Is Bill Gates right? Call to put climate resilience before rising temperatures • FRANCE 24 English

Is Bill Gates right? Call to put climate resilience before rising temperatures • FRANCE 24 English

So, does Bill Gates have a point? In a bombshell statement last week, the Microsoft founder come billionaire philanthropist uh arguing that environmentalists devote too much effort to the planet’s warming temperatures and not enough to helping humans adapt to the new normal. Gates turning up the heat on delegates traveling to the Cup 30, the annual UN climate summit this year in the Brazilian Amazon city of BM. We’ll review the argument that the transition to cleaner energies is already bearing fruits, rendering 2015 Paris agreement projections out of date, or with coal and oil production still rising, whether it’s uh too soon to take the foot off the gas of green investment. In an age of echo chambers and slashed public spending, the farright seizing on Gates’s remarks as proof, they say that climate change is a hoax. this as many European conservatives push to roll back environmental norms. This in the name of slashing red tape and competitiveness. So as insurance companies count the cost of rising sea levels, fiercer storms, and deadlier fires, how best to invest in humanity’s common future. Today in the France 24 debate, is Bill Gates right about climate change priorities? Uh with us from Rio de Janeiro where she’s attending the world mayor’s summit that uh precedes COP 30 and an Shaktier director of urban planning and design at the advocacy group of uh that brings together municipalities from around the globe C40 cities. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for inviting me. From Brussels, French member of the European Parliament Tom of the Centerleft Prik Party. Welcome to the show. Happy to be here. She’s an economist specializing in environmental policy. Christina Pasco, researcher at PU’s laboratory for interdip interdisciplinary evaluation of public policies. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. And we welcome back energy and transport analyst and consultant Nicola Milong. Good to see you. Hi, good evening. A reminder, if you’re on the go, you can listen to the show wherever podcasts are streamed. It’s um time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies. That’s the claren call posted to Bill Gates’s uh website. Although climate change will have serious consequences uh for particularly for people in the poorest countries, it will not lead to humanity’s demise. He argues Gates arguing uh thanks to a chart that you see here that innovation has cut projected future emissions by 40% in the 10 years since the Paris agreements. And after Washington’s gutting of international uh funding for the developing world, the Microsoft co-founder sounding the alarm over the Gates Foundation’s original remit which is um vaccines and alleviating poverty. Gabby, the vaccine buying fund will have 25% less money for the next five years compared to the past five years. We have to think rigorously and numerically about how to put the time and money we do have to the best use. Elen Shakier, your reaction to uh this uh manifesto to pivot our thinking when it comes to climate change and global warming. Yeah, I think a few years ago everyone was talking only about emission reduction and in some way we needed to bring climate adaptation. So how to prepare our cities and and our country to to be ready for the increasing of climate risk. But I think now we are seeing a bit the opposite happening and I think it’s uh we need to find the right balance. uh we don’t we should not oppose emission reduction and urban adaptation because both are essential and they are in some way two side of the same fight. If we limit uh GG emission, we can also limit the severity of the climate events. And also it’s important because scientists are warning us about the risk of a tipping point which could really trigger a form of chain reaction of climate events for for example heat and road leading to wildfire which turn in increasing emission. So, so it’s very important to bring the two leg of the climate change reducing emission and preparing our cities and country to to the increasing climate risk together. And I would say just one more thing, it’s also a matter of solidarity and equity. I would say because it’s clear that global north countries produce far more emission per capita while the resident from global south will be the first and the hardest to be hit by climate impact. So global north countries like France and other have also responsibility to try to reduce their emission in order to limit the scale of the climate crisis for for them for the people in the global s but also also for for ourself. So I think it was right to equilip to find a balance in the debate but we need the two to keep the two element together. Uh Tom Cara, in fairness to Bill Gates, he does not say to stop trying to fight uh global warming. What he simply says, as you saw in that little excerpt we showed, is that there’s really not enough money to go around. You have to pick priorities at this point in time uh because of uh dwindling public uh funding and the priority should be on human welfare as he puts it. Do you do you agree with that in Chartier that the pendulum swings a little too far with this uh statement that he put out? I mean, it’s really a matter of interpretation, but in truth, the only way for us to act in a way that will allow humankind to survive the 21st century is to work both on climate change mitigation, so that means cleaner energy, electric cars, etc., and also on climate change adaptation because there is a part of climate change that is already irreversible and the the objective way where why we are doing this is to make sure that we can live happy lives both as individual and as collective as a civilization throughout the 21st century and hopefully the one uh the one after that. So so we need we need to do both. Then the question is how we can put um human welfare at the center of climate policy. That’s what we are fighting for here in European Parliament. Let me give you just one example. We’re fighting for the European social leasing scheme. And the idea is very simple. It’s to allow rural Europeans that have a low income to have access to an electric car. And they just need to pay a small rent, a monthly fee of 80 to€150 per month. So they can have access to the small electric car that will improve their human welfare while also acting for climate and for the European automotive industry. Lo, is is there enough money to do both to uh uh uh climate mitigation and adaptation to the new normal? Well, if you if you look at um what was done a couple of years ago by um Nobel Prize, I think Mr. Stern, he evaluated the money that we needed for the transition to be 1,500 uh billion dollar per year. That’s what was supposed to be, you know, the transfer from the rich country to the poor countries for clean energy adaptation. But what did we get out of this 1,500 billion euro on eventually every year? I think the numbers is 10. So it’s it’s obviously not happening this this financing. There’s not enough money. There’s no the money is not there. So where’s the priority? Why? Well, the priority is you know I think we getting to the 30th 30th conference of parties you know we started back in 1995 and it is the 30th almost year in a row that emission are still increasing so I think we are missing a a part a piece of the puzzle and this piece of the puzzle is very easy it’s the fact that China joined uh you know world trade organization back in 2001 and rich countries outsource their production back to China made out of coal so we basically live in a world made out of coal which is about onethird of emission and the only reason why emission has not decreasing is because emission in China up to now have been increasing so let’s take example of France France we consume a lot of coal a lot of coal not in the central plan because we have nuclear but in our importations more than 50% of our carbon footprint is our imports and we do ex we do nothing about it stuff that’s made with with heavy industry Christina Pña Asco, what was your reaction when you read Bill Gates’s uh statement there? I was very surprised given that he wrote a book in 2021 calling about the climate change disaster. And it’s true that he doesn’t mention this idea of a hoax, but somehow is putting priorities and ranking things that cannot be ranked. He’s opposing the view of facing or fighting poverty, fighting uh health issues with climate while they are intricately connected. There is an indogenity issue in this in this story of him. You cannot fight poverty without taking care of the climate and you cannot fight climate change without adapting uh certain certain areas of the of the of the planet available in input. So why did he pivot between 2021 and today? That’s a very good question. Um, I think he’s not wrong in thinking of putting welfare at the center of the of the issue, but the narrative is certainly pernicious. I I could say pernicious. Pernicious. I I think it’s not the right narrative to face this two these choose and is what what actual evidence is telling us scientific evidence is telling us that if we increase 0.1 degrees he used this idea of increasing 0.1 degrees centigrade versus eradicating malaria. It’s like well you cannot face you cannot oppose these issues because they are connected. If you increase temperature, you will have more cases of extreme weather events and therefore you will have more cases of particular diseases, vector-bor transmitted diseases like malaria for example. So I don’t know if there are other interests behind uh his statements but certainly the narrative has changed. Pera are there other interests behind Bill Gates’s statement? Um, I don’t think there are other interests behind Bill Gates’s statement, but there are clearly a lot of interests that are fighting against climate action. I mean, if you make money by drilling oil and gas, which is the business model of Vladimir Putin and a lot of private and public companies all over the world, the oil drillers, the gas drillers, obviously they don’t want climate action. They would be happy to see the world burn as long as they can have higher quarterly profits. So there are very very strong interests and we feel them here in the European Parliament where we see the the the the falsehood the lies that a company like Exon Mobile which is a foreign company is spreading around the uh here in the European Parliament but more broadly Exon Mobile has been funding fake science and fake news for decades uh on climate and this is well documented even by the scientific community now. So obviously when you want to act for climate you make a lot of winners but also there are people that are losing. The problem that we have is the people that are winning are not really potent today. The the biggest winners of climate action are our kids and our kids do not vote currently uh because they don’t have the age to vote and they are losers and the loser losers tend to be all white men with ties uh and they tend to be billionaires and they tend to be ruling countries like Russia. All right, Gates’s post, by the way, drawing a reaction from a another fan of the pivot. President of the United States, Donald Trump saying, “I we just won the war on the climate change hoax.” Bill Gates has finally admitted he was completely wrong. Wrong capitalized on the issue. Of course, that’s not exactly what Bill Gates puts it wrote down. Uh, nonetheless, let me ask you and and Shakier, you’re you’re at this conference of mayors currently. your uh association co-chared by the mayor of London uh who’s also was uh crossed fences with Donald Trump as well as the mayor of Freetown Sierra Leone. But let me ask you the what’s the view right now on the timing of this statement at this moment in time from Bill Gates. I think I think we should make a difference between what Bill Gates say and what Trump is saying. I think Trump is also using what Bill Gates is saying. I don’t think at all even if I disagree with what Bill Gates say and I definitely think we need to both reduce the the severity of climate change by continuing to reduce G emission and at the same time adapt I don’t think he said at all that climate change was a oak and I think if you hear what uh President Trump say earlier this year in the during the the UN General Assembly he was just mentioning that climate change in oaks and I think the day after you have a lot of uh national president like the president Lula and cities coming together to say this is not okay this is the information we need to push back and everything so I think Trump is also trying to use was what what Bill Gate is saying Bill Gate is going too far I don’t think we should private so far in the fact only focusing on climate adaptation we need definitely the both uh the both action but I think we can definitely see how Trump is trying to use this to continue his fight of disinformation and trying to to kill all of the local leaders, the national government who try to continue to fight against accelerating climate change. Uh in 2017, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the uh Paris agreements. Uh the cup summits went on despite the US eventually rejoined at the time. Uh there were uh workarounds. Now though, his administration is actively punishing those that try to curb uh global carbon emissions. There was a recent meeting of the International Maritime Organization. It was buil as historic because for the first time they were going to agree on a carbon tax for shipping. Uh but the Financial Times this weekend quoting five sources who attended who explained how the US delegation basically torpedoed the plan using bully boy tactics. uh one of those delegates say saying they went from delegation to delegation threatening them telling to go back to speak to their capitals warning what would happen if they didn’t change their minds the the article Nikolai Mino also says that uh they warned some of the African and Caribbean delegates that they they and their families wouldn’t get visas if they voted in favor of uh uh of this of this measure. The United You were complaining about China, but the United States is acting a little differently than it did the first time. Donald Trump. Uh but there is something interesting that I I like to uh to explain here. Donald Trump obviously is is thinks that climate change is a hoax and he’ve been reducing for example tax credit for electric cars. uh but in what he does it’s slightly different because when he was first in office he replaced uh coal in electric electricity generation by gas and that reduced a lot of CO2 emission from the US and now what is it what he is doing now with his import tax 34% on China and maybe 100% EV subsidies in the United States yeah but this tax on countries such as China such as India those very polluting country using a lot of coal. This could be a way to actually reduce CO2 emission globally. What are we doing in Europe? Do you know which trade agreement we are discussing with? We are now discussing with India, top second country using coal in the world and with Indonesia number three. So we are actually doing the other way around. So at the end of the story, there is what people say and there is what people do. But I’m suspecting and we’ll have to focus looking at China’s export to the US. China China economy is going to contract with what happened in the US and that could be a very good news for the climate and for its emission. Do do you agree with that Christina Pasco? I have the feeling that China is doing a lot in terms of investments even if obviously uh in terms of co they are doing a lot in reality they are putting a lot of money in in in renewable energy in clean energy and investments that are very important for the for the transition but they still have 60% of electricity from coal. Absolutely. I’m I don’t deny that. But in the case of the US, I think it’s slightly different as what you were saying uh before about the the fact that the US has left the the COP framework and so on and so forth. Sometimes it’s better that they are out of the table because otherwise they are going to oppose this particular type of policies or uh the the the agreements that they have reached uh before and if they are not on the table we will be able to act take it as well into consideration that in the US for example all the uh there are many policies the environmental policies green policies if we call it that way that take place at the state level and not at the federal level. of this framework is not been that much affected by uh Trump policies uh per se. So this not a bad thing in in one way if they are going to oppose that they don’t see it on the table. All right. So we looked at the reaction of Donald Trump. Let’s look at another reaction that of Jeffrey Sachs. He’s a a known scientist, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at New York’s Columbia University. He called Bill Gates’s memo pointlessly vague, unhelpful, and confusing. There is no reason to pit poverty reduction versus climate transformation. Both are utterly feasible and readily so if the big oil lobby is brought under control. Uh Tom, again, we’re we’re trying to figure out the timing of all of this again just ahead of Cup 30. Your thoughts? Mhm. I mean, first let me say one word about Donald J. Trump. We’re talking about the guy that was providing medical advice to people during COVID saying that you can cure COVID by drinking bleach. That is Donald J. Trump. So, let’s maybe, you know, not pay too much attention to the pseudocientific advice he’s giving us. His energy policy is controlled by the oil lobby. His entire energy policy is economically insane. Trump has been cancelling offshore wind projects that were already financed, already built under construction. The impact of that is the destruction of American jobs. The impact of that cancelling is also that there will be less electricity in the USA and the USA is already suffering from blackouts because they have, pardon my French, but a very shitty electricity grid. So, we need to to stay focused on the ball. What is the cheapest source of electricity in the world today? It depends on the places of the world, but it’s always either solar or wind power or hydro power. And those are three key renewable electricity sources. We’ve got we’ve made a lot of progress over the last 10 and 20 years. A lot of that has to do about innovation and that Bill Gates point is is clear on that and is right. But innovation is not something that falls from the sky. It is the creation of human efforts. It is engineers and workers and entrepreneurs and investors that are putting time and money in order to improve the way we produce, the way we transport, the way we consume energy. Um and and that is absolutely critical that we continue to have the policy framework uh that supports that kind of innovation to happen so we can live better lives. They would be slightly different lives, but they would be improved as a result of the policies that we do. And that has of course has to do with cleaner energy, but also on how we can adapt our way of life to an already um warmer uh planet. And let me maybe just say one last thing building on what Jeffree is saying. There is no way we solve poverty in the world if we fail on climate change. If we fail on climate change, there will be no way to feed the global population. Full stop. and the poor people will be the first one to stop today. Yeah. But again, understand that the only it’s a question of of limited resources uh for public finances. It’s where do you put uh if you don’t have enough money to do both the research for innovation that you describe uh and uh uh helping people prepare for this new normal, then where’s the priority? Okay, two things here. First, we’re spending a lot of money now. We’re spending a lot of money buying oil and gas. We Europeans, we spend 1 billion euro per day to buy foreign Iranian, Trump and Russian oil and gas. So, the money is there. The fossil fuel system is extremely expensive and the people that pay the price are the kids that die as a result of their pollution. It’s the farmers from even my own region of Normandy that are fighting drought in Normandy and that worry about whether they will be able to produce cattle and milk even in a place like V in in in in Calvados where where I’m from. So those are the people that are paying the price of the the very expensive price of the fossil fuel system and on adaptation I mean I’m sorry we don’t need more money for adaptation. We need common sense which adaptation is not about spending more money to build more dams. It is first and foremost about including the climate impacts that we already know will are happening and will worsen in the future in everything that we do from an infrastructure perspective. Maybe we need a few millions here and there for research on adaptation. Actually, we we do need that uh satellite and early warning system and supporting firefighters. Absolutely. But for adaptation, it’s really about making a smart investment. Investing in the world at as it will be in the future, not the world that some crazy US president thinks we’re going to have. And again, there are workarounds even in the United States. The US Chamber of Commerce put out a study in collaboration with private insurance provider Allstate, which finds that for every dollar invested in disaster preparedness, the United States could save $33. That’s that’s according to to that uh uh one study. So let me ask you what’s on the agenda uh at uh the the mayor’s conference you’re attending and at cup 30 what’s the priority I think today I mean we have two days where it’s really mayers and local governments who are coming together and discussing I would say both how they could accelerate their climate adapt adaptation agenda so we are discussing how we are accelerating retrofit building and actually for example retrofitting building is a very good way to do both. You reduce your energy bill but you also reduce the overheat in your flat or in your house. So there is also way to do to to bring the two action together. So they discussed how they changed the way they plan and design city. How we for example in the global south trying to limit the expansion of cities in in place that are very uh dangerous in term of flooding or landslide and that’s for example if you took what happened in Valencia you were mentioning before it’s not in global south but we know that the way we have been expanding cities didn’t take at all into account the the reality of the of the flooding risk in the in the city. So we need to help city to better understand what’s going to happen to to bring back nature in city. We know that green space permeable soil is the best way for city today to to reduce flooding to also bring back freshness in cities. So there is a lot of things to discuss to accelerate the adaptation of cities but also at the same time to reduce emission car dependency in city uh to also reduce the energy bill of the city. So I think there is a plenty of discussion happening a lot of commitment of mayor also it’s not just about exchanging ideas they also commit and it’s very important not the nation’s commit a lot of cities today uh for example have committed on their um cool uh plan how to reduce urban heat in their cities they they have been also discussing on how they adapt the way they are developing their master plan planning policy to embed climate adaptation and climate mitigation in their master plan in their rules of construction to also discuss about the flood and um and food plans for example of the city to reduce the consumption based emission uh of their citizen. So there is plenty of discussion and commitment of of mayers just ahead of the national negotiation that will take place in BM in next week. And we saw it uh with uh uh Hurricane Melissa swinging through the Caribbean. The uh which cities had better or worse uh structures to prepare for uh such an intense and fierce category 5 storm. We’re talking about Seilla uh as wildfires raged in Spain this summer. The city saw the mercury climb to 48 degrees last June. But uh what’s high on everyone’s mind is especially this Monday is uh last year’s flood. A flood uh uh that’s the biggest in decades. Last week the king held a led a state funeral honoring the victims of the catastrophe, more than 200 of them. The regional president came under copious booze at one point. Carlos Mazison who this Monday tendered his resignation while at the same time shifting the blame slightly. Let’s listen. I can assure you that if it were up to me, I would have resigned a long time ago. There have been unbearable moments for me, but above all for my family. I truly believed it would be easier to show from this position what happened during the emergency response, the information we didn’t have, the aid that never arrived, and above all that I could help rebuild this land after the devastation. But I can’t go on. Christina Pñasco, your your reaction there listening to the now former president of the Valencia region. I I just see a lack of political responsibility on on his statements. Uh I mean he’s resigning one year later while she had to have resigned when at the moment he didn’t attend his duties as president of the of the Valencian community. Um there were a lot of issues. He’s fine in saying that uh there was lack of uh ed flowing and so on and so forth. But there was a first alarm that arrived late and he was not in the meeting he had to be. So I think he should have taken responsibility and accountability of this way before and um I mean better late uh than never but in reality I think what’s the lesson of Valencia for Europe and for the world that these events are happening way more frequently than before and way more strongly than before. something that Elen has mentioned as well during the uh real estate boom in Spain we were constructing a lot of buildings in places in which we shouldn’t have constructed buildings this is something that we have to learn from in the in the urban planning that we are doing for the future as well and maybe integrate as well the idea or or how to communicate to the average citizen the risks and the uncertainties of these particular type of events and what are the consequences uh Maybe through part participatory um democracy or participatory uh budget there is a way as well to create more awareness of these type of issues and what are the consequences. to Tomara, you you heard both uh Christina Pasco and Elen Chartier uh allude to the call by some in the face of heavier rains for more protection of uh wetlands, places where the water can go in case uh there’s heavier than expected uh storms. What’s being done at the European level? What should be done? So we are currently working with my colleague from Malta Tomas Baya uh on the water resilience strategy and that is to do that we have a policy that allows both to avoid the negative impacts of drought which are critical for economy especially for agriculture and at the same time we also avoid the devastating impacts of flooding because in a way climate change is a disruption of the the natural cycle of water and climate change mean that we will have more severe drought and more severe floods at the same time. And if you just want to test that, you can test that actually at home. If you’ve got a dry sponge and you put water on top, the sponge does not drink the water. And that’s that’s what we see happening. So we need to have a comprehensive policy there. And I hope our colleagues from the center right from the Christian Democrats will agree to work with us and not with the far right on our agricultural policy because that’s one policy area where the European Union is is massively big and where it is putting a lot of money on the table already. We need to make sure that this favors the type of agriculture we need in order to have a resilient system so we can avoid drought and floods and at the end of the day we can do what politics is all about which is improving people’s life and making sure that people can first live and second obviously live happily except right now in Europe with or without Donald Trump leaders are talking uh about too much red tape uh the latest EU summit 10 days ago the likes of France’s President, Italy’s prime minister, Germany’s chancellor urging a lighter touch on environmental norms. None of us question the goal of protecting the climate. We all agree that we must combine this with the competitiveness of the European industry. This involves technology and its development across Europe. We must keep pace and watch what is happening across the world. Tom, it doesn’t sound like the Christian Democrat Chancellor of Germany is on your side when it comes to wetlands. I mean, we need to be clear. So we had a vote recently on um a new EU regulation that will be adding red tape by banning marketing practices from private companies that want to sell lentils and other type of vegetarian protein labeling that as Vij burger for instance. Um and so therefore when I hear people that they say they want to cut red tape I just want to check whether they voted on that. Um and they voted like the majority of the center right but not only and the entirety of the far right voted in favor of that amendment in the parliament and therefore they created red tape while making actually the transition towards vegetable protein harder for many many people in Europe and destroying economic activity from farmers that are growing cereals and lentils and need to have a market for for this. Uh so we need to be to be clear like this is uh this is an excuse. Obviously I’m in favor of simplicity like who is against simplicity? Let’s be clear. Um but let’s not let’s not you know uh let’s not kid oursel. Uh this is a rhetorical argument that is not backed by uh by any strong political political will. The one thing that I expect from the chancellor of Germany to do is to say that we need a bigger European budget so we can face all the challenges that Europe is facing. Obviously, number one is defense given the Russian war on European civilization that is currently happening, but also climate and those two things are related because the most peaceful way for us Europeans to defeat Russia, to defeat Vladmir Putin, is to make sure that we do the global clean energy transformation because a world without oil and gas is not only a world where we can have peace through climate action and climate protection. It’s also a world where we can achieve peace in Europe through the weakening of the Russian economy. Nicola Milan. Yeah, I mean norms is usually a good thing. It’s a good way to protect yourself. That’s why we had the most protective automotive industry because we had norms, crash norms, environment norms. But the problem is in Europe is we are the only one to respect the norms and we should impose those norms on our importers. This is an important question. You talk about the automotive industry. There’s this uh objective for Europe by the year uh 2030 2035, excuse me. You’re correct. uh to uh to switch away from combustion engines to either hybrids or electric vehicles. Is the EU going to roll that back? Well, in the meantime, they have this this objective to get rid of of IC, which probably a good thing because we don’t have oil in Europe. But on the same side, there is a norm in Europe that encourage manufacturers to produce big cars. I call them electric tank. And not all the Europeans are going to be able to buy electric tanks. They’re going to be able to buy Chinese cheap cars. Uh so the problem for this with this target for the time being with no protection from should it be rolled back? Well, it should be it should be uh maybe add some other uh you know we should make sure that by then we don’t buy all the cars from China made out of coal basically. Christina Pñasco, the way things are going right now in Brussels, in European capitals, do you see uh the EU sticking to that climate target when you saw those leaders saying, “Look, let’s pause a little bit on the the green deal here.” I think we should take into consideration in this particular case what the public perceives as well. So rolling back on green or thinking about a green backlash something like that it doesn’t make sense for Europe in this very moment and I think this idea as well of counter um or opposing views of competitiveness and the green transition is a fallacy because it can goes hand in hand. It’s true as uh Nicolola mentioned before that we are having a lot of rules uh that that we need to pay for but in reality this can bring competitiveness to Europe and people the general citizenship should understand this or might want to understand this and this is a way to go and to move forward in in particular and I don’t think uh European cities or countries are going to stop the transition. I think the process is going on. We need to think forward. We need to invest in infrastructure and just bring the idea of distributional issues which what which is one of the problems that we are facing with the general public on top of the agenda as well. So there is not this green backlash in terms of uh policies and then regarding this green backlash uh do you feel as though you’re playing defense? I realize that the mayor’s conference represents urban areas which are very specific. Obviously, uh uh a lot of constituents in those cities don’t even own cars. Uh but do you feel as though you’re playing defense right now? I think cities are acting very fast. We have seen that for example, cities who are part of the C40 network today, they are reducing their emission three times faster than their nation. So there is the day after Trump in the during his first mandate left the Paris agreement uh the the mayors of most of American cities say they will stay in the Paris agreement and will continue to accelerate. I think there is an opportunity for uh for for city to continue to advance on their climate agenda and to do that in a way that is in some way business friendly. what they want business is to be aware to have a vision to understand what is the pathway they want a form of stability we have seen a lot of cities and country I’m thinking for example of the Nordic cities where they have been uh defined a very clear path and and so the industry is very ready and in some way it can be a chance for them because they they prepare their industry and they become they become a form of global leaders on sustainability so we see a lot of industry also in China China see what’s happening in some way uh in in the US as an opportunity to for them to accelerate a very green industry and to become the leader on this so I think it’s important to have norm and I thinkers want to continue to regulate the construction we need to reduce the use of steel we need to reuse the cement to reduce energy we need to bring more nature permeable space in urban development all of these mean policies but I think it’s possible and the industry is in board as soon as they are prepared and there is a form of pathway for them so they can be ready and contribute to this transformation. So we need a form of collaboration with between the private sector and the city to accelerate the the green transition. All right. So that’s at the municipal level to car there’s going to be municipal elections in France coming up next March. There are a lot of greenun cities. they they may or may not do well the the green mayors with all of the uh issues that have been just been spelled out there by Sharti but at the national level the Greens and those that are environmentalists are on the back foot. We saw it no later than last Wednesday they did fared they underperformed in the Dutch elections. Why are the Greens not doing as well as they were a few years back? Um I think we should not assume that the green voters are voting only for the green party. Um I can tell you that from my personal experience. I mean I was a researcher for a decade. I became a politician a year and a half ago and I was running on the social democratic ticket led by Rafael Glman for the European elections in France and we did very well. And one of the reason why we did very well is because we had a green policy agenda that was obviously linked to our sovereignty as French and as Europeans visav foreign powers like Russia. That was obviously also linked to the social justice agenda that has been the core agenda of the social democracy in Europe for more than a century now. So you don’t think you don’t think that environmentalists currently you don’t think environmentalists currently realism you don’t think that environmentalists currently are on the back foot people in France to to vote for our list uh and to create what arguably was a was a big electoral surprise uh in uh in France and we forgot about it because of the snap election uh but that is that is what happened. So assuming that the green vote goes only to the green parties really looking at this from a very very narrow lens I can tell you of many members of the green parliament from the centrist from the social democrats but also from the from the Christian democrats that are really green when it comes to the public policy. Um coming back on on the Dutch elections, there were two party from the center right, Cya and BBB. Cydia is a proclimate party. They performed exceptionally well in the Netherlands in the Dutch election. They came close second. Um the BBB was a party from recently against the green deal. They are also in DPP uh in the center right political family and they did very badly. And to me that is the example that if you want to be a pragmatic politician today, regardless of whether you’re leftwing or or center right, you need to have green policies. Otherwise, uh the young people and everybody who cares about the the future of their kids will simply not take you seriously and for good reasons. Christina Pasco, what what’s your feeling right now as we head towards the end of 2025 when it comes to uh political ecology as we call it here in France. So the the fears of the pools are speaking in reality or your question about in particular green parties. Green parties are losing ground. Even if there are people that are voting or with green interest that are voting for other for other parties, there is a reality they are losing ground. In my opinion and I think what’s evidence says is like there are two issues here. people are changing preferences and it’s not a matter of not worrying about the environment or not worrying about climate change but it’s about other issues related to inflation other issues related to the war in Ukraine uh to defense uh to the cost of life and so on and so forth that might be impacting the voting for green parties that are perceived to focus exclusively on environmental issues and maybe that’s the reason why as Tom mentioned there is a basically um rrooting of green voting towards uh other type of other type of uh parties. The second one is more related to citizens perceptions of the programs of these green parties which is related to what I just mentioned. So it’s not a matter of I don’t concern or I don’t worry about the environment. It’s about which policies are being put in place and how they are affecting me personally in my daily life. And this global or the average citizen is actually perceiving these policies are not favoring them. We have the experience here uh in France with a with a jillejon yellow vest which started with a carbon tax protest. Exactly. So there is this kind of dichotomy and what we are seeing is actually I still people concerned about the environment. There is an increase if we use data for example from OPSCOP survey. We are seeing that there is an increase in concern about the environment but there is a decrease with time to with in relation to support for climate policies and is related to the sense of fatigue to certain uh segments of the population that are not seen that these policies are putting their interest at the center or of the core of the outcomes that they should that they should have and that’s why what I mentioned before it’s very important to take into consideration this distributional aspect effect of particular uh policies. Tom mentioned as well that there will be winners and losers and we have to find a way to compensate this these losers and maybe the citizenship is not seen in green parties this particular type of objective. Christina Pasco I want to thank you so much. which I want to thank as well Nicola Milon, Elen Chartier for joining us from the mayor’s summit that precedes COP 30 in Brazil and Tom for being with us from the European Parliament in Brussels. Thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate. [Music]

Is too much effort devoted to the planet’s warming and not enough to helping humans adapt to the new normal? The Microsoft co-founder-cum-billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is turning the heat up on activists traveling to the COP30, the annual UN climate summit this year in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem.
#adaptation #mitigation #climatechange

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