Four Reasons for Climate Hope

Climate leaders offer the case for optimism during interviews with Hank Paulson

To consider the scope and speed of the climate crisis and not be filled with a sense of dread is difficult. Climate change wreaks havoc on the global economy. It poses a significant national security challenge, devastates the natural world, and its effects are coming much faster than scientists ever predicted.

What’s the case for optimism? With climate hope in short supply these days, we reached out to four distinguished climate experts to give us their views.

Ernest Moniz | 13th US Secretary of Energy and President and CEO of Energy Futures Initiative

If we make this decade the decade of supercharged innovation, we'll have a lot of tools that are at our disposal by 2030.

Ernest Moniz

"The word optimism almost immediately drives me to the word technology. And I do believe the tools will be developed at the appropriate cost. I think we have reason to be optimistic; businesses will continue to see low carbon as the inevitable place to go, especially to make long-wavelength investments of capital in ways that align with that. And business model innovations will continue.

And by the way, in the United States, I would say it was demonstrated dramatically during the Trump Administration, there was a bipartisan consensus on moving forward the innovation agenda. Congress always overrode the Administration requests to reduce those budgets, and frankly, increase them quite nicely. So I believe that we have reason to be optimistic. If we make this decade the decade of supercharged innovation, we'll have many tools at our disposal by 2030."

David Wallace-Wells | Author, The Uninhabitable Earth

I think there's also been a real revolution in the way economists see the opportunities.

David Wallace-Wells

"Over the last few years, I've seen much more opportunity for climate progress than I thought was possible just a few years ago. And I think that that's because of a couple of factors happening at once. One of them is simply a global awakening to the issue, which has to do with the increasing number of natural disasters that have hit—especially in the northern hemisphere. Ten years ago, you could see the effects of climate change, but you really had to look at the equator of the planet. And now you can see them in the United States and in Europe, and as a result, many people in those places view climate as a top-tier political concern.

I think there's also been a real revolution in the way economists see the opportunities. A decade ago, many people would tell you climate action is morally virtuous, but it is far more expensive than the payback will be. And so, we would have to undertake it as a kind of a burden. But over the last couple of years, the revolution in the price of renewables has changed the calculus. We are seeing very clearly that the cost-benefit analysis says faster action will be better than slower action, almost everywhere in the world. I think that's one reason why we're beginning to see all of the pledges that we've seen over the last year, even in the midst of the pandemic. It’s so much more ambition than we saw, even in the Paris Accords a few years ago. And maybe most notably, all of these pledges are being done not in the context of an international negotiation, where people are blaming each other and shaming each other into taking action, but just in the internal deliberations of those countries thinking, we will be better off ourselves, if we move quicker. That is not a calculus that almost any policymaker was making just a few years ago. And now it seems to be the thinking of nearly every leader anywhere in the world."

Kate Gordon | Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and Senior Advisor to the Governor on Climate, State of California

This is a global problem and the solution has to be global.

Kate Gordon

"My optimism comes from a couple of places. First of all, the US rejoining the Paris Agreement is a really hopeful sign. We need to be part of the global conversation on climate change. This is a global problem, and the solution has to be global. We should be making climate an issue at the Major Economies Forum. It has to become an issue across our global engagement.

Second is the whole of government approach on climate, which President Biden has taken on. It’s important to make sure climate is not an issue confined to environmental regulatory agencies and the environmental agencies in general, but really having a more holistic approach. This will affect every sector of the economy and every region, and our international relationships and our position globally, in terms of the economy. The idea that climate is getting into the other agencies and that the President has prioritized that with his appointments is really important."

David Keith | Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Climate change is hard. And you need some level of political mobilization.

David Keith

"I have two cases for optimism, one human and one technological. The human one is the way young people are standing up and demanding action on climate. I happened to be in Ireland at some climate meeting during Earth Day this spring and saw these thousands of young kids marching in the streets with their amazing signs. And I was actually moved to tears. I feel like that's what we need. Climate change is hard. And you need some level of political mobilization.

The other one is, hopefully, a new sense of the power of science and technology. I think this experience with the vaccine, with all its problems, really is amazing. The fact that this mRNA vaccine platform had been developed for a decade, but nobody actually brought one to market for real. And now we actually have put them in the arms of 10 million people or more, and done it in less than a year is absolutely extraordinary. That really is an extraordinary triumph of human collective action. I think it's a template for how people can work together and use these technologies in the human interest.

These answers are excerpts from episodes of Straight Talk with Hank Paulson. Stay posted for more episodes, and subscribe to the podcast  here .


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