[Cities 1.5 main theme music]
00:00:07 David
I'm David Miller and you're listening to Cities 1.5, a podcast by University of Toronto Press, produced in association with The Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. Join me as I connect with leading mayors, experts, policymakers, and youth leaders who are helping ensure a 1.5-degree world by leading city-based climate action.
Each week, we delve into the necessary transformative solutions to today's most pressing climate challenges. The fight for an equitable and resilient world is closer than you think.
[urgent music] 1.5 degrees is a vitally important figure. In 2015, holding overall average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees was the target that global leaders looked to in the Paris Agreement. Leadership by cities, post-Paris, helped the world recognize that this target was not only essential, but possible. But now, we're almost a decade past Paris, and the goal is starting to slip out of reach. Experts estimate that global temperatures are on track to rise even higher to nearly double the original target of 1.5.
Speaking from the COP27 summit on November 7th, 2022, Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, warned that we need to act now.
00:01:40 Mia Mottley
1.5 to stay alive. My friends, the time is running out on us. We have the power to act or the power to remain passive and do nothing. I ask the people of the world, and not just the leaders, therefore, to hold us accountable and to ask us to act in your name to save this earth and to save the people of this earth. The choice is ours. What will you do? What will you choose to save?
00:02:20 David
Here at Cities 1.5, we feel strongly that 1.5 matters. In fact, that's why we put it in the name of our podcast because we're on a mission to figure out how to make this target achievable for the good of everyone on the planet, and the critical role cities have to play in this effort.
In this very first episode, we'll hear from 3 guests that are working to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees alive through concrete, practical actions, and the reasons we need to keep fighting.
[light, hopeful music] First, one of the world's leading climate scientists, Sir David King, will share the clear and unequivocal scientific evidence that we are not on track, globally, to meet our climate targets.
And, while the science is sobering and dire, mayors across the globe are demonstrating that their climate leadership has a critical role in ensuring a resilient and equitable world. We will hear from one such leader, Governing Mayor of Oslo, Raymond Johansen, whose ambitious climate action is raising the bar for action, globally.
[light, hopeful music]
Finally, we know that the impacts of climate change are felt disproportionately across the globe. Inspiring youth leaders, who will increasingly face the stark realities of warming climate in the years to come, are demanding more ambitious action from their policymakers. We will hear from Zainab Waheed, a youth climate leader from Pakistan, about why keeping 1.5 degrees alive is imperative from a global south perspective. [light, hopeful music fades out] That's all coming up right now, so let's get into it.
[light, hopeful music] Sir David King is the Founder and Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and is Chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University. He was the UK government's Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change. Sir David and his peers at the Climate Crisis Advisory Group do an incredible job of informing the public about the dire science and the urgent changes we need to make to address the climate crisis.
Sir David sat down with me for a live conversation at the C40 World Mayors Summit in Buenos Aires on October 18th, 2022.
David, thank you very much for joining me on our podcast today. David and his peers are on the cutting edge of what science tells us about climate change. So, David, before I asked you about what science tells us now about climate, I want to ask you about you. Can you just speak a bit about how you, as a scientist, came to the position where you formed this group so that people in the world could know the real facts about climate change?
00:05:26 Sir David King
Those of us engaged in the whole climate science business, whether it's the science or the policy making, et cetera, began to realize that things were happening much more quickly than we had anticipated. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts out its wonderful reports, those reports take six years in the writing, so we decided what we needed was a much more agile group that could report on what was currently happening in the climate change system of the world, and that's what we have been doing. But also, we held our meetings in the public domain, so that we are available on a global Zoom call, and we are also able to produce a very significant number of timely reports, and I'd say the timely reports are what puts our views into the public domain.
00:06:23 David
Well, it's very smart. Can you just talk about the state of climate science? How worried do we need to be? What are the boundaries we really have to concern ourselves with and, given the impacts we're seeing today in some of the extreme weather events—heat, flooding. How worried should people be about the need to take action, urgently?
00:06:47 Sir David King
I think the first thing to say is that that temperature rise, no more than 1.5 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial level, that was agreed in Paris in 2015 by 197 nations—“Let's keep it below that figure”—was the idea. We're now realizing that we are approaching that number far more quickly than we thought. The average, between 2010 and 2020, global temperature rise was 1.2 degrees centigrade. That means 1.1 was actually 2010, 1.3 was 2020 so, when we look at the IPCC report, they're very conservatively saying it's the average between those two: 1.2 . Today, at the end of 2022, we’re rapidly approaching 1.35.
[pensive music]
00:07:41 David
We're almost at 1.5, which is what national governments-- they use language of higher ambition but, essentially, they were saying that's where we need to focus our efforts to limit emissions so that the temperature, on average, doesn't rise above that. We're almost there. What does that tell us?
00:07:59 Sir David King
We're almost there, but the really difficult thing to take is that already, we are not in a situation where we can create a manageable future for humanity at the present time. And, clearly, that's what we all are, in the business, formulating as a strategy to achieve that. This needs a little word of explanation. [pensive music fades out]
What has been happening in the Arctic Circle regions has happened far more quickly than any of the climate scientists working in that region predicted, and the reason is because we've been losing ice over the Arctic Sea, which has covered it for many thousands of years. That ice, reflecting sunlight back into space, meant that the Arctic Circle region was always kept very cold with the North Pole in the middle of the sea, nevertheless, very cold, even in the polar summer now. Because we've been losing that ice so rapidly, about 50% of the Arctic Sea is exposed to sunlight during those three polar summer months. And so, of course, that blue sea, soaking up sunshine, is warming up the whole area rapidly and melting the remaining ice, as well.
But, the second factor is what we call blackening of ice: black ice. The surface of ice is normally white, reflects sunlight. Black ice absorbs it, and black ice is formed simply by soot from fires accumulating on the surface of the snow and, if you look at a film of Greenland today, you will see that many areas of it are grey-black, and we're losing ice rapidly, and the consequences that the Arctic Circle region, as a whole, is now heating up at between 3.5 and four times the rate of the rest of the planet, and the Arctic Circle average temperature is now over 3 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial level. That means very, very important things for climate change.
00:10:05 David
What implications does that have, from a scientific perspective, for the rest of the globe?
00:10:12 Sir David King
There are three major impacts of this effect. The first is Greenland, which has enough ice on it that, if it all melts, sea levels will rise by 7 meters.
00:10:25 David
7 meters?
00:10:26 Sir David King
7 meters, 24 feet global average sea-level rise. The whole planet will be dramatically changed in terms of coastlines. The second change is already with us, and that is the Arctic Circle region is kept cold very largely by the jet stream or wind that blows anticlockwise around the North Pole region, and that jet stream is a strong wind that keeps that cold air up there and the warm air below it. It keeps England much warmer than it would otherwise be. That jet stream is seriously distorted now. So, for example, last year, when we had this very warm spell all the way up the West Coast of North America, all the way up into British Columbia and then down towards Arizona, what you had was a locking in of the stream. Instead of being circular around the North Pole, well, it was actually running not east-west, but north-south.
00:11:30 David
Is that virtually unprecedented?
00:11:31 Sir David King
Unprecedented. That's totally unprecedented, and so the temperatures in, for example, Western Canada reaching almost 50 degrees centigrade. Never in humanity's lifetime have we had any experience of that so, yes, this is unprecedented. Let me say, you wonder why the number of extreme weather events is increasing so rapidly, particularly in the northern hemisphere over the last three years. It's exactly what we're talking about now: the distortion of that jet stream as a result of the warming—this warm air over the North Pole for those three months, pushing cold air down—and then we get a mix of wind coming up, with the hot air from below and the cold air down.
But, the third effect which, I think, in the long-run, could well be the most devastating, as if that wouldn't have been bad enough--
00:12:26 David
The first two sound pretty serious.
00:12:29 Sir David King
[chuckling] Yes. There's a molecule called methane hydrate in the permafrost of the Arctic Circle regions and, as that permafrost warms up, it is now warming up to this point, methane is emitted into the atmosphere. And, in northern Siberia, it now seems to be emitted explosively, explosive release, leaving great holes in the permafrost, measuring 50 meters diameter about 60 meters deep. If all of the methane up in the permafrost region must be released like this, with the higher rapidity, and lost in 20 years, the global temperature rise could be 8 to 15 degrees centigrade. It would be devastating for humanity.
00:13:18 David
So, Sir David, that was a fascinating point, and you've said that the solutions are the 3 Rs: reduce, remove, repair. What do we need to do?
00:13:31 Sir David King
[somber, delicate music] We need, first and foremost, to reduce: deep and rapid emissions reduction. Today, we're emitting 40 billion tons of greenhouse gas a year into the atmosphere. We cannot continue doing that, and every ton we put up there will have to be removed from the atmosphere, which brings me to the second R, and the second R is remove the excess greenhouse gas we've already put up there.
00:13:58 David
Why, at this point in time, do we need to take out every ton that we put up there? Can you explain that?
00:14:05 Sir David King
What I'm saying is that we're already in quite a bad way at 1.35, and so, as we keep going up at all, it gets worse and worse. It's getting worse as we sit here now. It'll keep getting worse as long as we keep putting it up there. Not only do we have to remove every further ton we put up there, we also have to bring the level of greenhouse gases back towards where they were in the pre-industrial level. I don't believe we have to get all the way down there, but we're at 500 parts per million, or over, today. The pre-industrial level was 270. If we could get back to 350, we'd be good. We, therefore, need to learn how to do the second R, which is removing greenhouse gases at scale. Very little work's been done on this. Is it going to be possible? I believe it is. Could we remove 20, 30 billion tons a year? I think we've got to.
But, the third is, because those two things—deep and rapid emissions reduction, and the removal of excess greenhouse gases—take us too long because of what's already happening in the Arctic Circle region, we also have to learn how to rephrase the Arctic. Now, that is a very big challenge and it does require the leadership of humanity, and humanity—you know, ourselves, each one of us—needs to understand the severity of the problem we're up against because, if we don't realize this is a unique challenge to our civilization, we're going to go on doing things that are totally irrelevant and even backsliding, such as removing the forests of the Amazon.
00:15:54 David
1.5 degrees is serious. At 1.35, we're starting to see really significant effects in the Arctic that it's possible could be absolutely devastating. Do you have confidence that the governments of the world understand how serious these issues are, or at least how serious the science clearly shows that they are?
00:16:21 Sir David King
I mean, there's a very real concern here because, if you were to ask me which of the political leaders in the world today are playing a significant global leadership role in managing what is the biggest crisis our civilization has ever have to face up to, I'd find it very difficult to pick out any major figure who really understands this and is prepared to lead the way in managing a future.
But I do want to say, there is a future . We know how we can do this.
00:16:57 David
Given the magnitude of what has to be done, is there a role for cities as part of the solution?
00:17:04 Sir David King
The population living in cities is around 50% of the full global population. Whatever solution we find, we have to be pulling our way through, from the cities. These dense populations are also the regions where most carbon dioxide is emitted. What we need to understand is that leadership from the cities is actually critical, not only because the cities are such a big part of what they're doing. Emissions from heating the built environment, emissions from traffic are going around our cities, et cetera, but I think the most important thing may well be that leadership shown within cities will also move governments to put in place all the right regulatory measures, the right technological measures to pull us through this crisis.
00:17:59 David
So, it is a place we can build on.
00:18:02 Sir David King
I think it's possibly the most important place we can build on. The cities are with us as a major contributor to our civilization, and they have been for thousands of years, and what we need to see is leadership from those cities today.
00:18:19 David
[light, hopeful music] Well, I think that's a great moment to wrap up the conversation because we do need to see leadership and, Sir David, one of the places we are seeing leadership is from a small group of committed scientists, the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, and your work's powerful, and it's regrettably clear to understand how urgent the situation is.
00:18:44 Sir David King
I'm delighted to have this opportunity to speak to you, David, but also to speak to the mayors.
00:18:50 David
We're looking forward to your remarks and please keep up the fantastic work. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. Sir David King... [light, hopeful music fades out]
[light, hopeful music fades in] We've heard the science. Now, let's go to my conversation with the Governing Mayor of Oslo, who is leading on one of the most innovative climate policies in the world, climate budgeting. Climate budgeting is a governance tool that helps ensure that climate targets and considerations are embedded into all levels of decision-making in a city's regular budgeting process. It combines the city's measures to reduce emissions with the calculated effect and cost and appoints responsibility for the delivery and monitoring of these measures. This increases the accountability, sustainability, and efficacy of city government actions. [light, hopeful music fades out]
Governing Mayor, Raymond Johansen, was elected to the City Council of Oslo in 2015 and appointed Governing Mayor after establishing a city government coalition composed of the Labour Party, the Socialist Left party, and the Green Party. I had the pleasure of speaking with Governing Mayor Johansen at the C40 World Mayors Summit in Buenos Aires on October 20th, 2022.
Governing Mayor, thanks so much for being with us today. I wanted to ask you about climate budgeting because Oslo is a program that's really leading the world. But, before we get into the details of it, I'd just be interested to hear you talk about how, as mayor of one of the world's most very special cities, why you're interested in climate change, why it matters to the residents of your city, and how you got to the place where you started taking the issue seriously.
00:20:42 Raymond Johansen
Well, personally, I have taken that issue very seriously since the end of the '80s actually, so it has been an important discussion, on and off, also in Norway. You know, it's a lot of contradictions, coming from a big oil and gas producer as Norway, and rich country, and talking about the need for change, that we have to do something, we have to deliver, we have to use our richness also to make some differences to develop systems that can be useful for others. I say that often. Oslo is small enough and big enough to be a test bed for other cities, so they can find ideas and then scale it up, and the climate budget is one of these important issues. Fossil-free construction sites is another. The electric vehicles revolution, it's the third. And the fourth is now the CCS—Carbon Capture and Storage—which we will introduce, our incineration plant. So, we have ambitions, but I see that we also have some certain responsibility as a rich city.
00:22:06 David
We don't often, in Canada, hear people say, "We have no obligation because we're an oil and gas producer and, you know, a rich country to show leadership.” [gentle string music] Can you talk about how, in a city government, you were able to implement. Why should a city do this? Why does it matter? And then, how do you actually do it?
00:22:27 Raymond Johansen
I think, first, it's the beauty of being a mayor close to your people, that you also have the tools to do, to make a difference. Then, you can have some tangible, real results. And, for us to introduce the climate budget, first of all, it was important to put it together with the fiscal budget, so it was the Commissioner for Finance that was also responsible for develop the climate budget. It was not the sideshow, not just environmental people that's dealing with it. It was in the whole parts of our own economy. [gentle, string music fades out]
And, first, we are 55,000 employees in Oslo, with different parts, and it was important for us that all of them should look down to their own emissions, low-hanging fruits and other, and also have an oversight over how much they actually pollute, or how much emissions they are putting out. So, that's the whole idea that we are counting CO2 in the same way as we are counting money, [chuckles] so that we can report back where you're able to renew your car park into EV, and also the other machinery that you use in the goods, use in the park, all these kind of things, and also look into the traffic system. "How can we cut emissions? What can we do to limit parking? To have car-free zones, car-free in the city? And then, we can count it and then we have to report it back each year.
And, to some extent, you can say that we have democratic discussions because they clearly can see, "Well, you were not able to reach your goals. Why? Why wouldn't you give enough economic support to renew that machinery park?" "No, it was because we have to give more money to kindergartens." Well, then it was real discussion about real priorities, so I think we will have difficulties to reach our goals, but now we have these discussions about the reason why and, of course, we have been able to develop. Throughout the years, our climate budget is more sophisticated because we learn and learn, and also within C40, we receive input from other cities which is relevant to improve the whole climate budget system.
It's also about democracy, because one really very negative and challenging thing about the discussions over the climate changes, is often that it's so far away. It's in 2035, it's in 2040, and it's about numbers and pollution. We have to bring it back, look at possibilities to have tangible results, and then how to measure it down to the effects.
00:25:46 David
I think it's important to let listeners know that Oslo's goals are really bold, so even if you're not quite achieving them, you're still achieving far more than anyone else. But that last point really interests me because the public servants, when the Finance department, oversees the climate budget, public servants have been taught how to do the financial budget and they make their applications every year. [gentle music] So, in a way, it makes it real for the public servants and some of the other initiatives you spoke to sound like they're making things real for the residents, also, like electric vehicles, clean construction.
00:26:19 Raymond Johansen
First, I think the EV revolution—I call it a revolution because, last month, 80% of all new cars sold in Oslo, it's electric... 80... 80.
00:26:30 David
Wow.
00:26:31 Raymond Johansen
And it has, for years, been a kind of good cooperation between the state and the municipality. [gentle music fades out] The state has made it cheaper to buy, and we, as a municipality, easy to use. It has been possible to drive in the public lanes, cheaper to park, and easier to charge the EV, so it's easier for people, and that has increased the market, so now it's also possible to buy a second-hand EV, and also for people that can afford it. So, that's this cooperation. It's important between state and the municipality to push it.
And you asked about the fossil-free construction sites. I think we, also, as a municipality, we buy goods and services. Just an example, Oslo, buy goods and services for 22 billion Norwegian Kroner, which is $2.5 billion, so it's substantial. So, in our procurement system, we can put forward a lot of requirements. And, into construction sites, we say that we want to have it fossil free. It means that you have to have electric grabs, the machines, and we have been, over the last six years, able to turn the market. We have been sincere, which is very important if you're going to change the market, and you know that the private enterprises have to make their investments. They know that for them is also profitable. To use your procurement, your purchasing power, it's also a part of what you can do as a municipality.
00:28:29 David
I want to expand on that leadership topic because, you know, you've just demonstrated very clearly why the leadership within a city can change markets, can change actions between cities. You've done a lot of work, Governing Mayor, and Oslo's done a lot of work with C40. Oslo's been generous to second staff to C40 to help other cities understand, and can you just speak to that leadership, and that networking, and that work, and why Oslo is doing it, and why it matters to Oslo, and to the issue of climate change?
00:29:06 Raymond Johansen
We're all in the same boat, all the mayors, all over the world, so we have to make ourselves as good as possible, so we need to share ideas and we need to be bold. We need to risk not to be re-elected, but the possibility to be re-elected even on a green ticket, you need to see that the green shift, it's something in it for all the people, not just conscious, middle-class people, but also for the working-class people. For me to be a part of C40, to receive so many ideas, so many bold mayors throughout the world, is really out of good help just to pick up the telephone, talk to the mayor in Lisbon, how he was able to get people around when he's trying to make the car-free in the city. [gentle music] It's relevant and it's practic. We can help each other to continue to run on green tickets and receive sufficient support from the people.
00:30:05 David
Well, Governing Mayor, I think it's people picking up the phone to call you to find out what Oslo is doing. You've been very generous with your time today. We appreciate your leadership and taking the time to speak to us on our podcast. Thank you so very much.
00:30:18 Raymond Johansen
[light, hopeful music continues then fades out] Thank you for inviting me.
00:30:21 David
Youth leaders from around the world have been putting pressure on their policy makers to act faster and go further on climate action. Zainab Waheed is one of them. She is currently doing her AS levels from the Lahore Grammar School, Islamabad, and has been representing Pakistan, internationally, at COP26 and COP27. Zainab and I spoke at the C40 World Mayors Summit on October 18th, 2022.
Zainab, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today.
00:30:56 Zainab Waheed
Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
00:30:58 David
So, I'm really intrigued. You're a young person, you're a climate activist, you're from Pakistan, your voice is making a difference already. Why do you care so much about this issue?
00:31:13 Zainab Waheed
My main motivation to work for climate is fear, and I don't like the reason I work for climate, because it is the fear of death, starvation, hunger, refugees, diseases, preventable deaths, and worsening inter-country conflicts, all because of climate change. This is the reason I work for climate, this is the reason I go on climate strikes, and this is the reason I take time out of my education, I take time out of my important daily activities to tell my policymakers, my government, my authorities that climate change is real, and it is happening, and it will affect my generation.
I am from Pakistan, the global south. It is a developing country, so I only know what this situation with the government officials and their behaviours towards climate change are. I don't know how the Western mayors, how the Western politicians treat their young people but, in my country, I have to convince them that climate change is a problem, and it is affecting us.
00:32:16 David
So, Pakistan, recently and now, is undergoing a terrible period of flooding, which a number of people are associating with climate change, including the government. Can you talk about that from the perspective of a resident of that country? How is it impacting people? How does it feel? Are people in Pakistan, themselves, talking about climate change and understanding that these extraordinary weather events are very likely connected with global warming?
00:32:49 Zainab Waheed
So, in Pakistan, there's so many divisions when it comes to people, so many categories of people when it comes to talking about climate change and the recent flood. There is one sect of people who are responsible for mismanagement of infrastructure procedures and people who are responsible for changing the infrastructure, making them more resilient, but they failed to do so, and that is why the floods affected my country the way they did. So many deaths could have been prevented, had the infrastructure been better.
[pensive music] Another category is the first-hand actual victims of areas that were affected by the floods, and those areas are primarily the least-developed areas of Pakistan, people with least education, least job opportunities, and those were the first-hand victims. And you go talk to them about their plight and they will understand everything that has happened to them, but they will not understand why it happened. They will not recognize the term "climate change", they will not understand the science behind it, they will not understand why it has happened, but they will understand very, very clearly what has happened and how it's going to impact their future.
And then, there's people, for example, my community, who are not in areas. They're first-hand affected by the floods. We were in urban areas, far away from the actual floods. There are people who do understand that it is climate change and why it has happened and who is responsible. That is the global north, climate criminals like the fossil fuels industry, so on and so forth. So, my point is that, when we talk about behaviours towards, or reaction to these recent floods, there are so many different kinds of reactions in the same country, in the same affected country. 33 million of my country's people have been displaced, and that's more than the populations of whole entire countries, and my country, about 60,000 pregnant women about to give birth do not have medical aid, do not have nurses, do not have medicines, and eight million girls and women all without sanitary products, and that is just how badly these floods have affected already marginalized communities in my country.
00:34:58 David
I'm Canadian, and our country is about 36 million, so it's almost like our entire country being displaced, which is just shocking to people when you think about the magnitude of it. You know, in your explanation, you talked about the causality, and you've written a really interesting article for The Journal of City Climate Policy and economy. Can you speak about this issue of accountability from your perspective? Who should be accountable for climate change, and how do we need to fix the system so that the accountability benefits those who are having the biggest impact? In this case, you know, 33 million people in Pakistan have been displaced.
00:35:41 Zainab Waheed
So, in my article, I try to identify the climate criminals and I do it largely by the colonizing global developed north, and also the fossil fuels industries-- well, the north because they colonized us. They started off what we now know as industrialization and, as a result of that climate change, and the fossil fuels industries were the first people to have the scientists to locate and identify climate change and its phenomenon and, through their propaganda, through their pursuit of their own financial interests, they kept that information, they kept denying it, and so we are at the position that we are today. So, those are the climate criminals. The crime that they committed was obviously not taking timely action for climate change, which affects me and my generation, countries like my country.
When I talk about accountability, accountability must come in the form of compensation and retribution, and that is one point I make in my article, and that is to recognize that, once catastrophes and disasters hit, it is of much less use to give aid and charities. What we need is climate finance in the form of retribution, acknowledging it as compensation to help build resilience, so climate catastrophes that are going to hit countries like my country, inevitably, have a lesser impact, right? And so, that is where accountability must come in, and also acknowledging and making legally binding the agreements that they commit to because, if it's not legally binding, they can just not act upon their promises, and they will just be words.
00:37:19 David
Can you talk a bit about what you see as the way to build resilience in a country like Pakistan? If the climate finance comes and nations have made commitments, but as you point out, they're not legally binding and the money hasn't come, how do you build resilience if the finance is available, in a country like Pakistan?
00:37:41 Zainab Waheed
So, 1.5, obviously, is again just the last station of catastrophe. So, the videos that came out during the floods, videos of buildings collapsing, of bridges collapsing, the entire community is being wiped out, a little more research into the backgrounds of those very areas would tell us that they were illegally built, that is, they were built on areas without getting that area licensed by the government, because that area was at high risk. So, many of the very big hotels that collapsed were built for tourists. When they weren't warned—or, even if they knew that this is a high-risk area—they still built it and, when the floods came, they were the first ones to be affected.
Now, we can't help urban flooding because cities are there, and there are developed and licensed, entire whole societies and housing. But, there are bridges, roads, hotels, financial institutions, or other buildings that are built on unlicensed land, and I think that is where management comes in. [Cities 1.5 main theme music] That is where transparency comes in. That is where accountability for my own government comes in. Why is it that the authorities and the government is there, but there were constructions being done on land that was not licensed, right? So, that is one example of how resilient cities could be made by using internal mechanisms in countries like my country to make sure that there is no illegal construction so that, when catastrophes do hit, the impact's lesser.
[main theme music continues] So, 1.5 is a famous figure that we throw around, but really it is just a little better than two degrees rise, right? And then, beyond two degrees, there is darkness and catastrophe and dust and rubble, and everything destroyed, and the point of no return, so 1.5 and stopping there means protecting the global south. [main theme music fades out] Why? Because climate change, in its essence, in its nature, is inequality, in its causes, colonization and industrialization and fossil fuels industries and, just like that, 1.5 degrees is the point where we can hope that this inequality is eliminated and there is a solid response to it because, if not, 1.5 means more inequality and disproportionate effects on the global south.
00:40:05 David
[light, hopeful music] So, rapid fire... Why should mayors listen to youth leaders?
00:40:09 Zainab Waheed
Our generation is the first generation to ever experience the true climate impacts, and we're the last generation that can do anything about it, and we need help.
00:40:20 David
Fantastic point to end on, Zainab, and thank you so very much for being on the podcast but, more importantly, for your ongoing work and advocacy, which is making a very real difference today.
00:40:32 Zainab Waheed
[light, hopeful music continues] Thank you so much for having me here.
00:40:40 David
[pensive music] The science and the youth leaders of today are telling us we need to take immediate action. We know you agree with us that the mission to keep 1.5 degrees alive matters. It's crucial, now more than ever, to put in place policies to make that goal a reality. It's up to those who hold power at the city level, and beyond, to do more than just listen to these frightening figures and impassioned pleas for change. It's time for action.
1.5 to stay alive is our new reality and we have to do everything we can to make that happen.
[lively music] Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about the importance of jobs and a just transition in interviews with Canadian economist, Jim Stanford, the Mayor of Phoenix, Kate Gallego, and Is'haaq Akoon, the Senior Manager for Climate Change from the city of Ekurhuleni in South Africa, so make sure you subscribe to Cities 1.5 and listen in to learn what actions are being taken globally in the fight to make the world greener, more sustainable and—just as importantly—achievable.
[Cities 1.5 main theme music]
Thanks for listening to Cities 1.5. I'm David Miller, the Managing Director of the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. I was the Mayor of Toronto, Canada, and know, first-hand, the impact cities can have in solving the climate crisis.
Cities 1.5 is produced by Jessica Schmidt. Our executive producers are Isabel Sitcov and Jessica Abraham. Our music is by Lorna Gilfedder. Cities 1.5 is a production of the University of Toronto Press and the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy.
To find out more, visit the show’s website link in the episode notes. See you next time. [Cities 1.5 main theme music ends]