Red Sea Ship Attacks, Bill Gates Climate Warning & Bitcoin Tops $40k

Good morning. It's Monday, the fourth of December here in London. This is the BlueBag Daybreak Here podcast. I'm Caroline Hepka and.

I'm Stephen Carroll. Coming up today, Iranian backed Hoothy Rebels attack commercial ships in the Red Sea as Israel ramps up its offensive in Gaza.

Bill Gates warns the world probably won't meet its climate goals, as Bloomberg finds Banks green reporting lacks consistency.

Plus eight three hundred pounds worse off. Britain's economic stagnation leaves households counting the cast, according to one new report.

Let's start with a roundup of our top stories. A US Navy ship has responded to a florri of drone and missile attacks against commercial ships operating in the Red Sea. The destroyer USS Carney blamed Yemen's Hoothy Rebels for what it said were four attacks against three separate vessels. Those included an attack on the UK owned cargo ship, the Unity Explorer, which caused minor damage which Retired US Marine Colonel Steve Ganyard says that the Pentagon fears escalation.

The use is being very careful not to turn the Red Sea into a shooting gallery who these continue to target what they say are only Israeli ships, But the US needs to be assured and the world needs to be assured that there's freedom of navigation and that ships could print it the heavily trafficked Red Sea.

Steve Ganyard, reflecting on the growing fears for the safety of vessels in the busy shipping lane. Last month, the rebels in Yemen issued a threat against ships with ties to Israel in the area, calling them quote legitimate targets.

The regional escalation comes as Israel's military expands its operations against Hamas. Days after a week long truce came to an abrupt end. The Israeli military is now warning many of the territory's two point two million residents to evacuate parts of southern Gaza as it ramps up airstrikes on the territory. He bit TV from the aid organization Care International.

The winter is already in Gaza. People left without proper clothing. Most of them they already sleep outdoor in the overcrowded churches, and now with this new evacuation, many of them say, we know we need to evacuate, but we don't know where to go with a new order.

That warning from one AID agency comes as John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, said Israel had taken steps to minimize civilian casualties.

We've urged them to as they go south, We've said, we've said publicly, we don't want to see them move into the south unlesser until they have accounted for that additional now civilian population, because they move folks out of the north and the South, hundreds of thousands of them, we want to make sure that they're properly accounted for. And again them publishing this map online and dropping leaflets and informing people of where not to go. I mean that is a step in the right direction.

That's John Kirby speaking the hamaser On Health Ministry in Gaza, says more than fifteen thoy five hundred people have been killed since the conflict began eight weeks ago. Israel around four hundred of its soldiers and fifty nine police personnel have been killed since the deadly seventh of October attack.

And now two stays around climate change, Bill Gates sees a hotter world, failing to stop temperatures from rising even higher. Once the world's richest man, Gates has devoted large sums of money to fighting climate change. At this year's cop summit, he told Bloomberg humanity will miss global warming targets that were set at the twenty fifteen Paris Agreement.

No, we won't hit the aspirational targets. Well, you can do the mouth on one point five.

And even two point zero. Isn't that likely.

Gates is still optimistic that the world can avoid becoming three degrees celsius warmer than the pre industrial era, but scientists point to this is extreme weather as an omen of the damage that climate change is causing.

Bitcoin has hed a nineteen month high of more than forty one thousand dollars. The cryptocurrency's stellar performance comes after a turbulent period for the token in the wake of ftx as collapse. Lucy Gasmararian is the managing partner and founder at Token Bay Capital. She explains why she sees bitcoin surging.

You know, there's a combination of factors going on here. I'd say, you know, expectations that interest rates are potentially going to you know, start coming down next year, and then the big thing in the sort of crypto circles is that the bitcoin harving that's coming up, where the rewards for miners that are mining bitcoin transactions gets cut in half so you get a supply shot.

Lucy Gasmararian speaking there, Bitcoin is jumped by more than one hundred and fifty percent this year to outstrip other investments like stocks and gold.

UK households are now roughly eight thousand pounds poorer than those in France and Germany, according to a major new report. Two think tanks behind it so that Britain is in fifteen years of stagnation and has called the government's economic plan quote not serious. Bloomberg's James Worcock has the story.

The Resolution Foundation and the Center for Economic Performance say the UK might have had its own lost decade of growth. The two top think tanks say Britain's earn less and are now less productive than rival countries, but despite their major new report calling for more investment and funding for public services, taxes are at a postwar high. Labour leader Kissed Armer praised Margaret Thatcher over the weekend and says his party won't turn on spending taps if elected in London.

And the Chinese developer Evergrant has won a reprieve in a restructuring agreement with creditors. Bloomberg's Brian Curtis has more from Hong Kong.

This buys some time Forevergrand and its creditors to do a deal. Hong Kong Court has earned a winding up proceeding until January twenty ninth. The unexpected delay came as the original petitioner did not push for an immediate liquidation. Bloomberg has report or did that offshore creditors want a controlling interest in Evergrand and its two Hong Kong units. The builder has offered them a minority stake. Expect a lot of back and forth now over the next eight

Now in a moment, we'll be discussing fears of greenwashing and sustainable investment goals for banks. But the story that caught Maya this morning from COP twenty eight. Obviously, we've been talking about a lot of the big conversations happening there, the global agreements to try and tackle renewables, But an idea from a Russian billionaire to look at how the tundra ecosystem in Siberia could be maintained to stop the release of methane emissions from the thawing permafrost there as well.

Is that serious or is this the sort of because look, coming with COP twenty eight, all sorts of ideas and a bit of a kind of trade show. Feel basically on the side of COP twenty eight, a lot of businesses come to kind of talk about all of the climate change issues. I mean, I suppose there's a there's been a lot of criticism that is being held in a petro state effectively, and so one wonder is that is that a serious proposition?

Yeah?

I mean, look, you're not alone and thinking that. Robert Savans, is a Harvard University professor of environmental economics, says you could think of this as more of a circus where the main event is sometimes eclipsed by the prominence of

Yea, absolutely, but the major challenge that you're trying to deal with climate change and what that means. Continued coverage then on the program this morning of the COP twenty eighth summit, which obviously is on for a whole fortnite.

Let's go next though, to the Middle East, where Israel's military is expanding operations across Gaza, while a US Navy ship has responded to drone and missile attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea. We've got Bloomberg senior reporter Anthony's cuisine with us in Tel Aviv this morning. Anthony, let's start with what's been happening in Gaza. The Israeli military offensive targeting the south of Gaza. What more can you tell us?

Okay, Well, obviously it's a pretty intense campaign. We just had news that the IDF says it hit about two hundred targets overnight, So a lot of air strikes and other ordinance, all in a very crowded area where most of Gaza two point two million people are now hold up. It's a very difficult situation because Israel has come under intense criticism for the number of civilian casualties in its campaign in northern Gaza in recent weeks before the Truth

So how what is the response then, when the likes of the US Vice President Kamala Harris are warning Israel about civilian casualties in Gaza? How significant is it? A change in tone from the Biden administration.

Absolutely, the Biden administration officials have become more strident over the last few weeks in cautioning Israel to be exercisemare caution to try and limit the number of civilian casualties.

They're coming under a lot of.

Pressure at home and also from the international community about the death toll, which local authorities in Gaza put at more than fifteen thousand, five hundred, many of those children. But at the same time, the US has said it supports Israel's broad aims in the war of destroying Hamas and retrieving its hostages, which still stand at one hundred and thirty seven.

And you we're also monitoring events in the Red Sea too, after we had that firing by US Navy ship intervening because of fire from Hooty rebels and Yemen. How series is an escalation of the events that we've seen in the Red Sea.

Well, certainly yesterday was the most most intense activity we've seen since the conflict began in October seven. The hoofi's head said that they would target Israeli in ships, and there've been a couple of instances so far, but yesterday there was a lot of activity, with three or four vessels targeted. None of them were badly damaged. But the US naval did have to fire on drawings and perhaps missiles, and definitely it's an escalation of.

Sorts, okay. And so in terms of what it means in a widening of the conflict in the Middle East, how much concern is there around that, I don't think.

I don't think we should overplay it. I don't think it means that there as you know, there's going to be new players dread into this conflict. But what it does mean is that one of the world's most important passageways for ship traffic is increasingly perilous, and that threatens the world trade and the global economy.

So it's it's a pretty big deal.

Okay, Anthony, thank you very much for bringing u up today with the latest developments there. That's our senior reporters Anthony's cuisine joining us from Tel Aviv this morning.

Now let's go back to the story around COP twenty eight in the Climate talks. Is the world's biggest banks are heading to Dubai for what is Climate Day today? Industry Insight does there are raising questions about the sustainable finance achievements that banks have made amid concerns that they are overstating their impact. Joining us for more on this is our markets reporter Greg Ritchie. I good to have you back on radio. What is it that banks are doing that is now facing so much scrutiny?

Thanks for having me.

So.

The background of this is that all pretty much every single major global bank has set as sustainable finance targets. So that's why they commit to say we're raising one trillion dollars of sustainable finance by twenty thirty, and they often publicize that by saying this year we raise two hundred and fifty billion dollars towards our targets. The issue is that nobody has really defined sustainable finance in a

Does this put in peril the whole idea then, of ESG. If we can't define it, it makes it much more difficult to track.

I think you're right to highlight that there's obviously been a lot of anti ESG rhetoric, particularly in the US, and even skepticism in other parts of the world. I think banks are operating in a vacuum right now where there isn't a regulatory definition of what is sustainable finance investments, and therefore they have to make up their own definitions.

Yeah, what have a few of the examples that you've turned up about what the different definitions in sustainable finance mean. What are some of the examples that you've got.

So, I think one key example is M and A. It's obviously M and A deals are massive. They can go into the tens of billions of dollars, whereas some banks counting M and A transactions as being sustainable finance and other banks that are not. And you can quickly imagine that if one bank doesn't, one bang doesn't, that quickly skews their figures. So when it comes down to

So how then can investors and consumers who want to know where the money is going, how a particular bank is behaving, How can they actually assess that?

It's very difficult for them, and that is the problem. I'm speaking to a lot of researchers who are specializing on this, and they struggle to navigate this through all the disclosures, for all the small prints. So if your consumer and want to know of your bank is actively contributing towards the climate transition, you can speak to experts, you can read news articles about them, but it's very difficult to find a single number that will tell you this bank is better than this bank.

Okay, regulators looking into this now, then.

They are, I think the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK they wrote led it to the banks heads of VSG earlier this year and they raised a number of concerns. One of them was the fact that lots of bankers their remuneration, their bonuses are set to the meeting of these targets, and that creates potential conflicts of interests. You can imagine that if you're banker and you want to achieve your bonus, you might be pressured to slap the sustainable label on a product that baby doesn't meet the

Are the banks themselves worried about being accused of greenwashing?

Definitely.

So I speak to quite a few of the heads of ESG for the story, and one thing that they keep on telling us is how courses they're becoming. You know, maybe two years ago they would have put a label on something that they wouldn't do. Now that's because of the increased scrutiny, and many of them think that next year, as last laps up, that they're going to face many different green washing risks that they need to navigate.

Okay, it's a really interesting piece, great research. Greg, thank you so much for joining us and talking us through that story around green financing. And the biggest banks in the world are Greg Ritchie. They're our markets reporter.

Now, Bill Gates says the world probably won't meet the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures to one and a half degrees. However, the Microsoft co friend or praise the COP twenty eight summitch for making progress untackling climate change despite geopolitical tensions. Okay. When speaking to Bloomberg's Francine Laquat in Dubai, she asked him how he measures success in this field.

I'm optimistic in general.

A lot of the power of human innovation is showing here and in all the work I do.

What does that mean?

Does that mean that you measure success as in pledges? Do we measure success as trying to do better and putting more money where it should be.

Well, in the end, it's all about the human condition. You know, more people are living longer. You know, we've cut childhood death and half claimate is this negative thing that's slowing down that progress? And so in mitigation, you know, we want to make sure the temperature doesn't get too high, and then an adaptation, we want to make sure that the ill effects that whatever we can't mitigate, that it doesn't reverse this incredible rate of human improvement.

But what are you.

Most optimistic about? Is it business or is it actually leaders coming together with pledges?

Well?

Climate change overall, it's a challenge to the world. Hydrocarbons have been very cheap. Our economy is built around you know, coal, gas oil, and so we have to make this change. The progression of inventing new approaches green approaches, and then implementing them and over time scaling them and getting them so cheap what I call zero green premium. You first

We'll see.

But do you think we're going fast enough to actually hit the targets that were set out in the Paaris agreement.

No, we won't hit hit no to aspirational targets. Well, you can do the math on one point five and even two point zero. Isn't that likely?

Now?

Fortunately, if you stay below three, a lot of the ill effects that people have heard about don't happen unless you really are irresponsible and let it get up to the the higher range.

Where do you see the role of fossil fuels going forward, Well.

We have to outcompete fossil fuels. Now.

To do that properly, they you know, they shouldn't get subsidies, and in fact, a carbon tax over time should be put on so that the new you know, say the electric car or the plane that use hydrogen, the fact that it doesn't emit carbon, you're helping it get adoption. Those companies have skills, you know, if you want to sequester carbon or you know, nuclear wayte or there's a lot of skills if you want to make biofuels.

Uh.

You know, some of those.

Companies will take the capital and skills they have.

Uh.

You know, so I wouldn't you know, say okay, I wish they weren't there. You know, people still, you know, there's no country that can say, okay, we have zero emissions.

Uh. You know, people want to drive to work.

You know.

In fact, the excess supply when Russia cut off its supply in the world was sort of glad that that was available, and so, yes, oil and gas needs to be out competed, and those companies need to join the effort.

I know you look at a lot of technologies and a lot of innovation, But is there one thing that you've been most excited about in the past five years or that you're most excited about for the future. I know we talked about nuclear fuel. I mean we talk a lot about the really big, you know, exciting stuff.

What are you excited about?

Well, you know, I love all my children, and I have these one hundred companies, and you know, I never knew that we'd get a new way to make steel or cement or beef. It's fair to say that if we can get either nuclear fission or fusion to be safe and broadly accepted and very economic because it's not whether dependent, it would be very complementary to the large amount of solar and wind that we're putting into our electric system.

And so I'm biased.

I'm a huge investor in both fission and fusion and hoping that it comes in time. We can't count on it, you know, fission it has been too expensive, and fusion doesn't exist yet.

But Fusion fifteen years from now, like what's your I know it's a guess. At the moment.

Well, of the four companies I'm invested in, one of them, Commonwealth Fusion has a credible path. Things will have to go well that in the late twenty thirties they'd be making electricity and start to scale it up. So that's an aspiration. But it's a great company. And we have three others that aren't quite that early, but you know, are within five to ten years of that.

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