A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

Right now, we’re on track to produce 110% more oil, gas and coal than can ever be burned, and keep the planet below two degrees by 2030 These nations are already having to move people because of sea level rise and the constant being battered by cyclones and extreme weather.

Tzeporah Berman, she was named Time Magazine top 100 Climate Impact List. She’s got a number of books. Her first book was this crazy time living our environmental challenge.

What we’re seeing today is a scandal. They knew. They’ve known for 50 years that their products were going to cause this harm on the earth, and they made conscious decisions to hide the evidence from us.

You’re listening to A Climate Change this is your host, Matt Matern. I’ve got a great guest on the program, Tzeporah Berman. Tzeporah’s background is, she is the chair of the fossil fuel Non Proliferation Treaty initiative, I knew I could say it, and she’s also done a lot of other great work, International Program Director at Stan dot Earth in 2019 she received the climate breakthrough Award, which included a $2 million grant to create breakthrough global strategies on climate change. She was named to Time Magazine top 100 climate impact list. She’s got a number of books. Her first book was this crazy time living our environmental challenge. And most recently, 2020. Was arrested for blockading the logging of 1000 year old trees in Vancouver on Vancouver Island. Welcome to the program, Tzeporah.

Thanks for having me.

Well, let’s just talk about your big, bold initiative, which this Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative regarding fossil fuels and and what was kind of the genesis of it, and where is it at now?

Well, for me, the fossil fuel treaty, as we can call it for short, much easier than having to say Non Proliferation all the time. The fossil fuel treaty idea came from my lived experience in Canada. I’m Canadian, and I worked for well over a decade on pipelines and the expansion of the oil sands, also known as tar sands in Alberta, here in Canada, it’s one of the dirtiest forms of oil in the world and and, you know, when I first started this work, I kind of thought we just have a government that doesn’t believe in climate change, and then we had a change in government, and they still kept approving more oil drilling and more tar sands and Canada’s emissions kept going up and and it forced, for me, a reckoning, a really kind of a deep dive into well, what does, what is climate policy and and what do our international agreements say countries are supposed to be doing?

And what I found out was really shocking to me. For 30 years, climate policy has been designed to reduce the demand of fossil fuels, to make countries commit to emissions targets how much we get to pollute, but not about constraining the supply of fossil fuels. And that, in some ways, is actually very odd. When you look throughout history of other big and tangible problems, you see that we’ve always tried to address both the demand and the supply to cut out a problem, and so that forced me to really start reaching out around the world to others and try and understand this disconnect. Why are we saying we are going to reduce how much fossil fuels we use? Because of course, climate change is complicated, but it 86% of the emissions trapped in our atmosphere and causing the fires and the floods and the extreme weather come from three things, oil, gas and coal. And we don’t have regulations climate policy at a national or at an international level to constrain how much fossil fuels are produced and what we use today, what we build today, will be what we use tomorrow.

And in the course of my research, I found out that there had been a declaration coming from the South Pacific in 2014 where governments, for the first time, were saying, Hold on. We need a moratorium on expanding fossil fuel production and infrastructure. We got to stop building the problem if we’re going to transition out of it. And that was the first time that had been considered. So to make a long story very short, I started engaging with academics and diplomats and lawyers who were looking at nuclear Non Proliferation and landmines and chemical weapons ban and saying, Could we make a companion to the Paris agreement to help us meet the goals of the international climate negotiations that constrains production in a fair and equitable way, so that there’s not just negotiations on who gets to pollute and how much, but there’s negotiations on who gets to produce and how much.

And that’s what we did. We’ve now created the fossil fuel treaty. We have 17 nation states who are participating in the developing the basis of the. Treaty, another 10 countries who are participating as observers in the negotiations. The movement has grown around the world. We have well over 3000 organizations and 117 countries that have endorsed the idea, over 4000 scientists, 101 Nobel laureates, hundreds of cities that have passed motions at city councils, so all of this engagement helps create the political space for nation states to take the idea seriously and start designing a fossil fuel treaty.

Well, it’s pretty remarkable that you’ve gotten this much momentum. I think I had seen one place in our earlier article, you were at 14 countries. Now you’re at 17. So the the needle is moving. You had, at the time, 101 Nobel Prize winners and hundreds of cities and 1000s of scientists, and that continues to grow. My own City, Los Angeles, I guess, was the first one of the first ones. So you’ve got some momentum. What? What are the next steps? Do you have any European countries? I’m pretty sure the United States of America has not signed off on this one,
and they might never.

You know what? The interesting thing that I’ve learned after studying five other treaties is that there’s, there’s a couple of different ways that international treaties are created, and one is that you have to have all the countries, and it’s by consensus, like the United Nations Framework on climate change and the Paris agreement. And that has particular strengths. But the weaknesses is that the rules end up being the lowest common denominator, because you have to get 190 countries to agree. So what that often means is countries that stand to benefit from the status quo, from expanding fossil fuel production, for example, like the US and the Permian Basin, they they would weaken this significantly.

It would be almost impossible to achieve a treaty. But when you look at other treaties, like chemical weapons ban or land mines, these are more the build it. And they will come model a small group of very ambitious countries getting together and creating rules. And once other countries start to see the benefit of that rules and that the table is laid, then they want to join it too. And so it grows as a kind of build it. And they will come the chemical weapons ban started with 20 countries. And you know, that’s similar to many the other treaties that I’ve that I’ve mentioned, and so the next step for the fossil fuel treaty is countries convening in a diplomatic conference outside of the UN system to start to review the research that we’ve been working on now for five years over how a treaty would work. So what we’ve been doing is, is developing trade ideas, tax agreements, debt relief agreements that can help countries so that they’re not pushed into a position of expanding more fossil fuels.

Because the fact is that renewables are cheaper now, and we have the technology to replace a lot of, almost all of fossil fuel uses. But fossil fuels are still being expanded, in part because countries look around and go, Well, they’re still doing it, so I’m still going to do it. And in part for especially countries in the Global South, they’re expanding new drilling, for example, in Ecuador, in the heart of the Amazon, just to feed their debt. So how can countries cooperate together, to support each other, to start to stop new expansion and start to decommission existing infrastructure in order to fast track renewable energy? I think in the past, a lot of people thought this was just going to happen by the markets. The markets would do it.

Renewables would become cheaper. Demand for fossil fuels will go down because people because people are buying electric cars and heat pumps and and that would constrain supply. But it’s not working. And it’s not working because the markets are really distorted with now, you know, over a trillion dollars in subsidies every year. So what we’re seeing is a lot of governments are trying to keep their own fossil fuel industry alive inside their own borders, but if we all do that, then climate change just gets worse.

Well, I guess the way I look at and see who are the potential early adopters would be countries that don’t have a huge or substantial fossil fuel industry, say, like Japan, or a number of countries in Europe, or the countries that are getting closer towards a higher and higher mix of renewables, like Denmark, which I guess on some days, produces 100% of their electricity from wind. So that those countries would sign up, and then you could and they’re rich enough, like Japan and Denmark that they could agree to some debt relief with a country like Ecuador and say, hey, we’ll buy up your debt, but you agree you’re not going to produce any fossil fuels, and then that creates a template for the next. Country to come in, who is a poor country from the global south or wherever, to say, Okay, we’re not going to keep digging coal, or we’re not going to keep producing gas. And there’s a market price for what giving that up is worth. And we’re willing to, you know, take the market price for that.

You know, it’s interesting, because that’s exactly how I thought it would work as well. But as it turns out so far, that’s not true. Like the first countries to join have been countries in the South Pacific, so small island nations who are the most vulnerable nations in the world to climate change, and for them, this is existential challenge, right? These nations are already having to move people because of sea level rise and the constant being battered by cyclones and extreme weather. And so the first countries to join were Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Vanuatu was the first country, followed by Tuvalu, and then many other island nations. But then again, surprising. I think a lot of us the next country to join was Colombia.

So Colombia is the sixth largest coal exporter in the world, and they joined the fossil fuel treaty when President Petro announced that, I think it was in Dubai. Might have been Samuel shark, one of those Conference of the Parties. When he announced it, he said, as a major fossil fuel producer, we’re joining this treaty because we know every day we’re making the problem worse and that it threatens all of us. In fact, it now threatens all life on Earth. But we, we can’t stop unless we have cooperation between countries to change the system that is pushing us all towards greater fossil fuel expansion. And I think that really, that really shifted this work on the fossil fuel treaty, because I think it, it opened up the conversation with a lot of other major or medium sized fossil fuel producers, as well as a lot of other countries in the Global South, who, when they first heard about the fossil fuel treaty, were thinking that it was not fair, because, you know, the Global North has been producing fossil fuels and benefiting from it economically, and now it’s their turn.

But what I think a lot of those countries, as a result of conversations with Colombia and others, are starting to realize is that investing heavily in fossil fuel production doesn’t lead to greater economic independence. In fact, it leads to greater dependence, because it’s infrastructure and production that they won’t necessarily own. You know, the most amazing someone said to me the other day, the amazing thing about the sun is that it doesn’t send you a bill at the end of the month. You don’t have to keep feeding it, you know, and keep digging up more.

And that is really true. Renewable energy infrastructure is leading to greater independence for remote communities, as well as greater resiliency and independence in countries in the Global South, whereas big fossil fuel infrastructure is essentially being designed to make Africa and parts of Asia into Europe’s gas station. And while that can lead to short term economic benefit. It also leaves a lot of countries in the Global South with the liability of cleanup and infrastructure that that leads to greater dependency and not and not long term economic stability.

So in terms of Colombia, what have you seen, in terms of, you know, doing things that move the needle towards reduction of their coal production. Have they? Have they taken actions to shut down coal mines?

They’re looking at a long term transition plan, and first of all, not expanding new production, which is critical. One of the very bizarre things I find about the climate debate right now that is so distorted is you, you have many countries talking about responsibility on climate, my own country, Canada, or look at the UK or Australia, yet they’re continuing to expand the problem. You know, we need to have a just transition. It’s not a transition if we’re still expanding the problem. It’s a transition if we stopped new projects and are winding down fossil fuel phase out. And this, this whole idea that it’s a transition, but we’re just going to increase fossil fuel production.

You know, right now, we’re on track to produce 110% more oil, gas and coal than can ever be burned, and keep the planet below two degrees by 2030 so we’re actually emissions are supposed to be going like this, but production is going up. And so Colombia has said, first of all, a commitment to no new and that they want to manage a wind down, but that they need to cooperate with other countries in order to do that. And so they’ve been extremely active. In the conversations within the group of countries, in looking at what mechanisms are going to be helpful, market access, trade and tax to put them in a financial position so that they can wind down fossil fuel production, which this government is committed to, and domestically, they’ve been very focused on creating a portfolio of projects that will ensure energy security and independence, but also potentially export from renewable energy.

And one of the again, big hills to climb is that while a number of countries in the Global South have renewable energy projects and would like to be building that cleaner economy, 98% of the finance for renewable energy projects is not going into the global South, even though, actually it’s many of those countries that have the greatest potential, especially for for solar. So we’ve been working with the Colombia government to help them identify that portfolio of projects and de risk them. So looking at policy opportunities, tax opportunities, et cetera, to make those projects exciting to investors and participating in the development of a just economy private capital fund that would be provide investment to countries for low carbon economic development if those countries are part of the fossil fuel treaty, a group, so a kind of carrot to joining and developing the fossil fuel treaty. So that’s the work that I’ve been involved in, that they’re more the work of developing their project pipeline, and then the work of developing these cooperation mechanisms between countries. With Colombia.

Have you made any headway, say, with Brazil or other countries in South America, but particularly in Brazil, since it’s the largest population wise and probably geography wise, and also it holds most of the Amazon?

A lot of headway with indigenous leadership and civil society. In Brazil, we have a growing movement calling for the fossil fuel treaty and calling for the Amazon to be the first Fossil Free Zone. So calling for a fossil free Amazon. And I think I raised those civil society and indigenous campaigns because they’re really critical. Those those campaigns start to create the social license for governments to take the step to do this, because many of us grew up with the idea that fossil fuels are what make us prosperous, and that social norm like the idea, when I was I’m old enough to remember growing up thinking stockpiling nuclear weapons was what was going to keep you safe, and turning that social norm on its head, because, actually, it was stockpiling nuclear weapons that threatened us, and that’s in some ways, that’s what we’re doing on fossil fuels, supporting governments and leaders so that they, when they say we’re going to constrain and phase out fossil fuels, that people understand they’re doing that to keep us safe, and that they will have we will have a more prosperous future.

Because right now, in a lot of jurisdictions, when an elected leader says that they’re threatening their ability to they’re threatening their ability to succeed in the next election. And so the movement is strong. In Brazil, we haven’t heard yet interest from the presidency, and I think Brazil is in a very interesting situation, because they’re hosting the concert Conference of Parties later this year. We certainly have heard several officials talking about the need to address fossil fuel phase out, and that perhaps it’s a work plan outside of the existing work plan for the Paris Agreement, and we certainly consider what we’re developing at the fossil fuel treaty as a work plan to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. So there may be some softening and opening there. We’ll see.

Chile has passed a motion to support the fossil fuel treaty in the House and in the Senate, but we haven’t heard confirmation from the Chilean presidency yet. So we’re hoping that that will come forward, and they will be one of the next Latin American countries. And I know that Colombia is reaching out now to many other countries in Latin America to encourage them to join them critical for the fossil fuel treaty this year, we we need a country from Europe, and we need a country from Africa. And we do have a major country from pakist, from Asia, Pakistan, joined last year. And there’s several other countries in Asia that are, I think, close on their tails. So we’re in good conversations with a couple European countries now, and a couple of African nations who, who I believe could join as early as by the end of this year.

So as far as like Pakistan, unfortunately, my understanding is they were building a lot of new coal plants with the help of China. Though I you know, on the heartening note, I guess they it was taken to using a lot of solar panels that people are using on the sides of their. Houses and apartments, and that has really been quite effective, and has reduced the need for some of these coal plants. Maybe you can talk to us further about that.

It’s huge. The pace of adoption of solar in Pakistan is a model for other nations, that’s for sure. And that’s really exciting, but I would say there’s, there’s no country at this point that is perfect. We are all still part of a fossil fuel system, and joining the fossil fuel treaty doesn’t require a country to have, you know, committed to completely, you know, decommission their existing fossil fuel assets. In part, what we’re trying to do is help them create the preconditions to be able to do that. And the idea that each country should figure it out mostly on their own is absurd, because our financial markets are connected. Our physical commodity markets are connected. Some technologies exist in some countries that don’t in in others, and and this speed at which we need to shift requires countries to develop new areas of cooperation so that we can move forward quicker. So I think Pakistan’s leadership by saying they want a fossil fuel treaty is really important and has created a lot of new conversations in Asia.

But I do think what they’re doing domestically is also really important, because people fear scarcity, right, especially in the Global South, where a lot of people only just got electricity, and so they need to see tangible projects of renewable energy, electrification of vehicles, in order to believe that it’s going to be real, we have the technology now to replace over 90% of fossil fuel use, and it will be cheaper, not just in the long term, but even in the shorter term, but it’s but a lot of people really haven’t seen that yet. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world and visit a lot of these renewable energy projects, and a lot of countries like Denmark. I was just there in Copenhagen, and many other countries in Scandinavia, where we’re seeing so much of their infrastructure is now electrification and renewable and it’s an amazing experience, not just to see it, but to hear it. I’ll never forget being on a construction site, and I think I was in Norway, and it was completely silent, and I had never thought about that benefit. Electric vehicles are silent.

So are the massive trucks and diggers and everything else. And it was the cities are strangely beautiful and silent, like you can hear the birds everywhere, and it’s besides, of course, the obvious advantage of the smog. A lot of people don’t realize that fossil fuels cause more premature death globally than any other single thing in the world, because eight to 9 million people die every year from fossil fuel air pollution, from asthma, from the smog, and so there’s so many other benefits when we start shifting to clean energy and renewable electrified system. And it’s but people need to see it to know that it can be real and it’s not, you know?

Yeah, certainly there are many, many countries and cities around the world that have made dramatic changes. That’s why I’m wondering, have you had conversations with, say, Denmark and other countries in Europe that are doing more renewables, and Denmark, to me, stands out as probably the number one opportunity, or Japan that is not, does not, historically, have a lot of fossil fuels.

To my understanding, we have and well, Denmark, we haven’t had that many conversations with, in part because the Danes have been so important in chairing the development of the Beyond oil and gas alliance called Boga. And Boca is a critical initiative because it’s about countries coming together to share experiences and plans for domestic regulations to stop the expansion of oil and gas. It’s the focus is not as much on creating new international cooperation on multilateral mechanisms like the fossil fuel treaty is but more on national regulation and what they can do together, from on on communications and and also supporting just transition in their countries. So we consider that kind of like a sister initiative, and Denmark has been really focused on that.

And so we we also didn’t want to initially approach European countries because we wanted this to be a treaty that was built from the global south up. We can’t continue the models of colonialization and extractivism that have created the systems we have where the northern wealthy countries have had a pretty. Big elephant footprint in a lot of the international treaties and and negotiations and and so we were really trying to do this a bit differently, especially when the initial interest that we got started from, and we started learning from the experience of countries in the South Pacific and now Colombia and in Latin America and Pakistan and others and but we this year, I did a trip meeting governments from 10 countries in Europe to invite them to join the growing block. And there’s a lot of interest.

And so I expect we’ll have a couple European countries joined by the by the end of the year, I haven’t yet reached out to Japan. They have some considerable fossil fuel investments in new development, not inside Japan, but outside of Japan. So I think that might be a complication, because we need to look at what countries are funding, not just what they’re building at home. And we see a lot of wealthy countries in Asia now funding some of the big new proposed fossil fuel infrastructure in Latin America and Africa as well. So, you know, we’ll, I hope those countries will be open to the fossil fuel treaty. I think we’re going to need to grow this block significantly over the next year. Colombia has recently announced during London climate week that they will be hosting the first dedicated diplomatic conference on fossil fuel phase out to start the negotiations process for a fossil fuel treaty in 2026 and I think once that conference is formally announced and that table is set, we’ll see more more countries joining up quickly.

Well, certainly from your lips to God’s ears on that. I guess. The thing is, I kind of see bringing more, you know, European countries and developed countries to the table, and that they have the money, and they also maybe have the expertise to to move the needle regarding some of these issues on a technical basis. And as you said, the finance issues are are enormous, and they have the banks and the lenders that can lend to the global south to get these projects off the ground.

Yeah, but that’s also Matt, why they might be a little reticent to join, and they’ve had some of those conversations with them, because the Fossil fuel treaty is being designed with the principle of equity in mind. So really looking at the role the wealthy countries have played in the carbon that is currently trapped in our atmosphere and causing the extreme weather and floods, etc, and how much they’ve already produced, and we’ve done some fairly detailed analysis too, on so who gets to keep producing and how? For how long?

The fossil fuel treaty is not saying we have to turn off the taps overnight. That would be crazy and but what we are saying is no new expansion and wind down in an equitable way. So that equitable wind down is going to be very challenging for wealthy countries in the Global North, they’re going to be asked to put up the funds. They’re also going to be asked to have a steep, steeper decline in production than countries in the Global South, because that’s actually what’s fair. I think that is going to be challenging.

Well, with certain countries, that may not be a challenge at all, and it’s already aligned with their goals, like Denmark that has got 100% wind power on number of days. And my understanding is their goal is to kind of be the Saudi Arabia of wind. So they’re actually creating hydrogen with their excess wind energy to ship to, say, Germany. So Germany can use the hydrogen to power industrial processes with their manufacturing base. So in many countries in Europe are trying to get off of coal, and they don’t have a whole lot of oil and natural gas to begin with. So say, for instance, Ireland, I guess, recently became one of the number of countries that have given up coal. That seems like a a complimentary group of countries to work with.

I totally agree, and I couldn’t have put it better. And if you ever need a role in a diplomatic corps, you’re making the argument. There’s a job over here for your fossil fuel treaty. You’re making the argument really well. We’ve had some great conversations with Ireland, with the advice and support of former President Mary Robinson, who is supporting the call for the fossil fuel treaty. And I’m optimistic that Ireland will join the group.

Well, that would be great. Yeah, I feel like there’s strength in numbers. Of course, you’re trying to get as many as you can and it’s hopeful. When I see more and more countries get off of coal, that coalition continues to grow. And of course, with the the availability of solar power that is cheaper than coal, it makes economic sense, and it at the end of the day. Hopefully that moves the needle as much as anything to just it’s cheaper.

And as I was saying, I think a lot of people thought that that would be what would move the leader. Move the needle like I’ve been at this a long time now, over 20 years. And when I first started, renewables were so much more expensive and inaccessible in terms of large scale technology, and now they’re at price parity or cheaper in every jurisdiction in the world. Then the technology for concentrated solar, etc, and battery storage is so much better than it used to be, but that hasn’t been enough. And you know on the hopeful side, renewable energy investment globally last year was twice that of fossil fuel investment, so we have seen a definite shift towards investment in renewable energy, but we’re still seeing such considerable investment in fossil fuel investment infrastructure, and that’s a problem, because every ton of carbon right now that We save from going into the atmosphere will save lives.

I mean, look, 1,500 people died at the heat wave in Europe last month. How many children were swept away in Texas? This is happening now, and every ton of carbon that we save from going into the atmosphere will save lives and save it from being worse. And so we we can’t just focus on building the good stuff, the renewables, we have to stop the expansion of fossil fuels, because, look, the atmosphere doesn’t care how many solar panels we create.

The atmosphere cares how many, how many fossil fuel projects we don’t so what do we do with, say, the United States, where the current administration policy is, drill, baby, drill. Do you just kind of work around that, and just kind of, as you said, work with other nations that are the coalition of the willing. Or is there work to be done in the United States to open hearts and minds to this process of phasing out fossil fuels?

Yeah, a tremendous work. There is enormous work to be done on the fossil fuel treaty. What we’re doing is supporting organizations who want to get their cities on board. Want to get their states on board. As you said, Los Angeles was one of the first cities to pass a motion. California was one of the Hawaii was our first subnational government, state government, and then California was next to pass motions at the Senate and the House endorsing the fossil fuel treaty during the nuclear Non Proliferation movement in the 70s and 80s, cities and states joining up was really important to kind of create the drum beat to have the conversation. What the polling is showing us right now is the majority of people in the US care about climate change. They’re afraid of climate change and they want stronger policies, but they’re not talking about it, and they’re not talking about it because they think they’re alone. The polls are fascinating. 89% care about climate change, regardless of whether you come from the right or the left.

Yet people are think that only about 10 to 15% care. There’s a tremendous climate silence. I think it’s being bullied out of people to not talk about climate change. People will think they’re too far left. It’s become a right or left issue or or they’ll be ridiculed or so. I think the first thing I would say is talk about it, not just at work, not just, you know, at school, talk about it. At home, in your community, talk about the connection of what you’re seeing in your life, the floods and the fires and the extreme weather we now know are being caused by climate change, and we know climate change is being caused by fossil fuels. We need to make that connection for people, and we need to be talking about it so that it becomes part of the lexicon, and we don’t allow those who stand to benefit from the existing system.

Because make no mistake about it, this is about benefits. The fossil fuel industry, primarily US companies, have made $2.8 billion in profit every day for the past 50 years, $2.8 billion in profit every day for the past 50 years. And those that’s the most profitable companies in the history of the world, they’re not going to let go easy. And I see sometimes what they’re saying and what is being echoed by the Trump administration and the drill baby drill mantras as the last gasp of the fossil fuel industry, because they can see the writing on the wall. We can have electric vehicles now. We can have renewable energy that’s cheaper, and the same people are not going to benefit from it.

They’re not going to be able to make those ridiculous profits on the backs of the rest of us, and so they’re going to fight hard to maintain control, and that’s what we’re seeing now. And we have to make sure that we continue to push, to raise the conversation, and most importantly, so people can understand the consequences of inaction, because we’re not creating this fight the world that we’re in this fight now, and the concept. Consequences of inaction are more people will suffer, and our kids will live in a world that is increasingly unlivable.

Speaking of which, there were huge fires in Canada the last few years, and I believe you’ve written a bit about it, a bit about maybe the litigation that’s going on related to it. I know there’s been a lot of litigation in in the US regarding fires and while the hurricane Maria down in Puerto Rico, I haven’t read as much about litigation in Canada, are there groups going after the big oil and fossil fuel producers regarding the damage caused by their conduct.

There are hundreds, if not 1000s of lawsuits right now around the world. This is a very new area of litigation. There are governments suing the fossil fuel industry now, city governments, state governments, California obviously is suing big oil for its impact on climate change and for the denial of climate change, even though they knew, because this isn’t about, you know, someone said to me the other day, it’s such a tragedy. What’s happening in Texas, and it’s not just a tragedy. A tragedy is when things happen that we couldn’t stop. We didn’t know we couldn’t avoid. What we’re seeing today is a scandal. They knew. They’ve known for 50 years that their products were going to cause this harm on the earth, and they made conscious decisions, which we’re now seeing through the court cases and all the documents that are being unearthed companies like Exxon, BP, Shell, they knew they had their own scientists. They did the analysis.

They knew it was going to happen. They made a decision to cover it up and to hide the data, and then to fund an infrastructure of public relations that cost them billions of dollars to hide the evidence from us, to create this kind of delay and denial. They flooded the policy system to make sure that their products were not constrained, and in some cases, to literally kill other projects so renewable energy couldn’t become cheaper and we couldn’t have technological breakthroughs. That has all been exposed now and documented in the amazing projects like Exxon new the work of academics like Naomi Oreskes and Michael Mann and so now we know, and we have the data to show it, and what we’re starting to see is the companies are actually acknowledging it, pulling out of all their net zero commitments, because they know they can never meet them. You can’t get to zero of fossil fuel emissions by growing more fossil fuel emissions.

And that’s what they’re trying to make us think, and that’s what the Trump administration is saying. It’s okay. We’re going to grow more fossil fuel production and then we’re going to put in place these technologies which will reduce the emissions and make it all clean. It’s fraud. It’s not working. It hasn’t worked, and it’s not going to work at scale in order to keep most of the people safe.

Yeah, it’s definitely a fairy tale. Carbon Capture is is a fraud. It seems as though I was at COP 28 which was in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and and a number of the fossil fuel Petro states there had gotten on board with accepting, hey, climate change was caused by their product, and have invested fairly heavily in in alternative energy sources. Is that more greenwashing? Or do you think there’s some there, there that they actually are going to engage and have has your organization engaged with them regarding kind of non plurift proliferation?

Yeah, I mean, we’ve engaged with a lot of those governments in the cop spaces. And, you know, it’s funny, a lot of people were very angry that the Conference of Parties were being held in Dubai or Azerbaijan, because of, you know, these are, these are Petro states. And I actually thought it was great, because what it did is it dragged the conversation about fossil fuels and future oil development into the center stage, and what the fossil fuel industry has literally tried to do in their written strategy documents is make it invisible. They wanted their products to be invisible. So we would talk about targets and emissions reduction and Net Zero, while never talking about constraining or phasing out fossil fuels. And honestly, they were successful in doing that to almost 30 years until Glasgow, until we started the fossil fuel treaty campaign. And many groups started, Boga formed, and we started having a more robust conversation.

And then the conversation escalated in Dubai and in Azerbaijan and and, I think there are flaws in the way the United Nation framework on climate change system is designed by consensus so that you you don’t get really strong outcomes on fossil fuels. But we did have fairly robust conversations, which have been important. What we see in really wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia is they’re investing half. Heavily in the development of renewable energy. They know, they know this is where they need to go. They’re still, of course, producing significant amounts of amounts of oil and controlling it. But I think they’re very clear that those days are numbered, and I think we’re starting to see that in the way that they are in the various policies of OPEC, and the way they’re increasing and decreasing access to oil. And I think we’re going to see a lot of fluctuations in the future as various countries and companies try and ride out the last days and figure out how long they’ll be able to continue to dominate production of fossil fuels.

Well, I would imagine that they may want to keep prices a little bit lower just to keep the tap on, so that if they jack up prices, then that will encourage more transition, a quicker transition to renewable sources, because the the price differential will be high enough that it makes more and more sense, and $100 a barrel oil makes it even more of a good reason to drive an electric car, versus maybe a $60 barrel of oil price doesn’t Make it as much of an economic benefit.

Yes, and when you add politics in there, sometimes it’s to their benefit to have a very high price of oil, because actually that increases social license to expand production. If they’re trying to grandfather in new projects, they need people to be worried about scarcity and worried about price and and so that actually can impact what approvals for new projects. It’s complicated, but it’s actually the vulnerability that we have to the control by a very small number of oligarchs, a very small number of companies, to whether or not we can heat our homes, whether or not we can transport ourselves, whether or not we can turn the lights on, is exactly why we’re seeing a number of countries now move to to to committing towards fossil fuel phase out.

The Netherlands, for example, quite a right of center administration right now, they have committed to fossil fuel phase out. And when I met with their climate ambassador, President Obama. What he said to me is what we know now, we were dependent on Putin’s gas, then we were dependent on Trump’s gas, and we’re starting to realize that fossil fuel phase out is an issue of energy security for us, so that is pushing them more towards renewable energy and decreasing fossil fuel use, and that’s really interesting, right? And it is. It’s not only more stable, it can renewables. It can increase your a country and certainly an individual, family, communities, energy security. But we’re also seeing from places like Texas that it’s more resilient. It’s less vulnerable to to the infrastructure, is less vulnerable to extreme weather because of the distributed nature of the infrastructure. So there’s a there’s a lot of reasons why a renewable energy and clean energy economy is going to make economies less vulnerable.

Well, it’s been great having you on the program, Tzeporah, and amazing work that you’re doing out there around the world, and I’ll take you up on the offer of being a diplomat. That’s I take that as high praise. I feel like I’ve said it many times to friends or family members, of the highest and best skill of a lawyer is to be a diplomat. So one of these days, maybe that that will come true, but until then, great.

Well, thank you so much. It’s been a great conversation, and I hope folks will explore what we’re doing. We make all of our research available online for free at fossil fuel treaty.org so I hope people will will join us, because no one owns this idea of a fossil fuel treaty. It is a movement now of businesses and cities and states and individuals. So please join us.

Absolutely, everybody should check it out. And you know, follow Tzeporah and her organization on all social media channels, but maybe more importantly, advocate for it, whatever local state government you’re affiliated with, let them know that, hey, this is an idea that you think is important and they should join in.

Great. Well thank you, Matt.

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