You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
We've got some numbers for everybody to chew on. Ninety three percent of respondents said that they believe climate change poses a serious and imminent threat to the planets. Seventy one percent say the weather where they live has gotten more extreme over the past few years. We have certainly seen it this year, and eighty two percent worry that climate change will make life extremely difficult and unpleasant for all of us and our families.
I can relate to a lot of this, given Carol, I'm in New York. I've lived through three once in a one hundred year storms, I know, and that's like, you know.
It's supposed to be anomalized, not as much.
Once in a century storms.
Well, the figures we just talked about, right, I know, it's dramatic, but we're living it. The figures come from Edelman's twenty twenty three Trust Barometer special report Trust and Climate Change, released this month. Richard Edelman is in the house, he CEO of Edelman, the global public relations firm. Of course, behind the Trust Barometer. We've talked about it over the years.
He's just back from COP twenty eight, the UN's annual Climate change Conference, which this year is being held in the UAE, and it's just about halfway over at this point. As we said, he's here in studio. How are you You are just back? Yeah, a little jet lagged a little bit. Yeah.
I actually feel good about the progress at COP twenty eight, Carol, because the importance of the finance unlock cannot be understated.
What do you mean by that?
So in a sense to have a remediation fund that was passed the first day by the assembled multitude is a big deal. And also that UAE and Bloomberg Philanthropy has announced a big fund thirty billion dollars to invest in climate technologies. That's making finance work for climate remediation.
How has that not happened in the past, because I feel like in an ESG world, I think we thought all this money was coming in.
It's called COP twenty eight, not COP one, but.
The other twenty seven haven't come to these kinds of agreements. And so the five hundred million dollars already voted for remediation funds, they need a lot more. And also, let's face it the reality of fusion and hydrogen and all these things that need actually to be invested in and made available at a right price. And it's the key thing that binds the North and the South together. Think that before you always had this kind of well you Western guys have already had yours, and now we want ours.
And so the remediation fund. So, for example, Lula of Brazil got up and said, listen, give me remediation so I can stop people cutting the forest and Amazon makes sense, we have to pay farmers not to do that. And so this remediation kind of thing, or the venture fund is part of we hear you South. We want to be helpful to you in supposed to opposing.
In terms of technology, in terms of solutions. What moves the needle here?
I think optimism And so our study, the Trust Study on sustainability, showed that people who believe that they actually the climate change can be dealt with will change their behavior.
I was so interested in these numbers. They were so much higher than I thought, and I thought to myself, go do this in Congress and see what members of Congress actually But.
A person who is optimistic is two and a half times more likely to change his behavior about shorter showers or evs or whatever else, as opposed to the half of the world that says, I give up, it's too late. What the hell I may as well, you know, drive a gas callsler.
But is somebody who's coming out of an emerging economy, maybe they're the first generation to actually have running water and electricity. Do they care how that electricity is generated to the same extent that of you know, my neighbors who say, after the storm here in New York on September twenty ninth, they say, you know what, We're going to pay thirty thousand dollars for solar because we think it's a good investment and we need to do something.
And we need to use Look, I think in developing world it's about the price, because it's a price and access. And if I don't have the ability to have a light so that my kid can read and get educated, then I want the light and I should feel like I should get it. But as to where it comes from, meaning whether it's oil or solar, they don't care. But it has to be affordable, and that's the key point of this. But I think another key point in this
study is the relatively low trust in business. You know, we've always talked about how business is much more trusted than government, not unsustainability, because we're seen as having talked a lot and delivered a little. And so I really like that so many companies showed up to COP twenty eight and it's an agriculture, or it's an energy, or it's in tech.
I feel like it's starting to you know, ESG right. The original idea, right was that these ESG elements would affect your business. And I feel like climate is now affecting people's business in other words, whether it either shuts it down or I mean, I think about the beer producers or you know, we talked to a lot of folks in the wine industry, the fires, the you know, soils changing it's dry or whatever. But I think in general, it's companies are really being hit and impacted by it,
and so they've got to do something well. And that's fair.
It's totally fair, Carol, that they want to be part of change because their supply chains are deeply disrupted otherwise. And so why regenerative agriculture for Unilever, because they're going to make the soybeans that going to the mayonnaise that, you know, and they're going to have to do it in a way that the soil is able to keep producing. And I heard something fascinating in in cop fifty percent of the farmers who own cattle are sixty five plus
or something. There's a whole generation change and it's fifty percent of all farms are people who are fifty plus.
It makes sense.
So the youngers they.
Want to move to the city, they don't want to be doing correct.
But we have to get younger farmers. So there's a generation change possible. Who will want to do it differently, a differently approach, a different approach.
Well, you know we always talk about well consumers they care, like we've had conversations my daughter, you know, or but is it true? Is that really moving the nut? That is somebody going to say, I'm going to buy this because that company stands for what I believe in. But it's going to cost me double the price. So will we do that?
Consumers won't pay more? Yeah, And they told us. We did a study with NYU over the summer and if it's good for me and good for the planet, I'll do it.
You know, I wrote this all the time, Like I think it's FedEx or ups or like even you know, buy tickets for an airline and they're like, do you want to pay a few more dollars to offset? I'm like no, Like why is that with uber? Like go for a green car, you know, yeah, but oftentimes that's like less expensive. You know when we were on the West Coast and every car.
Was yeah, that's it was easy on the West.
Yeah, it's so that that's so interesting to hear.
But but a company like Hundai that has fifty thousand dollars EV, it's going to sell more than than ones that are for eighty or ninety or that's true. But because in a pyramid in the marketing business, we've got to get to the big middle. Yeah, and those are the people who we.
Talk about it, right, we'd love to own EV's.
Yeah, we live in the city where we can't even get parking. Yeah, it's tough, but but look at over the last six months the way EV sales in the US have fallen off a cliff essentially, and in favor of internal combustion engines. I mean, as a year ago, hybrids are doing well, but they're still used.
Gas well ev sales passed a million units this year out of seventeen million. And you know, again, the producers are anticipating it's going to be a quarter of the market in the two or three years. But they're going to have to have infrastructure such that it makes it easy for you to refill.
Is the US of China doing enough? They're important in all of this, the biggest emitters right when it comes to the impact.
So the Chinese continue to do coal plants, and yet they're also the biggest implementers of solar because their energy use is continuing to soar. So the hope is that the COP twenty eight will stimulate them to focus more on the solar than the coal because the coal is cheap.
And again it's the price issue for developing markets. But if consumers start and this is where I think COP has to go to a next step in COP twenty nine or thirty and actually say to consumers, you know, we want you to affirmatively change your behavior and byproducts that are sustainably sourced.
Yeah, bonuses on all of us too, write.
Correct shorter again, shorter showers called water wash. There are all sorts of small things that we need to do. But it's really interesting, Carol, that just quickly the source of information has to be scientists, but also people like you, somebody who's a friend and family. We've got to get to the pastor or other people informal sources because they don't just believe experts anymore.
That's really interesting your community, right, It has to be kind of putting pressure on you. You well, so good to see you in studio.
Happy holidays, Thank you so much, Happy holidays.
Richard Edelman of course, CEO of Edelman joining us in studio.