I understand it, there were also a lot of issues with um ensuring that those things were actually being done properly, as is my understanding of some of the issues with that kind of mechanism. Um, and so I think that also points to how, in this kind of framing of net zero and this idea of using the carbon credits as the way to allow the reduction of emissions, what you have is the global north, which you know has massive emissions per capita in comparison to much of the rest of the world, exporting the need to reduce its emissions onto the global south yet again.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely. And this was one of the big criticisms from the outside, from the People's Summit, the COP26 coalition, so like the movements in general saying that basically, you know, the developed world has led us into this uh huge crisis, and they just want to use territories in the global south uh as a way to say, no, we're going to fix it this way. And that could even lead to more worrisome things like um militarization. So, like uh Melita Morano, who's a researcher uh from Ecuador, who works on this, like she just denounced, like, like, for example, in Nigeria, it became like this militarized conservation of carbon, right? Because like you had to evict people, or like you can't use the forest in a particular way. So then you get into like this whole conflicts between um local communities and like sometimes even conservation NGOs who have different plans for the forest. So it's complicated. And even though language around indigenous rights, human rights made it into um the climate pact, it is in the sense of what I just told you about, right? So it's just like encourages, emphasizes, remembers. Uh it doesn't really mean that it's going to it's important that it's there, and it was a huge fight actually to make sure that it was there because every now and then some countries try to remove it just to make things easier, right? So it's important that it's there, but it's not enough to make it binding and to actually like protect these rights.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, just to make one more connection here, I think you know, to make some connections to tech, as this is a tech podcast, you know, at COP26 you had Jeff Bezos of all people show up and pledge $2 billion to the preservation of nature, right? And you know, what I saw in the aftermath of that, obviously we don't believe that this is actually going to be something that is in the interest of the planet, Jeff Bezos purportedly putting all this money into it. But researchers saying that, you know, there are a lot of issues with the way that Jeff Bezos and his kind of organization view protecting nature in the way that they put it, and that instead, if he really wanted to make an impact, he would reduce the emissions of Amazon, which is the company that uh produces all of his wealth virtually, um, which saw its emissions increase by 15% in 2019, and another 19%, I believe it was, I'll put the links in the show notes, you know, increased in 2020. So if he really wants to address the climate crisis and he's really concerned about this, why isn't he taking action on the thing that he can directly control instead of saying, like, oh, nature-based solutions?
SPEAKER_00The answer is that then it's not green capitalism, right? So like the whole point is to make it into green capitalism. And Amazon was actually sponsoring some of the pavilions, so like we could see that, and like one of the big places that was talking about um this like carbon markets was like the nature's own pavilion, and it was put together by a lot of different partners. Amazon was uh part of it, but also the World Economic Forum, and they put these videos of like these forests and wetlands, and it's all really beautiful in the way that utilize it. Like the greenwashing is absolutely everywhere, right? But at the same time, you know, like the real push, we should make sure that you can just offset things in this way, so they're they're really, really quite connected. Um, but also mentioning tech, like some like curiosities around it. So um uh the US pavilion um had a whole thing with NASA. You could even get like uh like freebie uh NASA merchandise and stuff when you were there. So I thought that was uh different. Um, and this year like they had like the methane pavilion. This is actually like um an interesting discussion here. There was like this pledge, one of these extra pledges. Uh, it was led by the United States and the European Union uh called the Global Methane Pledge. And like it was one of the first ones that they came out with. And the idea is that while they wanted to um agree together, not like each country making their own pledge. So that's just something to notice, just together. Um, we want to reduce global methane emissions by at least um 30% by 2030, right? So, like using a baseline uh from last year, 2020, right? This is important. I like it to be more than 30%, but it's important because methane is a really powerful greenhouse gas. So it could really reduce warming. So, like some of the estimates were that was that if they actually abide by this, this 30% cut, that could reduce the warming by 0.2 by 2050. So there could be a difference between 1.5 and 1.7, something like that, right? Um, so they made the splash and there were uh that includes like these like big methane emitters in the world, but it's different than the way that you can think of the reduction of methane depending on the type of methane that's being produced. Uh so in places like the US where a lot of this methane is connected to uh leaks from like oil production, you can like apply some like cheaper technological fixes to it and kind of produce it, right? Um but when you're talking about Brazil, uh that's like one of the five, I believe, five biggest emitters of methane in the world, that means every business, right? That means cattle, that that means like bovines uh primarily, right? So you need to change a lot more things to make sure that that happens in Brazil. And like you need to talk about a brilliant form, you need to consider that this is a country that like is based on like commodities and it's exporting meat and all of these things. So the way that this is structured uh kind of make you look like okay, this is all really nice, we're all going to reduce it, but it's not the same for every country, and that's why I didn't really think the pledge itself is going to have this much of an impact. But at the methane pavilion, they were talking about the use of satellites to monitor you know methane emissions, and through this monitoring, they could like keep an eye on whether these signatories were actually cutting down their methane emissions and like from landfills as well and things like that. So that was one of the pavilions that were really into the whole like the space race can kind of be interesting for us, and they actually like framed it that way. You know, it's space exploration and the way we monitor methane emissions, and then we're going to cut down on methane, and like everything's so connected.
SPEAKER_01Great. They're gonna they're gonna create another way for uh Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to kind of uh I guess greenwash in this sense their their space businesses and their desires to go to space.
SPEAKER_00Basically, they get to play heroes every time in these spaces, right?
SPEAKER_01Ah, it's ridiculous. Um, but you know, I think I think when we look at net zero by 2050 as well, like there's an aspect of it that seems like kind of a techno-solutionist fantasy to me, right? And and you know, I think this is kind of reflected in some of the stuff that you were saying, because a big piece of this is that, okay, yeah, we can embed more today, uh, whether that's because of offsetting or you know, just because the the work, the necessary work isn't being done. But then at the same time, you know, the promises, okay, you know, we'll keep doing these emissions today, but we will have these forms of carbon capture and storage that will come along, that will be developed in the future, that will be able to suck those emissions back out of the atmosphere so that it won't cause the warming that we are so concerned about. But then when we look at that, you know, there are a ton of issues where a lot of these carbon capture and storage technologies are not proven. Uh and uh where they have been tried so many times in the past, you know, they never meet the kind of objectives and the targets that are set for them to actually be able to effectively pull the carbon out of there. And so it seems like we are setting up this kind of uh plan for net zero by 2050, but just kind of hoping that the technologies get developed to kind of follow through on that promise because the actions aren't being taken today to you know phase out fossil fuels and do the other actions that are necessary to actually reduce the emissions instead of just kind of take them out of the atmosphere later.
SPEAKER_00Just to put it very simply, um, a lot of these like geoengineering, techno fixes, um, at best, there'll be a band-aid solution. Like if they work, there'll be a band-aid solution. If they don't work, they're very dangerous, not only because of possible side effects of the application of technologies that we don't know work that well or that affect ecosystems, and I can get more into this, but also in the fact that like they're just stalling us, they stall us, right? Because okay, we can use this instead, and then okay, we have more time, we have more time. And this is very, very, very dangerous. And there are different categories here, so like the two major ones you mentioned, so like um carbon capture and sequestration, CCS, and you also have uh SRM, which is uh solar radiation management, right? Perhaps people have been more familiar with SRM because of Bill Gates talking, like Bill Gates funding research within SRM, but SRM is actually like an old idea, and they're different forms of SRM, right? Like you get all these airplanes and you put the airplanes to go around. So, like it just keep thinking of this, right? Like a huge source of emissions is aviation, right? But you get more airplanes and you get them to spray these aerosols into the atmosphere, and they're they're going to like um reflect some sunlight, and then the earth is going to warm less. And this is just really stupid because once you stop reflecting things, and you you were believing, okay, the earth the earth is warming less, so that's okay. We don't need to cut emissions that much. So you keep emitting more and more, and then you the airplane stops flying, and then there you go, things are going to like heat up much faster. So you could have like um this overshoot that takes into like an unprecedented uh level of impact that we don't know of. There is uh also SRM connected to micro dopplets of water that they take from the sea and then create these reflective clouds as well. But this could be even like more general things that we've heard about in terms of like urban planning, right? So like painting roofs and uh painting like entire roads white and saying that everything is going to be like mirrors. Now, imagine walking through a city, okay, where everything that you touch is reflecting heat and the earth is already warming. How lava is that city, really? Because when like we've had cases in places like um Dubai and London where they put too many mirrors and reflective glasses on the on buildings, and they start like actually frying and melting pavement. So these ideas are really strange to me that people think like that this is going to be livable in that sense, right? But these types of techniques around SRM, they can also cause huge ecosystem problems, right? So, you know, like it affects very much like the weather patterns in a region. And this could have major consequences, not just the fact that you know a place that is used to having rain is not gonna have rain, but also like countries get into like more territorial fights, you know, like you know, geopolitical conflicts around this as well. And this will affect you know how crops are raised and entire food chains, so it affects other species as well. And then you might have like an influx of animals into cities that you're not used to. So it's not that simple as they try to make it look like. Um, and that's why a lot of these approaches that have only been tried like at a small scale, so they don't fix other problems because when we're talking about for Example cutting emissions, um, let's say emissions from ethane by reducing the exploitation of bovines. This is about a lot of things. It's about the use of the territory, that's about animal cruelty, it's a lot of other things, right? That we get to tackle at the same time. Through these uh geoengineering techno fixes, well, we don't need to tackle anything. We just like go there at the end of the, you know, tap water is like leaking, you know, put a little band-aid there, but we don't actually fix the piping. So this is uh part of the situation here. And so far, we've had problems in terms of like the ethics around some of these experiments. So like money being funneled uh to like these big research projects, and they're like going to places like the Greyberry Reef in like around Australia and like spraying stuff there. It's like what like you can't just go around and do that kind of stuff, but it's really iffy, right? The ethical um uh benchmarks for this kind of stuff is still um to be developed, and then we get to CCS, and CCS gets uh more complicated because it could be like anything from like filters that they put at the process of emissions until until like the the whole idea about like actually capturing carbon and storing it underground or things like that. And um, yeah, that gets into like things that could be called uh carbon capture, tree planting and forest expansion, right? And uh in some places they could be just planting any trees. So it's concerning in terms of like biodiversity, uh it's concerning about the fact like of the actual, actually the forestry industry being involved in this, or ideas around backs, uh, because backs uh is connected to biomass. So like you plant a lot of the trees for biomass and then you capture uh uh carbon at the emission site and then you put it under storage. But if you're going to use bags to actually fix the problem, there's not enough land in the planet for it. I'm not even talking about agricultural land, there's not enough land in the planet for bags to be uh a proper solution, right? So there's that um there's some conversations around like uh genetic engineering of deep-rooted crops because you know they they will fix more things into the soil, and then these things at the plants at the industrial scrubbers, there's competitions around like artificial trees. Uh that that one I haven't looked that much into, but I know it's also there. Liquefied transference from like CO2 from oil reservoirs underneath it, and it's it's a lot of things. And one of the things that we're that's like more famous is um iron fertilization of like marine spaces, right? So that would help to grow more algae, and then these uh algae, when they die, like they're absorbing carbon, and when they die, they sink to the ocean floor. So that's one of the main ideas. That's fertilizing the ocean. Imagine how wonderful that is for like entire ecosystems, like marine ecosystems, right? And that could lead to like collapse of fisheries, and that could be worse for the coral situation, it's already quite bad because of ocean acidification. So there are a lot of really terrible side effects in terms of like ecological rifts and ruptures uh that are sometimes not considered, but also um in terms of when we when we think about well, they're not actually fixing the problem, right? They're just like putting you the band-aid on the leak.
SPEAKER_01I think what you've illustrated there is that there are so many ways that these solutions that are supposed to be the way that allow us to kind of delay the action that we should be taking right now, because you know, these technologies or these other fixes might fix it down the road, even then, you know, we're not really considering the full ethical implications that come with it, whether they're going to be feasible in the long term, and whether you know they're going to have regional impacts that could have really significant consequences that are not being considered. And so, you know, I would just also note that when we think about the carbon capture and storage right now, a lot of that is being used, like when it's pushed underground, to extract more oil to be burned and produced. That is one of the main uses of carbon capture and storage right now by oil companies. Um, and then I would also say, you know, when you're talking about kind of the regional impacts and thinking more broadly, you know, not just about the tap, but about the whole pipe, uh, transportation and electric cars is a major piece of this as well. Um, and so much of that is focused around, okay, we don't need to change anything about our cities. We can just replace our gas-powered or diesel-powered cars with electric cars. We don't need to think about anything else when there's a whole massive supply chain of mining and things like that that are going to have huge implications for people, often in the global south, but also in rural and indigenous parts of the global north where all those minerals are going to be mined.
SPEAKER_00This is a major thing now, right? Like we've been talking about uh this new wave of green extractivism. The World Bank issued this report in 2020 talking about the demand for like lithium and cobalt, manganese and other uh special green minerals uh soaring by like 500%. And this leads to um speculation in the financial market, you know, around like the prices of these commodities and mining companies actually trying to even look greener, saying that yeah, yeah, we have destroyed their communities for other things, but this is important to stop climate change, right? And that gets into a whole other conversation that perhaps you can do a whole episode on this, is how um a lot of these discussions around renewables they follow this paradigm around like let's decarbonize things, uh, but not really let's like actually transition, right? So they reduce the whole conversation to electricity, to energy. And obviously, this is really great for Elon Musk and those guys. And then they can take lithium, and then for example, when Elon Musk comes out and he says the whole thing with Bolivia, right? Then we we will cool whoever we want and things like that. And obviously, his lithium wasn't coming from Bolivia because it's not actually viable lithium right now, it's something more for the future. Um, in that area, like Argentina, Chile, and and Bolivia, Chile and Argentina are producing lithium today. Uh, Chile is like a major producer, it's actually part of the strategy of the Pineta government, like a neoliberal right-wing government that was like shooting people in the eye in 2019 uh during the protest. So that's a problem there. But when he says no, our lithium is actually coming from Australia, as if Australia was conflict-free. When Australia were talking about safety-colonialism, right? So it doesn't change it that much when they just say, well, our lithium is coming from Australia. So we need to mention this. And you know, there's like they're talking now about like mining the bottom of the ocean from Hanganese. And like what are the impacts of these things? Because it's all about making sure we have these minerals, we need to take them. We're not going to reduce our demand for energy at all. We're just going to replace everything and perhaps increase. Because a lot of the plans is not just like, let's take one car that you know that's powered by gas and change it into an electric vehicle. You know, it's actually like a soaring demand for electric vehicles. And that's the actual approach for like growing capitalism. And it's quite worrisome. Like the scenario around uh green extractivism is something that we're worried about, and it connects to other concerns that we didn't get into it today that are like more uh on a tangent around energy in general, right? When we're talking about nuclear, when we're talking about green hydrogen, which is a big thing. Green hydrogen is a problem for like in Chile as well. Sometimes people don't consider what uh the effect on water reservoirs of these type of extractions. And we need to be quite aware that it's not just about the efficiency of using this or how safe this is, or something like that. It's also like an impact on the ecosystem in general, and how it's much easier to just outsource this into these sacrifice zones in you know, indigenous territory, in the global south, because it's not going to be in the backyard of the rich countries. So they would rather mine lithium in Chile rather than in Portugal and Spain, because well, the environmentalists in Portugal and Spain, they're not gonna let it happen, right? So let's just go try and do it somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's an essential point, right? And as you say, I think there are so many more topics that we could touch on and that we could discuss around you know this whole net zero concept and the other green capitalist solutions. But I wanted to end by talking about, you know, the alternative, right? Because even at Glasgow, we saw a ton of people marching and protesting against this kind of green capitalist vision for addressing the climate crisis that doesn't really address the climate crisis and you know other other demonstrations around the world supporting that kind of that kind of a desire. And a lot of your work is on eco-socialism and what that would look like. And so I wanted to end by asking you you know, do you see hope for a different kind of way to address the climate crisis? And what would an eco-socialist approach look like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, we don't have another 50 minutes, but let's try. Well, the the basic thing here uh to make sure is that it's not advocacy for us to go back in time and live in a de-industrialized world or anything like that. It's about how we plan things. And for example, something that's really important when I look into what would the prospects for eco-socialist industry to look like is like getting rid of planned obsolescence, right? Because this is like a major obstacle that we have today. Uh, so there's a lot of things that need to be done for us to understand that when we're talking about just transition and climate justice, we need to consider people and ecosystems together, less than the profits of the industries involved. So the way that mining happens today is not the way that it should happen if we get our alternative. So obviously, we're not going to transition from fossil fuels overnight. That's not possible. But we can like create like a measured approach that like X tons of fossil fuels uh that are being extracted will lead into investment into these many other alternatives. And then we could talk about like solar and wind and whatever energy prospects that is, but understanding that those also have impacts. And then when you're doing like this huge solar solar panel farms in the middle of the desert, you're going to use a lot of water, right? And that water is going to be taken from somewhere and some community might be affected. So that might not be the most efficient way of doing it. So we need to have a more decentralized approach to energy production, and that would allow us to rethink about how what we do with our cities, right? And like I had this conversation a lot with uh Danielle Dana Cohen, my friend, over this, because like this whole thing about like what Green New Deal cities would look like. And I think it's quite important because we do live in a global society today where the majority of the population live in like urban areas. So we need to consider the urban areas quite uh seriously and like a better integration of like food production in these places. And for me, this means talking about property. So a lot of these discussions uh within the UNFCCC they don't lead anywhere because they don't consider the problem private property, they don't consider that you could be making deals with Brazil, but we need a grant reform. We need indigenous communities to have access to that land. Once we have that, other things can come along. So this process of transition requires us to look into who's holding economic power within each area. And then so when we say that we're going to take something out, and this is something like I've discussed with the oil workers union in Brazil before, if you're taking something out uh from the Petrobras, from the oil company, so it becomes more of an energy company and not an oil company, and to transition, you got to make sure that it's not a private company, because a private company is not interested in that. So you need to talk about sovereignty. You need to talk about how the financial market is actually making things much worse. And it is a much more difficult conversation, and that's why it's not going to come out of a COP. It has to come out from like a mass movement and like from pressure from many different areas.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely essential. You know, thinking about power, thinking about ownership, thinking about property, and you know, the the kind of larger implications of these transformations and how to ensure they're done in a way that really serves the people of the world instead of the profits of these major companies.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's been so absent. Like just to complement very quickly, because like uh on tech transfers, like I was following some of the negotiations on tech transfer, but it's really funny how it's more like this country is transferring this technology to another country and not the linkage or you know, patent breaking, which would be the quicker way of doing this, right? So and this this hasn't been like seriously talked about at the UNFCCC for over a decade.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And you know, we can see the issue with patents with the COVID-19, and you know, that's a whole other discussion there as well. Um, Sabrina, you know, I really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your insight and your knowledge from being at COP, but also studying these issues for you know over a decade now. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Freddy. This was a pleasure to be here today.
SPEAKER_01Sabrina Fernandez is an Urga postdoctoral fellow at Rosa Luxemburg's Stiftum and the producer of Teze Onze. You can follow her on Twitter at SAFBF, you can follow me at ParisMarks, and you can follow the show at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, and you can find out more about that at Harbinger Media Network.com. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening.