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Jessamy: Hello and welcome to The Lancet Voice. I'm Jessamy Bagenal.
Gavin: And I'm Gavin Cleaver. It's conspicuous the extent to which the climate crisis has been absent from mainstream political debate in the lead up to the 2020 US election. But with the effects of climate change ever more apparent around the world, and the pace of warming increasing, addressing the climate crisis isn't something that can be put off.
Jessamy: And as such, we're delighted to be joined today by Noam Chomsky and Robert Polin, authors of the new book on climate crisis and the global green new deal. So Noam, Bob, thank you so much for joining us today. You've written this amazing book that was written during lockdown. And what I loved about it is that it brings this sort of tangible numerical details to a concept that's so crucial.
It feels really sensible and plausible. We, I don't know whether you've been aware of it already, but we have our own Lancet Climate Countdown that's a sort of annual measure of progress with regards to health related issues and climate change. And last year at the launch, I remember hearing this phrase, which really hit home with me, which is where fear meets hope and how you can get over that fear to mobilize change, to stabilize the climate.
And you've both been doing work in this field for a long time. And I just wondered whether you might be able to tell us Why you wrote the book now?
Noam: We wrote the book now because the moment is urgent. There's never been a period like this in all of human history. We actually have a confluence of crises combining right at this moment.
It's an astonishing moment in the history of the species. We have a the devastating threat of environmental catastrophe, have maybe a couple of decades to deal with it. We have a growing threat of nuclear war that's unpredictable, but would be terminal. We have a sharp deterioration of democratic processes around the world.
United States, Britain are examples that eliminates. undermines the possible ways of dealing with the crisis. They're not going to be dealt with by demagogues and strongmen. If we have a raging pandemic, which is the least of the crises, that one at least will get over with. Terrible cost, needless cost, as you can see from the countries where governments actually had some concern for the welfare of their citizens and managed to get it more or less under control.
Others are just off the spectrum, like the United States. So there's a confluence of serious problems. They all have to be dealt with quickly. One of them, which we focused on, is the climate crisis. This one, while we're talking, It gets worse. Things that are happening which will not be reversed. The arctic ice sheets are melting faster than it was expected.
That's essentially permanent. Other things that are happening are essentially irreversible, unless there are major Inventions that are not on the horizon, we have time to deal with it, but the urgency is extreme. Some countries are doing something, some localities are doing something, overall, the chances don't look good, in particular because Leading countries, the United States is the worst villain in this respect, are actually racing in the other direction, racing towards destruction.
So the Trump administration is opening up new areas for oil drilling. The last nature reserve in the United States was opened up recently. This is really fanaticism because the oil industry doesn't even want them. It has a glut of oil, but the administration is so dedicated to ruining the environment for future life that it doesn't care.
Let's open them up and destroy things. Anyway, every day, practically, regulations are being reduced or overturned that somewhat mitigate the crisis that protect Americans from the lethal effects of pollution. Magnified by the respiratory pandemic, chemicals flowing into the water and so on. Now these, the relevant agencies by now are just staffed by businessmen looking for profit.
They don't care what the scientists say. All of this is happening day by day while we are in a crisis that must be met and can be met. Means are available, you have to keep that in your mind. We're squandering the opportunity and it's never going to come back. If we squander this opportunity, it's finished.
Gavin: Why do you think it's proven so difficult to articulate a vision of the effects of climate change that can compel voters to act?
Noam: Just take a look at the two presidential conventions that just took place, and take a look at the huge commentary on the election. Try to find the words, climate, first of all, forget climate change.
That's a euphemism. Okay? It's not climate change. It's overheating the atmosphere. See if you can find a phrase about that. Every once in a while, somebody may mention it in the nuclear war, and nobody even mentions. It's as if the society is living in some dream world. Major crises are coming. No comment on them.
Million comments on every other thing you can imagine. Personalities. What did somebody say about this? Did somebody make an ugly comment? Masses of commentary and discussion. Virtually nothing about lethal crises. Actually, it's very striking what's happened in the United States. The activist movements, which are very significant, did around, mostly around the, under the Sanders banner, more or less, though there were others like Sunrise Movement.
They did succeed in shifting. In compelling the Biden campaign to adopt a moderately reasonable program on doing something about the environmental crisis, many flaws, but a big step forward. The Democratic National Committee, the Clintonite donor oriented managers of the party, plainly don't like it.
And they've been cutting away at it. If you keep looking at the webpage, bits and pieces of it disappear or removed. That's a battle. inside the Democratic Party. The other party, the Republican Party, is dead set towards destroying the environment. This has been happening. We can trace it. It happened in 2008 when John McCain ran for president.
He had A weak environmental program, something about carbon tax, a few other things. Democratic legislators were moving towards it. The huge energy conglomerate, the Koch energy conglomerate, which had been working for years to try to prevent the Republican Party from even mentioning anything about the climate, was appalled by this.
launched a huge juggernaut to try to ensure that the party would not deviate from their dedicated denialism. Intimidating senators, bribery, huge lobbying campaign, astroturf, party shifted, nothing more about the climate. You could see there was no primary this time, but if you looked at the primary in 2016, you could see what had happened.
That was the cream of the crop, debating in the primary. Almost all of them denied that climate change, that heating the environment is taking place. Denied that it's taking place. A few said, yes, it's taking place, but we're not going to do anything about it. There was one. John Kasich, governor of Ohio, who was regarded as the adult in the room the sensible person, so much so that the Democrats actually invited him to appear to talk at this convention in August.
What was his position? He's the governor of Ohio, coal producing state. He said, yes. Climate change is taking place. It's dangerous, but we in Ohio are going to use our coal and not be embarrassed about it. In my opinion, he was the worst of all of them. He said, yes, of course it's happening, but we'll make it worse.
Because we can, we want to make more profit. That's considered the adult in the room. You have to remember that. Almost half the population is having this drummed into their heads every day. On Fox News, by Rush Limbaugh, they're being told science is one of the four corners of deceit, lives on deceit.
People are getting this, that's all they hear. What do you expect them to believe? So yes, they don't see it as an urgent problem. Maybe 20 percent of Republicans think that this is a serious problem. This is a very astonishing phenomenon. Hard to imagine this taking place in a civilized place, but it is.
And we have to work very hard to overcome it, starting with public opinion, up to legislators, up to actual legislation, and then implementing them. And all of this has to be done very quickly. We don't have a lot of time. And if it is done, We can move towards not only a sustainable future, but a much better future, a much better future with, to be concrete suppose I want to get to work, it's much more convenient to go in efficient, clean, quick mass transportation than to sit in a traffic jam for two hours, much more convenient, we can do that, it's much more convenient, to sit in a home like mine, which has solar panels on the roof, and no electricity costs in an area where the temperature is in the low 40s Celsius.
Okay, much better than paying a thousand dollars a month for electricity bills and not having enough electricity. Lots of things we can do, but they have to be done. I think if they are done, we'll have a better world and we'll be able to escape this crisis, but not if nobody's talking about it and the only people here are sciences to see.
Jessamy: We've been speaking about America, but obviously this is a global issue in terms of sort of the lack of action towards climate change. You give some examples of the infrastructure that Germany has put in place. And I was just wondering whether. You could tell us some of those examples of countries that are doing a good job and There's a great discussion that you have about the sort of relationship between capitalism, neoliberalism, and climate change, and maybe you could just briefly summarize some of those issues for us.
Noam: There are countries that are doing pretty reasonable things. Now, some of them are moving towards net zero emissions. Some states in the United States are doing very decent things. Some localities are. The big barrier is the federal government, which is racing in the opposite direction. Now, the connection with neoliberalism is very simple.
You go back to 1980, 1981, when there was a reversal in the direction of economic programming by the government from, it didn't happen in an instant, but roughly then from the regimented capitalism of the early post war period to the neoliberal period. And the doctrines were very explicit. The leading economist for the neoliberal programs, Milton Friedman, famous economist, wrote an article in 1981 in which he said, which became a kind of a Bible for neoliberalism, in which he said, the sole goal and responsibility of corporations is greed, maximizing their own profit.
For shareholders, and of course for management and CEOs, that's their sole responsibility. Anything else they do is not only economically wrong, but morally wrong. What happens when that's the credo by which all the economy functions. Oh, you can see, in fact, we have some estimates of it. Now, the RAND Corporation just did a study.
The transfer of funds, the lower 90 percent of the population to the very, to what they call the top 10%, really means the top fraction of 1 percent for the most part. What's that, what they politely call transfer of funds, I'll accurately call robbery. What's the measure of the robbery of the working class and the middle class in order to enrich a tiny sector of the population?
Their estimate is 47 trillion dollars. Over a trillion dollars a year. Okay, you could argue about the details, but the general picture is correct. And for the top 0. 1%, it has meant doubling their share of the country's wealth from 10 percent to 20%. CEO salaries have shot into the stratosphere, carrying other management salaries with them.
The end result is, if you're working, you could say the Trump administration is just doing their job. If the job is to maximize wealth and profit for the rich and powerful, they're doing a wonderful job of it. What's wrong? They're following the rules. It's perfect. The only thing is, it's destroying the world.
And it's not just Trump. Trump is a kind of a caricature of programs that trace back to Reagan, Thatcher, and the institutional interests, the corporate, financial, other interests that were behind them. And we're suffering from it. One of the reasons for the deterioration of democracy The anger, the contempt for institutions, you see all over the world.
They don't know that it was 47 trillion dollars, but they can see it in their lives. You can't trust institutions. They don't work for us. Everything's going wrong. Let's blame it on somebody. You see it all over Europe. You see it in the United States. It's an extremely dangerous situation. This has been an assault of 40 years, has turned the economy into something grotesque, and has had the immediate effect of undermining the functioning of democracy.
When you have high concentration of wealth, perfectly obvious mechanisms that distorts the political system so that it serves their interests. People simply aren't represented and they know it. Meanwhile, other crises are developing, like the rising threat of nuclear war, which are literally not being mentioned.
There's speculations about whether extraterrestrial intelligence exists, but if it exists and is watching what's going on here, they wouldn't believe it. And it's all within our hands to control. That is the crucial thing. That's Bob Pollan's crucial work, which is the centerpiece of the book.
What we're talking about is the periphery. That's the centerpiece. Says we can deal with it easily. Not like that, but easily within our means, within the range of other things that we've done without even thinking about. That's the crucial message. We have to get that across to the population and make them compel their legislators.
and the major institutions of the society to abide by these options and possibilities.
Gavin: Perhaps following on from that then to, to Bob Bob how can we overcome this kind of short term profit motive that's Driving so many actions at the moment and compel the economy to what to look towards this long term future that you describe.
Robert: The simple thing is you just you have to legislate it is as known said. I mean, there's often there's various policy options before us and all of them have relative strengths and weaknesses. The simplest one. Is the fancy term in the U. S. Is renewable portfolio standards. What renewable portfolio standards really mean is just that you set a limit as to how much fossil fuels can be burned, and then you can't go over the limit.
The renewable portfolio standard could be That you have to cut burning fossil fuels to generate electricity by 5 percent every year. And the next year, 5 percent off the previous year. And if you did that, and you did it in the electricity sector, And in the transportation sector, we would hit zero emissions within the time frame set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
You just outlaw it. Now, yes, there, you can say we can do it through a tax. And, there's maybe some merit to that as well. Among other things, a tax will generate revenue, which you can plow into renewable energy and energy efficiency. So it's that basic combination The other thing that you need is you need the money to finance the new investments in the green energy and energy efficiency and renewable energy And according to the work i've been doing now for some years It's really not that big a number.
It is a big number when you say okay for the united states, we need 600 billion dollars a year on average 600 billion dollars a big number 600 billion dollars a year is two percent of gdp So if you say, Oh, we're 98 percent of GDP doesn't have to deal with this problem. It's only 2 percent of GDP.
And then similarly for, I've done a global model and as we summarize it in the book, we're looking at between two and 3 percent of GDP and other researchers have gone at the problem from different angles and come up with similar. Result, for example, Jeff Sachs, who is directing the sustainable development project at the U.
N. We may have some disagreements as the specifics of the research, but we're coming out with broadly the same result, which tells me the result is robust. So if you can get 2 to 3 percent of GDP invested in building the green economy and you regulate the use of fossil fuels down to zero over the next 30 years or less You've solved the problem on top of that the investments in clean energy are going to generate jobs and within a global model.
I did a rough estimate Something like 150 million jobs per year on a global scale in the u. s we're looking at something like four to five million jobs per year And so it is a source. It is a source of job creation There will be people who will lose their jobs in the fossil fuel industry, of course And therefore we have to provide a transition for them.
They have to transition out into something else But in that sense the good news there also The number of people that have to transition out of the fossil fuel industry is way below The number of jobs that we create by investing two to three percent Of gdp in building up the green economy and just as one example in the u.
s No mentioned ohio I'm actually writing a project, a study right now, like today, for Ohio on the the green economy, and the number of people per year that you would have to transition out of fossil fuels into something else in Ohio is minuscule. It's a thousand people I mean We can't find a we're going to create we're going to create 150 000 jobs in the green economy in ohio And then we have to find new employment for a thousand people.
That shouldn't be very hard problem to solve Analytically, it's not economically. It's not politically. We need to get over the people Like Noam was talking about, the former Governor Kasich, who says, I don't know, we can't do this, because we're a coal state. A tiny bit of the Ohio economy is a coal state.
The rest is a whole lot of other things. And you can create, new opportunities, as Noam said. It could be a much better economy. And among other things, as Noam also said, people's energy costs will go down, not up. If you have solar panels on your roof and you invest in raising efficiency in your, with your car and your house or your apartment, you'll spend 40 percent less on energy than you do now, and you won't be generating any emissions.
Jessamy: What you've done there, Bob, is a great summary of what the Green New Deal is or what your sort of vision is. And I was just wondering whether you might be able to tell us What's the sort of mobilization of this huge amount of money that has been used to deal with COVID 19? What that means to you or what that represents in the context of climate change and potentially transitioning to a different type of, not a different type of economy, but an economy with a different focus?
Robert: What we saw here in the U. S. and elsewhere in, in Europe is, on a dime, we the U. S., the initial stimulus program that was passed in March was 10 percent of GDP. Remember, I'm only talking about 2 to 3 percent of GDP. We got 10 percent of GDP mobilized out of this. Crazy administration signed off on 10 percent of GDP to deal with the COVID crisis and its impact.
It actually wasn't enough. We can go into that later, but it wasn't, it obviously wasn't enough. But note also on top of that, the Federal Reserve, which is not really covered to the same extent. The Federal Reserve has really injected. About 40 percent of GDP about, about 8 trillion into bailing out the financial market.
They made the commitment, they're not going to let the financial markets collapse. They will do anything. They made it clear. They will do whatever it takes to get there. They found the money. They can create the money. And they did. We're, they're looking at about 20 percent of GDP from the Fed and another 10 percent from the U.
S. Congress and the administration. So that's 30 percent of GDP has propped up. The US economy in particular corporations and Wall Street because the stock market hasn't stock markets gone up while unemployment is in a crisis. So if we can find 30 percent of GDP in an instant to avoid something comparable to the 1930s depression, which so far, at least we have accomplished that.
Then easily we can find two to three percent of GDP to invest in the green economy. When, in fact, not only will the green economy investments save the environment, but it will also be a source of job creation. And this is the story I'm telling in Ohio right now. It's all pretty obvious stuff. Once you boil it down and get rid of the rhetoric, it's really straightforward.
Jessamy: Yeah, and I think it seems from your book and also from what's just been happening with regard to that. There's this great phrase that you talk about early on about the fact that neoliberalism seems to have created a kind of socialism for corporations to be able to Drive greedily for profits and then when they come into problems Then they get a kind of socialist bailout from the government and for everybody else.
There's nothing
Robert: Yeah, I mean look at this the I mean it absolutely that wall It was just a given that the Fed was gonna bail out Wall Street. That's socialism for Wall Street I mean if you really follow Milton Friedman all the way down to the hardcore principles. If Wall Street is failing, then so be it.
That's how capitalism works. Joseph Schumpeter, another famous conservative economist, had his term, Creative Destruction. And so yeah, if these wall street people are too stupid, they've over leveraged And they can't handle a crisis. Then that's their fault let them fail and then somebody else stronger will emerge That's free market capitalism.
That's not what we have. We have profits on the upswing and in a crisis, the profits are protected in the downswing, and that's socialism for the rich, and that's a core precept of neoliberalism.
Gavin: I was going to ask Noam the big question. How do you feel about the election?
Noam: Very striking fact.
This is an election of the kind that has never taken place in 350 years of parliamentary democracy since Britain, 350 years, the United States, 250 years. We have a situation in which the sitting executive president of the United States has said straight out, if I don't like the consequences of the election, I won't accept it, and it's taken very seriously.
Very seriously, two of the most respected top military officials, retired General John Nagel, retired Lieutenant Colonel Ying Lee, just very respected military of top military officials, recently wrote an open letter to the chief of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, top military official, General Milley.
In their letter, they reviewed for him his constitutional responsibilities in case the president refuses to leave office. They said, it is your duty, call out the army, 82nd Airborne Division, force him out, because he is, in their words, a lawless president. It is your responsibility to do this. These are not fringe voices, and they're being echoed all over the place.
There's a, what's called a transition integrity project, consisting of, uh, leading figures in both political parties and election analysts, other political scientists. They've literally been running war games, the kind that the military runs for various possible options, to see what the outcome would be if the president refuses to leave office.
If the president loses the election, just about every war game they run leads to civil conflict. Two days ago, the National Guards, two state National Guards were mobilized. Alabama, Arizona, where I live, they're mobilized and being provided with equipment and being set up so that in the event. of violence after the election, they can be deployed all over the country, Arizona to the west, Alabama to the east, military forces.
They're not calling on the military, federal military, and I think we know the reasons. The president and his party does not believe that the military will follow orders. It's very interesting the way they've avoided the military. The when they sent forces to terrorize people in Portland, Oregon.
I'm sure you read about that a couple of weeks ago. They didn't send federal troops. They sent power militaries. They sent people from the border patrol. I'm in Arizona. and other federal officials, not the military. I think the reason you could see back in Washington a couple of weeks ago, President Trump wanted the military to clear out demonstrators.
They refused. They left the city. They had to use other forces. We're in the kind of crisis that has never existed. It's like a small third world dictatorship somewhere, where they have a military coup every couple of years. That's the situation that's arising. You can read, if you want, detailed studies by the most prominent commentators, going through the tactics that the Republican Party can use to undermine the election if it doesn't come out the right way.
None of this is fantasy. This is all very serious possibilities. It was serious enough in Britain a couple of years ago when Boris Johnson prorogued Parliament. That was taken to be a huge constitutional crisis. Law professors were saying, Constitution's being destroyed. The Supreme Court finally intervened.
It's another crisis right at this moment when the Johnson government says, We're going to violate international law and not observe the Brexit agreement we just made. Europe is now suing Britain. It's another major crisis. When major, the leading major governments, the two leading parliamentary democracies, are decaying.
That's a, before our eyes, it's an extremely serious problem. Much worse in the United States. How is the election going to turn out? We don't know. Major commentators like Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, probably. Says, this may be our last election. You're not hearing voices from way out at the periphery.
This is right at the center of establishment thinking. And we don't know what'll happen. Will there be violence? Will If Trump does not win the election, will he call on armed militias to surround him in the White House? Nobody knows. And remember, this is the United States, with huge numbers of guns, armed militias which outgun the police.
Trump calls his tough guys, they're out there. Just a couple of weeks ago, they had a military parade in the, in Ohio, down the canal ships, boats armed with heavy military equipment, shooting cannons and so on, saying, we're ready to come, to defend our president. It's a very strange situation.
Frankly, I just can't believe it's going to happen, but we can't overlook the very significant possibility. And the very fact that there is such a possibility, the very fact that people are even talking about it, reveals an extraordinary crisis. Let's go back to, I'm sure every January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, major scientific publication tries to give an assessment of the world security situation.
It's captured in the Doomsday Clock. Scientists, political analysts, try to assess the situation, give a single number to it. The number of minute to midnight. On the doomsday clock set first right after the atomic bomb oscillated over the years. Every year that Trump has been in office, it has been moved closer to midnight.
Two years ago, it got to the closest point it had ever reached. This year, in January, they abandoned minutes. They moved to seconds, 100 seconds to midnight. Three major issues. One, enormous and growing threat of nuclear war, which is not even being mentioned. Second, the threatening environmental catastrophe and the failure to act properly.
Third, the deterioration of democracy, which offers functioning vibrant democracy in which people are really engaged in taking control of their own futures is the only hope for getting out of this crisis. It's not going to be dealt with by Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban Modi, Narendra Modi, they're not going to deal with it.
And in every one of these countries, democracy is collapsing. Those are the three dangers. Since January, Trump has succeeded in a really remarkable achievement. He's made all of the problems worse. We've talked about it. Destroying the arms, last steps in destroying the arms control regime, new weapons of mass destruction, very dangerous, opening up reserves for oil exploitation eliminating regulations, cleansing the executive branch of any independent voice, firing inspectors general who are beginning to inspect malfeasance and corruption, and then finally saying I'm just not going to leave office if I don't like it.
Every one of these serious threats that moved the second hand, now the second hand, to 100 seconds in the midnight have gotten worse. What's going to happen next month? We don't know. Could be the end of democracy.
Jessamy: I would like to ask you both about global collaboration and the fact that we've seen such poor global collaboration during COVID 19.
What that means for the climate crisis and what it tells us about our global security kind of infrastructure and what needs to change to be able to make the kind of economic reforms a Green New Deal would entail.
Noam: Just a word, and then Bob can pick this up. It's transparent that every one of the crises we face is global.
Heating up the environment doesn't have borders. Nuclear war doesn't have borders. Nuclear war between substantial powers is going to have global effects. Deterioration of democracy has spreading effects from one country to another. The pandemic is obviously global. There are ways to deal with it through international organizations, but not if you destroy them.
So take the pandemic. There is an international consortium, COVEX, Not very effective, but it's, it is an international consortium over 160 countries, which is working on ways to cooperate to develop a vaccine. Obviously, cooperation is far better than competition. Anyone with their head screwed on understands this, certainly scientists do.
So they're, they are working on efforts to create a vaccine together. They're also beginning to work. Insufficiently, but at least looking at the severe distributional problems. How, if there is a vaccine or several vaccines, how do we ensure that they go to the people who need them, not the people who can afford them?
How do we ensure that they're not monopolized by the rich countries and then used for the rich? Okay, serious problem, especially under the neoliberal plague, very serious. So they are working on it. So what can we do about it? The Trump administration had an answer. We can destroy it. We can pull out of it, say we're not part of it, which they just did.
They had a reason. Why? The World Health Organization was involved. And for the Trump administration and the Republican Party, the World Health Organization is an extremely important organization. They need a scapegoat to blame for the fact that they have killed tens of thousands, to be accurate, probably a 150, 160, 000 Americans.
Most of those who have died needlessly from the crisis. So you have to blame it on somebody else. China, governors of democratic states or the World Health Organization. The charge is so ludicrous, you don't even know what to say about it. I don't have to tell you the consequences of this.
You know it much better than I do. All over, in poor countries all over the world, Africa, Yemen, other countries. There are huge numbers of people who depend on WHO services for survival. That's the world we're living in. And it's true in Paris negotiations one of Trump's leading policies is destroy every international initiative.
This is the exact opposite of what we have to do. Many countries are doing it. There is, in fact, a progressive international which had its first conference. About a week ago, which is trying to bring together forces all over the world that want to put an end to this horror, okay? There are, just as in the case of heating the environment, there are means available, but they're not going to be there forever.
And they're not going to be of any use unless we grasp the opportunities and employ them. I said I would talk for a minute. Sorry.
Robert: I'll just focus on the issue of emissions and climate. So if we're thinking about it as a global issue. Total emissions right now, China and the U. S.
Are by far the two leading sources of emissions. But if you add up China and the U. S. As the two leading sources, they add to 42%. Now, if we take the entire European Union, which is the third leading source of emissions. That gets you another 10%, so where that gets you to 52%, so that if we're going to have any chance whatsoever of stabilizing the climate, we can't just ignore the rest of the world, even if we wanted to, even if we didn't care about them.
Because they represent roughly half of all emissions. Any serious climate stabilization project has to be a global project. And we have to have low income countries have to be on board because we, they don't want to stay low income, they want to grow. And I support that but they can't do it on the basis of fossil fuel economy They have to do it on the basis of a green economy a green energy economy so that's the obvious basis on which we need to have global financing of Clean energy investments not just in the rich countries, but on a global basis So yes in india.
Yes in sub saharan africa. Yes in throughout south asia and latin america We need to have a global financing mechanism To get there and this is you know, noam said how serious the problem is just to cite a couple of other useful Observations, I think the paris agreement which was hailed as you know a major breakthrough and in some ways it was if all the countries Did everything that they've agreed to do under the paris agreement global emissions don't even go down we're not going to get to zero under paris.
We don't even get a reduction Now this is i'm citing the model of the international energy agency, which has the biggest global model around Energy and emissions. This is their model global emissions keep going up under paris. So paris Is obviously far from adequate as a framework for getting us to a climate stabilization path.
So what we need, though, is we need to have global financing that will pay for these upfront investments in all regions of the world. For example, in Sub Saharan Africa, where I've also done work with the African Development Bank. And initially by the way when I did that there were a lot of people that were just absolutely adamantly opposed Saying you're trying to starve africa.
You're trying to kill us. You want us to stay in poverty? I said no I said the green investments are going to help get you out of poverty because right now half of the rural Population of sub saharan africa has no access whatsoever to electricity and this is the cheapest way to get you there again Even if you don't even care about climate change.
But we do need to come up with the upfront financing once you come up with the upfront financing then Actually building the green economy saves money and you can finance over the long term through your savings Like, if you're gonna spend, 40 percent less heating your home and driving your car, that means, okay, 20 percent of your 40 percent savings, you can pay back for the initial upfront investments.
And that simple framework is the way that we can get to a zero emissions economy, global economy within 30 years or less.
Jessamy: That's brilliant. Thanks, Bob. And I know we've been talking for a while. So I just wondered whether we might. finish on asking gnome and you bob about health in the U. S. and I suppose what's at stake in this election, but also where you see it fits in to the country as a whole.
Noam: What's at stake in this election is literally the survival of organized human society in any recognizable form. If we have four more years of Trump policies, it's possible that we may actually reach irreversible tipping points. Maybe not. But in any event, there will be moves in the direction opposite to the ones we must pursue.
Four more years of this and it'll be, at the very most optimistic calculation, far more difficult to reach the goals that we must reach, like What Bob mentioned, zero net emissions by mid century, within the brief period allowed to us. And that's putting aside all the other things that are happening.
There's never been an election like this in human history. Now, suppose that he does, that the lawless president does leave office, may be forced to. Then the next set of problems starts. The within the democratic party, there is a split. Between the, what amount of the Blairites, the comparable new labor neoliberalism light, Thatcher light.
They run the party. They're gonna, they're donor oriented. They're trying to impede the efforts of the popular base to move towards more progressive policies. That's gonna be a struggle. We see it every day. You can actually see it if you just look at the Democratic Party web page, website page on climate change keeps changing.
You can see the fight taking place in the background. That's going to be a major fight to force Biden and Harris, if they win, to live up to the promises they made and to go beyond. That's going to be a major battle inside the Moor. liberal sector of the population. That's even assuming that they win. There'll be similar struggles elsewhere in Germany, in England, everywhere.
And they cannot be delayed. They have to be undertaken. And what Bob just mentioned is of a supreme importance. We must be moving towards solving the problem for the Half the world that we don't pay any attention to, actually that we should pay attention to, not only because they're human beings, but because we learn something from them.
One of the most astonishing facts about the COVID crisis is that the countries that are best dealing with it are countries like Senegal, Liberia, and Kenya, which mobilized resources minuscule by our standards, undertook policies which have it under control. While the richest and most powerful countries are seeing a disaster, we have things to learn from the world, as well as to contribute to them, and we must do it expeditiously.
Robert: I would give another example of a country that we can learn a lot from in the United States and also the UK. Vietnam, in terms of COVID, has had, the last time I checked, a total of 24 deaths. And we've had 207, 000 deaths. Their per capita GDP is 3 percent of the U. S., but somehow they've managed to mobilize a public health intervention that works.
They did it and we didn't so that's pretty powerful evidence more generally around the health care issue I would just pick up what noam said yeah, the other big issue that was debated within the democratic party was you know, the Bernie Sanders proposal of Medicare for all, single payer health care, roughly comparable to what you have in the U.
S. or what's in Canada. Throughout the primary season, you had our candidate now, Biden, as well as others, some of the lesser candidates, Buttigieg, insisting that we simply could not afford to have a single payer health care system. They couldn't afford it. It's impossible. The only problem is that every other advanced economy has it and we are paying You know 18 of gdp for health care and you in the uk Germany, France Canada are paying between 9 and 10 percent.
We're paying about 10, 000 on average per person. You're paying 4, 000 to 5, 000 on average per person. So how could it possibly be that we can't afford it? It's, it would be dramatically cheaper. And it would deliver health care to people that 30, 40 percent of the people in this country has no health insurance or they're underinsured.
They can't afford to see a caretaker even if they get sick and even if they have health care. Yeah, that was the other big struggle. And as Noam said, the corporate Democrats squashed these proposals. I mean at the vice presidential candidate, harris She actually was one of the people that endorsed medicare for all until she was schooled And so she backtracked and obfuscated And that's what they all do so that will be a major struggle and this is despite the fact that you have polls In the United States saying, 75 percent of the people's favor Medicare for all.
Over 50 percent of Republicans favor Medicare for all. Now I know I've had a lot of discussions with people in the UK and Canada and explaining that your systems are getting Undermined dramatically as we speak and that's also true. That's another struggle That's another struggle to fight against neoliberalism but they at least you have the infrastructure For operating a decent health care system for us in the u.
s That will be something that we will have to address Assuming, the Democrats come to power and it's certainly the case that if the Democrats do come to power that the Sanders wing will be the source of all the energy and all the ideas.
Jessamy: We've had you for more than an hour and we're incredibly grateful.
It's been a really wonderful discussion.
Gavin: Yeah, we'd just like to both so really sincerely for joining us. Thanks very much. Thanks again to Noam and to Robert and you can purchase their book Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal now.
Jessamy: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lancet Voice. We'll see you again next time.