Green Fix

Transforming Amazonia in the lead up to COP30 with Prof. Carlos Nobre, Co-Chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and Prof. Peter Cox, Director of the Global Systems Institute University of Exeter

• The Green Fix Podcast • Episode 18

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Welcome to Episode 2 of the Positive Tipping Points Special! A 7-episode special series on the road to COP30 in Belem, with guest host Liz Courtney. 

In this episode we meet Professor Carlos Nobre of the University of São Paulo,  Co-Chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and Professor Peter Cox, CBE Director of the Global Systems Institute University of Exeter. 

In this episode we discuss how Amazon’s stability depends on a dance between climate, deforestation, drought, and fire, and why some feedbacks can lock in change far faster than politics tend to move. From early land–atmosphere models to today’s field experiments under engineered drought, we unpack what science has learned about tall tree mortality, rooting depth, evapotranspiration, and the fire thresholds that can flip dense forest to open, flammable savanna.

The conversation moves from ocean drivers—El Niño and a record‑hot North Atlantic—into the messy human layer: man‑made fires, land grabbing, and organised crime accelerating degradation even as official deforestation drops. We get specific on numbers that matter: 120–200 billion tonnes of carbon stored; around 20 billion tonnes of water recycled daily; record droughts in 2005, 2010, 2015–16, and 2023–24; and why crossing 2°C makes saving the basin dramatically harder. Cox presses the global need to phase out fossil fuels quickly; Nobre details the Arc of Restoration, a plan to recover vast degraded zones and build a bioeconomy of standing forests and flowing rivers grounded in indigenous knowledge and local enterprise.

Hope here isn’t wishful—it’s strategic. Positive tipping points in human systems are already forming as renewables undercut fossil power and social norms shift. We talk practical climate justice: what high‑emitting nations can fund now, how to confront misinformation and political headwinds, and why indigenous stewardship is indispensable for biodiversity, carbon, and water security. If we pair rapid decarbonisation with zero deforestation, fire prevention, and large‑scale restoration, the Amazon can remain a cooling engine rather than a carbon source. 

Your Hosts:
Dan Leverington
Loreto Gutierrez

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Loreto Gutierrez:

Welcome to the Green Fix, a positive tipping points special series with guest host Liz Courtney, an award-winning film director and science communicator. This seven episode weekly special is offering a fresh lens on the climate conversation. We'll explore the science of solutions, the many sparks of change already underway, and the moments when small shifts create big impact. Expect good news stories, evidence of real progress, insights on the urgency of acceleration, and above all, a huge dose of optimism about the world we can build together. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the Green Fix Positive Tipping Points. Today we are going to be your hosts. My name is Loreto Gutierrez. I'm Liz Courtney.

Liz Courtney:

And for this episode on the Greenfix's Positive Tipping Points series, we are joined by Professor Peter Cox and Professor Carlos Nobre. It is my great honor to introduce Professor Peter Cox, a world-leading climate scientist and professor of climate science dynamics at the University of Exeter, where he has also served as the director of the Global Systems Institute. He is internationally recognized for pioneering research into interactions between the land biosphere and climate change, especially on how changes in vegetation and the carbon cycle interact with global warming. Professor Cox led the development of the climate models to understand the potential dieback of the Amazon rainforests under climate change. He is a lead author for the fourth, fifth, and sixth assessment reports of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC, and has been recognized as a highly cited author in global warming research. Professor Cox's career has also included leadership roles at the Met Office, Hadley Centre, and the Center for Ecology and Hydrology, alongside advisory work for both the UK government and international panels. In 2025, he was appointed the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to science and climate modeling. Congratulations, Peter, and it's wonderful to have you on board.

Peter Cox:

Thank you very much, Liz.

Loreto Gutierrez:

And I'd like to introduce you to Professor Carlos Novre. He's a renowned Brazilian earth system scientist and a meteorologist, recognized globally for his pioneering research into the impacts of deforestation and climate change in the Amazon. He holds a PhD in meteorology from MIT and has spent more than 35 years at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, where he helped found the key research centers focusing on weather prediction, earth system science, and disaster monitoring. Professor Nobre has been instrumental in shaping major scientific initiatives such as the large-scale biosphere atmosphere experiment in Amazonia and currently serves as the senior scientist at the University of Sao Paulo's Institute for Advanced Studies. He leads Amazonia 4.0 project, advocating for a sustainable, science-based Amazon bioeconomy, and is co-chair of the science panel for the Amazon. Professor Carlos Nova, welcome to the Greenfix.

Carlos Nobre:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Liz Courtney:

So thank you for both joining us today, Peter from the UK and Carlos in New York for Climate Week. It's amazing to have everybody here together at the same time. I think we're going to start by just diving back a little bit to understand the Amazon tipping point, some science and projections around it. And Peter, you were among the first to model the Amazon rainforest reaching a climate tipping point. Can you explain for the listeners that theory and the scientific reasoning that led you to that?

Peter Cox:

Yeah, for a long time, climate models had assumed things like atmospheric carbon dioxide would go up, sort of assuming that the biosphere, the land, for example, forests would take up carbon as they have been doing. And of course, we know empirically from observations that that's not true, that the biosphere and land carbon uptake particularly depends on the climate. So we were the first people to do this with interactive vegetation and carbon cycle to basically say we should have vegetation modeled and soil modeled within the climate model. And we were doing it primarily to see whether there was going to be an impact on the rate of growth of atmospheric CO2 and climate change because climate change itself would suppress the ability of the land to take up carbon. We were very surprised to find that, well, although that was true and very significant, then the most significant region was the Amazon. In this model, the Amazon, and this was without direct deforestation from humans, just died back under climate change quite alarmingly. And we discussed that in that took points program, and that we've done many studies on it subsequently. So that was really what got us interested in this. We didn't set out to look particularly at the resilience of the Amazon rainforest, but it emerged from this study.

Liz Courtney:

And from that study, how have those projections evolved with other new evidence that may be also influencing and providing more insights?

Peter Cox:

I think it's fair to say that model was had the largest impact on the Amazon rainforest of any models. Subsequent models have had less impact, but almost all of them find climate change to be detrimental to the Amazon rainforest in various ways. What's happened subsequently is we've had the, and Carlos has been key with this, is the recognition that the combination of deforestation and climate change was really quite damaging. Climate change on its own might be okay for a while because carbon dioxide partly protects the forest from climate change. But the combination of the two is a real worry.

Loreto Gutierrez:

Carlos, if I can um throw to you, I know you have a lot of experience with uh drought cycles in the Amazon. Can you tell us about the experience that you have and what is the impact of warming oceans and shifting rainfall patterns on these drought cycles?

Carlos Nobre:

Yes. Uh let me just say I'm also like Peter working for many, many decades uh about the tipping points. In fact, I was one of the first scientists to publish uh two uh articles in Science Journal of Climate 1990, 1991, 35 years ago. But at that time, uh we are not really looking much at the global warming. We are just looking at deforestation because in the 1980s, uh high deforestation rates. So we did a study what would happen uh with the Amazon if we had a lot of deforestation. And then that uh initial uh articles showed that tipping points with lot lots of deforestation, and then 50% of the Amazon would degrade. And then uh with my PhD students, we did studies saying uh if we did not have any global warming, only deforestation, then we got this threshold to be 40% deforestation would make the Amazon cross the tipping point. And then another study what was if we had zero deforestation, only global warming, and then we got the 3.5, also Peter worked a lot with that, 3.5 degrees warming uh would also make the Amazon cross the tipping point. And then a a more recent study, almost 10 years ago, we put together in uh in a land and atmospheric model, ocean model as well, we put together uh deforestation and global warming. And then that model showed if deforestation exceeds 20 uh 25 percent and global warming reaches two degrees, we could lose even 70 percent of the Amazon forest. So those are modeling studies, but of course, as you mentioned, we've been involved in the larger scale biosphere atmosphere experiment in the Amazon for 26 years now, and this experiment put a larger number of measurements on towers in pastures in the Amazon. So we know now that warming is inducing record-breaking droughts 2005, 2010, 2015, 16, and the record-breaking drought 2023-24. And this is uh very much associated with the increase in the Pacific Ocean temperature associated with El Neo, but also, as we know, record-breaking tropical North Atlantic temperature warming. So those two oceans, very warm, they induce this record-breaking drought 2023-2024. So therefore, you know, what the all these models under the observations are showing, yes, global warming, the oceans becoming warmer, they will induce very severe droughts in the Amazon.

Liz Courtney:

Another impact that was quite interesting, um, and I know Peter, you looked at this was what the impacts of extreme weather could be in an area where you have already had some fallen big trees where the canopy has started to come open. And then you have extreme fires that can start just from a lightning strike. Could you just share a bit more about those runaway fires and and how the Amazon can be weakened?

Peter Cox:

This is something that um um Carlos told me about once many, many years ago, and explained this to me when we were walking across the savannas. Essentially, the transition from a forest to a savannah is mediated often by fire. So if the dry season gets long enough, you have frequent enough fires that the forest can never get fully back in. So you have a tipping point that's that's mediated by fire frequency. And you can see that very clearly. Carlos showed me a region where you went from a forest area to the savannah area. And we expect that to become more common because of the the phenomena that um Carlos was talking about with regards to sea surface temperature warmings and both weaker wet seasons and longer dry seasons with the Atlantic. So that's the big issue, and that's probably the mechanism that would lead to diet in general, is that things get dry and therefore you get more fires and then you stop having a forest and you have a very open canopy, as you as you said, Liz, that we saw in that experiment.

Loreto Gutierrez:

You have both um expertly explained the modelling behind reaching these tipping points. How close are we now to these irreversible tipping points and what does this mean for the planet?

Peter Cox:

Yeah, so um we don't know exactly. I mean, we've got estimates and we have concerns. What we do know is that the Amazon rainforest has many impacts on the global climate. So, for example, it stores somewhere between 120 and 200 billion tons of carbon, and that's equivalent to 12 to 20 years of current human emissions. So if that was all released, we'd get another quarter of a degree to 0.4 degrees of warming. Maybe more importantly, the Amazon forest evaporation recycles a huge amount of water through the deep-rooted trees and returns it to the atmosphere, something like 20 billion tons of water per day. And that cools as well because evaporation cools the climate and it produces clouds that cause the climate. So the net effect probably the Amazon forest is probably somewhere between a third and two-thirds of a degree cooling of the climate. And if you lost it, you'd lose that, which would mean if we lost basically burst through, not 1.5 but two degrees of global warming, most likely. So there's a huge impact, of course, globally, but of course, maybe even more importantly, it's one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. It supports millions of people. It would be catastrophic if it was lost or it became unstable.

Carlos Nobre:

This would also to complement a little bit the question by Liz about fires. As Peter explained the risks of of you know uh droughts and the desalvanization, etc. But we have had for many years a big problem, which is the fires, very small number of fires were natural cause, lightning striking ignited fires. Last year, 2023 and 2024, we had a record-breaking number of fires in the Amazon. 95% of the fires were man-made. Of course, because it was a record-breaking drought and uh also a record-breaking uh heat wave, the fires spread a lot. So they caused 160,000 square kilometers of degraded land due to fires. So basically, in addition to the climate drivers of the tipping points, but now people are really putting a lot of fires. So it's it will degrade the forest much, much faster. As Peter said, you know, the forest recycles water so efficiently, 20-40% of all the rainfall in the Amazon depends on this recycling. And when you degrade the forest, you recycle much, much less. So this is a point I would like really to make. Fortunately, it seems in the last three months there was a reduction in the number of fires in the Amazon. It seems that the Amazonia countries now are combating the fires because fortunately, since 2023, very important reduction of deforestations. For instance, comparing to 2022, now we have more than 60% reduction of deforestation. However, graded force due to fire exploded last year. And now in the last three months, all countries are being able to reduce the man-made fires. So I think this is very important to combat. And also a very challenging issue is that most of the fires is not only farmers, cattle ranchers. Last year, most of the fires were by organized crime. Organized crime, for many, many decades, they were doing land grabbing. Land grabbing, deforestation, making livestock, cattle ranches, etc., creating an illegal market for these cattle ranches, all those things. But then because of the reduction of deforestation in the last two and a half years, they started using fire to do deforestation. For the first time, we measure in the Brazilian Amazon last month of May, 51% of deforestation was caused by fires, not man-made deforestation. So many fires that they completely kill all trees. So I'm just saying tremendous risk of combating organized crime. Organized crime is uh land grabbing, illegal gold mining, wildlife trafficking, and also drug trafficking. So they are very powerful. Studies show they produce $250, $300 billion a year, and they have a tremendous political power as well. So we have to combat organized crime because this man-made not only deforestation but fire setting puts the Amazon at the edge of this tipping point.

Liz Courtney:

When we talk about the edge of that tipping point, it was amazing to travel with you both or to Cachwana, the research center. A lot of people think about research being in labs and sometimes on ships, but maybe you could just paint a picture of what this research center is like in the Amazon.

Peter Cox:

It's an extraordinary place, uh Liz, isn't it? I mean, it's um it's so uh intense in terms of human um efforts to maintain in the sense that it has essentially um polyphene sheets stops most of the water getting through to the roots and to the soil. And so basically it's an experiment to say what happens if you cut the rainfall by a significant fraction to the forest. And uh it's quite a remarkable place to walk through and have been there many times. And what they found there was really that it took a while for the droughts to have an impact, and then the trawless trees went first. So the big trees went, they were the ones that suffered most from the drought because it's actually harder to get water up high in in the trees, and we've looked at that subsequently. How long it takes um depends on how extreme the drought is, and also how deep the roots go, the sort of rooting depth. You may remember lowering me into a pit, which was horrific for me, uh that had been dug out by an amazing Brazilian scientist. Um and you remember putting me in that pit, and I was trying to work out whether I could see any roots. I remember going down there and thinking, I cannot see any roots down here. People were telling me it's gonna be fine, the roots are going deep, but they weren't actually. I mean, we went to another site and they were deeper. But that's a things like that are rather critically important, is how resilient the forest is to droughts and how long depends a bit on how deep the roots are. Simple things like that, which can be measured and we're measured in that case. So it's a remarkable place, and we're still using data from that, Liz. The project still goes on, and it's remarkably useful because we fear the sort of droughts that Carlos was talking about, and we try to model their impact, but we we need to check our models against data, and things like how deep the roots go, how plants respond, uh, how the tubes, the xylem in in trees breaks or doesn't break under water stress are absolutely key. So um still lots to get out of that data, but it was exciting and scary to go down that pit.

Liz Courtney:

And just to paint a picture for the listeners, it was nearly the size of a a big soccer field, and it was the Amazon with a roof over it. And I know that, Carlos, you have so many people looking after that project when it breaks to paint a picture. It takes at least three days to get there by boat. It was a long way in, right?

Peter Cox:

Yeah. Yeah. It was an adventure.

Carlos Nobre:

Just to complement what Peter said, now this ecological evolution of the Amazon forest is something unique in the sense that uh over millions of years, a larger number of trees have very deep rooting systems, seven to ten to twelve meters. And the equatorial Amazon forest, most of the Amazon, it was hard even to believe before we did all those measurements. Peter was a leader in those measurements. The Amazon forest recycles, transpires more water during the dry season. Can you believe that? Dry season. And because of that, or to 4.5 liters per square meter per day. And because of that, the dry season is short, and there is rain during the dry season. So it's a fantastic ecological evolution, millions and millions of years. But as you know, Peter and myself were saying, the Amazon is so close to the tipping point that we need nature-based solutions. The first one is zero deforestation, degradation, fires. Fortunately, this we are seeing for the first time now in 2025, in the last three months, a reduction of fires, reduction of deforestation. And uh, we need really, because all of the southern uh Amazon, uh, the dry season is four or five weeks lengthier in 45 years. So we need immediately stop deforestation degradation fire and then immediately do a large scale forest restoration in these degraded areas. Uh the science panel for the Amazon, we launched at COP27 the arcs of restoration. There are two arcs of deforestation in the Amazon, southern Amazon, Atlantic to Bolivia. This is 2.5 million square kilometers, and then along the Amazonian Andes, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru also highly deforested, and that's the area with the largest biodiversity in the world. The Amazon has the largest biodiversity, and that the area with the largest biodiversity. And then fortunately, Brazil launched the Ark of Restoration project during COP28 in Dubai. So Brazil is planning to restore a minimum of 240,000 square kilometers all over the southern Amazon. It's from now to 2050, 60,000 from now to 2030, has started this project looking for funding, estimated 40 billion dollars to do it. And also it's donating now money for indigenous territories, other local communities, Afrodescent, the River End communities to do restoration as well. Of course, in the indigenous territories, only 3% has been deforest. And then giving to cattle ranchers, farmers, uh a loan, only 1% interest rate a year to make these people really to move towards a larger scale forestry restoration. We have one close to 1 million square kilometers in the Amazon, fully deforest, and 1.5 million square kilometers, several stages of degradation. So we really have to see ways to do large scale forestry restoration. We have really to restore in the southern Amazon more than 50% of degraded deforest areas. So this is a big challenge, but I'm I'm hopeful that now with this project in Brazil and also some other Amazon countries are also starting forestry restoration because it's not only important to remove a large amount, billions and billions of tons of carbon dioxide, it will do it. But the very important aspect is that they will maintain lower temperature compared to today's temperature. And also recycle, as Peter said, recycle water so efficiently they will avoid the dry season to becoming lengthier and lengthier. Because, as Peter said, the dry season reaches six months. This is the climate envelope of the tropical savannah. Impossible to maintain the Amazon forest. So, yes, forest restoration, essential to save the Amazon.

Liz Courtney:

It's wonderful to hear about the the project that you're undertaking, and sometimes people don't always realize that tropical rainforests aren't resilient quickly. My understanding is that if we have an increase in 1.5, 2 or even 3 degrees in the next hundred years, that's at such a speed. Can the Amazon rainforest can it adapt to that? Can biodiversity change that quickly? I'd love to hear both of your comments on that. So we really understand what's at stake.

Peter Cox:

So what Carlos suggests here makes a lot of sense, but it would need to be coupled with uh a reduction in climate change and include the global warming metric because we are both concerned that some of that replanted forest might not be resilient to uh climate change if that's not the case. It has to be part of a a spectrum of a collective number of uh of measures, I think, Liz, that also deal with fossil fuel emissions as well as restoring the Amazon, or else it won't work out. Um oftentimes we're gonna need to do many things here. This is a really tough problem. We're gonna need to deal with fossil emissions, whatever happens, and the developed world in particular is responsible for those. We can restore forests as well and stop deforestation, which is the saddest thing of all, isn't it, really, where you're deforesting mature forests. Um for many years tropical deforestation was um about 20% of global CO2 emissions, probably more like 10% now. Occasionally gets to 15%, but that's stopped chopping down forests. Mature forest, you would say quite a lot. In the context also, as you're saying, Liz, of controlling climate change by other measures as well.

Carlos Nobre:

Yes, for sure, for sure. If we continue with global warming, unfortunately, thousands of scientists are trying to explain, Peter is also working on that, why we we we got 21 months with the global warming at 1.5 degrees, you know, 2023, 24, and up to April 2025. Now we are 1.3 degrees warmer. If we exceed 2 degrees global warming, it will be very difficult to save the Amazon. Very, very, very difficult to save the Amazon. And also some studies that we did show, even, you know, for instance, if we exceed two degrees and then we lose the Amazon, there is the salvanization of the Amazon. The salvanization of the Amazon will also increase the temperature to three degrees. So if we exceed two degrees, we are going to get 2100, four or five degrees warmer in the Amazon because also global warming and salvanization. And that temperature makes all of that area in the world inhabitable. Four or five degrees, our body will not be able to lose heat. A lot of places in the world will become inhabitable, even mid-latitudes during summer days. But I'm just saying global warming and the salvanization of the Amazon will make almost all Amazon inhabitable. And also, the the another tremendous risk of forest degradation all over all tropical forests in the planet is the risks of epidemics and pandemics. Science in the Amazon has already detected 48 zoonoses, virus that can become epidemics and even pandemics. And for the first time ever in 500 years, two of those uh viruses uh became epidemics in the Amazon last year. One is called Mayaro fever, which is mostly in the Amazon, and the Oropush fever. This is spread all over Brazil, more than 25 uh cases already. The symptoms are like dengue, chikungunya, it's not like you know, COVID-19, it's not as bad as killing people, but it's very bad epidemics. Tremendous, tremendous risk even of becoming pandemics. So this is another tremendous risk of the forest degradation, all tropical forest, but particularly the Amazon.

Liz Courtney:

Over the next couple of weeks, next two months, there's going to be a lot of focus coming onto the Amazon and a lot of focus as we lead into COP 30. What sort of programs are you planning, Carlos, around the Amazon? And will you be bringing into that indigenous knowledge with cutting-edge climate science? Can we expect to see the combination of those two things at COP 30?

Carlos Nobre:

Yes, for sure. In fact, I mean we finished a study going that we are going to launch at COP30, that uh Brazil can, in fact, get to so-called net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, not by 2050 as the Paris Agreement COP26. You know, in doing that, as Peter mentioned, in Brazil, land use change uh is responsible for 40 to 50 percent of emissions. Uh so we are showing Brazil really can get to zero deforestation degradation fires by 2030, and then uh transition to towards renewable energy and also reducing the emissions by uh livestock, uh mostly ruminants, a burp, uh methane a lot. And of course, this is not only true for Brazil, you know, COP30, we have really to be optimistic that uh unlike the last three COPs, it's like COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, uh most countries, of course, US is out, but uh all other countries, large emitters, China, also India, Russia, European countries, Brazil, Indonesia, so those countries will really agree on reducing emissions very, very rapidly. And a very important element, we are inviting a lot of indigenous people from not only from the Amazon, from all countries. I attended the Biodiversity Cop 16 in Cali, Colombia, and I was very impressed with the large number of indigenous leaders there, because it was related to biodiversity. So there's a very important element of COP 30. It will be probably the first out of third climate COPs that will bring the indigenous people and being in the Amazon showing the importance of protecting biodiversity. Let me also say we for the first time are creating a uh science pavilion. It's called Planetary Science Pavilion for the first time in third COPs. So we are going to bring all the positive tipping points. We are looking for nature-based solutions, but also we are going to bring to the science pavilion a lot of indigenous scientists as well. So bringing indigenous people to this COP will be certainly very important.

Liz Courtney:

That sounds wonderful.

Loreto Gutierrez:

As we're um drawing the episode to a close, I'd love to ask you in this critical time, what do you think the international community, and in particular when we refer to high emission nations, what should they be doing or what can they be doing to support the Amazon restoration as part of climate justice?

Carlos Nobre:

As Peter said, it's not only land use change, it's global warming. We really cannot let the global warming exceed two degrees at all. Of course, all countries have to reduce emissions. Today, China is number one, US number two, India number three, Russia number four, European countries as well, and Indonesia, Brazil. Coincidentally, beginning of this month, I spent eight days in China, and I gave many talks at university and in development banks, the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Development Bank. In my speech, I said China has to take the leadership. US, for four years, is out. So China, please take the leadership. China is the country doing a very rapid energy transition, but it has to accelerate much more. It's very clear we have really to accelerate the reduction because science is showing that we may reach 1.5 degrees with the next five to ten years. And if we reach 1.5 degrees by 20, uh, let's say 2035, we will exceed two degrees by 2050. So we cannot really allow that. All countries have to accelerate reductions of emissions.

Liz Courtney:

So, Peter, as someone who's spent um decades modeling the potential loss of places like the Amazon, how do you remain optimistic? And, you know, are there positive tipping points that uh are really helping to turn the tide?

Peter Cox:

Um It's a really interesting problem to study, first of all, as a scientist. Um I think the positive tipping point thing is something we've begun to work on a lot at Extra, this idea that the sort of non-linearities of tipping points that we worry about with the Amazon rainforest, they also occur in the other direction with human systems and with public opinion and with innovation and with the way people respond to each other. The human realm, from economies to societies to action, is very prone to tipping points, which can be positive. So the sort of thing that's going on at the moment which can depress you is this whole Trump denial of the climate science. I think what it might do is to steal the rest of us that are still being thinking sensibly to do more and to work harder, and that's my hope. And then there is a phenomenon, as you know, in um networks of people that you can get a tipping point, a bit like Carlos talks about with the Amazon rainforests, you get 40% of people, or sometimes 25% depend on the net network of people believing something, they can tip the rest, and we are close to that, I think, with climate change. And some of the things just make economic sense, even if you didn't care about saving the planet and avoiding fossil fuel usage, if you wanted to generate energy now in most parts of the world, you wouldn't do it with a few fossil fuels, you would do it through renewables, very likely solar energy. So I think we're close to the the the tipping point also for adoption of renewable energy. It takes just takes a while, and there are always going to be actors in the world that would rather we didn't change because they benefit from us staying the same. But we're close. And I think if we can just tune out the noise, which is completely um mislead deliberately misleading, then I think we can continue to do this, and at some point we'll start to see the CO2 start to come down, maybe in the next few years.

Liz Courtney:

Thank you for a dose of optimism. And Carlos, do you have a dose of optimism for us as well?

Carlos Nobre:

Well, you know, I'm I I have to have optimism about the Amazon. Globally, I'm very concerned, and I wish Peter also would make some comments because they are studying this social drivers of tipping points. But now I I consider a social political tipping point. Why all over the world democracies are electing populist politicians? US, Argentina, Japan, European countries. I'm very concerned because you know, we scientists have been saying all of these risks of climate change, all tipping points for 30, 40 years. Instead of the population being concerned, do not elect a president like in this country, US, completely denier in his discourse at the United Nations, he says, you know, climate change is a cool, there is no need to renewable energy, and renewable energy is much more expensive than fossil fuel energy. This is completely nonsense. And this is not happening only here. So, you know, I think there is a risk of social political tipping point. And Peter was saying something very important. How we also, in science, communicate that to all global populations, educate young people, students. So I I think that's a big challenge as well.

Peter Cox:

I think it is. And I just to add to that, I think um the concern about leadership is pro is there's been a problem for a long time, and it's most of it's now. But there comes a point when we can do it without requiring our leaders to tell us it's true. And we're there now. And most of us know what Trump is saying at the moment is absolute nonsense, as you say, Carlos, so we just don't have to listen to it when carry on what we're doing. And I think there are enough people that want to do this and understand that we can do it, regardless of what our leaders might suggest. They have to follow us in the end if they want to get voted in.

Loreto Gutierrez:

Well, I want to thank you both for a really wonderful interview. Before we wrap up the episode, I'm gonna give you one go at the magic wand each. And I'd love to ask you if you look towards 2035 and you had to change one thing and you can just wave the magic wand and get it done, what would you do?

Peter Cox:

I would like to see an end to the use of fossil fuels before 2035. We should have done it a while ago, and we're in a position to do it. I think it's almost a question of um the historical baggage and the vested interests that stop the happening. But if we could do that, we'd get there. If we don't reduce fossil fuels, we've got to absorb the carbon by other means or do something else radical. So um that's the way I would like to see.

Carlos Nobre:

In addition to exactly, you know, getting to almost zero fossil fuels by 2035. I also think it's very important for us globally in the Amazon especially to get zero deforestation, degradation, virus, larger-scale forest restoration, and then a big challenge. Let's start a new bioeconomy based on the social biodiversity. The Europeans came 500 years ago to the Americas and completely ignored the knowledge of all indigenous people. The indigenous people in the Amazon arrived 14,000 years ago, used 2,300 products, almost 300 fruits, 1,500 medicinal plants. So now, this is also a big challenge we are doing in the Amazon. Let's create this we call social by economy of standing forests and flowing rivers. And also, of course, everybody likes to eat meat. Let's also move globally, but certainly in the Amazon, to the so-called regenerative livestock, much more productive beef production, but not using no new area. So that's, I would say, in addition to getting to zero use of fossil fuels, but also zero deforestation all over the planet.

Loreto Gutierrez:

Wonderful. A wonderful use of the magic wand. Again, I want to say thank you both for joining us today in what is a very busy time. I thank you for your work and thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with us today.

Liz Courtney:

It's been very exciting to have you both on. I I also want to say to Carlos, we wish you all the best with COP30 coming up in Bilem. We'll be thinking of you, and uh, we just uh can't wait to hear um very positive outcomes from that as the world moves forward. So thank you for holding the light on that, and thank you, it's been very exciting to have you here today.

Carlos Nobre:

Thank you, thank you very much.

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Dan Leverington

Host
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Loreto Gutierrez

Host